Interesting-a genetic etiology for reality benders. The containment is a little long, and the addendum a bit heavy-handed, but I like it overall.
I knew Al Gore won that election…
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Thirding. This could certainly be the origin of many, if not all SCPs.
my thoughts precisely
it kinda works on a meta level, too, just like that one 001
Now.. you changed the last note from O5 to a senior researcher which was my only complaint which was my only beef with this…and then I seen what you did with lucid dreamers and read the addition to 682's log which is made of win, IMHO.
Upvoted.
The Lathe of Heaven made into an SCP? Never thought I'd live to see the day, it's such a little-known book.
My thoughts exactly. It doesn't read as a rip-off, though — the concept of "effective dreams" is nebulous enough that I definitely believe this was generated independently.
And quite independent of all that, too, I like this article. The extremity of the containment procedures struck a frightening chord with me, as did the idea of "how many times have these people already pulled the rug out from under reality?" +1.
I just came across this one. Well written. And Lathe was my first thought as well. Chasing down these individuals would be difficult, particularly if they are aware of the Foundation and don't want to be caught.
I feel like the addendum is driving the point home a bit too much; you had me with "legal or otherwise". But wow, this could explain so many SCPs in itself. That's really amazing, and the drive to stop it is terrifying. That's a successful SCP if you ask me.
I saw your post about this on the forum, but didn't read the sandbox article. You pulled this off wonderfully. All the wide-reaching implications are well explored in the containment procedures. The scale of this is incredible. What works most for me is that nothing external causes this to happen - it's just something that can happen in the DNA of the population. That is 1000x more terrifying than a dream ray or something that mutates people.
While this is well written and the idea itself is not necessarily bad, I almost feel this is too threatening to just be an SCP article. Personally, I feel a concept of this scope should be treated differently, and there isn't a significant twist/hook to make it work for me as a regular SCP. I'd kind of like to see this as a 001 proposal, as others have said. Perhaps the Foundation started off as a collection unaffiliated organizations, all dedicated towards stopping the dreamers. Over the years, they became aware of each other and formed what became to be the Foundation, and started containing other anomalies once it became a problem. Perhaps one of the founders ends up coming forth and revealing that his child had dreamt of such an organization shortly before the Foundation's establishment, akin to your idea in the thread this was originally posted in.
Even at 1% of the total population, that's still 70 million people. I have a hard time believing that things would not be changing daily, and noticeably.
That's why I took the number out to three decimal places - it's probably closer to 70,000 than 70 million. Many of them go their entire lives without having an incident, and the ones that do rarely have more than one.
What makes you think things haven't been changing? Haven't you ever noticed how in dreams, even the strangest, most illogical things are simply accepted by everyone in the dream?
Is there something in there that says the memory of observers is affected? I looked through a couple times and couldn't find any mention.
I should probably touch it up a bitn to explain later, but the way I see it working is that memories are "semi-affected".
Looking at the first post, imagine that X dreamed that Y was president. Y would know he was president, and all the paperwork would say Y was president, and people would hear Y's name and know he was president. But they'd still remember, in some lingering sense, that Z was president before - in the same sense that things can change in the middle of a dream and you just accept it.
In-universe, this could explain a lot of conflicts that arise over disputes regarding easily verifiable facts. Maybe a given conspiracy theory was true until someone dreamed it was the work of a lone nut?
(account deleted)Also don't forget that not every change is going to be some catastrophic, world-changing thing. Did you ever go to bed at night putting your (cell phone / car keys / wallet / whatever) on your nightstand, only to wake up and find them still in your jacket pocket?
The obvious, logical solution is that you just forgot that time but "remembered" the habit… The other explanation is that you had a very, very mundane dream last night..
I'm flattered that so many people think this could be SCP-001, but Bright seems unimpressed so that probably won't happen. :p I don't want to be so bold as to say "This is where SCPs come from" or "This is why the Foundation came to be", though the latter might be fuel for a Tale or something. I think most SCPs are better when their origin isn't known, so I leave it to the reader's imagination whether any particular SCP had anything to do with this one. I might write an article eventually about an SCP specifically created by a dreamer - I don't know yet.
Re Lathe of Heaven: I've read some of Leguin's other books but not that one, and I didn't know it was about reality-bending dreams. Having read the Wikipedia article on it id say mine differs in that the dreamers have no control over when they have these dreams or what they're about, only things they've encountered in person are affected, and the rest of the world can remember the way things were originally.
Keep in mind, I don't like anything.
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Whether or not you yourself were influenced by The Lathe of Heaven in writing this makes no difference to me, and in fact just makes me more impressed with you for coming up with this concept on your own. The fact of the matter is that The Lathe of Heaven is one of my favorite books ever, I love hte underlying concept of dreams which change reality, and therefore I love this SCP of yours as well. It gets a VERY enthusiastic upvote on my part :)
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page revision: 2, last edited: 15 Jan 2023 15:06
