SCP-2140 / Discussion

This is the discussion related to the wiki page SCP-2140.

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Author Post

sirpudding 24 Jul 2015 07:03

2/2140 Clearance Confirmed…

The glyph image is by Petrograd. He used fonts by Juan Carlos Porcel from http://elderprops.tumblr.com/post/89934858272/free-fonts-necrofonticon2. All under CC.

The deep storage facility is Svalbard seed vault IMG 8887 by Bjoertvedt also CC.

Word count as of posting: 492.

I was vaguely inspired by "The Retgun" by Tim Pratt and GURPS Horror: The Madness Dossier by Kenneth Hite.

Thanks to Mr. Wrong, Eta Carinae, and especially psul and Petrograd for review!

Edit: Kallinikos was the guy who brought Greek Fire to Byzantium and oversaw the first known compartmentalized development of a weapon system.

Last edited on 03 Sep 2015 01:04 by sirpudding Show more

Re: Author Post

Agent MacLeod 20 Aug 2015 17:29

So the picture uses a real font…

Does it have a translation? I was trying to figure out whether or not it does by comparing the website the font came from to the picture, but I couldn't find any matching glyphs.

Re: Author Post

sirpudding 23 Aug 2015 21:16

I think Petrograd chopped them up to match the glyphs I designed. There's some shoutouts to other bits of the scipverse there but in this iteration they are so heavily stylized I wouldn't expect them to be recognizable.

Re: Author Post

Petrograd 08 Sep 2015 06:24

Yep, they're chopped to hell and back. Admittedly, I'm now deeply curious as to any references I might've obscured.

Also, I got the idea of chopping up glyph fonts as well as the weird fonts themselves from Propnomicon, a Lovecraftian prop blog I enjoy.

Re: Author Post

sirpudding 08 Sep 2015 06:28

The Hanged King was there (along with an homage to the Yellow Sign). There were some others but I don't remember, I can look at the hand drawn one again and see what I can recall later.

Re: Author Post

James Gabriel Morgan 19 Jul 2017 14:28

I decoded as many of the glyphs as I could, but I don't know what to do with the black circles or any of the letters decoded. :/

+ Show image

Last edited on 19 Jul 2017 15:22 by Accelerando Show more

Re: Author Post

Scorpion451 19 Jul 2017 14:42

It's not a secret code- the references are pictographic. Also, collapse your images in the forums.

Re: Author Post

sirpudding 19 Jul 2017 16:41

Here are the shitty hand drawn and MSPaint versions by me that were the basis:
http://scpsandbox2.wikidot.com/local--files/sirpudding/Glyph.jpg
http://scpsandbox2.wikidot.com/local--files/sirpudding/Glyph.gif
There are symbols here that are supposed to be the black sun, the hanged king, the yellow sign, and antlers for the scarlet king or DEER.

Last edited on 19 Jul 2017 16:42 by sirpudding Show more

Ihp 24 Jul 2015 07:20

I'm sorry, but this just doesn't work for me.

Thaumiels are meant to be big, grand things, and quite frankly, if I had to describe one in under 500 words, I would have ripped my keyboard to shreds out of frustration. Good on you for managing to do it, but it's way too short for its own good.

Downvoted.

sirpudding 24 Jul 2015 07:56

I originally conceived of this as much longer, but it kept ending up a bunch of boring policy documents, ethics memos, and twisted retrocausility reasoning over testing statistics. I really believe this works better if the reader tries to figure out what's in all those appendices themselves.

Last edited on 24 Jul 2015 08:05 by sirpudding Show more

Ihp 26 Jan 2021 06:18

Jesus Christ 2015 me had bad takes for just about every occasion. Vote flipped to a +1, don't know what I was thinking.

Communism will win 24 Jul 2015 07:34

Retrocausality stuff is always fun for me to wrap my head around, and this raises some interesting questions about the nature of the Foundation. Well-done.

I'm not quite sure how it's Thaumiel, though. Care to explain?

---

if your reading this your gay

sirpudding 24 Jul 2015 07:48

It can be used:

1. To counteract the effect of any SCP-2140-1 instance, which would otherwise be a Keter class anomaly.
2. To counteract any anomaly that works by conversion, possession, transformation and so on, as long as the victim is still sapient and capable of viewing the glyphs. With the side effect that the person will now have been a loyal Foundation person with 2/2140 clearance, but that's probably better than a meat puppet for space worms or whatever.
3. To turn moles.
4. To instantly recruit (presumably in an emergency).
5. As a weapon by turning enemies into allies. As a weapon it's just as useful tactically as it is strategically.

