Uncyclopedia:Pee Review/Walpurgis Night

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Walpurgis Night

Hi, I've tried to do a religion themd article, i've trid to keep it pretty stripped back. I hope you like it, and thanks for spending the time with it;)--Sycamore (Talk) 10:25, 9 July 2008 (UTC)

I have an unfinished piece at Walpurgisnacht. Damn. Also, see Walpurga (saint) for related material -- Walpurga was a girlie; maybe we can work around the existence of the article on the saint. I'll work on this review -- there are some preliminary notes at the end -- but I also have some errands to run, so it will take some more time. Feel free to comment, curse, ask questions, etc as I try to get the review finished. ----OEJ 16:31, 20 July 2008 (UTC)

Humour:	6	Needs some concentration, pacing, and revision in order to be funnier.
Concept:	8	Good idea. So good I tried to write on the subject. But yours is better.
Prose and formatting:	6	There is some need for revision. See endnotes. But mostly these are Grammar Nazi things, ie, non-fatal. Be therefore of good cheer.
Images:	7	Good images.
Miscellaneous:	8	I like this and hope it succeeds. See long-winded bitchy endnotes.
Final Score:	35
Reviewer:	----OEJ 02:10, 23 July 2008 (UTC)

Endnotes

Picky stuff:

"The true story details local inhabitants bordering some village by the Brocken Mountains, found a Freudian slip from one of the witches. When they went to investigate further up the Mountains - they saw was the blackest heart of hell, in festival form."

This lacks a verb or something. "The true story tells how villagers at the foot of the Brocken Mountains found a Freudian slip..." perhaps.

In fact, I would recommend rewriting that whole paragraph. Were there only male villagers, who became the warlocks part of the witches-and-warlocks? Why did they want to join "the blackest heart of hell"? It seems rather like something to avoid, in the way one avoids massacres, movies starring Jerry Lewis, and horny 200-kilo women hanging around truck-stop toilets.

I'm a big fan of specific detail. I would put some details into this -- a windy mountain trail strewn with fir needles and beer cans, enchanted spiders hanging from branches like black grapefruit, lightning-splintered boulders, long-teated witches dancing naked in the light of a sputtering sulfurous fire. Whatever. Just put in stuff to help the reader see, in his mind's eye, what is happening.

In a related matter, I always bitch about imprecise attributions and vague identifications: "it has been reported" is an imprecise attribution; why not say "The Hamburg Glückliche Unterwäschezeitung reports" or "According to an MI5 investigation"? Similarly, "certain worthier members of the town folk" is a vague identification -- you could turn it into a joke by including specifics, like "certain 'worthier' villagers -- ie, those who washed their underwear on a weekly rather than a yearly schedule."

But I like pieces that are specific.

Anyway. I have to go out. More later. ----OEJ 16:31, 20 July 2008 (UTC)

Picky-picky-picky continued:

"...forced to accept advertising and a variety of changes amidst its current format..." Changes in its current format. Amidst isn't the right word -- it's like "changes among its current format". Ain't right.

Put a hyphen in "bonfire-lit environs"; probably "quasi-religious celebrations" should have a hyphen too. One website ("The Blue Book of Grammar and Punctuation") says: "Rule 4: Generally, hyphenate between two or more adjectives when they come before a noun and act as a single idea." That would be the case with "bonfire-lit" and "quasi-religious" here, I think. (But hyphenation rules are unpleasantly complicated.)

"There have also been talks to increasing the current festival from not one but three possible dates as approved by shareholders." I think "talks to" might need to be "talk of" or "talks about".

"Other adopted practices include promotion (pandering) of Gay/Minority groups to encourage participation and bring the event in keeping with the 21st century." That sentence presents you with a sticky problem! Usually one speaks about promotion of, and it's always pandering to. They aren't easily used together. The parentheses imply that instead of "promotion of" the reader can slyly assume it is "pandering of"...but that's ungrammatical. The solution might be to give each verb its own preferred construction: "...includes promotion of (or pandering to) gays and other minorities to boost participation and..."

OK, relax, that's all the grammar-Nazi stuff

Generally, as mentioned, I prefer little bits of specific action, specific dialogue (the closing line of the article is an example of that), and if possible small included scenelets. It's like telling any funny story...some carefully chosen details make it funnier.

I might give some more thought to some of the rationale...stockholders, for instance. How did Walpurgisnacht become a corporation? What exactly was the "meaning" that Wittgenstein proposed shifting the celebration away from, and how did the "significance of the night" lead to commercialization? Frankly, I was too stupid to get the connections in that part.

Mostly this just needs tightening up and revision to make it funnier.

My Connection to Saint Walpurga

I have two suggestions for existing articles, Walpurgisnacht and Walpurga (saint): First, redirect Walpurgisnacht to your Walpurgis Night. Second, I can rewrite the section of Walpurgis Night that deals with the saint concerned so it is consistent with Walpurga (saint) -- which is a long article and (in my admittedly biased opinion) reasonably well-built.