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Sometimes you just gotta coldpost, I guess?
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A Terrible Thing / Discussion
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This is the discussion related to the wiki page A Terrible Thing.
I really love this. The tone is very well nailed down to be cold in its quick, non-compound sentence structure. There is an intrigue that doesn't quite get explained, but has enough logic to give an impression of what is happening throughout. I found this to be a compelling mystery, building up a subtle tension that pays off well in its final moments.
This story raises a couple too many unanswered questions and the spook is not developed enough — he goes mad the same chapter we meet him in — but is still written in a style that's sleek, menacing, and stylish enough for me to let those go for the sake of horror.
You lost me in the middle segments, which I felt were a bit too sparse and hard to get through from a readability perspective. Nonetheless, the imagery remained strong for the majority of the piece, and the climax/resolution of the Jailer's actions brought me back in enough for an upvote.
Heyo,
I read this after learning you wished to put it as a featured tale, and I'm not disappointed in the slightest! This was a very interesting read I enjoyed quite a lot. It'll be a +1 from me!
snipped
~~~🐜Ant boi baby🐜~~~
Votes don't help the author, so I've vowed to always leave a comment with mine, at the very least whenever I rate an article negatively. If you feel the same, help out by leaving critique with more of your votes. Comment follows:
What a beautiful tale.
The characterisation is spot-on. The flow is perfect. The whole piece is just dripping with atmosphere. The style of short, direct thoughts with the odd more verbose, almost poetic thought sprinkled here and there had me held the entire way through. There is the perfect mix of brevity and description - it is enough to intrigue me and entice me into imagining/craving more, but not enough to bog down the flow.
The freak is the weakest character of the four. I'm glad that he was introduced first - I feel the characters are arranged by how interesting they are. The librarian's description was compelling enough that there was a long moment in which I wanted to write a prequel for them, but that temptation was set aside by my unfamiliarity with the Library. The spook was the cream of the crop.
The static feeling of the bulk of the tale is excellently executed. The action scene contrasts with that but it doesn't conflict. I've found the style of leaving a blank line without a horizontal rule confusing in some of your other works, but here I finally understood it - "Five things happen at once." in a little section all by itself was very effective.
I'm not entirely cognizant of what happened here, what the characters' goals were, or what the resolution was. I don't think I need to be - I don't even think I want to be. It's an easy +1.
I have zero idea what I just read. Sometimes that's good, sometimes that's bad. In this case, it is incredibly obvious that there's so much going on here, so much thought put into this, and I love it. +1.
I love the immediate subversion of convention with the line "The spook leads them;" at first I thought that the spook was supposed to be the GOC or something, but then I remembered that the GOC got completely obliterated early on as per "1", and checking the tags confirmed that yes, the traditional butt-monkey organization is the one at front.
I also love how the Freak's refusal to fix the machine completely embodies the sentiment again expressed in "1" at how the Church of the Broken God and Sarkic cult were too busy engaging in their mindless hatred of each other to work together, but that it wouldn't matter anyways since the new god would just get eaten by the Rat just like everything else in the entire universe.
If there's one thing that I think is lacking, I think that the spook desperately needs more development, because unlike every other character, he owes his allegiance to something actually human. The Foundation is a cold, pragmatic international organization with no nostalgia or attachment to anything. The Sarkics worship a god, something above humanity, and something that has always been there from the beginning. Similarly, the librarian is seemingly just a stand-in for any number of groups or traditions probably associated with the Wanderer's Library, and I'm not really sure if they owe allegiance to anyone.
But the spook is different in a way that I think is really important. He works for the FBI, he is an agent of the United States of America, and he swore an oath to protect it from enemies foreign or domestic. The UIU might be a joke, sure, but they hold to their ideals, and I have never read a tale that had them willingly derelict in their duty or act in a corrupt fashion. If I were writing this story, I wouldn't have named him the "spook", I would have named him the "lawman", and added in some details more firmly designating him as a relic from a bygone era.
If there's one thing that I think is lacking, I think that the spook desperately needs more development, because unlike every other character, he owes his allegiance to something actually human.
And as such, he's the first one to break this time around! That's what the Machine does, at the end of the day - it feeds on ideals and consumes those that hold them. They all believed in something (with the exception of the jailer) and it just so happened that this time around, the spook either believed too much or not enough.
That's not to say I disagree - he's definitely the least characterised, and as ARD points out above he's basically gone by the time we meet him (though he had the right idea). If I had to do it again I'd give him a bit more!
If I were writing this story, I wouldn't have named him the "spook", I would have named him the "lawman", and added in some details more firmly designating him as a relic from a bygone era.
I really like "the spook" though :p
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page revision: 2, last edited: 15 Jan 2023 15:06
