Man, this is good. Lovely work. Absolutely lovely. The compulsion effect WORKS here because it's personalized to each person, and the ways it affects literature, in particular, were not at all what I was expecting - you did a lovely subversion there. And the interview with the author hits home - I know I'd feel the same way. Lovely job. +1
SCP-2465 / Discussion
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Oh my god this is my first successful skip! I'm so excited! I might poop myself!
I'd like to thank DrSolo, MrWrong, SoullessSingularity, Mistbourne, Croquembouche, Zyn, everyone else who helped out during the drafting stage, and YOU, dearest reader!
<3
85% of all observers agree that the subject is a Caucasian male,
I am not convinced that 85% of people use "Caucasian" the same way, since some people even exclude people who are literally from the Caucases…
I think I dislike that word so much that I can't upvote an article with it in it. :( Which is obviously my problem.
I had my doubts about it initially, when it was still a draft. I might have perceived the solutions to those doubts to be slightly different, but this version worked out enough for me to say "It works altogether".
While this is significantly improved from the draft that I read, it still seems to boil down to "Some bastard Italian caused van Gogh's suicide by amping up his depression with a compulsion effect."
I'm not sure I can buy into anomalously caused / heightened depression. And I'm not sure that the interview, with a new character not part of the main narrative, added much to drive things forward - just a spooky "even the writing turns into a painting" bit.
I think this would be improved by cutting (or greatly changing) the final interview, and instead looking to expand on the idea of depression and artistic endeavour. Was the Italian's move deliberate (making his letter deeply ironic)? Can you put the reader into the shoes of someone with depression, or someone trying to create great art and never living up to their own expectations?
I enjoyed this, good job!
It's like, all I want to do is shit, but at this point I'm out of shit to shit, but I'm sitting on the shitter and it feels like I'm gonna be shitting out my intestines real soon. Do you get me, Doc?
Your time is lost, along with your trust
Misled again, by an anal gust.
+1
Exposition via Convenient Note is by far my least favorite narrative device on the wiki, and I cannot support anything that relies on it the way this does.
Outside of that, the last addenda doesn't tell us anything we don't already know, and the dialogue is very reminiscent of the "Doc I gotta fuckin' tell ya something" style of D-Class dialogue that is always lurking around here. That weighs down the execution further, and even beyond that, I don't see how this is much different from a standard "thing what compels you." Allowing affected subjects choice of medium doesn't really get around the fundamental issues of that trope.
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page revision: 2, last edited: 15 Jan 2023 15:06
