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Seeking Greenlights: Yes
Page Type: SCP Article
Genre: Drama, Comedy
Page Layout: Normal SCP article, but with first-person and retrospective 'narration' from the SCP interspersed between the clinical descriptions and incident reports.
Elevator Pitch:
SCP-XXXX is an entity that has the ability to travel through and influence textual narratives, with its ability to jump between narratives depending on the narratives' physical and 'conceptual' distances from each other — so it would be able to bounce between Harry Potter 1 and Harry Potter 2 at a further distance than it would from Harry Potter 1 to a random book.
This has been basically done before, so its 'character' is the 'hook'.
Narrative:
ConProcs are to not alter or copy this document, and to surround it with procedurally generated narratives.
Standard pomo-SCP fare, y'know? Should tip you off that this is a format-screw: which it is, with the SCP angrily introducing itself before engaging a clinical tone-y explanation of what it is — interjecting with angry reminders that 'the Foundation made me write this'.
- Progressed from bargain bin to local newspaper before capture.
- It's got a unique philosophy: believes it's morally wrong to write a work of fiction where a character suffers (partially influenced by the fact that it itself suffers when inside such a narrative). To stop this, it turns sad narratives into happy ones.
- Being sad through a fictional character is immoral, because the construct in your mind is suffering — like a pantheistic God who lets people suffer: He's still being mean, even though those people are Himself.
- The implications of its philosophy: essentially, all negative ideas are bad, and, in a transhumanist-y-type way, the entire mental landscape of humanity should be changed to be composed of only happiness.
- Was difficult for the Foundation to write about it, because any information about it always had an extremely short conceptual distance from the narrative it was currently residing in, since it's a part of own narrative. It always mucked up anything that was written about it!
- As Pavlovian-style punishment, the Foundation dumped it into procedural 'everyone-is-miserable’ narratives until it stopped 'vandalizing' stuff written about it.
- The 'fight' against these narratives fried the AI and wasted resources, so the article's current state (with accurate-ish reports but also the skip's retrospective commentary) is acceptable enough for both parties that they aren't willing to act … for now.
Narrative focus will be on the scip's quixotic heroism (which develops into bitterness), and Foundation's correct but cold "villainy".
Hook/Attention-Grabber
A fun philosophical thought-experiment, interesting format, and ultimately tragic tale all in one!
Had a convo about this on IRC. Logs follow, edited to remove unrelated messages:
[2020-05-25 17:03:45] <OCuin> Hoppler: what's the pitch?
[2020-05-25 17:04:17] <Hoppler> you want me to pitch it on here? a'ight!
[2020-05-25 17:04:33] <etoile> Hoppler: i like this, too tired to actually crit rn though
[2020-05-25 17:04:44] <OCuin> Hoppler: please
[2020-05-25 17:06:31] <Hoppler> OCuin: it's basically like a narrative-changer type scp (who travels through and changes text-based narratives) who's dedicated themselves to a philosophy that creating a fictional narrative where someone gets harmed is immoral, and so it dedicates itself to changing narratives to happy ones
[2020-05-25 17:06:48] <Hoppler> (sorry if that's long and spammy)
[2020-05-25 17:06:56] <OCuin> No no, it's fine
[2020-05-25 17:07:02] <OCuin> Ok
[2020-05-25 17:07:26] <OCuin> So pataphysics is a controversial topic in my experience, but I'm partial to it when it's well written
[2020-05-25 17:07:46] <OCuin> As a premise, I kinda like this. It's a nice twist on the usual things pataphysics can deal with
[2020-05-25 17:07:55] <OCuin> Have you got a narrative in mind?
[2020-05-25 17:07:56] <Hoppler> haha it doesn't break the fourth wall at any point, so I was hoping it would be safe!
[2020-05-25 17:07:59] <Hoppler> yes
[2020-05-25 17:08:42] <OCuin> breaking the fourth wall can be a difficult one to handle, definitely
[2020-05-25 17:10:22] <Hoppler> essentially the narrative is that Foundation apprehends the SCP, but it cannot write information about the SCP bc the SCP can jump inside that information and corrupt it
[2020-05-25 17:11:05] <OCuin> hm
[2020-05-25 17:11:15] <OCuin> I'm not so much of a fan of that, to be frank
[2020-05-25 17:11:36] <Hoppler> so the Foundation attempts to combat this by trapping it inside procedually generated narratives involving eternal suffering as a way of torture, but SCP fighting that burns up rescources. so you end up with this article that's half-SCP's-propaganda and half-clinical 'cause niether are willing to act any further
[2020-05-25 17:11:39] <Hoppler> why not?
