Uncyclopedia:Pee Review/Fantard

From Uncyclopedia, the content-free encyclopedia

Jump to: navigation, search


edit Fantard

Fcukman 13:49, April 10, 2011 (UTC)

I'll give this one a go. --Black Flamingo 10:10, April 11, 2011 (UTC)
Humour: 5 Hi there, Mr-ex777. I see you're new to the site. That's great, it's always nice to have new users, so welcome; I hope you enjoy your stay. Anyway, let's have a look at this article. Hmm. To be brutally honest, it is in fairly bad shape right now, but hopefully I can give you some tips on how to get it spruced up all nice and shiny. So here we go...

Right from the top then; I see we have some opening quotes here. Generally speaking, they're a bad way of making jokes (unless you've got a really witty one liner, which these aren't). They're easy, cheap and have no literary flow to them. You'd probably be better off trying to rewrite them as proper prose-based jokes in the main body of the text. The first one, for instance, about the guy who gets goatse'd... I can see the funny side of that. It might be worth rewording it and moving it to, say, your section on "attacks", where you can cite it as one of the things that might happen when you cross a "fantard". The second quote is the same, you could work that in somewhere, perhaps in a section about public reaction to "fantards". It may need expanding though because right now it's not really a joke it's just a statement. For thought: did any of the original authors read any fanfiction or look at any fanart? What kind of things did they see? How did they react? And as for the last quote, I would just get rid of that. I don't see how it adds anything.

And as for the rest of the intro - you introduce your concept well enough; basically these "fantards" are a subspecies of humanity and are incredibly dangerous. It's slightly confusing though. You say, for instance, that they live in the "evil aeon known as Fandom". I'm not sure what you mean by this; are you suggesting "Fandom" is a place? The capitalisation would suggest so. And what do you mean by "aeon"? I always thought (and dictionary.com confirmed) that an aeon was a measurement of time (although I think it can mean a kind of godlike entity too). The other problem I have here is that you never say why they're so dangerous. I suspect there may not be an answer to that, because obviously these people aren't really dangerous - no one is dangerous on the internet, we're all just fat guys sitting on computers (except for me, obviously, I'm as svelte and sexy as a young Kate Bush).

I re-read this section a few times and I'm still not 100% what you're trying to say. Basically, it seems "fantards" were mercenaries, then they spawned a magical creature who did some other stuff, then God got involved for some reason. Essentially, it's nonsense isn't it? This is a common trap that new writers fall into; the whole "whacky origins" thing. The problem is; it doesn't work. Surreality can be funny but randomness rarely is, mainly because you could simply be saying anything. "Fantards" could just as easily be the sons and daughters of a powerful Sheik who practiced necromancy, or a lifeform who evolved from coral - and it wouldn't be any more or less funny. You've probably heard someone around here say that the truth is funnier that anything you can make up. While that's not a rule, the point is that intelligent satire or parody is better than randomly-generated auto-writing, which is what this appears to be. So for instance, instead of literally demonising "fantards", demonise them in a way that echoes the truth of the matter. Say something like; "fantards" love their franchise so much that they end up destroying it, very much like a small child who ends up smothering her pet cat. While that's not a hilarious line, it's more believable, and people will be better prepared to take the article seriously. I really recommend you read our guide to writing for the site, which has loads of helpful tips on how to do stuff like this. It may be even more worthwhile to read our best of too, to give you an idea of what passes for humour around here.

In this section you stumble upon some decent ideas, but they are marred by flawed execution. The descriptions of the "slash pairings" would be a lot funnier if they were clearer. Perhaps even include a brief explanation of what slash fiction is, as you can't guarantee every reader is going to have prior knowledge of this (hell, I'm surprised that I do). Another problem I can foresee is that you seem to focus quite exclusively on anime-type franchises. Again, that just makes it quite niche. I've no idea who this "Yugi" is, although I'm guessing he's the guy from Yu-Gi-Oh (which I've also never seen). You know what might be a good idea here? Talking about more mainstream stuff. You have to remember that some of the people who read/edit this site are old men - if a hot youthful guy like me doesn't get your reference to a fairly modern cartoon, how on Earth are they going to know what you're talking about? So why not throw some Star Trek in there? There's plenty of fanfiction and fanart for that, and Lord of the Rings is the exactly same. The good thing about franchises like that is that they're less alienating - everyone knows who Kirk and Spock are, for instance. I don't know, it's up to you, but I really think it would help.

This section is probably the weakest so far. Again, you just get so niche here with your subject matter that I found it difficult to follow. You talk about all these numbered "types" of "fantard", the problem is that most normal people have no point of reference for this. The world of fandom is sadly a bit of a microcosm, you need to open it up or no one will find it funny. I don't think a rundown of "types of fantard" is really the way to do this. It's inherently flawed, mainly because it seems to me that there aren't really that many different types, and their certainly aren't any popular stereotypes you can play off. Quite a bit of this seems made up, which I'm guessing is in lieu of there being anything interesting to say. It's still worth talking about the society, and how they interact, but as I mention above; try to do it more truthfully (although that doesn't mean you can't embellish the truth for humour).

