SCP by Series
Other SCP
Feed
Stories
Discovery
Random
THIS IS NOT MINE. I AM NOT SELF-UPVOTING.
I'm posting this for MacLeod, with permission from Reject (gotten by MacLeod) because Mac's desktop is out of commission.
The name "Roderick X. Freeman" still makes me cringe, but I enjoy this one enough to upvote. I do miss "300-foot-robot tall" though ;)
Don't talk about that. Also, what wrong with the name?
It just throws me. Freeman makes me think Fremen from Dune/slaves named Freeman/the general concept of naming a character "Free man" in a dystopic setting. Combined with the X. it feels like "John Q. Everyman" territory. Opinions will differ on it though :)
Actually, I chose the name "Roderick Xavier Freeman" because it sounds badass, and because of the freed slaves thing: It makes his ethnicity ambiguous, which allows the reader to make up their own mind on what he looks like. If I wanted " John Everyman," I'd have named him Smith. As far as the "Freeman in dystopia" thing is concerned, I didn't even consider that.
Huge thanks to Americium241 for helping look this over, and for posting. Thanks also goes to Dr Hysteria and Dr. Poke for help in the brainstorming phase, and Hysteria again for critique. DillingerPHD and CharonTheHand also provided valuable input.
Again, thanks, guys.
To the rest of you: I hope you enjoy the story. :D
Great to see this finally up! Good luck to you in the contest! :)
I wish I had seen this in chat to review it. It looks awesome, but my only problem is with this:
Then Leonard steps away and— NO!!
The "NO" at the end. I get it. I get why it's there. But why does it need to be there? Maybe it's just me, but I found that pretty sudden and a bit of a gear-grinder.
This isn't enough to stop me from upvoting. I like it lots. Just wondering about that one part.
The pacing of this piece is extremely fast for no discernible reason. Also there is a ratio of 1 comma per sentence in this piece (or about that frequency) and it is pretty wonky to read the piece.
Living the dream, or dreaming the life?
It was written on a phone in a rush to meet the deadline, so that may have affected my mindset when writing it. But really…
… it was all just exposition, context, an explanation for why our narrator was shot in the back of the head in the middle of Nowhere, Wisconsin, in the dead of winter. It's written the way it is so that you'll understand why it happened that way. An earlier version had slightly more information on the connection between the two narrators, gave them both more character, but this version was preferred amongst my reviewers.
I don't care for what is essentially a blunt infodump.
Living the dream, or dreaming the life?
Meh. I can't please everyone. I'll try to avoid such exposition-heavy pieces in the future. I do appreciate your input, regardless of your opinion on the story at the end of the day.
It's not bad. There's a clear story, which is something that's tended to be absent in other entries, and it does very well in addressing the contest requirements. There's a few bits that don't quite sit right with me, such as the fact that Navy SEAL willingly goes into a situation that seems sketchy as hell from the outset, or that the 13-year-old sounds a little older than she should, but those things aren't so out of the mainstream of human behavior that it beggars belief or anything, so it doesn't really affect my overall reading.
My concerns fall into three main groups:
Yeah, it's pretty by-the-numbers. I tried to be as inexplicit as possible on the geopolitics, but the fact remains that, well, North Korea is very oppressive, China is fairly oppressive, and Russia is currently having a tough time moving away from being oppressive. I chose Sierra Leone because I know that that particular country is politically and socially unstable compared to, say, South Africa, or the United Arab Emirates.
I know it's not the most original story, or even the most original setting, but I chose the X-Men registration trope in order to demonstrate the fact that sentient/sapient anomalies have a shitty existence in the Foundation universe no matter what happens. The same is true for the running-from-a-government-you-once-served trope: the life of a Foundation employee is always miserable, secretive, and lonely, regardless of specific circumstances.
As per your starting points: with the former SEAL putting himself in obvious danger, I wanted to make it clear that he was very desperate, to the point of walking into an obvious trap; with the contained skip, I wanted to make them seem intelligent, but innocent. It's been awhile since I spoke to a 13-year-old, and I didn't want the character to be perceived as annoying, just naïve.
However, I'll admit this is not the best piece of literature, and won't complain if people dislike it or its components.
Note: the second narrator is intended to be male. However, death of the author and no canon and all that apply.
Much as I like seeing the Broken God put the final kibosh on the Flesh, this starts off in a bad spot (hi, I'm 17 and joined the Navy SEALs) and doesn't move beyond a laundry list of everything that happened from that point. Too telly for my tastes; I couldn't finish it.
But as far as the "too telly" thing is concerned, you're right. This is very exposition-heavy. I wish I could change that, but then I'd be disqualified from the contest.
This doesn't really work for me.
The Broken God stuff is underwhelming, especially its description as a skyscraper-sized robot. That reads as too little Ancient Eldritch Being and too much Power Rangers Villain. It being a benevolent force is a nice touch, though.
The Awakening stretches my disbelief in some places. The Foundation disbanded, but GOC is doing fine? Hand is partnering up with the Chaos Insurgency? The Foundation disbanded?
I couldn't make myself care about the characters.
The ending was telegraphed a mile away, and isn't particularly interesting.
Actually, Broken God vs. SCP-610 comes from SCP-2217. It implies such a happy ending, I couldn't help but overthink it and declare SCP-2217 to be an announcement of the end of the Foundation. This is the first story I ever wrote for this site, so I expected it to be poorly, or at least lukewarmly, received by the experienced users/authors. I'll take your advice and modify my next Tale appropriately.
Eh.
I like some of the Church of the Broken God stuff, but it feels like you could've done more with it.
But this is mostly just exposition (and exposition that isn't that interesting and also is a bit rote) and then when stuff starts happening it's not very interesting.
This isn't by any means terrible, but it's juuuust enough on the not-interesting side of things that I have to downvote. At least for now.
Yeah, I know, all exposition and no plot makes Jack a dull boy. An earlier draft gave the two primary narrators more character, but my reviewers felt that the final section explaining their connection would work better, and it likely wouldn't have pulled it within your exposition tolerance limits, anyway. I haven't had much practice with "show, not tell," and I was trying to create a cyberpunk/Orwellian dystopia with a mobile device and a short deadline, but my future contributions will be less exposition-heavy as a result of your's and other's feedback. I appreciate the input, thanks!
No problem :)
It's not just the excessive exposition, though; it's that what's happened could stand to be a lot more interesting. ;x In fact, you could've gotten away with this amount of exposition if the content had been a bit more fascinating.
That's hard to do on a mobile device with a short deadline, of course… but you have the chance to rewrite now, at least! :)
So, this is the first piece of prose that I ever wrote for this site (unless SCPs count as prose), the second tale I ever posted to the site, and my second successful work on the site. I knew it wouldn't be received to a fanfare of cheering skippers while the band played "Hail to the Chief," but I worked my ass off to ensure it wouldn't flop like most early works do. I feel it did pretty well considering. However, a fairly large number of experienced, well-read members of this site, including a few high-profile authors, downvoted this. That is unacceptable. I don't expect to turn every downvote around, but I know I might be able to change a few if I put forward some effort.
Therefore, I'm proposing the following stylistic and narrative revisions:
Opinions of these possible revisions, suggestions on other revisions or their execution, or other, relevant feedback would be appreciated. Please respond with such input as a reply to this post.
(account deleted)
