RPC-712 "The Tank"
http://rpcsandbox.wikidot.com/rpc-712
I feel like I may need to improve this a lot, so critisim would be appreciated.
RPC-712 "The Tank"
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» RPC-712 "The Tank"
Make sure to add a third dimension to your containment chamber. Width, length and height.
the safety of twr object
the
how will it be monitored? mention that the chamber has cameras if so.
Give us more details about the tank. What year was this one produced in? what years is it known to have served in?
RPC-712 is a French Renault FT tank from WWI that is in perfect condition as of ██████.
Why redact the date? Add the comment that it's in good condition later in the article. The most important thing to say is what is anomalous about it first.
The RPC has shown that it can be slightly aware of its surroundings, as it is able to move around its holding cell without hitting walls.
I suggest rewording this to be
"RPC-712 has demonstrated awareness of its surroundings. The object will move around the containment cell without striking walls or objects.
Personnel have reported that they hear voices from the tank shouting "Vive la France!" These voices are to be ignored, as it usually ends up with someone hurt.
What ends up happening? That's quite important.
You mention that it is driver-less. You should describe the inside of the tank in the description as well.
and the locals were amnesticized.
Why? all they saw was some trees knocked down. There's no need to erase that from anyones memories.
Dr. ████ was captured and punished by MST personnel.
So this was an unplanned test?
Overall the article needs more details and story to it. Describe who that french voice is, and give us the history of this tank. You can tell us the story of what these french soldiers went through and how they it ended up like this.
Added. Thanks for the feedback.
Not hugely impressed with this draft. While it's competently written, it has some major conceptual flaws and plot holes that need filling.
- Why would you fuel a vehicular anomaly every day? Wouldn't keeping it unfuelled be both cheaper and easier for containment?
- Why would you need to clean the tank weekly if it's inside, and survived being outside for more than a century without wear?
- The idea of people moving tank rounds around an RPC site illicitly is… too much. C'mon, assume some professionalism on the part of your research staff.
- In what way is the tank in perfect condition? We talking paint, fittings, everything? What happens if the vehicle is deliberately damaged?
- How exactly is the tank aware of its surroundings beyond not hitting walls?
- What happens when someone sits inside the vehicle and attempts to operate it as normal?
- Are personnel hearing voices, or is the tank actually emitting sounds?
- How do they know whose voice is whose?
- Given that most countries maintain fairly extensive service records from the First World War, why isn't there more information on the crew of the tank? Wouldn't the Authority know their unit, regiment, etc? Wouldn't the tank have identifying markings and personal effects inside if it's pristine?
- This may be me being pedantic about tanks, but Renault FTs don't have two seats- the commander was expected to stand, braced against a band of fabric slung across the inside of the turret.
- How did the tank react to attempts to capture it?
- "I keep trying to send distress signals" With what? Signal flags? carrier pigeons? FTs don't have radios, and both of these need access to the exterior of the tank to use.
- The FT was, by default, armed with a 37mm Puteaux SA18 gun- this is the version shown in the picture. How would you load it with a "90mm" round?
- How stupid do these researchers have to be to conduct a test with a cannon-armed vehicle inside? Like, I get that it was unplanned, but that's just fucking suicidal
- Why would the ASF "Capture" the researcher? That implies that he was, I dunno, a fugitive or something.
- You wouldn't need Security's permission to test an armed anomaly- wouldn't that be a Containment thing?
- Your experiment logs are written in a weird tense and tell us basically nothing new about the tank. Fix 'em.
There have a been a variety of "animate tank" articles here and on other sites, and I don't think this does anything new or interesting with the concept.
Thanks for the feedback. I'll fix it.
This piece of criticism actually helps me improve this article a lot. So thanks.
BIG piece of writing advice from me: If you're going to mention something, that means you're calling attention to it. And if you're calling attention to it, you'd better be ready to elaborate on it.
RPC-712 is to be contained in a 20x20x10 meter containment chamber in Site-002.
Point 1: Personal nitpick, but if it's already in the chamber, then you don't need to say "to be" since that sounds like an impending to-do action to me. So you could delete the "to be" and that'll be fine.
Point 2: You can mention the room contains surveillance cameras in this same first sentence ("…containment chamber under 24/7 surveillance…"), so you don't need that line at the end of the paragraph.
RPC-712 is to remain without fuel unless a test is being conducted.
Sounds a bit convoluted. Suggest to reword to "RPC-712 is to be kept unfueled when not undergoing testing."
