Tales of the Ethics Committee: The Foundation Eats Babies / Discussion

This is the discussion related to the wiki page Tales of the Ethics Committee: The Foundation Eats Babies.

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There isn't nearly enough content about the ethics committee

MrNumbers 05 Dec 2017 23:27

So this is part one of a series I'm hoping to do exploring the idea of an SCP ethics committee. If this gets positive reception, I've already got the next one storyboarded and sketched out. Hopefully you guys like this conceptual space as much as I do.

This is my first content on the site. I heard Tales get a lot less coverage than SCPs themselves, but I thought the SCP for this was too weak to make a page for. It would help me out a lot, if you liked it, to share it. God, I feel tacky saying that, but I do mean it.

EDIT: Also, if you're interested in this as well… I mean, I'd love to eventually be able to make a Hub series out of this.

Last edited on 06 Dec 2017 00:38 by MrNumbers Show more

Re: There isn't nearly enough content about the ethics committee

Gummy_Dragon 06 Dec 2017 19:07

I'd be willing to help you.

Re: There isn't nearly enough content about the ethics committee

Hunteddreamer 06 Dec 2017 19:16

I absolutely loathe the concept of needing babies as containment method. You made the ethics council sound human and you do it well. Take the +1 and make the ethics council squirm.

Re: There isn't nearly enough content about the ethics committee

Doctor Cimmerian 06 Dec 2017 20:38

What's this, ethics things without Doctor Cimmerian involved? That's crazy! Critique in the collapsible.

+ show block

Ultimately this isn't interesting for some long stretches, but the parts that click really click well. The "let's stay professional" lines got a bit grating after a while. At first I was fine with it, but it kept happening and at some point a character should either move on or do something besides admonish people.

There's a number of things that get driven home more than once to be honest and it really harms what you're trying to say. Dude vomits 3 times. We got it the first time. We got it the second time. And by the third time it's literally just to structure the joke with the kettle.

Ultimately this feels like a letdown at the end. That's only because a lot of it is very well written and the idea has remarkable potential.

I already have an idea in my head of the Foundation deciding to start determining the worth of an infant life through anomalous means before doing this sort of killing. Kind of like having your fortune read but you're a baby and if you were gonna end up a Drug Addict they feed you to a monster.

And then a monster isn't satisfied because it wants the babies with better potential…

Definitely keep working on this. I may end up writing something for this sooner or later (likely involving Cimmerian). If you're interested in having the help of an established site author, PM me.

Last edited on 06 Dec 2017 20:39 by Doctor Cimmerian Show more

Re: There isn't nearly enough content about the ethics committee

taylor_itkin 08 Dec 2017 03:24

and me

Re: There isn't nearly enough content about the ethics committee

Petrograd 08 Dec 2017 07:53

Kind of like having your fortune read but you're a baby and if you were gonna end up a Drug Addict they feed you to a monster.

I know the Foundation has a complex relationship with prophecy, but I think they've contained too many cursed wish-granters than to trust such things en masse. Plus the decision criteria bring up all kinds of ethical questions of their own. I mean, from a pure numbers standpoint, why not ask if the kid would grow up to be an important D-class?

Re: There isn't nearly enough content about the ethics committee

MrNumbers 09 Dec 2017 00:00

Made suggested and noted changes.

Re: There isn't nearly enough content about the ethics committee

(account deleted) 31 Jan 2018 03:28

New series directly acknowledging the Ethics Committee that is taking tales from other authors? Where do I sign?

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~Baubi

Renasanse 06 Dec 2017 02:05

So I'm not really one for the ethics committee usually; focusing on Foundation-funded atrocities is probably one of my least-favorite….angles? Is that the right word? Ah well.

That said, this is a really well-written tale. The characters were believable, and their arguments and conclusions made sense given this situation and these choices. Most importantly, for me, at the end of it all they actually came to what I could agree is the least-abhorrent option, instead of settling for some horror-show answer or complacency with the current system. When I do like the ethics committee, I like them doing their jobs right, and this is a great example of that.

So +1 from me, and congrats on your first successful article! Look forward to the rest of this series, if you write it.

Flawed 06 Dec 2017 02:20

Saw this while wandering through the draft forum, loved it there, love it here. +1 keep up the good work.

Modern_Erasmus 06 Dec 2017 02:32

Wonderfully fucked up. +1

(account deleted) 06 Dec 2017 02:38

At the end of the day, the Foundation’s gotta eat some babies to save the world. That’s just the facts.

Eh. This basically summarizes my thoughts on the whole thing. These are hardened shadow operatives orchestrating an atrocity in the same manner as at Wannsee; the dialogue, which this entire tale is focused around - it's essentially all one conversation - doesn't reflect that. There's a little gravitas in there but it's overshadowed by gonzo a little too much for my taste. I get that you need the back-and-forth to have color - can't just have everybody be all mrmm hrm casualty reports grumph army group b mumble grumble - but the end result here just doesn't gel with the tone established in that excellently minimal opening graphic.