Last edited on 08 Nov 2015 20:47 by sirpudding Show more

Communism will win 24 Jul 2015 08:56

Works for me.

---

if your reading this your gay

MrWrong 24 Jul 2015 08:03

+ show block

personnel with 2140/2 clearance or better

Why not "higher" instead of "better"? "Better" feels a bit casual and broad for my tastes.

No record exists of any other person viewing the complete image including any experimental test subjects (such as D-Class personnel).

Feels a bit fragmented in my opinion. But what I'm getting from this is that there are no records of people who have viewed the complete image. Yes?

Pros:

• I like the usage of the image and its meta implications. All viewers of it would end up becoming loyal to the Foundation, screwing espionage attempts very badly.

Cons:

• This does, however, suffer from a "Show, not tell" scenario. While it is admittedly difficult to express retcon via the written medium, it is hard to buy that the Foundation realised that and successfully reverse-engineered something to help them out.
• How would the Foundation come to realise it can be weaponised? There's a whole lot of stuff to add on from here. Rather than a short article, I would call it the tip of an iceberg.

Verdict: Downvote (but I believe it is worthy of expansion)

Last edited on 24 Jul 2015 08:04 by MrWrong Show more

sirpudding 24 Jul 2015 08:11

Why not "higher" instead of "better"? "Better" feels a bit casual and broad for my tastes.

Okay.

But what I'm getting from this is that there are no records of people who have viewed the complete image. Yes?

There's records of people who have viewed the complete image. They are all loyal Foundation personnel with 2/2140 clearance. There's no record of anybody else viewing the complete image, because viewing the complete image makes you always have been a loyal Foundation person with 2/2140 clearance. That's what it does.

The point of that sentence is that every D-Class they've tried to test in on is now an Agent or Researcher or whatever instead and never was a D-Class, so there's no record of the test.

There's a whole lot of timeline that's just going to be inaccessible by this point in the process, including most of the testing of 1-D.

Verdict: Downvote (but I believe it is worthy of expansion)

Sorry to hear, that. I don't think I'll be expanding it unless I can figure out a not boring way to do it.

Last edited on 08 Nov 2015 20:50 by sirpudding Show more

MrWrong 24 Jul 2015 12:10

Sorry to hear, that. I don't think I'll be expanding it unless I can figure out a not boring way to do it.

I will admit that for it to work to its fullest, one must go all out with it. Since I know what you intend for this SCP to be about, I can easily imagine very in-depth stuff about this. Its maximum potential, I envision, would be to explain the Hell out of it and reveal it in its entirety (origins, implications, fridge logic/horror).

That would befit the Thaumiel class and I think you have improved since the initial draft (most of my initial scepticism then is removed).

Last edited on 24 Jul 2015 12:11 by MrWrong Show more

sirpudding 24 Jul 2015 17:56

I just can't imagine any of that stuff is interesting to read or write. "Appendix D Section 3, Ethics of Personal Identity in Retrocausation Events" "Appendix B Section 4 Statistical Basis for Determining Unlikeliness of Personal History Relative to Assumed Altered Existence" Who wants to read that?

Last edited on 24 Jul 2015 18:28 by sirpudding Show more

MrWrong 24 Jul 2015 18:03

Not the appendix. I would say how the Foundation goes from "It's something we don't understand at all" to "Let's harness it for our use" and the implications that arise from a Foundation using these things to enforce loyalty.

sirpudding 24 Jul 2015 18:13

That's Appendix B: Theory of Operation and Appendix D Ethical Considerations respectively.

MrWrong 24 Jul 2015 18:16

God, you have it all thought out, didn't you…

sirpudding 24 Jul 2015 18:23

Yes. Shouldn't I have? The way you write an iceberg is to imagine the whole thing but only write the part you can see…

Appendix A: BASILISK Protocol - Deployment of SCP-2140
Appendix B: Theory of Operation
Appendix C: Hostile Instances
Appendix D: Ethical Considerations
Appendix E: Project Kallinikos

Last edited on 24 Jul 2015 18:26 by sirpudding Show more

Eta Carinae 25 Jul 2015 11:46

The way you write an iceberg is to imagine the whole thing but only write the part you can see…

Well said! And well-done too.. This is precisely what I tried to do with my own SC, and… it didn't work!

