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A major pet peeve of mine is the first line of the description not telling us what an object is. If the location is important, it can be sentence #2, but when I get down to the description, I want to know what I'm looking at. No, the image does not suffice.
Language use in the description is extremely prosaic, so this needs another round for tonal tightening. Did not grab me.
I fixed the first bit of the description. Can you elaborate on what you mean by the description being prosaic?
Honestly feel like it should be safe. Just lock up the door and you basically contained it. other than that, +1
Hi there
That makes sense. I'll give it some consideration.
Seconding Safe Classification.
Locking the door in a box (and the objects associated with it) effectively contains it.
Even if Vogel had some kind of conceptual contamination (rather than hubris) that was due to exposure to the SCP/what he read, this contamination can still be safely boxed.
It definatly wants to get out/let more people in. But it hasn't really been shown to be able to exert it's influence onto our world so long as the door is closed and nothing goes in or out.
Sapient SCPs are usually Euclid, but this thing is basicaly a djinn. It can only act with sapient-agency if you let it out of the bottle. Otherwise it's just a dangerous bottle (door)
Yeah, I think I had decided on the Euclid classification when I had different ideas about what it was going to be able to do. I guess that's one of the risks of taking 3+ years to write it, heh. I'm going to be doing some editing soon.
I honestly couldn't get halfway through the first exploration. There's far too many issues with poor atmosphere and showing vs telling that made what I did read a slog, and there's far too much content afterwards to stick around through more of it (not to mention constant redundancies breaking flow).
I'll lay out a few, but certainly not all, of the issues I came across.
The entrance to SCP-3608 is to be contained in Secure Wing Alpha of Site-3608. Site-3608 was constructed around SCP-3608 due to the failure of all attempts to neutralize or relocate it.
Economy of language is something one should ideally strive for in SCPs. Beyond it merely being a personal stylistic preference, good technical writing is supposed to be direct and accessible. This could very easily have been:
| Site-3608 has been constructed around the entrance to SCP-3608 due to the failure of all attempts to neutralize or relocate it. |
SCP-3608 is not the door itself, but what the door leads to. Foundation researchers have determined that SCP-3608 is a sapient, predatory dimension, able to siphon energy from the negative emotions of any sapient beings that enter it.
Telling us what it is not is no way to tell us what it is. Suggested trim:
| SCP-3608 is a sapient, predatory dimension located behind the door. Foundation researchers have determined that SCP-3608 is able to siphon energy from the negative emotions of any sapient beings that enter it. |
universe of origin
I cannot speak for the whole article, so I've no idea if they test sapient beings from other universes, but this struck me as odd. Is this confirmed later in the work? Do people from other universes enter the doorway and produce unique environments? If not, you could cut this.
On ██/██/2015, O5 personnel approved Operation Locktight.
Not a huge issue, but this line feels like a non-sequitur where it is. I would suggest placing it somewhere more relevant.
The interview log and discovery, honestly, do not do much for me. It feels tangential to the overall plot (from what little I saw of it), includes personnel being horribly lax with secrecy and protocol for no obvious reason (is naming the Foundation and its goals really necessary for a simple information extraction? I realize they get amnestized anyways, but that's just a crutch), and the brief mention of the cop's partner dying feels forced and melodramatic.
Landscape within SCP-3608 is drastically different from landscape outside.
I would lose this sentence, it imparts practically no meaning. It's roughly described a second later, so this isn't doing anything worthwile.
Flowers unlike any known earth genus can be observed
Feels lazy. What kind of image is this supposed to provide? I'm drawing a blank.
3608-1 appears to be similar to a normal human settlement on Earth.
I cannot imagine a professional writing this, it feels terribly stilted. Also, 'settlement' is a touch broad, so again, I've got next to nothing to work with.
I see that some details leak in later on, but it's not a great idea to establish a scene midway through writing it.
Thanks you very much for your input! I have gone in and made some changes based on what you said, and I will give it a few more read-overs with what you've pointed out in mind. A lot of what you pointed out was, like the Euclid classification, left over from earlier iterations wherein I had planned different ideas of its abilities. I truly do appreciate you spending time reading my work and giving constructive criticism. I don't like to hide behind it as an excuse, but this is my first SCP ever so honestly I was expecting people to find things like this.
