http://rpcauthority.wikidot.com/forum/t-13826443/013-contest-entry#post-4804222
Story about a girl and her best friend, inspired by one of the first superstitions we ever had:
Imaginary friends
To everyone who critted, thank you so much
Images by Johnny (ironic lol) and Biggest head on the discord.
Most importantly I would like to thank Logan, Full and Zakari for last minute crit, and a special thanks for Fullbreaker for helping me with the idea for addendum 5.
You guys are the best!
RPC-013 is an 8-year-old female Caucasian child of Norwegian descent. It has brown hair and blue eyes, and measures 116 cm in height and weighs 21 kg. RPC-013 personality is an energetic, cheerful individual with signs of ADHD. RPC-013 appears to be extremely divergent against staff, attempts at contact through other Authority personnel has caused the manifestation of an unstable apparition, hereby designated RPC-013-1. RPC-013-1 is a partially invisible3 entity, nicknamed "Jhon" by RPC-013, to which it shares a connection with. RPC-013-1 is incapable of being fully transparent, producing a silhouette similar to a mirage. It also produces a slim shadow, however, it's theorized that most photons of light pass through its body. RPC-013-1 is only fully visible to RPC-013 and individuals under the age of 10.
Jesus man, you should've run this through some sort of spellchecker. I get that English isn't your first language, but I don't think this is an acceptable state for a piece to be published in.
"RPC-013 is an 8 year old female of Norwegian descent. It has brown hair, blue eyes, measures 116cm in height, and weighs 21kg. RPC-013 normally behaves in an energetic and cheerful manner, but is highly antagonistic against Authority staff. It displays some behavioural symptoms associated with ADHD, with a clear diagnosis remaining to be written in the future."
"RPC-013-1 is an unstable, partially-physical and partially-visible entity that manifests upon attempts at interacting with RPC-013. Nicknamed "Jhon" by RPC-013, this entity is extremely hostile against individuals it perceives to be a threat against RPC-013."
I don't get what you mean by "incapable of being fully transparent". Does it change its transparency at will?
The entirety of the description is subject to similar ESLisms. I am also very worried that these were not successfully corrected given the amount of crit you received. Were you unable to get someone to do a line-by-line critique?
At the time, RPC-013 had awakened from scheduled status.
What does "scheduled status" mean? Was she scheduled to be asleep by then?
After a brief discussion with staff, the subject agreed to perform an interview with Dr.██████. This was accepted upon the terms that RPC-013-1 was to remain docile, and outside the room in a designated area during the verbal exchange.
I think there should be further context here. Was this a long while after containment? Has the Authority been struggling for a while to talk in decent terms to 013? While this context is implied, I believe it should be outright stated.
Well, after that day you said momma wasn't coming back, I was playing in the backyard, and found some kind of stone inside a tree. I remember touching it… and then Jhon appeared behind me.
This dialogue doesn't feel natural, but I can't really pinpoint why.
RPC-013-1 was aggravated and started behaving irrationally.
Why is "irrationally" used as a descriptor here? It is never implied to behave rationally to Authority staff, and the context makes it seem like it's an unusual thing despite -1 being actively described as hostile elsewhere.
the comatose inducing machine.
… What does this mean?
Overall thoughts: This isn't an acceptable state of SPAG for an article to be published in. It's genuinely hard to get through, because most sentences require to reread words and try to reorder words until it makes sense.
In general terms, I don't think the general theme you're going for works here. The first interview doesn't add much to the article — while I appreciate the attempt at giving 013 and her father personality, they ultimately don't feel important or are better elaborated elsewhere. The letters do a way better job here, but ultimately don't amount to much but "generic little girl", which I can't blame you for because children are very same-y in terms of personality.
Addendum 4 works well with the context of the letters, but there's ultimately no reason for an audience to care about the relationship between 013 and -1 because it's barely explored. Yes, we've been introduced to it in the letters, but we don't get to really explore why -1 means so much to 013, or really what she is as a person.
This sequence makes Addendum 5 particularly ineffective. The revelation that -1 is part of a series of hostile parasites doesn't work because -1's behaviour isn't recontextualized to match it, and their necessity to "feed" from children isn't elaborated upon. Why children specifically? Why do they NEED to bond with them?
-1 is also never shown to operate like a parasite (i.e. depending on 013 for survival in some way, or using her as a source of food), so the reveal comes off as somewhat gratuitous. If -1 had behaved in a different manner upon meeting 013 then gradually changed to this positive guardian attitude, that would've made the stinger hit harder.
In its current form, the article does not benefit at all from the stinger. What I read is the story of a girl's extremely violent guardian getting killed with no emotional impact for being extremely violent, and then being told that he's actually a parasite that ditched its survival instinct to protect the girl. Both of these have no connection to each other. Maybe it could've worked better if we were told from the beginning that -1 was a hostile parasite, so him behaving in an actually protective manner would serve for better emotional impact.
Again I have to state that the relationship between 013 and -1 carries no weight. We're never introduced to why he's emotionally significant to her, not even in the context of being imprisoned in a secret facility. One can deduce that she only feels the company of -1, and that's why she comes to be so close to him, but this is never actually shown.
So, is this our last adventure? If so, where will it be? Mountains!? In the snow? Or, will we… go back to where it all started?
We're being told that they have a long standing relationship, but never really shown. Not even close to the same impact. Furthermore, the letters present us with an already stable status quo; we're never shown how -1's presence changes 013's life in a positive way, but instead what we get is…
Hey, don't look at me with that weird face, weirdos gotta stick together right, Jhony Jhon Jhon?
It feels like an undeserved tragic end to a novel we don't get to read.
With this in mind — I'll be voting negative. There's potential for a good story here that isn't being explored.
You are getting better each article and I can tell that you worked hard on this like always. I also like the thought that you put into making the story.
However I downvoted because in many parts the wording/sentence structure could really use some improvement. Keep working at it.
