http://rpcauthority.wikidot.com/forum/t-13867979/rpc-517-kenos
Huge thanks to Tarbolin, Proto, Worm, Balloon, Sovereign and Harmony for critiquing this draft.
RPC-184 / Discussion
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This is the discussion related to the wiki page RPC-184.
5/5 overall
4/5 premise. Strange thing happens and now someone is strange.
5/5 delivery. Perfect. Tingles of wtf don't lie.
5/5 grammar. Right amount of technical and less formal writing. Good readability.
The description for this anomaly feels a little strained. Starting off with the "inconsistent details" bit is a good idea, but the rest of it is framed confusingly. For instance, it says the frequency at which the event occurs mid-way through describing the event itself. Also, how does RPC-184-A reappear? That really gets brushed over in comparison to the disappearance.
By the time I had gotten halfway through Appendix 01, I was exhausted and ready to quit reading. Nothing about the first disappearance felt important or interesting. It was around that point when I caught wind of what was going on, and it was a pretty gratifying moment. It didn't fix everything for me, though. Even when some details matter later on, a substantial chunk of the runtime is just fluff. For instance, see this paragraph:
General confusion persisted on the department upon the end of their involvement; subsequent attempts at profiling encountered identical results to no apparent explanation, but no further irregularities made themselves evident that would help explain the phenomenon.
I don't see what purpose it could possibly serve. The reader already knows about and believes in the phenomenon, so taking the time to further validate it is redundant. For the record, I don't believe that every story has to be a straight march to the finish line, but if a section doesn't progress the story or amuse enough to validate its own existence then it should probably be cut.
The ending is supposed to be the high point of the article. Unfortunately, it didn't do it for me, and not just because I came into this with the context that you "might've drawn kinda too much from RPC-996" (which I will not contest, and which I could tell without even remembering that it was this article you were talking about).
For one thing, it's not much of a "reveal", since I already figured out what was going on earlier as stated above. Additionally, the details of the body just fail to impress me this time. What makes this trick work in 996 is that the reader has no idea what's happening. In this story, I already have a pretty good idea of what's happening, so I'm basically scanning the details to validate what I already know. It feels like the author tried to fit in a piece from a different puzzle entirely.
And hey, watch this:
On June 4th, 2018, the corpse of RPC-184-0 was discovered stranded on Delta Beach, along the southern border of Manitoba Lake.
The corpse was originally found by local police, having discovered a significant number of physical irregularities. Proper identification was initially impossible as facial features had been extensively damaged. Eventually, DNA profiling succeeded in identifying it, after which the corpse was acquired by the Authority. Cause of death has been ruled to be asphyxiation.
I know this is supposed to be dramatic set dressing, but this segment started out by saying whose corpse it is, so this short "body identification drama" is effectively a waste of time.
This discovery has changed current Authority understanding of RPC-184. While originally believed to be a single person affected by an anomalous event, it is now certain that this is not the case.
For the love of God, people, end your articles on their actual endings instead of anticlimactic notes for those who haven't been paying attention!
I'm rating this a 4/5, but it's probably one of my lowest 4/5 ratings all things considered. There's too much dead space for the mystery itself to shine as much as I want it to.
Great article that reminds me of how much I love reading about disappearances. When I read about a disappearance, I always like to imagine the possibilities of what could have happened and this article is no exception. The tone and pacing went along very nicely and easy to read where I could have the time to think about what is going on. The idea of an entity being able to outsmart even the Authority is one that scares me personally. 5 stars.
On a side note though, I wonder if this article is an implied reference to the missing indigenous peoples cases as the anomaly takes place in Canada.
Maybe it’s because I’ve been watching too much Twin Peaks, but I really enjoyed this article. I’m a little lost on the significance of -0’s wounds (I get the connection between the ‘hair down the middle of the face = face split in half) but the teeth being replaced and the hexagon in her skull are beyond me.
From what I understand, this is sort of a brood parasite situation where the girl is being replaced by these things, but I don’t get what’s up with the knocking and ‘the person’ visions. Is it a time-travel situation? Hmm.
Still, five stars.
Blessings,
LootedCrate
/forum/t-14136695/rpc-184#post-