Uncyclopedia:Pee Review/Pansy

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Pansy

NeuroticNinjaPirate666 10:44, July 21, 2010 (UTC)

Humour:	4	Pull up a chair, NinjaPirate, er, Gomphog. Actually, pull up that nice comfy couch with the comforter on it. This honestly won't be the best review. On the bright side, it won't be the worst either, so you've got that going for you. Right, six sections (including pre-TOC intro), ten possible points. Last time I tried dividing them up, I got seriously confused, so I'll just give an overall score this time. Intro: huh, sexually confused male flower? That's a bit much to swa—wha', pistils? Transsexual flowers? Right, I think you're officially trying to fit too much into the introduction. Generally what you want to do is set up the component parts of your article, not give everything away at the outset. But I'm afraid this whole introduction more non-sexually confused me than made me laugh. I guess I kind of like that throwaway bumblebee one-liner, but everything else needs to be paced better. Talk about the pansy as a flower in another paragraph, then deal with the pansy's effeminate nature in the second paragraph. (I do have a few things to say about that, but I'll hold up 'til the Concept section.) Description: a list of stereotypes about effeminate males, I guess? I find the idea of a gardener pansy mildly ironic, but nothing else here was particularly memorable. The fact that you included a quote from a petunia is surreal, possibly, but not really incredibly humorous or meaningful—is the petunia a female? male? LGBT? TGIF? BBC? ROT13? (disregard those last three, obviously) There's no context, no build-up, no resolution. I suppose it's continuing on from the versatility of pansies, but still, there's nothing to indicate that they're particularly good at anything or have a particular affinity for certain flowers ... I'm just non-sexually confused. You probably need quite a bit more development. There's a lot that could go in Description—general appearance (could play around here with effeminate stereotypes a bit here, I suppose), colours (ditto), scent (ditto), flowering seasons (er ... yeah, sorry, ditto), etc (ditto, I suppose). You've got somewhat of a start here, but not enough as it is, I'm afraid. Life cycle: oh, sorry, you deal with seasons here somewhat. I suppose it's just that "Description" as a section title is a bit vague. Perhaps you could pick a more specific title, like "Physical appearance" or "Morphology", for the previous section? Oh, right, this section. Okay, it's basically another list of stereotype-type things, this time about LGBT-type people. Actually, no, it doesn't even go as far as that. It's just a list of sexual orientations for the pansy flower. The only exception is the mention of hardiness and a sunny climate, but you don't really elaborate on that. Were you going to make a humorous point out of those things? If so, make the point, because you aren't doing so as is. That said, I do find the idea of cross-dressing flowers somewhat amusing. Cultivation: yup, this is a list of LGBT stereotypes, and it's not even executed in a very graceful manner, I'm afraid. You're actually sort of scaring me here with this—are you actually transposing everything you say here onto effeminate and/or LGBT people? Because frankly it's more disturbing and disgusting than amusing. (Your particular mention of manure makes me wonder this point more than anything.) Tops and bottoms: this seems like something you should have put under Description, for organisation purposes. But whatever—on with the review. Unfortunately, this is where I lost all idea of what you were saying. Petals, indentations, shrivelling—yerwot? I'm sorry, you just lost me. I appreciate how you're trying to make this transposition of pansies (people) onto pansies (flowers) so ridiculous as to be hilarious, but it's far more miss than hit. I find the idea of bearded flowers somewhat funny, but I thought we were talking about sissies. They're hardy enough, but shrivel early? You need a unified idea here, but more about that in Concept. Contradicting yourself silly and making it make sense is impossible unless you're Monty Python, and you're not Monty Python because one of them's dead and the other ones are far too famous to try and ruin their reputation by being on this site. Etymology: congratulations, you're taking cues from the Wikipedia article, as not enough people these days do. However, I'm afraid it devolved into an immature joke and a final line that made absolutely no sense. And that's my cue to discuss with you the concept of this article ...
