SCP-2453 / Discussion

This is the discussion related to the wiki page SCP-2453.

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Author post

gishface 03 Jan 2017 01:14

I co-wrote this SCP with Zyn, who improved my base idea immeasurably.

People who gave feedback on this, in no particular order:
Forums: Rum N Napalm, Comparing Realities, Skerples, Petrograd, Jekeled
Chat: Sliptide213, Cetus, Cimmerian, A Random Day, Nusquam, Lazar, Levi, famine, Tuomey, WrongJohnSilver
Thanks to all of you; the high quality of feedback that people provide here is one of the the things I enjoy most about this site.

Image source: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Pregnancy_test_result.jpg

Re: Author post

Zyn 03 Jan 2017 01:37

This was quite the journey! Ideas and Brainstorming, Draft forums, chat, the whole gauntlet. Big thanks to everyone who gave feedback on this!

It's been awesome working with gishface. We did a lot of idea hashing in chat and there was a lot of same-wavelength-ing regarding the development of the draft. Several times we'd be discussing something and both posted almost the exact same though/epiphany. Collabs are fun!

NatVoltaic 03 Jan 2017 02:49

So the pregnancy test transfers the child of the woman that gets negative to the one that gets positive. That is wonderfully unsettling. Budhism being an automatic negative is also very thought provoking.

+1

Roget 03 Jan 2017 03:04

This has a nice narrative progression and the revelation on what this is all about was a satisfying conclusion. +1

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Whether you like it or not, history is on our side. We will bury you!

Shaggydredlocks 03 Jan 2017 03:44

Seconding this. The article keeps moving along without dragging; and there's both enough information given to form a picture of what's happening, and enough left to the imagination to leave one wondering.

Last edited on 03 Jan 2017 03:44 by Shaggydredlocks Show more

Jacob Conwell 03 Jan 2017 04:15

The year is 2017. Even your pregnancy test will be judging you.

Going to echo Roget. The narrative here has a nice flow and proceeds to satisfy with both the revelation as to what is going on, and the conclusion as a result.

+1.

Espilae 03 Jan 2017 07:27

I really like this one. Good build-up, too. The stork has a chip on its shoulder.

+1

AbsentmindedNihilist 03 Jan 2017 13:02

Saw this in chat, really liked it there. You clarified a lot of the unclear language in the latter half that made it confusing when I first looked at it, and I understand the purpose much more easily now. Nice work!

(account deleted) 03 Jan 2017 15:09

Excellent! Upvoted, too. But why is Buddhism a negative factor?

Last edited on 04 Jan 2017 01:37 by (account deleted) Show more

Buttfranklin 03 Jan 2017 15:19

A little clunky at times, but I really enjoyed the weird, thought-provoking idea behind this.

+ crit

And that narrative development was executed with great aplomb. There's a lot of skill involved in teasing out that nice twist from a very technical narrative base. It was also brave and skilful of you to derive creep from social evil — I feel that for a lot of writers, especially in this community, the potential for offence in that area makes it too risky to work in. So, points for originality and flair there!

The scip starts off looking like an instrument for some awful social eugenics program, which leans a pleasingly fat thumb on my disgust buttons. Then all of a sudden there's that last addendum that whips the thumb off "disgusted" and onto "intrigued", when it turns out that the anomaly is injecting genetic material from foetuses of (subjectively) unfit mothers into (subjectively) better ones, and that all the successful babies are gesunden Ubermenschen. Which, depending on your interpretation, is either: a surprisingly progressive form of genetic egalitarianism, allowing any "good" genes from "bad parent" babies to have a fighting chance in a "good parent" baby; an even more efficient and insidious form of eugenics, ruthlessly stripping "bad parent" babies of all their "good" genes for the ultimate betterment of "good parent" babies; or some kind of long-term reverse-eugenics whereby "bad parent" genes are poisoning the well of "good parent" genes. For the latter, an analogy could be made to that attempt to eradicate mosquitoes by releasing males that father healthy but sterile offspring.

I also just want to note that putting in a couple of odd parameters in the "speculative criteria", such as the Buddhism, was a nice touch. Made the agent of this thing appear more alien and interesting, and also deflated any overt similarities to actual Nazis and the like (which would potentially not have been great for the author!).

But, as the first line alludes to, there was some wordiness here and there. It took a little while to get exciting. The procedures could have been boiled down, and you spent a tad too much time focusing on the dry logic and logistics, e.g. precisely how mysterious the appearance of the scip objects was. Not an awful amount — this is an "even better if" critique. (I'm often guilty of it, btw.) Oh, and I understand that the "not after 20 weeks" was to ensure you weren't putting any controversial images of late-term abortions into people's heads… but it would have been a very effective way to pack some more creep into the piece. Probably would have turned some people off, though.

The biologist in me had a field day reading this. +1.

