The idea itself is not that bad, but seriously, please try to avoid textwalls. They tend to be a major turn off for most readers.
SCP-531 / Discussion
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This is the discussion related to the wiki page SCP-531.
Interesting concept, son. Creepy old egyptian cat statues with bad juju and such, always a good thing.
As Spoon's pointed out, though, it is a bit long. There are a few good ways to shorten it up to a more reasonable length, while keeping the idea intact, the first and most important of which is changing the tone.
Right now, this article reads more like a story than a pseudo-scientific report, but if you could edit it down to bare bones while not taking away any necessary description, you'd be dandy. Toning down the references to psychic powers could be a good start here.
Another thing to do would be to perhaps make a seperate test log page for all the experiments listed toward the bottom of the article.
Adding some specifics to the Procedures section would benefit this entry as well. Can't help but notice that it's a bit lacking in that regard.
'Kay. Prose fiction is my usual format so this is new to me, I tried copying the style of other SCPs but I guess some "storiness" still slipped through. :) What's the standard format for linking to an experiment sub-page? I'm thinking perhaps I should just split off the one with the big transcript for the time being, the rest are short and to the point.
Just make sure the log page has a name like "Experiment Log 531", then link it back to the article by putting an addendum into the article with "For complete experiment logs, see {link to log page here}." or some such variant of that, eh.
This is really good. (I liked the experimentation log too) The Cat Gaze Cage totally deserves to be mentioned in other articles and stories- maybe even a staple that's frequently brought up like telekill?- The Foundation mass producing and using but not fully understanding these weird objects, getting all the efficiency they can out of hyper specific powers fits perfectly.
Thanks. The idea of actually using these things to contain stuff only occured to me partway through writing it up, but now that the idea's in my head it's all kinds of fun. Here's something else I just came up with:
This is a "fence" of arbitrary length. The SCP-531 units are mounted on platforms that can rotate 36 degrees, triggered simultaneously along the entire length of the fence. Triggering the rotation causes all of the cats to simultaneously "switch partners" to the cat immediately beside them, opening the entire perimeter. (They'll actually switch partners after only about 18 degrees rotation, but might as well rotate them all the way to make sure)
The nasty part is that this fence requires one SCP-531 unit every 1.5 meters. To enclose a Foundation site measuring a hundred meters by a hundred meters, a relatively modest size, requires about 270 cats. That's a lot of people turned into statues of cats. You could decrease the number slightly by pushing the angle closer to the "critical angle" of 30 degrees and increasing the distance between the cats slightly (I've assumed 5 meters in these diagrams), but that gets rid of any margin of error and a slight misalignment could mean a section of the fence fails or becomes dangerous.
One other thing that's neat to ponder about this arrangement. I implied without too explicitly stating it that people who are turned into SCP-531s remain conscious and are able to communicate with their partners through their eyes in some fashion. When a fence like this cycles each SCP-531 connects first to the unit to their left and then to the unit to their right. If the fence turns on and off regularly I can imagine them slowly passing messages up and down the line via a game of telephone. Not sure what they'd have to talk about, probably nothing complimentary of the Foundation, but that's fine as long as they do their jobs. :)
This sounds like a way to get a use out of those d-class personnel slated for termination.
So what happens if an orphaned statue is suspended in the air in such a way as to force a potential victim to look straight up?
Hm… The victim will start being forced into the statue's posture, which will at some point force him to break the statue's gaze. I can think of two main possibilities:
*If the gaze is broken quickly the transmutation into brass won't have started yet and the victim will be able to recover. Which might lead him to locking gazes again as soon as he's able, resulting in repeated starts and stops. Hopefully the victim will be able to slowly inch his way out of range in the midst of all that.
*If the transmutation starts before the gaze is broken, the victim takes the slow road to statuedom. The suspended statue would always be free to initiate new connections with other passers-by so this could result in quite a collection developing below it.
It depends on which is stronger; the drive to keep ones' gaze locked with the statue or the drive to crouch down and mimic its pose. That relative strength hasn't actually been determined by any experiments yet so it could go either way. I'd lean toward the latter, personally, since locking gazes seems to be the "primary" function of these things.
If you crank the relative strength of the gaze-locking drive up even higher I suppose a third possibility might be to wind up with a cat statue that's looking in a "nonstandard" direction (in this case with its head tilted at an upward angle). I can see that being useful, actually, if one wants to build a fence or cage that makes a significant elevation change. But on the other hand it ruins the nice uniformity that the statues have so far. I'll have to think about this some more before setting it in stone.
This is ingenious. Quick question, how high is the barrier created by the statues? Does it continue up indefinately, or could a flight capable SCP go over it?
Off the cuff, I'd say the barrier probably extends as far upward as it does laterally. So a pair of cats 5 meters apart produce a 5 meter tall barrier. It'd extend downward an equal distance, too, perhaps explaining why those cats in the original tomb corridor were in raised alcoves.
If you've got a specific application in mind that needs a higher barrier there's easy ways I could stretch that, though. Maybe it goes "as high as they can see", which would normally be the ceiling and would prevent the original cats from producing horrible moments for airline passengers flying over Egypt.
Hey, what would happen if a statue were melted down? Would the "eyes" still have the same effect?
This one is really cool, only I can't…
stop…
staring….
at the picture….
Yeah, it is kind of pretty… At least the experiment log explicitly states that a broadcast of 531 (or in this case, a picture) won't cause the effect.
Hmm… Remember the test with two 531s facing a third one, and one of the first two connected to a D-class? Well, what if the two statues were replaced by two test subjects? Would the remaining 531 try to convert both of them, or (more likely) just one? And if it is just one, how does it choose? Sounds like an interesting idea to try…
Also, I like the idea of using some of the to-be-terminated Ds to make more statues for the fence thing.
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page revision: 2, last edited: 15 Jan 2023 15:06
