RPC-017 truth in advertising rewrite
RPC-017 truth in advertising rewrite
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» RPC-017 truth in advertising rewrite
Summary:
Rewritten version of RPC-017
Here below lies the crit.
Containment Protocols:
Competent, and thank god. Avoids that sinking feeling a reviewer feels when the containment protocols are a total mess of pseudo-clinical tone. You're know you're in for a slog then, but why am I talking about those drafts, this is good. Nice detail on securing the cases down in transport.
All instances, excluding RPC-017-5, and -10, are able to be delivered to other Authority facilities for the purpose of experimentation and/or analysis.
This might be my personal aversion to "are to be" being overused, but this could be phrased better. Suggestion:
are available for delivery
.
Small samples of variants RPC-017-1, RPC-017-4, and RPC-017-8 are also kept in armory vaults at RPC installations, and may be used in case of a breach -
suggest
Small samples of variants RPC-017-1, RPC-017-4, and RPC-017-8 are also kept in armory vaults at RPC installations at the request of ranking Security staff, for use during an emergency -
The rest is good, no comment beyond that. Might include their use by Security under duress in a future tale.
Recovered Docs:
The weakest part of the entire article. Brings the whole thing down if the reader decides to click on the offered link halfway through.
Formatting: Two bigass paragraphs smooshed into each other doesn't read well. It can work, but not with this level prose in some places.
This level prose: other wise, your writing quality and sense of character is excellent. Here it is not. Grammar is fine, the story is comprehensible, but the author comes across as a ridiculous caricature of an IJA soldier rather than a real person writing his final diary entries.
Constant references to "the emperor", american criminals, and on and on. It comes off as farcical after a while. "my type 97 was never designed for tunnel fighting" is just clunky. Japanese soldiers never used the term 'banzai charge', that was an American invention. It'd be like a Chinese soldier in Korea writing "we need to human wave charge the Americans". I would recommend you read some available Japanese war diaries to get a better sense of how they talked and what they griped about, and adapt your story more to those than a litany of fanatical cliches. Links at the end. Otherwise cut down on the extraneous intro bits and get to the relevant 017 stuff.
Reread it again. Especially the last part, is actually quite strong, but my negative reaction to the 'fanatical soldier' bits clouded those out the first time. Suggestion: cut down on the references to the emperor. "May the Emperors of the past discuss it with Kiru when he arrives in the afterlife." "The men who get out of the landing craft look weak in the face, they have doubtlessly heard of the futility of trying to resist the will of the emperor." "Do I have the blood of the Japanese people on my hands for failing to fight? "
breaking to point out: "I did feel uneasy for a while for the pain he felt but in serving the emperor I know it was still right. The man must have deserved it for fighting the will of the emperor."
This is exceptionally poor. I've never seen an IJA diary write like that. This line is wildly out of place in an otherwise enjoyable read, comes off as an alien writing humans.
"I hope my brothers in arms used the advantage." worth pointing out as good. Brothers, brothers in arms, much less wooden than "Do I have the blood of the Japanese people on my hands for failing to fight?"
9 mentions of emperor, and the only okay one is "Kiru may be right, I shall serve the emperor as he does tomorrow.". That comes off as natural, even a little sardonic, feels human.
Constantly insulting his opponents feels forced, didn't help with my immersion any. Reads like a bucktooth Slap a Jap cartoon villain instead of a real document, and the gigantic imposing format did not help. You might have intended for it to contrast with the respect and fear he gives them after RPC-017 is brought in, and that part actually works: "they fight as pack beasts… The only way fight a brave man is with bravery." thats good. Perhaps keep the insults, but tone them down, and mix them with awe and despair at the incredible resources the Americans have brought to bear. That's a recurring theme in most japanese diaries I've read.
I can help with this particular section more on discord, if you like. Two examples of real diaries from the period that could help:
https://www.archives.gov/publications/prologue/2013/summer/diary.html
https://www.historynet.com/i-will-fight-to-the-last-wwii-japanese-soldier-diary-june-1943.htm
Granted, this is a highly amateur Pacific historian speaking and the article as a whole is very solid, so I may be disproportionately latching on to this.
Experiment Log:
Overall solid stuff. Does its job in telling me what this thing does.
specific bits:
Moderate accuracy improvement over control tests.
"accuracy improvement" gets the point across, certainly. Perhaps a bit unimaginatively. Suggested rephrase:
Moderately tighter spread on target ah forget it, this is fine.
Good stuff, good stuff…
██████████████████ catastrophic levels of damage to ████████ ████████████ ██████████ 3rd degree burns to the head, torso, and █████ █████████ ██████████ ███████████████████ was successful, at great cost to life and limb. ██████████████.
