I'm not sure why, but the thing that got me interested was the detail about it eating squirrels and birds.
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This may just be me being an overly emotional phillistine, but I have to wonder if even the Foundation would consent to just feeding it children. Almost seems to defeat the purpose of containing it.
No vote for now.
Actually, I see this as part of the Foundation doing bad things to a few to save many. Would be feasible for them to take children from orphanages or similar sources to meet their needs. They do far worse than this for containment anyway in some cases.
I would say that yes, actually, if it were part of containment, yes they would. If it was just part of an experiment then it'd have to be justified, but containment procedures aren't just invented on a whim….
That said, I don't see it saying that it has to have consumed a child, just that it has one targeted. After that point its vague….do they let it feed? Drive it off? Hard to say. But if it doesn't feed, might it find a way to breach containment? Likely…..
I would like to see the vagueness of that wording cleaned up.
As well, my point is that feeding it is defeating the purpose of containment; if it will eat one child every X amount of time, and we FEED it one child every X amount of time, then we aren't actually containing it, since that is 90% of the danger of it. All we are doing it keeping it from migrating. We aren't doing anything at all to limit its harmful affect on humanity. I refuse to believe the Foundation was like "eh, fuck it, just throw kids at it, that's easy." I would think at least some effort would be made at coming up with something a little more humane and less wasteful.
Actually, we're feeding it a child much less often than it would prefer. If you add together the time-frames I noted, it would normally eat a kid about every 2-3 weeks until the local population available to it got to thin, at which point it would migrate. So instead of about 20 kids a year, they're feeding it about 4.
Giving bearhugs to the unsuspecting since 1872.
The purpose of containment is also, in part, preservation of normalcy: securing and hiding abnormal creatures and phenomenons from the population.
The fact that the Foundation feeds it children when the description states it could survive on other animals like squirrels bugs me.
Edit: Following the realization I had in the post above, I have come to terms with my being-bugged-ness.
Although SCP-974 can briefly subsist on small animals such as squirrels or birds…
You personally could live for a short while on nothing but brackish water and whale blubber. It wouldn't be pleasant or healthy, but you could do it for a limited period of time. It's like that with SCP-974.
Giving bearhugs to the unsuspecting since 1872.
There may be a solution to the child murder problem, sort of. Create a stock of clone children, utilising SCP-222, release the originals back into to populace and take the clones out of cryo at feeding time. That way, moral quandaries over leading real kids to their dooms may be safely quashed.
Edit: the only down side I can see to this, is the whole "cross-contamination of SCPs = bad" thing.
Hm. I find this vaguely interesting… but only vaguely. So, no vote for now. Would need something more for an upvote.
Why would it not target a child when offered a group? Either The Foundation is feeding it when it isn't even hungry (in which case, see DrSevere's previous posts) or consuming the kids fulfills some need other than nutritional value (which I don't see implied elsewhere in the article).
Completly random suggestion: it ages quickly, and something truly bad happens if it's allowed to enter puberty. But eating a new kid resets the biological clock. The creature also would like to avoid the puberty-effect, so it rejects kids too close to on-set. Explains both the picky eating and why The Foundation keeps feeding it.
Feel free to use that interpretation if you so wish (no canon, after all), but my thinking is that the Foundation simply doesn't know why it chooses one kid over another or sometimes doesn't choose any at all. There's obviously some sort of sorting process (the playtime), but the Foundation doesn't know what criteria the creature is considering. It's not as if it can be interviewed.
Giving bearhugs to the unsuspecting since 1872.
But it could be interviewed, just not directly by an adult. Give one of the sacrifice kids a list of qeustions to ask it while they play. Or use an earpiece/microphone rig so that a researcher can have a conversation using a child as a relay. This isn't to say that the entity would provide useful answers, but you could still talk to it and learn something.
This is all a complete aside. My main point is that, like DrSevere, I see no reason that The Foundation would keep providing it with kids to eat. Not for moral reasons, but for resource efficiency. There isn't an infinite supply of orphans that nobody would miss laying around, and they also need to feed Baba Yaga. So unless there is some greater danger to be forestalled, or at least some potentially useful information to be gathered, I think the PTB would just let it starve and dissect the corpse.
