THE TOWEL
Finally got this draft done. I'd like to thank Kloth2 for collaborating with me on this draft as well as everybody who critted it
RPC-376 / Discussion
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I really like the idea of an animate towel, I find it spooky and kinda goofy. I have never read anything similar to this. Although the formatting for this could be better by simply separating the sections with ——. Good job!
Where there is a choice of two evils, I choose both.
A really cool concept that chooses not to rest on its laurels but tells a compelling original story on top of presenting a unique and versatile anomaly to the universe. Top shelf RPC, well done.
Such is life in the Soviet Union
(account deleted)Alright, I've got some issues with this specific article, so I'll go through them step by step.
"Alpha-yellow"
Alpha-Yellow.
"RPC-376 is to be held in a standard containment cell in Site-014, and given a liter of goat’s blood twice a day through an automatic dispenser on the wall of its cell."
Too short. I understand this is supposed to be the old containment procedures, but I'm not sure how this would be useful to someone assigned to it.
"…Ranger Macdonald…"
"…Frank Macdonald…"
The 'D' in MacDonald should be capitalized.
"RPC-376 is currently uncontained after an incident regarding Ranger Macdonald…"
'an incident regarding Ranger MacDonald' can be removed. It's unnecessary to the containment procedures.
"Customer service complaints, especially those in hotels, regarding towels are to be investigated as well as any uses of the name Frank Macdonald and all transactions with a Frank Macdonald for any connection to RPC-376."
This is pretty ridiculous. All customer service complaints regarding towels are to be investigated? Every single one? And all transactions with a very common name are to be investigated? You really need to be far more specific with the containment procedures. It's very lackluster as it stands.
"RPC-376 is an animate cream-colored body towel, that…"
Remove the comma.
"…although this is rarely seen and almost never used by RPC-376. Normally, RPC-376 will remain folded up like a typical towel. However, when left to its own devices, it has a tendency to it will sporadically reform itself into its other forms and roam its containment area."
"RPC-376 is able to sustain itself through consuming the body fluids of organisms."
How is it sustaining itself? You never state if 376 actually needs this blood or what happens if it doesn't get it. The Authority would at least try- the fact that it's immune to tranquilizers (whoever tried to use tranquilizers on a towel should be fired) doesn't really explain why the Authority would continue tossing money and blood towards it.
You need to answer more questions about the towel.
"Security footage that was transmitted from Site-014 in its final moments prior to the Failsafe incident show RPC-376 acting very abnormally (I would use 'atypically' here but that's more of a stylistic choice) after the emergency alarms began ringing were activated."
"What happened next is still not fully understood by watching the tape. Most of the footage transmitted after the failsafe was activated is of very low quality. However, through this footage, RPC-376 appears to slowly disintegrate, leaving nothing but small pieces of itself behind until the majority of the anomaly had vanished."
I think that 'leaving nothing but small pieces of itself' seems very un-clinical, and words like 'still' or 'very' should be avoided.
"After the incident, RPC-376 was quickly noticed spotted and captured by MST Charlie-2 who had been dispatched to the site. At the time of capture, It the entity was in its a humanoid form, pinning down and attempting to rip remove the clothes off of a member of personnel who had begun feeling the effects of acute radiation poisoning due to their proximity to the nuclear explosion (unnecessary information). RPC-376 did not appear to be affected by the nuclear explosion or radiation at all **(The segment of RPC-376's immunity to radiation should be in a footnote or heavily reworded). RPC-376 was placed in a modified quarantine cell, guarded by 2 ASF officers."
"Incident 376-1: After RPC-376 was placed in a modified quarantine chamber as a way to temporarily contain them it, it seemed to be very complacent with the room chamber. It became less frantic in its movement and only turned into their humanoid form once, not utilizing any of their other forms. Unfortunately, ('unfortunately' is not clinical, too opinionated) on June 30th, during the same time the MST Echo-3 had accidentally struck multiple members of the cleanup effort while attempting to capture or subdue an unknown anomaly (the reader doesn't need to know this, unless you want to say that is the reason for why Echo-3 couldn't respond to the breach), RPC-376 was able to escape its temporary containment chamber by what is believed to be some form of mind-control."
I would say something more…science-y than mind-control but maybe that's just me.
"The two ASF personnel stationed to watch RPC-376, J. Patton and L. Farnsworth, were watching the chaos unfold and wondering what was going on when RPC-376 "influenced" them to go investigate the scene. From the testimony of L. Farnsworth:"
No. You need to consider whether or not this would fit in a story or a document. '…watching the chaos unfold', 'wondering what was going on', those are not clinical.