I liked this SCP concept but in parts it is repetitive. In particular I think that operation lockout, you know the one to destroy the door, was repetitive. It also seems irresponsible of the foundation to attempt to destroy the door, considering that they usually do not intentionally neutralize objects (that'd be the GOC). The use of "man of science" twice in the later parts of the scp and attached log is also repetitive. I quite liked the D-class exploration logs and debrief though so overall I think this is quality.
You've got a really good point. I honestly never considered how out of character it is for the Foundation to try to destroy or otherwise neutralize an SCP like that. I'm going to have to reconsider having Operation Locktight in there at all. Thanks for pointing that out!
I was pushed over the edge required for me to upvote.
Then I got to the interview log with the D Class.
Something about it sounded too canned, or serialized, or something. It sounded way too articulate for someone who just went through intense emotional trauma.
Then Dr. Vogel being silly enough to actually mutter the "shaping the future" line a few times… it just doesn't make sense that they're dealing with an emotionally manipulative entity, and also not screening the lead researcher against emotional manipulation.
Just my nitpick, but it pushed it to a novote for me.
I… like this. But there are some things which prevent me from upvoting.
First things first, I agree with the other commenters that the paragraph describing what SCP-3608 is should be the first thing in the description. "Sapient, predatory dimension located behind a blue door," is a really good hook that's made even more effective by the SCProcs being so short! I seriously recommend switching the paragraphs around in the description.
I'd have to say that the police interview was my favorite log in the article. The officer actually seemed like a real character and not just a medium for exposition. It's a very well written dialogue about a normal guy encountering something weird and other worldly. The one thing I'm confused about is when he describes the structure as "five meters deep." What does that mean?
In the first expedition the D-Class is described as going inside 3608-1, but 3608-1 is described as being identical to the structure the officer encountered, who said it didn't have any doors or windows. Shouldn't the log specify that it has doors now?
Other than that, I think the four expedition logs are really good. I especially like how they show SCP-3608 slowly learning and adapting.
The interview with the D-Class and the recovered materials log were pretty good too; the brutality and reach of SCP-3608's abilities respectively.
I really don't like operation lockout. It doesn't make sense for the Foundation to try destroying an anomaly that hasn't been exceptionally dangerous to them, humanity, or containment. I'd recommend removing it altogether.
I really don't understand why Dr. Vogel would believe
After thinking about it, I think I'm kinda okay with what Dr. Vogel does. He was being manipulated by an entity that can change your emotions, and it stands to reason his thoughts were influenced by his feelings. But, I don't understand why he wasn't screened for possible memetic contamination after reading the notebook, or at the very least have a background check on him given the strange message it gave him.
Powers killing himself after he shoots Vogel seems… overdramatic and WAY too big of a leap.
TL;DR It starts out good but goes downhill after 3608-R. Novote.
Significant changes over the last week! Removed all blackboxes, changed date/time formats, removed an entire exploration log and changed small parts of the logs in -E2 and -E3. Dropped about 1200-1500 words total!
I like this, especially because it doesn't say some stuff straight up. You have to infer that the dimension thingy is growing, learning, and becoming stronger as it feeds, and the last exploration log proves that its learned to be more nuanced and tricky with its methods, rather then just causing flashbacks and negative emotion via blunt force. It also shows Dr. Vogels descent into madness, or something like it.
+1
Dr. Sanderson submitted an official request to cease testing on the grounds, etc. Dr. Vogel refuses on rather spurious, grandstanding-sounding grounds. Do you want an Ethics committee investigation? That's how you get one. Useless exploitation of D-class gets their attention.
I wonder if Powers killed himself due to realizing the thing was eating his memories, or because he feared that he'd bring contamination back to ……………..
Oh. Oh crap. Lightbulb moment.
We hear Dr. Vogel get chewed up somehow after letting his ego get the better of him. (Probably influenced by the book -why else would Shadow-3608 let them have it?) But Powers is heard later talking to someone he identifies as Dr. Vogel.
This thing learned how to take specific human forms.
Powers made sure the other Foundation members heard him killing himself, so there was no way that the entity in his form could trick the others. Maybe he felt he was going down and had no way to escape, maybe he wanted to be sure the thing wouldn't escape itself.
But he sacrificed himself to keep the entity trapped.
This… is some incredible writing. The only complaint I have is Vogel's ego isn't really shown at the beginning; at first, he's rather bland.
