Done & Dusted - Memories of Dad
Let's see how this goes:
Situation normal, Cap'n! Spiraling out of control!
Done & Dusted - Memories of Dad
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Summary:
Done & Dusted Draft
A fantastic article for which I have very few complaints. I will admit the spag was rough, but post-clean-up? It’s one of those gripping articles that would understand the contest and what it was going for. It had a clean premise, got multiple perspectives on the issue, and had a nice ending. My biggest complaint is that the article tells us Leroy shares important information but never shows this. Maybe some quick incident logs show them giving important information and the authority reacting to that to prevent future events.
Show, don’t tell doesn’t matter. Also, the GD interview was a little flat for as long as it was. Not much was gleamed or emotionally said about the core themes. It’s just “Hey, I was -A. Yeah.” And nothing else. It wasn’t as gripping as the previous interview, nor did it give much perspective.
Still, it was a fun article. 4/5, but with the spag corrections and addressing the two issues I outlined, your article could be given a 5/5 rating. There’s little to be fixed here. It’s just solid.
I'm going to sound fruity for saying this, but my first instinct upon finishing the draft was to quickly scroll up so I could rate it five stars. So, I think it's pretty good.
You've outdone yourself. I think my comment on your last article was that the characters were all flat and mostly a means to an end. This draft puts stock into the character exchanges, and I have to commend that. I don't recall one bad line of dialogue. Admittedly, there's not a lot going on with any one character, but it's how they interact that matters.
Martin is kind of a false protagonist, which probably was the right call, but his memory-hopping moment with Leroy is brilliantly freaky. My opinion on the Infoplane have been admittedly precarious, but this is a shining example of how it should be written: making the mundane uncanny. If anything, I find it a little unbelievable that this hasn't been more debilitating for some…
…But I suppose Martin could've grown more cautious with his powers over time. I like the subtle detail of Martin's usefulness fading as people's memories of him become hazy, and it also took some time to really sink in for me that he has essentially lived and died twice. Or is he stuck in limbo, with no one to remember him? Having just written a review for an article that I claimed "punishes you for thinking about it", this has been quite the palate cleanser.
I greatly enjoyed the reveal as to why RPC-XXX's surname is censored. It was getting fairly conspicuous, but it paid off wonderfully. Color me jealous of your ingenuity.
I don't think adding a few more dates to the logs would hurt, but it's your choice if you want to keep them more ambiguous. The "finest protege" line in the final log left me puzzled for a while; the only way I can really wrap my head around it is if Charles is a bit deluded (he has only met her "three times" after all) and ARCH feels that she's wronged him. I'm not sure if that was your intent.
I am glad I got to proofread this article. Now, fix my nitpicks! Or else! >:(
Therefore, RPC-XXX-A instances are useful assets as the only connection with RPC-XXX.
Obvious (and subjective) statement is obvious.
However, RPC-XXX has also repeatedly demonstrated that it cannot acquire useful information reliably.
This sentence is unsatisfying and mostly meaningless. Does RPC-XXX not relay useful information regularly (which was already stated in the first sentence of this paragraph and is therefore redundant), or is its information sometimes inaccurate?
The 57 instances of RPC-XXX-A encompass 13 other members of MST Lima-17, 20 other Authority personnel, and seven members of Agent ██████████'s family that were also employed by the Authority at the time of his death or had previously been so employed, nine civilian members of the ██████████ family, and eight unrelated civilians.
The middle "and" (before "seven members") leads the reader to expect that the list of instances will end after the next item, causing confusion when it doesn't.
"Members of Agent ██████████'s family that were also employed by the Authority at the time of his death or had previously been so employed" is a mouthful that makes the sentence harder to parse and can be replaced with something shorter like "current and former Authority employees of biological relation to Agent ██████████". (Also, use "who" when referring to people, not "that".)
I notice here and elsewhere in the draft that you are inconsistent with how numbers are written out. Personally, after some experimentation, I've found that writing all quantities numerically reads the best.
Dr. ██████████: Just wait a minute; I'm getting to that. So, like I said, he was a pretty goofy kid
Missing punctuation at the end of the sentence.
Dr. ██████████: — Look, Howard, tell me straight. Is there anything we can do for him? He— he still had so much to live for. I mean, his kids, his oldest isn’t even in high school yet! They can't go through life without him!
Dr. Dale: We need more information before we can determine if that's possible. We don't know what's happened.
There's a missing newline between the dialogue. Yes, I do parties.
other personnel that Agent ██████████ was known to associate with
Just call them his "professional associates" or something. I find the "other" particularly egregious, because the word "other" was already used once in the sentence, and it's not like I'd think he associated with himself. I wouldn't be so picky were this not part of a long list, of course.
- Authority Security Force:
- 2 Personnel Minorly Bruised
- RPC Objects:
- RPC-XXX-3 received minor injuries
It's minor (ha), but the style of writing is inconsistent here.
Assets Comprimised: None
"Compromised" is misspelled.
the then recent death
Hyphenate "then-recent" for legibility.
(RPC-XXX-A37 pauses for seven seconds.//)
Broken formatting.
RPC-XXX-A51: No, for god's sake! It’s not that. It's just—do you know that I was one of the proteges that one Harris
This sentence is incomplete.
RPC-XXX-A37: He always told me[…]
RPC-XXX-A37: I'm maybe lucky enough[…]
The nametag switches from A51 to A37 here, which I'm assuming is a copy-paste mistake.
I was asked to review it a second time and came to the same conclusion: No notes, perfect. Post it.
/forum/t-16910832/done-dusted-memories-of-dad#post-