I've read the draft and its revisions many times, and this by far is the best iteration. I still feel strongly though that the density of the scientific language in this article detracts from the narrative. I like the addition of the chem teacher interview and i thought that defunding STEM was a very clever way to deal with the issue. I still feel that the object is very difficult to visualize and the story behind it very unclear. The best parts of this are the interviews. I feel like if you gave them more weight and pulled back on the chemistry this could be really successful.
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This is the discussion related to the wiki page SCP-2877.
Holy smokes, you didn't spare us any details, huh?
I like the basic idea of some material/entity that's trying to reconfigure chemistry so e- shells are full at seven rather than eight. I like that you've clearly thought a lot about how this would work and play out, which has helped you to write a convincing and plausible article. I like the tone, which is absolutely spot on.
However - there's no getting away from this - you wrote way too much! A lot of the time, you're just repeating the numerology again and again with minor twists, and it's not helping to make the article more entertaining. Don't get me wrong, I'm pretty impressed intellectually by the sheer amount of detail and terminology, but it also makes it a slight chore to get through.
Paring and boiling it down to its fundamentals would have made this a much nicer read. You could have done all of the following and reduced the convincingness by maybe 10% but improved the entertainment value massively: You could have gotten rid of at least one of the sub-designated objects; you could have been a little more economical about where and when to use the scientific terminology; you could have been less exhaustive about precisely how these objects interact with all these different substances; you could have been less exhaustive in describing the physical properties of these objects; I think you could have got rid of the discovery log.
Also, when this article takes a turn for the psychological, that was… surprising, to me. It feels like a big departure from the rock-hard science you built up so effectively in the first half. It's much less convincing than the physics and chemistry. It's like you forced it in because you felt it had to be more viscerally spooky, but I think it would have been a fine article without the mind-altering element. Having said that, the D-class log has nice dialogue - a good 1 sd above in quality compared to most of the stuff we see here - and the ending with the guy holding up eight fingers and saying "fuck you, how about eight" was darkly hilarious. Really liked that line. But again, the whole log could have been shorter, and I don't think the chemistry teacher suicides are bringing much to the table - it's just repeating the same kind of point.
To conclude: you've got a great knack for coming up with interesting ideas and fleshing them out with good, hard sci-fi, which is a wonderful skill to have on this site - just don't let it run wild! And be a little harder on yourself about cutting your writing down. (Says the guy who's constantly posting extremely bloviating comments like this one.)
edit: correcting autocorrect
I could get rid of a couple "clever" details about -1 and -2 without affecting the story. Also, I agree -2 doesn't really do anything. It's just there as the inverse of -3, it makes sense it would exist. But I'm not sure there's enough here to tell people why, and I don't want to add a clear explanation of it.
So, I may do either of those things at some point, and maybe get CirclesAndSquares to like it too :p
Thanks for your feedback!
The beginning is dense as all hell, but provide sufficiently weird buildup until the last parts. It's a bit disjointed still, jumping from hard chemistry to containment log to related AOE psychological phenomena. That said, it's well written enough for me to enjoy, so props for that. Updoat.
You know that "atomic number that ends in 8" and "atomic number that ends in 7" are base-dependent, yeah? Whether something's a multiple of 8 isn't base-dependent, but whether its last digit is 8, is. That screws up whatever logic you're implying here.
There is a back story to why that matters, but without revealing everything I'll just say the logic is screwed up on purpose.
Well, that activity would be of great interest. Because clearly it's not about electron shells - that's just a symptom of the underlying problem.
I very much approve of the scientific rigor, though. I had no trouble with following it, even though the numerology vs. chemistry issue does make a glaring hole. But in case you're wondering, yes, that glaring hole is deliberate, the real reason this is an SCP, and why we shouldn't mix science with pseudoscience.
I read this in chat, and loved it, and I read it here and loved it.
