With thanks to those who read over all/part of it:
Vacuum
Meta
Ninevolt
Icepick/Mortos
Now, I was planning to get more crit, and some people had indeed offered to critique it. I do apologise to those people for somewhat-prematurely posting; but this draft was taking up far too much of my time, and I think it's best if I just post it, get it out of my head and then take a short (i.e. a few days to a few weeks) break from this site. I'm posting this more to get it off my mind than for any other reason. And because I think getting anyone else to wade through this mess to critique it is just cruel at this stage. Is is 9672 words long, after all.
With that said, I do hope you all enjoy it :) I have put far more work into this than I should have. But if you downvote, then I completely understand; it's long, sprawling and corny.
Flawed pointed out that I should probably add a summary, as it's very long and people might not want to read 10,000ish words of this stuff :p.
SCP-XXXX is a train station that only appears at midnight The train within it takes people to several extradimensional train stations; behind each one is a cinematic scene which the subject gets drawn into as the protagonist. When put together, the scenes form a traditional cinematic narrative: of someone who leaves the countryside to arrive at the bright lights of the city, runs into hardship, meets a love interest, gets a "big break" by attaining success in their chosen field, confesses their feelings to the love interest, has a happy climax, and then returns by train to the original station. These scripts all fulfil some form of fantasy/ retell a happy memory in the subject's life.
I've used this to tell 9 stories:
- The story of D-3150, a failed ska musician who makes it big in Manchester.
- The story of D-2072, a noir fan whose script involves her proving her own innocence.
- The story of D-3150, a woman who murdered her abusive boyfriend, and whose script involves her living a fantasy where she is innocent.
- Dr. Westwood, a cynical researcher who disdains SCP-XXXX and whose love interest is as meta-minded as she is, but who gets forced into a romantic-comedy script against her wishes.
- Dr. Montague, a Cogwork Orthodoxy defector whose script involves him leaving a world of clockwork into a strange version of the Foundation with buildings constructed entirely of wood and greenery.
- Dr. Safavi, whose script concerns his infatuation with a colleage, Dr. Wong, and is set in Safavid Isfahan.
- Skimbleshanks, Dr. Perry's cat. Does cat things.
- Dr. Perry, who has a v. traditional "Country girl goes to Hollywood and makes it big in acting" story, the archetype upon which all the scripts were vaguely based. Gives a musical number about the joy and regret of fantasies.
It's very long, but I don't think there's anything I really could have cut.
(account deleted) 07 Jul 2017 08:30
