SCP-4526 / Discussion

This is the discussion related to the wiki page SCP-4526.

Author post

Erazm 20 Dec 2019 17:57

Boy, I hope I remember how to do this correctly.

This is my first attempt at uploading a skip in a long time. I'm trying to do something a little different from my past attempts that worked, but it's not too different. Please bring attention to any formatting errors—they're probably not deliberate!

I've included some of my thoughts about this piece in the collapsible, but my way of thinking about this is certainly not the only way—feel free to take it or leave it. Thank you for reading.

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Image attribution:

This image is in the public domain and borrowed from the Internet Archive Book Images, page 629 of "Florist's Review," 1912.

URL: https://www.flickr.com/photos/internetarchivebookimages/16518073220/

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+ Author opinions, interpretation, inspiration, etc.

I'll get this out of the way first: yep, in my head, this guy is portrayed by Danny Devito.

My political sympathies are probably clear enough. Still, I hope that I don't lean too hard in forcing an interpretation of Jimmy as truly benign or truly malign. I do think that the Foundation's tendency (in some canons) to cave to the irresistible temptation of using skips (often for very good reasons!) might be akin to opening Pandora's box. Someone's surely explored that in a more full and nuanced way than I did here, but it's a fun question to consider. I personally consider doubt and uncertainty to be a rich territory for dread, even when it grows out of a facially boring question like "how are we going to run employee grievance proceedings?"

I'm also very intrigued by the idea of a "non-unitary" Foundation—exploring the impact of competing factions, interests, and some of the divides that you see in every other part of society. I hope that some of this came through here in a way that you also consider intriguing and worth the read.

My vow: One day I'll write a skip that doesn't end with two collapsibles that contradict one another.

Inspiration, other than those mentioned in the skip, includes the bold and still-challenging SCP-1851-EX.

Last edited on 20 Dec 2019 17:58 by Erazm Show more

Fantom732 20 Dec 2019 20:49

Good tone, good hook, pretty good picture, fairly simple narrative but that suits the piece well. +1 for me, having a hard time understanding why the reception seems so mixed at this time.

Nagiros 21 Dec 2019 04:11

We secure, we contain, and we protect. And sometimes, those things protect us back.

This is a fantastic line and I would adore this piece if there weren't some details that I feel are out of place. Namely, the incredible lengths the Foundation goes to try to kill Jimmy or lure him out. I get the commentary about the higher-ups seeing him as a threat, but the list of methods they've used to try to harm him is so extensive that it becomes comical.

conceptual jamming, metaphorical dissolution, and other comparable physical and pataphysical assaults.

A lot of this stuff is supposed to be esoteric as hell, and I can't see it being utilized for a threat that only appears 2% of the time. I also had concerns about the crosslinking to Series II, which is only justified by "Jimmy likes these anomalies". Felt sort of OC-ish since there's not a greater narrative reason for their inclusion.

Otherwise this is right up my ally. I'd love an article about Foundation unions/managerial overstep/the Foundation's sordid past.

r0se 21 Dec 2019 06:26

Barely an upvote: tone drops at times, the name of "Jimmy no last name" puts out a little as silly for silly's sake vibe

I also agree with Nagiros above.

Junior Staff - Site Crit

gee0765 21 Dec 2019 09:53

ETA: The author has made some changes to address my issues, and I have now upvoted this piece. Therefore, the review below is outdated.

I saw this hovering around zero, and decided I'd justify my downvote here.

[+ Click for Crit]

Apart from the tonal issues mentioned in previous comments, there are other parts of this that I'm not a fan of.

Firstly, the redaction in the manifestation log doesn't work for me. Redactions and expungements only really work when it's fairly clear what's behind them looking at the context (SCP-4354 is a good example of this). However, due to the only real pattern in these manifestations being the result, I don't have the faintest idea of what's behind the redaction. And the result lacks the sort of absurdity you often see in successful redactions; reinstatement of unions does nothing for me as a reader.

The end also, really doesn't work for me. First off, the presence of the sentence mentioning that the lower class personnel can't open the high clearance note suggests that in your headcanon, personnel can see parts they can't open. In this case, this means that there is a note that the higher ups can see and can't open, and they've just done nothing about it. I don't think that in an organisation like this someone would just be allowed to badmouth the higher ups and get away with it. Looking past that, it's still a fairly generic message. 'The Foundation is bad' is a theme that's tackled a lot, and just narrowing it down to the leadership being bad didn't do enough for me.

I also really don't get what the object class and conproc strikethrough add to the article. There's no addenda mentioning an update in real-time and the presence of these changes adds nothing to the experience of the article, so they just seem unnecessary and led me to expect something that wasn't there.

