I made it in the sandbox. I ran it through the chat. I ran it through the forum. I performed over 35 spellchecks. I followed all advice given to me, after consideration. Now I'm posting it here. This is my first SCP attempt, and I want to know what you think of it.
SCP-2545 / Discussion
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This is the discussion related to the wiki page SCP-2545.
May I have your permission to fix some of the walls of text author? Maybe space it out a bit?
pastarasta1 is quick-talking and often scheming
I just took a big chunk out of it. If you think it needs even less, be my guest.
That's good enough for me ;)
pastarasta1 is quick-talking and often scheming
I recommend you put the rating model on the top and the discription is kinda wall of text.
pastarasta1 is quick-talking and often scheming
Ninja'd
(that means I fixed the problem WHILE pastarasta1 was requesting that it get fixed.)
Is the rating module not at the top for you? I'm seeing it at the top, right where it is on any SCPs. It's there in the page source, too. As to the "wall of text"…
Yeah. I did everything I could, but I guess I couldn't condense it far enough.
At first it was at the bottom but now it's at the top now so thanks for fixing it
pastarasta1 is quick-talking and often scheming
Off the bat, the wall of text is doing no favours in the reading. Paragraphing helps to make the work more reader-friendly. And I'm gonna ask: If the barrel is only anomalous when filled with gummy bears, isn't the best solution to this to have the barrel be empty normally?
SCP-2545 is to be fed 500 grams of food three times per day.
How do you exactly "feed" a barrel? I think it's better to say that food is inserted into the barrel. But then again, there is no need to feed it since an empty 2545 is as good as a normal barrel.
Regarding your surface area/volume, it might be better to quantify the limits here. It is clear that the Foundation tested it out, so I guess they would have numbers at least.
As to why it cannot simply be kept empty, please note the amended containment procedures and addendums 2 and 3. I'll fix the "feed" thing.
In my reading of the procedures and the addenda you have listed, I do not see how they relate to the detriments of the barrel being empty.
The barrel contained at least some gummy bears prior to containment, as well as during the testing phase. Once testing was done, it was determined it could be emptied and put in a locker. Shortly after being emptied and put in a locker, the locker it was contained in was compromised due to internal pressure from vast quantities of SCP-2545-1 that were not in the locker previously. The instances of SCP-2545-1 facilitated a breach by battering down the storage door. All of this was a direct result of the barrel being emptied.
If that was not made clear in the document, I shall work to clarify it. I also welcome any and all suggestions for doing so.
Also, thank you for scrutiny. Your comments have helped me improve the article significantly.
Internal pressure? Where would those 2545-1 instances come from? Did they generate from nowhere? From my understanding, the empty barrel is put in the locker. And the 2545-1 instances were disposed; I suppose it would be something like incineration.
But on a more critical note, this feels like a relatively cheap way of elevating the danger of your SCP. Those addenda posited this breach to express that this is more dangerous than it seems, and might not be entirely Safe.
Furthermore, the means this was discovered is odd. I (and others) do not fancy the idea of researchers randomly finding SCPs on mundane trips, which feels like those episodes in police dramas where the protagonist deals with a case while off-duty. And would it be believable for people to not notice self-moving gummy bears stashing other food in what I assume to be a shop? Or the mysterious disappearance of food and never-ending supply of gummy bears?
Now that you mention it, the means of discovery could be improved. Thanks for the heads-up; I'll change that.
As to where the other gummy bears came from, Addendum 5 indicates that all gummy bears in a 75 km radius had vanished after the barrel "generated" a bunch to escape. I'll admit, I don't know the distribution density of gummy bears. If 75 km sounds like too much or too little, I'd be happy to change it.
The barrel used them as an emergency means of escape in order to continue doing its job, which it was inhibited from doing while contained. Don't plenty of SCPs have a "thing X that they do when researchers do thing Y, so we'll write not to do thing Y in the procedures"? How are variances to an anomaly's behavior considered "cheap"? Not being accusatory; I need to learn this stuff apparently.
As to the classification, I mean, the incident hasn't re-occurred since current procedures were put into place. Since current procedures involve putting gummy bears into a barrel, and not, say, scrubbing-feces-out-of-a-room-without-blinking-or-face-death, (I'd assume) the Foundation would have no problem declaring it Safe. I know Safe is usually just "put-it-in-a-locker-with-a-shiny-new-lock-on-it", but I figured this would qualify too.
