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Sandbox Link: https://scp-sandbox-3.wikidot.com/enterframe
Greenlight Link: https://scp-wiki.wikidot.com/forum/t-15826239/seeking-greenlight-who-mourns-for-apollo#post-6074167
Concerns: I’m concerned about whether the description comes off as too convoluted, and whether the inclusion of other gods beyond Apollo is justified. I'm also concerned about how well the containment procedures fit with the rest of the article.
Hello. I know you didn't ask for my review or anything. But I since I read your article I thought I just leave my opinion. I think this article feels very hollow. There's not much meat to the bone if you get what I mean. It's really just about some weird humanoid corspe that force people to act strange or view it the body in different ways. That's it. You probably know that already since other people have told you that. But it really feels like a article that was written with no deeper purpose beside putting the words down. Secondly, the description isn't overly complicated but it did feel a bit like a drag reading. Also, you have several coding errors and other issues in your log you probably should fix.
I think my advice for you would maybe be try to focus on a genre of story and try hone in on that. If you want to write a really weird, mysterious story, try to make reader have more question's and wanting more. If you want to write horror try to make the reader skin crawl. This has no emotional weight because we don't know enough about the characters. The skip isn't all that interesting, and just in general the piece feels flat.
Hello. Thank you for giving your two cents on this, I appreciate it.
Like I told Zoobeeny, I’m considering just removing the exploration log entirely and either leaving it out completely or replacing it with an after-action report about the skip’s recovery.
I feel like the latter, should I choose to include it, could create a sense of curiosity/dread regarding what actually happened, as it won’t give all the details or specifics of the recovery op.
Also, I am considering a full streamlining of this article to better represent my original idea for it; the corpse of an alien who used magic to pose as Apollo in Ancient Greece, and whose magic is still going strong millennia after its death. I feel like if I were to start this over from the beginning with my original idea in mind, I could vastly improve on what I have in the Sandbox.
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Summoned via PM.
Apologies for the delay.
The biggest problem I'm seeing is that there's little to no build-up. The story is almost entirely constrained to a single log and nothing in the log is surprising in any way and it's rather expected. At the same time, there isn't enough time for the characters to really endear themselves to me so that when they die, I feel anything in particular.
Essentially, this article has something I refer to as, "a series of events that happen". There's nothing here tying me down to the story so that I actually care about what happens next. I don't know the characters, I'm not invested in the conflict, so when things do happen, I'm rather unperturbed.
You need to personalize the characters more and give them more time for their personalities to shine. At this moment, I can't really remember which character has what personality, because they're all rather bland. No one is particularly memorable.
Overall, I think you need to rework a great majority of this article. It needs stronger characterization and more time for adequate build-up and pay-off.
Thank you for the reply.
It honestly took this reply for me to realize how weak the characterization was. I had attempted to write Agent Hersch as less experienced as Captain Mitchell, given his addressing the skip as “he”.
But in hindsight, I agree with you on how poorly the characters are developed. That’ll definitely need improvement for draft 4, and I think it’ll work well with the suggestions TheChunk gave regarding the other updates to the MTF log.
Resummoned via PM.
Apologies for the delay. Was on break.
I have to agree with TheChunk. This article feels very hollow. There's a lot of stuff written down, but not a lot of substance contained within. The characters still feel rather generic and dimensionless, and the dialogue ends up rather campy when the doctors go on their killing spree.
The article feels rather directionless, like it doesn't really know what it's purpose is.
The action is rather weak since it's just two people going to town on some doctors and there's no really an emotional connection to the characters that their deaths are actually impactful. There's not enough build-up or mystery for a horror to work here either, so I, as a reader, aren't really all that tense or scared. The SCP's effect isn't really insidious enough to make me worry about the characters all that much, essentially.
Overall, I think the article needs to be redefined. You need to figure out just what kind of emotion you're trying to evoke in the readers. Do you want them scared? Excited? Curious? There's no clear emotional appeal right now and the article suffers as a result of that indecision.
P.S. There are a couple parts of dialogue that appear unfinished.
Thank you for coming back to this.
At this point, I feel like I should just cut the exploration log entirely. It’s been consistently the hardest part of this to write, and I should probably just write something else in its place if not remove it in full.
TheChunk also said that the fourth draft seemed to be over-detailed, like it was using a lot of words to get a simple message across. I agree; I’m considering just doing a full overhaul on this and making the description shorter.
