SCP Concept - Emotional Lightbulb

Summary:

An emotion reading lightbulb with a dark story. Heh.

SCP Concept - Emotional Lightbulb

TSDTom 12 Mar 2020 20:30

Seeking Greenlights: Yes

Page Type: SCP Article

Genre: Emotional/Horror

Page Layout: It will be structured like a general SCP article, with several interview logs and experiment logs.

Elevator Pitch: There's a lightbulb that can reflect and affect people's emotions when they hold it. The article focuses on a researcher trying to get the Foundation to study the bulb further and failing, placing an unhealthy amount of attention into and becoming slowly addicted to working on it.

Central Narrative: A lightbulb that accurately reflects the emotional state of any entity touching it via shining various different colors corresponding with different emotions, even when not powered. The bulb also elevates the subject's current emotional state, so annoyed will become angry, happy becomes ecstatic, etc. The bulb reacts violently to fear, shaking and screaming while inducing a maddening anxiety attack in the subject. The Foundation determines all of this through a series of tests and is set on just locking the bulb away after that, never to worry about it again.

However, one of the researchers takes a peculiar interest in the bulb and starts doing his own experiments with it, and for while the Foundation humors him. However, after his tests start producing no new results, the Foundation catches on that no progress is being made despite the researcher's assurances. The researcher starts taking the bulb for "personal testing" and continues to try to experiment with it and find ways of creating because "this could help people, this could change the face of the earth!", despite the bulb's rather limited skillset and dire consequences.

One day, the researcher is experimenting on himself with the bulb in his own office. Someone startles him while hilding the bulb, and its fear response is triggered. The researcher is carried off to be psychologically evaluated and/or terminated, and the bulb is replaced in containment, with no clearance for its "personal use".

Hook/Attention-Grabber: The special containment procedures specify that anyone showing mood-swings is advised not to come into contact with the SCP, and anyone who is suffering from anxiety is barred from interacting with SCP-XXXX. The bulb also doesn't necessarily coerce anyone to do anything, but an obvious side effect having a bulb that elevates your emotions is that you would decisions that you wouldn't normally make, so creating the most heart-driven person in even the most logical of people.

Additional Notes: The lightbulb can elevate someone in a good mood/someone who is using drugs to be in such a state of pleasure that it's almost orgasmic. This may explain the researcher's initial interest in it.

Last edited on 18 Mar 2020 16:37 by TSDTom Show more

Re: SCP Concept - Emotional Lightbulb

TSDTom 15 Mar 2020 17:08

IMPORTANT NOTICE:Major changes have been made to this concept as of 15 Mar 09:57 PDT. Any critique from before that edit have been taken into account and (hopefully) fixed. As always, I am still looking for greenlights. Leave any critique you deem necessary.

-Tom

Re: SCP Concept - Emotional Lightbulb

Screechy 12 Mar 2020 20:35

I think the idea has potential, but I must say: It seems kind of barren. It seems to me that this is a type of SCP that is like, "It does this thing but it's kind of weird and we don't know why it does this so we just keep it in a dark room" type article (no offense, anything can be expanded upon!). Although my love for horror SCPs aren't as strong as mine for abstract ones, I still feel that a lot is missing from this to allow it to become a full article. Best of luck in getting greenlights, though!

Re: SCP Concept - Emotional Lightbulb

TSDTom 12 Mar 2020 20:52

I was thinking that the real meat of the article would be the story of its origin, and how the Foundation uncovers it through experiments and investigation, so I think I'll edit it to reflect that. Thanks fro the feedback!

Re: SCP Concept - Emotional Lightbulb

Simartar 13 Mar 2020 23:41

Summoned by PM — let's take a look at this.

My main issue with the concept is that it feels a little bare-bones — the idea of an SCP object with lingering effects from a traumatic incident like a murder has been done before, and while that doesn't mean this concept isn't workable, it is something to keep in mind when thinking about how to set your skip apart. I think focussing the narrative primarily on how the Foundation uncovers the origin might be the most interesting, especially if you give it a mystery type feel. It shifts the genre a bit, but ultimately gives it a more unique narrative.

Last edited on 14 Mar 2020 01:25 by Simartar Show more

Re: SCP Concept - Emotional Lightbulb

TSDTom 14 Mar 2020 01:39

That is exactly my intention, so it works out!
Is this a greenlight? I haven't been in these threads for long enough to know.

Last edited on 14 Mar 2020 01:39 by TSDTom Show more

Re: SCP Concept - Emotional Lightbulb

Zyn 14 Mar 2020 02:23

Is this a greenlight? I haven't been in these threads for long enough to know.

Reviewers will be very clear when giving greenlights—they'll state "greenlight" straightforwardly, often in green-colored text. The reviewer above has not given a greenlight.

Re: SCP Concept - Emotional Lightbulb

TSDTom 14 Mar 2020 03:23

Ok, Thanks!

Re: SCP Concept - Emotional Lightbulb

Zyn 14 Mar 2020 03:38

Got a PM about this, stated that my review was guaranteed to be negative, was asked to give it anyway, so here we go.

