SCP-2394 / Discussion

This is the discussion related to the wiki page SCP-2394.

Jack Ike 16 Oct 2015 05:33

Rolled snake eyes. Demanded re-roll.

Huge thanks to everyone in chat who helped me less-badify this skip! Including: TwistedGears, MacLeod, madness_, salvagepbj, SnarkyPotato, PickYerPoison, and the metric tonne of other people I asked for help from.

EDIT: This skip is being rewritten. Stay tuned!

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Russian translation, thanks to Petit Noir does not match any existing user name!

Last edited on 21 Oct 2017 00:58 by Jack Ike Show more

Agent MacLeod 16 Oct 2015 05:42

Like I said in chat, this is a huge improvement over the old one. Where the old one was emotionally manipulative (and not too good at it), this one is actually emotionally moving. It stretches disbelief like a rubber band in a lot of ways (I'm sure other readers will know what I'm talking about), and it still has facets of its emotionally-manipulative past form, but this is still a step forward. I actually care about the damn frog now, and it doesn't feel like the CI were being cartoonishly evil for the sake of being cartoonishly evil (which is a far too common depiction of bad guys in fiction; I'd rather see bad guys I feel bad for calling "bad guys." #moralambiguityFTW). Upvoted, but only just.

Kalinin 16 Oct 2015 17:18

I guess I just don't have it in me to care about the plight of a teleporting cyber-frog. This is more developed than the last version, so it has that going for it in a technical sense, but this runs afoul of the "more-is-more" fallacy that's common in articles these days. I don't find the base concept interesting, and embroidering that base concept further doesn't help that initial problem.

There's also a lot of contrivances here that don't make a whole lot of sense in-universe. I don't see what possible reason the Foundation would have to design software just to be able to monitor a frog's dreams. Also, I'm not really sure how much neurological function an animal like a frog is capable of. I am sure that it's not going to be idealizing stuff in a manner easily relateable to humans.

Lastly, you're running up against the fact that you're relying on animal cruelty to sell the article, but what you have here pales in comparison to real-world examples of such. A single barely-sentient animal that was made to do tricks and now hurts a lot doesn't really affect me compared to what one sees when they walk into a modern factory slaughterhouse. And I still feel that the GoI reference is shoehorned. Overall, can't support this one.

Zyn 16 Oct 2015 20:31

Author, I've cleared the tags. If you're not going to add all the tags for your article, it's best to just leave the page untagged and wait for an experienced tagger to take care of it. We have a team of people on the site who tag articles, and they search for pages that have no tags. Adding only a few tags prevents the team from finding the article, so if you're unfamiliar with the tags, it's totally fine to wait for them to take care of it.

Furthermore, the "hidden" tags prefaced with an underscore are used only for tales, since the tales pages are automatically generated using said tags. More information on author tagging for tales can be found in the corresponding announcements thread: http://www.scp-wiki.net/forum/t-1063129/technical-team-report:tales-tagged-with-a-hidden-tag

Wilhelm Klink 16 Oct 2015 23:28

Why do the dreams of a cyber frog matter? Do frogs even dream? Also, how is its cyber heart "anomalously powered"? Also dream state doesn't seem very clinical.

In the end, I just kept asking myself why the everything matters. And why they don't just toss it in a jar hooked up to life support and lock it up? Why mess with it if I has a demonstrated ability to just teleport?

thedeadlymoose 13 Feb 2016 09:32

I really like this idea; I like the idea of trying to control a tree frog with a valuable anomalous ability, and the way it's done (a Firewire port!) seems realistic enough (even if the precise details are a bit iffy). The Insurgency aspect works for me.

That said, it's not interesting enough for me to upvote. It feels like it would be a fun side aspect of a bigger story, but it doesn't stand alone.

There's also way too much extra detail here. This could be cut by a third and would be better. Some of the details of the anomaly itself seem fairly pointless from a story perspective: to pick the most obvious example for me, why is it sapient? To try to make the reader care more? This in and of itself introduces a bunch of weird extra details. Etc.

An aside:

Attempts to force SCP-2394 to relocate personnel with it are currently pending review by the Ethics Committee.

I'm behind on reading SCPs. Did I miss a change where the Ethics Committee started micromanaging everything, right down to animal testing? I don't buy it. At all. There's no reason for the EC to be mentioned in here.

Adobe Bryant 13 Mar 2018 22:25

It's pretty weak, but I have a pet australian green tree frog so it kinda struck a chord with me. Pity upvote.