Whale Gun

Summary:

Rough draft seeking review for a gun that swaps your mind with that of a whale

Whale Gun

Syrgpure 24 Aug 2020 17:06

Seeking Greenlights: Yes

Page Type: SCP Article

Elevator Pitch: Its a Foundation sidearm but instead of stooting bullets at a person it swaps their conciousness with the nearest whale

Central Narrative: Random guard tries to shoot a D boy during a minor breach and instead of dying he starts flailing around like a whale, and a whale in a nearby aquarium freaks out and drowns

Hook/Attention-Grabber: Its a brain swapping device (not to original) but with whales, and its a Foundation-issued weapon but how it became anomalous is unknown (gonna add a quick revision to address that somewhat)

Additional Notes: Had this idea so I jotted it down and I'd love to know how I can fix or improve parts. I'm pretty new to the writing process so any and all advice would be welcome!

The draft is at http://scp-sandbox-3.wikidot.com/syrgpure

Last edited on 24 Aug 2020 17:41 by Syrgpure Show more

Re: Whale Gun

Marcelles_Raynes 24 Aug 2020 17:59

Hello, Mars here. Let's dive in.

Critique

So, I am not really getting a sense of narrative growth here. As you have described, your object is a gun that swaps the human consciousness with that of a whale. I'm not sure how well that would work given how vastly different the standard is for SCP articles nowadays. This feels very Series I to me.

Consequently, a whale is a mammal IIRC. It needs to breathe air and has the ability to do so, which makes it highly unlikely that it would just automatically drown. This point is minor though.

Given how closely this resembles a Series I skip, I would suggest reading some of the more recent articles to get a better sense of what the wiki expects from an article. You should try to focus more on developing a narrative, as t is essentially the core behind (almost) every SCP article. Remember; The anomaly should be used to convey a story, and a narrative should be centered around said anomaly. Just because the object is weird or dangerous does not inherently make it interesting.

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~ M.D.R.

Re: Whale Gun

KaraKatt 24 Aug 2020 17:26

Author,

As per the required reading forum guidelines, please fill out the concept template to seek feedback on your idea:

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Re: Whale Gun

Syrgpure 24 Aug 2020 17:42

Thanks, so sorry about that! It's revised now, and I'll get to contacting the reviewers

Re: Whale Gun

fishnets 24 Aug 2020 20:35

The big barrier for me is that it falls into the "thing that does something" category, and the "something" is confusing at this point in the process. Namely because there would be much more practical targets, like laboratory animals, for a mind-swap gun created by the Foundation.

I'm also stuck wondering why nobody's noticed this property of the weapon until this point and wondering how a Foundation guard could've just accidentally come into possession of it. It could be a workable concept with an interesting narrative around that part of the situation.