Yup, it's been a while, but I'm back.
http://rpcsandbox.wikidot.com/von-pincier
This draft, like many good ideas, came to me in a dream. Thanks to Gismo, Alma, Dattop and DoubleDenial for helping flesh out my basic idea.
Not much to say outside of the spag I gave you in google docs. This should count.
3 or a 4. No larger opinion. It's adequate.
The appearance of RPC-XXX-1 within RPC-XXX is accompanied by a serious of consistent anomalous
series
[[Footnote]]Less than 1% of RPC-XXX-1 instances have been specifically marked as urgent requests, with due dates on the order of a single business week. No other irregularities in their content or the nature of the requests have been noted.[[/Footnote]]
Footnote block is broken due to capitalization
The capitalization on the Notes column is inconsistent, sometimes it's Request fulfilled and sometimes Request Fulfilled
IMPERIVM AVSTRALIS INCOGNITA
A financial analysis correlating the production of paper doilies in Gabon with the rate of murder-suicides in Finland during the Korean War.
… Genuinely confused as to how this helps them kill bugs
Since many RPC-XXX-1 instances remain unfulfillable
I wonder what'd happen if they filled those requests with random garbage or just imagination.
All in all this felt quite a bit formulaic, something that the article seems surprisingly self aware about (with this line: "Consider the number of anomalies the Authority contains which involve the propagation of documents and historical miscellanea into our universe").
I don't think it's bad by any means but it's relying a bit too much on that very last note to get it going somewhere interesting, and that note itself rests on the concept of bureaucracy as a force of order sparking the reader's imagination. It's missing some spice is what I'm saying — I'd like to see crazier places where this concept can go.
Like, what if some bureaucracy from XXX is outsourced to specific sites to help increase/decrease Coherency? Or if, by some extraordinary bureaucratic mishap, some member of the Authority got to peer at the bureaucratic projectile that caused the impact crater? Could they see some part of the massive chain of paperwork causality that holds things together somehow? You get my point.
I was hesitant to read this draft because I'm not really sold on memotics for reasons which will soon be made apparent. I decided to do it anyway, and I felt the urge to put in my two cents as the one doctor who wouldn't recommend your product.
This draft is long. Perhaps not in word count, but it certainly felt the part. In contrast, the idea itself is not suitably complex. In four words: "paperwork from alternate dimensions". The rest is either framing towards that or a direct progression from it.
For me, articles are like restaurants; the amount of investment should be proportional to what you get out of it. Going to a fancy diner will take more time than going to McDonald's, but the fancy diner will be a more fulfilling experience. An author like TomatointheMirror is the fast food joint of my metaphor; He can deliver a punchy concept in a short amount of time. (Later edit: For the record, I like Tomato's articles, so maybe take the general unhealthiness of fast food out of the question. I never said I was good at metaphors lol) So, once you get past the framing, is this article's payload fulfilling?
The Dominion of Upside-Down Boobies
I didn't really enjoy it. The list of requests is one of two "payoffs" in the article, which otherwise felt like a pile of exposition. Unfortunately, it boils down to attempts at non sequitur humor, and none of them landed for me. Besides comedy being a bizarrely non-committal genre for this concept, I don't feel like it has any "jokes" per se. Perhaps I missed the punchline for one or two, but most of them are completely arbitrary.
The humor on this display reminds me of RPC-949 in that the delivery would be so much more effective if the worlds were actually thought out. Let me peek into worlds that are fascinating and captivating, not just read a list of wacky names and silly requests. You've served me a plate of croutons.
Soon after the table is the introduction to… ugh… "uittology". I'll be direct: The entire Document section could be removed from the article, and the end result would be better for it. It's an exposition dump of information that the reader already knows or could easily infer, for the sole purpose of tying it into lore. This is what I generally dislike about memotics; most applications of it have felt indulgent to me. Articles like RPC-004, RPC-222, RPC-604, and RPC-930 all could have included a section about memotics, but they don't, because that wasn't the point when writing them. Even outside of that, there's plenty of connections that are just there for the sake of it. You could probably find a way to attach Anderson Coherency to any anomaly if you wanted to. If you think this section is necessary, that's okay, but I would like you to write me a detailed analysis on what the narrative gains from the infoplane connection.
The final log is what I considered to be the second payoff, and it's passable, I suppose. It's distinctly similar to the wacky throwaway comedy that I see in articles like RPC-949 (hello again). Not bad on its own, but it comes as a disappointment after such an invested read.
I pondered for a bit about how I would rate this if it were posted. I feel I've been rather lenient with ratings in the past, awarding at least passing marks to anything that shows a degree of competence. However, I've been changing my approach as of late, and I would probably give this article a 2/5. Nothing stuck with me, and I was still not convinced that the idea was intriguing at all after finishing.
It seems to lack forethought. My attention is sent to places that are completely inconsequential in the end, for instance, the exact way that the room must be arranged. The "juicy parts" are brushed aside in favor of article-specific buzzwords and lore development that doesn't serve any immediate purpose.
If the length were drastically reduced, I still don't think I would like this article, but I would at least be more tolerant of it. I'm not exactly sure what to suggest to improve the draft further besides just going back to the drawing board. Also, RPC-612 is incredibly similar, and I would say renders this entire article redundant. The exposition is shorter, the effect is more interesting, the worldbuilding is better, and the finale is astounding. As for this article, I would call it much ado about nothing.
RPC-XXX is an anomalous meeting room on the 4th floor of the the United Nations Secretariat Building on the United Nations campus in New York York City which contains an extradimensional gateway or portal capable of creating nonanomalous paperwork.
This sentence is too long, and I don't think "New York York City" is a place.
non-anomalous printed documents, designated RPC-XXX-1, will spontaneously manifest on the largest flat horizontal surface in the room.
That would be the floor.
All RPC-XXX-1 documents are written in grammatically correct standard English and follow formats used in United Nations proceedings and clerical work and are non-anomalous.
Too many "and"s.
At current rates of RPC-XXX-1 fulfilment
Typo; Should be "fulfillment".
This entails the inexplicable disappearance of memoranda, electronic correspondence and paper documents containing requests for RPC-XXX-1-styled research and analysis work.
This sentence is hard to understand. The phrase "RPC-XXX-1-styled" has to go.
Consider NuCorp, who, with apologies to those of its employees in attenance,
Typo; Should be "attendance".
