This is one of those lovely attempts to save an old SCP by someone else that was thoroughly, mercilessly torn apart. I'm pretty sure you know the one. I've done about all that I can and don't particularly want to watch it collecting dust in my sandbox any more, if this one isn't up to snuff, it's gone.
SCP-1575 / Discussion
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Only β non-mammalian mutations were known to have stabilized, and both were euthanized after brief study
So… 2 non-mammals, then.
Even with lampshading the furry thing as specialty products for MC&D, I still find this distasteful and fetishy.
Also, that humorous addendum really needs to go. If you want to include the parasites thing (which is actually a good idea), you need to do it in a non-humorous way. The funny note just blunts the potential horror, to the article's detriment.
Giving bearhugs to the unsuspecting since 1872.
To the first part, that was me changing one half of the sentence and forgetting to change the other half. The streak continues, I always seem do that at least once per article.
As far as the distasteful and fetishy bit… Well, yes. That's half the point. It's a thing to use to change animals into people, or at least most of the way. We're not sure why it was made in the first place, whether intentions was particularly benign or sadistic, but we know that MC&D looked at it and said "Hey, you know, we know some folks that like pretty weird shit…"
And yes, in retrospect, the latter half of the note was a bit Lolfoundation, I excised it and tightened a little.
I'm pretty sure this is a rewrite & attempted salvation of the idea behind Furry Mirror.
Giving bearhugs to the unsuspecting since 1872.
It is; was going less for "wish fulfillment" and more "inexplicable transmogrifier, repurposed to entertain obscenely rich folks".
Starting to think maybe I should remove the bit with MC&D, and instead make it having been used by a shady "biotech" firm…….. In fact I'm starting to think on that a LOT
(account deleted)It doesn't really do anything for me. Tone's good, but I just don't like the idea at all. Also, the examples should be redone as Test Logs.
I was thinking that, but the idea of working with test logs would basically be 3-Xty iterations of "It turned fully human" or "It turned most of the way human except/until this happened". Didn't think it enough to make its own blurb short of the conservation-of-mass exposition, may go with something like that if enough people think it'd be worth it.
A statue whose anomalous powers are induced by water? There's a skip for that!
On a serious note, though, i'm a little on the fence about this. I can buy the physiological transformation of an animal into a human being, but their acquiring human-level intelligence and magically learning to speak is a stretch for me. I think it'd be far more interesting if the transformees still had an animal mentality and were confused and horrified by their new bodies - I imagine that if you suddenly got turned into, say, a meerkat against your will, that you'd be none too happy about it.
Also, isn't the 16th century a little too late for Italian sculptors to be making erotic statues of Venus? I'm no art historian, but from what I can recall the Renaissance artists of the time were more into Biblical imagery than pagan gods.
Well, they'd have human-level intelligence as a result of having human brains. They could likely then be taught by the Foundation to speak. More like a newborn baby than an animal, really.
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I like it, oddly enough. I'd recommend keeping the MC&D reference, it's something that really adds to the horror if you understand what they do. However, I also recommend removing the "lolfoundation" addenda.
Um…
None of these addenda here really qualify as lolfoundation, besides, the image of a seven-foot tapeworm with a human screaming face tearing out of a dog in horror is one of the reasons I upvoted this rewrite.
not bad. definitely better than the other article. this is EXACTLY the kind of thing i'd expect MC&D to have.
that said, lose the note at the end, it almost turned my upvote to a downvote all on its own.
Yeah, the end note needs to go, and not just for tone. Given the caveats about non-mammals and creatures with small proportions, it simply doesn' make sense.
I fail to see how that one breaks the tone at all. Reminds me more of the Jaw Tree incident with SCP-827.
For one, the researchers weren't doing anything idiotic - what happened is an unexpected caveat.
For two.. consider the possibility that the reason the substance normally doesn't work well on non-mammals is that they lack something in their bodies that makes it into proper active form. The dog's parasites were taking it from the dog's blood, where whatever was needed already happened… and so the effect worked full steam on.
my main problem with it isnt about it breaking tone(though it does) or notes from researchers being overused or lame in general(which they are), but because it's poorly written. read it again. the first half isnt too bad, but then
We absolutely do not need another instance of giant half-human-half-flea creatures, and the psychologist is having a hard time helping Janet with her nightmares of a seven foot long tapeworm with a screaming face tearing out of the belly of a dog.
feels awkward and ridiculous to me in its phrasing, the "half-human-half-flea creatures" bit especially.
actually i think just stating the first half and then leaving it to the imagination of the reader would be more effective anyway(to give a slightly adjusted application of "The Fundamental Base of the Unsaid").
I like the line…. the psychologist is having a hard time helping Janet with her nightmares of a seven foot long tapeworm with a screaming face tearing out of the belly of a dog.
It's a good line.
The tone complaint, for me, is because the whole addendum comes across as "srsly guys. Srsly."
As for point 2, even if I did buy that explanation it still doesn't cover the catastrophic anatomical failure you'd get with the flea fairly rapidly. I don't know worms terribly well but I have to assume you'd get the same problem. The discrepancies in skeletal structure alone…. to say nothing of the circulatory system on the flear…. yeah….
That's specifically why I said non-mammalian creatures don't *stabilize*, I never said that they're not AFFECTED. I'm also going to touch up the note to point out the fact that this was when they realized things could be affected by something ELSE that had drunk the water; it was a learning experience, just not in a good way. The fleas were in the middle of the "growth" phase, and a giant flea could still be the size of, like, a good sized wasp. The mutated tapeworm was nightmare fuel, pure and simple, and yes those things grow many feet in length if left untreated and they're able to continue to thrive.
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page revision: 2, last edited: 15 Jan 2023 15:06
