Board Thread:Writer's Workshop/@comment-35711173-20180705051303/@comment-9041013-20180705102655

So much racism, god damn it, Doctor, why do you hate Africa so much? Sheesh I'm sure Ethiopeans wouldn't be happy about you calling The Sheban Kingdom "Somali" I'm kidding, of course.

But some actual historical issues appear here, The Queen of Sheba was most likely a person from Arabia, if she was a real person, because Sheba or Saba was a south arabian civilization and kingdom. Now here's what happened in our historiography, somehow, The Queen of Sheba became an Aksumite queen, meaning, she never met Solomon, because the Aksumites came to power some 600 years after his death. Leave that stuff aside. According to the sources we have, the queen came out modern northern Ethiopean and she is a Habesha, who are today Tigray and Amhara, both Ethiopean ethnic groups. Not Somali; different cultures, different clothing, different phenotypes actually. So, if you are interested in making this histographically accurate, make her more "Ethiopean". Also, I get it, past monarchs were all probably fat at one point or another of their reign but this Queen is described as the most beautiful woman in the world, or one of them, so having her looking like an elderly "unintimidating" african woman wouldn't do much hurt to the story.

I like the Were-hyena concept, which is actually a true folkloric thing in Africa, don't remember where. Even if it's not east african the narrative of the Queen of Sheba who has like a shit tonne of legends around her could be a nice story, which it was in its core.

As for the Hyena transformation itself, I personally would've perferred them to change into pure Hyenas, maybe just larger than the usual beast, but nonetheless not a human-beast hybrid. I am saying this due to personal experience with wild Hyenas. I was camping once at the Sea of Galilee and we apparently still have stripped wild Hyenas around here. What ensued was a sleepless night filled with really annoying and terrifying laughter noises. Also, Hyenas have the jaw power and the wild feeding attitude to turn a couple of men into a pile of mess in a matter of minutes.

You should either make it into a third person story, since the narrator in this version dies and cannot really tell the story or perhaps make the narrator a bystander, a costumer or perhaps a criminal that gives up on the crime at the moment of truth and ends up being spared.

Also, I'm not really sure about this, but the name Malik is less common than Amir in muslim or Arabophone cultures. Malik means king and Amir means prince, so there's that. I know a bunch of Amirs and only one Malik and even then, it's a nickname his family gave him.

Getting badly injured in your penile area is most likely to trigger a very rough stimulation of the vagus nerve which would either knock you out, or kill you due to the shock. Also, the rather casual reaction to have one's sausage chopped off is rather silly. More panic please.

The language of your narrator is well, more yours than that of a street orianted small time gangbanger.