Thank you note
Just wanted to say thanks to Rhett and everyone in the chat for helping me out with this. You were all pals!
edit: also, I might have gone a little overboard on the tags.
SCP-274 / Discussion
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This is the discussion related to the wiki page SCP-274.
This needs a bit more fleshing out. The idea is… Interesting. It definitely has potential. However, I felt like it gave up its secrets too easily. I want a read that makes me think, a read that makes me ponder what-if, what-is. This was too simplistic for my tastes. I'd love to see you either re-write or add a great deal to this.
I think the concept needs to be refined, because at the moment it's a confusing mishmash of different elements that don't quite go together. It's evil living graffiti, that then converts buildings into flesh, and then forces an irresistable compulsion that then creates new unicellular (?!) gasmask graffiti zombies. It's all over the place, and doesn't really explore any of those ideas in depth.
Also
SCP-274-1 exhibit signs of life, and react to stimuli. Instances of SCP-274-1 show no signs of intelligence or sentience.
what
yeah, like how a Venus flytrap is alive, and reacts to stimuli, but isn't intelligent. I rephrased it though.
edit: let me explain what this is:
It's a building that is alive, clearly, but when you go into it, you are going into it's literal body. SCP-274 is its mucus, SCP-274-2 are the antibodies, and the rooms are essentially its intestines. When people walk in SCP-274-1, they're recognized as foreign contaminates by SCP-274-2, which will "kill" (or incapacitate) and throw the poor guy into the digestive track… I guess I didn't make that clear, did I?
Yeah, see, that's cool, but that wasn't clear when I read it. If you can clarify it, I'll change my -1 to a +1.
I don't know how to vote on this. The idea isn't bad, it just really seems like it's a whole lot of ideas with no real connection between them other than spray paint. Also, why invariably destroy the buildings? The Foundation is about containment. It makes sense to destroy them out in the wild, but surely the foundation would keep a few specimens of SCP-274-1 and SCP-274-2 for testing purposes. I also noticed the picture depicting SCP-274-02 says it is "inside" the wall. Holy shit, these things can suddenly obliterate 99% of their volume to stick to a wall? Are they researching how this is done? Do they know why they do this?
I thought that it would be implied that they would have some SCP-274 on hand :/. As for how the can do that… let me write that. thanks for bringing that up.
edit: done.
how do we contain that? And again, are there any test subject instances of SCP-274-01 and 02?
We put it in a mason jar. It's implied that we have tested this shit in a controlled environment due to the extensive amount of information on it. Worked for others, should work here… It's just that something else doesn't work.
(account deleted)You know, I really like the basic concept for this thing. Paint that turns a building into a living being with spray-painting entities spreading the effect is really cool.
But I don't know if the SCP really needs to be "alive" in the strict biological sense. I'm not really an expert in biology, but some of the science behind this article seems a bit off, particularly the part about the giant unicellular SCP-274-2.
Maybe you could remove the bits referring to SCP-274 with terms assuming that it is some sort of actual organism (e.g. SCP-274-2 being a unicellular organism, the mitosis, etc.)? We have plenty of SCPs that would be considered "alive" without necessarily having a discernible/based-in-real-life-science biochemistry; some aren't even made of physical matter.
This is actually really good but needs work. No vote.
A few things bothered me about this.
- Just because the Foundation operatives are posing as the local police and fire department does not mean that the local police and fire department are not going to show up.
- Wouldn't the Foundation operatives feel his as strong a compulsion to enter SCP-247 as the civilians?
- Where the hell did that digestive tract come from? Are you implying that the structure extends itself into the ground, and if so, how? In fact, why would it need a digestive system? What does it use the energy for and where do the wastes go?
- I could be wrong on this on, but I could've sworn that antibodies don't "clean" foreign agents; they "eat" them.
All in all, this isn't a terrible SCP, but it could use some work. Downvote from me right now.
EDIT: Also, who the hell just goes and touches wet paint?
Well, I'll point out reasons to these things as best I can.
- Since the foundation is above every law, they could just tell them to leave, assuming they didn't already make arrangements for these outbreaks, which they have.
- only if they touch the paint. you could burn a building without touching it.
- SCP-274 made the rooms into a digestive track. Every room, barring the first one you walk into, is an organ.
- They 'act' as antibodies. It's another means of disposal. Since they can't actually eat them (highly complex organism vs single celled), they incapacitate them, clean them to prevent contamination, and then chuck them into something that can eat them. As for waste, they are made into SCP-274, and another SCP-274-2.
you're right on it needing work though… I just don't know where to go with it.
edit: AM I THE ONLY ONE?! Also, you could walk past it, and happen to get it on you, you could have realized that the graffiti has been wet for ages, and touched it out of curiosity, or it could have gotten on your house while you were away, so you tried to paint over it, failing miserably. No wet paint signs too, so people who lean against walls.
