Uncyclopedia:Pee Review/Joseph Ducreux (2nd Opinion)

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Joseph Ducreux

No one has reviewed my first attempt at this article yet. I have spent a bit of time improving upon my initial article on Ducreux and would really like a good, in-depth review, since I'd like to try and get this featured. thanks! --Sir Skinfan13 Talk {< CUN RotM FBotM VFH ΥΣΣ Maj. SK >} 00:01 EST 23 January, 2010

Hi!

PLEASE REVIEW THIS

sincerely,

--Sir Skinfan13 Talk {< CUN RotM FBotM VFH ΥΣΣ Maj. SK >}11:01 EST 26 January, 2010

Since you've been waiting so patiently I'll try and get something cooked up for this one by tomorrow . Sequence 04:07, January 30, 2010 (UTC)

Thank you so much! it's been about a month now since I put this up --Sir Skinfan13 Talk {< CUN RotM FBotM VFH ΥΣΣ Maj. SK >} 0937 EST 30 January, 2010

Sorry wasn't able to get to this one today because of politics and am too tired at the moment, but I will do it tomorrow. Yakusoku da. 116.90.73.63 10:23, January 31, 2010 (UTC)

That was me forgetting to log in. Sequence 10:23, January 31, 2010 (UTC)

Humour:	4	I know the score looks really bad but please don't be disheartened by it. I've only given this article a low humour score but I didn't particularly laugh all that much reading it. Indeed it was actually a little difficult reading it through all the way to the end since the humour is few and far between. I think the most important thing to realise is that writing that someone did something silly looking, or said something silly sounding, or vulgarity isn't all that humorous and thus is unlikely to garner many laughs. I would strongly encourage you to go through HTBFANJS and try and apply some of the techniques mentioned there. I didn't notice many of them as I was reading through the article and it is a very good resource. I'm trying to accurately write down what the problem I found with your jokes is and I think the best way of saying it is that they take too long to set up. You're obviously trying to get people to laugh by saying things like "Scientists actually credit drinking more alcohol to the elimination of his public drunkenness and the return of semi-professional discourse to Ducreux's life. The logic behind this is that he drank enough alcohol to counter-act the alcohol already in his system, thus increasing his tolerance over time." This is the kind of pseudo scientific explanation that you would hear on the Simpsons, but the difference is on the Simpsons you would only have the line about the alcohol countering out the alcohol already present, and it would be delivered by Doctor Hibbet. Reading the same thing has a much reduced effect. So you need to make your jokes much harder hitting. Another thing to note is the jokes are all kind of...childishy. The laughs are apparently meant to be derived from the fact that he is doing silly things like winning drinker of the year in 1750 by challenging some made up guy to a contest that uses an obviously American word in an article about a French dude although we don't actually know how many drinks he had although experts (who apparently have nothing better to specialise in than guessing how many drinks someone had 250 years ago) guessed that he had between 10 and 15 over the course of an hour. You see how what is meant to be humorous ends up being tedious and unamusing because of how long it takes. Add to that the fact that he won Drinker of the Year isn't actually a joke. It's just something you made up because it sounds weird and therefore must be automatically funny right? Well no, just because it sounds weird and wild it doesn't automatically mean it will get a laugh. In fact if it gets a laugh it will be despite the fact rather than because of it (there are exeptions of course when you are able to surprise the reader, but since this whole article is filled with them we just come to expect it). So that's the current problem. What to do then? Firstly start by reading How to be funny and not just stupid. It contains heaps of good advice on joke writing techniques which is weak part that you have at the moment. Secondly tune up the way you deliver the jokes. The lead up is taking too long so by the time you get to the punchline it isn't funny anymore. That's if you even manage to get a punchline which you often fail to do. Thirdly you need to find a new set of underlying jokes to use. The random, silly, weird jokes are far too many and end up just becoming stale. Finally I'd advise you to dump most of the stuff about drinking and sexing. But I'll discuss that more in this section coming up right now.
