RPC-782 / Discussion

This is the discussion related to the wiki page RPC-782.

(account deleted) 17 Dec 2022 21:19

Heyo! This is my minicon entry!

Crit Thread: http://rpcauthority.wikidot.com/forum/t-15468653/rpc-782:exit-albert-without-due-presidents#post-5767387

first image is a portrait of James Garfield by Ole Peter Hansen Balling, taken from: https://npg.si.edu/object/npg_NPG.65.25

second is a painting of General Grant examining the remains of President Garfield, edited a little by me, taken from here: https://www.grantcottage.org/blog/2019/7/29/a-necessary-undertaking

televisionist 18 Dec 2022 05:56

An unorthodox read, but an interesting piece nonetheless. It gets me enough momentum to follow along with a pretty banal and boring event in our history, then subtly adds intrigue into itself through skepticism.

Still, I don't feel comfortably intrigued by this anomaly. I don't feel as its the quality of either concept or story is "solid." I feel as if you left a bit more mystery as to whether or not it was anomalous. The Schizophrenia bit kinda stopped my mind from imagining the rest. It's a shame as well, cause I would've written it a four if it just trusted the reader to do a little bit more work.

Prototype_Toaster 21 Dec 2022 21:06

Reminds me a bit of the theory that George Washington was killed and replaced by Illuminati founder Adam Weishaupt. Leaves a lot to the imagination, and perhaps I could even see it as a real conspiracy theory, albeit it would be rather out there. 5/5

Almarduk 21 Dec 2022 21:13

Torn between a 3 and 4. 3 because it's not super subtle and the execution is pretty plain, 4 because it's a genuinely original idea and that gives it a lot more mileage. I just wish there was a little teeny tiny widdly bit more to the conspiracy theory to figure out what's going on, but what's there is pretty good.

Superspambot 27 Dec 2022 21:42

Excellent start, but it feels like there's too much time spent discrediting the first half of the article that it doesn't really feel like its reached a conclusion. There's certainly a mystery here, an intriguing one at that. However, it leaves feeling a bit unfinished, and not in an interesting way. 4/5

DoubleDenial 31 Dec 2022 22:27

In some sense this is a subversion on the wacky, frantically self-justifying alternate history pieces, and I like that. However, I do see that reducing an article to just "it's a satire of a trope" is a bit insulting to the author, and it's usually not the initial intent.

Though I'm glad it didn't just parrot a trope that I didn't like to begin with, I didn't think it was very enthralling. There wasn't a strong sense of mystery, though I admit this is a particularly subjective thing. The first Addendum is one-note in explaining why Garfield doesn't exist, and the second is one-note in explaining why the first one is wrong. At the end of the day, I'm only left to wonder what happened to Voss, and I don't think there was a compelling case to say anything other than that he was nuts.

At the end of the day, this didn't really interest me as an anomaly or a story. 3/5

8ismo 08 Aug 2024 21:50

It's… Strange

On one hand, you can absolutely and should expand on it but on the other the small amount of it there is does manage to make it intriguing and leaves you questioning the contents in a good way.
Usually, articles like this are very obviously undeveloped with the author not knowing what's actually going on behind the story. Here, either the illusion of control is better or there is a good explanation hidden behind it. The discovery opens up a lot of interesting questions, but then the Investigatjon SUBVERTS these questions and opens new ones while making it either obvious that something actually anomalous is spreading through the information relating to Garflied and infecting knowledge related to Voss and him, or there is nothing to it and there is something else afoot.

Either way it displays confusion and misinformation in an amusing and somewhat satisfying way in a format appropriate to the contest it was made for, but it could have been much longer and equally as engaging while being more satisfying.

It reads like a conversation between two people who had completely different experiences for the same event, and both of them feeling correct in the assessment and equally convinced they're the right ones.