Radio
Radio
Forum
» Writing Help / Help: Drafts Critique
» Radio
Please refrain from posting in the Help forums if you do not have any useful feedback to give.
The help is that I cannot figure out what this is. This seems to be a generic magic item. I think.
Then ask for clarification or comment on what you can see. Don't post something completely useless that does nothing but spam a thread.
If you'd bothered to read the forum rules, they note that you should defer to more experienced authors and staff members anyways.
Insert_number, I'm going to agree with Aelanna and ask that you refrain from posting relatively-contentless comments on the help forums.
It's great that you're enthusiastic about helping out others, but in this case, I think it's best that you first get a better feel for giving specific advice to people regarding the mistakes they may have made, rather than just pointing out vague aspects.
"Radio" as a title is more useful than "First SCP", but it's still nice to have a descriptive title to your thread so people can find it again. "Self-Replicating Radio" would work just fine.
SCP-XXXX is to be contained in a 3x3x3m containment chamber located in the left wing of Site-██.
All Special Containment Procedures must be directly related to the specific anomalous properties of the object or entity in question. Why does this have to be stored in a room that is a three-meter cube? (Which, by the way, should be "3m x 3m x 3m" instead, even if it were plausibly required.) Why the "left wing" (which doesn't even make sense, architecturally)? Does it pose a containment risk or a threat to site personnel if we don't?
Personnel are not allowed 10 meters or nearer to SCP-XXXX.
See, here we have an actual, plausible reason why the room containing it might have to be an exact size… except that you aren't doing it. A three meter wide room doesn't prevent people from accidentally coming within ten meters of a area-hazard object, so why aren't we doing more to prevent this thing from harming people?
Activities requiring the use of SCP-XXXX needs approval from at least two Level 3 Senior Researchers.
This tone is inconsistent with the rest of the site. "Experimentation with SCP-XXXX may only be done with prior permission from at least two (2) Level 3 Senior Researchers."
SCP-XXXX is a machine resembling a consumer electronics radio reciever. There are no marks stating its manafacturer or brand, nor any signs of past usage.
If it looks like a radio, feels like a radio, and could be described as a radio, then it's a radio, not "a machine resembling a […] radio".
You also misspelled "receiver" and "manufacturer".
SCP-XXXX sends out an unknown type of airwave every three seconds. This airwave (now named SCP-XXXX-1) is still being studied and is theorized to be a combination of different [REDACTED].
There is no such thing as an "airwave". A scientist would not use this term, and the censorship here is extremely gratuitous.
SCP-XXXX-1 has the following abilities:
• Manipulating cells of animals
• Changing the chemical composition of matter
An omnipotent radio. Oooookay?
Animals subjected to SCP-XXXX-1 enter into three stages:
Stage 1: Starts 5 minutes after contact. The subject's frontal lobe stops functioning, inducing a type of coma.
Stage 2: Starts 3 hours after Stage 1.
Subject will now stretching and moving itself, even breaking bones if needed, until it resembles a radio. Subjects will remain in this condition until Stage 3.
Stage 3: Starts 24 hours after Stage 2.
SCP-XXXX-1 starts changing the chemical composition of the subject. Subject's molecules are altered until polystyrene (C8H8)n is formed. This stage may take months, or even years until all atoms are fully altered.
So… it can "change the chemical composition of matter", which implies it could do damn near anything, but the only thing it does is turn animal and people into more radios. Which is incredibly cliche.
Currently, there is no cure for the effects of SCP-XXXX-1, but research is ongoing at a steady pace.
Also off tone.
Summary
A radio that turns people into more radios. This is about as boring as a generic magic item can get. Pass.
Line-by-line critique coming along shortly.
E: Bwoops. Guess aelanna beat me to it. Also, we already have an object that turns you into a sheep made of telephones (SCP-1498) after a bit of weird mindscrewery. If you're going to do an object that just turns things into other objects, you need to make it at least as interesting as that.
/forum/t-676034/radio#post-
page revision: 1, last edited: 02 Apr 2021 15:16