All these issues considered, I was led to downvote this article.

Disclaimer: Opinions expressed in this review do not reflect the opinions of SCP Wiki staff as a whole. Please respond to gee0765 or contact the captain of the Site Criticism Team, SoullessSingularity, for any questions or concerns relating to this review.

Last edited on 29 Dec 2019 13:40 by gee0765 Show more

Re: Junior Staff - Site Crit

Erazm 22 Dec 2019 00:01

Thank you, I appreciate the thoughtful critique. The points you take issue with include a few of my nagging doubts when I pulled the trigger on publishing.

+ Specific issues.

I hoped that the redacted log would suggest a very large and serious intra-Foundation conflict, when the one right before that wasn’t redacted had to deal with XK-Class scenarios. Ultimately, it’s good to get feedback that an audience didn’t see it as suggesting something big or even something intriguing. The high and low-level addendums were also something that could have been handled with more care: I considered a whole fabricated story like “we need to quarantine any potential cognitohazards and keep this info among the low-level staff only” but was concerned it might have been a bit too much duplicity built into what is, at the end of the day, meant to be technical documentation. You’re also right about the strikethrough.

I’ll think over your comments and think about ways to edit and improve. Thanks again.

Last edited on 22 Dec 2019 00:04 by Erazm Show more

Wombat140 21 Dec 2019 23:17

I like it. Are you implying that the main reason it's so hard to destroy is actually sabotage by the lower ranks? Haha. Very well written with all the lifelike detail.

I didn't mind the crosslinks since I hadn't read either of those before and they were just my cup of tea.

I do agree about some of the neutralization methods mentioned. With the amount of trouble this thing could cause if it wanted to, and its only semi-friendly air, the O5 Council bringing out the big guns to stop it seems reasonable, but you're mentioning some things there that I don't think are supposed to be common knowledge in the Foundation, in an entry that we know for SURE is accessible to Level 1 researchers and upwards! If anywhere, maybe they could go in the Level 4 note.

weedfire24 22 Dec 2019 23:03

Theres a lot of dissonance in this skip for me, it feels like you're trying to be silly and serious at the same time.

-Jimmy ,no name, what a wacky guy huh?"
-Oh he has access to the entirety of the Foudation's history
-Oh and his actions led directly to the removal of an O5
-But thats fine, the rest of the O5 aren't that concerned with this guy, and no one's doing anything to stop it because theyre lazy schlubs who now have less paperwork

I want to like it, and I was hovering over the upvote button, but its just…
It doesn't feel like it follows a consistent internal logic, you really should have aimed lower than "this guy unseated someone who's more powerful than POTUS and prevented the literal apocalypse from happening" if you wanted it to be taken with a more light-hearted context of researchers being happy an anomaly is giving them less work to do, since the site directors will immediately fire the person that sent that letter at the bottom due to criminal negligence and refusal of work orders.

Concept is amazing, and super fun. Execution leaves me a little worried.

Downvote for now, but would really prefer to upvote all things considered, so fix it up a little

Wombat140 28 Dec 2019 00:26

My understanding was that the O5 got removed by the other O5s because he did something very bad, and Jimmy was just the one who told them what he'd done. The awkward thing about Jimmy is that his arguments seem to be always *justified*. It's hard to publicly call for the head of somebody who is known to only go after people who are doing something illegal! At least, on those grounds. His knowledge of all the secret files is still a massive security risk, of course.

Not sure that it's about the lower-ranking researchers being *lazy*, more that they're deliberately shielding him because they consider him to be on their side and think the O5s only have it in for him because he spoiled their nasty schemes.

It's still true that that letter at the end is awkward - the idea is that site directors shouldn't have access to it, but in such a context, any director who saw that there was a note on the file that they didn't have access to would immediately want to know what it was and hunt around until they found a low-level researcher who was prepared to spill the beans! I don't know what another reasonably succint way of expressing this would be. Hopefully the author can think up something.

Wombat140 02 May 2021 05:17

Just come back here and seen the revision. Very clever!

Underrated

Samuel Page 02 Jul 2020 14:23

I definitely like this one, maybe I've just been romanticizing Danny Devito lawyers and courtroom drama recently but either way it's a +1 from me!

Re: Underrated

Erazm 10 Jan 2021 16:53

Thank you for reading. I appreciate that my head-casting of DVD is spreading. He's a powerful meme!

do_the_right_thing 10 Feb 2021 22:58

This is a fascinating slice of organization-based storytelling that can only be done with the Foundation universe as a frame.

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Spoon!