User talk:Cap'n Ben/Great Time Travel War of 1871
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Expansion[edit source]
Please feel free to add to this. The more confusing it becomes the better. --Cap'n Ben 12:16, 30 Apr 2005 (EDT)
Ultra-Grammar[edit source]
Does someone want to write up some strict rules for ultra-grammar? The ultra-grammar in this article is a bit random. Something with more structure would probably make this funnier. --KP 17:22, 27 Jul 2005 (UTC)
- I really didn't like the ultra-grammer addition myself; it seems like it detracts from the humor more than adding to it to me. -Twinge 19:29, 31 Jul 2005 (UTC)
- I think what we need are more multi-level time travel paradoxes (like something about sleeping with your grandmother to prevent your father from being born, in order to prevent your father from going back in time to kill your great-grandmother). This, along with a regularized ultra-grammar, would be more compelling. --KP 00:38, 1 Aug 2005 (UTC)
I'm with Twinge; I don't think the ultra-grammer adds much to the humour of the article, but it does make it less readable. This is why I only used it in a couple of places in my draft; once is a joke, all the way through is just belabouring the point and irritating to the reader. Having said that, I do agree with KP that it could use a lot more time paradoxes added. As it is, the story is fairly linear, I think a lot of additional writers each dipping their oar in could make a terrifyigly confusing - and hopefully funny - time travel story. --Cap'n Ben 11:03, 1 Aug 2005 (UTC)
Wow... this article succeeds brilliantly at ripping off Douglas Adams and making it a lot less funny. (For those who want a lesson in real time travel grammar, I refer you to Dr Dan Streetmentioner's Time Traveller's Handbook of 1001 Tense Formations from the novel The Restaurant at the End of the Universe). —EatMyShortz 16:30, 21 April 2006 (UTC)
Revision[edit source]
I’m going to start doing the research to revamp this article. I'm also going to try to regularize ultra-grammar. Instead of using new word endings, I’m going to base it on multiple auxiliary verb usage. This will also require some variations of conditional, negative, hypothetical, and potential tenses (some of these tenses do not exist in English). The year 1871 is a very good one to start with, as on October 8 of that year, the Great Chicago Fire, the Peshtigo Fire, and the Holland, Michigan Fire all took place. (By the way, the Peshtigo Fire was the most deadly fire in American history, incinerating at least 1200 people and destroying 12 towns.) I would also like to incorporate the Eastland disaster in this article.
My overall plan would be that an original timeline that would have had a U.S. President William Bonney from 1913-1921. President Bonney would have been an activist who signed laws promoting racial and gender equality. (This is in contrast to the actual U.S. President Woodrow Wilson, who was a member of the Ku Klux Klan, promoted constant U.S. invasions of Latin America, actively worked against the labor movement, and opposed women’s suffrage.) In this timeline, time travel would have been invented in the Ashanti Republic in 1986. As the timeline gets mangled, William Bonney, instead of becoming president, becomes Billy the Kid. Eventually, we arrive at timeline where U.S. President Gore in 2007 transitions the United States to renewable energy, and then finally one where George W. Bush becomes the President and sets the world on the path to an apocalypse in the mid 21st Century and time travel never gets invented. It’s going to take me about a week or two to complete the research (yes, I actually do some research before writing articles on Uncyclopedia). Any help or ideas would be appreciated. --KP 00:13, 2 Aug 2005 (UTC)
- Cool. Just don't lose Marty McFly running over Bill and Ted, I really liked that idea. --Cap'n Ben 13:25, 2 Aug 2005 (UTC)
What the hell?[edit source]
Whats this "wassend" that's repeated through out the article? --Nytrospawn 22:00, 25 February 2007 (UTC)
- It's supposed to be time-travel grammar — "was" with an —ed on the end. — Lenoxus 22:18, 16 March 2007 (UTC)
From Pee Review[edit source]
| Humour: | 5 | There's a lot of fantasy, but not much in the way of satire or comedy. |
| Concept: | 6 | Hmm...it's a fantasy narrative on a manufactured topic; there have been some similar experiments in the past which did not work (Tobler One was an example). I don't know if the concept is inherently unsound, but it seems precarious. |
| Prose and formatting: | 7 | See endnotes. |
| Images: | 5 | None of the images are particularly stunning; the one of Billy the Kid fits best with the story; the cartoon of Mr. Peabody and Sherman is completely irrelevant...personally, I think it's stupid. |
| Miscellaneous: | 6 | I'm lukewarm about this article. I know there's been a lot of collaborative work on this, and some part of me wants it to succeed, but at the same time I just plain lost interest in the whole thing about 2/3 of the way through. |
| Final Score: | 29 | |
| Reviewer: | ----OEJ 18:49, 22 February 2007 (UTC) | |
Endnotes:
On concept: Manufactured topics are inherently difficult to handle. When one starts reading an Uncyc article on the Eiffel Tower one is expecting some kind of satire involving a well-known landmark in France. One already knows the background, and one is curious to see what humorous or satirical changes the author(s) will bring to the story.
