Alrighty then, I rewrote parts of the SCP, reworded more, and have fixed many of the errors pointed out to me.
Have at it.
(I'm doing the tags now)
SCP-1420 / Discussion
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This is the discussion related to the wiki page SCP-1420.
(account deleted)Upvoting for what I think is an easy-to-read, improved rewrite. I have a few zoological qualms with how something can look like "an infant domestic chicken" (infant domestic chicken sounds more like a babelfish translation than scientific tone) while having a reptilian bone structure, but eh. I also squinted at the phrase "an extremely muscular snake" (EXTREME), because all I could picture was Trogdor. Maybe rephrase that.
Nitpicks aside, I kinda like the weirdness + plausible reproductive capacities of this one.
ALright, thanks. I'll be doing the fixings.
EDIT: On another note, +2 WOOHOO! Highest I've ever gotten on an article :D
Downvoted because of immature writing style. It hurts my brain.
Ehm… What immature writing style? As far as I can tell the tone of the article is clinical enough.
Unless you're talking about the test logs, in which case I have been made aware of poor wording/tone in that section.
I gotta agree with Alexander. I'm not seeing anything objectionably immature. Would you mind giving specific examples?
Giving bearhugs to the unsuspecting since 1872.
I did, but goofiness with the website made me lose it all, retype it, and then not post it as a response.
It's not "objectionally immature" but it's the kind of immature that makes me feel like I'm reading a high-schooler's analysis paper on Catcher in the Rye.
This is simply not a college-level read, which is what I expect from most SCPs now. The clinicality that people talk about here doesn't just refer to your word choice, but it also speaks to your writing style. There's also a lot of stuff here that just doesn't make sense.
Instances of SCP-1420 are egg-shaped objects composed of alternating strips of Calcium Carbonate and a leathery material characteristic of reptile eggs.
"alternating strips" is a poor descriptive phrase. I'm also not getting the half-chalk, half alligator egg idea.
The leathery sections will stretch to accommodate the opening. The egg will close within three minutes of initially opening.
End-of-sentence redundancy.
Upon "hatching"
Why are there quotes here?
[REDACTED] (See Addendum 1420-A)
Why would you redact information in one section, then reveal it in another?
Instances of SCP-1420-1 have shown to be highly sensitive
"have shown to be" feels really grating in this sentence.
To make use of this, a gas system has been installed that can administer hydrogen as needed.
"To make use of this" is simply bad writing.
These new eggs are ejected from the parent eggs at approximately 2 meters per second and are identical to the original eggs.
We have flying eggs now? At least they don't kill anyone.
Extra eggs are to be destroyed as soon as possible.
"Extra" eggs? Are we preparing an omelette?
eventually resembling a four meter long king cobra with multiple sets of wings and two sets of legs originating from its chest
This is getting goofy, and so is the tone.
In general, there's just poor writing that is very hard for me to put my finger on. There's also a slight lack of organization. And regardless, I didn't like it, so downvote.
"Mottled" or "fused segments" might be better descriptive phrases (alernating strips makes sense to me, but sounds a bit like basket weaving)— but, for the sake of diverse feedback, just pointing out that I liked the idea of a Frankenstein-patchwork egg.
Hyaenaboy points out some good edits, but the writing here really isn't so drasticlly juvenile. These are simple syntactical fixes.
Let me break this down.
individual perforated steel cylindrical containers
That is not one, not two, but four adjectives before the word 'containers'. Now, I'm no grammar nazi but I think that is fairly excessive and is somewhat confusing. The lack of commas implies that each adjective is linked to the adjective after it (as in they are also adverbs in a sense, I guess?). So it is a container shaped like a cylinder and is made out of individually perforated steel? What does individually perforated even mean? Am I just being anal? (If the answer is yes, let me know)
These containers are to be placed in a reinforced concrete room with a locked iron door.
I realize the containers and the room have no measurements. That's going to be balls when the foundation makes these only to realize they're too small/too big or something.
to be kept in good repair
This is kind of obvious, though it's not a big deal.
Instances of SCP-1420 are egg-shaped objects
On the tip of the egg
Dammit why would you do this. You call them egg-shaped objects, then blatantly say that they are eggs.
Also please for the love of pizza replace 'the egg' with 'SCP-XXXX', 'the object', 'the instance', etc. It will do wonders, WONDERS for your tone and most people don't seem to mind a bit of repartition of these kinds of words (SCP-XXXX in particular), probably because IT IS EXPECTED YOU CALL THEM THAT.
At approximately 4:00AM every first and second Thursday of the month, the muscle will contract
That is really, really specific for absolutely no reason I can discern. Maybe it wants to be born Thursday so it can party Friday night, or something. SCP-XXXX spawns college fratboys, apparently.
despite no cracks or seams being visible
Okay, could you remove the comma before this? For greater flow?
the egg will open
Please, SCP-XXXX.
The egg will close within three minutes
You're gonna make me cry
will be produced by the egg
Let me get the tissues.
Instances of SCP-1420-1 normally weigh less than 600 grams, and are often malformed and expire shortly after birth
Okay. I really don't like this sentence and how it crams adjectives. I also despise its bad formation. 'Instances of SCP-XXXX-1 typically weigh less than 600 grams, are malformed, and expire shortly after emergence.' Maybe that would be better.
An extremely muscular
This is an unnecessary adverb. You'll find adverbs aren't as necessary as in other writing styles here.
A small multi-colored bird
Multi-colored bothers me and I would think there would be a better, more tonal way to say this.
collapsed on the testing table shortly after birth
Oh god you're going to use 'birth' too. An egg that gives birth. Lawd. Not an SCP that has creatures emerge from it. Not an SCP that produces these creatures. No. It gives birth.
