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Hi! I'm a coauthor of this rewrite along with the initial author Kinchtheknifeblade! We've been working pretty hard on this, so I hope it's paid off and you'll enjoy it!
Special thanks to -
Kinchtheknifeblade, for being rad as hell
ARD for crit
Thekillerax for crit
Lordstonefish for crit
Sudypt for crit
And many more!
EDIT JUNE 27th, 2018
Thank you to kinchtheknifeblade and scarhaver for input on changes. Here's to you.
I really wanted this piece to work, but without my bud Dolphin, I don't think this SCP would've been able to really coalesce into something I'd consider myself proud of. Anything good in this is her, imo. She's a great co-author, kind of a main author really. I hope you like the weird satellite friends.
Shit. I forgot to credit the art. It's drawn for me specific-wise by my friend Khyle (doggirlsondrugs @ tumblr) for the SCP, as a kind, beautiful gift.
I really liked this one. The concept was very strange, and I wasn't sure how I felt about non-J SCPs referencing Tumblr and Homestuck, but it worked really well. Their blog entries are wonderfully written, especially Eli's, and just enough is left unexplained. +1.
I figure since some SCPs have mentioned Facebook and Faulkner, Tumblr and Homestuck isn't too faaar away.
what gave you the idea to make this SCP In the first place? not to be mean but this SCP seems so bizarre to make.
I gave Dolph critique on this in chat, and I was a little worried it might get flak for referencing Tumblr and Homestuck, I am very happy to see it doing well.
In fact, even as a draft, I had little to nitpick about; I like the pacing of it, the containment procedures have provide very good exposition for the description and logs, and I like the idea that the Foundation's procedures are letting them be. It's happy and cutesy, with enough Lovecraftian flesh beast content to still have that twinge of "Uh, what?" to it.
I think my biggest praise I can offer is the ending - it's happy. I can probably count the articles with happy endings I've seen on one hand, and this one does it in such a way it's not bittersweet, and it still fits what the Foundation would do. If anything, the Foundation is safeguarding the happy ending. They're letting it happen and if it goes to hell, they'll clean it up. It's very refreshing to see, and I thoroughly enjoyed reading this and giving feedback.
Good job, to both authors. +1 from me.
I couldn't stop laughing. I know I probably shouldn't have been laughing, but I found the whole thing hilarious. Cute, yes, and definitely serious enough to be on the mainlist, but hilarious. My only qualms are the expungements.
Now we only have to wait for the inevitable character blogs that copypaste contents of this page and expand on them.
I don't know how I feel about the Life, The Universe and Everything reference, I need to think about this. Otherwise this seems to have moved well away from allegory and firmly into science fiction, as I had hoped it would. I find the characters to have become fairly compelling and I think I generally like this version of this.
The SEP (Somebody Else's Problem) field is an idea from Douglas Adams. I'm ambiguous about having a Hitch-Hiker reference in an SCP, but I suppose it would make in-universe sense that the Foundation, having developed a way to make something psychologically invisible, would name it after a similar Adams whimsy.
Yeah I get that scientists sometimes name things with geeky names, but I feel like it might be one pop culture reference too far here.
Incidently in SCP-2111, I used "SNARK HUNT disinterest/disgust memetic agent" for something similar, but that probably only cloaks memetic content.
My apologies, the SEP field appears in Life, The Universe and Everything.
I was a bit iffy about this one from some of the formatting and naming conventions at the start. But I think reading until the end changed my mind, the divide between the two 2721s' perspectives showed the development of their personalities in an interesting way.
Although I am also a sucker for aliens going native.
It consists of two entities, designated SCP-2721-LYRE and SCP-2721-LORD
These are very strange designations, and at no point are they explained.
Honestly, I quite disliked this article. It seemed more like a drawn-out pity party to me, and the attempts to get me to sympathise with -LYRA were rather poor.
It's a reference to Calliope's title of "The Lyrist" and Caliborn's title of "The Lordling". In other words, it's a heavy-handed Homestuck reference that doesn't make any sense because the Foundation picks the designations and them referencing Homestuck in-universe isn't something they would do.
…. oh!
I thought it was somehow a reference to Lewis's Trilemma (when CS Lewis said that Jesus was either "liar, lunatic, or lord")! If it's a deeper Homestuck reference, okay, that explains a lot.
as for whether it makes sense for the Foundation to do that - from a realworld viewpoint, no. But this is narrative, and the codewords are typically a lot more meaningful than they'd be in a real clandestine organization.