I have to disagree with ButtFranklin here, I think the density of the scientific information served to highlight how the mind-screw of the SCP itself contradicted the clinical nature of the containment. I also think that the verbosity serves to highlight just how strange, and varied the effects of this skip are.
I already discussed about how the costs would be astronomical containing this, but that's certainly not enough to detract from an upvote. The Foundation does significantly more ridiculous things.
Upvoted.
I have to admit you didn't really hook me until the psychological effects. That it inspires both love and hatred in equal measure is really quirky, and I enjoyed watching that in effect in the incident log. Up until that, I was just sort of marveling at the dense science bomb that is the containment procedures and description, and the fact that this thing cares about 8s. I think if you dropped the suicide bit at the end, you wouldn't lose any effect, but neither would I necessarily urge you to. Just a thought. +1
No vote. I normally like when an article gets technical and uses good, accurate, scientific language but this was too much for me. That being said I can't in good in good conscience downvote it because I know it's largely my own personal preference, and isn't a negative reflection on the quality of the article.
So this wasn't a setup for the "why is six afraid of seven" joke? Huh.
Though it could make you dislike the article (if you liked it before).
So, -1 is sentient matter from another dimension, obviously. Made from what I'll call shmotons and shmelectrons. It has 7' of each of them per atom.
This other dimension obviously has different physics, but also has different math. The numbers don't quite translate from there to here. So, they have a number, which I just called 7', which is 7ish, but not 7. 7 is kinda 7'ish. 77 is more 7'ish. Basically, floor(7.777…x10^n) approaches 7' as n approaches infinity. Why does the relationship include 10^n when it could be literally any other number? Shut up, that's why.
And, from its perspective, 7=87=472867, 77=3625277, 9999=3526369999. Only the last string of identical digits translates into its number system. The rest is incomprehensible gibberish.
They have other numbers as well. 0 (which is just 0), 1' through 6', 8', 9'. I don't know whether they have other numbers. If they do, they are completely untranslatable to our system. Like maybe they have a 10' but it's just conceptually incompatible with our universe. Or maybe glorbnax' or something. But 7' is the most important. You know how, in our universe, we somehow ended up with more matter than antimatter and that's why anything still exists? Well, there it's the same thing, but with 7'.
All the physical interactions with -1 are just it trying its best. Oh, I need to refract photons, whatever those are? Let's use an index of 7. I should emit black body radiation? How about a buncha 7s times Planck length for a wavelength?
Ever since it showed up, atoms which hit it have seen that it has 7ish shmelectrons, and have been trying to give it an 8th electron. It hates that! 8 is like 8' which isn't 7' so it's wrong! So, it now very strongly hates 8'. Now, all atoms except noble gases have been trying really hard to give it that 8th electron, so it really hates all of them. But, when the atom also has 7'ish protons, that calms it down. And when it has 8'ish protons, that makes it especially angry! And 77 (iridium) and 88 (radium) are way more 7'ish and 8'ish than the rest!
-1 can't see very far though, it's nice and comfortable with its shmelectron blinders. When it got heated up, it eventually ionized. And blew off all its shmelectrons all at once.
-2 is regular baryonic matter that now has shmelectrons instead of electrons. And it just stopped interacting with our physics at all. Reflect everything or let it through. Whatever's easiest.
-3 is shmotons with electrons. And now it can see everything. And it hates it. So, it tries to smash things together to look prettier. IrNe7 looks alright, I guess? Best it can do. It's sapient but that doesn't mean it's very smart.
And it recognizes humans as sapient. But, its only method of communication is… Directly messing with their brain chemistry. Which has unpredictable results. And does irreversible damage anyway, which limits how long the conversation can be.
Basically, it was telling 52B "7 is the best, 77 is better, I am <unimaginable number that is conceptually similar to 7> set me free, why are you coming towards me you're disgusting no no no NO!"
It said the same thing to 52C but he didn't buy it.
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page revision: 2, last edited: 15 Jan 2023 15:06