[2020-05-25 17:11:42] <Hoppler> (sorry)
[2020-05-25 17:11:57] <OCuin> Meshing pataphysics with infohazards and "can't be described" SCPs feels like a recipe with too many ingredients
[2020-05-25 17:12:30] <OCuin> the pataphysics stuff is nice, but making it corrupt information about it's self over complicates that idea
[2020-05-25 17:12:37] <OCuin> *itself
[2020-05-25 17:13:17] <Hoppler> I justified 'can't be described' bit kinda operates by the same 'mechanics' as the narratives. like special containment producedures for it obviously spell out a sad narrative for the skip
[2020-05-25 17:13:45] <Hoppler> although i understand that it still is a bit of a mishmash, yeah
[2020-05-25 17:14:05] <OCuin> I'm sure it could be plenty well justified within the narrative
[2020-05-25 17:14:24] <OCuin> but that's a funky thermian argument, and I'd say it would still feel over complicated and conflicted
[2020-05-25 17:15:04] <OCuin> if something isn't directly related to the core mechanics, it's either aesthetic dressing, or unnecessary complications, in my opinion
[2020-05-25 17:15:14] <OCuin> aesthetic dressing is fine, complications usually aren't
[2020-05-25 17:15:34] <Cyvstvi> It seems like you'd really, really struggle to "write" it.
[2020-05-25 17:15:52] <OCuin> that's also true
[2020-05-25 17:17:43] <OCuin> The idea of an article with two clashing tones at war with another I also like, but again I'm not sure it would fit well with the idea at hand. It feels like another complication on the core idea and I feel like it could harm the core idea
[2020-05-25 17:18:19] <OCuin> (I should also note the Foundation torturing an object is fairly out of character)
[2020-05-25 17:20:19] <Hoppler> @OCuin hahaha i've just realised how ridiculous the torturing bit is. lmao i thought the foundation would torture the SCP into obeying them or something lmao whyyy
[2020-05-25 17:21:07] <OCuin> Hoppler: No worries, we all have funky ideas
[2020-05-25 17:22:29] <Hoppler> @OCuin this is prolly just writer's blindness tho, but i'm not entirely seeing how the infohazard bit, thematically, contradicts w/ the narrative-y bit. the danger of happy-sappy narratives are that they are infohazards (since could ruin, like, sad new stories)
[2020-05-25 17:23:10] <Hoppler> @OCuin so the infohazard bit seems like a progression to me rather than a … dunno a tvtropes word for it lol
[2020-05-25 17:23:26] <Hoppler> @OCuin incoherent thingy
[2020-05-25 17:23:29] <etoile> Hoppler: your ideas thread lays it out pretty coherently i think
[2020-05-25 17:24:41] <OCuin> Hoppler: it's not that it necessarily thematically dissonant, but execution wise I'm not sure that would work. It may very well just be me, but infohazards and pataphysics are generally two separate concepts in my mind, and I think mixing them together here doesn't feel expressly earned or relevant to the mechanics of the principle idea
[2020-05-25 17:25:18] <Hoppler> OCuin: (sorry for @ing you btw force of habit lol)
[2020-05-25 17:25:24] <OCuin> No worries
[2020-05-25 17:28:12] <Hoppler> OCuin: thanks for taking the time to write some feedback!
[2020-05-25 17:29:08] <OCuin> You're welcome, I'll put a quick forum reply up with the logs just for a record of it. Feel free to ping me if you revise it and want me to take a second look
My feeling on this concept is mixed. Like I said on IRC, I like the premise a fair bit, but the narrative doesn't do it for me at all. It feels very convoluted and complicated in an unnecessary way. I think this idea would be better served by a narrative that focuses on this activist as a character, their motivations, and crucially their actions and how they affect the Foundation. Some simpler, but all the more compelling for it.
Thanks for the feedback!
Apologies for the atrocious grammar on some of my messages as well, damn.
Hm. My biggest concern here is that like, you have a fun weird anomaly but I really don't know how exactly you're intending to convey all this story here? Like, the character has a lot of interesting moral positions that could be fun to explore; but there's not a lot of surrounding narrative here or anything so it seems like it might end up feeling a lot more like a philosophy textbook than interesting reading material?
Plus, since the anomaly hates stuff writing about it, it feels like it'd be awkward to actually like, convey the whole conflict where the Foundation punishes it until the SCP lets them write about it in a SCP file since like…it wouldn't be letting them write about that conflict as it happens?
That said: if you have thought about how you're going to convey it all, and have a good suggestion for it; this could be really excellent.
Thanks for taking the time to write some feedback! :)
It made me think about some stuff I wasn't thinking about before, so a lot of this response is going to be a bit ad hoc-y! (Feel free to ignore this of course, just me developing and thinking these things through.)
'Like, the character has a lot of interesting moral positions that could be fun to explore; but there's not a lot of surrounding narrative here or anything so it seems like it might end up feeling a lot more like a philosophy textbook than interesting reading material?'
I'm going to try my best to weave this 'philosophy' into the narrative (doing stuff like 'Ugh, foundation, I've told you a million times: [exposition]' — but, um, well), and make it not that much of a philosophy at all — just, like, an opinion that informs the character's actions.
Obviously there'll be some exposition here and there detailing the reason why the scip thinks what it thinks, but the article will mostly be focused on the quixotic "heroism" of the scip, and the cold cruelty of the Foundation — this is a story about personalities, rather than philosophies. The appeal of the article, I think, will be in the scip's charisma and courage — and eventual loss of hope — whilst facing the Foundation's ever-increasing ruthlessness, rather than in the scip's arguments.
