The Ugly Barnacle

Just...The Ugly Barnacle. I don't care how horrifying or useless the story is, I loved this story ever since Patrick read it on October 26, 2000. Describing the magnitude and influence The Ugly Barnacle made in Writing would take forever to finish, so I'll simply gush about Patrick's writing and creativity.

Some stories take years, or even decades to complete. There are stories and epics that require a lot of intensive research and knowledge in order to entertain certain audiences.

As for The Ugly Barnacle? Patrick came up with the whole story in mere seconds, just so he could cheer Spongebob up.

It's just that good.

That is the best page on this site. Period.

I had no fucking idea that short-ass story had its own page.

edited 29th Jan '11 12:06:51 AM by Parartropa36

It may not have helped Spongebob at all, but it sure helped me. The Ugly Barnacle changed my life.

Why has no one posted this yet?

edited 29th Jan '11 1:22:47 AM by Dynamod

The Ugly Barnacle is an exemplary tale.

"Once"

The very first sentence display the author's unwillingness to compromise the timelessness of his oeuvre. The story's setting and rough time period are only referred to as "once". Where is the ugly barnacle? When does the barnacle kills everyone?

Those questions are irrelevant - this is a story detailling the unneeded struggle of the unlucky in a society obsessed by an arbitrary beauty ideal. Attaching a specific time and place would simply dilute the message and weaken the reader's empathy toward the barnacle's plight.

"there was an ugly barnacle."

Thusly is our protagonist introduced.

Who is the ugly barnacle? What is the ugly barnacle beyond this shallow description? How is he ugly? All questions lesser minds would ask, completely missing the point of the tale.

Say what you want about Patrick Star, but he doesn't fuck around. Whereas so-called "talented" authors often bore the lectorat with unneeded descriptive, Patrick sticks with the basics. The main character is a barnacle. He is ugly. For the purpose of the story, that is all you need to know. Anything beyond this point is space-wasting fluff.

The so-called "Beige" description also has the quality of bypassing the reader's suspension of disbelief. A more detailed description, no matter how abject, would cause one smartass to spout "That doesn't that ugly!" or "You're exaggerating dude". Simply labelling the barnacle as "ugly" causes the reader to apply his own standard of homeliness, skipping unneeded subjective concerns.

"He was so ugly everyone died."

Unexpectedly, tragedy strikes!

The climax of the tale is a superb case of subverting the reader expectation. Usually, this kind of story will features the main character going on an adventure to "fix" his appearance and conform to the society ideal, or finally accepting his physic and reconfirm himself in the saccharine ideal that appearance alone doesn't matter.

Not here. Not only did the barnacle did nothing to resolve his predicament, but said inaction causes his surrounding macrocosm to die. The tale satirize both society's obsession with physical appearance (as the presumably shallow, straight-thinking citizens are conditioned to be kill by violation of beauty standards) and the inaction of the homely, as the main character's unjustified lack of initiave causes negative and oh-so-very real consequences to himself and his surrounding.

"The End"

Patrick Star walks triumphant and doesn't look back. There was a barnacle. It was ugly. Everyone died. Blam.

edited 29th Jan '11 5:24:31 AM by Glowsquid

Yours is the kind of review that will one day be held up as a Platonic ideal of the art of criticism. It is fit to join the ranks of Lord Byron's analysis of Stu Making Chocolate Pudding At Four O'clock In The Morning and Tertullion's epistemological work Piscis Deuueaugh.

... It's just a fifteen word "story". Seriously, people...

I laughed. Oh dear lord, did I laugh.

Yes Komodin, that's the joke.

edited 29th Jan '11 6:39:28 AM by Myrmidon

^ Sorry, but you think this is a joke?

''The Ugly Barnacle' is no joke, sir!

Do you fools not understand that The Ugly Barnacle is an absurdist masterpiece on par with Samuel Beckett, Thomas Pinter, and Coleman Francis? FOR SHAME!

Man, it's quite a great story! Mr. Star should be up there with Shakespeare!

I think the barnacle represents society. I would agree with the interpretation that this represents society's superficiality. However, due to this superficiality society itself has become hideous. What's the "everyone died part" though? This is still up to interpretation. In my opinion, it represents the physical hardships people are willing to endure in order to meet society's standard of beauty, which may in fact lead to their inevitable demise (anorexia, for instance).

Mr. Star's tale is a clear warning to western society: "vanity will lead to an unfortunate consequence."

Glowsquid, that analysis is MOFW, and I'm going to start an Analysis.The Ugly Barnacle page and copy all that over there so everyone can see it.

...

Whatever you do, Komodin, don't read Fisher Price: A Retrospective.

Speaking of it, our own page on Fisher Price is dissapointingly mediocre.

Glowsquid, you really are a genius for deciphering the unfathomable mysteries behind Patrick's Magnum Opus.

You know what, Sponge Bob's a work of art if it could come up with stuff like that!

Whatever you do, Komodin, don't read Fisher Price: A Retrospective.

The same site has an article consisting entirely of the letter A. It was never serious...

And this was?

It recycles the same few jokes, it spoilers the part about it being a one-off Spongebob joke despite having a picture of Patrick on the page, the Character and Trivia pages exist solely to have Character and Trivia pages with zero thought put into them, tropes are shoehorned in there just to make the trope list bigger, and really, the idea of a ridiculously short story with a ridiculously long trope page has been done before, and better. The "joke" is thin enough as it is. We don't need two pages for it. I'm embarrassed that I created it.

It was even worse, until Fast Eddie, Muzzman and others tried to squeeze some funny out of that husk of a page.

edited 29th Jan '11 1:31:17 PM by Redhead

Cheer up, emo kid. It's funny.

^^ Hi, Bloodpouch.