There isn't nearly enough content about the ethics committee

correct, regardless

Last edited on 06 Dec 2017 02:42 by (account deleted) Show more

MrNumbers 06 Dec 2017 02:48

Well. Yeah. I didn't want it to be like that though, I wanted to hammer home the fact that it's still very human people who have to orchestrate these decisions, and that sucks.

I feel like cold professionalism would lose a lot of the significance of the situation I was going for. I want the Ethics Committee, in my head, to be the people in the foundation who can't afford to be too hardened, because they're the people whose specific job it is, at the end of the day, to care.

And I feel like if they're all Borges and Strauss, that's a serious problem when the debate isn't something this extreme. But you still need them for when situations like this do occur, so you do get debates like this.

(account deleted) 06 Dec 2017 04:06

to be the people in the foundation who can't afford to be too hardened, because they're the people whose specific job it is, at the end of the day, to care.

That's a very interesting interpretation. However the above line and other stuff like

I will admit, my first reaction to that was; ‘Ah, yes, the other-other white meat.’

Dictatorships don’t usually get ethics committees, no.

Welcome to SCP ethics. Where it’s necessary to be politically correct about baby-culling.

don't really read as humanizing, or even how somebody would talk, in that situation. I mean, maybe this is the first time they're doing this (even as I'd expect this is meant to be taken as one in a very long line of roundtables?) but even then these are p.h.d.'s and a black-ops assassin. I wouldn't expect total starkness - in fact I'm pretty sure that'd work to its detriment, as you say - but the way the characters are written right now, I don't really buy 'em. Of course that's relative, and general reception appears to be very positive, so it's probably just a matter of taste.

ophite 02 Jan 2018 21:37

As someone who has been in a room where life-and-death decisions are being made — not life-or-death, but life-and-death — this is rings extraordinarily true. I'm not just saying that to defend the article, but because I think it's important for people know that, yes, sometimes the people with your life in their hands treat the decisions they're faced with like this.

Compassion fatigue

Aceofmoxes 27 Apr 2018 19:04

Sometimes, it's the only way they can make decisions like this.

fieldstone 06 Dec 2017 03:02

This definitely stands on its own. Tales do have fewer readers, but it's a subsection of the community that seems to be growing, and stuff like this will definitely help.

I'm excited to see what comes next. This completely nails a level of heaviness and complexity that I've been making attempts at - I will definitely be pming you to get your thoughts on some things.

Congratulations on this, I think it's going to be an instant classic.

Edit: by the way, those images are great, it really helps the opening.

Next day edit - noting that this is at +67 in just over 24 hours, probably some kind of record. Damn good work.

Last edited on 07 Dec 2017 01:21 by fieldstone Show more

stormbreath 06 Dec 2017 03:14

I liked this as a draft, and I like it now.

Two things:

• You should really put the images onto the page itself and then internally host the images
• You don't need to have the same title as the page URL, and I think that the colon in the url is messing something up, because this isn't showing up under Recently Created Pages, so you might want to rename it

You'd want to go to files to upload the images, and then to Rename to change the url. (Best way to retitle would be just dropping the tales-of-the-ethics-committee: part)

And this is the code to put the images on the page

[[image name.png]]

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can I get some nice "no signatures on my forum"
sigma-9 css machine broke
understandable have a nice day

MrNumbers 06 Dec 2017 03:17

Still eternally grateful for all your help, doing all this now.

Taffeta 06 Dec 2017 04:55

Yeah, I can appreciate this. I can appreciate this quite a lot.

This might not be how I imagine the Foundation's Ethics Committee running, but it's a version of their proceedings that I can buy into and the details of this horrific magic baby factory farm are on just the right side of 'gratuitously disgusting' for me to buy into. There's a kind of depressingly creative imagination that goes into the affirmative case for 'should we use occult human mass-production to sate the hungers of Keter-class anomalies', and I think that alone is worth a show of appreciation.

Have an upvote. I look forward to seeing what else you do with this iteration of the Committee.

FaustoV 06 Dec 2017 05:10

first of all, there's a typo there (kdinappings).

Second, I don't know where you got the Julio Borges name, but I swear to God, that just made this even more powerful to me that it was meant originally.

Third, I was reading this, and at the point of the use of commatose women I thought of my wife. I, for a mere second thought of her in this position and horrible realization came to my mind. I honestly considered the implication of this meeting and I found it horrible to no end. I am upvoting this, but it became a bit more personal than your usual eldritch horror tale. I mean, I was already upvoting because I thought it was pretty neat to read a tale expanding onto the Ethics Comittee in this way, but there's a deeper layer for me and it stroke gold.

I'm impressed, disgusted and horrified. +1

Aceofmoxes 27 Apr 2018 19:07

Funny story, it could believably be https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Julio_Borges

Disturbing.

Agent MacLeod 06 Dec 2017 05:31

The fact that half the characters use gallows humor and the other half are vomiting is what sells it. The question of "what is the least evil way to murder babies?" should never be up for discussion, IRL or otherwise. But these folks discuss it and settle on what is arguably the "best" answer. That's a good horror story in this kind of setting.

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