Uncyclopedia:Pee Review/Fissiparous (quick)

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Fissiparous

Latest Mhaille/Syc collab - would be nice to have another set of eyes run over it for any improvements. Thanks:-)--Sycamore (Talk) 13:49, August 31, 2010 (UTC)

Guess I'll review this, see what I can do. Give me a day. An Earth or Mars day, that is, not a Mercury or Venus day and certainly not a Neptune or Uranus or Jupiter day... definitely not a solar day, either; that'd just be silly.

Er, anyway, it'll be reviewed. Soonish. ~ *shifty eyes* (talk) (stalk) -- 20101016 - 15:28 (UTC)

On second thought, I don't think I can do this. ~ *shifty eyes* (talk) (stalk) -- 20101018 - 01:15 (UTC)

I don't think a quick review is possible for such a bizarre piece. It's taken nearly an hour for me to simply finish reading it. Nevertheless, I'll have a review by tonight. --Black Flamingo 17:55, October 23, 2010 (UTC)

Humour:	6	Ok, back in August you requested a quick review, now two months and as many reviewers later I finally arrive at something vaguely resembling one. I hope it's ok. In terms of humour, I didn't find this hugely funny, although there were a few parts that made me laugh. Most of the funniest bits in my opinion were near the start; the stuff about Bagpuss and hypothetical forms of life, as well as the first image and its caption. I think the main issue I had with it was the fact that most of the way through I had no idea what was going on, and any attempt I made to follow exactly what you were saying made my brain hurt. I think this might be the reason I appreciated only the beginning too, because by the half way point it was just too much; too much information to process, too much apparent nonsense, too many strange phrasings that I knew probably meant something but couldn't quite tell what. By the time I'd finished the Definitions section I think my brain had mostly shut down. This, apparently, is the problem Lyrithya had too when s/he tried to review this. So on the one hand, if you set out to write an article that confuses the hell out of everyone then you've done a great job, but on the other hand I doubt many users will take to this simply because of the fact that it's such a struggle. Some of the older, more intellectual users may be on board with it, but sadly I am not one of them. At first I thought the problem may simply have been that I didn't know what "Fissiparous" was, then I looked it up and found it quite simple, but also found that it didn't really help my understanding of the article at all. To be brutally honest, I think there may be too much going on here. It's not just that it's hard to follow, it's that the article is all over the place. Even just in the Definitions section you vary vastly between ideas. The whole interlude in the office, for instance, why such a specific example? What significance does it have? Is anything in the article really significant? I ask these questions but I suspect there is no answer. My reaction to the second definition almost sums up the way I feel about the article. You say it is; "A word which explains why some individuals only hope of reproduction lies in asexual methods". Why does it mean this? I reckoned you were trying to insult somebody, but who? I couldn't figure it out, and didn't find it funny as a result. Very much like the whole article, really. A suggestion I'd make is to reign back on the distractions, and at least try to stick to some kind of basic subject matter (like Fissiparous itself, for instance). At the moment you're going on long, unfunny tirades about Sid Meier games, Aristotle and the IRA. But what does this have to do with Fissiparous? These really detract from the piece in my opinion, and it would be better if you just stuck to the sexual stuff. At least that would give it some much needed focus. You can still be deliberately confuddling if you want, but it will have the added benefit of not looking like a bunch of different, unrelated articles cut and pasted together, which is sort of how it appears now. That's not to say the whole article had this effect on me, the Occam's Razor picture actually had me giggling for a while. This is because it was very obviously meaningless, and also silly and imaginitive enough to tickle me. The caption, on the other hand, didn't. Like the rest of the article I found it bemusing. As someone who failed to grasp the article I'm probably not in much of a position to tell you where to go with it, however I think doing more stuff like this might be a good idea. Things that are obviously meaningless, that's the key here, so your reader isn't struggling to find humour in something that actually makes no sense.
Concept:	5	Hoo boy, concept. What actually is the concept here? I think one of the biggest problems I had was that all the way through I was thinking; "is this meant to be nonsense, or am I just missing something?" If you could somehow make it clear that this is deliberately nonsensical (if indeed it is) then that'd help. The reader wouldn't have to read it over and over as I did, struggling to figure it out. They'd know straight away and just be able to take it at face value. I think the first half of the article is probably the strongest conceptually. Although largely incoherent, you get the idea that it's hinting - or maybe even leading - to something. What it's hinting at I don't know; an explanation? Answers? A punchline? Whatever the case it still kind of feels focussed, albeit in a random sort of way. The article really becomes stupefying towards the end however, especially all the stuff about the IRA. I really had no idea why that was even there, and suspected there might not have been a reason. Like I said in Humour, I think the best thing for you to do is cut it all down to just the stuff vaguely related to sex, and then perhaps try to come up with some more material along the same lines. At least then the reader would have a structure to follow. Of course, I can't shake the feeling that I'm totally wrong about that.
Prose and formatting:	6	Again your prose seems deliberately confusing. A lot of the sentences are over long and have loads of clauses, odd concepts and esoteric words. This one is a good example of a sentence I had to read several times to understand: "The factions were being fissiparous when they dared to disagree with the crazy eco-chick with the mind worm military funded partly by the brutal serfdom of a police state." Even now I'm not too sure about that. Again, the problem here is that when your reader is struggling to understand something, it's doubtful they will appreciate the jokes. Even if they do finally "get" them, they still probably won't laugh because it took so long for them to figure it out. Now I realise most of your jokes are quite intelligent and unconventional, but to word them in such a confusing way is unlikely to be as effective as writing in simple, plain English. I would definitely recommend you take another look at the style you employ here. I also noticed a fair few grammatical mistakes, and also the odd spelling error, but such is the power of this article I actually started to consider that these might be intentional as well. Take a look at this line: "Of course fissiparous elements have no many permutations that it is all but impossible to keep up". Is that supposed to be so many rather than no many? Because it seemed like the kind of deliberate mistake this article might contain. If such things aren't intentional then I'd give it another careful proofread, Lyrithya told me s/he noticed similar problems with grammar too so it can't hurt.
Images:	6	I liked the first two pictures. In fact, I liked both the caption and the picture for the first one. It was silly, it was nonsense, but it was coherent and it made me chuckle. Then as I've said, the second was made me laugh heartily but the long, difficult caption failed to do the same. I couldn't really get my head around the third one at all, and with the fourth I felt the same way I did about all the IRA stuff - that it shouldn't be there. I think you have a lot of potential here for images, basing this mostly on the Occam's Razor one. The idea that the image is supposed to be a "simple" diagram really made me laugh because it was obviously so far from simple. I think I've already said this but; more of this would be great.
Miscellaneous:	7	For effort, a 7. However don't concern yourself at all with the scores, they have very little meaning here. I have no idea how to even score an article like this.
Final Score:	30	Well, I'm not sure what else to say. Except; sorry you had to wait so long for a review, but if you're going to submit an article like this I guess you get what you deserve. My main suggestions then would be to try and simplify the prose to make your jokes clearer, try to stay focussed and maybe trim some of the unecessary deviations and if possible make it clearer that this is supposed to be nonsense. Of course, if I've totally missed the point (which is likely) then disregard my comments and do what you want. Whatever the case may be, I hope this stuff helps you if you do come to edit it. 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.
Reviewer:	--Black Flamingo 18:50, October 23, 2010 (UTC)