RPC-349 / Discussion

This is the discussion related to the wiki page RPC-349.

Crit Page

s n o w y 15 Feb 2021 03:50

Link to crit

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Where there is a choice of two evils, I choose both.

Thanks

s n o w y 15 Feb 2021 03:51

Special thanks to the critics who made this possible

Harold Caztovski
Captain Grunbeld
Excer
Almarduk
thatowldude
Vizlox

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Where there is a choice of two evils, I choose both.

Last edited on 16 Feb 2021 16:08 by s n o w y Show more

Sources

s n o w y 15 Feb 2021 03:52

Sound file original source

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Where there is a choice of two evils, I choose both.

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JasonMakesManhattens 09 Mar 2021 16:26

Good use of multimedia but overall the piece feels bloated, there’s a lot of dangling participles that need to have some sort of modifier in order to feel substantial.

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Such is life in the Soviet Union

DoubleDenial 19 Oct 2022 23:00

This article, the blandly yet aptly titled "Chasers", feels like it was written entirely out of "cool ideas". So let me get this straight: they're pale; skinny; have morphing masks for faces; attack people in suburban homes; are blind and track people down with echolocation, but then grow a pair of eyes that can see 280 degrees and teeth that they don't use; incredibly fast; can break, dismember, and reconstruct their own limbs; swallow people whole; and feed off of human pain, but the people they kill still stay alive for some reason. That is the "basic premise" of RPC-349. Good lord.

The problem with all this detail, besides simply being so convoluted and absurd that it loses all the punch that any of these individual concepts could have, is that very little of it is actually relevant to what happens. Which is not a whole lot either, anyhow. The Authority discovers them, contains them with some rather extensive protocols, then figures out how to kill them and they die. I legitimately fail to recognize what kind of emotional response any of this article's "plot" is supposed to give me.

Since the plot gives me almost nothing to say, allow me to talk about the concept some more. I can at least tell that this part is supposed to be scary. Unfortunately, it isn't. The lack of purpose in the monster's design seriously hinders its ability to stick in my brain. Even if it did, having it neutralized at the end kills the suspense. If you want me to fear a monster in my closet, don't tell me that the government already killed it.

Furthermore, the "feeding off of human pain" thing is a cheap trope that dodges an eye-roll at the best of times (i.e. not here), and it's immediately doubled up with an arbitrarily tacked on "fate worse than death"; The pain-feeding bit at least had a reason to exist in the monster's concept. What interest does this monster have in granting immortality to what is essentially its own shit?

Some of these ideas could work individually. Monsters that live in the suburbs, track people down with echolocation and eat them alive, leeching off of their intense agony? Now that's an actually "cool idea", especially with the addition of the sound clip, which could serve to make the monster seem all the more real. Reimagine the concept so you can emphasize the important parts, and come up with a better narrative or just ax that part entirely, and you might have something legitimately good. However, this is not it. 2/5