I'll refer to this passage as an example to explain what I'm talking about:
SCP-5734 is incapable of being conjugated in any tense or form either in English or German. Attempting to do so results in SCP-5734 'correcting' itself to its neutral, unconjugated form. Furthermore, SCP-5734 cannot exist as a gerund. This anomaly affects all forms of SCP-5734, spoken, written and otherwise perceived.
Okay so, its effect on language is similar to the effect the giftschreiber weaponized. But whereas we learned about the curse of the German language through Thilo's monologue, here, we're not quite afforded an apt enough explanation by-way-of the clinical approach (on account of dealing with the magical) and are left with a, frankly, awkwardly worded compromise. The result: The effect is explained almost in its entirety with the word "correcting" in scare quotes doing heavy lifting, but with not much actual indication as to how this occurs. When written on a page, do the letters magically rearrange themselves? When a person uses 5734 in conversation, do they manage only to stutter mid-sentence, forcing their interlocutor to ask for clarification?
And what of the "breakdown of linguistic and semantic concepts and words associated with the sentence" — how does this manifest? Does a person become confused, mashing together all associated words as though they are synonyms? How long does that last? How is it determined that the concepts undergo breakdown; is it something you could pick up inside the brain with an EEG? Or, would it take a trained linguist to engage in long and unnecessarily protracted dialogue with a person just to cover enough linguistic ground to understand what words fused? What are the consequences of such a breakdown?
I had all these questions arise during the reading, and frankly, it didn't take much consideration to arrive at them. If we're going for specificity, I unfortunately think this has failed.
Now, I see that this was written during Jam-Con2021, and I'm kind of thinking the time limit curbed the strength of the end result. With no offense to you as a writer, of course — I've seen you write really kickass things during a time-crunch!
Quality of writing aside, I also want to focus on the character of Dorothy Bradbury. From the text, it seems this is a pretty smart person. But how exactly did a university student uncover the truth about Thilo Zwist and the curse on the German language? Mind you, this was a feat that took the resources of the SCP Foundation, and double-PhD Lesley Scout helming the project, decades to solve! She also seems to have some knowledge of the Foundation, and was able to outmanoeuvre them with lingohazards.
This is all fine and well in a vacuum — I'm fond of genius characters, believe me — but in the context of the story, it's really gnawing at my suspension of disbelief.
I am, however, a fan of the message the character was trying to deliver. More of that, please!