I take your point, although I don't necessarily agree with it. My feeling regarding the Foundation is that there are certain sections, particularly those dealing with dangerous humanoids, that take a very… practical approach to containment necessities. Like there was a conversation at some point that went like:
"Keep it alive for later study"
"Uh… that means we're gonna have to feed it kids."
"So? Just keep it to a minimum."
Also, who said that the kids were orphans? Take a look at the Security Clearance Levels page (link in the drop-downs at the top of the page) and compare to the protocol for acquiring the children.
Giving bearhugs to the unsuspecting since 1872.
I like this but I am falling into the "why are we feeding it" camp, it seems the feeding is just to sustain it rather than keep it contained. Why not lock it up and feed it something it doesn't want rather than make it free range and kidfed?
That's not a comment against the validity of the concept though. I can see all sorts of off-page drama from people arguing about how it's necessary to keep the one specimen alive versus those who are willing to let the thing starve to death on its own (as opposed to being actively destroyed like the GOC would want) to even a few weird individuals who identify the thing as a child in its own right that needs nurturing. It'd be nice to get more of that in the actual article.
I can definitely see your point there, and actually agree with you. My problem is that I can't see any way of really introducing that into the article without using researcher comments, and I generally find those annoying.
Hmm… perhaps I should change that bit about trying to capture instances in the wild to just flat out killing any in the wild.
Giving bearhugs to the unsuspecting since 1872.
I'll be perfectly honest here, on SCPs like this, I wonder why the foundation would just feed it a load of kids. The GOC would just destroy it and be done with it.
Of course, if the foundation is learning something from it then that's probably morally valid in some strange way.
They're not kids they're D-Class. Silly newbie. Wait you're not new you joined on my birthday. Silly frog.
Exactly. In the Foundation-verse, there's lots of 6-12 year olds on death row.
Why should it be death row? We have orphanages for that, you know.
THANK you. When I mentioned Protocol 12, I was referencing the "non-death-row" method of obtaining D-class as noted in the Security Clearance Levels page. I figured orphanages or, if those aren't feasible for some reason, random kidnappings. Because yes, the Foundation really is that horrible if it thinks it has to be.
Giving bearhugs to the unsuspecting since 1872.
I like how strongly it starts out, but as it goes on, the sheer weight of "we're feeding it because…" starts to wear on it. The concept is very strong, though I have to say I feel as though, even for the Foundation, it would be a logistical nightmare to carry out the feeding. Granted, the Foundation is bound to go to extraordinary lengths to keep indescribable horror contained, but the feeding children thing feels a bit like a forced element to the creepiness of something that was pretty creepy and relatable to begin with. For something that seems so benign, the lengths the containment goes to seem slightly absurd. I agree with the previous posts that suggest some sort of further reason to keep the entity contained; otherwise we're just keeping it alive for its own sake. Not to suggest destruction or anything so drastic, but perhaps some reasoning behind the protocol and the need for such a high price to be paid for its containment; this seems to tread the line between the Foundation sacrificing things for the greater good and a sort of malevolence, at least considering how many other horrible SCPs are kept in check using far less than horrible means. The treehouse concept is good, the child-eating is good, I'd say it needs to go somewhere else to make it genuinely weird, something to play more on that fear in the beginning when you tap into that fear of "I've seen one of those when I was younger…" and keep it going.
I mean no offense, but the feed-a-kid-to-it isn't just disgusting, it's unnecessary.
The Foundation has no reason to preserve this thing. It provides no useful data. It provides no avenues for experimentation. This is quite simply the Foundation just being willing to murder children - and while the Foundation is a "for the greater good" organization, there is no greater good for this thing. It's just a creepy mimic that eats kids.
I steadfastly refuse to believe that the Foundation's rank-and-file staff - not the sociopathic doctors who do things FOR SCIENCE even when it makes no sense, but the people who actually have to march the kids off to their doom - would put up with this. Someone's going to just conveniently "forget" to feed it.
