*-* I liek it a lot.
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This is the discussion related to the wiki page New Job.
I admit, I did a double-take at the premise you set up near the beginning and then carried through without the slightest hint of joking, and the fact that you seriously interweaved different skips (and even a tale!) made me sure you at least thought it through. But like, I'm not sure. I'm not ready to buy into it yet. It's bonkers, but I can't tell if you didn't go far enough into the absurdity that it stops being absurd and starts being wholly serious for me (which it hasn't yet) or if the execution isn't on par.
Side-notes:
To explain the disappearance of 231-7's parents and siblings, the official story is that we killed them in front of her as part of 110 Montauk.
I can't imagine how this worked. They returned -7 to her family, but they disappeared… and the official story is that they killed them as part of a secret organization's procedure? What? This bit needs clarity.
You can crosslink stuff using:
[[[scp-231|this]]]
instead of the link code you have there. So that would become this. (Allows for easier interconnectivity too!)
I fucking hated 999. You just made me like one of my least-favorite Series I's. You… Christ. You're brilliant. I expect great things from you, author.
It has been a long time since I last saw this as a draft you wanted me to go through. Glad that you have decided to go on with it.
In general, I still like the main interpretation you are going for. As for the other lesser interpretations, I still find them lacking. I mean, why would every flesh-warping cult be somehow related? Maybe that is a case of a concept invented by two independent groups. It would be interesting for the Foundation to think that they are related, when they really aren't.
Thanks so much for your beta reading back in February. I was hesitant to post this tale since I honestly had no idea how it would be received, but I'm sure it's thanks to your advice that it's already got some up-votes.
As for my personal head canon about the CotSK being connected to the Sarkists, it's because of your feedback that I dialed that down as much as I did, but I didn't remove it completely simply because it is my head canon. I couldn't convince you of this before and I really don't won't to debate it again, so lets just agree to disagree.
As for my personal head canon about the CotSK being connected to the Sarkists
Actually, I like how you handled that part. The Foundation thinks there may be correlation, which might be reasonable for them to try to find out some semblance of coherency in the incoherence of anomalies.
Whether they are really related or not, or just produced the same set of results without consulting the other side… that remains to be seen.
This is pretty frickin awesome. +1
On a side note, I've always had it in the back of my mind that 999 was related to Majin Buu.
This is just way too much of a straightforward infodump, with an all too casual tone for me to really enjoy it.
Gotta agree with sirpudding here
I also think you could do with losing this line:
"(admittedly more out of concern for Procedure 110-Montauk's lack of viability as a long term containment strategy then out of empathy for the girl)"
I feel like you're beating a dead horse here, we get it- the Foundation is cold. Don't know if others would agree, but this line made me roll my eyes,
Idk, it makes sense to me. As much as I adamantly dislike Montauk (child rape is cheap horror), if we're taking it as canon the fact that it would at best be a very short-term solution would be the foundation's highest motivation to try something else.
Sure it makes sense, but I don't think it needed to be explicitly stated.
There's no reason why this doctor should be privy to commentary on the motivation of the O5. The whole tale is way too much exposition for a briefing and this parenthetical is probably the most egregious part.
This story is very good, I don't even know why, It just sort of clicks. The connections between SCPs just works wonderfully mixed with the great writing.
+1
Agreeing with sirpudding above, and also adding the following:
While in some ways the commitment to the more outdated aspects of these articles is admirable (in that the dopey crosstests are canon, for example), the piece doesn't really click when those more campy aspects of these works are brought into direct comparison with newer material, such as with comparisons to Sarkicism and perhaps most subtly with the tone of the whole thing leaning towards that of the subversive Fear Alone.
The problem then is that it doesn't click together, and the whole piece doesn't cohere so much as the disparate elements just exist next to each other. This is exacerbated by the casual infodump tone, as it's difficult to actually subvert the audience's expectations when they're not really sure what they're supposed to be expecting.
The final effect is that it doesn't read as a serious and interesting subversion, it reads like someone describing their crazy fan theory at the water cooler. There's also this patronizing way that the piece walks the reader through every step in the logic, even taking the time to put every every possible plot notion to rest. For example, the entire paragraph about how the traumatized little girl is totally fine now seems incredibly dismissive, like you didn't want to address anything dark in the story… which isn't really possible given the darkness of 231's subject matter.
The characters (or character, should I say) reach this interesting point, the uncanny valley of genre-savviness in that they're so aware of being characters that they cease to be characters and just become conduits for the writer to disperse wit. This O5 sits squarely in that valley, constantly going through motions of "predicting" what the reader is thinking (and doing the aforementioned "walk the reader through everything") and as a result feeling incredibly plastic.
So, unfortunately, this story takes a promising premise but fumbles on the execution. There isn't a narrative so much as there's a walkthrough of events and convenient steps, and there aren't characters so much as there's a narrator who spends all his time winking at you. This leads to the whole tale not feeling like an exploration of an idea, just the idea stated to the reader as clearly and unambiguously as possible.
Summary: Downvote. Could fare significantly better with a serious rewrite, keeping most of the story intact.
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page revision: 1, last edited: 02 Apr 2021 15:16