Concept:	3	... which is that the derogatory term "pansy" is also the name for a flower that has captured many an imagination. You've made a fantastic connection that could be the beginning of a wonderful article. You could start by describing the flower with a few mild throwaway jokes, and then suddenly launch into questioning its masculinity—ironic because you're questioning the manliness of a flower, and because you're talking about a flower as if it were a human being. Then you gradually build up through history (the pansy flower is actually a hybrid breed with a definite artificial origin, which is interesting but probably couldn't really figure into the article), physical appearance, breeding, life cycle, diseases, etc all the while playing up on stereotypical traits—could be in a subtle way that arouses mild chuckles, or in an over-the-top manner that really questions the stereotypes themselves and arouses chuckles as well—before launching into a last hurrah and the customary see also and categories. Oh, wait, that's not quite what you did. You got the connection, and got very little beyond this. Sure, you question its masculinity, but it's not either subtle or over-the-top—you just list stereotypes and "typical" traits and make a few customary puns. Furthermore, you seem to be working with multiple definitions of pansy (person). Effeminate male? LGBT person? I don't know—but you should. Decide what it is you want to play up on—and you can only pick one. As it is, you have no creative twists on the stereotypes, no unified concept, and no grace in your execution of what concept you did manage to create. Again, you made a pretty good connection with the derogatory term and the flower name, but beyond that, I don't see a whole lot in your article.
Prose and formatting:	6	I will say that your prose is pretty good—correct use of punctuation, good mechanics, good spelling. I will however advise that you move it back to Pansy, since that appears to be the accepted spelling. Also, just a few things about prose and formatting in general: Use subsections. They are your friend. They help you organise ideas within particularly lengthy sections that might need dividing up. Just try using three equal signs instead of two once in a while. You don't need to capitalise every (non-conjunction, non-definite article) word of a section heading. Pretty self-explanatory. I mean, it's not the title of a book or a play, so there's just no need to do it. So, "Tops and bottoms", not "Tops and Bottoms". Get a See also section. This links the reader to other articles related to the topic at hand so that we can entrap the reader in an endless Uncyc binge lasting through link after link after link after link after link after etc etc. You'll probably be able to find all of the above in many other articles on the website. Well, actually capitalisation of section headings is pretty varied—a lot of articles do capitalise every word, but a lot of articles also don't. Sometimes people don't bother with a See also either, but I'd recommend it. But subsections seem to be pretty standard unless you're doing something non-encyclopaedic, which you aren't. In any case, these are just my recommendations, and your formatting as is doesn't really get in the way of absorbing the content.
Images:	4	Well, there's only one image, but on the other hand the article is pretty short too, so I don't blame you. It's also a very creepy image—artsy, so I guess it fits in with the effeminate stereotypes—but yes, there are pansies in the image, and I'm mildly fond of that caption. Just make sure that should you choose to flesh out this article further, you should probably have one image per PgDn. This review obviously breaks that rule, but at least it has colours.
Miscellaneous:	4	This is the part where I ask you not to take this review to heart without extreme caution. I'm not LGBT (as straight as the y-axis), but I am known to be extremely prudish and rather easily offended, even by things by which I have no business being offended, like insensitive LGBT stereotyping. In addition, I am no more of a master of comedy than you are; I'm not so much skilled at reviewing as I am at being (hopefully constructively) critical; and I'm not exactly a big deal, even 'round these parts. As such, I may be completely wrong about this article. Perhaps it's a work of comedic genius, and I'm the old man who keeps telling people to get off the review queue. In any case, though, this review sums up what I think of Pansy—the article needs an awful lot more fleshing out, perverse stereotypes or no, but it has a pretty inventive concept, just with a scarcely inventive execution. The scores mean nothing—all I ask is that you think about what I've advised here and make your own decisions as to what to do, whether or not you base these decisions on my advice.
Final Score:	21	times 2 equals 42. You're halfway there just by starting this article—just put more effort into it. Yes, it's easier said than done, but it'll never get done before it's said. Read up on some of Uncyc's featured articles and Uncyc's own collection of humour tips; throw around a bunch of ideas; don't be afraid to be clever and inventive—and, above all, good luck. Trust me, it helps.
Reviewer:	Sir MacMania GUN—[02:16 11 Aug 2010]