Talk:Moruga Scorpion Chili
Actually, the official current Guinness world record for the hottest chili is the Smokin Ed's Carolina Reaper, grown by the Puckerbutt Pepper Company. -- Simsilikesims(♀GUN) Talk here. 23:45, February 10, 2014 (UTC)
From the Review page[edit]
How and why is it funny? Any suggestions?
Hi, Macboswell! I really enjoyed reading your Moruga Scorpion Chili and would like to review it! (Well, actually, it's not exactly the truth, as I decided to review it first and then read it, but the sentence looks better that way). So let's start!
I found the article very funny and well-developed! The jokes you made were good. I liked the idea that this Chili is lethal and that it is now used in metallurgical industry. My favourite parts were the start of Cultivation and the end of Smeltery. The article looks good, entertains the reader and makes him want to read more of your works! However, there are also several aspects which could be improved upon.
What you say is funny but I would suggest for you to concentrate on how you say it. The biggest problem this article faces is that you tell the reader exactly what joke you're going to make, then you make it and sometimes even repeat it but in other words. Humour often works because of a surprise effect. The reader looks at the path which he is following and thinks that it is all straight, makes two steps and suddenly discovers that he is now facing a wall and or - even better - a ravine, and the road has turned!
- In the introduction, for instance: "They [the peppers] are strictly not for eating and are used primarily in the metallurgical industry". This was one of the funniest sentences of the article but unfortunately you say exactly the same thing in Smeltery: "Due to their intense heat, Moruga Scorpions are used mainly in the metallurgy industry and are seldom used in cookery." Any of these two phrases would be great, but not both of them. You let the reader know where the road turns before he is able to see that turn and this makes your article lose some of its effect.
The same thing can be seen with the Clinker method - its mention in the info box, which summarises your main point, and then the whole section about it; with the components of the Moruga Scorpion Chili - you can get the joke from the info box before you see many mentions of the pepper's metallic nature in the actual article.
But the danger of the pepper is definitely your favourite one! You mention it in almost every section of your article! And sometimes, when you do, you just paraphrase what you have already said.
- In Probable flavour, you write: "Lying on his deathbed after consuming a Moruga Scorpion, Bill Capcom, etc., etc.". Then after you tell your reader what the incident was, there is: "He died shortly after". Well, if one is lying on one's deathbed, this actually means that one is going to die very soon.
- The description of human's sufferings is as picturesque with Bill Capcom, as it is with Henry Duotone. Blood is used several times in your narrative and all of the times under similar circumstances.
- And one last thing: in Combustion units, I did not understand where you took your Imhotep Junior from. I have only heard of Imhotep and he lived in 2600s-2500s BC. If there was a Junior Imhotep, he probably lived even later than that. If there wasn't, I cannot understand why you need him. And also, if the date is fake, then this is another topic - dates that don't mean anything usually distract the reader from the content and make the article where they are look more random.
If you feel like you won't be able to make something good out of this (I am saying this, because I have felt this way before), then don't despair! Don't consider your article bad, because it really isn't. And improvements may just consist in the deletion or modification of several phrases.
How good is an idea behind the article?
I found the ideas you introduced mainly very well-developed! The only thing I, as a reader, would wish is more of them! The article is not very long but it is clever and original and so the reader will definitely want to spend more time reading it!
You have talked about history of the Chili in the article, but perhaps an entire section about it would be a good idea? <----- Were there any famous uses of it?
Also, there were three paragraphs about people's experiences in your article and so you might be interested in this quote I found on Wikipedia:
| “ | You take a bite. It doesn't seem so bad, and then it builds and it builds and it builds. So it is quite nasty. | ” |
Have you tried the Moruga Scorpion Chili? Based on some research, I don't think it's very probable, but you already include many details, some of which are truthful to a certain degree (I didn't believe you would actually be able to taste your blood, but then I found that you actually would). So is there anything else about the experience itself that you could include?
These were suggestions for any future additions to your article (if you are planning to do any). The only thing that could be done better is the organisation of sections. The headers were funny, but somehow they made the article look quite unorganised. The section about the history of Combustion Units seems like an alien, because it interrupts a line of ideas about the Moruga Scorpion Chili. Won't it be more suitable at the beginning of the article? There connections between two subsequent sections is not always clear, but that pretty much all.
How good does it look and how well does it read?
Your writing is well-structured and interesting. You use words and phrases wittily, so that they make your points even funnier. For example, I liked what you did with "hot", playing with its definitions. I think that more of this could make Moruga Scorpion Chili even funnier. For example, you can create a certain ambiguity about the way in which the pepper is hot. Or not, you choose. That's just that after I read "Henry Duotone, the world's hottest man", I thought you were about to go that way and you have never returned to that aspect later. Actually, the first sentence also seems to touch the idea of the word's double meaning, but perhaps it is just my vivid imagination (there were two words in particular that made me think there was more to it than just the taste of the pepper: "disgustingly" and "bastard").
The use of "you" in the Probable flavour is not very encyclopaedic. You don't always have to make your article look like a Wikipedia one, but often, if you take a certain distance from the reader, you can make your work funnier than when you address him directly. In your case, I think that it could help you.
What concerns other aspects of your prose, I found grammar good with a very few exceptions, which were probably accidental (but I am not the best judge here, as English is my second language). Nevertheless, I've done some proofreading and here is what I found:
- In the introduction, you say: "They are strictly not for eating" and I am rather sure that there is a mistake in here. Even if this is not the case, this phrase gives birth to another issue, which I discussed in the Humour section of the review: you are summarising the joke before telling it.
- In Trial and error, you could rephrase "Now the director of the Chili Pepper Institute of Enterprise and Circumstance he recently commented".
- In Cultivation section, the phrase it requires so much sunlight and magnetism sounds rather vague, as it implies that the reader knows exactly how much of sunlight and magnetism this kind of pepper needs. Maybe replace "so" with a more specific adverb?
- In The Clinker Method, the last sentence does not sound very well: I think that "the Moruga Scorpion plant cannot die nor be destroyed" should be replaced with "the Moruga Scorpion plant can neither die, nor be destroyed.
Punctuation is good and the only thing I could possibly reproach to you is your unique way of using semi-colons: I corrected one (in The Clinker method) but there is still another one left in the introduction - "narrowly beating its arch rival; the Chinese Kong". Did you mean - "its arch rival - the Chinese Kong"?
How are the images? Are they relevant, with good quality and formatting?
The images were chosen with care, which I can see!
- The first one is great!
- For number two - are you sure it is "combustable" and not "combustible"?
- What concerns the Clinker method, I wonder how the picture itself is linked to the method. It is distracting, as it doesn't show the reader anything new about the Moruga Scorpion Chili or its cultivation. At the same time, that's why it cannot humorously backup the points you make in the article.
- The fourth one is also funny and it would be even more suitable if it was closer to the introduction, as well as the CU section.
The article's overall quality - that indefinable something.
Very funny section headers!
An overall summation of the article.
I really hope this review will help you to make your article even funnier, then it already is! You may need to reorganise it a bit, to check whether all of your phrases are essential to your concept and humour and maybe to add a few sections to the article - but overall, good job! I should be honest, I have never seen a user to whom features come so quickly! This is why (and also because of the article's quality) I am sure that its destiny is to reach the main page!