Zyn 21 Jan 2017 07:46

Belated, but…

Oh, and I understand that the "not after 20 weeks" was to ensure you weren't putting any controversial images of late-term abortions into people's heads…

Squick as it may be to say, if memory serves I think when gishface and I were hashing out details the thought was, "it would likely be really harmful for both mother and child if a fetus over 20 weeks old was transferred into the womb of a woman who was not yet pregnant to begin with". The one thing the SCP object here will not do is harm the mother or the child.

Also, it would be a rather obvious spontaneous effect, and part of what I liked about the approach was that the Foundation would have to run a lot of damage control because the anomalous births were pretty hard to track.

The biologist in me had a field day reading this. +1.

I'm glad to hear that! :D gishface and I spent a lot of time on the internal consistency of the piece.

But, as the first line alludes to, there was some wordiness here and there.

Could you make some suggestions for trimming? I definitely prefer thrifty language, so I'd love to hear your thoughts on how to make this more succinct.

Rejekyll 03 Jan 2017 16:07

Mostly like it but I'm not a fan of the Buddhism bit. Since it's the only "random" criterion it seems out of place.

WrongJohnSilver 03 Jan 2017 16:11

I'd argue that musical ability and being a pet owner are also "random" criteria. I would agree that Buddhism being correlated with a negative result is not friendly, but it appears we're dealing with a discriminatory anomaly, not a discriminatory author.

gishface 03 Jan 2017 18:50

As the author of that table, I'd like to nip this in the bud: The test is anti-Buddhist. I am not anti-Buddhist and neither is Zyn. It was written to be intentionally provoking, sure, but only to the extent of wanting to throw a reader a curveball if they were becoming complacent about understanding the motivations behind the test, not as any sort of propaganda. As WrongJohnSilver noted, it's not the only "random" condition but it is certainly supposed to be the most unexpected one.

Now, as for why the test dislikes Buddhists so much, I'm going to pull the college-textbook-handwave and say "the solution is left as an exercise for the reader". With that said, if you're familiar with Buddhism (or at least, certain schools of it) you can probably cobble together a reason why an entity that is (perhaps) seeking to "improve" humanity by propagating the species might view Buddhist ideas as a threat.

Or maybe it just hates Buddhists.

WrongJohnSilver 03 Jan 2017 18:59

Yup, just as I believe.

And agreeing with Buttfranklin, too: we can certainly have bad characters without implying bad authors. We'd never have villains otherwise.

Buttfranklin 03 Jan 2017 17:21

I disagree. Firstly, Buddhism is not the only random criterion, as pointed out already. Secondly, including a few surprising criteria is vital for making the anomaly something more nuanced and interesting than an out-and-out social cleansing machine. Doesn't it intrigue you that whoever made this doesn't want babies to be brought up by Buddhists? Doesn't it make you wonder if the anomaly is trying to prevent children from being raised in a culture of non-violence, self-discipline and anti-materialism? And if so, doesn't that raise interesting questions about the long-term goals of the anomaly — the kind of people the anomaly wants to populate the world with?

To both you and WrongJohnSilver: expressing disapproval at the mere mention of a fictional agent that could maybe be interpreted as holding illiberal views, and raising the possibility that the author could be a bigot because of that, contributes to groupthink and stifles the creativity of our community. More broadly, promoting this reflexive instinct to censor any mention of an entity with regressive views makes us forget that people like that exist, inflating the bubble of progressivism that already surrounds us here and in other places — avoiding ideological polarisation is more important than ever post-2016.

Apologies for getting so vehement and geopolitical. I just think it's really important for both this site and society as a whole to be a little more nuanced and intellectually sympathetic.

Last edited on 03 Jan 2017 21:25 by Buttfranklin Show more

Rejekyll 04 Jan 2017 03:42

I'll concede that musical aptitude is "random" as well, but that's really it (in my opinion of course). The real reason the Buddhism bit sticks out to me I think is that it doesn't line up with the societal norms I'm used to. We generally agree that drug abuse is a bad trait and musical aptitude is a good trait, for instance, and most of the criteria are treated in about the manner I'd expect. The Buddhism bit isn't though obviously. My issue is that it feels a little out of place in that regard.

As for this:

To both you and WrongJohnSilver: expressing disapproval at the mere mention of a fictional agent that could maybe be interpreted as holding illiberal views, and raising the possibility that the author could be a bigot because of that, contributes to groupthink and stifles the creativity of our community.

Never did that. My disapproval relates to the criterion's relation to the others, not its content. I'd feel similarly if being Buddhist made a birth Very Likely.

Communism will win 03 Jan 2017 21:17

The Buddhism thing was one of the only light spots in an article that was, in the rare moment where it wasn't dreadfully predictable, just not terribly interesting. As soon as I hit "SCP-2453 is believed to either induce or terminate a pregnancy", I managed to guess pretty much what was going on (fit mothers get babbies, unfit ones don't), just because that's how these things go, and I was almost entirely right. I didn't see the ending coming, but moving the pregnancies from one woman to another just doesn't pack enough punch for me to forgive an otherwise unspectacular article.

Still, it was well-executed for what it was, and I fully expect you to produce good material in the future.

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