Uncyclopedia:Pee Review/A Peter Griffin Christmas
A Peter Griffin Christmas[edit]
Something stupid I wrote my first year at Uncyclopedia. It was unanimously deleted before Christmas even arrived. Five years later, I've resurrected, tweaked and expanded it to something slightly less stupid. -- Kip > Talk • Works • •
19:13, Nov. 17, 2012
- I think it's fun and light. The issue is that I don't think there is much we can do with comedy shows except a) rip them to pieces or b) pretend they are about real person. When I read the South Park article I thought it would be a lot funnier to write a geographical article, as if South Park were a real town in Colorado, than to write a half-serious bio of the show, so I think your approach makes sense. I'd expand the reception section - I don't like the way the quote looks there, and I think we need to think of a smarter ending.
| Concept: | 4 | This is moderately funny. However, it relies too much on borrowed humor, and, at times, is little better than a transcript. To be fair, I have seen similar humor "borrowing" that is much worse than a transcript.
I don't see much originality in the article. The "Music Video" section is notably bad, as it consists of little more than video transformed into a .gif. In other words, it is someone else's content, only in a worse format. Even the "Track Listing" section is quite unoriginal. Although the list isn't borrowed, it is exactly what I would expect to see on an actual episode of Family Guy. This isn't parody, rather fan fiction. Fan fiction consists of taking someone else's characters and using them without alteration. Whereas parody consists of lampooning or exaggerating something. Parody is almost always comical by definition, but Fan Fiction can also be comical. In other words, parody mocks, while fan fiction reuses. Some of the content isn't even fan fiction, but regurgitation of somebody's else's work. While fan fiction reuses, regurgitation simply vomits someone else's work in a a different format. Most of the jokes are based "inside" the Family Guy universe. For example, the "Surfin Bird" reference and Peter's retardation are canonical. There are some comments that are witty, but even then, the jokes are using, rather than parodying, the subject. Parodying inherently funny subjects is actually quite difficult. It is too easy to simply borrow humor. A good example of a parody of Family Guy would be South Park's Cartoon Wars episodes. |
| Prose and Formatting: | 6 | I don't see proofreading errors. However, I do have some issues with the formatting.
First off, you have an in-line image. I understand why that is here, but it is heavily borrowed humor. Second, the article ends with a box template. Bright boxes only serve to clutter the article. The info box on the side is short, which is good. Those generally turn into homes for red links and stupid one-liners. Generally, don't use the quote template. As Oscar Wilde once said, "One can quote someone in the paragraph of a text. In fact, that is the normal method of quoting, rather than creating out-of-paragraph italics text." The 2nd quote can easily be removed by integrating into the preceding paragraph. The 1st one might be ok, but probably could be added in the intro somewhere. |
| Images: | 5 | The first image is appropriate. The 2nd is also relevant, but is more of a silent video spork than an image. As I have previously mentioned, if I wanted to see the video clip, I would look it up on youtube. On a related youtube links are also bad. They are an even worse form of content borrowing. The fact that are hosted on another site makes it feel even more unoriginal to the reader. |
| Humour: | 4.5 | This article is funny, but there is actually surprisingly little content to this article. There is about 10 lines worth of paragraph text. The article looks longer because of the in-text image and the list. The list is appropriate in this situation, and isn't worse than the rest of the article.
There are some witty bits, but these are mainly borrowed from the in-universe of the show. That can be OK if used correctly. However, this article consists of mainly of direct content borrowing and reuse of characters. If the article consisted of reuse of characters and "original" parody, that would still be parody. This article, however, is still well within the "fan fiction" category. You could fix it by adding more content to the article, preferably in paragraph form. However, I can't think of anything obvious to add. Since the article is just under 4 kilobytes long, I assume you probably can't either. |
| Improvability Score: | 3.5 | I don't know of any obvious fixes for the article. It isn't horrible, but it isn't "good" either. You could try expanding it, but the article as it stands feels like a regurgitation rather than a parody. If you have any ideas to expand it, do it. If not, I would suggest working on something else. |
| Final Score: | 23 | Please leave any comments on my talk page, as I have a watchlist over 11,000 pages long, and will possibly miss anything here. Also, you may want to withdraw your pee question at the fork. |
| Reviewer: | --Mn-z 14:16, February 9, 2013 (UTC) | |