The containment cell is to be cleaned monthly.
See "writing advice" above: Now you have piqued my attention. Cleaned of what? Dust? Dirt? Oil? Semen? Diarrhoea? Uranium? Bananas? If it's just standard janitors coming in to do the usual "mop the place" schtick, that's already basic protocol and is fine to not be mentioned.
Any movement from the RPC should be monitered by personnel to ensure the safety of the object and the surrounding area.
If the room is being surveiled with cameras, this is sort of just repeating their function. It would make more sense if you just wrote that any unusual behaviour should be logged.
Also, if you're going to say "safety", you need to elaborate on what exactly you mean by that.
Also, I'm just asking this without having read the rest of the article so far since I'm reviewing as I go along, but if the thing is "to remain without fuel", then can it even make any movement?
Since Incident-712-1, personnel are banned from loading the RPC with ammo unless an experiment requires it.
Change "Since" to "As of".
WHY would personnel load an anomalous object with ammo "unless an experiment requires it"? That already sounds like an obvious recipe for disaster.
Continuing later.
PART 2 ELECTRIC BOOGALOO:
Description
1) "okay condition"? You do know that sounds incredibly informal/layman, yes? Suggest to swap to "serviceable condition".
2) If you're going to list the year, you should list the month of inspection as well at the very minimum. Between saying the tank is okay at January versus saying the tank is okay at December, a LOT can happen in those 10 in-between months.
3) This statement, below:
Experiments have been conducted observing the anomalous nature of the tank.
Is easily the most redundant sentence ever written. Of course the Authority conducts experiments all the time! This is like saying that the man is breathing or something. Delete it.
4) And now we move onto this:
Ammo is to be stored in a storage container which is to be guarded by at least 1 ASF personnel.
First off, shouldn't this be under "Containment Procedures"? Second off, since you've mentioned it now, my interest is piqued: What is special or unique about this ammo? Is it anomalous? Shouldn't that make it RPC-712-1? Is it ammo for the main tank turret, or is it bullets for the sponson turret? If there's something unique about it that makes it worth mentioning, then keep it, move it up into containment procedures and give it the 712-1 numerication.
5) Now this:
RPC-712 has demonstrated awareness of its surroundings.
I notice you have only added "Mechanical" to your hazards list. Is the tank sapient (advanced self-awareness including reasoning, advanced memory, learning and analytical skills), or sentient (basic self-awareness, like an animal)? Either way it will also need one of these added in.
6) Another:
The object will move around the containment cell without striking walls or objects.
With fuel, or without fuel? With a live human sitting inside and turning on the ignition, or all on its own?
7)
This voice either belongs to the commander of the tank, Louis Pierre, or the driver of the tank, Paul Collette.
How do you know the names of the tank crew, let alone how Louis or Paul sounded like? This is a tank from 110 years ago, you need to mention service records or whatnot.
8)
These voices seem to be emmited from the tank.
"emmited" is a typo. Fix it. Also, you're already just stating the obvious that the voices are coming from the tank, so this line is repetitive and can be deleted without any harm.
9) Oh, boy.
RPC-712 was then captured after it was chased by Alpha-3.
HOW was it captured? Did A-3 run up to the tank (WW1 tanks are slow as fuck) and jump into the crew compartment and seize control of the steering wheel? Did the tank get harpooned and lifted into the air by several Authority helicopters crewed by A-3? Did they use a gigantic horseshoe magnet to just lift it off the ground, Looney Tunes style?
10)
and in good condition.
This is really hard for suspension of disbelief to accept. A WW1 tank that's been loose in the world for 110 years, driving through mud and rain and water and whatnot without any servicing or repairs or spare parts is in good condition?
11)
This gives us a thorough understand of some of the anomalous properties of the tank.
First off, NO FIRST/SECOND PERSON PRONOUNS IN A CLINICAL ARTICLE. Change "This gives us" to "This provides" or something.
Secondly, "this gives insight" is an incredibly spoonfeeding sentence. You should be writing an article for the reader to find out and piece together the information, making it much more mentally stimulating and rewarding. Don't write sentences like this, unless it comes as the conclusion of a big investigation or whatnot.
PART 3: THE JOURNALS
First off, if you're going to put in entries, they need some form of formatting to stand out from the rest of the article.
The most basic thing you can do is to put them into quote boxes, as such.
The other thing you can do is text formatting: italics and whatnot. By writing it all as plain text, it just comes off as… unextraordinary.
