http://rpcauthority.wikidot.com/forum/t-14840581/the-devil-and-a-piece-of-hell-with-him
Here’s the crit thread. Thanks to KaiserXI,
The Son of Man,
Mr Makor and
Prototype_Toaster for all the feedback and help they have given me; if I am forgetting somebody, feel free to shoot me in the nuts.
Only took me three years.
Marco Marchi B. Mark
RPC-769 is a memetic agent located in the Șoimoș Fortress, Arad, Romania.
A memetic agent is not a physical thing. Maybe you should describe it as a "memetically-active object" or something like that that flows better. I'd also add a footnote for Viderics just in case. I don't even think "memetic agent" is what you mean to say considering the rest of the article.
covered in spores.
Spores of what. Fungal?
RPC-769-1 entities are any Kingdom Animalia species
are any -> are members of any
Remove Kingdom.
Severe Swelling of the Thyroidal Glands
Lose the capitalization. Goes for the following list item too.
Lose some of the goddamn footnotes too. Be efficient and integrate some with the text.
I want to like this, it hits alot of my niches, but there's just a certain level missing to the quality of writing here. Even in the opening paragraph. How do you define heavy surveillance? What does it entail clinically?
I'm leaning on a no vote now because my honest vote is a 3 and I really want to encourage you to keep writing; to try you hand at more mainlist entries.
This review is the result of an almost year-long unfulfilled obligation; I put this off for so long that I don't remember when it was originally asked of me. Better late than never, right?
Put straight, this article has a good premise with a botched delivery. The author did not seem to know exactly how to structure a piece in the RPC format, and their clinical description does a poor job communicating the nature of the anomaly.
The description is written in a style I've seen before, which I will demeaningly refer to as "if-you-give-a-mouse-a-cookie tone". It's when one thing is described in the first paragraph, which introduces a second thing, which is described in the second paragraph, which introduces the third thing, and so on…
Another article that does this is SCP-3008, and it's something that I strongly recommend against; when describing something this way, each detail is given equal importance, and they are only mentally connected through an arbitrary order. Effective clinical tone is about breaking down the mental models to understand a system and giving those to the reader.
There are other issues that hinder the article's clarity. I found it odd that Glycine max lacked a footnote, as knowing what it refers to is important and there are already ten other footnotes on the page. The designations are strange (RPC-769-1 vs. RPC-769-A), and I would be lying to say I didn't need to scroll back and refresh my memory on which was which at one point.
One last clarity issue comes from some of the phrasing. On multiple occasions I noticed phrases that were vague to the point of being confusing.
The description fails to actually describe the cult in a meaningful way, which I suppose does admittedly lend itself to the remainder of the article. Everything before the discovery, though, feels like an obtuse exposition dump. A good article uses its description as part of the reading experience, not just a way to catch the reader up on what they need to know.
The discovery story is what I consider unquestionably the best part. It's also why I think it apparent that the author was more comfortable writing standard narratives; when he got the opportunity to incorporate one, the article suddenly flourished. The clinical part here is just a workable setup, but the personal note is wholehearted and wonderfully vivid. It's not the most incredible narrative I've read, but the characterization of the cult paints and validates the description before it.
Yes, the cult is beautifully horrific. I'm trying to talk more about the premise, since most of this review is about the delivery and tone, but honestly, they didn't get a lot to do. I guess that's my one complaint with the premise: it doesn't exactly excite the mind for much further storytelling. These people all seem content to do nothing, and their leader is no more active.
(For the record, I'm very much aware of the joke that spawned this article. A good job was done writing it seriously while keeping the innate silliness intact. I'm looking at you, Me Gluteus.)
Unfortunately, that strength doesn't run for the remainder of the article. The closing addendum, while too short to offend, is an unsatisfying conclusion. Instead of building upon the previous events, it provides the same "person sees a higher power and kills themself" drama that I'm pretty sure one could buy in bulk from a warehouse somewhere. I was expecting it to lead into an interview log or something of the sort, but that's really it. A shame, because this could've been used to show how the anomaly relates to the present day.
There's quality and substance here. Especially the note, which I couldn't praise enough if I were to judge on eloquence alone. However, I really had to look past the flaws to enjoy this, and I'm sad to say it didn't leave me with a gratifying conclusion. I give this a 3/5.
personnel is authorised to devise a course of action to either observe, study, communicate, apprehend, or terminate the anomaly.
The word "personnel" is plural. (I see some contention about this on the wiki, but since it lacks an article in this context, it is definitively plural.)
RPC-769-A are insectoid creatures similar to worker ants covered in fungal spores concealed as specimen of Glycine Max, indistinguishable from those commonly found in nature, which solely reproduce in the vicinities of the RPC-769 fracture.
Run-on sentence with a dangling modifier at the end. Also, "specimen" should be plural, and "Max" should not be capitalized.
- Severe swelling of the thyroidal glands.
List formatting exists! Use it! D:
Auctoritas Imperata agents, while investigating the cause of various disappearances around the Arad region at the hands of what the locals considered to be a group of creatures popular in Balkan Folklore called Ala that had come from Bulgaria, they were deemed missing after not reporting back to the Vatican for more than two weeks.
Run-on sentence that doesn't join properly; note how it reads once I cut out the middle clause: "Auctoritas Imperata agents they were deemed missing after not reporting back to the Vatican for more than two weeks."
Auctoritas agents were found rogue in the proximities of the Șoimoș Fortress and were promptly impaled accusation of blasphemy as they proclaimed themselves servants of the “Prince of Darkness”, identified as Satan by the locals.
The phrase "accusation of blasphemy" does not fit in the sentence. Either way, this sentence is confusingly convoluted, with another dangling modifier at the end.
The moment we had consumed that curious fruit, or seed, I could not tell, everything around us seemed to crumble away.
The different uses of commas makes this sentence hard to parse. Here's how I would punctuate it: "The moment we had consumed that curious fruit—or seed; I could not tell—everything around us seemed to crumble away."
For a moment, I thought the end of the world had come, and the lord was there to judge us at once; I turned around, and I realised something had happened to the fortress: it was different, surely, vines sprouting out of every hole, and I could finally catch that stench.
Run-on sentence. This could easily be separated into three distinct sentences.
Also, "lord" is not capitalized here, while it is later on in the note.
Deep in my heart I feared, without warning, that they could access the confines of our room.
The modifier "without warning" is misplaced. He feared without warning?
What Sanderson saw must have shaken him to the core, going as far as naming it “the Devil” himself, and it wouldn’t be the first time someone gets out of some nasty predicament with mental scars; however, I have come to the conclusion that the Agent’s illness may not be of an anomalous nature.
One last sentence I found too convoluted.
