SCP-7046 / Discussion

This is the discussion related to the wiki page SCP-7046.

Author Post

XHAWK77X 30 Jul 2022 23:57

+ Desired Slots

SCP-7006
SCP-7004
SCP-7600
SCP-7046
SCP-7417
SCP-7548

+ Luck Justification

Philosophers sometimes write of a concept called “moral luck,” which refers to the role random chance plays in determining the morality of any given person or their actions. This encompasses both the role chance plays in determining the morally significant outcomes of one’s actions and, more relevant to this piece, the role chance plays in determining what influences we are subjected to and how that affects our actions.

Cassidy Redwood is not a bad person. She is a compassionate and conscientious woman, with a powerful drive to help and do right by those around her. In 99.999% of the lifetimes she could have lived, she would have been a role model, remembered for her kindness, piety, intellect, and integrity. However, because she lives during a once-in-a-billion-years cosmic tragedy, and because fate interferes with every attempt she makes to undo it without resorting to acts most people would regard as immoral, she will be looked upon by history as a kidnapper and a mass murderer and by her own church as a traitor and a blasphemer.

Though many of her mistakes could have been avoided if grief has not clouded her judgement, and even she is able to identify how she might have done better once she has the benefit of hindsight, the fact remains that she only resorted to what she did because her Plan A, Plan B, Plan C, Plan D, Plan E, and Plan F all failed for reasons that were not primarily her fault. Only because she was forced to resort to Plan G will her name become synonymous with the rare Ortothan murderer.

While not all of us would have done the things she did in the circumstances she encountered, most of us could probably be driven to similar acts by some set of similarly unlikely stimuli.

This is in no way a post-hoc justification for submitting a draft I’ve been working on for months.

Don’t you love it when you happen to finish your first SCP right when a new X000 contest is coming around? I’ve been working on this story for over half a year, and I hope the good people of this wiki enjoy it. No part of me expects to win, but with the opportunity to try right in front of me, I can't not do it, and who knows, maybe I'll do well enough to get a relatively choice slot.

The inspiration for this story came when I was reading up on the Church of the Second Hytoth’s lore. The fact that the Holy Sixth died in the year 2000, when I was alive, made me think about how devastating it would be for a religious person to lose one of their gods. Imagine if, one day, the Catholic Church announced that the Holy Spirit had died, and the Father and Son were now the only remaining elements of their trinity. That would be confusing and emotionally ruinous to countless people, and, while Ortothan grief over the loss of the Sixth has been explored elsewhere, there has not been an intimate study of how that grief affected an individual person. I started thinking about how to do that, and this is the story I came up with. It’s very much a classic tragedy, and I hope people enjoy it and feel that it justifies its own length.

Thank you to Emb3rdition, Hollow-Astolfo, AlzinCdag and Just_G_O for critiquing this piece despite its length.

Edit: In response to some of the criticism I have received, I have removed the first interview from this article. I am also considering rewriting the second interview to instead be a series of journal entries. I thank S D Locke, RadioactiveRADS, and DrScaramouche for their feedback.

Last edited on 13 Aug 2022 00:16 by XHAWK77X Show more

-1

RadioactiveRADS 02 Aug 2022 00:01

I like the idea of the unwilling blood prison, very cool. But, it is a slog to go through. the dialogue is almost all exposition and not interesting enough to stay focused on. I think you need to cut all of them down and try to rely on that information in different ways because as you have it now, I almost stopped midway.

Re: -1

S D Locke 05 Aug 2022 02:25

Seconding that this suffers from excessively expository dialogue. The first interview in particular feels extraneous, mostly belaboring what could already be surmised from the description alone. I don’t feel as though it serves a real purpose.

I’m not well-versed enough in Orinthian lore to know how well this falls in line with that section of the mythos, but I’ll admit the internal strife was intriguing at the very least. It’s unfortunately bogged down by an equally verbose glut of dialogue at the end, and it being presented through several back-to-back walls of text was enough to put me off from finishing.

#69

DrScaramouche 12 Aug 2022 01:50

This one is tough. The story is good, the setup is excellent - I got the whole way through because I was interested in what was happening.

