Many thanks to those that provided feedback, on the forums and in chat. Some stylistic things I chose to keep as they were, and I hope that doesn't offend any that made suggestions to change them.
May god have mercy on my soul.
SCP-2824 / Discussion
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This is the discussion related to the wiki page SCP-2824.
I like it, I really do.
For a first submission, this is brilliant compared to many other articles. I felt drawn in by the story, and it has an ending that ties up the story well.
I did make a small edit to fix up some errors I noticed, apart from that it is a great first submission.
+1
Slight nitpick:
SCP-2824-2F: Right. Yeah, sure. I, uh, I don't have any personal history of psychosis, though I have been diagnosed with ███ and ███. I'm on ███████ for the ██████████ and ███████████ for the ███████. Do you think the meds might have triggered this?
The blackboxes really chopped up the flow of the sentence here. I suggest maybe removing some of them, in order to preserve flow.
Otherwise, this was an enjoyable read. Upvote for you. +1
Similar nitpick on the same line: I don't know any mental illnesses that are 3 characters long.
Living the dream, or dreaming the life?
SCP-2824-2F: It's a stretch. Apples are kind of a family theme. It's on the crest and we've grown orchards of them in the past. And the name Avalon, the island where Arthur went and from which he shall return to save Britain, just so happens to be derived from afal, the Welsh word for apple. But that's it. And, of course, that we can't seem to stop naming ourselves Arthur, but that's hardly evidence for anything except obsession.
Dr. Garfield: So in your dreams, you are-
A spacing was missed here.
SCP-2824-2F: There's no such place. Not in the UK. I was looking at schizophrenia treatment just yesterday. Where am I and how did I get here?
Are we supposed to take that this guy's just super smart of there really aren't more than a couple psychiatric treatment facilities in the UK? Here's what I could drag up from Wikipedia. Did the guy memorize 44+ locations yesterday or something?
On 3/14/2017, Foundation agents took possession of a series of three stone tablets from a potentially anomalous archaeological site near ███████, Ireland. Text engraved onto the tablets was determined to be Modern Welsh.
I'm going to assume that the SCP-F that we're talking with had done this, because I don't like the idea of Merlin writing in Modern Welsh way back when.
Overall, I'm unsure of the piece. I was asking for a big, big payoff. Arthurian legend was actually magical aliens? I'm unsure. For me, I don't think it was to my tastes.
Living the dream, or dreaming the life?
I think what's going on is that the -F (Arthur Rountree IV) managed to transport himself back in time ~32 kya and start/complete a fucking massive stable time loop.
Giving bearhugs to the unsuspecting since 1872.
Exactly. That's why it's signed
There are no aliens. They revere the moon, and the crystal, for whatever reason, allows for the transport of those buried there to the moon. It's probably similar to the Moon Wizard.
Drewbear and WrongJohnSilver got it. Also, I considered cross-linking Moon Wizard, but was warned against it in chat. I felt it better to avoid that kerfuffle.
Agreed, it was for the best not to link. Sometimes the best crosslinks are the ones only subtly and obliquely intimated. I think it's stronger in this case.
Agreed. Its generally looked down upon anyway, but the SCP worked fine without crosslinks.
I wouldn't say that it's generally looked down upon, but the link should help strengthen both entries. I've done plenty of crosslinks in my SCPs, some directly presented, some near invisible.
"This SCP is doing X like SCP-YYY does" isn't that strong, and is best left as an exercise to the reader.
"This SCP has an interesting reaction with SCP-YYY, something that makes sense but you wouldn't immediately realize it" is a stronger use, and the link can be made.
Crosslinks that are done well aren't looked down on. Unfortunately, we don't see many of those.
That is what I meant when I said this, but was sort of quoting my memory of the writing guide.
I wouldn't even say that we don't see many good crossslinks. The ratio of good crossslinks to bad ones is roughly equivalent to the ratio of good articles to bad ones.
I myself have done several successful crossslinks and my most successful article even crossslinks to a Heritage article!
I see, okay.
In that case, I'll retract my observation. Unfortunately, I still don't believe that the payoff is worth the extensive length of this piece.
Living the dream, or dreaming the life?
I really like this interpretation of Merlin's reverse aging, the way this starts on the moon and ends in paleolithic Europe, and the Mona Lisa paradox but I am neutral voting because there's a lot here that just doesn't work for me or is inconsistent (fix them and I will upvote):
pending review by Class B personnel.
So they are going to ask a cafeteria worker, a custodian, an accountant, and a shop clerk at Spatulas, Colanders and Pots? Why?
Class isn't really relevant here, and Class B includes everyone that doesn't directly interact with anomalies who isn't an essential strategic asset. In other words: all of the service employees. Asking them about containment is silly (especially since a lot of them are level 0 or 1 and don't even know anything about anomalous stuff at all).