I could see it happening if the researcher giving them designations happened to like Homestuck. They're non-standard, but anyone who might write them up for it has more important things to care about.
Embracing the bathos here makes all the difference in the world from the previous iteration.
+1 for the heartwarming snarky planet-annihilating organic death machines
But alas, this draws out as another "non-human that tries to be human". Nothing inherently wrong with that, but it is a drawn-out approach towards SCPs. Perhaps the references to social media is suitable, but I do not see that as praiseworthy.
Well, I think the dysphoria metaphor is interesting, as is the difficulty of Eli having to deal with Lyris' decision to abandon the mission. In some ways Lyris' choice to save the Earth is viewed as a selfish one from Eli's POV which is a pretty unusual take on it. Is this about how you don't have to be anything you don't want to be, even if that is what you were made for? Or is it about sacrificing your own identity to help someone you love? That seems like a fresh take on Pinocchio Syndrome.
ETA: I also like the choice of Lyris to identify as a transwoman. Lyris isn't human, and from her perspective male and female humans aren't any more similar to her than eggplants are. On the surface it seems odd, she could just choose to identify as a ciswoman and it wouldn't be any less of a cognitive stretch (and that would fit the typical Pinocchio trope), except that in some way she can identify with trans persons more than she does with the rest of us eggplants.
The use of Homestuck here is interesting too, she could have read say Frankenstein, and Pinocchio (like Johnny Five) and been more typical for the trope, but instead the choice is a long rambling surrealist science-fantasy webcomic with a fanatic but welcoming fanbase, which in some ways is more interesting than aliens randomly falling in love with Mozart or whatever.
Yeah, I think the choice of Homestuck is actually what makes the skip so compelling. I feel like aliens getting into/appreciating classical works is something that's been done, but aliens getting into a comic with this particular kind of a fan culture is something that hasn't been explored as much.
And it works so much better than if she'd chosen another contemporary work with a fandom just because of the nature of the comic. For one, it includes humans and aliens who are both trying to survive the apocalypse. For another, it's the kind of work where what makes it great isn't necessarily the work itself (have you read Homestuck? I know there's no accounting for taste, but even as a fan I feel like the art's not that good and the writing is meh), but the way the fans expand on and elevate it. In short, what makes Homestuck great is the power its fans have to transform it into something better than what it was originally. No wonder it resonated so powerfully with LYRE yes, canonically it was just a malfunction, but this is poetic. It's also got one of the most welcoming fan communities, second only to the furry fandom I think; for a long time there was a culture of "if you're in Homestuck cosplay and someone else is in Homestuck cosplay you're instantly friends", and that hasn't totally died out I think. So it makes sense that she'd grow so close to the community.
I'm rambling, but this is one of my favorite SCPs, and I've read it a bunch of times. Upvoted.
???
Edit: Ignore this
they closed voting
who uses this feature anyway?
I also like the choice of Lyris to identify as a transwoman. Lyris isn't human […] she could just choose to identify as a ciswoman and it wouldn't be any less of a cognitive stretch
Sorry to reply to an old post, but you're kinda misunderstanding the cis/trans concept. Cis/cisgender means simply someone whose assigned gender is the one they identify as and wish to live as. If an entity designed by an extraterrestrial force and assigned no gender by that force has identified as a woman, there is no way this entity can be considered a cisgender woman. If anyone's cisgender in this narrative, it's 2721-LORD, who is totally fine being "it" and has no dysphoria.
I think you misunderstood me. Pinocchio never says say he wants to be a real PtM boy, Data doesn't present as or identify as a transman (we don't get a queer main cast member until Discovery, unless you count the Dax symbiote; even George Takai and Andrew Robinson played as straight), Johnny Five isn't even humanoid, but there's no real question that he's a "male" robot from the beginning.
In the cliché version the character assumes an identity as though they were assigned a gender at creation and are just assuming the human identity to go with it. So effectively, even though it doesn't make much sense, they identify as cisgendered humans. This piece breaks with that and actually recognizes what you are talking about.
In the cliché version of this, Lyris would be have been a "female" alien space robot (probably with preposterous and useless metal breasts like the Maschinenmensch in Metropolis) to begin with, get into Mozart and the Iliad, and identify as a human woman, without any connection to trans identity or subculture.
This thoroughly subverts this.
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