Good lord the exposition though — and some of it repeats itself! Also, while I find your post hoc reasoning for luck to be really compelling, it doesn't stop me from having a bad taste in my mouth that this wasn't meant for this con at all.

I'm sorry to downvote; if this ever gets a second working, let me know.

Re: #69

XHAWK77X 12 Aug 2022 06:39

People keep mentioning "exposition," but like, how am I supposed to tell this story other than by having someone say what happened? This isn't background information. It's the plot. I could remove the 1st interview, but if I removed the 2nd one, I would have to replace it with a bunch of journal entries or something, or else a big chunk of the story would just be missing. The step-by-step process by which Cassidy was led to do what she did despite trying everything else is a major part of it.

I hope this doesn't come across as salty. I am planning to implement some of the feedback I've gotten from you and other commenters. I'll pm you when I have.

Last edited on 12 Aug 2022 17:24 by XHAWK77X Show more

Re: #69

DrScaramouche 17 Aug 2022 02:43

Thanks for being willing to listen to critique. I look forward to your pm!

(And salty is fine. You're an artist, you're allowed to be salty about your work!)

Re: #69

Thopter 22 Feb 2023 23:25

"This isn't background information. It's the plot."

Here's a very strange and controversial, but very useful, principle to consider: as author, you don't get to decide which passages are essential to the plot. "Plot" is a cognitive framing device for readers and listeners. You can provide and withhold information as you see fit, you can attempt to construct reasons for readers to follow your guidance, but if the readers decide to blow off a hundred pages of exposition detailing how the crew of protagonists prepared their sailing ship for a storm,¹ you are ultimately powerless to say "but those events were essential to the plot!" The reader can simply reply: nah, that was all side detail.

This idea is usually conveyed by phrases like "you didn't give me a reason to care about X." Such a complaint usually indicates the author and reader have a divergent conceptualization of the story's plot.

Footnotes

1. Bonus point to you if you catch the reference…

Last edited on 22 Feb 2023 23:26 by Thopter Show more

Ethagon 13 Aug 2022 18:28

I was very surprised by the rating because for me there was maybe one paragraph that seemed superfluous. Everything else was very engaging throughout so I didn't notice its length.

I think the only thing I would maybe change is making the "moral luck" thing more apparent in the actual article because I think that would enrich the story, but it works just as well the way it currently is.

This is the first explicitly orthothan-focused work I've read after reading up on the hub, so I can't say if this retreats any ground from other hytoth articles, but I personally enjoyed this a lot. +1

XHAWK77X 13 Aug 2022 22:13

Thank you. I'm glad you liked it.

Mei Raiden 14 Aug 2022 10:22

Hello, aspiring Second Hytoth writer! Before I get into it, I should probably clarify that I am obsessed with dead alien gods to an unhealthy degree, and what I say will probably be biased since I love the Koru-teusa so much. Anyway, let's begin.

At first I wasn't sure what to make of it. I thought that depicting a follower of Yorun-leusan as a murderer in contrast to the rest of the Church might end up being a bad decision, but you handled it well. I have to admit, though I have seen villains similar to Cassidy before, I still found her very compelling and sympathetic. I might even have done the same thing as her if I was in her position, though it's hard for me to imagine that. It must have been hard for her to accept that the murders she committed were all for nothing, she had given up her place in the eitoth, her gods were likely disappointed in her, and there was nothing she could do to make the situation better.

This idea is also similar to the idea I had, also involving a follower of Yorun-leusan and an unethical ritual to bring them back to life. This seems to be executed far better than my idea which I never posted, though.
I do see why others who aren't as crazy about Ortothans as me would find this to be a slog to go through, however. The emails section was quite long, as is the final section about Cassidy's motivations. The moral luck reasoning was interesting, though I'm not so big on submitting preexisting drafts for contests like that.

With that out of the way, some minor details. While the Koru-teusa's genders were always ambiguous, I think this is the first SCP to use she/her for Rakmou-leusan. Also, since nonsentient creatures cannot willingly give blood, does that mean that most human Ortothans would be vegan?

