Suicidal Fungi

Summary:

It's an ancient intelligent fungus that is difficult to kill and suicidal

Suicidal Fungi

phohavewemet 26 May 2020 07:05

Seeking Greenlights: Yes

Page Type: SCP Article

Genre (Optional): Drama/emotional

Elevator Pitch: This species of fungus is sentient, intelligent, rapidly growing, and has a memory of every generation of its species going back four-hundred million years. It has seen it all including many things it can't unsee mostly due to the self-destructive and disgusting nature of humans. Aimless, scarred, and pointless, it has had enough; it's done with trying and with the world and wants to leave it the only way it knows how death. But it has difficulty ending itself due to its resilient and self-reproducing life functions.

Central Narrative: Communicating through actions and a foundation made language used by the fungus. It tells stories of the past that it has experienced throughout the ages. From the natural beauty of the earth to man's disgusting invention of war murder and greed. Over time the fungus has developed multiple mental disorders including PTSD, schizophrenia, and depression all “gifts of the humans”. It constantly attempts to break containment to make attempts on its own life with SCPs, personnel, and foundation weaponry.

Hook/Attention-Grabber: It shows intrigue from seeing humanity's actions from nature's perspective and what effects they have had on it. It could also be fascinating to see something as plain as a mold to be personified. Also plays on the, immortality isn't all it's cracked up to be trope.

Additional Notes: I hope to take this somewhere so if you want more of this idea please tell me. Also, side note: I want to convey how detrimental isolation and trauma can be to mental health.

Last edited on 27 May 2020 20:55 by phohavewemet Show more

Forum Criticism Team - Captain Post

Zyn 27 May 2020 06:17

Since this thread has fallen to page 6 with no responses, this is a quick staff reminder to the author that if you haven't yet, you should contact reviewers directly to request feedback as needed.

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Re: Suicidal Fungi

cybersqyd 28 May 2020 14:42

I'm really not sure about this as a whole; like, the actual themes your playing with are fun, but this feels like an exceptionally heavy handed take on them? It also feels, perhaps, like your central narrative doesn't have quite enough narrative meat to it: a lot of it feels very much more like 'the fungus dumps information about the past to the Foundation' than it does a coherent story?

The angle of it trying to break containment and die is…fun but it feels, perhaps, a little too reminiscent of SCP-682 here? Like, obviously, it's pretty thematically different but it feels too much like it'd just be a big table akin to the 682 termination logs, and I'm not sure there's enough here to differentiate the two?

My suggestion would be to consider this in terms of internal Foundation conflict: have e.g, the Site Director be determined to test it to figure out how to make other things immortal while the Ethics Committee oppose that and be pushing for it's termination for compassionate reasons; and then use that to like, really explore the whole concept of it's detrimental isolation etc.

Re: Suicidal Fungi

Naveil 29 May 2020 20:03

Responding to PM Request

The "immortal being tired of humanity's shit" trope is fairly cliché, but can still be good if done well. Problem being of course, it has to be done well.

Your proposed narrative is this trope. An entity that has been alive for all of humanity's history, seeing all their sins and so forth. That, in of itself, proposes an emotional narrative. That is juxtaposed by the fact that this entity is a mushroom communicating with mushroom language. It just sort of… goes against the feeling you're creating?

Like, you're very obviously dealing with heavy themes like mental illness (which I'll briefly remind has to be written well and respectfully to work), but I don't really feel like you're treating it right? It might just be me, but I don't think a mushroom that has multiple mental disorders and is constantly trying to kill itself is going to sit well with some users.

That's on top of the fact that you're playing off a trope. Personally, I can't really say I like this idea. It's not to say it can't be changed, but there is some serious restructuring in order if you want it to succeed.