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Rejected Submission [RA] Raiken Submission

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Sham

Inactive Member
Submission Type: New Race Submission
Submission URL: https://wiki.stararmy.com/doku.php?id=species:raiken

Faction:
FM Approved Yet? Yes, Approved by Me
Faction requires art? Nah

For Reviewers:
Contains Unapproved Sub-Articles? Yes (Read Notes)
Contains New art? Yes
Previously Submitted? No

Notes:

Sub-Article Notes - Raiconian Alliance is NOT being submitted at this time. However, the more detailed Physiology page IS being submitted at this time.

I am submitting just the race at this time.

- Thanks for Reading, Sham
 
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Cadet, will find some edits have been made, following your suggestions. Let me know what else you have for me.

- Thanks for Reading
- Sham
 
Alright, that's good, but we still got a lot more work to do.

First, change the "Armor" section to "Scales" instead - there's also the misspelling of "Scut" - the proper term is "Scute" or "Scutum". You'll need to change that. As Sigma brought up, the outright DR rating is something that's simply going to piss off a lot of people. What you're going to have to do, is remove that, but instead, replace it with some good writing. What you'll want to do, is say that the heavy plates are nearly immune to small-arms fire, but easily penetrated or destroyed by dedicated anti-armor weapons. Meanwhile, also say that the scales are only resistant to small arms fire.

Also, since I noticed it, I might as well point this out - you'll need to make a correction in their diet area; the rock is known as "Serpentinite".
 
Alright. The next thing to address, is the biology.

To put it simply, the phrase, "What the heck is this?!" is best used for what my brain is thinking. Currently, if my brain and it's proper function were to be represented by a cute hamster running in its wheel, the hamster has just tripped and is now tumbling end over end as the wheel continues to spin. The reason for this is very simple; the article goes on to say that they eat things such as meat - proteins and fats. Then it suddenly says "such as petrol and kerosene". Basically, this doesn't make any sense - proteins are similar, but also very, very different from things such as gasoline and kerosene. For starters, the former is solid at room temperature, and the latter two are liquid. It's fine to have an alien biology, but enough needs to be told for it to make sense.

There's basically only enough information in the article to confuse, but not to educate.

You'll need to explain some of the basics of this starkly different branch of life and how it works, and also have the article be laid out in a more organized and interlinked manner. That should be in the "General Overview" section, which in its current state, is far too thin to do its job of telling readers what the Raiken are - in every important sense of the word - at a glance. You already have how they look described there, now you need a brief overview of what they are under the hood. That their biology relies instead on short-chain hydrocarbons for energy, organic polymers for bodily tissues, and minerals for the hard stuff such as scales, plates and skeleton. And organize it right so a reader won't be confused. Put the muscles at the beginning of the article, flesh out its function more, and remove the mention of basketball. THEN, you can move on to the digestive tract, and how the thing's eating habits keep it alive; hydrocarbons in its food broken down to form essential building substances for its polymer 'muscles' and so forth.

If you start off with some strange and alien digestive track without telling a person what it's even made to support, you can well expect people to be angry and confused when they read it.

In addition, you mentioned to me that Blindy did a lot of the work? Well, you had better read it yourself and see if it make sense. This article is your responsibility, even though she came up with a lot of the biology.
 
G'day, Kia Ora, and hello.

Your friendly neighbourhood Oceanian dropping by with some word. Sham was having a little trouble figuring out what to do with this latest request. So with his permission I've reshuffled the order of the enter Biology section, moved Reproduction to its own sub-section, and reshuffled the orders of some of the various organs to make a little more sense.

Digestion is right at the bottom, rogue basketball mention has been removed, and a paragraph regarding the third raiken sex has been made cleaner.

I've given Sham some of my own advice in private on this page, but this is just to let it be known that the most obvious work is done. More in-depth edits can be made over time now and hopefully some of the background spacing I've done will make the article easier to update in the future.

Sham feels not everything specified has been done, and indeed the general overview of the digestion system remains the same (This was one of things I've mentioned to Sham on how to improve). If this, and anything else requires work please let us know.
 
So far, the changes are a good step in the right direction. I would personally put reproduction as the bottom most one and have it be after internal biology, since I think that is more important, but again, that is personal preference. As Sigma points out, you'll likely need to play around with the header levels a bit until you get the layout to be just right. This is assuming it isn't a portion meant to house even more info and simply just encompasses everything underneath it of course.

My main problem, as it was then, is with the biology. When I initially looked into this, I was amicable to the idea; the further I went and the more deeply I looked into it, the more it seemed to me there was no real understanding of how the Raiken actually work. What I see in this article is the 'what', or end result, rather than the 'why', or what causes all the end results in the first place. Initially, this made me drop my jaw, amongst other things. What needs to be done is to explain how the Raiken really works - what's on the surface is all quite unique and interesting at a glance but, it all falls apart under scrutiny. I actually have a little bit of bio background; with other alien species, they just use what we do, so don't need much more work, but this is something drastically different and therefore needs explaining. So far, what I see doesn't make any sense.

To start with, the Raiken article emphasizes their high heat and thermal emissions, which are necessary to keep them active. For humans, heat is not what keeps any of us going, but is instead the waste, or byproduct of the actual thing that keeps us going - chemical reactions. It just happens that the heat produced keeps us at the ideal temperature for said chemical reactions. For the Raiken, their equivalent for muscles for an example, are electropolymers. This is very significant. To quote Doc Brown, "No, no, no, no, no, this sucker's electrical." All the muscles need to move, is a jolt of electricity. No ATP/ADP or alien equivalent to make a chemical reaction that triggers movement. What you need to do, is figure out how the Raiken is producing the electricity from the food it eats, and not only that, but store it for later use like we do with chemical energy (fat). You don't need in-depth stuff - just the basics, which isn't here. Only the end result is.

The Digestive section needs a lot of work. Besides lacking the detail on how or why, it's too informal. First, you'll have to break off a different section, possibly even a different sub-artice, and define what they eat very clearly. Going off of the Raiken themselves, it'd be electropolymers and liquid hydrocarbons for an example. Only after you have clearly defined what they do eat, would you give any 'human equivalences', saying that the electropolymers they eat would be their version of meat, liquid hydrocarbons like concentrated sugar-water or something, while solid polymers would be starches. If its out of order, it gets confusing. And again, this ties into the last paragraph - how does their body convert it into what they need to power their bodies(electricity)? You can't say that they 'burn it' - it's too

If you don't understand why any of this is important, I'll give you one big reason; if you don't make this up, someone else will, and quite possibly, IC, at the head of a dissection table/lab. All for whatever reason they have. Maybe the person needs it for their plot. Maybe they want to spit in your eye. Whatever. Bottom line, it may not be to your liking in the slightest.
 
Unfortunately I'm going to have to Reject this submission. While changes were initially made, it seems interest has died off as there hasn't been any further progress made within the past three months.

This doesn't mean this submission is entirely dead, when interest has been rekindled, you may resubmit this for approval.
 
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