LuciferM 19 Aug 2022 01:55

I'm not super familiar with the Orthothans, but I enjoyed this a lot! I do have to say I'm not a huge fan of the luck connection, but I'll leave the luck judgement to the organizers.
This is definitely heavy on the exposition, but I think it's done well so I don't mind. Plenty of good, established SCPs do all their story telling in the logs.
My only suggestion: cut the repeated footnote. Either make the first footnote say something like "any related documents" or if wikidot will let you just use the same footnote (same number and all) for each spot. I feel like if you've got access to this document you're competent enough that you don't have to be told the same thing over and over if, earlier in the document, you were told something applied to everything of X type. Linking the same footnote would be even better, because you wouldn't have to check it if you've already read it, and if for some reason a researcher is just skimming the document or doesn't think the first footnote is relevant to them, it's right there in front of them again. Or you could just put it in plain text before or after the email chain, honestly I think that might be better than the first option I gave but maybe not the second

totallynotenby 22 Aug 2022 15:13

Seconded. The story was very cool and i liked the characters a lot. The exposition is a little bit long and it definately drags at thw beggining but the meat of the story is very good.
_-temmy

J S Writer 23 Aug 2022 00:58

• With the many numbers listed in the article’s first section, I think a clearer way to write them would have been to list them out as Arabic numerals (0, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, etc.) instead of writing out the numbers word for word.

• The writing of the article, especially the email correspondence and Interview 7000-B, flows well from section to section. The tragedy of the story is presented in a really visceral way and Cassidy’s fate at the end of the story mirrored the empty feeling she described after her failed ritual quite well.

• Pertaining to the ending, I was actually thinking it would have been more interesting for Cassidy to have sacrificed herself to Yorun-leusan at the end and for the Foundation Ortothan experts to have found that her blood was drained of its life energy, casting just a smidge of doubt on the results of her efforts. Perhaps they maybe could’ve even found that her blood was tainted in some way, hinting that Yorun-leusan was resurrected but in a kind of “corrupted” state. Though, if that were to happen, I can see how it would take away from the tragic element of the story (that Cassidy’s efforts were for naught).

• Overall, a great addition to the many SCiPs and Tales concerning The Church of the Second Hytoth. It builds upon the mythos of the Ortothans in an interesting way while telling a surprisingly relatable story about how overly zealous faith could corrupt one’s morals.

• Rating: +1

+ SPaG (Spelling and Grammar):

• Discovery

• “All but twelve of these human subjects was later identified as a missing person” -> “All but twelve of these human subjects were later identified as missing persons”.

• Interview 7046-B

• “soon be devoured by the voruteut” -> “soon be devoured by the Voruteut”.
• “and for all they’d condemn my methods” -> “and while they’d all condemn my methods”

Last edited on 31 Aug 2022 18:05 by J S Writer Show more

Maxyfran73 26 Aug 2022 23:24

Yeah, I have to agree with the people that have said that the story is good, but the dialogue is too expository to really click through. It doesn't feels real: You have one character asking one sentence questions, and the other spewing out the entire plot of your piece. I think a more organic delivery would help here, because info dump-like dialogue almost never lands well imo.

Downvote. That being said, I do believe a rewrite with a more polished execution could make this piece success.

Thopter 22 Feb 2023 23:02

I read through this without opening any of the collapsible supplements and loved it. It's well-written, clinical, crisp, and gives me a sense of a massive ritual attempt gone horribly wrong.

So let me ask something. What do the collapsibles, the email exchange in particular, add to this piece? (If you prefer this phrasing: what is the email exchange supposed to add?)

Let me pre-empt the answer by saying email exchange is generally an atrocious format for conveying felt emotion, developing character, or advancing plot points. The story is not helped at all by belaboring that Cassidy made multiple prior attempts at accumulating resources for her ritual before resorting to kidnappings. A sentence or two in an interview could tell us that, if you feel it's essential.

Last edited on 22 Feb 2023 23:10 by Thopter Show more