My main issue here is that it seems like a pretty generic item gratuitously linked to a violent creepypasta-like deadly past, and I've seen hundreds of similar works deleted from the mainsite over the years. The tropes are pretty overused and I personally am kind of tired of repeatedly seeing the narrative be "it's linked to someone who was murdering people!" We get a lot of monsters, serial killers, body horror, jump scare scream things, etc. on the wiki. Horror's been a staple here since over a decade ago.

With regards to the core anomaly, it's also fairly generic. Typically, an SCP object's effect forcing someone to feel something or act a certain way tends to come off as a lazy or contrived narrative, since there's more genuine tension if there's a struggle involved, and/or if the people instead react of their own volition rather than just because the author needs them to for the story to work. Consider reading through the further discussion on the narrative issues of compulsion and addiction effects. I've also never been much for the whole "color based on mood" premise, since depending on culture the same color can mean all sorts of things (red in Eastern cultures being a lucky color, compared to also being an angry or romantic color).

If feel like if you really wanted to write this without tweaking either the item itself or the backstory, you'd need to format it into a tale or a GoI format document.

Re: SCP Concept - Emotional Lightbulb

TSDTom 15 Mar 2020 16:21

Thanks for the critique! I will try to fix the kind of overdone backstory, luckily I haven't' developed that part fully yet.

I also guess that I wasn't extremely clear on how I was envisioning the bulb's power in my head. I was thinking that the bulb works the way alcohol works for a lot of people: It doesn't actually change how you feel, but the feelings you are feeling it will elevate and make more powerful. I was thinking about a possible plotline where one of the researchers, who has an anxiety disorder, decides to touch the light bulb while he's in a good mood and discovering that if he's in a good mood, the bulb will elevate that mood to almost orgasmic levels if given enough time (since it does this gradually). This would eventually lead the researcher to become "addicted" to the bulb, and its all well and good until he has an unexplained anxiety attack in the middle of a "bulb session". The bulb reacts violently, not only screaming and shaking but also raising his anxiety levels extremely high very fast, causing a full mental breakdown.

So the bulb doesn't necessarily coerce you into doing anything, but it does make you more emotional.
Does that fix the issue, in your opinion? or is it still too "mind affect-y"?

Re: SCP Concept - Emotional Lightbulb

MalyceGraves 17 Mar 2020 18:30

Summoned from the cave that is #thecritters.

First and foremost, there are numerous SPaG errors throughout your idea pitch. While this doesn't disqualify your idea, it makes it less attractive for review.

You've received a lot of feedback on this idea, and progress towards a functional idea has been exceptionally slow, so I'm going to be fairly straightforward with this critique.

Onward ->

As it is currently stated, there is little about this idea that would keep me, as a reader, interested enough in continuing very far down the path you've laid out. Even with a backstory, I still don't understand why this isn't just put on the anomalous log and just dropped into a box somewhere.

There are many many ways that the Foundation can study human emotion without resorting to using an item that could potentially drive someone mad. Researching this item doesn't seem to be at all worthwhile.

Also, electroconvulsive therapy is a very real therapy, and I am 100% certain that there are people whose lives have been radically altered by the use of this therapy that wouldn't appreciate it's being depicted here. It sounds ableist at the best, and I think it reflects a fairly broad misunderstanding of the topic on your part.

Your entire story revolves solely around this anomaly. Remember, your anomaly is the vehicle of your story, not the other way around. If you are certain that this anomaly is worth exploring further, I suggest delving into this from an entirely different direction.

Maybe there is a researcher that is convinced that this is a tool that is worthwhile. Maybe they have approached studying this thing in an unorthodox and more interesting manner? Maybe they've pitched several proposals for using this item and they've all been rejected. They've taken to studying it in their off hours because they can't get the go-ahead from their superiors, and while the item isn't compulsory, they've become addicted.

This becomes a story of a researcher's live coming unraveled because of their addiction to something, rather than the rather boring story laid out here as is.

I will not be approving this idea as it stands.

Re: SCP Concept - Emotional Lightbulb

TSDTom 17 Mar 2020 18:44

Thank you, your critique has really made me rethink the whole angle I was going for, and I can see that this would be a lot better.

A side note: I do not mean to portray electroconvulsive therapy in a negative way, I mean to portray the doctor who uses it in this story as an idiot who doesn't understand the field, gives the patient much higher doses of electricity than he should, and who gives out the therapy willy-nilly to anyone who is unlucky enough to book an appointment. I know electroconvulsive therapy has helped many people, but its a tool, and in this story, that tool is misused, hurting a lot of people.

But I realize that wasn't clear at all, and I shall make that much clearer in the future.

Thank you for your critique!

Re: SCP Concept - Emotional Lightbulb

TSDTom 18 Mar 2020 16:41

MAJOR CHANGES NOTICE: As of Mar 18, 2020, 9:37 am PDT, major changes have been made regarding the aim and content of this SCP concept article. Any criticism from before then has been taken to account and (hopefully) fixed.