Uncyclopedia:Pee Review/User:Guildensternenstein/Tea and Strumpets
User:Guildensternenstein/Tea and Strumpets[edit source]
An article so pun-tastic and British I'm surprised one of these guys didn't think of it. Inspired by a phone conversation with my girlfriend. Review away. —Unführer Guildy Ritter von Guildensternenstein 02:39, August 23, 2010 (UTC)
- Inspired by real life eh? You filthy mare. I'll have this done by Friday night. --Black Flamingo 18:45, September 2, 2010 (UTC)
- It's not quite what you think. She was telling me the story of this guy she knew who did this terrible English accent, and would say "tea and strumpets" instead of "tea and crumpets" because he evidently didn't know the difference. —Unführer Guildy Ritter von Guildensternenstein 20:21, September 2, 2010 (UTC)
- Also, thanks for the review. —Unführer Guildy Ritter von Guildensternenstein 20:22, September 2, 2010 (UTC)
| Humour: | 8 | This is a good, solid piece you've got here Guildy. The concept is great, it's stupendously well-written and it's also pretty funny. I say "pretty funny" because it didn't have me laughing all the way through. It was one of those articles where you think "oh, that's funny", but don't actually laugh out loud. At least, that was my response. There were just a few very minor problems with the humour in my opinion, nothing that won't be too hard to fix however. My main advice, I think, would be to work on getting the joke ratio up a bit. I know this sounds unhelpful on it's own, but I will dedicate the humour and concept sections of this review to exploring this, so hopefully you'll get a clearer picture of what I mean.
One thing that struck me here is that there actually isn't that much innuendo. Perhaps I only expected there to be because the title is punny, and because you yourself described it as "puntastic" above, whatever the case I was expecting more. I wouldn't make an issue of this if it wasn't for the fact that the double entendres are some of your strongest parts. I refer spefically to the jokes about the erect member and the shape of the teapot (although I guess the latter isn't really a pun, but I'm throwing it in there anyway because it's along similar lines). These jokes really help to conflate the dual concepts of old fashioned British drinking habits and raunchy sex, something you definitely need to do more of in the article (I will talk more about this later). A little more of this is just what the article needs, in my opinion. There are many times where you don't really use pun or innuendo, and you just say something that involves both tea and prostitutes in a fairly tacked-on kind of way (see the etiquette section, particularly). While there are absolutely no bad jokes in here, I think this kind of humour will strengthen the underlying concept, make it seem like a more natural joining. And surely there's tons of material in there; from crumpets being buttered to asking how many lumps the guests take in their tea. The list goes on. There's probably a potential yeast-based double entendre in there too, although I don't really want to think about that myself. Again none of this is a major issue, just something to think about when revising. Another small issue I had was with your etiquette list. It's almost a cliche in pee reviews to say that lists are predictable, but I'm going to say it anyway. The problem I had here was that as I read it I was thinking "oh he's going to say something rude any minute now!" then you do, and my expectations were not met. I simply didn't find them shocking, despite them being suitably rude, probably because they were so anticipated. Now, ordinarily I would advise a writer not to use lists, but bare in mind that the lists I'm used to dealing with are absolute drivel. This is not a bad list by any standard, but have you considered converting it to prose? You should at least do something to make it less exptected. I also think you could go much more in depth here, that's another problem with lists. Surely the ritual involved is longer, and while I wouldn't recommend you get overly-carnal in your details (because you maintain a good balance of sex and prudeishness), I know you can explore it more. How does it all end, for instance? Things like that. There is another joke in this section that I don't think helps - the one about semen, hidden in the link. This is even more predictable than the list turning rude. As I'm sure you know, the funny link thing is a bit overdone here. It's not a problem in itself, we all do it, but I think with this one specifically you could do better. Why not use the "rule of 3" approach? For example, try saying something like "adding milk, cream or semen to the tea". I really think this would work better; when you see "other substances" in blue you know straight away it's going to be a link to semen, but with the rule of 3 you don't see it until you've already read it and (hopefully) laughed. Sometimes