Its maximum potential, I envision, would be to explain the Hell out of it and reveal it in its entirety (origins, implications, fridge logic/horror).

I don't agree with MrWrong. This is precisely what makes this skip so good: it gives you a lot of thinking to do on your own - 'what if…?' and 'Oh, but does this mean that…?'. This is why I like it so much.

Thekillerax 24 Jul 2015 10:44

Always a sucker for retrocausality, and what happened in the incident log is pretty damn interesting, but I think it ends too soon. I know you've stated before that you tried to make it longer and it just ended up boring, but I really don't know what to say other than this isn't doing it for me quite yet at this stage. No vote.

---

And if the whole world is crashing down… fall through space out of mind with me.

weizhong 24 Jul 2015 12:46

There was a lot here that could have been expanded on, and I think it's deserving of a much greater space than this contest would allow. -1

Rounzie 24 Jul 2015 15:29

So this is getting sent out to the Chaos Insurgency listserv, yes? I liked it, yay retcon stuff.

sirpudding 24 Jul 2015 18:29

I had seriously considering doing the image as a gif, where every ten seconds or so it flashed a version with the CI logo instead…

Last edited on 24 Jul 2015 18:30 by sirpudding Show more

enemyofentropy 25 Jul 2015 01:10

There's still time!

Rounzie 25 Jul 2015 23:58

0o0 Thaumiel indeed.

Neghtasro 24 Jul 2015 16:02

It's a coherent, sensible Thaumiel in fewer than 500 words. +1.

Kalinin 31 Jul 2015 20:41

It's a coherent, sensible Thaumiel in fewer than 500 words. +1.

This is a concise, accurate representation of my feelings on this article.

Mostly. I will add that I liked the amount of information that was packed into this. I was able to glean the implications that the author stated upthread by reading the article, and that's a sign of good writing.

sirpudding 31 Jul 2015 20:47

Thanks!

I think it is just successful enough now that I am inclined to leave it up as is. Any (if any) expansion that I will do in order to try to please the people who said "not enough" will be in the form of filling out the Appendices as supplements.

This isn't as successful as I hoped, but it isn't a failure either.

Guilliman 24 Jul 2015 18:45

Image isn't working for me.

Or could it be that I am an anti-Foundation agent immune to the effect? *dramatic chord*

Last edited on 24 Jul 2015 18:46 by Guilliman Show more

sirpudding 24 Jul 2015 18:59

Image isn't working for me.

You can't see it on your device? Or don't like it? Or are you just joking that it is fictionl?

Guilliman 25 Jul 2015 18:00

I can't see it

sirpudding 26 Jul 2015 05:01

Weird. It's a PNG, and it works on all my devices.

Can anyone on the technical team shed some light on this?

MrWrong 25 Jul 2015 18:01

Or could it be that I am an anti-Foundation agent immune to the effect? *dramatic chord*

So there could be anti-memes whereby one escapes SCP-2140's effect? This opens the floor for Tales, at the minimum.

sirpudding 26 Jul 2015 17:40

I think there are some obvious limitations suggested by the description anyway:

1. It only works on "persons". This is probably not strictly humans, but there are sapients it may not work on. Especially as a result of #3.
2. It needs to be seen, in it's entirety, so therefore probably doesn't work on somebody with significant visual impairment (although a bas relief version might work by touch or echolocation). It may not work on individuals with significant brain damage to the broca's area (testing is planned).
3. It probably has probability based limits on the amount of alteration possible, it can't work on entities whose existing personal histories are radically divergent from any possible Foundation employee. This doesn't show up in the testing, because the Foundation hasn't attempted any of these tests.
4. It is obviously a fairly dangerous Keter-class object in its own right, and abuse has obvious terrible consequences (an AK-class end of the world scenario in which all persons are Foundation employees with 2140/2 clearance).

rumetzen 24 Jul 2015 18:56

I like the idea, but it isn't going to work in a less than 500 word format.

sirpudding 24 Jul 2015 19:03

This seems to be a common complaint. I guess if it is still floundering after the contest I may take it down and try to expand it (if I can figure out how anyway).

Last edited on 24 Jul 2015 19:04 by sirpudding Show more

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