Why not Soulberg?
I'm going to regret this I know I am
EDIT: Four years later, I only half regret it. Check back in 2022 for further updates.
Discover more of my weird ramblings in
~PeppersGhost's Gallery of Illusion!~
Why not Soulberg?
I'm going to regret this I know I am
EDIT: Four years later, I only half regret it. Check back in 2022 for further updates.
Discover more of my weird ramblings in
~PeppersGhost's Gallery of Illusion!~
I knew this was coming and I still audibly swore when I realized what this was.
+1
I don't get the in-joke but I found this enjoyable. +1
Were you around for Soulberg, PG?
Also, it's just barely passable for me. I'm impressed you explained the core of the original article, but I was very impassive towards the actual ideas presented until I got to the interview logs, which collectively won me over.
I dislike in-jokes being made into SCPs. It encourages people to coast with subpar articles because the "OMG someone actually did that!1!" reaction tends to be the most salient part of the piece, rather than any inherent interest or storytelling. It also makes the SCP experience more insular for newer users and thus limits our audience.
Additionally, I dislike permanent memorials to bad articles so they can be made fun of forever. This place is harsh and unsparing in its criticism, as it should be. But stuff like this crosses the line into petty meanness and contempt, IMO.
This particular article lacks any sort of interest to me. It's an overly complex version of random thing what does a random thing. I guess there's a "is the copy really the person" kind of thing going on in there, but it could have been handled far better without the extraneous goofiness. So really, this is pretty much riding the Soulberg thing almost entirely. For the reasons outlined above, that engenders my emphatic downvote.
Wait, what's going on here? Was this based off a now-gone article?
Piffy is an SCP Foundation Moderator, Lv. 9001 Squishy Wizard, and Knight of the Red Pen.
Soulberg was a bad article posted probably about a year ago featuring a Super Saiyan Gary Stu with a giant sword and a blue aura that got bigger as he got angrier or something. His name was actually Soulberg.
In Pepper's defense I had forgotten about the original Soulberg and thought this article raised some interesting questions. I don't think that injoke scps are inherently bad so long as they can be enjoyed without the requisite knowledge1, though I will admit that immortalizing the sins of a hapless noobie is a little meanspirited. Then again, this is a lot gentler than a decomm, so take that as you will.
So basically an author is never allowed to take inspiration from a bad idea.
Like, who cares if the origin of the article is some old bad one, the current one is interesting.
It isn't that authors aren't allowed to take failed SCP ideas and make them work…that's basically what a rewrite is. It's that in-jokes and scips making fun of bad scips rarely do well…and can be construed as rude towards the original author.
I thought this was pretty interesting, even without knowledge of the in-joke. On the other hand, SCP-2200-1 is referred to as a "sword" at the beginning, and later as a "knife". Also, it's referred to as "possibly independently intelligent to some degree", which I find breaks the tone a little. Maybe "possibly sentient to some degree"?