House of minds (Redone)

Summary:

House that reads minds and changes accordingly

House of minds (Redone)

GostSpin 10 Feb 2020 14:30

A revamp of an SCP I was working on.

The basic concept is a house that reads the entire history of it's inhabitants and it slowly changes accordingly. Each person has a unique experience in the house, and every owner that lived in the house has either gone crazy, or have been lost for a while (spiking huge red flags for the foundation)

Now that I've explain what it is, I'm planning to have the foundation do research on the house, where they add 4 D-Class personnel in the house at the same time, and watch how the house slowly changes for each of them, and how it combines all of their fears and insecurities into one huge psychological torment.

A few things I should note are: The house itself isn't inherently 'evil' or alive, it's simply doing whatever the person's mind is doing, just projecting it physically. You also need to be in the house for around a month or so, before you notice things slowly changing around you, eating away at your sense of reality slowly, but surely. (unless someone's fear is being surprised, then the house will most definitely bring a surprise).

I'd love to know what everyone thinks of this :)

Last edited on 10 Feb 2020 19:33 by GostSpin Show more

Re: House of minds (Redone)

snuggly face 10 Feb 2020 17:41

I love this, the idea is a story, which is great, a few short horror movies set in a Foundation-style big brother show, basically a house of horrors. in a collapsible, would you mind summarising a few examples for what happened to residents before containment and to the D-class?

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thank you the reading and have the best day

Last edited on 10 Feb 2020 17:42 by snuggly face Show more

Forum Criticism Team - Junior Staff Post

gee0765 10 Feb 2020 17:52

snuggly face, this feedback is vague and unhelpful. As stated in the conceptual critique guidelines found here: http://www.scp-wiki.net/forum/t-9804362/so-you-want-to-be-a-concept-reviewer#post-4105023

Give the author a direction to follow!

• Just saying "needs work"/"needs more"/"has potential" and leaving it at that is vague and unhelpful because the author doesn't know what specifically needs work or has potential.
• Just saying "I like this a lot" / "I don't like this" is also too vague. What specific parts were good and can be kept after edits? What parts are weaker and can be trimmed?

Please look at other responses in this forum to work out what is an acceptable level of detail.

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Author, you may need to manually seek out crit now, as experienced reviewers prioritise threads with zero responses. This can be done by PMing users on the Butterfly Squad Roster, or by asking in the IRC Chatrooms.

Forum Criticism Team - Staff Post - Closed

TheMightyMcB 10 Feb 2020 19:14

snuggly face, Given that staff has repeatedly needed to address your feedback because it has been unhelpful, please refrain from giving any further critique on forum drafts and ideas. This decision is appealable to the forum criticism team.

This is a closed staff post. Do not reply if you are not staff.

Re: House of minds (Redone)

(account deleted) 10 Feb 2020 22:55

Interesting idea, but first of all you have to decide, where is the house and how it looks from the outside. After that it would be very foundation-style to do test on animals. You could bring a dog or ape together with the D-classes to add something else in the story that isn't necessarily horror. Finally, I advise you to decrease the time in which paranormal events occur, I think it is quite unlikely that the foundation will be able to notice something so slow.

Last edited on 10 Feb 2020 22:56 by (account deleted) Show more

Re: House of minds (Redone)

gee0765 10 Feb 2020 19:57

Summoned by PM

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So, whatever the method, things that make you go crazy are generally not received especially well. They're very often unrealistic and applied to situations where a normal person definitely wouldn't go crazy, and also just don't really make for that much of an interesting story. For this anomaly, I feel that the former is especially obvious. People would move out/contact others long before they could die or go crazy, and the Foundation would discover it by other means.

As for the overall big picture, I'm not really a fan. It feels like it would just end up being a fairly standard horror-type thing, with descriptions of lots of scary things that frighten the D-class. Like, there's two broad classifications of things that scare people: things that scare nearly everyone and specific irrational phobias. An article focusing on the former would feel especially cliche and tropey, and implementing the latter (things like being scared of buttons) wouldn't have any impact on the vast majority of the audience. The lack of specificity on the actual experience or why they had to choose four D-class (one or two is surely enough?) only add to my overall lack of enthusiasm towards this concept.

