SCP by Series
Other SCP
Feed
Stories
Discovery
Random
This took a lotta time. A love story between two lonely women.
The photo was made by Agente Shuffle, who gave me permission to use it on this article. thank you!
Crit by several people, but special thanks to scalykitty for their crit.
Also i saw this open slot awhile ago so I yoinked it.
ඞ
1. in my republic anyone who uses #000000 bg for their scps will be gently sent to a farm upstate.
2. this feels very mid. mid bordering on downvote tbh, and its mainly due to the relationship between o5 and pov char. most of the dialogue is centered on pov char, and this feels leering. like im stalking kaitlan. her dialogue parts are always on these small windows, giving us not much perspective on her as a person. what we do know of her is "she likes music, she likes mc, she is an o5". nothing to attach her to us. so when the twist comes, it becomes "wait what?", since i am not attached to this character. i don't even know anything about her. theyre dating, sending nsfw pics to each other, and are deeply lovestruck with each other, yet the only things we see from POV char's side are: music recs, milf issues, secretive abt her work. overall, i wish there was more fire between pov char and kaitlan, because as it is rn, it feels more "one night stand" than "dating"
The premise is fun. I find it tasteful. The Journal Entries — at least, nearer to the beginning — do a solid job of panning around and defining the ethics of the situation, and it showcases that the writer put real thought into such a concept. The means of relaying important details to the reader are surprisingly effective, in a medium that is typically unavailable to the SCP writer.
Some of the Journal Entries teeter into behaviour that I'd consider unbecoming of a Site Director. It teases at the edges of disbelief. For instance, although I can foresee a Site Director using a dating service, I don't understand why she has to be the one documenting it in real-time. Having a Site Director deal with an anomaly firsthand is inherently dangerous for reasons I hope I don't need to explain. Surely there are technologists, or other researchers, who can assist a principal member of staff in this area? I don't buy that involving lower-level staff would cause an undue infosec breach: There are rules behind handling sensitive materials. Amnestics exist, as demonstrated at the end. Additionally, some of her posts remind me of a Discord user's, and not a Director's: "Touch grass" is the slang of a terminally online Gen Z person. As the entries progress, even the pretense of professionalism and director-ly mode of speaking are dropped completely.
The flourishing queer relationship, on the other hand? Adorable. It's great to see gay joy. At the same time, seeing how it turns out is deflating. On the bittersweet scale, it's more bitter than sweet. The article should have spent more time developing their relationship; it would make the ending a lot more impactful. Namedropping the End-of-Death Scenario was a poorly placed red herring, and for seemingly no reason. I thought it would tie into the canon, but it never went there.
For the reasons stated, and some of the observations basirskipreader shares, I regretfully have to leave this at a soft downvote. The efforts that went into setting up the premise, and feeling out its edges, are duly noted, but it wasn't enough to make up for the serious breaches in tone. I also think more effort could have went into highlighting the lesbian relationship, which is set up as the skip's emotional core, but never elevated beyond a workplace fling.
Beyond what Flops said above, I just feel like I've seen this story done already and done better. I don't remember the number, but there was an anomalous dating service SCP a while back (Series 6 iirc) that involved two agents being sent to "perfect" date locations and slowly falling for one another as they did so. It hit the same basic plot beats that you did, but the relationship felt better developed and the ending overall more satisfying.
I respect what this wants to be, but it just doesn't feel successful in my eyes.
Having a Site Director deal with an anomaly firsthand is inherently dangerous for reasons I hope I don't need to explain.
Nevermind the Site Director, why is an O5 using this website? Surely they'd see the others' feed and realize their own secretive meetings could be exposed.
Novel concept, great execution. Well done!! A hearty +1 to you.
Fires rage just below the surface of the ice.
"touch grass" in 2013?
Overall I found the idea to have potential but the relationship felt very weak. In fact, I was way more interested in the website than in the sapphic love.
This was an emotional roller-coaster. (Although I thought I remembered a SCP dating site already being something)
anyways, I love the execution of this piece, and I love the queer love story.
+1
theres a lotta people who got sad over this. maaaybe ill write a tale where its a happy ending..
ඞ
I wouldn’t say you have to write a happy end( god knows not all queer stories have a happy end), but if you do I’d be happy to read it!
Id love to see a tale where they meet up after she got amnestizied, the 05 playing at being a high level business exec, having meticulouly engineering them meeting somewhere. Might give you a chance to write from the perspective of the 05 too.
Comes of as very 'antimemetics division' but i think you could pull it off
If you do msg me id love to read it
