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SCP-5282: Building Blocks. A girl and her set of alphabet blocks. Don't make any spelling errors!
This is my first SCP article. I'll provide a link to the greenlights on this page's Ideas Forum thread if requested.
Feel free to share your thoughts in the comments or through PM!
Did I greenlight this? I don't remember, but I know I reviewed it. I think you did a good job! I feel like the end needs a bit more of a punch to tie things together, but this is a solid article! +1
I agree with you on that, but I might have to do that at a later time. Right now, I can't really seem to find a place where I could add any more narrative in. I'll try my best to fix this!
Edit: The punch has been delivered. Hope it's a good one!
I see that the dad one says data redacted now, and that there’s white text sprinkled throughout building up to a sentence. I guess I don’t see how it adds, so it doesn’t do much for me. I still love the basic idea though so +1 remains.
Good Job! I'm Impressed, really. When I saw how negative the Scp-5222 article is, I was scared my SCP, Currently in progress at the sandbox, would be a disaster. Good Creativity
+1
This is pretty well-written but I can't help but feel like there's not much here — her parents are dead but I'm not sure what I'm supposed to do with that information since it doesn't inform how I read the rest of the story.
I remember reading about this on both Ideas Critique, and on Drafts Critique! Congratulations on posting your first article to the site!
Just one thing though. I personally don't see why SCP-5282 would be classified as Euclid. This seems Safe to me. Besides that, I think this is well written.
Euclid is generally considered the baseline for humanoids that require things like food, water, and other maintenance. If you left -1 in a box, she'd die, so to speak.
the real anomalous property of 5282-1 is that she actually likes red delicious apples. nobody actually likes red delicious apples.
I want to like this, I really do. Formatting aside (don't indent after the conprocs of description!), the writing is clean and compelling, and you've got a nice sense of humor shining through in the test logs. Even the concept itself is solid, and got me hooked.
Like Nagiros said though, there really isn't much of a narrative here, just a weak twist. Her parents are dead. Okay. You don't build up enough empathy for the kid to make that have an impact, and it's not really a surprise or factor within the context of the anomaly, the kids life, or their shared history. It just… is.
Ironically, all the building blocks are there, but this isn't a complete article yet. Novote.
I didn't really think of -1's parents to be one of the central parts of the article… But if that's the case (and it seems to be), I'll try making a bit of a rewrite later on that includes more about them. Thanks for the feedback!
No problem! When something is the cap-off of the article, people are going to assume it's either the main twist, or an abrupt climax. No way around it in a short article, I'm afraid!
Y'know, you're the second person I've seen interpreting it as 'her parents are dead'. My personal take was that if her parents were dead, their remains would've appeared. But the N/A implies nothing happened, and so by extension that she has no parents.
…This isn't really a more satisfying ending to the SCP though because it still feels very much like something that doesn't shape the article much.
I think my biggest problem is really that the testing logs just…don't really do anything particularly interesting? I don't find the results particularly funny or cute or weird, so it just kinda, feels hollow.
I like your interpretation. You're right, by the way; I never explicitly stated that her parents were actually dead. I also acknowledge that the ending might not be too good, and I'm currently trying to see if I can do a minor rewrite for that.
I thought that, by reading the white text, the father is…
but thats just a theory!
I believe the article's brevity sort of harms itself in terms of the narrative and the SCP's background story. I felt it was simply… too short for an emotional impact? The writing and clinical tone are good, and I could feel a sense of escalation, but I felt it was too… sudden when it came to the kid's parents. Granted, there were a few humorous bits here and there, particularly about a fossilized T-rex manifest in a daycare center, as well as accidentally summoning God (if I didn't interpret it wrongly), but it didn't really bring about a prominent reaction/emotion out of me?
I agree with you, looking back over it, I think I kind of overlooked the part that would be the keystone of the article. I'm currently coming up with a minor rewrite.
Edit: I've done a minor rewrite. You'll have to read between the lines a little to understand it now.
Overall, this article flows well. It's generally well written with a nice and an original concept behind it. (Gotta say, I love 'broken'/'limited' reality benders like this) +1
Also, kind of intrigued about what the God Dog looked like.
Please don't eat me, I'm unhealthy
I intended for it just to be "God," like, they didn't finish the rest before 343 showed up. But if what you said was the case… It probably looked a little something like this.
so she can never get a strawberry, only a straw?
(and would it be a drinking straw, or the kind that's made from grain?)
she can never get a dollhouse, only a doll?
Well, that's a fair point. Maybe I should change that part of the test logs.
what happens if she creates a word going backwards?
T, then to its left A, then to its left C?
Does this depend entirely on her perception of language?
What about nouns that refer to phenomena, like "hug" or "nap" or "fun" ?
what happens if she creates a word going backwards?
The order in which a word is spelled doesn't matter. If you spell "CAT" from right to left, as long as the end result is "CAT" and not "TAC," you'll still get the same results.
What about nouns that refer to phenomena, like "hug" or "nap" or "fun" ?
Quoting the article,
"SCP-5282-2's primary anomalous effect manifests when SCP-5282-1 arranges a selection of SCP-5282-2 instances to spell out the name of a noun in the English language."
Nouns are not necessarily physical objects with concrete referents. Nouns can refer to abstract concepts, like 'concept', 'word', 'language', or 'noun'.
Did you know that there are words that form other words when you invert them? Can she create a spinning TOP, or will she only get a POT?
or will she get marijuana?
When you have an SCP that involves natural language parsing, these are the sorts of questions that you should be thinking of. If you don't, someone else will.
I think the larger point being made here is that this concept could sit comfortably in the confluence of "escalating containment logs" and "simple concept taken to a logical extreme", as described in this essay.
That said, you don't really need to focus on testing every possibility if the point of the article is the final twist at the end. An audience is less interested in an anomaly and more in the story it tells, which may be one and the same.
With the T. rex incident I was wondering if this may stray from the "child character who misses dead parents but doesn't understand" trope for a unique direction, but then it returned straight to that. There isn't enough information to let us emotionally attach to the family, either — the approach is too bare-bones to allow that.
-1
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