I really want to like this. The testing logs were interesting, and I like the restraint of this being mostly harmless. I was basically teetering on an upvote, but the bit where they try shooting at it (which risks breaking or pissing off a currently harmless object in a [data expunged] sort of way) and the slightly over the top breach kind of ruin it for me. I think scaling the last half back a little would go a long way toward fixing that, though, and I do like the fact that even after they shot at it it was still non-lethal. Maybe you could find a way to keep the spirit of that test in a less risky way.
Addendum about the "cheap" thing mentioned above: The breach feels cheap because it goes against both the established rules of the SCP and its established personality. What you have here is more interesting than a monster what is made of summoned gummy bears, but that's sort of what the breach reduces it to. Now if, say, they were find it had jammed the lock with gummy bears and was raiding the staff break room at night…
^This. I like the basic anomaly/effect, but the sudden outbursts where it's faster and an amorphous containment breaching machine kill it for me (along with, as MrWrong pointed out, the recovery of the skip). Sitting on a no vote for now.
Right here, thank you. My head-canon was basically that the SCP was designed to be, y'know, safe. Not actually sure where it's from yet, was thinking it was made, but it could just be a natural phenomenon. I wanted it to be safe, but also able to do its job, even when inhibited. Something about what I'd written didn't feel right. This idea is awesome and I love it and I'll add it as soon as I get home at 5.
And I did already change the recovery log to something more reasonable. Is it still not good? Too boring? I didn't want it to be super flashy.
My fault. I read it hours before I commented, so I couldn't see the update. I'll check it out now.
Scorpion451's suggestion feels more in line with the rest of the article. It's a satisfying way for them to break out. It shows how clever and patient they are, as opposed to magic mass surge/new abilities. (ETA: Plus it's flippin' adorable!)
ETA: It's a definite improvement on the recovery log.
The image of them making a compact mass with a pseudopod made me think of slime molds (one of my favorite bizarre real organism). That added a tinge of disturbing to what could have been a -J in other hands.
My headcanon is that it's not a barrel and they're not gummy bears - it's something else that looks that way so it can feed and reproduce. We may never know what that something else is, but the Foundation's motto is not 'Study, Cogitate, Prove', is it? This has been secured, it's currently contained , and humanity is protected.
From a barrel of gummy bears. Kack!
Yeah… I love me some primordial entities disguised as something mundane, even cute. Turns out it's an unpopular opinion. You might not like the new ending unfortunately.
It's cute, I'll give it that. Tests 1-7 are solid, and I could totally see this making it with a collaborative test log, or just with what it has now. Scorpion's suggestion above is solid, but I think that the description should also be revised. The tone there's not all clinical, but you could also just shrink it to get to test log (the best part) quicker.
Yeah, there was this one sentence I couldn't get right. Reworded it just now, but, in my eyes at least, the rest of it reads clinically. And again (in my eyes at least) the information written there is necessary to explain its properties. By the time you read it, it had already been trimmed by about 30% anyway.
Overall I found the idea nice enough for a +1 but I'd definitely like to see some improvements. I'd echo the sentiments of others about the Incident and later tests with the gun- though for the latter my only reason is because it does seem unnecessary to fire upon the poor gummy bears.
I also thought the recovery log was a little pointless. Possible suggestion? What if gummy bears (sentient or non-sentient, whichever) turn up every so often outside the entrance to the site? The implication being that all the bears that were outside the barrel when it was transported are slowly making the journey back to it.
Idk, you might not like the idea but the idea of these litte gummy bears travelling so far really appeals to me- seems a bit like the premise for a pixar short
I've written a new "ending" by utilizing elements of Scorpion451's and ribby97's ideas. Thanks guys.
I really enjoyed this one. Initially I was going to complain about it being too similar to the play-dough army men, but the test logs were a lot of fun, and really served to flesh out that this thing is 100% safe, but will go to ANY adorable lengths to keep making gummy bears.
This is one of the few articles I've read that feels like a Series 1 article in a good way.
+1
Once per week, SCP-2545 is to be emptied until it is 10% full, and the extraneous material delivered to the on-site cafeteria for consumption by staff. The cafeteria staff are to incinerate any leftovers after a period of one week. SCP-2545 should not be kept empty for more than 24 hours.
This is a Huge problem for me. There's no reason for this. The Foundation has unlimited resources. If they want to give their employees gummi-bears, they can buy them some, not feed them something that for all they know is hell bent on destroying the world. It's a needless risk, it's pure lolFoundation, and it does absolutely nothing for this article but weaken it. -1 from me until that's gone.
Awesome. I like the other changes you've made as well. -1 abolished.
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page revision: 2, last edited: 15 Jan 2023 15:06