Since we don't fully understand this guy, he is useful to science. If your stomach can't handle that, then I don't know what to tell you. Anyways, we do feed 5-year-olds to 682.
No, one researcher fed 5-year-olds to 682.
And was promptly locked inside to be devoured for his cruelty.
Compare this article with another excellently-written, child-victimization article: SCP-093. There the attitude is: "This horrible, inexplicable thing eats children. We must keep it from doing so." Here the less-inexplicable thing is literally fed kids.
I'm in agreement.
I'm willing to say the researcher who was fed to 682 was the one who is/was allowing it.
Or, at the very least, has tricked researchers into thinking it must be fed children otherwise something bad would happen.
Ethics Committee is gonna have a field day here.
I steadfastly refuse to believe that the Foundation's rank-and-file staff - not the sociopathic doctors who do things FOR SCIENCE even when it makes no sense, but the people who actually have to march the kids off to their doom - would put up with this. Someone's going to just conveniently "forget" to feed it.
Write up a tale about it. There is drama and conflict to be explored there.
edit - this was intended to be in reply to Roland rather than Beamu, I hit the wrong reply button
Understood, but you get my issue - this crosses the line from "morally problematic organization, Hard Men Making Hard Decisions" into plain-old-dumb.
Thats my basic problem with it. Its not a "Hard Choice" that the Foundation has to make, the costs are high and typically, the Foundation deals with it in the way that makes the least noise. The eating part seems like a fast easy way to make it "more dangerous" without actually making it scarier.
Expanded upon it to try to improve it. Let me know if it worked.
Giving bearhugs to the unsuspecting since 1872.
Well, I know for sure "…where it ripped off the steel room…" didn't work.
As for taking the it's-worse-when-it-hits-puberty route, I'm not sure. Starve it into hibernation, then dig it up and kill it before it hits mary-sue-death-god stage.
Freaking typos. Thanks for catching that.
Giving bearhugs to the unsuspecting since 1872.
You know what I'd do? Upgrade it to Keter. Put a note in about increasing wild populations. Put in a section about requiring data on the selection process to aid extermination measures, perhaps. And maybe tone down the -A rampage just a tad - it has a bit too much subjective/evocative language.
I get what you're trying to do, Drew, but I'm still not buying it, I'm afraid. You've just added an arbitrary "feed it the kid OR ELSE!" to the scenario; it still feels faulty, given the killpower of the Foundation. Making its active puberty phase so much worse doesn't really follow naturally from the theme.
Does the mandatory-child-murder really help it? Even if the Foundation had to expose the child, then save the child, you've created a pretty terrifying situation with horrible aftereffects on the child's mental health.
I'm going to disagree with your argument but agree with your point. The Foundation shouldn't be feeding these things kids. Not because they don't have the capability, the capacity, or the willingness to do so-they probably do-but because that makes the article about how the Foundation is a pack of boogeymen, instead of about the thing itself. The conceit and the fact that they exist in the wild is enough to justify keeping an open file on them; tying one to a stake in the backyard only serves to blur the focus here.
As far as the puberty phase thing goes, I think it works in some ways and doesn't in others. With or without it you've got a kind of very grim joke about the eternal boy archetype, the cannibilization and perpetuation of youth embodied as a poisonous, destructive obsession that destroys the very innocence that youth is made of. (As a tangent, I think having the SCP prefer to scavenge its nests out of discarded toys, clothes, and the beloved pop culture paraphernalia of our own childhoods would make that a bit more bitingly topical, though, admittedly, also super blunt.) But with the puberty stage it takes on a melancholy aspect of misremembered youth and the inevitable disappointments of growing up, and without that it becomes a more static commentary on our own cultural affinity for self-infantilization and our inability to let the past go. In other words, I think it tips the article between IT and acidly mocking VH-1's I Love The 80's.
anyways i thought it was p good so i upvoted welp peace
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page revision: 2, last edited: 15 Jan 2023 15:06