fictional-historical things like this suffer from being implausible. You don't really have a problem with this; you actually make the idea of tea and strumpets sound rather realistic. There were one or two minor things I found hard to believe though. There's a great joke you make in the etiquette section about differing customs amongst various social classes. The joke itself and the idea behind it, are spot on, but what ruins it for me is that I found it hard to believe that the working classes would find "drinking tea out of a prostitute's navel" to be "too kinky". The idea just jarred with me, and like I said, it spoiled the flow of an otherwise excellent joke. If you can think of a more plausible reason for them not liking it, I think this would help. Maybe they'd consider it a waste of expensive tea? The way you describe teabagging also jarred with me when I read it. I think my issue was that you make up a fictitious meaning for it. While the idea of teabagging emerging from the tradition of tea and strumpets is funny, I think the notion that it originally meant "covering a prostitute in teabags" is, again, unbelievable. Perhaps try sticking with the real meaning, and talk about how it started off as dipping actual teabags in the strumpets mouth, then evolved into something much more intimate. And in doing this, you could further explore the kinkiness of the conservative British upper-classes. Because let's face it, they're all sexually jaded freaks. That abouts wraps up humour. To end I'll just say that once again I think some of your footnotes are too funny to be hidden away down there (I think I'm talking about 2 and 4 here, although numbers aren't my forte). Like last time you probably don't think this is a problem. I don't really know why it strikes me as one, but when I read articles I usually don't bother with the footnotes until second time around, and unless the article is good I don't bother reading it more than once, meaning I miss them. It's up to you, of course, this might just be pointless anxiety on my part. |
| Concept: | 8 | There are a few problems conceptually, although again they are very minor ones. Mainly, I think you could go into a bit more detail about the subject, as the article itself is a tad short. When it comes to getting more content in, Romartus makes some good suggestions on the talk page - the irony that crumpet can also mean strumpet would definitely be a good thing to explore. You also don't really elaborate much on the strumpets themselves. What are they like? Where are they from? What do they do in between "sessions"? What do they think of the whole thing? etc. It would be nice to see them conflated more with their real-life counterpart - in what way are strumpets like crumpets? Do they come dripping in butter? Are they nicer hot? I've talked about this already; about how you should do more to conflate the concepts. Like I said, puns that play on both subjects are a good way of doing this.
If you do indeed want ideas for more material, how about a section on tea and strumpets in the modern age? Because people still have tea and crumpets, albeit mostly separately. There might be something here you can draw upon. |
| Prose and formatting: | 9.5 | Ah Guildy, your prose are always a joy to read. Perfect, in fact. The pace of your writing is quite simply beautiful (if you like that sort of thing). I have but two very small issues to raise here, so here they are:
That's it, I believe. |
| Images: | 7.5 | The first image is good but if you can find (or make) an image actually depicting tea and strumpets it would work far better. The next two (of the teapot and the erect member) are great, I wouldn't recommend changing them (unless you can find a similar image of the "erect member" from the actual time period). All the captions so far are good too, by the way.
Then the picture of the Japanese woman; I wasn't as keen on. It didn't even seem to make a joke (again, unless I'm missing something). My suggestion would be to either make the caption more humorous or try a different image. I know you're trying to illustrate "tea around the world" but I also noticed that the article has no pictures of the strumpets themselves, which surely are more relevant overall. It's up to you, of course, but it's something to consider. |
| Miscellaneous: | 8.3 | No comment. |
| Final Score: | 41.3 | So not many problems here overall, a quick revision of some of the weaker parts I've highlighed should be all it takes to get this into excellent shape. As it stands now, I would probably vote for on VFH. With a little tweaking - based on my suggestions or otherwise - I would definitely nom it myself (although since you tend to self nom I suppose it doesn't make much difference). Feel free to leave me a message if you want me to clarify anything, have a look at changes, or are simply lonely, and I'll see what I can do. |
| Reviewer: | --Black Flamingo 19:18, September 3, 2010 (UTC) | |