Not a fan of this entry. Classic example of too-many-black-boxes-syndrome.
At least from my POV, black boxes are best used for comedic effect, the horror of dangling the unknown just out of reach or letting the reader fill in the gap from prior context, or simply to harmlessly enhance the verisimilitude of the section.
This isn't used for comedic effect. It's not horror, either; there's too much redaction. Catastrophic damage - no context. Even
████████ suffered catastrophic levels of damage to ████████
would be a little better. Burns to head, torso, and …? Nothing else in the article hints to what else could have been hurt, no body horror or anything, so it comes out of left field and stays there. My imagination doesn't get tickled. We don't know what they were successful at, 'at great cost to life and limb' isn't exactly clinical and feels out of place in such a sparse, sparse section.
I'm kind of meandering, so: too many redactions for no reason. Not effective at any usual cause for black box spam. Nothing else in the article - not the interview logs, recovered docs, etc - plays off of 017-5 and -10. It appears, makes no effect (other than the vague promise of huge destruction it never mentions again), and disappears. Which can be fine! But it ends the experiment log, so it should be stronger. The rest of the article, other than a "don't request -5 and -10" has nothing to do with this black box spam, so its isolated and just feels awkward to read over, briefly ponder, and then come up with nothing mentally shrug and move on with your reading flow somewhat disrupted. If you disrupt a reader's flow intentionally (and black boxes are great at this) make sure it counts. or maybe I way overanalyze what I read and the average reader won't care, i dunno lol.
Incident Log:
I was kind of lead to expect the incident report would immediately follow this, but here we are.
assist MSTs
Might be more lore accurate to say he assisted 'ASF squads' 'Authority reaction forces' or just 'on-site Security'.
the rest of the interview
Good. Really good. Much stronger than the recovered docs. Flows nice, the researchers ask and answer questions like intelligent people. "Absolutely. I guarantee if I wasn’t, I would have just ran for the nearest panic room." Liked that line in particular. I nodded along with him and went "yeah, man, you know it. Good for you to be unambiguous about your conclusion."
Not a fan of the interview format describing actions (with normal font in parentheses) in the same line as the dialogue. Didn't happen enough to really bug me, so change or leave at will.
Recording Transcript:
Also good. Grammar, believable dialogue, its got it. Thank god. Inject this straight into my veins. I don't want to gloss over that as quickly here; not wasting half the crit doc with endless "that don't sound right try this instead" is nice. You've got your voice and its consistent and it reads well. The lady in particular is dry but sounds exactly like a bored customer service rep would. Just enough of a human slipping thru the cracks that it got me thinking, wondering about the organization behind this product, and that's good.
The parentheses descriptions worked better here. Might be personal, but I'm not a fan of overusing "…". Especially to begin a line of dialogue. Might be better ways of representing that awkward pause.
I'll raise my eyebrow at the very last line of the collapsible hinting at the origins. My reaction was a shrug and a "oh, okay. Doesn't have any bearing on the rest of the article, I guess." Which isn't bad, but it did shut down a slice of my imagination that was spinning around this company. If it's a story hook for a future thing, nice. If it's just a misc detail, whatever. I don't take too much umbrage because…
Addendum 017.1: Nice. Low-key ending, but I think it works. You've spent the whole article setting up these oils, what they do… and make the leap to cars right at the end. That made my think for a bit with the foundation of the prior reading to guide my imagination. That's a solid ending. Not like you can blow up a city to cap off a relatively modest article like this. Good stuff with some isolated exceptions. disclaimers: late night crit. Subject to terms and conditions of late night 'oh shit gotta get this done' syndrome. May suggest other things on discord upon reflection tomorrow.
This is a fantastic crit!
I found a few mistakes
footnote 1 The company of manufacture. Shouldn't it be "The manufacturing company" i am not perfect and i do sometimes encounter new ways in which people use the English language so i may be wrong
also in the table you missed some things
RPC-017-2 “Trusted by the Pros!” 6/7/1947 Applied to M1911A1 Pistol.
RPC-017-3 “The Gold Standard” 4/7/1951 Applied to .45 ACP M1911A1.
While you wrote a full description to which fire arm it was applied to in the others.
The articles is most certainly much better than i last remember it and is an intriguing concept too. Keep it up.
The company of manufacture. Shouldn't it be "The manufacturing company"
I think it can be either, but I'll check to be sure before posting it on the mainlist.
Nice catch on the table, and thanks for the crit!
I think it reads more straightforward the crit’d way. Revert me if you want.
/forum/t-13034060/rpc-017-truth-in-advertising-rewrite#post-