Concept:	5	The concept here of Ducreux being a painter and a pimp is a little on the weak side. The running joke about his sexual exploits starts to drag on much too long. You have to remember that not a lot of people find jokes about sex to be all that funny. One thing in particular that causes problems for the article is the very first line. You mention him being a painter, philosopher, and cook, yet of those three things the only one you talk about in the article is him being a a painter. Other than that all you focus upon is him being a womaniser and drunkard. His name even appears in the philosophical badassess template down the bottom...so why doesn't the article have anything to do with him being a philosopher? Either add in sections dealing with his philosophy and cooking or change the introduction to accurately reflect what you are going to be casting him as. Going back to the actual concept of casting him as a pimp...again it means you can only appeal to a limited audience. I think you could do much better by playing up upon his painting and how he attempted to break the mould on that. The other territory that you could explore is to base his fake biography on another famous french person. This is from the 'trial and execution' that you added onto the end. It obviously didn't happen but you could expand on it. See if you can't dress him up as being Napoleon or Joan of Arc and trying to unite France under the banner of progressive art and to lead out and conquer new territories only to be thwarted by the rest of Europe's artists who don't want to have to learn new painting techniques or something. Remember, making light of serious things can be very funny. The content of the concept i.e a rough chronology of his lifetime with addendum at the end, is solid enough so keep it in that layout.
Prose and formatting:	5	You've got a couple of problems throughout the article. The first is that you are going for a third person encyclopediac tone throughout the article but it is broken in several places where you start referring to yourself and to the reader. It's important when you set the tone of the article in the opening paragraph that you determine whether it is going to be third person or first person throughout. Breaking the fourth wall once in an article doesn't contribute to the humour, it just breaks the flow of the article. So get rid of that part. Additionally there are some parts of the article where the flow of the sentences just seems wrong. Try reading the sentences to yourself aloud and see what sounds weird to you when it is said in that method. Making sure your delivery is good is hugely important. A lot of the lines in your article are tripping overthemselves which is why I had to give such a low humour score. For instance rather than saying "On the stone, the inscription simply states;", why not just say "The inscription on the stone simply states" There are also some grammar, spelling, and punctuation erros littered throughout,such as "'...rememb' The text", should not have a capital letter on the word the. The layout itself is looking pretty good as you don't have any weird formatting or large empty white spots.
Images:	6	The images that are currently in the article are kind of meh and I think you could do much to improve them. I believe part of the reason why you wrote this article is because his portrait is starting to be used as a meme apparently. While I haven't come across any of them myself I did a little research and saw what it is. A good idea then would be to edit the first picture to include the quote at the beginning. This both allows you to get rid of the quote (which generally are kind of ehh... anyway) and turn what is currently an uninteresting photo into a better one. The same thing could be done with the second self-portrait. You would need to choose the lines carefully though. Remember what HTBFANJS says about vulgarity? Just because you say 'penis' doesn't make it automatically funny. Well it might for 14 year olds but that isn't who most of your audience is. Additionally it makes reference to Oscar Wilde, which is of course a tired old injoke. So the two things would be to move the quote into the picture and change the quote. Then for the second quote probably make the quote up to say something like "I am bored Entertain me", which then works quite well with the description underneath. The picture of the 'cottage' is plain and the sarcasm is too blunt. I don't know how skilled you are at use of photoshop or Gimp but perhaps you might be able to edit a small cottage onto the side of the mansion. Then it changes from being a bluntly sarcastic picture into an actual joke, it is a picture of the humble cottage, the cottage just happens to be overshadowed by the mansion. I can't really think of anyway to alter the last photo although you've obviously been looking for a way to put that into an article somewhere. The total number of pictures for this article is good so keep it at that number.
Miscellaneous:	5	I'd be surprised if there is anything else left for me to say at this point.
Final Score:	25	If you are planning on getting this featured then you definitely have a long way to go. With all that said please please don't let this get you down. A lot of the commentary might look like it is on the negative side but I was just trying to point out what isn't working. I would highly advise you attempt to take it in a new direction, based mostly on the fact that I don't think you can significantly improve the overall humour by keeping up with this 'pimp' line. It just isn't amusing to anyone who isn't a teenager. If you keep on working on this article then I'm sure you can turn it into something really good and I look forward to seeing what you can do with it. If there is anything at all in this review that you want to talk about then please feel free to comment on my talk page.
Reviewer:	Sequence 23:59, January 31, 2010 (UTC)