Subject exploded
Usually, subject is used as a person/humanoid creature.
A feathered and winged lizard capable of flight
I don't even know if this is biologically possible. I'm pretty sure it's not really biologically possible, unless you say the wings replaced a pair of legs, had hollow bone structure, and all the other fun things that are necessary.
Subject produced a sound
"it" works perfectly fine here, you know. Or you could remove that altogether(so the sentence becomes 'Produced a sound that…) , since it looks like a list and can therefore probably be shortened to that.
Subject expired during
See above.
Necropsy deemed
Necropsy revealed
Necropsy revealed
I like 'Necropsy deemed' better. Has a kind of 'humans looked at this and came to this conclusion and can be wrong' instead of 'the answer jumped at the scientists as soon as it was opened'.
a new egg
Why do you choose this above SCP-XXXX.
will be produced
Why do you use produced now, which is much better but now holds inconsistency.
These new eggs are ejected
author
from the parent eggs
wat r u doin
identical to the original eggs
author
Extra eggs
STAHP
Addendum 1420-A:
This whole paragraph is kinda bullshit with way too much description.
It sprouted several clawed wings and multiple prehensile tails, all of which had venomous barbs.
I don't even think this is biologically possible. Why does it not mention that these things like to fuck with what we know science to be.
It continued to increase in size and sprout additional limbs, eventually resembling a four meter long king cobra with multiple sets of wings and two sets of legs originating from its chest.
Okay uh. Yeah. I can see why this is seen as immature. The imagery that this delivers is like a 'super cool scary monster' my 10 year old little bro made.
A necropsy revealed the creature to contain ██ of the eggs
;^;
eggs were incinerated without incident
eggs are to be placed
;^;
Object Class changed from Safe to Euclid.
Wait, so these are eggs that produce things through an unknown means and creatures that defy laws of biology randomly and can make researchers unconscious and explode with acid and WERE CONSIDERED SAFE (MEANING PREDICTABLE AND EASILY CONTAINED) UNTIL IT ACTUALLY KILLED SOMEONE? This rustles my jimmies.
Overall, this thing has a lot of tonal issues, questionable word choices, awkward sentence structure, etc. The whole shebang here is that it's not even that interesting. It's an egg that produces stuff. I mean, eh.
EDIT: Oh, and downvoted. In case people couldn't infer this from my unhappiness with the article.
Living the dream, or dreaming the life?
I shortened the addendum, made SCP-1420-2 a bit more "wtf" and replaced "egg/eggs" with "SCP-1420" or "The Object".
No, you didn't replace all the egg/eggs thing.
These new eggs are ejected from the parent eggs at approximately 1 meter per second and are identical to the original eggs. They will begin to produce new creatures on the aforementioned schedule. Extra eggs are to be destroyed as soon as possible.
Eggs. However I will say the addendum is better and the tone is better now.
There are still a few awkward sentence structures I pointed out in the full review that weren't addressed, but I'm going to assume that that's your choice as an author and I won't push it further.
However, I am going to push further the fact this was changed from safe to euclid only AFTER it killed people, as opposed to the time where it created things that EXPLODE ACID and PRODUCE NOISE THAT CAUSES PEOPLE TO GO UNCONSCIOUS. The fact that we clearly are unable to predict what kind of creatures it will produce gives it a quality of randomness/unpredictable behavior that I would think typical for a euclid-class object. I don't know why it would've been considered safe in any point of its classification.
Living the dream, or dreaming the life?
It was bumped up to Euclid because it breached containment and caused havoc. Before it did that, it seemed easy enough to contain; Just put it in a locked room and do critter cleanup twice a month.
I also fixed the eggs.
Ease of containment isn't what the classification is about. Its about how much we know about it and how well we can predict it as well. We don't know shit about this. We dint know where it came from, how it works, what causes specific mutations, fucking nothing. We can't even predict what monster it will make next. We couldn't predict an exploding one. We couldn't predict one that causes people to go unconscious. We couldn't predict one that was immune to what we thought was its weakness. I don't see how it would've ever been granted safe classification, since we know so kele little about it.
Living the dream, or dreaming the life?
Ah, okay, you have a point. I'll remove the bit about bumping it up to Euclid.
Gawddangit double post.
So the creatures die when exposed to hydrogen. Do you mean H2, aka Hydrogen Gas? Such gas is very liable to react with the oxygen in the air and cause an explosion if exposed to enough energy. Or do you mean Hydrogen Atoms in general? In that case you may as well specify that you're spraying Water, as in the original.
I'm trying to think up something other than them being vulnerable to Hydrogen or water. I don't like using hydrogen because of your mentioned reasons, and it's difficult to use water and still have it make some sense because the creatures have internal water (blood) and need to drink it to survive.
Maybe they are vulnerable to water of a specific Ph or Salt Content. So blood (including human blood) is safe for them and one of the few things they can drink, but the Foundation can just put a little Calcium Chloride or Sodium Bicarbonate into their sprayers. You could get a little horror with the samples getting more and more resistant and the Foundation needing to use stronger and stronger chemicals.
I am actually glad to see you've rewritten this. I think it could be better, but it is definitely better than your previous version. Good job on the massive improvement, keep working on it.
No vote from me just yet, I have a feeling I'll want to upvote this later though.
composed of fused segments of Calcium Carbonate and a leathery material characteristic
There's no reason for "calcium carbonate" to be capitalized like that.
/forum/t-571586/scp-1420#post-
page revision: 2, last edited: 15 Jan 2023 15:06
