Started writing this one in June but came back to it this month to finish it.
Thanks to Site Manager Todd does not match any existing user name, ThermicLine,
google_chrome and
TheGreatTarbolin69 for critique.
RPC-070 / Discussion
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This is the discussion related to the wiki page RPC-070.
(account deleted)Inconsistencies
RPC-070 is a spatial anomaly affecting the fast food restaurant franchise "Burger King", specifically, restaurants with a particular type of indoor play-area. These play-areas consist of a series of colorful tubes, slides, ladders and other components, combined in a maze-like structure meant to serve as entertainment for customers' children.
fast-food* There's a huge issue here. When you say franchise you are specifically pointing to a particular restaurant. Yet you use it as a plural and a singular noun.
" She was granted an exclusive franchise in the city's west end.
They just opened a new fast-food franchise down the street."
https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/franchise#examples
The first sentence of your description is confusing and can be restructured.
After manifestation, an RPC-070 instance will undergo two distinct stages.
So… let me get this straight. You said in the first sentence that this affects all franchises, now you're saying there is a manifestation point? Manifested from what? The creation of the restaurant? An inciting anomalous event? When the play-area gets created?
This entire sentence does not agree with your very first paragraph AND the containment procedures which specifically indicate that some franchises are not affected by making the distinction for employees who either spot anomalies or don't.
Suggestion: Rearrange either the paragraph or sentence to suggest specific restaurants undergo detectable changes with a reoccurring characteristic provided to the reader to indicate what restaurants are capable of manifestation.
Otherwise, this reads as nonsense.
The beginning of stage two is marked by the appearance of RPC-070-A instances, quadrupedal humanoid entities with inverted spines and torsos.
which are*
The creatures have human-like heads, rotated 180 degrees and lacking any nasal organs. The entities emerge through small crevices in the tunnels. They have sharp claws which allow them to obtain a firm grip on the walls. Because of this, 070-A instances are extremely agile, able to travel long distances and around corners in the structure, much faster than a human could.
After acquiring a child, an 070-A instance will cover the child's mouth in order to muffle any screams until it has traveled deep enough into the structure as to not be heard by outsiders.
So really at this point think for a second. This happens, in what I assume, all Burger King franchises? Why isn't this a mass-containment breach? You have literally not provided me a distinction between non-anomalous and anomalous Burger King franchises so I will assume as such. In which case, this entire article is fucking bonkers in scope. Do you know how much footage would be leaked on places like liveleak or Youtube before the Authority could even begin to mass-flag?
Why wouldn't the Authority just shut down Burger King in general through buying their shareholder stocks via a front company? Or enact corporate sabotage?
This is the issue brought upon by your first description paragraph and worsens everything below it because you're forcing the audience to lose their suspension of disbelief.
It first snaps the child's neck in order to paralyze it, then beginning to devour chunks of flesh.
There's no rhyme or reason for these creatures to exist outside of they adapted purely to these conditions for the sole purpose of traversing RPC-070 and solely for devouring children.
It reminds me of SCP-3008 humanoid instances, but those monstrosities actually had a theme to them. Even if you didn't know their origins, they emulated what an Ikea worker would say when the store was closed. Everyone and their mother has been to a facility to purchase goods, everyone knows that these places sometimes have to shut down during night-time. Which is why it makes thematic sense and why they act hostile only during night.
Yours doesn't do its own thing with the child-hunter-humanoids.
Overall Impressions
+1
Number of Burger King restaurants in the United States and Canada from 2011 to 2014
This doesn't make a lot of sense when you realize the scope of fast-food franchises. Even then there are a plethora of inconsistencies.
As expressed prior, the Authority would just shut down the entire business entity before they would allow a breach of normalcy on this scale.
Addendum: You realize there's less and less rhyme and reason as this goes along right? Unless there is a rampant pedophilia problem that exists solely in play-areas, that acts as a bridge for verisimilitude… you kind of force the reader to question why would:
A blue slide that becomes steeper until it reaches a vertical drop. This drop was at least 300 meters in height. Three corpses were found at the bottom.
… mean anything? Why is it specific to a Burger King? This just seems like random Raiders of the Lost Ark nonsense happening because the author wanted it to. Not because the anomaly "exists" and uses its properties in a coherent manner.
Thank you for this detailed crit.
I've edited the article to make it more clear that the anomaly only appears very rarely, and only within one establishment at once, along with the other stuff you suggested.
I can understand why you would think the core concept is too random, with your comparison to SCP-3008. That being said, I think this criticism is a lot more subjective. To me, the anomalous is inherently absurd. It shouldn't make sense. It should be random. That's why they're anomalies. They don't make sense.
Thanks, I wish I could change it to a no vote but at the moment I'll push it to a +2 because the event log was better than what I was expecting with the final note at the end. Originally the note wasn't really enough for me, but upon reread, it grew on me and fits the theme your trying to get at with something sporadic manifesting in specific regions for this specific business entity.
It's still a logistics nightmare imo. If it were me I would relegate to a one-time incident or to a far more containable, singular building.
Also:
It shouldn't make sense. It should be random.
While an anomaly is simply a thing that is outside a… organized group or a certain order of operations or an ordered system, I don't think that necessarily applies for all works of fiction. The work I cited was also an anomaly it's just that it didn't waste space and connected its own internal logic well.
I can say "Florbus equals the Letter A" but without contextual glue, its basically a random statement. It's fine if you simply wanted to make a random statement. It fulfills the prerequisites.
What gives a statement more weight is the nuance and details that lead into it.
"The manuscript replaced certain letters with nonsense words, such as Florbus in the place of the letter A. So an apple, as per the manuscript's example, would be Florbuspple."
While still being fairly random, it builds upon this weird sense of knowledge. You don't necessarily need to know the origins of Florbus, the manuscript, or even the letter A, but by pinning it down to something solid, something physical, you make the absurd feel like it has a *reason* to exist. Even if that reason is unknown to you.
Maybe not the best example, but I hope it illustrates the point I'm trying to get at. I respect your opinion. It's where our opinions would differ as you definitely had a vision for this when starting it.
Overall, the main takeaway is that you got +8 users who think differently than I interested in your work, so to them it is compelling enough to vote. And that is a good thing. Just not my flavor of flash-fiction.
Good luck and god speed.
Wow, this is a messed up article. Alright, so, I found two errors:
The RPC-070 structure enters a chaotic state in which any direct intervention… The remaining 33 are capable of avoiding direct intervention…
I believe the correct word is "Interaction", not "intervention", since to intervene means to insert oneself between two parties in order to perform some sort of beneficial action.
A-35 is visible following A-22 from behind.
At this point, the only living 070-A instances are A-22, A-50, and A-37.
You mean A-37 in the previous sentence, not A-35, right?
Good article, interesting narrative, but questionable grammar and tone.
3 now. 4 if you fix it.
As a guy who's not that into horror, this article was both scary and thoroughly enjoyable for me. Make of that what you will. I don't think there's a single censored line in this, which is impressive. I would be interested in an exploration log for one of these things. +5 also maybe find a therapist
(edit: changed my vote)
This is the article. Thanks to this article, I was inspired to participate in this community.
The title, "Burger King Battle Royale", it grabs your attention inmediatly upon reading it in the Main List. The anomaly description, setting up a horror story and then completely twisting the theme!
There are some issues here and then, but I can disregard them. Every new user should read this article, well done Vizlox, you earned one of the few 5 stars I've ever given on site! And thank you for writting this!
/forum/t-12313320/rpc-070#post-