SCP-3434 / Discussion

This is the discussion related to the wiki page SCP-3434.

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Thanks, Attribution, and Others

MrWrong 25 Mar 2017 02:57

We die in the darkness, so that you may live in the light… Yeah, right!

This is my SCP-3000 proposal for this contest.

Firstly, allow me to express thanks to various reviewers like Gog33, Dr-Prentice, Bluemorpho, GibberingEloquence, LordStonefish, Targellon. Triple thanks to both psul and Petrograd, who took the trouble of looking at it thrice.

Image by Tormod Sandtrov of Flickr (https://www.flickr.com/photos/tormods/3841034148) under CC BY-SA 2.0; changes made include the addition of blackboxes

This article also involves the following:

• Church of the Broken God hub by FortuneFavorsBold
• SCP-428 (The Crowd) by DrScooter
• SCP-343 ("God") by Unknown Author
• I Thought You Died Alone by A Random Day

And as for spoilers,

+ show block

The Foundation's position re: the instances is that they are Foundation members who died violently in-line of duty. Keyword is "Foundation's position", i.e. not the reality of it.

The instances definitely remember how they die, and that becomes their trauma even into their next lives.

Also, check the death date for -5 and birth date for -48. It's in dd/mm/yyyy formatting.

Last edited on 21 Apr 2017 06:06 by MrWrong Show more

Re: Thanks, Attribution, and Others

Bluemorpho 27 Mar 2017 00:37

HOW DID YOU KNOW MY FIRST NAME WAS PRENTICE

Re: Thanks, Attribution, and Others

MrWrong 27 Mar 2017 01:42

It is? No no, there's another user called Prentice.

Re: Thanks, Attribution, and Others

Bluemorpho 21 Apr 2017 18:57

the joke was that you forgot to include a comma between DrPrentice and Bluemorpho the first time

And this is now SCP-3434

MrWrong 21 Apr 2017 04:34

Okay, it didn't win. But I actually like this number more; '3434' is more befitting of its content.

Re: Thanks, Attribution, and Others

Zetan-R-055 01 May 2017 02:52

I thought of it as something like that the minute I saw the shortcut to SCP-343; out of all the shortcuts, that was the only one I saw prior to looking at this.

Communism will win 25 Mar 2017 03:05

Remind me to upvote this after the contest. It's well-executed and fairly unsettling, but ultimately I just don't find it scary at all. So, not a 3000 contender, but still good.

---

if your reading this your gay

GuesssWho 15 Aug 2017 10:42

Did you remember?

Ihp 25 Mar 2017 03:17

I don't find this particularly scary (Then again, it's hard for me to get scared by written media, anyway), but it's well-written and well-executed enough that I don't care. Upvoted.

weizhong 25 Mar 2017 05:28

Oh wow. It didn't really click until I actually saw the spoilers, but it's a very interesting concept. Similar to Scanny, it's not scary enough for me to upvote for the purposes of the contest, but it's a very cool story.

rockyred9 25 Mar 2017 07:18

I really love this. The interviews were the best part. (But I guess they often are).

Last edited on 25 Mar 2017 07:18 by rockyred9 Show more

Jacob Conwell 25 Mar 2017 09:59

Huh.

The base anomaly here is rather simple, but how its explored through the logs is particularly interesting. Combined with some very unsettling body horror implied from the babies trying to avoid being born, and you have a pretty creepy entry.

+1.

TL333s 25 Mar 2017 14:12

Downvote. The idea of fetuses that don't want to be born is fantastic, and the memory of dying was a good explanation, if expected. But all of them being related to other skips was disappointing for reasons I can't quite explain. It felt like a rug-pull somehow.

MrWrong 25 Mar 2017 14:30

But all of them being related to other skips was disappointing for reasons I can't quite explain. It felt like a rug-pull somehow.

I won't necessarily call it a rug-pull. Besides, two scenarios do not directly involve SCPs (and instead, other ways one can be KIA). Relating the deaths to other articles, I feel, expresses a message. These characters died for a greater good, to save the many by offering themselves. And in return, they suffer pain (forever).

And in the words of Monty Python's Life of Brian, while it is nice to be saved by a Messiah, being nailed onto a piece of wood and left to die is not good for the person being nailed.

Besides, it provides something to be said across the setting and this is the scale that is most deserving of this article's circumstances.

EDIT: Mind you, I can indeed conjure "original" scenarios (like the first and last one). However, I do not feel that the impact will be as resonating if all scenarios are things that a reader has no idea of. And frankly, the only reason why the first and last scenario is original is because I could not find a suitable death set in the early 1900s.

Last edited on 25 Mar 2017 14:36 by MrWrong Show more

Rioghail 25 Mar 2017 15:03

Going to have to agree with TL333s; I was hyped going through the main body of the article, but my curiosity evaporated with the addenda.

