Uncyclopedia:Pee Review/siege of orleans
siege of orleans[edit source]
Second opinion! Tell me how it is. — Yipyapper 
(talk)
Yipyapper 00:51, February 16, 2011 (UTC)]
- I reviewed the first one didn't I? It seems familiar, so I'll let someone else do it to give you a fresh perspective. I did want to say good job working on this one, though, it's a lot better. --Sir Oliphaunte (განხილვა)
22:24, February 16, 2011 (UTC)
Someone review it already!— Yipyapper (talk)
- Patience, little one. There's been a shortage of urine at the Pee Review offices recently, but it's being worked on. —Sir Socky
(talk) (stalk)
GUN SotM UotM PMotM UotY PotM WotM 14:40, 20 February 2011
| Humour: | 5 | First of all; it's lovely to see another historical article, it's very rare I come across something like this on Uncyclopedia, and there are some great ideas at work in it too. Having said that, there are a number of issues here that I suggest you take a look at before you go any further with this.
There is quite a bit of random humour in here, which is really detrimental to the article, especially as it's such a lofty, serious subject. The references to Oscar Wilde being a historian, and the whole idea of Joan of Arc winning the war with a bomb from the future, are just way too silly. If you haven't already, I recommend reading our guide to writing for the site. While there are no rules or anything, it is rather good at showing you what works in satire, and what doesn't. My personal problem with random humour is that it's a bit lazy. Instead of being surprising or clever, it's tangential and tiresome. I could write an article about Joan of Arc, for instance, where I claim she was a cyborg built purely to kill all ginger people - but it wouldn't be funny, it would just be nonsense. On the other hand, I could write an article about Joan of Arc where I claim she had garlicky-breath, had lots of sex and constantly wore a beret, and while that may not be an amazing idea, at least it has a grounding in reality because that is a popular stereotype of what French people are like. Something a lot of the guides on this site say is that "the truth is funnier than fiction". While I don't think this is necessarily true, it does make a valid point; you have to follow some kind of logic or you just end up with gibberish. While your article is nowhere near as bad as a lot of the nonsense articles that new users write, it does suffer from some of the same problems, even if only slightly. So get rid of the madder, unbelievable parts like where God is watching football and the whole story about Walmart having something to do with slavery, and also where Roger Waters is angry at the wall being torn down, and get some more realistic, relevant humour in there (the Roger Waters thing, as a side note, isn't really random per se, since he is tenuously linked with walls, but it's still an absurd notion, isn't it? Why would he really care about the destruction of a building in Fourteenth Century France?) To give you a better idea of where you should be going with this, let's take a look at some of the stronger parts of your article. If I had to pick a paragraph, I would go with the first one from Start of the Siege. This sets the scene in a comprehensible and believable way and contains lots of good historical humour based on the silly hatred the English and French share for each other, which is a real thing, of course, so it works. The joke about the young king who couldn't control his bowels was also well played. These jokes are better than random humour because they have thought behind them, they're satirical because they poke fun at real things; and reveal the idiocy behind accepted cultural norms, which is basically what satire is. I remember British satirist Will Self once said that a satirist is someone who gets up in the morning and thinks; "why cars?" What you have to do, especially with a political/historical based article like this, is question everything. Why do we drive around in cars? Why are cars little boxes with wheels on them? Why do the English hate the French, and vice versa? Isn't it all just a bit weird when you really think about it? Another thing that is incredibly lazy (and clichéd) in my view is the use of opening quotes. Opening quotes, to put it bluntly, are terrible and very rarely tell decent jokes. Instead of taking the time to write something surprising and prose-based with humorous twists and turns, new writers tend to just compact it all into a small, overused framework that has no sense of timing or delivery. Sorry to be harsh there, but they really are shit and overused. Only very rarely do they work, and the ones you have, unfortunately don't. It's not that the content of your opening quotes is bad, it's just that there's no care taken to actually tell the joke. For instance, instead of the first one, you could perhaps have one of the British Generals being excited about taking Orleans because he thought it was a pizza place, rather than the abrupt, humourless Oscar Wilde quote you've shoved into the top of your article there. That would be funnier. They're ugly too, don't you think? Wikipedia doesn't have them, I don't understand why we should. Half-jocular personal hatred aside though, you should definitely get rid of them, either by reworking them into prose-based jokes or chopping them entirely. Opening quotes are especially bad, I find, when attributed to longstanding clichés like Oscar Wilde and Captain Obvious too. It's been done to death... for six years now... Captain Obvious has nothing funny left to say. Finally, I'm in two minds about the parallel with the New Orleans flooding. On the one hand, I kind of like the idea of bringing it into the present, although I'd like it if you did it in more of a satirical way. On the other hand, it seems a bit of a stretch. It's not really that funny because it's too forced, and the reason it seems forced is because there isn't really that much of a parallel is there? One was a siege and the other was a hurricane. Perhaps there's a way you can get around this, I don't know. Maybe if you simply make subtle allusions to the modern-day disaster throughout the story of the siege. So to the reader it looks like a parallel without you ever actually saying so explicitly. Again, them's just my thoughts. Have a think about what you can do here. |
| Concept: | 6 | Well, you don't have much of a concept strictly speaking. The whole thing is a bit scattergun, by which I mean you basically just throw any joke you can think of in, without giving thought to a consistent style of humour. Pretty much the best battle article I've ever read is this one. Note how it uses a single style of humour throughout - basically just telling the story the way it happened but with rather extreme stereotypes of the countries involved (so you don't actually have to read it, the Russians are portrayed as drunken Slavic farmers and the Japanese as high-tech androids). Although a relatively simple idea, it ends up being really funny because the author sticks to it throughout, building up on the absurdity slowly. Often the simplest ideas are the funniest, so have a think about what you could do with your piece.
