RPC Authority

This was a collab between me and Von Pincier.

We wanted to make a failsafe entry that was less "big scary monster" than the other entries.

Thanks to Croal and KaiserXI for crit! Forum post here.

The image used is released under Public Domain. The image is called Dominic Bluegill Prime radiation cleanup taken by the United States Government Defense Nuclear Agency. Image source here.

I still don't remember how exactly we got from "radioactive blob organism" to a fuckin' stapler, but it was a fun ride.

I wrote most of my parts of this pretty much immediately after watching Chernobyl, and I think it shows.

Gross, disturbing, and absolutely fantastic. Easy 5

At first, I found the narrative transition at the conclusion of the article to be kind of out of left-field and not sufficiently developed beforehand. After re-reading, I think the concept itself is sound, but the execution just didn't work for me. Not only does this anomaly have to survive being neutralized from the Fail Safe explosion, it also requires a researcher to survive the event, transport the item in a truck, drive it away from the detonated site, and crash into a fast-food restaurant that was far-enough away from the explosion to not be damaged. I think it would have been much more straightforward to have the anomaly start molecularly bonding things at Site-14. While the article is entertaining, the story does feel over-the-top.

Great article that demonstrates the horrifying effects of ACS. The most terrifying part for me was when I realized that people were inside of the McDonald's and they combined together with the restaurant into a monstrosity that happens to… make me laugh thankfully. What an Amazing! anomaly. 5 stars.

I think that this article deserves immense praise and should be an example for writers on different aspects.

Off the bat, the formatting is done in a very simple way that still leaves the impression of this being an actual file someone can access. The information is not repeated, but expanded upon creating a good rhythm and tempo of the story. The parallel between anomalous and regular radiation is also amazing - a worker escaping an incident with a ticking time bomb is a perfect setup for the second half of the article. It doesn’t try to overplay its hand, but slowly builds up the tension through each segment.

A particular praise I should note is its very good use of a GoI within an event, three of them in fact. GEAR, NuCorp and Amazing!Co. both make a brief, but relevant appearance in the article that doesn’t overstay its welcome and instead creates a backdrop through which the story is further expanded on. All of the references are more than believable, relevant and don’t suffer from something that many other similar uses do - namedropping the GoI and it just being irrelevant in any way outside of the mention. Again, it just makes the anomaly more believable.
I cannot commend the story enough. I cannot remember the last time an article actually made me feal creeped out, worried and at attention. Paying attention is paid off, the dialogue is actually used to reveal more information and move the story instead of just padding the page and the visuals are great. Literally the only fault I might find is the ending, which while in-tone and appropriate doesn’t fully close the entire story. One more addendum regarding how the -2 instance was contained with a description of what happened to the mass would have been great.

But, aside from that single problem, excellent article. I will point people to it in the future and I see it as an example of the site’s wish to achieve quality.