Rewrite/update of a previous SCP I posted.
Giving bearhugs to the unsuspecting since 1872.
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This is the discussion related to the wiki page SCP-2768.
(account deleted)So what happens when one of the adults does touch the baby?
The adults are potential futures for the child. If one of them managed to touch it, then that adult would disappear (as would all the others) and now be what the child will grow up to become. Although they don't know/can't articulate it, that's why the adults are so hostile to each other; all want to be "real" and none want to be "unmade". That's also why brand new versions are hybrids: the potentials are winnowing and "evolving" into the "best" future for the kid.
Ironically, this entire anomaly would completely vanish if the Foundation would just let one of the adults touch the kid. All the others vanish, the kid starts aging/developing normally, etc. So the Foundation is unknowingly preserving the anomaly.
Giving bearhugs to the unsuspecting since 1872.
If there was some hint of this in the article, I'd upvote.
There can only be one! (This reminded me too much of Highlander in the early paragraphs.)
All joking aside, love the concept. Very well put together, and not overly complicated. +1
I recall this from last time around, and the revision still highlights an issue I consider primary—the lack of any reasonable path from what's on the page to the spoiler'd premise here in the comments.
In addition, if this is meant to be a child in the midst of possibilities for his future, why are they all stereotypes that can be summed up by an attachment to a single object? Is this child doomed to live as some kind of stock character from a Saturday morning cartoon if one of these boxed personality archetypes touches him?
Or is the idea rather that these single personality elements will kill each other over and over, blending into more nuanced future potential selves with each pseudo-murder?
Either way, none of these questions can be asked, let alone answered, without your provided spoiler. What's on the page is just…mildly odd. There must be a way to link your intended result to the work while retaining some mystery and effort on the part of the reader.
Or is the idea rather that these single personality elements will kill each other over and over, blending into more nuanced future potential selves with each pseudo-murder?
That's how I see it. Of course the Foundation won't turn the containment areas into a non-stop deathmatch so the process is halted. This is why the current instances still remain stereotypical.
I'd love to see this deathmatch happen.
Throw the baby in there for some fun.
Oh, dear. We've had this discussion. White is just fine.
Stop triggering me please.
I'm Canadikin and your username is triggering to me. Sorry.
I don't understand the necessity of providing gender information for the -2 instances. Simply noting that they're genetically identical to each other and the baby tells the reader everything they need to know, both in- and out-of-character.
For that matter, there's no compelling reason to list the race of anything here either. It's not obviously relevant to anything here from a literary standpoint, and from a containment standpoint, they've already fucked up horribly if they have to rely on a written racial description to identify the thing(s).
if your reading this your gay
Because, at risk of being offensive (and I'm really not trying to be at all, seriously), I've noticed a few individuals on the site really pushing inclusion of alt-gender-identity / alt-sexual-identity bits into articles, even when it makes little to no sense for it to be included.
So, because they're fairly vociferous about how that's an issue for them in the comments, a lot of people seem to be including it now to avoid downvotes or gain a few upvotes. At least, that's been my perception and may be subject to confirmation bias; grain of salt, etc.
It's good to include those things when you're trying to establish a character, since a character's positioning in society can be important to understanding their thoughts and actions, and """alt""" genders aren't somehow less warranted than other ones. This SCP isn't a character piece, though, and it doesn't need that information at all; I would have no issue with this information being included in a tale that then made these things matter somehow — same as with any other piece of biographical information. This piece identifies the race and gender of the -2s, then moves on to things for which race and gender really do not matter. Look up conservation of detail (I'm on mobile) for a longer idea of what I'm talking about.
Moreover, I've never actually noticed an article get any downvotes for sticking with white/cis/male humanoids — hell, thedeadlymoose and I probably feel the strongest about SCPs being none of those things of anyone around here, and neither of us have (to my knowledge) ever delivered a down/no-vote informer strongly by a lack of diversity or whatever you wanna call it, or an upvote seriously influenced by inclusion. Any serious pressure to include these characters is either internal or imaginary.
If I had to speculate on their inclusion, I would guess that the information was added because we subconsciously categorize people by where we think they fall in these categories to the point that it would feel natural to make it a part of any serious description of a person, regardless of whether or not it actually matters. Even I, being consciously aware of this, don't consistently catch myself doing it.
if your reading this your gay
Well, I'm in 100% agreement with you about making it about narrative necessity and not any sort of personal predilection otherwise… Which is why I got into it once or twice with another forum member, once because they seemed dead-set on pushing the "well why wasn't this SCP tested with trans people" thing, when the answer was "because the SCP makes people escape forever from the Foundation, so it was only tested on two people".
It would have literally made the article worse/nonsensical to include more people of any sexual or gender persuasion at all. I'm glad that you haven't noticed a couple people frequently commenting about inclusion of gay/trans/etc. issues into articles, because I feel like I've been seeing it pop up a lot recently, and it's good to get an outside perspective.
As for the six quote-marks around "alt", I take it that that's not your preferred term? I seriously couldn't care less than I already do about what people's gender identities and sexual preferences are (in a non-judgmental, just-don't-give-a-damn-as-long-as-you're-happy-and-not-hurting-someone-nonconsentually way), but a lot of people are pretty sensitive about the terminology; is there a less bothersome or offensive term you would prefer when discussing this in the future?
/forum/t-1270979/scp-2768#post-
page revision: 2, last edited: 15 Jan 2023 15:06