My original plan for this was for it to just be the corpse of an alien who used magic to pose as Apollo in Ancient Greece.
Real-life gods being interpreted as SCPs have worked before, and that’s partial inspiration for this piece.
I think I’ll have to go back to the drawing board with getting that core concept down.
As for what emotion I want the audience to feel, I’m leaning towards curious regarding the skip’s discovery and transfer into Foundation custody.
Maybe I could replace the exploration log with a post-incident report that leaves certain details of the recovery open to interpretation.
Reresummoned via PM.
I think the major issue is that the article is simply too short to tell the story it wants to.
You say you want the audience to feel curious, but that's a very hard kind of emotion/feeling to evoke in readers because they have to want to know more. The way SCP articles are laid out though, requires that the Description come pretty much before everything. Therefore, the mystery of the article has to lie somewhere other than what the SCP actually is.
Then, you have to point the narrative in a direction where both the readers and characters are trying to find out more, and this has to be done in such a way that knowing more is conducive to some larger goal.
Learning for learning's sake is rather difficult to sell and if readers were actually interested in just knowing more, there'd be a lot more scholars in the world.
For a mystery, the who, what, or where are often less intriguing than the "why". A serial killer goes around murdering a bunch of people and the first question isn't typically, "who" or "how", but rather, "why?"
So, to make a compelling mystery, sell the readers on figuring out the "why" of the SCP.
Hello,
I feel like that main question would be, why? Why did the corpse come to Earth and pose as Apollo? My first few drafts involved Ortothanism/the Church of the Second Hytoth, perhaps I could work that in a more subtle way.
Alternatively, I could replace the exploration log with transcriptions of the skip’s logs that were found aboard its ship. That way, the reader could infer what the skip’s goals/motives were without those goals being stated outright, no matter if I bring back Ortothanism. Plus, I could avoid repetition by keeping the bigger details to the transcriptions, with an execution similar to SCP-2935.
I’m also considering including psychological evaluations for both Captain Mitchell and Doctor Ryan after the mission ended. These could reveal what happened on the ship without having to rely on the log.
Rereresummoned via PM.
Focusing on the 'why' is great, now you need to work on the pacing. You don't have enough build-up right now to intrigue the readers. In answering the question, "Why did this SCP pose as Apollo?" you need to give the readers a reason to care about the why.
What did the SCP do? Gather faith, as I understand the draft. Therefore, you need to start sprinkling in hints as to what this SCP was doing with all that faith/Akiva radiation. As you state, you could use logs to place these hints in, but don't just limit yourself to logs. Use leftover equipment, translated ballads from the time, anything and everything can be used as a hint to point at what was being intended.
If you've already figured out what it is the SCP was doing, great. If you haven't, keep in mind that the mystery should be something that people would actually care about and not something that's really only relevant to a handful of folks.
The big question I have now, though, is how you plan on doing the reveal or if you plan on doing a reveal at all.
Due to being a part of the Greek pantheon, Apollo most likely had poems written for him and appeared in artwork.
Perhaps I could insert some of those works in the article, like to break up the containment procedures, description, computer logs, and anything else. This could imply that whoever is writing the article in-universe has been affected by the corpse. I had found the poem Hymn of Apollo by Percy Bysshe Shelley, and maybe I could use that if I go forward with this and if it clears Creative Commons.
Also, with the computer logs, if I do bring back the the Church of the Second Hytoth/Ortothanism, I could suggest the corpse’s involvement with it instead of outright stating or explaining it. The logs could mention how the corpse came to Earth while alive, and why it chose the Ancient Greeks over any other civilization that existed at the time.
If I do keep Ortothanism, the translated logs could mention Rakmou-leusan or provide the details of animal/blood sacrifices in Apollo’s name and whether they were accepted.
Hey, I just took a look at this today. I think it's a bit all over the place, but still has some cool concepts at work.
Taking a broad look:
Tone
I think you're relying on the exploration logs to carry the article. I think that makes sense, but that's also where a lot of the article falls flat.
Let's call a spade a spade here: Once you get past the Apollo gimmick and really dive deep into the log, this is Alien. Or maybe Alien with a little bit of The Thing thrown in.
I don't think there's anything wrong with that, but I think it's important to consider what makes those kinds of stories work. They focus on a group of people in a remote location who are isolated and underprepared, trapped with a monster they're ill-equipped to fight and don't understand. Then the narrative slowly cranks up the tension as mistrust and paranoia divide the characters at the time when they most need to stick together, raising the stakes as the chances for survival drop.
