Thanks to sirpudding and WrongJohnSilver for critiquing and giving me some feedback on this months ago. A couple people also helped me out in chat, but I lost the note with their names. Sorry about that.
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Okay, so this was interesting enough. While anthropomorphism is not an uncommon theme among the wiki, this took a different enough angle to keep my interest.
On a more nitpicky note, I'd recommend you drop the blackboxing and include the names and dates omitted. Black boxing should really be done only if you have a clear reason to withhold that info from a Foundation employee reading that document, and that doesn't appear the case here. The document would be far more interesting, in my opinion, if you included the info.
Either way +1. The article held my interest. Good job.
I took them out because I didn't feel specific dates or names added to that portion of the story. I wanted Kato to be memorable so I left his name unblanked, but everybody else is largely irrelevant aside from "guy asking interview questions" or "guy who dies". If more people share your view I'll put them back in.
And thank you for reading! :)
Well written but a bit too heavy handed for my tastes. Drone strikes against civilian targets are bad, I get it.
Neutral vote.
I agree on the heavy-handedness of the topic here. And the sapience felt thrown in for the heck of it. Without the sapience, the story can still work without much difference.
That wasn't actually my intent. What about it reads as particularly heavy-handed and what can I do to change that?
The whole sequence of events where the operators attack civilians and then the drone retaliates back at them smells too much like karmic retribution to me - "you did a bad thing, now you die". And to make things clear, it was a bad thing and such things happen in real life, but this is not a place to discuss it. Anyway, I suppose that what bothers me most is how convenient for the narrative the situation is: the operators think they identified their target but are told to proceed without extra confirmation, and then it turned out he wasn't even there - but little kids were. It all seems like it's put there just to make the reader feel bad.
I'm not sure if you need to change anything though because even if I don't exactly like it, the ratings are in the article's favor. So it's just a personal opinion.
Ahhhh, okay, I can see that. There were certain things going on in the story I wasn't sure how to communicate, so I left them vague. That's definitely a valid reading as its written, but I'll try and consider how I can make it a little less heavy-handed.
Thanks for the feedback!
"Haji" is actually an honorific, it refers to one who has completed the Haj, the pilgrimage to Mecca. It is used as a disarmament by US service men and women. Regardless, I don't think "diminutive" is the right word.
I was wondering about how best to put that too. I stuck with diminutive because in the context it is—it's something uniformly applied to all men from the middle east regardless of whether they're even Muslim.
Should I just remove the footnote?
EtA: I changed it. Let me know if the new footnote reads better. :)
This is a combination of tropes I've seen before, yet I like what you've done with them. :) It's cute!
I feel like this bot and Alexei should swap stories sometime.
The document itself could use a bit more proof-reading, but I like it. Not sure about the use of the word "hajji," though; pretty sure sirpudding would know more about it than me, and appears to have already covered it (to the best of my knowledge, the only place that word has been used the way it's used here is in the miniseries Generation Kill, which, while entertaining, is not accurate).
Out of curiosity, how much research did you do for this?
Hahaha, oh god, that would be heartwarming if the Ethics committee ever let him out, and if he ever learned English (or A2 learned German/Russian, I guess)
I wrote it while I was on deployment a half a year ago, so I feel comfortable in terms of military slang and demeanor. My job isn't even a tiny bit related to predators though, so all that info is from Wikipedia. I got a lot of help on the site with regards to plane technology ("airframe", "hardpoints", etc.)
(account deleted)**Interview dated 19 ███,
you missed a syntax there, otherwise great SCP you got going there
It's using military dating, for example, 22 APR 2016. I'm not sure if there's standardization for dating on SCPs, but since it was likely brought to Foundation attention by military personnel with Foundation connections, it seemed appropriate.
Thanks!
no I mean the bolded text. you know the Asteriks * that make it bolded
I like it.
I had some problems getting into it at first, but that is probably because I know nix about armament, military operations and the like - I had to Google MQ blahblah to visualize what the skip was about! This lasted for a few paragraphs, then I was hooked.
A few nitpicks:
- proofreading needed: you have a few 'foundation' without a capital F, and a few typos/mistakes here and there
- why is the ITW re: Incident Kato placed last? (Chrono)logically, it came first, it should be first - and it would make everything clearer.
- I don't understand the various mentions of Captain Kato's behaviour during interview: why is it important that he sits at attention? But here again, this may be just me and my ignorance of things military.
A2 began to accelerate on its return even though no command had been issued to do so. We had taken nearly 90 minutes on approach, and A2 made the return journey in 35.
This is not what I'd call 'began to accelerate'. More like 'sped up enormously'!!!!! You might want to rephrase this… (what is it with English-speaking people and the verb 'to begin'? I often proofread things written by a US friend of mine, and she tends to constantly use 'begin' this way too…! ;>)
No matter. Upvote anyway. This is nice!
Haha, I've uploaded a public domain picture of a predator that will hopefully make this easier.
Foundation capitalization: I feex.
Kato: I pictured it as being organized by the most recent conversation with the child therapist, with the incident notes being relevant to the file, but "old news" in terms of the day-to-day securing of the SCP. I felt like it made the story stronger being last, but eh.
Military bearing/position of attention: Military bearing is basically maintaining an even demeanor regardless of what's going on. You know the Queen's Castle Guard in Britain and how they're not supposed to stop standing in that position? That's the standing position of attention. In Kato's case, he was assuming the position of attention that he likely had to assume when he reported the circumstances of the incident in a military tribunal. It's not necessarily what really happened—it's what he rehearsed and practiced delivering, military bearing included.
Acceleration: That's true. I've added an extra sentence explaining that the airframe continued to accelerate and reached an unsafe speed in order to make the journey.
Thanks for the feedback! :)
Thanks - the picture does help! ;>
Chronology: I still think Kato Incident should come first, but eh. Shall we battle it out? rrh rrh rrh
Military position: out of the abysmal depths of my above-mentioned ignorance, I still think it would engage the [clueless?] reader more if you described Kato at first solid and soldier-like, then gradually becoming more human (children dead, target not there, companions killed).
Acceleration: OK, it works.
Oh, and something else (sorry, I forgot): why does SCP-2918 feel sorry for the dead children, but does not regret killing the pilots?
Not bad. I like the concept, and the execution overall was pretty good. One thing I'd perhaps recommend is finding another way to format the actions in the interview logs, especially towards the end of the second the bold just gives off the wrong tone for me. But, that's a very subjective stylistic thing.
There isn't anything I can say that is explicitly wrong with it (maybe try to remove blackboxes? they usually add nothing but ugliness to an article), but there's just this overall feeling I get from the story that makes it somewhat… underwhelming. It's difficult for me to describe.
Even so, this skates just into upvote territory for now.
P.S. Because Macleod already did his own self-promotey thing, I feel perfectly justified in saying that this drone and the vacuum should meet up sometime.
What bugs you about the formatting? Is it the brackets, or the tone of the description, or…?
We'll see about the blackboxes. Haven't had any other real complaints about them, but (just kidding, I totally have actually >_>) I can see them as ugly. I might take the date blackboxes out, but leave the names, I don't want to bog it down with too many characters.
I get what you mean! It's not a very intense scip, and I probably didn't push the angles of it as far as I could have/should have. But trying to add or significantly edit seems to make it worse.
PS. I call writing a tale about all these sad, melancholy SCPs getting together for a monthly support group.
/forum/t-1689221/scp-2918#post-
page revision: 2, last edited: 15 Jan 2023 15:06
