New tale. Thanks to Rademacher and Wogglebug for reviewing my draft.
How Site-19 Blew Up / Discussion
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This is the discussion related to the wiki page How Site-19 Blew Up.
For translation purporses: can you break down the "We're pulling a -1 out of this bad boy" phrase to me? We got confused with it in Site-7.
Parts of SCPs that are anomalous on their own are often denoted as SCP-XXXX-1, SCP-XXXX-2 etc. They want to retrieve such a sample (for example an egg) to analyze it separately. I left the nature of the -1 instance ambiguous intentionally.
My thanks.
Parts of SCPs that are anomalous on their own are often denoted as SCP-XXXX-1, SCP-XXXX-2 etc. They want to retrieve such a sample (for example an egg) to analyze it separately. I left the nature of the -1 instance ambiguous intentionally.
It isn't clear how the character is pronouncing it, it might be better to write out "dash one" or "tack one " or whatever.
Okay, I will just rewrite the whole thing to "collecting a sample from". This should clear out any confusion.
I don't know why I like it exactly, but I do. Maybe it's the idea of researchers having to dress up like a wombat to avoid an SCP going into some kind of rage state, maybe it's the thought that even the Foundation needs Workplace Safety videos.
Either way, I like it. +1
I really like what you're doing here, but I feel like the "low budget training film" thing isn't played up enough, and the presentation is confusing.
I'd suggest switching it over to a script format, with scene descriptions, stage directions and lines, so that you can really get across that whole "Dr. Bright is played by Steve from accounting" and "the keter SCP is played by Agent Lorenz in a gorilla suit" vibe. That'd also help make the whole thing make more sense.
Edit: One thing that might be fun to do in addition to that is the "Lets see that again, but this time with John remembering to double check the safety signs before filling the pool" parts these movies always have. Having watched quite a few of these sorts of videos in engineering and chemistry lab classes, its a fairly standard thing.
I'd suggest switching it over to a script format
I may argue that a script format may not work out in this case. Since the short film is presented as something an audience is watching currently (in-story), prose description leaves a stronger impact on readers (supposing the reader = the in-story researchers watching this film).
On one hand, I like the workplace safety video and I feel it could be really fun if I watch it. On the other hand, I find the content to be mildly disjointed as I'm not sure how the pieces tie in together. Rather than a didactic narrative meant to illustrate an idea, it feels like a scrapbook collection of moments.
For that, I'm afraid I will be downvoting this due to my concerns over the presentation of the "video".
What do you mean by disjointed? The scenes are supposed to be connected to each to other, to show how a mistake leads to another. (Like the secretary blacking out the word 'wombat' leading to a researcher entering in a hazmat suit instead of a wombat suit. Or filling the pool with the sprinkler system's water leading to the system not activating, etc.)
For me, it has to do with the presentation of the work. From how I see it, the horizontal lines used come off as a cut towards the next moment. Of course, I can assume you are going for the feel of watching the short film. However, it can just as easily be a collection of unconnected moments.
Granted, if this was done via the medium of video, I will have no issue with it. However, I do have an issue with how a short film is being presented via words which ultimately lessens the overall effect of the work.
On that note, why would a pool be filled with water from the sprinkler system? It screams of lolFoundation standard to me and suggests poor logistics. And the didactic element can be brought up more if there were a scene with the secretary actually redacting "wombat" due to whatever complacency they have.
It's cute and made me smile. So it gets a +1 from me.
It's pretty funny.
I especially liked the bit with the gasoline, although the sentence ("sat atop a gasoline barrel someone left at the corridor and he lit a cigarette") is a bit awkward.
I noticed that the dialogue was often a bit wooden, which I figured was intentional (PSAs aren't generally known for being showcases of good acting).
I have two other gripes: first, the bit where Chaos Insurgency soldiers were compared to ninjas from an 80s action flick. Most of the humor in this comes from being deadpan. Like, in the above part that I liked, you didn't say "he had a cigarette on a barrel of gasoline like an idiot because gasoline is flammable", because the audience can get that. The description itself isn't trying to sound funny, it's a faithful description of something funny, which works. When you come out and say "and they looked like ninjas in silly costumes" then it becomes far less humorous than just describing what they looked like and allowing the reader to realize for themselves that they look ridiculous.
Final gripe: I don't get the part with the warhead. Does he think he's not in Site-19 and so not about to get blown up? If that's the case, why would he know to set off the warhead in the first place? Did he think he was setting off some other site's warhead? Why would he do that?
So, despite those critiques (I could also say more about your use of commas, but I won't. But I could.) I enjoyed it, although it may not be as uproarious as other humorous articles on the site.
The CI soldiers were sent on a suicide mission by their higher-ups. They were told that they are infiltrating Site-61, and blowing up an other site, Site-19 from there. One of them realized that only when it was too late.
You have my permission to fix commas or the sentence with the barrel. Will think about the ninja thing.
Ooooh. My problem was that I didn't actually notice that the guys who set off the warhead were supposed to be CI agents! I thought that it was Foundation personnel, setting off the warhead because of the CI agents and the Keter breach. It makes more sense now, my bad.
The presentation of the Foundation as a faceless, low-budget bureaucracy has never really made a whole lot of sense to me. Different organizations have different cultures, depending a lot on the nature of the work, who's working there, the management structure, etc. The Foundation, in most peoples' interpretations of it, is a professional environment, composed of a high percentage of highly educated and extremely motivated individuals who are on the cutting edge of research and technology. It's certain to be a high stress environment, but I would also expect a high degree of cohesion and organizational morale from a place like this.
Now, writers will of course differ with my assessment, and that's fine. But I also don't expect the Foundation to be rolling out cheaply made training videos with little point to them to an audience of bored, listless employees who somehow need to be made aware of the importance of workplace safety. This is the hallmark of quotidian, low-profile organizations with absolutely replaceable workers who have no personal investment in the job. You're far from the first to roll with this kind of a presentation (as evidenced by the bunches of other orientations that we have), but I've always found that to be incongruous with what the Foundation is supposed to be by most peoples' reckoning.
The video, of course, is the main draw of the piece, but it doesn't really strike me as particularly funny. "People being pointlessly stupid lol" doesn't usually do much for me, personally. Seeing as how that makes up most of the tale, there's not anything here for me.
It was humorous to get a chuckle out of me, but nothing else. I feel like this is more like a quick succession of jokes rather than a tale, and for that reason I am not voting.
And this, boys and girls and others, is why we do not redact information in the Special Containment Procedures section.
I considered fixing these myself but considered it would be more courteous to show them to you.
Behold: several minor grammatical issues.
It was the 47th such lecture he gave
Should be "had given"
lied back in his chair
The lay/lie/lain thing is confusing. Heck, I had to do some googling just to make sure this was, in fact, an error, but it seems that "lied" actually only refers to telling a lie. The past tense of "lie" (as in "I lie down") is actually "lay", which is the present tense of the word that does not mean the same thing as lie. That is seriously confusing.
All that aside, though, it should be "lay back in his chair".
ordinary humans after all
Should be a comma before "after".
they had already reached the Administrative Sector
The "they" here is a bit ambiguous. Certainly could be determined pretty easily by context clues, but it might make a smoother reading experience if that were cleaned up. Minor point though.
You know, on my first read through, I remembered there being more places in which commas should be added, but now I can't find them. Hm.
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page revision: 2, last edited: 15 Jan 2023 15:06
