SCP-5579 / Discussion

This is the discussion related to the wiki page SCP-5579.

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SCP-5579

T Rutherford 15 Apr 2020 00:44

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Sippin' on my bubble tea
Oh I was catching up with my homies
Aw no when suddenly she stood next to me
I couldn't help myself with this shorty

I said I just wanna kick it, sit back and just chill with
You and me we just get along
It's low-key passion, mutual attraction
Baby you and me we just get along

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Thanks to: ROUNDERHOUSE, AbsentmindedNihilist, MalyceGraves, Sevatar, Popsioak, DrMoned and Crusty_Jon.

Images used are from Wikicommons, found here,here, and here.

I've always hated tapioca. I'm very much a texture-eater, and those little baubles have always looked and felt like slimy little alien eggs to me. My partner, however, loves them, and always makes a point to noisily slurp her bubble tea around me. You can guess what inspired this article.

As always, thank you for reading.

Side-note. This Iris Black isn't intended to mirror the Iris Dark in other MC&D articles. She's my interpretation of the character - someone older, someone different. Marshall, Carter, and Dark are all fantastic characters, but I can never seem to write within the lines of another authors narrative. That said, I whole heatedly encourage you to explore the MC&D Canon, and the many fantastic articles and tales within.

Cheers!

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► More T Rutherford Articles and Tales ◄

Last edited on 14 Apr 2021 16:39 by T Rutherford Show more

Re: SCP-5579

Voct 22 Apr 2020 18:29

The leaves, I can trace to https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Kerala_Cassava_plant_2.jpg (correctly licensed). The others, though, I can't find with any of my image search tools. Be more specific about where you got them?

Operational Staff Post

Naepic 22 Apr 2020 19:18

Tapioca pearls image is by Nandaro, under CC BY-SA 3.0.

Cassova root image is by CIAT, under CC BY-SA 2.0.

Kerala leaves image is by Slashme, under CC BY-SA 4.0.

Re: Operational Staff Post

T Rutherford 22 Apr 2020 19:34

Quick check - is 4.0 valid? If not, I can replace this image. It's not vital.

Re: Operational Staff Post

leo60228 13 May 2020 23:08

It doesn't seem to be, at least in general. I'm not sure if the wiki has special rules for this.

Re: Operational Staff Post

Bottleofwater 14 May 2020 00:06

If the post is a few weeks up and the pic isn't down, it probably is fine.

Cerastes 15 Apr 2020 01:00

“It’s a breed of pheasant," Iris said "Found only on a single farm in France. The previous owner hung himself in the barn. For whatever reason, whenever a Faisan Pathétique is butchered, it experiences an instant of existential realization. It understands it’s a bird. It understands it has lived a pointless life. It even realizes it is dying purely for the sake of some human's dinner.”

Iris's dark characterization (heh) really clinched this one for me. +1

T Rutherford 15 Apr 2020 01:02

I'm glad you liked it, Cerastes. I'd like to use this interpretation of Iris in other articles, or tales, in future :)

A Random Day 15 Apr 2020 01:16

I deeply appreciate this variant of Iris Dark. It's a far cry from virtually all her other appearances in the wiki and one of my favorites to boot: a deeply wealthy, deeply cultured, and deeply hedonistic monster who embodies what I only recently realized was missing from Marshall, Carter, and Dark. I find the messages sent from 5579's home world to be unnecessary at best and nearly article-ruining at worst, so it's lucky that Iris overshadows them completely.

Last edited on 15 Apr 2020 01:17 by A Random Day Show more

T Rutherford 15 Apr 2020 01:41

Hey ARD! I'm glad I've improved my characterization since my last article, though it's a two-steps-forward-one-step-back situation, as always. I wanted the 5579 transmissions to be a quick, vague impression that these creatures are technologically advanced, arrogant, and so full of entitled disdain that they'd send a follow-up message detailing how much of a shitty species we are by the metric of baby food. Basically, the alien equivalent of an xbox live message. Sorry it didn't land, but I'm really happy you liked my take on Iris.

Thanks as always for the crit, and the read.

carolynn ivy 15 Apr 2020 01:32

i agree wholly with what ARD said above. the characterization of Dark here is fantastic, bringing a very human (and deliciously creepy) side to MC&D's avarice. while i wouldn't say the messages from their homeworld are explicitly bad, they are certainly the weakest part of the article and don't entirely add much the offset dialogue which is the meat of the article. still, Iris's characterization brings a whole new face to MC&D, one which is absolutely incredible.

Last edited on 15 Apr 2020 01:36 by carolynn ivy Show more

T Rutherford 15 Apr 2020 01:43

Thanks carolynn! I'm thinking of possible alternatives for this section that still convey the same sentiment and info for the reader. I'm always open to suggestions. Either way, thanks for the read!

AbsentmindedNihilist 15 Apr 2020 01:44

I've always hated tapioca

Tubby is sad now, as are his many relatives.

Regardless, a very fascinating article, with Iris easily being the best part. +1

Edited to add: so THAT'S where that list of items went.

Last edited on 15 Apr 2020 01:44 by AbsentmindedNihilist Show more

T Rutherford 15 Apr 2020 01:47

Surely I'll remember this comment, years from now, in the Grey Age of Tubby, working away in the tapioca mines with my fellow dissidents.

Will I learn anything? Probably not.

Thanks for the read Niles :) I'm glad you liked it.

Koooper 15 Apr 2020 02:48

…holy shit, this is amazing. I would give this all the upvotes if I could, but alas, +1.

T Rutherford 15 Apr 2020 02:50

Thanks for the read Koooper! I'd pet that tiny turtle, but alas, it's a drawing.

