SCP-3194 / Discussion

This is the discussion related to the wiki page SCP-3194.

seeprybyrun 17 Mar 2018 23:48

It's hard to follow the description at the beginning. I can't easily visualize what you're describing, and it didn't have much to hook my interest: I almost missed the bit about the age of the blocks.

Maybe using a diagram would help the description make sense (and help cut out the details that don't help hook the reader's interest).

The logs drew in my interest more, and it made the description make more sense. You might consider calling it a "tornado" in the description. Good technical writing can still make analogies to real-world concepts that readers have intuitive familiarity with.

Pseudogoldcoin 18 Mar 2018 14:47

This reminds me of reading At the Mountains of Madness in a very good way. A compelling story and everything sits just great to me. +1.

CharlesDoucet 21 Mar 2018 01:57

That's a very flattering comparison. Thank you very much.

F00tball!!! 18 Mar 2018 23:44

I think this is quite good and interesting. Like others have said it's a little hard to follow the description in some parts which can be solved in various ways. But overall I really like it +1

Aceofmoxes 23 Mar 2018 01:59

+1, I like this, but did they consider biking it? Would have made for a 20 hour or less trip.

SARJ 26 Mar 2018 23:15

+1, I like this, but did they consider biking it? Would have made for a 20 hour or less trip.

Yeah, I also thought this when reading it, so I imagine the Foundation would have come up with it.

My suspension of disbelief was also challenged in Exploration Report 3194-02 when the researcher requested that all members of MTFs in the future be screened for claustrophobia. Hard to take at face value that the researcher's conclusion at this exploration was that he'd been given a team consisting solely of claustrophobic task force members, if I understood this correctly. Should have immediately recognized the anomaly.

Anyway, I otherwise enjoyed this. +1

Last edited on 26 Mar 2018 23:17 by SARJ Show more

ApollyonZ 26 Mar 2018 03:53

Am I missing something? It's well written but I'm not sure what is going on here. Why did they want to seal the entrance? Why did she become so religious? Hopefully I'm just missing some details here.

Toa_Vine 26 Mar 2018 03:57

SCP-3194-3 is provisionally classified as a Grade 2 cognitohazard

There is something about the -3 instance that causes a change in peoples minds. The request to seal it is most likely a result of events escalating beyond from what is written down.

mlister 29 Mar 2018 19:22

I want to love this, but I can't.

The logs, for what they are, are incredibly well written, with this sense of… immersion? I can't find the right word, it's something in German I think, but they have this immersive atmosphere, realistic spirit to to them. The description itself is coldly clinical in the way that hits that "Don't get attached, don't skip a beat describing the otherworldly" sweet spot that 173 pioneered. But both feel like salad dressing to an article sparse with actual content, building for a climax that never comes.

The SCP doesn't feel complete. The story presented is great for building up tension and mood, but feels meandering and pointless with the anticlimactic ending. They finally reach the end, things happen, someone is affected by the anomaly, they go out, infectee tries to go back in, doesn't go far and then… nothing. I guess the meat of anomaly is the coghaz infected Molerat but… it really doesn't work for me. On paper, "cognitohazard that makes you go crazy for the Abrahamic God" is a bad idea, and despite the quality of the writing, this SCP doesn't salvage it. It's intriguing, I suppose, but far too cliche, with not enough done to set it apart or give it any character.

Ultimately, it's a well-written but incomplete story.

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DrMagnus 07 May 2018 15:03

Man, you hit the nail on the head.

I felt like this was so well done, every log had me reading further, and harder, but the payoff never happened.

This may be an "up to the reader to decide what happened" but I'd really like to know what the author meant for this to be. The swirling eye of fire is a great visual metaphor. Unfortunately, the rest of the elements don't make a lot of sense to me.

My question that keeps coming to mind is: Why? Why would potentially-god be stuck as an eye of fire under the arctic. This would have been such a great opportunity for something…more. Hinting of some creature, or entity, rather than just a phenominon that made someone crazy.

It still gets my +1 for the incredibly compelling logs, but this could have been so much more. It's promise unfullfilled.

LordStonefish 11 May 2018 13:41

To be quite honest, it's exactly that unfulfilled promise that interests me most about this, the fact that it's never explained why, and there is no indication that we'll ever understand what's going on.

Last edited on 11 May 2018 13:41 by LordStonefish Show more

DoctorNovakaine 27 Sep 2018 23:01

This is one of those things that I think has to strike the right balance. An SCP doesn't have to be explained or inferable (though personally, I feel an intriguing and compelling explanation can be better than a mystery ending, but that's an opinion). Hanging your hat on "we may never know" can be a great result for a file…if it provides sufficient enough information for the imagination to work with a direction. The meat and potatoes of that sort of mystery comes when there's the right amount of detail to reach speculative conclusions rather than just wild guessing.

I feel like this one just missed the mark. Not as badly as some others I've seen, to be sure - the effort was made, you can see it was trying to get to that point, but it just never made it all the way there. I don't finish the SCP feeling like I know enough facts to have an idea what's going on - not even enough for an educated maybe - and that makes the 'use your imagination' theme fall flat. It's done well enough to avoid a downvote but not well enough for an upvote. That said, I think the author's on the right path, and I hope they hone their technique because I think they can deliver.

LordStonefish 07 May 2018 14:34

The reboot of SCP-343 we needed. The sense of atmosphere here is incredible. CharlesDoucet, please write more. This is one of my Series IV best ofs

++++1

DFliyerz 15 Oct 2019 21:04

"Results of spectrography studies of SCP-3194-3 indicate the presence of carbon, nitrogen, oxygen, hydrogen and potassium in a mixture of atomic and ionized states. Proportions of elements is consistent to within 0.3% with the elemental composition of DNA."

Do you mean phosphorus? DNA contains phosphorus but no potassium.

Travalgar 13 Apr 2020 03:41

I kept thinking that the whole thing is a giant nostril.