The writing style does not seem very good, I'm sorry to say. It suffers from a flaw that I have termed "Puppet Master Syndrome". From the moment I started reading the diary entries, they look and sound the same exact way you write and talk to us critics in this thread, as well the way you talk to me in our DMs.
To combat this, you need to BE in the mind and the shoes of the people you are writing for. You need to FEEL from their perspective and their upbringing and their personality, and you need to give them all different speech patterns! I could suggest you to read some of my articles to try and catch the feeling of that.
Now, onto your writing pattern as such:
You write in short sentences. You like to write short. But, overdoing it is bad. You sometimes write longer sentences, but you do not do it near enough.
PACING is an important part of writing! Treat the writing of sentences the same way as blinking; ergo, your liking of writing many short sentences is like rapid-fire blinking. The frequent use of full stops breaks up the mental train of thought and stops the reader's mind from engaging due to how "bumpy" the reading gets. On the other hand, writing too-long sentences (something I've got a bad habit of doing sometimes) can wind up "exhausting" the reader's mind and may cause them to disengage (unless it's REALLY riveting).
So you need to start merging your short sentences and making them longer.
I've been feeling fatigued recently. Maybe its because of the war.
…Uh? War is hell on everyone, you don't just start complaining of feeling fatigued two weeks in from your first diary entry. It'd make sense if he was already fatigued and tired from the start.
I just Have to stay awake for now.
Capitalization on "Have".
Honestly, the diary entries just don't feel that engaging to read. Entries like this are meant to make use of the great potential to induce great sadness/fear/suspense for the reader. Instead I'm just sitting here, going all "yeah okay, that sucks".
Additionally, the journal is an attempt to, and yet fails to explain WHY this tank became anomalous. It just boils down to "War sucks. Oh, I'm tired. I can't leave my tank.". Not even a tantalizing hint of whatever it was that caused this to happen - did the tank roll over a leprechaun pot? Did it roll over a gypsy cart and get cursed by an angry granny? I dunno, I'm trying to grasp at straws here.
For an origin story it's just very… flat and underwhelming.
PART 4: THE INCIDENT LOG
Oh boy.
on purposely
Grammatically wrong. It's either "purposely", or "on purpose". And if it's the latter, it should be the final words at the end of the sentence.
Also. WHY WOULD HE DO SUCH A THING WITHOUT TESTING? WHAT WAS HIS MOTIVES? Did he go crazy from another RPC testing? Did he get possessed by one of the tank crew to help it escape? Did he have a sexual fetish for tanks and wanted to free this one to get some mechanical fetishistic acts in exchange?
RPC-712 then rolled out of the containment cell.
And where exactly did it go into next? Was it on an above-ground warehouse, so it had a chance of driving away to freedom? Or was it underground, so all it did was blow its way into a new room with nowhere else to go?
noone was killed.
You do see the typo in here… yes?
When it was discovered that the test was unplanned, Dr. ████ was punished by ASF personnel.
First off, there's always a bureaucratic measure that prevents personnel from just doing unauthorized tests willy-nilly. How did he loophole his way past those? Did he sneak the ammo in or what?
Secondly… Punished by ASF personnel? Really? He's a doctor, he ranks above them! This is like a gang of janitors beating up a business executive! The protocol would be that he would be stuffed before a board of pissed-off doctors and administrative personnel who would then assign a proper punishment!
After the incident, a new rule was put in place that personnel cannot load RPC-712 unless a test is being conducted that requires the RPC to be loaded with a 37mm tank shell.
I mean, why else would you load ammo into a sentient/sapient tank without any test being conducted?
Last part for the test logs:
Result: CSD-2409 would look at RPC-712, slowly approaching the RPC. When the RPC moved slightly, the RPC jumped back. CSD-2409 refused orders to proceed towards RPC-712. The RPC then moved closer to CSD-2409. CSD-2409 was then debriefed and returned to the housing area.
Regarding the bolded bits: what?
MY FINAL CONCLUDING THOUGHTS
I can see you want to make this work, but your take at a "haunted tank" isn't really up to par. It needs a great deal of elbow grease to work.
Additionally… There is a very old "haunted tank" SCP from the classic series that does the trope extremely well: **SCP-516**. Through experimentation and its history, the reader learns that it is a pacifistic entity that desires peace and would not harm others unless in self-defense… or because the target is a treasonous officer. It is wonderfully written, and really shows the spirit of that vehicle.
I suggest you give it a good look.
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