SCP-4903 / Discussion

This is the discussion related to the wiki page SCP-4903.

History of the article

CryonicAutumn 04 Feb 2019 21:14

This ended up being pretty long for a discussion post, so the history is in the collapsible for those who are curious.

Open textdump

Before the final draft, before the crappy first draft, before I even had an account on this site I had a thought: what would happen to somebody stuck forever in a single room? This concept developed to the idea of an empty pocket dimension where immortality is guaranteed and escape is impossible, along with the temporal distortions to have the subject both experience a near eternity and be able to communicate with the outside world.

The main differences (besides basic quality increases) between the current version and the original version were that SCP-4903 was originally a painting and the temporal distortions were under the control of SCP-4903-2. I changed it from a painting because weird paintings are boring and done to death, and I changed the distortions to something chaotic and uncontrollable to fit with the feel of the article.

Researcher Elmsway was a result of my desire to hold a more concrete foil to the Foundation. I had the idea in mind that the effect of SCP-4903 would create a living testament to the failings of the Foundation method of sending D-Class on early exploratory missions into anomalies, and initially Elmsway was just the name of the device that was used in the incident log. I ended up liking the name and kept him as the Foundation side of the story, a scientist who can see the failings of his work but also who knows that there was no other feasible way to test the danger of new anomalies to humans. I surmised that SCP-4903-2 would be able to come to the same conclusion. I also thought that SCP-4903-2 being friendly and joking while holding a mostly nihilistic outlook would be the most effective for the story. Remember, this is someone who gets around a week of human interaction per every couple thousand years.

I also added a hint of another concept, but I made sure the article worked without it. I would recommend opening the spoiler only after reading the article completely.

There's another effect at play here, but on the advice of Weryllium I'm removing the spoiler for it so you'll have to figure it out yourself ;)

Last edited on 05 Feb 2019 23:27 by CryonicAutumn Show more

Re: History of the article

CryonicAutumn 08 Feb 2019 02:54

Just a heads-up that I made some minor quality improvements recently. Mostly formatting and tweaking a couple words here and there, but I figured it was worth the announcement nonetheless.

Weryllium 05 Feb 2019 22:44

This is nice.

The D-class is good, and a dark parallel to characters such as 11424, where in this case the rapport is still there but the exploration isn't a happy ending. I also like that you avoided making him a one-dimensional "arrrghhh i'm angry at the Foundation" cliche.

Project Timaeus is insanely creative in concept, kudos for that.

Personally, I prefer the article without the spoiler, guess that's Death of the Author. My impression when reading was that the effect would happen through purely nonanomalous means; Elmsway isn't going to be there forever, whether via transfer, amnesticization, or even plain old death. One day there'll be a containment breach, or an attack on the Site, or a K-class scenario, or just the simple ravages of bureaucracy, and 4903-2 will eventually be forgotten and alone. Forever.

Excellent work.

CryonicAutumn 05 Feb 2019 23:24

Good point on the Death of the Author, I'll remove the spoiler. Thanks for the feedback and I'm glad you liked it :)

Weryllium 06 Feb 2019 07:57

Oh. I meant to say that I prefer the article as-is, compared to a hypothetical version where you put the [spoiler] in the article explicitly. Discussion pages are fair game.

Zzuxon 05 Feb 2019 23:18

I like this a lot. It explores a lot of interesting and distinct ideas.

Faraday Cage 11 Feb 2019 16:21

I have an opinion that the

+ Spoilers

white text is completely unnecessary and even may detract from the impact of the rest of the piece. It felt tacked on and tacky to me. Not sure how it played out for everybody else, though.

CryonicAutumn 11 Feb 2019 22:40

Yeah, I was honestly on the fence about it myself, I think I'll remove it.

+1

LuckyManJohn 20 Feb 2019 19:45

This is a great article. Project Timaeus is such a creative idea, hell, the whole object is a such a creative idea. I love it.

One minor suggestion. In your author's note, you say that:

this is someone who gets around a week of human interaction per every couple thousand years.

That is not the impression of the magnitude of the time distortion that I got at all. You don't specify how much the time is distorted by in the article, only saying that it's a "significant multiplicative factor," so I thought that time was sped up by 10x or 20x, but according to your note, you're trying to express that it's being sped up by like 50,000x. So, I would recommend that you give the multiplicative factor a range, similarly to how you specified a range between the distortions, or specify how much time -2 usually experiences per distortion.

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This has been an official Lucky Co. post

Re: +1

CryonicAutumn 21 Feb 2019 15:23

Good point! I added a footnote clarifying the multiplicative factor.

Re: +1

LuckyManJohn 21 Feb 2019 16:48

Looks good!

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This has been an official Lucky Co. post

+1

Arcade0416 07 Mar 2019 19:50

I like this skip a lot, so I went ahead and gave it a +1. My only question is, if they can't manage to kill him or help him escape, why not put him into a medically-induced coma of some kind. Or, heck, they were able to stop his heart, why not just keep it stopped? I'd imagine death is more preferable to what this guy is going through.

Or, at the very least, get this poor man a portable DVD player and a couple dozen complete-edition box sets of long-running TV shows. That should help.

Jokes aside, great work, well done.

Last edited on 07 Mar 2019 19:51 by Arcade0416 Show more

Interro_bang 10 Oct 2019 18:56

This takes a simple idea and goes all the way. I love it.

Magn67 28 Dec 2019 15:16

Seriously underrated. One of my favourite SCPs. +1

MadEngineer 07 Aug 2020 03:08

Wait what's the bonesaw for?

CryonicAutumn 04 Dec 2021 05:56

If someone were to accidentally put a hand in there, I think that they'd appreciate having it nearby.

RealSurrealSir 09 Dec 2021 01:26

I'm objectively too proud and satisfied to learn that my guess on a small detail like that was correct…

In all seriousness though, this is definitely oneof those rare, successful 'makes you think more and more the more you think about it' entries, so kudos. I can only imagine how hard it was to get something as short but implicationally (?) complex like this so 'right' for lack of a better term.