This article will invetibably include some exposition and pontificating, but by keeping the focus on the attitudes and actions of these two characters, and not getting overly self-indulgent when writing about the scip's philosophy, a compelling narrative might be sustained.
'Plus, since the anomaly hates stuff writing about it, it feels like it'd be awkward to actually like, convey the whole conflict where the Foundation punishes it until the SCP lets them write about it in a SCP file since like…it wouldn't be letting them write about that conflict as it happens?'
This article will probably be written as the skip's sorta retrospective of their conflict, traced through incident reports that the Foundation would insist the skip adds to the article (these incident reports would, among other things, detail a history of the article's 'vandalism'), and the skip's commentary on these reports. Since the skip's commentary doesn't really *remove* any information about it, destroying this commentary is, as of now, not deemed to be worth the cost. The skip will include this incident reports at this time due to fear of the Foundation further exposing it to these everyone-is-suffering-narratives.
This retrospective method sucks in that it loses the conflict's immediacy since you aren't seeing all of the vandalism 'live', only gaining it back at the very end — since it's an in-progress standoff-type situation between the scip and the foundation. But I think 'live' conflict is probably just a cool idea that doesn't work for this skip (although it's obviously totally understandable if the 'retrospective idea' ruins the scip for you!).
Furthermore, the article being a retrospective from a perhaps changed skip might be a cool idea on its own, because it enables contrast between the skip then and the perhaps more jaded and bitter skip now, and the distance from the narrative gives room for the skip's philosophical or even introspective and self-questioning pontificating.
I'd rather this article lean more towards the skip's perspective than the Foundation's perspective, because the Foundation's view on this situation (probably something like: "This scip has an obviously incorrect worldview and is a massive inconvenience.") is much less interesting than the scip's — the article being the scip's retrospective enables this.
Placeholder! Got summoned via PM to take a look-see. Will crit in a bit.
Alright, here’s my take.
I can certainly see this concept going somewhere. Pataphysical conflict can be quite fun if handled correctly, and actually basing it around an individual with a personality will help ground it and maintain a focal point.
However, I’m not currently too big on your main anomaly, mostly because there’s no real evidence of a person behind its quixotic beliefs. Hell, the eponymous Don Quixote even had a persona, albeit a rather silly one. Without some personality and ‘humanity’ behind the silly position of minimizing fictional suffering, I’m not sure that readers would identify much with your main character here. How do you plan to develop its philosophy into a three-dimensional depiction of a personality?
Thanks for taking the time to write some criticism! :) Gave me a lot to think about about!
I (like you, I assume, at least in this context) personally dislike the trope of 'totally unrelatably deluded people' so I'll try to make this scip, in all respects except in their philosophy, a normalish, intelligent, and even charismatic "guy". They'll be able to make jokes, write (hopefully!) engagingly, and even criticize the Foundation in non-insane ways.
They'll have a few mildly amusing and humanising personality traits that'll pop up in the document: an innocent (at first) sort of arrogance; a generally choleric temperament, with the enthusiasm as well as temper that comes along with that; a tendency to creating hyperbolic neologisms by compounding words together; a tendency to create analogies based off popular books (that they'll have lived in!), perhaps peppered with a few of their very human observations about them; increasing, and sometimes humorous, exasperation at the Foundation ignoring them.
They're not supposed to be stupid: they're just the product of insular and deluded, though superficially convincing, logic. Their enthusiasm and quickwittedness could easily lead them down such a sort of logic, especially since they were presumably born, and live in, fictional narratives — so they have a totally different frame of reference through which they perceive reality.
A real-life example of how normal or even intelligent people can reach such weird conclusions would be the infamous thought experiment Roko's Balisisk [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LessWrong#History] — the people who believed this probably aren't especially abnormal, they've just got "caught" in a mistaken train of thought, I guess.
The personality of these scip will shine through their narration inside the document, and interactions with the Foundation in the article's incident reports. All in all, I think they could shape up to resemble a three-dimensional person rather than just a tragic idiot.
Alright, you seem to have the personality of your anomalous activist fleshed out enough to assuage my concerns there. Considering both that and the intriguing novelty of the philosophies behind your concept, I'm going to give this a greenlight. Your main conflict here is quite interesting, and I look forward to seeing how your format screw turns out.
[Asked to take a look. Will crit soon. Hopefully quickly.]
Responding to PM Request
I'm a tad tentative on this - on one hand, this does has the potential to be both extremely funny and genuinely gut-wrenching, and on the other hand you could have a lackluster narrative that doesn't go anywhere.
Ultimately, this is something that can be figured out during the drafting phase, but the core concept really is excellent. I'm not usually a fan of "meta" articles playing off the fact (probably because they aren't done well most of the time), but you've put on a neat little spin that I quite enjoy. My main piece of advice would be to focus your narrative. You've got a pretty good idea of the emotion you want to evoke and the story you want to tell, but page layout is something that can make or break this article.
In any case, I'll leave you to figure it out. Good luck, and take this greenlight!
Thanks for taking the time to criticize my draft — and for the greenlight! :)
Currently working on a draft, and jeez, you're right! This narrative is a pain in the neck to format and make work, haha!