You probably want the opinion of Containment Specialists and Researchers here (all of whom are Class C, but so are security, rapid response, and MTF grunts; so again class isn't relevant).
I would change this to a review board or interdepartmental working group: "by a containment review board" or "the Lunar Facilities Working Group (LUNFAC)"; or even just "pending review."
Previous Containment Procedures
The strikethough text repeats a lot of the same information, and long paragraphs of strikethrough are hard to read. You should either just strikethrough only the deleted text inline or just make a note of the changes.
Sea of Serenity
Why translate "Mare Serenitatis"? This is like, for example, saying that an SCP was found in the "Peaceful Great Circumference River off the coast of the Fictional Caliphate of the Black Amazons, near the City of the Angels", instead of "in the Pacific Ocean, off of the California coast, near Los Angeles" .
human
"Human" is generic (Homo) and not specific; while it usually is safe to assume Homo sapiens (as the only extant human species), in this case you are contrasting with another human species, so you probably should specify that the second remains are Homo sapiens.
furs
white robes
rough-spun tunic
You specify materials of every other artifact, so why the inconsistency here? Probably should be something like "bear (Ursos arctos arctos) furs", "white wool robes", and "rough spun linen tunic".
Genetic analysis of SCP-2824-2 instances revealed instances B, C, D, E, and F to be direct patrilineal descendants of SCP-2824-2A
This is unremarkable. Unless they had only single male children for 30,000 years, a very large number of European descended men should be expected to have -A's Y chromosome. There are about 6-16.3 million ethnic Welsh worldwide in the world, so if -A's descendants had every 25 years on average, only an average of 1.01 boys that survived, he is the common patrilineal ancestor of all Welshmen.
Ireland
Ireland was unpopulated by humans until 8000 BC.
ETA: Actually thought about my math.
Security and Clearance Guide led me to believe B Class was effectively senior researchers and site managers. Removed personnel class entirely: maintains meaning while avoiding conflicting canons.
Sea of Serenity and human replaced with big thinky words, cause yeah, you're right. Good note.
Containment Procedures changed as recommended. That's how I originally had, and personally prefer, them, but feedback led me to believe it read better split apart.
Trinity College is now Cardiff University, because again, you're right, and my story about humans and neanderthals doesn't make sense if there aren't any about.
Genetic analysis adjusted to emphasize familial line. These things are not my specialty, but hopefully this is less absurd and more germane.
Thanks for your notes They were very good.
OH
OH SHIT I JUST FIGURED IT OUT
I caught that "ARIV" was "AR-Four", Arthur, his name. A, R, Roman numeral four because Arthur Rountree the Fourth. It's a fucking closed time loop.
Fuck this is brilliant. I could complain that it's a little heavy-handed in explaining itself (Googling the Welsh gave me the flash of "here's what's going on!" and then Arthur explains his tattoos, for instance), but there's enough here to get on your own that I didn't mind that so much. You've got a "breath" that should be "breathe" and that's the end of my criticism. I think this is fantastic. :)
On the downside, I had a lot of trouble actually picturing the crystal lattice as described. I'm also not entirely clear why it specifically teleports them when the lattice is damaged, if that is the mechanism.
All of that said, still a hell of a lot of fun. I really enjoy his reaction in the second interview and the ensuing events, because it's fun when the Foundation loses track of the narrative but the reader gets to keep going. +1
Also, just curious, is the forest people/thinker distinction a reference to anything specifically?
Forest people / thinker is meant to be Neanderthal / modern human. There's reasoning behind the teleportation when damaged, but the foundation has no way of knowing it and it's not important to the story.
So we're up to what, three space wizards and three King Arthurs now? They should face off against the four or so Terra Cotta Armies, maybe run into the ever-growing number of Superscience time-travelling/parallel-universe-jumping Nazis or Power-Armored Supersoldiers while they're at it. One of 'em should punch one of the six or so One True Gods for shits and giggles, while another one should steal one of the ghost tanks.
This is one of many redundant tropes, is what I'm saying. Not saying I don't like it, just that it's not the first.
One thing I do have a problem with is the size of the pattern on the cave floor. Surely you meant 2.5 meters and not 2.5 kilometers, right?
Only three King Arthurs? Hell, I'll take it.
And yeah, I did have that thought just now. That's a huuuuuge undiscovered cave. Edited.
Meh, I have no problem with multiple takes on a subject/trope as long as they are entertaining and unique. What with the no-official-canon thing and the fact that a *lot* of scips deal with alternate universes and alternate Foundations, there's no reason they can't coexist on the mainlist. There are a ton of scips that contradict each other in other ways.
(This certainly qualifies as unique, as I don't know of another Paleolithic King Arthur with a magic-crystal hand-axe Excalibur. Entertaining is up to the reader.)
And yes, that is a BIG cave. Not sure if it needs an "anomalously large" inserted or a reduction in size, though.
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page revision: 2, last edited: 15 Jan 2023 15:06