"The encounter was caught on a body-camera normally only used by ASF but was being worn by Agent Macdonald. He was using an ASF uniform to replace his normal outfit, which had been mostly destroyed the previous day."
The entire tirade about why they had a body camera is really unnecessary, you could've just left it at how it was recorded via body camera. I can't imagine why someone would question why an agent would have a body camera both in and out of universe. The agent wearing an ASF uniform isn't necessary to the article, whether you're an Authority researcher or not.
Also, yes, you should define 'boots' via footnote, but the bit about them being 'unintelligent typically' wouldn't make it into a clinical article, and also is in the wrong order. As in, it would be 'typically unintelligent'.
For the sake of time, I'm not going to go into all the issues I have with the dialogue step-by-step, but the main thing is this: I wouldn't bold or italicize words within dialogue, because that wouldn't make sense if this is, again, a clinical document for research and containment purposes. I would add punctuation- no, you should add punctuation to the end of the italicized actions within logs.
Also I lied, I'm going to go through this one sentence so you can see what I mean for the rest of the log.
"Macdonald: (to himself) Great, another issue to deal with. Looks at RPC-376 Alright, I’m gonna need you to return to your temporary holding cell right. now."
Remove (to himself), we can tell he's not directly addressing the towel through context. You're overexplaining things to the reader. You do this again by bolding the words 'right. now.' That just makes it seem edgy, not 'intense' or whatever you were going for.
And here's what REALLY bothers me. This is a towel. Why is he ordering a towel to get back to its cell? There is absolutely nothing in the entire article before this point that even implies it is able to understand human speech in any capacity. It was originally deemed a sentient hazard first, remember? Why on earth would a trained agent be barking orders to what is, to him, an unintelligent animal? Even if it he did know it was sapient, he wouldn't be arguing with it! He'd be calling in reinforcements! It can kill him! I can't emphasize this enough, he shouldn't be talking with bathroom supplies, especially one that can drain him of blood!
The fact that the towel took the voice of his dead commander shouldn't be consigned to a footnote, either.
"Macdonald: What? Commander Hawkins? Wait, you're obviously not him… Why do you sound like him?"
Okay. Again. Why is he talking to a towel? Even then, why does he need to point out that "hey, this walking towel isn't my commander?"
This is harsh, I will admit- too harsh. But these things are incredibly dentrimental to your article, and make it almost impossible to take seriously in any capacity. Yes, it's a vampiric towel, that is funny, but I shouldn't be so disconnected to it that it seems entirely ridiculous to me. The anomaly is completely out-there, but the Authority is what brings it down to earth.
Any sort of improvement on these aspects of the article would make it at the very least a 3 or a 4, but there's simply too much potential wasted here for me to give it higher than a 2 in good conscience. Please consider working on it further.
I'm surprised this is as devisive as it is. I loved this piece. It was really good, and a late highlight of the contest. I'd give it 5 stars. Really spooky, really interesting concept. The part where he's sucking Malloy's blood is a bit meh, but that letter at the end is fucking gold and I wish to one day emulate the personality of Forge that well. God, that letter was good.
I do agree that this really doesn't connect into him being a vampire towel that well, though. I feel as if your Achilles' heel is having good RPCs that are well written but the narrative doesn't really connect or build-up that well. And I agree with BettermyButter, his abilities and being a towel aren't really utilized that well.
Such is life in the Soviet Union
2/5 overall
5/5 premise. Original and creepy.
2/5 delivery. It gains superpowers through the article. The writing lacks tone and organization.
1/5 grammar. There are legit incomplete sentences and incorrect grammar.
This thing is too cool to deserve the amateur writing of the article itself. No insult intended but this level of writing needs improvement.
article a day day 4: rpc 376, by Evolt/superspambot
i dont like this article very much… i seem to have left crit on this before, and i dont think its been applied very well.
nonetheless, i like the concept of a shape-shifting towel, and the description is fine, pardon some glaring sentences like "even when should not be physically large enough to do so."
after that, though, it sort of falls apart. This doesn't look like it was proofread very well, which is strange because the crit in the thread was very elaborate.
the part that really seems to fall flat is the event log. some parts of it just look silly to me, such as:
Macdonald: Great, another issue to deal with. Looks at RPC-376 Alright, I’m gonna need you to return to your temporary holding cell right. now.
Macdonald: What the hell?! Why do you have Hawkins voice? You're just the stupid fucking towel!
These are marvel-tier quips. Other lines have some pretty blatant punctuation mistakes. I believe the article would genuinely be stronger if this log was cut, because it is a really dramatic drop in quality from everything else.
I'll have to stick with my original rating of 2, because my original crit wasn't very well applied. It's acceptable, I guess. Should be better, though.
/forum/t-14029543/rpc-376#post-