In your log, as it's written, the characters are well equipped and well informed, and approach everything in a confident, matter-of-fact sort of way. There's peril, but very little horror. And I'm not 100% sure survival horror is what you were going for, but if it's not, it's not clear to me what the intent was.
More broadly, the thing that makes the exploration log drag the most is that it focuses on characters discovering information that the reader already knows. Most of the discoveries are of information that is already included in the description, so instead of feeling like an exploration, it just feels repetitive.
If you want to lean into the survival horror element, you could use this to create dramatic irony: instead of having the characters instantly recognize and identify everything, you could have them remain oblivious to hazards that the reader is aware of. This way you can increase the sense of danger and vulnerability.
Concept and Theme
I don't know if thematically or conceptually the different elements of this hold together.
I love the trope of ancient people worshiping alien beings as gods, and the idea of dead alien gods drifting through space really sings for me. At the same time, I think those concepts usually work because they deal with such vast, foreboding subject matter. Apollo, on the other hand, seems like a mismatched fit. Of all of the gods of all the world's religions that are well known today, Greek gods are the most human-like. I feel like as a result, the image of someone in the modern day sincerely revering a dead alien as though they were Apollo reads as silly, even if it's a delusion.
I also think the connection to the Church of the Second Hytoth feels a bit shoehorned in without adding much. This might be a personal preference, but I feel like tying in to Foundation universe lore works when it's either a very brief illusion, or something that meaningfully builds on the lore. I think this is kind of a one-foot-in, one-foot-out approach, which just kind of muddies the narrative with references that don't pay off.
Suggestions
I have lots of ideas as to how you could iterate on this, but I don't want to backseat pilot this article, so I stead I'll just toss out two suggestions:
If you want the delusion to be scary, I think it would be a lot easier to manage if it were an aura that led people to believe the alien was whatever deity the subject worships, or a figure of supreme authority, rather than specifically Apollo. You could keep that the ancient Greeks saw it as Apollo, but maybe the people who are exploring believe it instead to be something modern people still believe in.
If you want to pull this all together, it might be best to lean into what really stands up, and build the rest of the article around it. I think the best thing you have going for it right now is the setpiece of the exploration log. It needs work, but the concept of scientists exploring a mysterious ship that turns out to be the tomb of a dead ancient alien god and would-be conqueror of Earth who still psychically compels devotion from beyond the grave is just really damn cool. It reads like Call of Cthulhu in space.
Overall I think this has a lot of potential and I'd love to see more. If anything I think your draft is a bit unfocused because your concept still feels a bit unfocused. That said, given some refinement I think a lot can come of this.
Thank you for the reply.
My primary inspirations for the log were indeed Alien and The Thing, and I wanted to go for a more Thing-esque tone regarding the survival horror part. I feel like tone-wise, a better fit could be something like The Thing plus Stargate SG-1.
As for the Church of the Second Hytoth, I was trying to get the “meaningfully building on the lore” part, while also featuring a GoI that I don’t see a lot of. But now that you’ve pointed it out, I do get how disconnected it feels.
I think that a way to improve the log is to have them collect as much info as they can, with the plan to bring it all back to base/the relevant sites and actually investigate there. That could provide the dramatic irony you mentioned, because the crew doesn’t quite know what’s going on yet while the audience already does.
I agree with your “aura” concept. Reading it now, it does feel less convoluted than the “bodily components” angle. It could also still justify why Collins and Brooks were the first infected, as perhaps it could brainwash people who spent enough time under its influence and make them act like I described. Of course, Collins and Brooks would probably have to see it as the same god if I still want them to team up later.
And the “tomb of a dead ancient alien god and would-be conqueror of Earth who still psychically compels devotion from beyond the grave” aspect? Definitely something that I want to lean a bit harder into now with the next draft.
Glad to see you're making progress. If you had any follow-up questions just let me know. Otherwise, I'd be happy to check out your next draft when you're ready.
I had originally selected Apollo as a shout-out to the Star Trek: The Original Series episode “Who Mourns for Apollo?”, which featured Apollo as the central antagonist.
I’m thinking of having the corpse appear as not just Apollo, but also non-Greek deities associated with the things tied with him; healing and medicine, education, light/the sun, oracles, etc. Apollo could be the most commonly seen god, since he’s the most well known example who’s associated with those things.
