SCP by Series
Other SCP
Feed
Stories
Discovery
Random
My first SCP. Thanks to Zyn, DrMagnus, and DrFred for feedback.
Included image is mainly my own work (base photo; most of the SCP-3620 image), with the exception of the gray sphere which was courtesy of Wikipedia user Darkdadaah and also shared under a Creative Commons license: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Sphere_-_monochrome_simple.svg
Instead of this:
Interviewer: So tell us about how you came to acquire this… animal.
Use this:
Dr. Fuckface:1 So tell us about how you came to acquire this… animal.
"despite having been in foundation custody since 19██-07-05"
But say it's from the eighties here:
"it's been in custody since the 80s"
EDIT: I also cleared your tags because you didn't apply all the relevant ones. I'm not familiar enough with the tags to fix them myself, so I'd suggest waiting for the tagging team to get to this.
Right, I mixed up the doctor that killed himself with the interviewer. I'd like to think that this supports my argument more than it detracts from it, however.
No you didn’t; I changed the names out from under you because I realized there were too many F people in the article. Sorry!
(I appreciated the Dr. Fuckface)
I think it would be made stronger by placing the suicide note after the interview. The real wham of the article is the implications of the chicken, and so it'll help if you build the mystery of Dr. F's suicide first. The note kind of spells it out.
I actually had the interview and the note swapped in my first sandbox version and Zyn gave the exact opposite of this feedback. After some consideration, I decided that I preferred her version to yours and mine.
Going to have to disagree. Framing the twist as "The world's a simulation!1!!!1" would have been melodramatic and eye-roll-inducing for me. Gives a sense of forced gravitas over something that really can't be proven. Framing the twist as "Sometimes Foundation researchers find themselves out of touch with civilian perspectives, with disastrous results" gives the story a much more grounded feel. It's frankly refreshing that the potential world-altering implications aren't taken at face value, but that the weight is instead given to how people react to said implications.
No signature defined.
"Wanted Buffalo wings so much the extra mass threw off Earth's orbit"
I mean that's grounds for upvote alone.
I like this one, mainly because of the fact that "Oh god the world is a simulation" is enough to get a rookie researcher to commit suicide with the rest of the team going "Eh, even if it is we don't care."
I feel like it does give a glimpse into how … routine stuff like this is for researchers.
Upvoted.
Well there are too many grand implications for all of them to be real, so having something that suggests the world is a simulation could be real… you know, we could all be in a simulation. But on the other hand, that's just as likely as all of everything else. Too many problems to worry about them all.
Which is why I upvote, and why I like the interview coming after the suicide note. The punch of the article isn't the world being a simulation, it's the world being too fucked up to worry anymore.
unfortunately somewhat similar to the real world ;-;
Good to see this posted to the mainlist! There's a lot to enjoy in this article, from the quirky anomaly to the dialogue in the interviews. Also I really like chickens. They're pretty neat.
+1 from me!
Mental note: Make all of my future SCPs about chickens so I can at least get a +1 from Zyn.
This is terrific. Great storyline and concept and then you throw in the human part of the equation. I could go on but I'll leave it at that. One more thing actually, the thunderclap mixed with an orchestra going through a wheat thresher line was my upvote moment.
Whether you like it or not, history is on our side. We will bury you!
The suicide note I personally felt unnecessary, but it's not bad and people seem to like it.
It's a fun anomaly, and the idea that the Foundation has a Ripley's-esque front to snatch up minor anomalies like this is a stroke of brilliance. As are the "$10 chicken" line or the Buffalo Wings XK scenario.
Overall, good work, and +1. Looking forward to more skips from you!
I like the article, but I also think the suicide note is unnecessary. It's too on-the-nose spelling everything out - you could probably get the idea that this might represent some sort of cosmic glitch without the note telling you.
I thought we weren't supposed to take the note at face value because it was written by a newbie with no evidence.
Yep. The evidence of SCP-3620 alone suggests that the universe is all a big simulation… but if you look at all of the other skips, that conclusion is contradicted/reached in a different way/easily explained away/etc. So "We're just computer programs" is one way to look at it, in the SCP universe (and that's the idea I had in my head when writing it), but it's just as likely to be "A wizard did it" or "One of the art GoIs did this as a statement about the poultry industry" or "someone figured out how to make software chickens from their Apple IIe into real chickens, kinda" or a variety of other possibilities.
So yeah, don't take the newbie's note at face value.
Yeah, but I meant that there is probably a more subtle way to convey that he committed suicide due to the effect of the SCP on his worldview than the explicit note.
Yeah, that's a valid point (and Zyn suggested deleting it entirely in her first critique). My thought was that some people will get the subtlety and others need to be smacked in the head with an anomalous chicken before they figure out what's going on, so I decided to keep it. Also, I'm not sure I'm a good enough writer to convey it properly through subtlety.
The funny thing is that if he hadn't included the suicide note, there would have been at least one person in the comments complaining that the article didn't do the thinking for them (though not phrased quite like that.) I usually am a bit slow picking up on the subtle twists in SCPs, so I tend to cruise the comments to see what kind of nuances others picked up on, and it never fails that someone either hates the last addendum that spills the beans or hates the lack of an addendum that spills the beans.
It's all fun and games until someone fails a SAN check.
(account deleted)
