Uncyclopedia:Pee Review/Unbooks:The Art of Nostalgia for Babies
Unbooks:The Art of Nostalgia for Babies[edit]
Fbi36 04:09, 3 August 2009 (UTC)
I like it, I'll give it a go later (hopefully, though I have 2 other reviews to do as well, but I'm unemployed so I have the time and all). It's a nice pice of work for a first time btw --El Sid, the lazy one • parlez-vous franglais? 07:55, 3 August 2009 (UTC)
- Hey Fbi, just so you know, I had a read through now, I'll have another couple of reads through later and then, when I feel I have a handle on it and can come up with some useful advice on where it should go next, I'll do the review (i.e. I haven't forgotten about the review, it'll be done before the end of the evening). --El Sid, the lazy one • parlez-vous franglais? 14:49, 3 August 2009 (UTC)
- Ok, I hope you don't mind but I went through and did some formatting, mainly just to make it flow better and make it less likely to affect my ultimate verdict. I think the concept and content has potential, I just didn't want to be negatively biased by the odd random capitalisation or incomplete sentence, anyway, to the review! --El Sid, the lazy one • parlez-vous franglais? 18:50, 3 August 2009 (UTC)
| Humour: | 5 | OK, this is a really mixed bag basically. It starts off well enough, for example the line about Gimlet's reasons for writing the book is pretty funny. Unfortunately I find the "Well, crap" line kind of lame, and it should really be used to more blatantly reveal something deeper about Gimlet's character. To be honest I'm not sure what is implied by this line - is he just stubbornly single-minded? If the line doesn't really mean anything, it shouldn't be included (and there are a few others like this too). Likewise, a lot of the alternative links don't really make me laugh, they seem a bit obvious and when they do surprise, they surprise in a random way that doesn't seem to add up. Likewise the link to "how to make a man feel manly", unless I'm just stupid and missing something obvious, which may well be the case. Generally I think too many links to outside pages generally make people with ADD (anyone who uses the internet enough to come across Uncyclopedia) lose concentration pretty fast.
Again, there are some good lines in this next paragraph but then I don't quite know what we are supposed to understand about Gimlet's character - he doesn't understand the difference between a baby and an adult? Why is this? Are we to assume he never grew out of his own nostalgia phase? It gets funnier when you talk about the different types of Nostalgia, especially the recurring quote, but I think you should really emphasise the oddities of Gimlet's character, perhaps he should slip off into nostalgic reveries or something. It appears to lack the science to be academic and lack the character arc to be literary. The humour towards the end dips a little mainly because I don't think it is written as well as it could be. |
| Concept: | 6 | Well it took me a few goes obviously to understand exactly what it was you're getting at, but now I understand, I like it. I just think it needs to be clarified a little. The guy in the introduction (and footnotes) is someone who has nostalgia for this book he read as a kid, am I right? I think it really needs to be made clear from whose perspective we are to come here. According to whom is this author possibly the best ever? If it's the former nostalgist, we should start that intro saying something like "I had this book when I was a kid..." or something, or just somehow making it clear that the introduction claims are subjective. I mean, you may well think it's clear, but you need to make it more obvious to the reader, because otherwise the quality of the article might be ignored and dismissed by somehow who can't immediately latch onto what the point of the article is (and try not to rely too much on the footnotes either).
It needs to feel like it is going somewhere, the narrative needs to either continually reveal how weird Gimlet is, or provide hints throughout the narrative (I would use italics for this) that the former nostalgist is becoming increasingly alienated from his initial enthusiasm. In addition, I would prefer to see Gimlet as a man with some strange quirks, rather than being an all-out oddity and I think the authentic feel of the book would be improved with a Case Study chapter or something. Just a short example of an experiment he carried out, something to reveal more about Gimlet and parody academic psychology in general. |
| Prose and formatting: | 8 | Well the formatting is good really, perhaps a few more ideas will come to you afterwards about chapters you might want to consolidate (like the Memory, Conversion, Thought, I would merge these into "Method"/"Technique" or something) or add further chapters. The flow is better now, I can't really see any further problems with formatting. |
| Images: | 8 | The pictures are very good actually, these say more sometimes than the text itself. For some reason I feel that Gimlet's dogma and views come through better in these pics. I would suggest more pics :D but then I always suggest more pics :D, I just think pics are pretty damn important. Maybe a pic of the book itself would be a useful addition, and a pic to introduce the author, this could be really useful to act as a bridge between what the reader knows (or doesn't know) and what you want them to know. The pics you include links to are good btw, maybe you should integrate a couple of them into the page? Don't overload it though, obviously. |
| Miscellaneous: | 7 | Approximate average of the preceding scores. |
| Final Score: | 34 | OK so in conclusion, I like the actual pitch, the concept, I just think certain things need clarifying, refined, and more of a bridge being made to the reader, so he/she actually cares about the article from the offset, grab their attention in the first paragraph and then try to hold it all the way through. I'd love to see how you do because this article has a lot of potential, good luck :) |
| Reviewer: | --El Sid, the lazy one • parlez-vous franglais? 22:49, 3 August 2009 (UTC) | |