The Outback Sends Its Regards / Discussion

This is the discussion related to the wiki page The Outback Sends Its Regards.

Done!

TheManhattenProject 01 Oct 2018 05:19

Damn, that tale took a bit to write, but it was worth it! Hopefully I can develop this into a full on series if this takes off, I really like where it's going right now!

As always I would like to give a special thanks to Lazar Lyusternik, LadyKatie, Coryn02, Oculism, and DarkStuff for reviewing and critiquing my draft, you guys were a great help in making this way better than I would have thought!

Last edited on 06 Oct 2018 22:43 by TheManhattenProject Show more

ModernMajorGeneral 02 Oct 2018 10:12

I don't know if you're Australian, but as an Australian this doesn't feel very Australian to me.

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Oh yeah, how could he forget? Kangaroos were a staple of Australia since the early settlers stepped foot on this country. Without them, many people wouldn’t of given Australia the time of day, let alone even want to settle and create a superpower out of it.

I don't get what any part of this sentence means. If you're trying to say that foreigners only notice Australia from a tourism/pop culture point of view because of kangaroos, maybe that's an acceptable exaggeration, but nobody lives here because of kangaroos. Unless you're referring to Aborigines (instead of the British) when you say 'early settlers', kangaroos were obviously there before early settlers. And nobody has ever associated 'Australia' with 'superpower' (I found this so odd that it was what captured my attention for the rest of the piece, as I honestly assumed I was going to be reading a weird SCP-universe alternate history where Australia was a superpower).

Hey, he loved Australia as much as the next boomerang wielding, slogan shouting, barbecuing bogan.

I don't really get this either. Nobody in Australia describes themselves like this. A foreigner might describe themselves in stereotypes like this, but that confuses the scene-setting function of this line - after reading it, I'm none the wiser whether this is an Australian guy or a foreigner (although if this is an adult Australian guy who drives for a living, there is no way he has never seen a wild kangaroo before).

There are a bunch of things that don't make sense to me. "Maybe Michael could get them to tow his car when they inevitably pass by." Is this meant to be a sarcastic thought? If not, why would his roadside assistance company 'inevitably' be passing by in the middle of nowhere in the outback? Why is he expecting to be able to pet a kangaroo without it running away? The only people who would do this are foreigners who don't know very much about kangaroos (or drunks), but if he's watched nature documentaries, he knows they're wild animals. How is he driving over animal corpses without noticing them? That's pretty difficult to do.

There are a few other minor inaccuracies/strange details - kangaroos make different noises and I suppose it's not impossible they might squeak or squeal - I don't really know - but it's not how I'd describe kangaroo sounds. (see https://wildambience.com/wildlife-sounds/kangaroo/ for reference). The rural speed limit is >100km/h in all Australian states. The Australian desert is infamously dry, not humid (usually).

If nothing else, this could use a proofread for spelling/grammar - 'would of', 'that would do to' were errors I noticed, plus some comma use I would disagree with.

Ultimately, though, the tone doesn't work for me. 'Man attacked by horde of angry kangaroos' sounds like something comedic, or that Australians would tell gullible tourists, but here it's played totally straight for horror.

Last edited on 02 Oct 2018 10:16 by ModernMajorGeneral Show more

TheManhattenProject 02 Oct 2018 11:54

True, I'll agree that those parts are very jarring to an Australian, and as an Australian myself I knew some of these were full blown exaggerations.

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The reason I included those inaccuracies though, were because I wanted Michael to be a character that doesn't tell the reader what the author thinks, but what he thinks as a character. If the reader knew what the character thought was right 100% of the time, it would be dreadfully dull, and if every fact he knew was 100% correct, it would also be incredibly dull. And yes some of the things described aren't the perfect and accurate representation of Australia, especially the Outback.

And nobody has ever associated 'Australia' with 'superpower' (I found this so odd that it was what captured my attention for the rest of the piece, as I honestly assumed I was going to be reading a weird SCP-universe alternate history where Australia was a superpower).

And I honestly thought Australia was a superpower in terms of it's place right now, but upon further research I did find out it wasn't. However, I found this after the tale was published, and honestly I think it fits in terms of Micheal biases and beliefs.

I can understand that these can turn someone off, and I can respect that, especially with the tone, which doesn't fit in the horror aspect when looked at. I mean, if I heard someone was attacked by kangaroos I would laugh my ass off. Also, I will tell you that Micheal is Australian, and from me talking to friends and whatnot, most actually haven't seen kangaroos before, in the desert or otherwise, so I based it off that.

Last thing, yes I do have a problem with some grammar, especially with word order or placement. When I got feedback, most of them didn't see any problems, and those that did I quickly fixed (I once wrote a sentence backwards in this, I'm that bad.).

Anyway, with that, I do thank you for spending your time writing out what you thought about it, it really helps me when developing the next chapter in this series.