Last edited on 11 Feb 2020 16:57 by gee0765 Show more

Re: House of minds (Redone)

GostSpin 11 Feb 2020 18:15

Hmm let me explain it a bit better. I used "go crazy" as an umbrella term (though now that I realize it's kinda distasteful oops). By "crazy" I meant they develop some sort of mental ailment, whether it be something small, like prolonged paranoia or anxiety, or something more serious such as PTSD or Schizophrenia. The people who make it out usually have a shift of personality,for example, someone whose extroverted and outgoing could go to a shy and generally nervous wreck. And let me remind you, I never said the house would project only their fears. It's not house of fears, it's a house of minds. It changes accordingly to the persons mind, and if someone comes in with a generally cheery and happy attitude, the house will escalate that emotion to the point where the person needs the house to feel truly happy and alive. Secondly, they don't move away. They are literally lost and can't be found on the globe. One day they entered the house and they never came back out, and not a single trace can be found of them inside the house. THIS is what caught the foundations attention.

+ show block

Again, the house is not a house of fears. I wouldn't dare have a person go in with a fear of spiders and clowns and make some stupid clown spider hybrid come and kill them. I really want it to be subtle. The house has no psychic powers that force emotions on people, like making them feel fear or happiness or whatever. It does it ALL physically, yet subtly, but still affecting them more psychologically. To explain myself more I'm going to give an example

A man who feels lost in life would then make the house slowly turn into a huge maze

A woman who has deep self appearance/body dysphoria issues, would slowly make every object more and more reflective, until every object in the house is some sort of mirror, distorting her view.

These are generally small/non harmful cases (Unless the man can't find a way out of the maze)

But imagine if you add a nihilist, who feels life is meaningless, with a few other people. Imagine what the house would do to the other people, considering it's being told their lives are meaningless.

What I actually have planned with the four people is a sort of long research log that focuses more on the people than the house (My original plan was to have multiple little research logs that would explain what the house did then move on, but I was discouraged from that on my previous post), and yes, I could totally just use 2 people, four is just what I thought would be more interesting, but two could work too.

Hopefully this clears some things up, I'd like to know what you think.

As a courtesy to our readers on mobile devices, please collapse long posts. ~Zyn

Last edited on 12 Feb 2020 06:54 by Zyn Show more

Re: House of minds (Redone)

gee0765 12 Feb 2020 22:44

I'm not sure this clarification really changes my opinion on the overall concept. The examples you've given don't feel as if they'd really have any impact on people who aren't suffering from the exact problems they're meant to represent, and even if they are the effects aren't striking me as particularly evocative. Like, you as a reader aren't directly in this situation, and hearing about it second-hand never has as much of an impact.

By "crazy" I meant they develop some sort of mental ailment, whether it be something small, like prolonged paranoia or anxiety, or something more serious such as PTSD or Schizophrenia.

Mental illness is an extremely sensitive topic, and suggesting everyone in this house develops one while also insisting that "The house has no psychic powers that force emotions on people" comes across as a gross oversimplification and generalisation of the background conditions that lead to conditions like these.

I also don't really get your insistence on the effects when there's a nihilist. All I can think of is that it just harms or kills the people in the house, which isn't an especially interesting plot point. We've had enough SCPs that kill you that just cranking up the danger level to try and make it more interesting doesn't help that much in the originality front. Overall, I'll say that I personally don't really see much interesting in this concept, and would recommend reaching out to other members of the Butterfly Squad or asking in the IRC Chatrooms to see if others have different views on the idea.

Re: House of minds (Redone)

GostSpin 13 Feb 2020 14:55

I'm very much over simplifying all of my examples here since it's just an idea page, I have very different plans for when I do my draft. I can assure you I'm not going to make it so that something small and mundane changes these peoples lives. Every example I've said thus far is what it is. An example. It's not going to be in the story, since I plan something different. As I said, the house is different for everyone. That's the point. Everyone is effected differently, whether the house not doing much for them, or changing their lives (for the better or for the worse). I'm not trying to grossly oversimplify mental illness, just giving an example on what it could do. Obviously the reflective surfaces thing isn't going to give someone PTSD for the rest of their life, I know that, it was just a small simple example of the ability of the house. I'm sorry if I offended you, it wasn't my plan at all, just wanted to keep things short and not go too much into detail.
I'm not sure you really see what I'm trying to do here, so I'll contact a butterfly squad member later.

Last edited on 13 Feb 2020 14:58 by GostSpin Show more

Re: House of minds (Redone)

FISH35 14 Feb 2020 08:09

[Placeholder. Irl stuff happening. Will crit soon]

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I am FISHES, but I am also BananaMan