User:Shabidoo/happymonkeycompetition/2012/Xamralco

Happy Monkey Competition 2012

Pee reviews for: Xamralco

Article: UnBooks:The journey of the ugly kitten

Pee Review from Shabidoo

Creativity:	9.5/10	This article does not lack creativity at all. It is totally over loaded with it, super creative moments of which I have included many examples of in the "cleverness" section below. I'm giving you a 9.5 here because I really believe you pulled out all of the fanciful ideas that one could but still showed a lot of restraint when combining all this creativity and creating an article with a clear concept, narrative and well written content.
Originality:	8.5/10	I was expecting some kind of cheesy journey of an ugly cat that crosses the continent and is loved by all despite its ugliness and does lots of totally random things. Instead, youve interwoven two different stories (the adventure and the author trying to get more books sold) and sort of reinvented the loser becomes a hero character.
Cleverness:	9/10	Right off the bat, the title is clever, at least for me. I love the "epic quest unlike any other". As with the entire first paragraph...it is outrageously funny. I especially like the lines "dreadfuly alone" "appaled by his appearance". I laughed really hard at the end of the paragraph with the various smells and your well constructed introduction to the ugly cats journey. I personally couldn't be able to think up a better way. Titling the sections as "Book, the 1st" for example is a nice touch. First section, at times the narrative doesn't flow as well as it should and you should probably reorder the words in a couple sentences, I'm impressed by the way you incorporate all of the elements of a cheesy story of the weak loser into a valient hero, and in a very very funny way. I suppose there are easily two very different opinions as for the next part, the continuous commentary. While I think its good, and funny and clever, I think for it to really sync togehter (the actual story and the commentary) that you'll have to dedicate more time to it, so that the transition isn't so sudden and edit out a little of the cheesiness. In the first commentary, I laughed a lot about the "comes directly from my life" and mentioning the dog that no one loved, it is darkly and sadly helarious. Book the second: This section is funny in itself. It seems like the cat and dog problem is resolved for the moment a little too quickly and the chinese restarant comes out of nowhere. I find the details about the chinese food funny and having three different martial arts belts clever clever clever. The sensie leading into some suggestive sexual favour is broken by the dog attacking and I think it was a very nice touch. The image that comes with it was well chosen. The commentary sort of pops in out of nowhere, and again, I think you should consider working on the transitions. The content is funny, I suppose saying that your brother took lessons with a "man" is as suggestive as the "doing something for sensei" without being dirty or explicitly saying anything. Discussing which is your favourite character is also very inventive. I find the last sentence a little over the top. Book the third: I smiled throughout the content, though I'm not sure it was developed as well as you would have liked to. A lot of the ideas are creative though the narrative isn't as easy to follow as the first two sectinos and the moral of the story comes out a little to quick and directly, also, for me at least, slightly dissapointing. If our hero walked away realising that they would never have friends, but that this was the lesson he learned over all, that being a hero, being valient, being who you were was more important than impressing people and having friends, then that would probably fit well within the dark tone of the books, though if you wanted to avoid that, you might consider drawing out the meaningless message of the story more, show the hero walking away narratiing it. "That's right, Ill always be different, and no matter how hard I try, they0ll always remind me of that. No cat will ever like me, no matter how many black belts I have". Our hero walks down the street, alone, utterly alone, with no one to joke around with, no one to share things with, just himself, and his own little cat throughts" etc... In any case I would suggest exagerating the high moral message or the dark meaningless moral message (whichever one you prefer) a lot more at the end so that the ending doesn't feel so sharp. Commentary: Clever moments in my opinion: PBS series, untouchable Betty. Moments I found a little silly and or out of tone with the rest of the article: Suicide Bob and the starbucks thing. Up until now you've been pretty good at keeping everything fresh and new and subtle. The Suicide Bob character seems a little too serious and dark and too close to death. The star bucks part also brings in an element of the real world, as well as the corporate world which was well avoided throughout the rest of the article when you created a really fantastic world of your own. The image here is a little confusing as I don't think there were several cats taking on the dog, but instead just one. In any case, over all this article is super mega extra clever and I'm amazed with just how much you pulled off in over one day.
Content and Images:	7/10	The first and second image are well chosen in my point of view, rthough I would suggest making the picture in the dark alley seem cartoonish, to fit in better with the cartoonish second images. I would suggest finding a different image for the third one. Perhaps you could replace it with an image that no one would expect and give a great caption to justify the use of the image and make people laugh. For instance it could be an image of some of the food you've mentioned, or an image of a sweet dog and change the colour of its nose and make it seem cartoonish with the caption "dont let appearances fool you, this is a mean dog with only one weak spot". As for your prose there are quite a few sentences that need to be polished (though otherwise I find the prose excelent). "why didnt the owner see the truck" for instance is a little confusing as I didnt realise that this was dealing with the cats ugliness rather than why the other cats dissapeared. "and that something is a...dog" you may want to split these into two different sentences. "hits his nose like a title wave hitting his nose" you might ought to replace one of those "nose"s with snout or something even more creative as repeating a word in a sentence is looked down upon these days. Otherwise, you've impressed me with your writing style and choice of words.
Points for whatever reason:	8.5/10	I'm giving you 8.5 points as this is sort of the average of the article and because I liked it a lot. The article seems 90 percent finished to me and I'm certain the community will like it and that it will easily be featured if you work on it more, take care of a couple issues with the image and prose and work on the transitions from narrative to metanarrative etc...
Final Score:	42/50	Thank's for participating and thanks even more for making me laugh. Come to my talk page if you need me to explain any of this better, want other suggestions or examples or what not. (p.s. I just rounded the score up...because I decided that rounding the score up is nice than rounding the score down and I didn't consider the idea of not rounding the number.
Comments:

Score and Comments from Wilytank

6/10 Remember Latias? This article is kinda modeled after it. I.e. some normal text followed by some douche-bag's commentary in red letters. Though the entirety of the article wasn't entirely funny, it wasn't at all bad either and I'm pleased with the way the story ended. --Wilytank can be a pain in the ass. 04:31, February 19, 2012 (UTC)

Score and Comments from PopGoesTheWeasel

8/10

Score and Comments from Mattsnow

7.5/10

Awesome prose and imagination, great read! Mattsnow 18:19, February 14, 2012 (UTC)

Score and Comments from Joe9320

7.8/10

Score and Comments from Chief

9/10

I really liked this one. Amusing and well written; an excellent combination. --ChiefjusticeGameCube 00:15, February 17, 2012 (UTC)

Final Score

80.3/100