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Special thanks to thedeadlymoose, Dillinger, djkaktus, and everyone else in the chat that provided feedback for this.
SCP-2160 / Discussion
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This is the discussion related to the wiki page SCP-2160.
I like it. I am intrigued, and I like the use of crosslinks that I see here. That being said, it needs some editing for grammar and mechanical stuff. The plot overall rreminds me of a more in-depth version of SCP-993, which I don't know if you've seen or not, but the similarities are pretty hard to miss. No vote for now; I'll need to reread it again later when I'm not on this shitty tablet to reach a more comprehensive conclusion.
I have read 993, and I tried my best to minimize the obvious comparisons, although it's something that would be impossible to completely manage. I hope there's enough differences that once they give this a thorough read they will see them and like it for what it is. Thanks for the feedback!
(account deleted)This is horrifying, and it's really well-done, especially with the crosslinks. I'm so glad there are no images (for now).
Edit: This seems like more of a Keter, however. Also it might be fitting somewhere to put revised containment procedures, maybe after the collapsible?
That is definitely something to consider, thanks for the feedback.
Good show, Punch! I really liked watching this one evolve through the drafts and I'm pretty stoked on how you did the ending. You've also done a good job of having this skip carve out unique space despite some of the similarities to others like 993.
The execution feels a little choppy:
Forty eight hours before broadcast, a countdown timer appears on the website chosen to host the webcast, and once it reaches zero the page automatically refreshes itself; in its place is a built-in video player.
This sentence is structured oddly and a little off for a scientific document. "And once it reaches zero" feels a little too much like narrative in this context, and this really could be broken up into two or three shorter sentences. Something along the lines of "Forty-eight hours before broadcast of SCP-2160, a countdown timer appears on the chosen host website. Upon expiration of the timer, the host website's contents will be replaced with SCP-2160."
Due to the coding on the website itself
I don't get this part. This implies that there's preexisting coding on host websites for the skip, which doesn't seem like what you're describing.
with the audio similar to other educational children's television shows
"Educational children's television shows" is such a widely varying category of content that this description is completely meaningless. You'll want to be a little more specific here.
No evidence that such a show was ever broadcast prior to the first known instance of SCP-2160.
Sentence fragment.
It was discovered that if an instance of SCP-2160 is downloaded or recorded from the broadcast site and then is played within a different program the visual portion of the instance functions as normal, revealing Sheriff Buddy to be a marionette dressed in a cowboy suit that resembles O5-6, and other puppets that re-enact events that do not coincide with the audio of the broadcast.
This is another example of a long sentence that could be broken up for better flow. The way this is written also erroneously implies that Sheriff Buddy is also "other puppets that reenact events" etc.
That, coupled with the memetic effect the footage has had on some,
What? You didn't say anything about "memetic effects" in the description, and there's no explanation as to what exactly that "memetic effect" is. This part feels exceptionally shoehorned.
A posthypnotic suggestion is placed into the mind of SCP-2599 to attempt to recreate the events of the broadcast, to see if her subconscious mind was capable of acting in a manner that her conscious mind could not.
This is a huge, immersion-breaking stretch in terms of the limits of hypnotherapy.
Mobile Task Force Mu-4 was ordered to seize control of the broadcasting website the moment a transmission of SCP-2160 ended and broadcast a posthypnotic suggestion to make the viewers forget they had just watched SCP-2160.
And here it is again. I get that the site relies heavily on amnestics and whatnot (though that's something I'd like to see a lot less of), but this is an after-the-fact handwaving away of a major containment breach without any real attempt at addressing the consequences on the narrative.
00:02:22 - Sheriff Buddy: Secrets will always get discovered, no matter how hard you try to hide them kids, so be sure not to lie and keep things from others.
Oh good, another heavy handed "evil Foundation" moral.
There's three main issues, in addition to the writing-related problems above, that are making this not work for me.
- I feel like "creepy kids show" is kind of an overused trope. That doesn't necessarily make this bad because it's been done before, but the fact that this is a common thing speaks to the fact that this is a pretty easy and predictable source of "creep" to reach for. It gives the article's overall feel a predictable and hackneyed one as I read it, instead of the intended unsettling backdrop.
- I don't agree that this was a good use of crosslinks. The whole crosslinking issue is one that, like other critique memes, has gotten out of control and is now completely untethered from actual content. We have people on one side who say "crosslink bad always no matter what", and it appears that here we have the other side of that argument, "crosslinking stuff is good because crosslinks." There is no thematic connection at all with the skip that you're writing about and the things that you chose to reference. And I cannot tell you how tired I am of seeing Montauk show up, again and again, in various places on this site. It's just sort of, "here's a few well-known articles to put in my article". I have no idea why the loop thing and why the girl who can't carry out commands are especially suited to be here. Thus, this is actually fairly good fodder for the anti-crosslink camp, as this comes across as coattail riding.
- "Evil/Incompetent Foundation" is not a trope I really care for at all. I'm more interested in the stories being told about the various anomalies encountered in the shared universe we inhabit than the organization that stewards them. I understand that's a personal thing, but the moralizing within the article about the whole "keeping secrets" thing was pretty sledgehammery, and I felt that could have been handled better. And I think that an organization so bad at doing its job of protecting consensus reality from the shadows that dozens of people literally show up at its sites because of an uncontained skip would have probably ended the world six times by now through its incompetence. Suspension of disbelief is always kind of tenuous around here, but the Foundation being poor at its mission always shatters it for me.
