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Theme is The Light and the Glass by Coheed and Cambria.
Thanks to minmin, Rimple, TyGently and Cyantreuse for putting up with my inane brainsludge during this process. Title courtesy of Dexanote. This may be the last thing I write for a little while.
This SCP is a piece of writing.
This SCP is a piece of writing, written as the product of frustration with an inability to complete things.
This SCP is a piece of writing, written as the product of frustration with an inability to complete things worsened by the author disintegrating under immense pressure.
This SCP is a piece of writing, written as the product of frustration with an inability to complete things worsened by the author disintegrating under immense pressure caused by anxiety and something far outside their control.
This SCP is a piece of writing, written as the product of frustration with an inability to complete things worsened by the author disintegrating under immense pressure caused by anxiety and something far outside their control — re-written, replaced and constantly re-tooled in an attempt to realise the idea that lay at the center of it.
This SCP is a piece of writing, written as the product of frustration with an inability to complete things worsened by the author disintegrating under immense pressure caused by anxiety and something far outside their control — re-written, replaced and constantly re-tooled in an attempt to realise the idea that lay at the center of it, but failing to quite do justice to it at the end of the day.
This SCP is a piece of writing, written as the product of frustration with an inability to complete things worsened by the author disintegrating under immense pressure caused by anxiety and something far outside their control — re-written, replaced and constantly re-tooled in an attempt to realise the idea that lay at the center of it, but failing to quite do justice to it at the end of the day, despite the emotional stakes that ride on it.
This SCP is not a meta SCP. This SCP is dedicated to my father.
Now, 2747 is my favourite skip, so anything which uses it like this is pretty much guaranteed an upvote. But the twist at the end was so cleverly done, because all the clues were there but it never occurred to me that she was constructing the anafabula. Plus, it doesn't entirely depend upon 2747; the onset of insanity is itself effective even without knowledge of 2747.
Beyond that, the article is excellent anyway; the slow build up of her madness in the logs following the image of a broken person/people we get in the desctiption; it all flows really well. +1, one of the best and cleverest of the series thus far.
As a general heads-up, this has a couple of things you might want to read so as to make it more effective: firstly, SCP-1425, for grounding in the Fifthist stuff, secondly, SCP-2747, for the stinger, and finally, SCP-3005, for some more bonuses regarding the pink light and a couple of the other concepts mentioned in the Addendum.
The main plot of this article follows a college student (Myrna Callaghan, or SCP-2495-A) who has a spark of divine inspiration that comes after a dramatically stressful period in her life. This spark essentially tells her a way to create a universal pattern-matching algorithm, which would let her find patterns in anything. The problem is this divine inspiration isn't particularly effective, since she's both so very tired and anxious: the result is that she has this impure, incomprehensible version of the algorithm set down in the draft thesis (Iteration #1).
During this time, she meets Natalia Ianucci, someone with a copy of Star Signals on their person and probably a practicing Fifthist. Natalia introduces her to 1425, and the influence of Fifthism corrupts the idea, a la how it wormed its way into the members of Constellation Starfish. The theme you need to watch for in regards to what her end-goal is are "the light": this refers to the algorithm itself post-Fifthism, in an homage to the "pink light" of SCP-3005.
Nat's Fifthist corruption affects Iterations #2 and #3, with the data being corrupted in a similar way to SCP-3005. The low-level reality-bending abilities 1425 readers get as part of Ojai Syndrome start to set in around Iteration #3, and Myrna gives herself the pattern-matching abilities we see in people who've been exposed to SCP-2495-1. She also realises that if she has these pattern-matching abilities, then she can work with the imperfect form of the pattern-matching algorithm and find the perfection that lies underneath it by studying the patterns within it (basically reverse-engineering it).
At Iteration #4, she locks the light into her head so the "fours" (a reference to the Fifthist's intense hate of fours) won't be able to get at it, hence why the amnestics won't work on her. At Iteration #5, she makes a mistake in her work, seeks out the wrong pattern and receives a certain specific type of pattern matching: namely, being able to see patterns in someone's past to predict their future. She refers to this as "overlaying that new outline" in a similar way to how someone might use polarised lenses or diffraction grates to see interesting patterns in light.
Finally, at Iteration #6, she comes as close as she's able to get to finding the "truth" she's been looking for all this time. The more refined the idea is, the more powerful and infectious it is, to the point where it's in the document and hungering to infect anyone who reads it. She now has "a chain for others", a way of dragging other people with her into this strange Fifthist fucked-upness, but it's got "nothing on its end": it's still not perfect and it can be cured using amnestics.
Seeking for truth, she goes too deep: she finds a pattern, an arrangement of ideas, that annihilates patterns and narratives and leaves nothing but a gaping hole in its wake.
