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SCP-4341 / Discussion
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This is the discussion related to the wiki page SCP-4341.
(account deleted)Superbly disconcerting. Gave me a real, tangible knot of unease — it's honestly hard to put into words how just plain off this thing is. Extremely strong upvote.
The fact that I was expecting the ending to be "SCP-4341 is an animal" is basically a microcosm of everything I dislike about the article — it follows a highly predictable trajectory of Foundation personnel being overtaken by the anomaly in a manner that's flagrantly derivative of more articles than I can count, and the constant repetition of "SCP-4341 is NOT an animal" is just irritating.
Yeah that's entirely fair. I just changed up the ending (cut everything after the exploration log), so I hope that should now lessen the generic path the original ending had.
I’m not married to any one ending route right now so I’m open for any alternatives!
Ohey a new skip for me to do a crit thingy with!
using bullets containing HCl capsules that burst on impact
This just kind of feels like total scifi overkill. Even super high concentrations of HCl wouldn't cause a ridiculous amount of immediate damage. Stuff takes a good couple hours to really show results (it also doesn't really hurt much due to killing your nerve endings, fun fact!), and honestly a deadlier (e.g. larger, explosive, incendiary, fragmenting, etc) bullet would just do the job better.
its appendages convert into hyphae
Holy shit, FUNGUS PEOPLE?
after six minutes plasmodium structures grow into the wheels and internal mechanisms of χ2 and χ3, disabling both.
Missing a comma. Should be "after six minutes, plasmodium structures […]". Also, holy shit the wheels become malaria protists?
Drone κ1 is crushed beneath additional Jonathan Brams.
Does this mean the drone was crushed by the one extra Mr. Brams, or that there were multiple instances of Mr. Brams that crushed the drone?
- Detonation of a neutron bomb
Neutron bombs specifically are basically dirty bombs in regards to how much radiation they spit like everywhere. Considering most living things are more resistant to radiation than humans, this feels like a bad choice of nuclear weapon if radioactive fallout is their primary concern.
Personnel are to be reminded that SCP-4341-B is not an animal.
This kind of feels like a rehash of the "You do not recognize the bodies in the water" thing, and I'm not sure I'm a fan of it to be honest. As such…
SCP-4341-B is an animal.
This is pretty much the exact same payoff. Doesn't really do anything for me, and honestly it just took the wind right out of your sails at the most critical point of the article. I was fairly sold on an upvote pretty much until this.
Overall, the pacing here was excellent and you built a wonderful sense of unease the entire article, only to completely offset all of that with that format screwy infohazard stuff that has already been done before. That really killed it for me, and I find myself mostly agreeing with ARD here. Reluctant -1 I think.
E: New update pretty much fixed most of the serious gripes I had here, and preserves a wicked amount of tension. Reversed my vote.
Thanks for the crit! Regarding the HCl and neutron bomb stuff I can change up tomorrow. Regarding the Brams it was meant to be multiple instances of Brams, so I can clarify that tomorrow as well.
Glad the revised ending works better!
I don't think the neutron bomb is an especially bad fit. It works if you need something that will affect every nook and cranny. Anything too big, tough or lucky to be killed by the radiation then finds its food and water source poisoned.
Perhaps they could try firebombing instead. It'd be a resource-efficient way to sterilise an area that size. Any suggestions?
SCP-4341 doesn't actually care about destroying or infecting the outside world, just Foundation staff and assets.
Bingo.
The Foundation is the only harmful force acting on it, so SCP-4341 wants them gone so it can keeping living safely and not being animals.
The continued assertion that they're not animals would make somewhat more sense if it wasn't clear that they were fungi.
..except that they aren't all fungi. There are assertion within the article mentioning protozoan and plantae lifeform being anomalously transformed to replace animal lifeform. The phrase "non-animal lifeform" is both appropriate and accurate in this context.
I love this. Just the right level of confusing. Really evokes the "What exactly am I reading?" aspect of first finding the SCP wiki. The level of variety in the addenda really help too.
I found the containment procedures to be a bit of a difficult read. (Typical impulses to skip to the description.) I'd suggest simplifying the English a little bit rather than cutting details. The details are actually great once I re-read them with context.
Keep up the good work!
Me, reading this item:
This is an infohazard.
This is an incredibly pervasive cognitive hazard.
This is impossible, thus it cannot exist. It must be an infohazard.
Yet… is it?
Am I not animal life?
dammit the tension +1
Definitely gave me some existential chills! While the concept here isn't totally original, I think the prose alone stands out enough to warrant a +1!
Really liked it, reading the new ending without knowing that it had a previous one, and then seeing the author spoiler of “scp-4341-B is not an animal” really tickled my paranoia.
Just a extremely small nit pick:
Researchers identified Landon as being animal life.
Should this perhaps be changed to “Researchers incorrectly identified Landon as being animal life.”?
Please don't kill me verbally
No, because humans are animal life.
You were expecting a forum signature, weren't you?
Oke, but Landon was made of mycelium and plants here. Not very “animal life” to me.
Please don't kill me verbally
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page revision: 2, last edited: 15 Jan 2023 15:06
