There are various issues of terminology (any sensible human would describe the item as a "bead", besides, if it's not crystalline, then how could it possibly be a gem?), technical (many non-flowering plants do not produce seeds per se, and quite a few do produce structures analogous to flowers) and structure/style (probably too much censoring in the final paragraph). Overall, though, I like it.
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This is the discussion related to the wiki page SCP-780.
OK, I'll grant it's probably more similar to a bead than a gem. Since I'm unlikely to find a picture of a gem-like object with a hole in the center, I'll just call it a bead. As to the botanical issues…honestly, I'm not entirely sure how it makes new copies of itself with all sorts of plants. I could try to make it more along the lines of "if it has a flower or flower-like part, it uses that; otherwise, if it has a seed or seed-like object, it uses that, and if it has none of the above, it just makes one copy at the heart of the plant." But making that sound more scientific will be a challenge.
Not all plants produce seeds, no, but they do all produce some form of dispersal unit. Flowering plants have fruit. Gymnosperms (pines etc.) have seeds but no fruit. Ferns, fernlike plants, and mosses have spores. Even liverworts produce tiny scraps of tissues called gemmae, which are splashed around by rain and sprout into more liverworts when they land someplace hospitable.
If you like, with your permission, I could edit this for botanical accuracy. Botany's my area of expertise; I could have fun with this.
Go ahead; I like the image of a single copy of the bead in the center of each of the flowers of a plant, but beyond that (for plants without flowers) my only concern is having too many seeds per volume to contain an equivalent number of beads.
Done. What do you think?
Also, how does it react to seeds/spores/etc.? Same as actual plants? If not, what does it do?
Huh, quite interesting. Better than it was before, certainly. There are two things I would suggest. Firstly, adding temperatures in Celsius, besides those in Kelvin. And secondly, I feel that the picture really detracts from the article. When I look at it, all I see is a dinky little bead, which is neither interesting by itself, nor the gemstone described. I think you should either a) find a picture that fits the description, or b) change the description and find another picture.
Either make a bead or a gemstone, but the description should match the picture. I think a bead might actually be more interesting.
could use a little fluff removal.
Also, regarding the photo: would this picture work better? With or without changing it to say "bead"? I like the idea of the plant growing from within the object, and there aren't too many crystals that have holes in them; I could just go without a picture altogether, but it's nice to have a visual reference.
Posting here for clarity, as author linked the website source.
The website this image originates from holds all images and content on it under All Rights Reserved, which is not compliant with CC 3.0. As such, the image has been removed.
Exactly how outlandish can the written description get and the plant still come into existence as written?
The way I envision it, the produced plants can't "do" things (as in the cases of the various plant-based SCPs), can't produce things (aside from fruits, which can't be too different from real-world fruits, and the bead of course), and can't reproduce, but otherwise can have whatever physical traits the author wishes; this leads to the risk of a described plant being extremely harmful if they're said to be very large or very hard to destroy. The restrictions exist to keep this from being a magical create-anything-you-want SCP; the plants may be very large or very odd looking, but they're not going to create anything for you aside from maybe some food. And even that's just included to give the Foundation a reason to not destroy the last copy of the bead; if the plants couldn't possibly do anything useful, there'd be no reason to not just eliminate all of them.
So, I'm going to assume bringing a copy of "The Little Prince" into the testing chamber would be a bad idea, yes?
Or perhaps we could bring it into contact with the Voynich manuscript. =)
actually, the Voynich Manuscript raises an interesting question.
Is this thing dependent on English?
Is it dependent on written English?
What about enciphered descriptions?
What about morse code? Or pictures of semaphore flags?
What about Pig Latin?
what about a Magic Eye picture of a tree?
I hadn't really thought about it, but I'd probably settle on "any language which can be written, including Morse code or semaphore flags, but not encrypted text or text in a non-written format (e.g., text on a floppy disk, a speaker reading out a description, etc.)." And for pictures, probably they have to be a fairly direct representation, so no Magic Eye. I don't know if I want to add this detail to the experiment log, though, since I don't know if it's already going into too many details.
Since it works on both actual plants and pictures of plants, it'd be a good idea to keep this away from SCP-754, right? Or would that just be something for the experiment log?
Probably a good idea to add to the experiment log…in line with my general "not reproducing the extraordinary properties of other SCP objects, since that renders those objects useless and is lame" idea, it would probably produce a length of the vine, but would not propagate beyond that. I should probably add something to that effect, though.
Seems misclassified— I can imagine this absolutely destroying the world's grain harvest!
Very creative though.
O.K. what happens if you tried this:
A scrap of paper on which is written…
a small plant, harmless to humans which is utterly toxic to 682 to the point where being in the same room as it will instantly kill it.
What would happen?
While it sounds good in theory, SCP-682's incredible adaptability will likely keep it from dying. Considering how it can survive acid submersion and can even dissolve into quantum particles and reform itself- I severely doubt any "toxin" would be effective at terminating SCP-682; while it may incapacitate it briefly, it would likely become immune to it.
I can't quite put my finger on it- but I really like something about this SCP. Perhaps some more experimentation with "non-real" foliage would really add some potential depth to the experiment log, (and there is a lot of potential.) Nicely done, regardless.
This article has been placed up for review. Check it out, it could use more attention.
While the article plays with an interesting idea, it doesn't really do enough to hook my interest. The writing, while not bad, isn't too great either. This has a lot of unexplored potential, but as it is just plays it too safe. Neutral vote, but might upvote if future revisions can utilize some of that potential.
Whether you like it or not, history is on our side. We will bury you!
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page revision: 2, last edited: 15 Jan 2023 15:06
