Uncyclopedia:Pee Review/UnBooks:Conversations With My Father

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UnBooks:Conversations With My Father

In depth only, as always. Who's up for it? --UU - natter 11:59, Aug 17

I'm always up for it, 24 hours. --ChiefjusticeGameCube 12:47, August 17, 2010 (UTC)

And not a second longer, I'll be watching you very closely! ~ Mordillo where is my DUMBASS? 14:31, August 17, 2010 (UTC)

Right, I apologise that this is going to go over, I was unavoidably detained in my morning sojurn to the shops. I'm starting now. --ChiefjusticeGameCube 12:00, August 18, 2010 (UTC)

Humour:	8	Righto, I have a confession to make, baby humour is not my particular cup of 'cha and I was expecting the review to be very much brought down by this fact. Ultimately the presence of such humour is a factor in my enjoyment of the article but the way you have approached it makes far more of an impact on me. The article is amusing, though there are a number of issues I would recommend you take a look at. The first thing that struck me about your article was the joke that you repeat throughout; at the end of every section you say some variant of "Something must be done", I was enjoying the gradual build-up through the article as the father's misunderstandings cause the frustration of the baby to grow, I was rather disappointed when the article concluded without really tying this idea up. You tie the article up reasonably well, but for me personally the ending outburst didn't really seem to demonstrate the amount of frustration you had built up before. Permit me to elaborate, consider something like this article, the frustration that the author demonstrates building pays off at the end, admittedly you have the additional difficulty of trying to confine this to something a baby would feasibly do, but I would still encourage you to consider trying a different way to round things off here, especially since you introduce new plot lines in the conclusion, saying "Do you now understand why I'm trying to solicit the services of a hitman?" this seemed particularly out of place, while it satisfies the idea of showing how frustrated the child is it doesn't really fit with the tone of the rest of the article. The line also seems to go against what you say at the start when you establish that the UnBook is for the purpose of drawing others to support and empathise with him in his struggle, rather than ridding him of his father. My recommendation here would be that you try coming at this from a different angle, saying something like "The dimwitted clod seems to be aware of my intent to reveal his stupidity to the world, handing me a red plastic telephone with a somewhat archaic dialling method and applauding as I try to use it to summon the local constabulary." Something like that I feel would express both the desperation of the child and would possess the credibility of feasibility, you use such techniques very well elsewhere in the article so I was somewhat disappointed when this was left out when you try to conclude things. Beyond that my only other complaint was that in a number of instances you use the child's mother to demonstrate what the child sees as ideal parenting, while I would advise against overusing this device I think that it could still help to mention it in the introduction, since you are using this to set out the child's agenda against his father you may wish to consider including a part where he explains a bit about his mother, only briefly but I feel it would help contextualise his general displeasure when his father arrives to carry out a task. I will leave a decision on that up to you since I feel that using it too much would hurt the article and I don't want to give the impression that it should be everywhere. In general I was pleasantly surprised by this article, not simply because the word poop makes me feel uncomfortable and you only use it once, but because I enjoyed reading it, I especially like the "Chapter 5: Ahoy Ducky!" section because of the manner in which you explain his motivation behind the things that he is doing. While I think some focus on what I have said above will be useful it is not essential, the ending still works with the article, but my enduring feeling is that it could end a bit more effectively than it does.
Concept:	9	The concept is, for me what makes the article particularly amusing, I have seen it used in other instances before but that makes it no less enjoyable here. The main issue I came upon here is very minor and it is that your article is very formal in style and your early introduction is the only part of your article that, for me, falls out of step with this. The word sticky, in any context sounds somewhat juvenile and the profanity also feels out of place. My recommendation would be to replace the profanity with some more upmarket expressions of dissatisfaction; things like 'oaf' 'buffoon' and 'badly dressed' would fit the article's enduring tone better, you are after all saying the child is educated, mentally at least so swearing doesn't seem right to me. As I said, this is a very minor problem and you may deal with it however you like, my feeling it is a very small alteration that can be made very easily to ensure your tone is as good there as it is everywhere else.
Prose and formatting:	8	Your spelling and grammar is excellent, although you may wish to decide if you want to use Americanised English or English English, as my pet hate, Jeffrey, cannot stand use of both, so decide which to use; diaper is not an English word after all. Now I have griped about something really unimportant I feel much better. The main complaint I have here is with your formatting, I recognise that you want the images to be next to the section to which they correspond, but the unfortunate upshot is that the first two images are very close together and the next image is right on top of the UnBooks template, my advice would be to try and space these out, as it makes things nice and tidy. That's all I have to say here really, I don't even need my obligatory proofreading speech as you have UU on board, the bastard.
Images:	8	Images are good in general and suit the paragraphs they are put next to, your captions are also generally very good. My complaint here lies with the caption on the final image, the tone doesn't seem right, yes the child is desperate, but if this is supposed to be a book surely it would be captioned with something more befitting some reflection on the subject, something like "Even my recent choice of apparel has no effect on him" I feel would fit better here.
Miscellaneous:	9	My overall grade of the article.
Final Score:	42	As I have said, this was a pleasantly surprising read for me and is another piece of excellent work from the two of you. While I have a tendency to go on and on over small errors I would still strongly recommend that you at least take a second look at the issues which bothered me, the article is good, but with these changes could, in my view, be even better. If you have any questions or comments about this review then feel free to ask me on my talk page or on IRC. Good luck making any changes and sorry the review was a little late.
Reviewer:	--ChiefjusticeGameCube 13:36, August 18, 2010 (UTC)

Thankies Chief, much obliged!

Couple of quick responses:

Actually, diaper is gaining currency in the English language, yet another Americanism being slowly assimilated. And I toyed with the idea of replacing it when Mordillo used it, but TBH, more of the rest of the world understands "diaper" than "nappy", so it travels better. so I kept it.

The ending - as parents ourselves, I think both of us enjoy the idea of the baby babbling dada dada dada, which is a moment of supreme happiness for any father, but it's subverted by his actual reasons. I'm prepared to go to war for that idea, although I'll consider a change of pace to how the ending is set up - not just jumping to a hitman - and ramping up the mother references so the final line seems more natural.

Apart from that, your usual fine job, I'll look at taking it all on board! Muchas gracias. --UU - natter 13:49, Aug 18