All in all, this adds up to a solid downvote from me.
Okay, to try to address your comments I'll use spoiler text, since it contains spoilers to my own headcanon on what is happening here:
First, to start off, here is my personal headcanon for what is happening:
SCP-2160 wasn't originally the broadcast, it was a psionic who's powers only work while asleep. It stole the memories of the skips shown out of the minds of employees and used the broadcast as a way to try to alert people to the Foundation holding prisoners against their will without being too conspicuous. Once that failed, it started placing red herrings to keep the Foundation busy as it ramped up its efforts, until it reached a point where it gave away too much information and the O5 figured out who was doing it. The Cayce Protocol was enacted, and the documentation of the show was put into the place of the original SCP-2160's designation to minimize questions.
Now, to address the specific points:
1. I realize this is concerned a widely used trope when it comes to the initial imagery, but that was a conscious decision. The psionic in question wanted to use something that would get people to be curious while trying to not raise too many red flags with The Foundation itself too quickly. If you want to get the greatest amount of attention, you go with something you know works. I realize that puts me at a disadvantage from the start, but I was approaching this from what would make sense for the events taking place, not what was easiest for me. This is my first SCP for the site, I very much decided from the word go that easy wasn't going to be a word that went along with this.
"Sheriff Buddy", specifically, was chosen because he's your "friend" who is saying one thing about keeping everyone safe while something else entirely is happening to you, which is how I imagine pretty much all humanoid skips feel about Foundation staff.
2. All the skips chosen were chosen for a very specific reason, namely the fact that to someone who doesn't know the specifics of said skip, they all appear to be trapped by the Foundation (and potentially experimented on) when one is denied total context of the situation. The psionic isn't omnipresent, and only has what it could steal from the memories of Foundation staff to work off of. Originally I had intended to make up events for each instance, but thedeadlymoose convinced me that there was enough meat with the idea that cross linking would work. I feel the story on its own if I had gone the other way still would have held up, and thus it's not "riding coattails".
3. This is probably one of those "agree to disagree" points. I don't think the Foundation is anymore omnipresent than the skip they are dealing with, and as a result it takes them a significant amount of time to weed through the dozens of potential culprits they have capable of doing such a thing. If anything I feel I show a Foundation being cautious and showing restraint to keep themselves from blowing their own cover. The "problems" this skip was causing realistically wasn't anything that they couldn't resolve by giving an amnestic to anyone that bothered them (which is why it's not rated as a Keter, because the actual effort required by the Foundation to minimize damage was fairly mundane). In the end, the culprit was discovered before any "real" damage was done and the protocols to resolve the matter were put into place. I feel they handled the matter as best they could within their own protocols to not escalate things unnecessarily.
First, to start off, here is my personal headcanon for what is happening:
Okay, that's great and all, but almost none of that is really apparent in what you wrote, so I'm unsure how I'm to contextualize my critique in light of that information. Also, that doesn't really make a whole lot of sense, because it's unclear whether a) the original SCP-2160 was a humanoid already contained that's doing this, which given the off-site recording studio is nonsensical, or b) the original SCP-2160 was an uncontained something-or-other, in which case how did it know about all this stuff?
The psionic in question wanted to use something that would get people to be curious while trying to not raise too many red flags with The Foundation itself too quickly. If you want to get the greatest amount of attention, you go with something you know works.
Soooo…this entity was intentionally using this kid's show format because it knew it was an overused trope in fiction? That's not really helping my reading of this.
All the skips chosen were chosen for a very specific reason, namely the fact that to someone who doesn't know the specifics of said skip, they all appear to be trapped by the Foundation (and potentially experimented on) when one is denied total context of the situation.
Here's the thing about that. That makes perfect sense as an in-universe justification. However, that's not enough, because if you rely strictly on "in-universe" justification, we should be posting HR leave request forms and cafeteria menus because the Foundation would be reasonably expected to have those things from that perspective. We don't post those, though, because out-of-universe, no one wants to read those things. So you still have to deal with the out-of-universe, reader's perspective issue, which again is that there is no thematic cohesion to this stuff, beyond "boy it's sad that these things are trapped at the Foundation," which is fairly thin IMO.
I feel the story on its own if I had gone the other way still would have held up, and thus it's not "riding coattails".
Um, no. "I could have written this without these references to well-known and popular articles and it wouldn't have been any different, but I left them in anyway" is not exactly a defense here. If this article would have held up on its own without those references, why put them in there? Other than "crosstesting is good because crosstests" tautologies?
I feel they handled the matter as best they could within their own protocols to not escalate things unnecessarily.
This point makes a little more sense after the authorial intent explanation above, although as previously stated there's still stuff that doesn't add up. Thing is, again, it was extremely difficult to arrive at that without the extra-article info. Because from my reading of it, based on what you wrote, it looks like a case of "random dude somewhere knows about the Foundation for some reason".
/forum/t-1075158/scp-2160#post-
page revision: 2, last edited: 15 Jan 2023 15:06