FourMinorSix 15 Apr 2020 06:38

Man, I adore this SCP. You've got this alien race that's dying of its own insensibility, and on the other hand there's MC&D deriving twisted, hedonistic pleasure from that race's failure. It's existentially dreadful and filled with depravity on both ends. It's really impressive that you could tease that story out of tapioca, of all things.

The base anomaly was also interesting, and it had a really snappy description that was a pleasure to read. While I know other commenters found the transmissions excessive, I actually really love them. It shows how desperate, and more importantly how petulant, the SCP has become; so much of that characterisation would be lost if the messages weren't there. You'd basically be relying on Iris' monologue to characterise the SCP at that point.

Thanks for the read! This really made my day, and it's one of my favourites in Series 6 so far :)

+ Some SPaG stuff I found

Conprocs

Project "Bitter Yuca" is currently underway breeding dominant strains of Cassava

cassava?

Description

multiple opportunities for the parasite to find a latching-point, similar to of egg-cell fertilization

remove the "of"?

this organism quickly succumbs to the hosts digestive processes

host's (with apostrophe)?

Offset 1

2. The SCP Foundation will exchange an equivilant sum of classified objects

equivalent?

"The Avanaski," Iris began "Come from a world so lush with resources
“It’s a breed of pheasant," Iris said

missing commas after "began" and "pheasant", and I think "come" should be lowercase in the first one?

"It tastes just like Tapioca. SCP-5579…"

"tapioca"?

I’d carry on and say 'The real point of Faisan Pathétique is eating something that, for one glorious moment, understood its place in the universal pecking order.”

Didn't close one pair of quotation marks there?

Last edited on 15 Apr 2020 06:52 by FourMinorSix Show more

T Rutherford 15 Apr 2020 13:29

Hey FourMinorSix! I'm glad you enjoyed the article. I was worried the alien transmissions were just a complete whiff, but I'm glad to know they landed for someone. I'm still considering possible alternatives for those dialogue pieces.

Also, I really appreciate you spotting those SPaG errors - I've corrected them all now. Thanks for the crit!

Captain Kirby 15 Apr 2020 19:02

This one is hard for me. Because it's like… it kind of rides that line between humor and brutality. But my issues lie largely in execution.

While I'm not one usually to harp much on "immersion", the sudden switch from the SCP document to the tale-thing felt extremely jarring to me. Mostly because I couldn't stop asking myself:

"Why did this have to be a tale? Why couldn't you have just continued it in the skip?"

And while there's a few possible reasons, things like wanting to utilize the prose and the different colored dialogue, the thought "but why not just put this in a transcript" heavily distracted me from the actual content of the tale. And by proxy of that, I found myself hung up on how expository I felt iris was being in the end of that tale. It's not as annoying to me as most exposition because you do a good job of injecting character and voice into it, but at the end of the day I couldn't separate it from being just an explanation, with the whole time in my head asking myself "but why did you have to explain it in prose?"

All in all… it's hard for me because I wanted to enjoy this. This had a lot of things going for it from the "useless parasite" angle to the brutality of eating a species just to feel superior to it. But the presentation of it distracted me from the content because I couldn't stop asking myself "but whyyyy?"

I think I'm going to have to downvote. Not because I think this is terrible, but because I can't help but think this could've hit harder.

T Rutherford 15 Apr 2020 19:46

Totally valid. The honest truth of why I went with a MC&D page shift is because that's how I originally wrote it, and translating it to a transcript felt like it muted the voices in my head? If that makes sense.

Honestly, I'll see how this does as-is, but if the crit from authors I respect continues to be this heavy, I might take it down work on the formatting, relying on a more traditional transcript / log format.

I like the characters I've created here, and I want them to resonate through the best possible written medium. If the tale isn't it, then I need to revisit this.

aismallard 16 Apr 2020 06:03

As mentioned above, you do Ms. Dark a real service here in how she's portrayed. Some of the sentences in here are simply excellent.

The SCP introduction of it is well-structured, with a good first-line hook and images going into its description. However I also felt the alien transmission unnecessary: the point about their shittiness to be best implied in some other way.

The "it's getting neutralized" bit is a bit sudden, and I'm not sure about the transition to the MC&D portion.

That said none of this prevented me from enjoying it, so +1.

T Rutherford 16 Apr 2020 13:55

Hey aismallard! I'm currently working on ways to fix these issues. They seem fairly universal across the crits I've received. I'm always open to suggestions, but Ill try and think of a better way of portraying the avanaski, transitioning to the MC&D portion, and making it a more uniform progression. Thanks for the read and the crit!

Haven't finished yet but caught this

FaustoV 16 Apr 2020 07:30

Is it project "bitter yuca" or " bitter starch"?

Also I love steamed yuca with a lot of guasacaca and grilled meat and by all I hold dear, this article won't ruin it for me.

Re: Haven't finished yet but caught this

T Rutherford 16 Apr 2020 13:52

It's project "Bitter Yuca", as the foundation is trying to breed a strain of cassava root that is poison / inhospitable to the parasite. Also, trust, you don't have to worry about it being ruined for you. If anything, this article will enhance the experience.

Re: Haven't finished yet but caught this

GG Crono 18 Apr 2020 18:45

I think what they mean is that it says "bitter yuca" toward the top and "bitter starch" at the bottom.

Re: Haven't finished yet but caught this

T Rutherford 22 Apr 2020 14:19

And again I say DAMN YOU STREAM OF CONSCIOUSNESS WRITING.

I can't believe I keep missing this stuff. Thanks to both of you, it's been corrected.

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