A created topic, on the other hand, does not have a backstory in the real world. The reader has no predefined background. The danger is that the created topic will not engage reader interest because its unreality will quickly translate into uninterest on the reader's part.
GTTWof1871 uses known historical and fictional characters, and that helps. But ultimately, for me, the cascade of fantastical events and figures just became uninteresting. One way around that is to create vignettes with realistic, humorous detail: to flesh out the characters and events so that they have some compelling reality. That's the standard technique of the story-writer, after all, and what is being written here is a story.
On humor: This isn't a particularly funny piece. Improbable events and characters do not equal humor any more than does random prose. You might look at the fantasy writing of Douglas Adams for some clues about humorous fantasy. Basically, I think it involves showing the same old human comedy transposed into fantastical surroundings -- "Why did the sinister overlords of Amblefumph develop a warp drive which could cross the entire galaxy?" "To get to the other side, naturally". What GTTWof1871 has so far is the fantastical without the comedy.
On style: It is possible to create a unique grammar for a work. It can be excruciating to read, however -- think of Finnegan's Wake. The novelist Russell Hoban worked the trick in more readable style in Riddley Walker, and I think did it by using certain rules:
- Keep the changes in grammar fairly simple. The more radical the changes the more confusion the reader will experience, and the quicker he will go away and find something else to read.
- Make the grammar completely consistent. The reader has to learn the new grammar, and if you are inconsistent it makes it very hard to learn. Changing unexpectedly from new to standard grammar and back again probably has a similar effect.
- Make the words of the new grammar easily readable. Don't make the new words into higher stumbling-blocks than they already are. Hoban uses logical phonetic spellings of many words -- "frendy", "littl", "clevverness" -- to suggest an evolved English, and he uses tweaked but readable grammatical constructions. Because the words themselves are easy to read the reader learns the unconventional grammar without too much mental anguish.
From oceolotfactory.com's article: "On the subject of Riddley's language, Mr. Hoban says: As much as possible I tried for more than one meaning in the words. For example, when Riddley says, on page 8, 'I wer the loan of my name,' he means that he is the lone carrier of his name, living on borrowed [ie loaned] time."
There was considerable discussion of grammar on the discussion page for GTTWof1871. If irregular grammar is to be used I might consider readablity first. [commence article whoring] The article Turning point uses some time-confused verbs toward the end:
- "On May 12, 2032 words will be changing meaning faster than society can adapt. Humans will no longer have any sense of what words mean. We are all going to have been autistic, suddenly, without any preparation....Blame it on the absurdists, the post-modernists, the arrant-gardists, blame it on intarweb Ikwis or Kiwis. God knows they will have needed to be have been taking some of the blame, in those future days. But the real culprits are those who encouraged them by reading and accepting their wholesale conversion of meaning into meaninglessness. It was you, genital reader, who will have been going to be to blame."
Take all this with discretion. These are just some random thoughts from a thoroughly randomized man.----OEJ 18:49, 22 February 2007 (UTC)
Good afternoon[edit source]
hello administrators of site uncyclopedia.org I not so a long ago I am vRaleigh and so, that I parted with very good a man, Caroline- David/Sarahon, and now try to find him, last that I know so it that he lives in citi, and often vi sits the resources of type your uncyclopedia.org, nik at itBabs Barbaraporkon , if suddenly will see this nik write that this man knocked in my icq . I very much I strongly test a boredom without socializing with this man.To reason wanted to say thank you and to wish successes to the collective your resource. So to hold boys. Only little request of,sdelayte so that uncyclopedia.org better embarked on dial-up connection – Preceding unsigned comment added by 76.235.86.68 (talk • contribs)
Comment[edit source]
I feel that Joan of Arc and battle for Middle Earth section, is the best written article. The author made me feel as though I was there, I am not saying that just because I wrote it. --Mad Maddox Madigan 6:00, 30 December 2009ish (EDT)