The big problem with the humour here is that it all seems to rely upon the fact that "fantards" actually do battle with other people (ie. trolls and critics). Unless you're going for a weird angle wherein internet users are portrayed as ancient warriors (note: you're not, but it might be something to consider) this isn't going to work. It just doesn't make sense; "fantards" can't actually kill anyone from their home computer so why say they can? The joke about them goatse'ing people's pages is better, because that's believable. But it would be better altogether if you could make some jokes at the expense of "fantards" and how pathetic they are, rather than just baldly insulting them. The attacks on your subjects lack subtlety, which is very important for humour, and usually much more effective than just outright calling them gay. For example, a "fantard" could say something like; "I do so have a boyfriend! I met him at Hogwarts!" - which hopefully should imply that the "fantard" is confusing real life and her own fanfiction. Again this isn't a hilarious example I hope it demonstrates what I mean by subtlety. HTBFANJS and our best of should be of help here too.

The last part of the article
seems to be made up mostly of lists. Lists are bad for pretty much the same reason that opening quotes are; they tend to be rushed, cheap and all too cursory to be funny. They don't get to grips with the subject matter, and generally just skirt over the humorous details. It's not that the ideas you have here are inherently bad (although I would get rid of the stuff about viruses and other such magical nonsense). What I would like to see you do is expand these sections, see if you can go into more detail about the points you make. The one about not being able to "take Constructive Criticism and opinion", for instance, sounds interesting. Could you talk more about what that entails? Remember, however, avoid stupidity. Garlic is obviously not a reasonable way to defeat a "fantard". Try to stick to believable jokes.

Concept: 4 You don't really have much of a concept, besides the rather strong assertion that "fantards" are stupid, of course. It would be nice to see an angle of some kind here, if only to give it a little consistency. I think the main thing to focus on in regards to this is making it more realistic and less nonsensical. Perhaps you could adopt a more satirical approach, like this article does? That follows a similar subject matter to yours, and yet does it in a wholly different style. I'm not saying you have to take a radically different stance like that article does, I'm just trying to show you that there are many options available to you. Anyway, have a think about it; anything is better than the random-nonsense approach. Just make sure it's consistent, that's the key really.

A few questions your article should probably answer: Who are "fantards", really? Why do we care about them enough to read an article about them? What kind of work do they produce? Is any of the work good? What differentiates them from normal fans? What do the critics that you mention actually think of their work? What do the original authors think of their work?

Prose and formatting: 3 I'm not going to lie to you, your prose is very poor. Sorry. Pretty much everything that can go wrong with writing has done so, including spelling, grammar, flow and comprehensibility. You generally use English very poorly, and one of the strangest things you do in regards to this is the bizarre non-phrases you use. For example, you say the "fantards have an EXTREME rivalry to the common mind". What on Earth does that mean? It's not a common phrase and doesn't even seem to make grammatical sense. Another, in the same section, is "RIPE use of critics,again [sic]". I honestly have no idea what that means. There's loads of stuff throughout the article like this, so I recommend you have a very careful read through. You should definitely try reading it out loud to yourself, as this can help sort out the flow. It may be worth enlisting the help of a proofreader, who can be contacted here, although I'm not sure how active they are these days, and they probably won't be able to fix your phrasing, just the spelling/grammar. It's still probably worth it though. Read up on our featured articles too, because generally speaking they all have impeccable literacy (mostly). The only other thing I can really suggest is putting it through a spellchecker, eg. MS Word, and sorting things out that way (but even that won't catch everything).

As for formatting, well, the whole article's pretty ugly. This is caused by numerous things; lists, needless use of all-caps and bold and poorly placed/sized images. Try to keep your images equidistant from each other so they're not piling up and ruining the flow of text. I've already recommended you get rid of the lists, so that should be ok. I would get rid of the all-caps too, because like I said; it's needless.

Images: 5 The first one is hard to follow, and not just because your caption seems to make no sense. It's hard to see what the characters are saying, and to be honest, even when I did read it I wasn't too sure what they were talking about. I'm guessing it's a bit of an esoteric reference. While this isn't so bad, it might be worth coming up with a better opening image than this - something big and broad that establishes your concept. You can always move this one further down if you want, but you might need to enlarge it, and explain it better in the caption. The next two (of the gay guys and the "original characters" are ok; they fit in nicely with the topic, and the sonic one is even pretty funny. The only problem is with their positioning. It's all a bit messy.

The third one of the forum conversation - I have no idea what that's supposed to mean. I can't understand what they're talking about, and the image is too small to read anyway. I can't see any other option but getting rid of it to be honest. The last image of the standard "fantard" isn't so great either. I don't see how it relates really. What makes this guy a standard "fantard"? He's angry, that's about the only remarkable thing. If there's nothing funny in the way they look it may be best simply not to show one.

As for ideas for more pictures; the most obvious thing that springs to mind is simply more pictures of fanart. I suppose there are limits on how funny that can be, however. I guess when you don't have much on angle it's hard to come up with good ideas for images, that's why you should definitely have a think about your concept, then maybe bring this back to Pee Review when you've done some more work.

Miscellaneous: 4 Overall impression.
Final Score: 21 So overall there are some decent ideas in here but at the moment the article still feels very much like a first draft. With the piece being a couple of days old though, that's really nothing out of the ordinary. The main things to work on, in my opinion, are making it less nonsensical, and sorting out the spelling/grammar. It might also help if you reconsider your angle, but it's ultimately up to you of course. 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 on my talky page and I'll try to help. I hope the review is ok.
Reviewer: --Black Flamingo 14:26, April 11, 2011 (UTC)
Personal tools