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I like it. Sorry to be a doc-block, though, but if the name of this really is AEGIS, there's already a skip named Aegides. Not that it's an uncommon word.
In any case, have a plus one for a great take on the classic invasion movie plot.
E: On second thought, neutral vote.
I'm just not feeling it. I think an article about a no-shit alien invasion of the planet Earth should have more interesting or more fleshed-out invaders than this — I mean, we know all of jack shit about the invaders, except that they use robutts. And we fight back with… regular weapons. And the only cool thing here that really puts this in the Foundation universe as opposed to the "Generic Alien Invasion Defier V (Defy Harder) for PC and PS4" is the use of an anomalous weapon, which… blows shit up and sends it back into the past/to an alternate universe. As opposed to something, well, cool.
This is like five kinds of squandered potential, and it shows. -1.
if your reading this your gay
[…] more fleshed-out […]
That is really unfortunate wording…
[…] which… blows shit up and sends it back into the past/to an alternate universe.
The intended implication was that the use of weaponized SCPs and ultimately the detonation of a weapon of mass destruction utilizing anomalous technology did so much collateral damage to the fabric of reality that it started cracking in places. I've refined a few points to make this somewhat more clear, does that help?
The "use of weaponized SCPs and ultimately the detonation of a weapon of mass destruction utilizing anomalous technology did so much collateral damage to the fabric of reality that it started cracking in places" thing sounds like a GREAT idea. I would read an article about that.
I also think it would pair well with PFC Winters's comment about winning, but at a massive cost. What if the wreckage didn't cross realities when NOVA detonated, but some time later? I'm picturing a story where AEGIS beats the aliens, but Earth is still devastated, and they're still rebuilding a working civilization… and that's when they start finding the lasting damage. Energy fluctuations, time distortions, all kinds of freestanding anomalous effects, obviously centered around the places they fought and the weapons they set off.1 Then they discover they've got working access to other realities, and have to decide whether it would be ethical to use it to evacuate their broken world.
I imagine you could have a resolution where the wreckage eventually stops coming through, and the portal is quiet for weeks or months… and then a hard drive comes through, and then it closes entirely. The hard drive, on further inspection, contains the last deliberate communique from AEGIS: tactical data (what weapons they used, what they learned about the aliens, what worked, what didn't, what the side effects were, how to contain them if they open up again, and an account of how the Foundation successfully entered a cooperative venture with the GOC and other GoI), and a simple message. "Don't make our mistakes."
I am a neutral vote on the brink of downvote.
So first of all I've been growing steadily more iffy over the past couple days about alt-foundations. We just have so fucking many of them. It's absurd. But that's not a huge problem. If the alt-Foundation's got a twist or the article has a hook, we're golden. This brings us to my main problem with this article.
It's well-written, sure! But it's an alien invasion. It's Independence Day; it's Battle: LA; probably a bunch of novels as well; probably more films that I didn't list; probably a few more video games. Here's the thing. An alien invasion in itself is just really boring at this point. It's as boring as zombies. There has to be some personal narrative. I'll read a novel about an alien invasion if I can get some cool writing or nice character insight. But this is an SCP article, it can't have either of those. So problems arise. This article is nothing but an alien invasion.
Well, okay. This article, if I'm reading it correctly, is the wreckage of an alien invasion generated in the aftermath of some superweapon explosion which was so powerful it punched through space and time and dumped all this shit on our planet. Which is, in essence, nothing but an alien invasion. Even the news reporter sounds like a news reporter from a movie about an alien invasion. Even the letter.
I would like this article a lot better if the aliens just stayed in orbit and bombed us into oblivion. I would like it if it did something with an alien invasion, because you can't have cool writing, you can't have cool characters or character development, and plot's irrelevant in alien invasion stories because come on, an alien invasion is just an excuse plot at this point. Maybe explore one of the common objections to alien invasions? Why the fuck are they coming for us? What'd we do to them? Where do they come from? Stuff like that.
man that brink is beckoning me closer
edit: oh, really minor quibble—you seem to be going for hard-ish scifi, what with the relativistic kill vehicles and whatnot, and the thing is, i don't think lasers…cut. certainly not cleanly.
There has to be some personal narrative.
This is fair, I've added some more personality to PFC Winters, does that help?
Which is, in essence, nothing but an alien invasion.
Yes, that's correct. I was hoping to portray a catastrophic event that had nothing to do with anomalies, a sort of take-that at the various GOIs showing that their petty squabbles meant nothing in the long run because they got beaten up by legitimate, non-anomalous invaders while focusing so much on their infighting. This was supposed to be balanced out by the hopeful note that the SCPF and GOC do manage to set aside their differences and join up as a dream team to lead the counterattack.
I would like this article a lot better if the aliens just stayed in orbit and bombed us into oblivion. I would like it if it did something with an alien invasion, because you can't have cool writing, you can't have cool characters or character development, and plot's irrelevant in alien invasion stories because come on, an alien invasion is just an excuse plot at this point. Maybe explore one of the common objections to alien invasions? Why the fuck are they coming for us? What'd we do to them? Where do they come from? Stuff like that.
Yes, you are entirely right. This was originally intended to be a canon with a lot more exploration of the events leading up to NOVA, and a lot of people have mentioned that it shows. I know it's not an acceptable excuse, but I did intend to have a tie-in tale that presented the aliens' side of things; I even toyed with shoehorning it into the main article at some point, but it just didn't fit with the main narrative.
[…] i don't think lasers…cut. certainly not cleanly.
Fixed.
I was originally going to neutral vote, but after reading the discussion page and seeing the points made here, plus reading other, interesting takes on aliens, I have to downvote. I really wish you had used this in a canon, because the twisting you had to do in order to make this work as an SCP seems to have crushed everything which may have once made it interesting.
Whether you like it or not, history is on our side. We will bury you!
I'm wavering between a no-vote and a downvote.
Something like this is super-dependent on execution, and shunting it off to an alternate universe just seems…cheap. Cheap enough to harm the entirety of the article. It could have worked as a scip, but it'd need a load of finagling with the format. I'll have to ponder this further.
e: No-vote. It's not bad, but it is very disappointing.
I think the last two addendums should be swapped. The ending was a lot less moving than the letter before it. No vote.
This doesn't feel like it lives up to it's premise. The idea of hard sci-fi aliens coming up against the Foundation/GoC has promise, but the execution just sorta peters out. With that premise, I wanted to see a progression in the news reports/logs, starting with the the hard horror of the alien bombardment and transitioning into madness as the Foundation opens the gates and lets every bit of hell they have at their disposal loose on the invaders.
I think a consensus is developing on this article that we are being set up for so much, and then kind of left hanging. This is a premise that I agree with. The front part of the article sets us up nicely with the alien invasion and the alternate reality, and then…it's an alien invasion and an alternate reality. Both of these things can be written as well as one likes (and in this case they were indeed well written per your usual standards), but neither concept is enough on its own to pull off something as ambitious as what everyone is expecting SCP-2000 to be.
I am refraining from voting in the expectation that you'll come back to this one. I don't wish to force anyone to write what I want them to write, but I'm really hoping that the nascent "the Foundation fights back with its array of horrible mind-breaking atrocities" gets the development that it deserves. I mean, that would be a wonderful twist on the technologically advanced aliens attacking the hapless humans. "The puny humans stand no chance against us with their primitive projectile weaponry, and- Skarlaxx, why is there a teddy bear made out of ears in the command room?"
So much potential that you've got here. I hope to see something come of it.
(account deleted)