I can't say I like the twist that these are reincarnated Foundation operatives. It invites a bunch of difficult to answer questions about where exactly the line between straightforward death and traumatic reincarnation lies, such as 'what makes the Foundation special enough that only their members reincarnate', 'why do so many different, seemingly unconnected anomalies all cause reincarnation', 'why do such different traumas produce the same stereotyped set of reactions'. It sort of ends up implicitly suggesting a unified theory of anomalies, which is a suggestion I never really like. It also kind of reminded me of Bell Weather, which I think gets away with the same thing because it's not constrained by the emphasis on explanations which the SCP format sets up, and because it straightforwardly implies that all Foundation personnel who die in the line of duty are cursed. This seems to be suggesting that dying for the Foundation just happens to be so awful that it traumatises the soul permanently, and given the examples (death by Brokenite torturers, death by absorption, blown up by experimental weapons, getting wished out of existence) I don't buy that only Foundation people would come back, or would be traumatised so severely by those deaths that they're a special case.

The fact that this is the last part of the article hampered the delivery. It starts of so well, with a strong idea and concept which both inspires curiosity and is deeply messed up. The question of 'what could scare an unborn child into resisting birth' is a fascinating one and works as a really strong hook into the second part of the article, and going into the addenda I expected this to be an easy upvote. Unfortunately, it felt like I was being given a bunch of vignettes which were neither strong enough to stand alone nor coherent enough to improve when taken together. Having all the deaths be due to other SCPs seemed like a little bit of a cop-out. I had expected going in that there would be new material, but the content that's given is a handful regurgitated older articles that seem to have been picked at random, with no real dramatic development within or across them save for -5 and -48 being the same person. The short interview snippets just become clipped retellings of other stories that I couldn't get much out of.

MrWrong 25 Mar 2017 16:35

what makes the Foundation special enough that only their members reincarnate

Technically, that would be "what makes the Foundation special enough that only their members reincarnate with memories of previous lives intact."

'why do such different traumas produce the same stereotyped set of reactions'. It sort of ends up implicitly suggesting a unified theory of anomalies, which is a suggestion I never really like.

This certainly has no attempt towards the unified theory. The instances are effectively having PTSD, and the second behaviour relates to it. Perhaps the first behaviour (to not be in the light) is more unusually uniform. But I would argue that it was the darkness and loss of consciousness that relieved them of whatever suffering they went through prior to death, and that's really the one universal factor among almost all instances.

I don't buy that only Foundation people would come back, or would be traumatised so severely by those deaths that they're a special case.

Upon reflection, while the article does have the Foundation assume that the instances to be former Foundation personnel, the instances never explicitly declared that they are Foundation personnel (not to mention that not all instances are shown in the article). And besides, only one of the scenarios listed here can be tied directly to the Foundation (the nuke scenario). The rest can be decontextualised such that the person dying need not be Foundation personnel.

But whether the person is former Foundation member or not does not matter, for any instance might have important information regarding anomalies.

EDIT: In fact, the 1st and last scenario makes more sense if it is the Broken Church culling a heretical Ticker, instead of a Foundation member being ceremonially executed in a cruel and interesting way.

Last edited on 25 Mar 2017 16:49 by MrWrong Show more

RGLM 26 Mar 2017 19:16

As others have said, this isn't particularly scary, but I like it all the same. I'll be upvoting after the contest ends.

I do have one other question, though: why is it Keter? It's uncontainable, certainly, but it doesn't appear to be particularly dangerous. Maybe the Foundation really wants to contain all instances for the purposes of maintaining secrecy, but I don't think that'd be Keter, just high-priority Euclid.

MrWrong 27 Mar 2017 01:42

why is it Keter?

I'm operating under the 'Keter = it is not contained' definition here. IMO, it would only be Euclid if they find a way to redirect the appropriate souls to a source they can control for long periods of time.

ianofdoom2 05 Apr 2017 23:43

Is this a CoBG neuro-bio weapon? Because it seems like that.

MrWrong 06 Apr 2017 04:15

CoBG neuro-bio weapon

What brought you to that conclusion? I am sincerely curious as to how you arrive at that.

I mean, the one who was killed by the Broken Church was the fifth person identified by the Foundation (and by no means, the first actual case). There can be others who were off-ed by other groups like the Daevites, Sarkics etc.

Last edited on 06 Apr 2017 04:26 by MrWrong Show more

ianofdoom2 22 Apr 2017 21:19

By this I meant that it affected the way the brain works, which would make it both a biological and neurological weapon (Unless its memetic).

MrWrong 23 Apr 2017 02:00

Considering that it affects humans across lives (from one reincarnation to another), the cause would be more spiritual in nature than anything else. If it were biological or neurological, changing the body would have solved the problem completely.

Last edited on 23 Apr 2017 02:01 by MrWrong Show more

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