So when this was proposed to me, the first two things I thought of almost reflexively were zygote and ziggurat. From there, I tried to figure out how to splice that together, and just tossed in a bunch of stuff I thought was neat and/or spooky. Lost cultures, worldwide cataclysms, body horror, techo-organic environments, it's just a mish-mash, but I dig it. Hope to do more with it as things progress, but we'll see.
SCP-7980 / Discussion
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Extremely minor nitpick: miles are used in the containment procedures when the rest of the article uses metric.
Man, a giant cybernetic temple raises so many questions.
Just so you know, not assuming ill will on your part or anything like that (some people use the term unknowingly/unthinkingly,it happens), but "biological female" is a bit of a loaded term which I most most often see with the "trans women aren't women" crowd.
I would suggest you instead use the term cisgender, rather than biological there, assuming that's what you meant.
edit: I also agree entirely with what Dolphin said below, I just didn't suggest it because changing one word is much simpler than specifying as Dolphin suggests, though it would be even better IMO.
dig in a bit further. "cisgender woman" is as much a social construct as "biological woman"; what precisely causes the anomaly to affect subjects?
is it the ability to give birth? can the anomaly differentiate between fertile and infertile individuals? is it chemical, meaning posthormonal (meno/andro-pause) people, or people on HRT, are affected differently? is it rough heuristic on weighted secondary sex characteristic presence? is it exclusively on external primary sex characteristics? how are intersex personnel affected?
precision in how it affects people is certainly necessary; reproductive horror is potent but warrants careful approach.
From there, I tried to figure out how to splice that together, and just tossed in a bunch of stuff I thought was neat and/or spooky.
it kinda shows. this article feels unfocused, containing a multitude of ideas but never really honing in on one or coalescing them into anything. as a result, nothing here ever really has the opportunity to become creepy or scary, and i'm left wondering what i was meant to take away from the whole thing. any one of these individual ideas could be a potent source of horror if it was made the central focus of the piece and expanded upon, but as it is right now i'm not getting a whole lot out of anything here.
I gotta agree with uncanny: There is something here, but just like the construct itself, it feels unfinished. The ending, for starters, doesn't feel impactful in any meaningful way: the tablet's nice, but doesn't really has the kind of energy that a proper ending would offer.
There's also bits that feel unnecessary. The 'biologically female' term is a tad problematic, but to begin with, why have 'biologically female' staff to begin with if they seem to only cause issues within the ziggurat, either becoming aggressive or becoming wombs for the machine? There's these types of details that kind of break the immersion for me (Same with the last [DATA EXPUNGED] that doesn't feel like it does much, and the last bit with the GOI groups that also feels unnecessary, muddling the last leg of the description).
Overall, the piece is rough overall, and I didn't really get anything out of it, be it horror or any other emotion. The concept itself has some merit, but it needs to be worked some more to become an effective article imo.
-1
There's something great here and I'll probably dig through it again to try and decipher what this all is but I really enjoyed it. What is on the surface is almost answering what this is but not really in a good way and also has a lot of great organic machine stuff. My current theory is that this structure is some kind of pre-COTBG and sarkic place of worship before the 2 split off but the poem has a bit to decipher.
(although small nitpick but you swap between miles and km in here)
+1
All I know is this article kept me reading, so +1 to you my friend!
SCP-7980 does not appear to be possessed of will or thought, despite various neurological and processing structures found, and has not as of yet communicated SCP-7980.
Shouldn't the second SCP-7980 in this sentence be removed? SCP-7980 communicating 7980 doesn't make sense in the context of this article.
This triggered some deep-seated nostalgia for an earlier version of this website, and I have to appreciate that.
The above criticisms are warranted, however, and deeply important.
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page revision: 2, last edited: 15 Jan 2023 15:06