She finds the anafabula, SCP-2747.
Its effects blitz her brain and her computer as the final iteration of SCP-2495 is wiped from existence, and she's found amnesiac in her apartment by the Foundation, unaware of what she's done or how close she was to her goals.
So… I'm wondering what your opinion on the anafabula is.
Whatever entity is behind the Fifth church is pretty horrifying, obviously. There's some great Antimemetics Department stories referencing it, and they have an interpretation that the Cosmic Starfish Thingy is actively "erasing" everything from existence that becomes aware of it to any significant degree, but it's doing so with an incredibly powerful antimemetic effect.
In your interpretation, are these different and totally unrelated canons, two different interpretations of the same effect (which may or may not be compatible), or something else?
Honestly, you'd have to ask minmin about that, but I think that Why is Five Afraid of Seven is pretty much my headcanon on it. Both of them are weird unknowable infinite monstrosities but the 2747 entity (by virtue of ripping apart the narrative 3125 takes place in) is probably more infinitely monstrous than the Big Shittin' Cosmic Starfish.
Also why 2747 may have hijacked the idea that Fifthism already hijacked, and won.
ETA: An alternate interpretation is that 2747 and 3125 are the same effect in different forms: one of them erases plot points and characters while the other wipes the entire story. Scalpels and chainsaws are both blades but you don't want to use one where you're meant to use the other. :p
This is nicely done. All the connections to Fifthism were cool and came completely out of the blue, and the descent into madness was well done. The SCP-2747 appearance was also brilliant for the reason Tufto mentioned.
Easy +1.
I think this definitely deserves more discussion than it's been getting—it was pretty clear, reading this, that you had put a ton of effort into the work. I neutral voted this, partly because I didn't 100% get it when I read it, partly because some parts didn't work super well for me.
In terms of not getting it, this is the rare case when someone crosslinks a bunch and I actually get most of it, because I'm caught up with Fifthism. That said, I flat-out did not understand what relationship the anafabula had with this, and I thought you were referring to it in a more roundabout sense (like all the other crosslinks in the article, such as 3512) as opposed to making it a major plot point. Specifically, I didn't really see how a narrative that could trigger the anafabula was involved, and while I'm sure that if I sat down and talked things out with AE he could explain it and I'd be convinced, I didn't get it while reading the article.
The thing about trippy weird shit like this, though, is that I don't think I have to get it to enjoy it. Having come off being a site reader for several years, I didn't even understand that SCP=3005 was about Fifthism and I still immensely enjoyed it. When it comes to this article, the imagery and voice of the subject losing themselves to Fifthism is really important, and what didn't work for me is that half the presentation of this imagery seems wrapped up in a bunch of clever memetic/Fifthist play, which is hard enough to follow even when presented in plain language. To go back to the example of 3005, that introduces a few concrete, central images and then corrupts the shit out of them; I could never grasp onto this article firmly enough to understand the starting point of the corruption.
Interesting. How did you come up with the idea?
if your reading this your gay
This is hella late but the idea basically came in two parts: firstly, the actual object and the plot that the object was attached to.
The object itself (the Joyce thesis) was either inspired by me going through various Modernist literature a few weeks back or someone talking about an idea they had in chat — I'm gonna guess kinch? Whatever the case, it stuck in my head long enough that I was planning to write about it in some form or another, but it was only recently that I actually found out just what I was gonna have it do, both with the effect and the plot.
The story kind of condensed out of thin air, in all honesty: I was irritated and thinking about Fifthists in an unrelated train of thought, and the closing sentence of the last note basically condensed out of thin air: "Six layers deep. One to go. The well awaits." From there, I kinda had to work backwards for the rest of the plot points, and tied in a couple SCPs I enjoyed through tangential references or even as central plot points (3005, 2747 respectively.) Eventually I had to come up with a plot point that would drive the whole story, and the pattern-matching James Joyce thesis seemed like a pretty good thing to pair it with.
tl;dr Any time I come up with good ideas I have little to no hand in it.
Typo: "pseudo" has been misspelled twice as "psuedo". I didn't read the article, found this because I made a typo in the search box. Didn't want to add an edit to the page just for this.
I'm willing to suspend disbelief and buy into the ludicrousness of the entire plot and referencing even more ludicrous SCPs (all of which I love) for this story, because the entire background and foundation is written so carefully that it is very consistent with its own logic, and I thus enjoy it. But I think 2747 had its own bizarre, unique magic unlike anything on the site that makes it work so well; tying it into something even as concrete as this chips a bit away at the splendor of 2747 outside of its own context and any article referencing it. Upvote, but a tentative one.
(account deleted)