The idea of God getting involved is ok, since that's obviously what a lot of people believe in reality. But your portrayal of god is a tad stupid at times. Why would he want to cause illogical things to happen? You need to strengthen your characterisation of God here, you can make him cruel, supportive of Joan of Arc, uninterested in human affairs; whatever you want, but whatever you do keep it consistent, and try to get consistently-styled jokes out of it. So if he's going to be cruel, make sure all the jokes are acts of cruelty. A scattergun approach just looks lazy. It might also be an idea to develop the idea of the conflicting beliefs, the English view being that God intervened, while the French just think that Joan of Arc was a strategic mastermind. This was a decent idea that you introduced early on, but then failed to go any further with. Run with it, see what comes from it. |
| Prose and formatting: | 4 | For me, this is probably the biggest problem with the whole article. Although your spelling and grammar are generally fine, your prose is at best messy and at worst difficult to follow. You seem to have a problem with the way you word things, for instance, in the intro you use a very bizarre phrase: "extraordinarily odd". Why not just "odd"? What does the adverb actually add? It's just a bit too wordy, when to be honest you'd be better off with simple, plain language. Can you see how it looks messy now? Another example; "but Joan speaks French and Talbot speaks English". Aside from the fact that it's in the present tense despite both subject being long dead, it is a very a clumsy phrasing. Just say "Joan didn't speak English" - simple as that. Word things how real people would say them, don't try to be fancy with your writing or it can very quickly turn into nonsense. The same happens with this one; "which made future historians wonder what was the point of Joan doing so". Again it's like you're trying to sound clever, but having the opposite effect. Encyclopaedic language is simple; just say the simplest thing possible - in this case "modern historians wonder why Joan did this". Although isn't it obvious why she did this? She did it to attack the oncoming army, surely? The article is simply riddled with stuff like this, I can list a few here but not all of them, so I seriously recommend you take another look at your prose. Perhaps try reading it aloud to give you a better idea of how to make things sound natural. Some more quite noticeable examples:
But like I said, spelling and grammar are ok. It could still do with a bit of a proofreading, either by yourself or by pasting it into a spellchecker (the latter may be able to help with the confusing prose too). The only gaffe that springs to mind is an instance where you use both an exclamation mark and a full stop (period, if you're that way inclined) at the same time, when an exclamation mark usually takes the place of a full stop. Then there's a line of French; "He, vous n'avez pas la poutine!" - which to be honest, is completely incomprehensible to me, and most likely a large section of your readership in general. Perhaps provide a translation, even if it's just in the footnotes? And in terms of formatting, there is large section in Start of the Siege that is in italics for no foreseeable reason. You probably just missed that, I'm guessing. |
| Images: | 8 | The images are fine, I actually quite liked them. They were both relevant but not too serious, and not too whacky either. The only issues here I suppose is that you could do with more. Ideally, there should be an image for each section, unless the sections are really small. I realise the big Hundred Year's War template is taking up a lot of space, but you may want to consider removing it, especially if you can think of a really funny picture to take it's place. The box itself isn't that attractive, nor is it vital to the article. |
| Miscellaneous: | 6 | My gut feeling as to the whole thing. |
| Final Score: | 29 | Ok, so there's some really great stuff here, especially for a noob article (you are still a noob, right? I didn't bother checking). And again, well done for taking on a serious historical concept, I wish more users would do that every now and then (myself included). The main things to think about are coming up with a tighter concept, fixing some of that messy prose, and maybe getting rid of some of the randomness. After some of that, you will very likely have a great article on your hands. If there's anything I've said here that you want me to explain better, or if you want my opinion on anything I might have missed, please let me know and I'll try to help. I hope the review is ok. |
| Reviewer: | --Black Flamingo 22:33, February 21, 2011 (UTC) | |