The Sweetest Honey

Summary:

A bee swarm that creates its honey and wax from children's flesh.

The Sweetest Honey

Dr Sage Evergreen 11 Mar 2020 17:04

Seeking Greenlights: No (Criticism is most certainly welcome though!)
SCP title: The Sweetest Honey

Basic idea:

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• A Euclid-class Bee swarm residing in a German Forest. If the swarm makes contact with a human under 18, they will surround the subject and consume the entire body via an unknown method, and used to make wax and honey.
• The child's consciousness is assimilated into the swarm's hive mind.
• The bee's hive where the swarm resides is a larger structure surrounding an abandoned schoolhouse, and is composed entirely of human flesh. It is vastly larger on the inside than it appears from outside
• The honey produced appears non-anomalous, although it contains faint traces of human blood

Core narrative:

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• The origins of the hive explained in an interview with the "Queen" of the hive, a 1940s-era schoolteacher with reality-bending abilities. She explains she lived in a majority-Jewish town when the war began, and that she gathered all the kids and took them to her schoolhouse when troops raided their town. When the troops attempted to enter the schoolhouse, she used her powers in a last-ditch attempt to save all her children. Queen breaches containment after interview.
• Exploration log into interior of the Hive. Mole Rats find a number of unique, gruesome discoveries. They are eventually captured and consumed on-camera for approximately 10 days straight. Footage ends with soldiers vomiting bees.

Hook/attention grabber:

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Unique concepts all thrown together to produce a complex, but interesting SCP and narrative. This will probably appeal most to body-horror writers. It takes something familiar and twists it beyond comprehension. It goes beyond "a thing that does a thing," with a sad but grotesque storyline at its basis.

Additional Notes:

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This is the second thread for this concept, with the first being posted more than 2 weeks ago. I've contacted members of the butterfly squad, but no one has responded. This concept already has one greenlight. You can see the initial thread and criticism here: http://www.scp-wiki.net/forum/t-13052760/little-johnny-s-breakfast-honey#post-4504886

Last edited on 12 Mar 2020 05:40 by Dr Sage Evergreen Show more

Re: The Sweetest Honey

djkaktus 11 Mar 2020 17:28

Yeah, ok. There are some neat ideas here. The idea of a class of children being turned into bees in order to save them from genocide is sad and neat, especially if they're not fully cognizant of what has happened to them.

Things I would address:

I would skip the body horror of this - I know you want to lean into that and I know the instinct is to head towards squicksville, but I feel like that would take away from a legitimately sad story of the queen who, presumably still awake and aware of what has happened, has to now take care of her flock of bees and give them the best life she still can.

I'd also shy away from calling her a reality bender - I think the better option is to lean into the "powerful magic that occurs in a moment of imminent peril" theme and not give an outright explanation for how they ended up that way, only that the queen/teacher very much wanted to keep them alive and safe.

Some good ideas here. Ditch the body horror, tighten up the theme, and this could really be something. I'd definitely greenlight that.

Re: The Sweetest Honey

Dr Sage Evergreen 11 Mar 2020 21:05

Thank you so much for the advice! I'm definitely going to use your suggestions in one way or another, and the feedback is very much appreciated :)

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I definitely see your point about the body horror taking away from the more emotional plotline with the queen. I still kind of want to do the body horror though, so I'm going to reconfigure it to serve the theme either one of two ways

1. The Queen and bees use the bodies of Soldiers who attempted to attack them (both from the SCP Foundation and German Troops) to create the hive and honey. This idea would paint the queen as a ruthless mother figure, willing to go to morally questionable lengths to save her children
2. The Queen is somehow functionally immortal and able to "recreate" a new body for herself out of nothing should she ever die. To help the hive survive, she would purposely kill herself over and over, with the swarm using her old bodies as sustenance and building material. This idea would probably provide a more self-sacrificial image of the Queen instead, although it may require her to be a reality bender.

I also agree with the idea of avoiding the queen being a reality-bender, at least consciously. I'll leave that part ambiguous.