Okay, that was a decent enough explanation that I think I will rescind my downvote. However, I don't think I'll upvote it yet in the state it's in.
I feel you should include those specific parts about how it turns the rooms into the digestive tract and that the victims are turned into SCP-247 and SCP-247-2 (speaking of those, the gas masks kind of bug me. Do they really need them if they're already instances of SCP-247-2? And are the gas masks just made out of organic material at hand, or where do they come from? I don't know, I just don't really like that part).
"Tell a man there are 300 billion stars in the universe and he'll believe you. Tell him a bench has wet paint on it and he'll have to touch it to be sure."
Interesting. A few little things:
- The picture should really be labeled in accordance with the table: SCP-274-1-4
- I don't think you mean "sanitize". Technically, the SCP-274 being applied to the victim coats them, rather than removing microorganisms and dirt from their surface. You might get more mileage from the word "encapsulate". Or, since it's being sprayed into their mouths, you could assume an anesthetic effect that would make them easier to consume — much the way cytotoxic T cells begin killing the bacteria or virus before the NK cell moves in to consume the target they've "tagged".
- Compulsions, even ones contracted by touch, are something of a sore point; if your creature or object has to have a compulsion in order to work, you might need to rewrite it. That's not to say there can never be a good SCP with a compulsion attached, but it works against you. Could the contaminated building pull in prey in another manner?
- If SCP-274-2 don't have internal organs, they don't have a chest cavity; the "torso" area would be their center of mass, instead.
- You may wish to make another proofreading pass. (I'd handle it myself, but I'm babysitting and using a weak connection right now.) You typed "contaminates" for "contaminants", for example.
As pertains to the reasons you cited:
1. The Foundation is less "above" and more "outside" the law. If you're a secret extra-governmental agency, you try to avoid people whose entire job description centers around finding out what's going on.
2. Noted, though as I said, the compulsion is working against you here.
3. Not all biological structures are organs. In most complex organisms, you pass through at least one preparatory structure (like the mouth and teeth in humans) before entering the actual digestive tract. And technically, if there's no waste and no need to chew, you don't need a digestive tract… the cell simply engulfs the target organism and digests it.
4. Technically, they're not antibodies; they're viruses. They work to infect surrounding organisms and convert them into additional instances, making them viral. Or, if you take a different tack, they're worker ants bringing food back to the colony.
Alright, I tried to fix the things on the bullets, and the compulsion. Now it's a feeling… don't know how else people would want to enter a building looking like a crack-house. As for the digestive track and antibodies… what if I said digestive sack instead? I have a hard time calling them viruses, since they are protecting SCP-274-1. They really come across as more of an antibody/sperm hybrid to me… although I don't want to call it that in the entry.
Fair enough, and I see the improvements have added some upvotes. Digestive sac… maybe. Let me check… ah, that would be a gastrovascular cavity (though "digestive sac" or "primitive gut" works, too). As for the antibody/sperm hybrid… hm…
(ponders)
Well, the gastrovascular cavity is normally seen in primitive creatures such as jellyfish and flatworms. If we follow through, that would make the SCP-274-2 roughly equivalent to the jellyfish's tentacles, especially since some varieties of jellyfish reproduce by budding from the tentacles. If you draw that comparison, the SCP-274-2 are effectively autonomous tentacles, with an occasional "bud tentacle" being sent out to propagate.
As for a lure, there are three methods of trapping prey that come to mind:
1. Bait. This can be anything from sound ("Help! Help! Someone help me! Help!") to a visual or even scent-based lure. After all, how often does the scent of fresh-baked chocolate chip cookies lead to danger… ?
2. Curiosity. When dealing with humans especially, the "non-bait bait". Flickering lights, strange sounds… heck, these things could almost live on parapsychologists alone.
3. Mechanical trap. Given the merging seen in SCP-274-2, it wouldn't be out of the question to have the "graffiti" simply reach out and grab passersby, pulling them into the wall to be absorbed. Or, of course, the "sidewalk graffiti" could act as a lue trap, or a trapdoor, or just an extended tentacle to reach out and gobble them up.
Just some thoughts.
… sounds! I like that idea. What if SCP-274-1 made some noises like a window breaking or a guy knocking on the other side? People would either call the police or go inside SCP-274-1. Either way, people are probably going to be eaten inside… as for the SCP-274-2… yeah, that sounds pretty much exactly what I'm getting at.
Now, is there a term for that kind of thing, or should I say somewhere that SCP-274 behaves in a similar manner to most jellyfish or coral, and kinda implement that into the article more?… Actually, the turning buildings into land coral bit might be better than what I currently have.
/forum/t-570042/scp-274#post-
page revision: 2, last edited: 15 Jan 2023 15:06
