Thanks to Grigori Karpin for, as always, reading my stuff and going "yay!" or "please don't hate me but…"
This is rambling and as a result fails to serve its intended purpose, both in and out of universe. It pretends for three paragraphs to be about anomalous waste disposal — spending a third of that time summarizing other articles — and then abruptly switches to a biography of an author avatar with clumsy attempts to introduce new site lore and unconvincingly heartwarming ending.
Lines like
If you're a very thoughtful individual, you might suspect that someone out there does.
It all started when a young Welsh boy threw a rock into a burning coal mine. This was an act of pure science,
It caused fires, it killed plantlife, it drove dreamers to dig into the earth and drove homesteaders away in fits of free-spiritedness.
sound like overeager attempts to spice up a poorly assembled dossier. Overall, the only thing we learn about 'acroamatic abatement' is that it means 'anomalous sewage treatment' — and the word 'acroamatic' isn't even related to sewage. Either dramatically shift this tale's focus from a biography of Wynn Ryderrech to an actual overview of the logistical, technological, and anomalous processes of anomalous sewage treatment — or just rename the thing to "A Biography of Wynn Ryderrech, the Founder of Acroamatic Abatement".
Your manner is abrasive, your phrasing is demeaning and it makes your criticism unconstructive.
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I have similar thoughts to what ARD said above. It sent me for a whiplash to see how it went from "This is what Acroamatic Abatement is" and then switch to "here's a biography." If it was specifically intended as a biography, that would be one thing, but the way it starts out makes me think it's an in-universe manual.
Either transitioning it more naturally from the explanation of the subject to the biography would make i work better, but as of right now, I have to downvote it.
Thanks for your thoughts. It seemed natural enough to me, but I'll look at it with fresh eyes later with that criticism in mind and see about revising the transition.
I feel like a couple additional paragraphs explaining it and then moving towards biographical information would work better. Such a biography attached to a discipline could work (I've seen it done in real life biographies, with the personal history and the disciplinary history occuring side by side), but there has to be a level of parallelism that isn't really here. It was well written otherwise, but it felt so jarring that it left a bitter taste in my mouth.
I am interested in your revisions though, and have faith they'll make the work better.
Very helpful, I'll give that a whirl. Appreciate it!
I moved some of the language explaining the facilities to the beginning and added several lines about what they do and what the overall worldwide effort looks like, as well as a direct segue into what is now specifically labeled as a case study. I don't know if that completely addresses the way the piece felt to your mind, but I do think it's an improvement, so thanks for the feedback nevertheless.
It works much better, and definitely feels more natural. I'll change my vote to a non-vote, mostly because these articles don't particularly appeal to me personally, but I find it well written and put together.
Thanks! It's been a pleasure collaborating with you lol
HarryBlank, instead of posting multiple comments in succession, please edit your previous post using the "edit" function under the "options" tab to the lower right of every comment. That prevents spam buildup.
+1. I like this tale so much that I translated it into Chinese to let more readers enjoy your work. Really a good job, thank you!
Wow, thank you so much! I really, really appreciate that, and I'm glad you liked it!