The corpse could have abilities related to that stuff while alive, and could have influenced the development of/posed as similar gods on Earth.
I’m also thinking that if an atheist/agnostic person saw the corpse, they wouldn’t see it as any deity but as just the long-dead corpse it really is; the corpse could be under the influence of a cognitohazard that only affected those with strong religious beliefs or affiliations. And in places like Ancient Greece, there were a whole ton of people who would have seen Apollo; this could be an alternate reason as for why he’s the most commonly seen god.
I think a lot of that depends on how you want to approach the ancient aliens gimmick.
Personally, I like ancient aliens as a subject in fiction because it allows us to reimagine ancient culture through a modern lens. What may have seemed like a god to people who lived in a more spiritual and superstitious time is a monster to people in a rational, secular world. That's a spooky concept, and I think you have a lot of options as to how to implement it.
If, on the other hand, you want to go more space opera with it, and make the alien less of a monster, and more of a human from another world, there's probably a way to make that work too. Just be careful, because that might not serve the horror tone you seem to be going for in your logs. I think there's a way to make either one work; your article just doesn't want to try to be both at the same time.
Right now, I’ve given the corpse a cognitohazard that makes anyone who stays within a certain distance from the corpse for a certain length of time develop abilities that mimic the original cognitohazard, “infecting” others nearby.
I feel like this could be a good way to explore the “monster” side of this. Maybe the corpse desired worship, or felt it was “saving” people but was really brainwashing them.
All in all, I do agree with not having the article be both at once. I don't want to confuse readers.
I think that can all play out well given the right treatment.
I don't know that it's an issue of confusion as much as it's an issue of tone: the more you focus on mood and environment while leaving the exact explanation to the imagination, the more you lean into horror. The more you develop a clearly populated universe, and the more human-like you make the population of that universe, the more you approach fantasy.
Gotcha. I'm leaning towards the mood/environment side of it; I'd like to try and keep the corpse's intentions for humanity ambiguous.
Hey, I'm back to comment on your newest draft.
Though the details work, I think you're over-explaining what's now a relatively simple concept. The description is very lengthy, but it what are you communicating that can't be summarized in a few sentences? At a certain point, a more elaborate explanation can be harder to follow and less clear than a succinct one. The terminology can also make things a bit hard to read, with references to XXXX-A, XXXX-B and XXXX-C crisscrossing in such a way that it can make a reader have to go back and reread to figure out what's what. I feel like some of these would be better classified in plain English than with their own sub-SCP designations.
The logs are still very rough. I don't mean that as a slight; action is particularly hard to write. But I really just don't think it's there. Characters are still spending most of the time either summarizing what's happening or discovering things that the reader already knows from the description section, and still feel largely interchangeable.
It might be easier to figure out how to make that section work by asking this: what is the effect of the exploration log meant to be, and why is this the best format for it?
You've mentioned being influenced by Star Trek, and it definitely shows. I know you'd said before that you were going to lean into the horror aspect more, but just looking at what's the same vs what you've changed, it does really feel like you're following the Star Trek model of having a team of spacefarers discover something strange or unusual, and then exploring it with the goal of learning more about it (and possibly reflecting on what it says about humanity). In spite of that, I just don't really see where you're going with it, since you hit on all the beats of the story, but don't really seem to be that interested in sticking with and developing any particular aspect.
The question I'm left with is: are you using this narrative/storytelling structure because it's essential to help convey the experience or effect you're trying to convey, or did you start with the structure in mind, then fill in the details?
My insight here is going to be limited since I can't see the version of the article that you have in your mind's eye, but the version as written still feels lengthy yet underdeveloped.
Thank you for the reply.
I think the issue with the description was me trying to sound too “official” and detailed for the sake of having detail.
Perhaps I could cut out XXXX-B entirely and just have the corpse, the people affected by it, and the ship the corpse was found on. I’m also split on having the corpse be seen as multiple gods, as I feel that it adds too much detail with little payoff.
I wanted the log to be about the Foundation discovering the corpse for the first time, and they’re not 100% sure what its deal is yet. They’re taking precautions, but without all the info things go south.
I had actually tried to go for more of a Stargate SG-1 tone for the fourth draft, with a quasi-military base sending a team in to investigate alien technology.
I’m thinking about putting the log before the main article, but at the same time I’m considering just cutting it out entirely and making the Foundation’s first contact with it play out differently. I feel like at this point the do-over idea may be best.
