SCP-2332 / Discussion

This is the discussion related to the wiki page SCP-2332.

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Author's Notes

Zyn 21 May 2014 06:03

You had one job, butterfly.

This is what would’ve been my SCP-2000 contest entry, had I gotten past the brainstorming/scrawl notes in my notebook stage.

Show spoilers

Basically, the Foundation in some other time/space/whatever managed to manufacture a means to send messages between parallel dimensions. The messengers are these butterflies made of light and human brain cells, who have enough embedded intelligence to communicate as well as relay the messages they were created to store.

Mark Kiryu in one dimension (where these butterfly messengers are commonplace) was trying to send a message to Mark Kiryu in another dimension but some funky space stuff happened and another butterfly smacked into it. Basically, two of them en route to the same message delivery spot got mushed up by accident and ended up in the wrong time/space/dimension. The resulting butterfly is basically waiting for the parallel universe it came from to right itself so it can go home.

Different kinds of light are like food to these butterflies. You are what you eat. d: This one happens to like ultraviolet light while blue light makes it feel nauseous.

Many thanks to all these nice people who read this over in chat! /deep breath ProcyonLotor, Riemann, Gaffsey, MisterFlames, Zolgamax, Eskobear, Devereaux, Gamerkid2345, TheTyrantis, TroyL, TwistedGears, Athena_Grey, Kalinin, Ihp(kmn) Sorry if I forgot anyone.

Some easy easter eggs, look up the NGC 6302 nebula and the etymology of the word “angel”. ;)

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Edit: Many thanks to the super awesome Dr Lonewolf, who made the new pictures!

Here's the attribution information (again, thank you Dr Lonewolf) for the source images; all are CC-compliant and allow for modification in their license:

Show attribution info

Image of NGC 6302 (Hubble picture, does not need credit)
Image credited to: JUDY SCHMIDT
Used under a Creative Commons License, 2014
https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/legalcode
Source: https://www.flickr.com/photos/geckzilla/10995574173/in/photolist-7W7rpq-czpPS7-6XEnTD-7PSd7Y-6WVShD-hKDc84-aYTgq4-itmwQf-6ZmA2w-6XenRf-7W4Bgx-7CRs4J-bmHHtw-pwHbus

Image of Sylphina Angel
Image credited to: Paul Seligman
Used under a Creative Commons License, 2010
https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/legalcode
Source: https://www.flickr.com/photos/paul_seligman_cardiff/7909053318/in/photolist-

Image of Alpine Black Swallowail
Image credited to: BERNARD DUPONT
Used under a Creative Commons License, 2013
https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/legalcode
Source: https://www.flickr.com/photos/berniedup/8419720097/in/photolist-p9Hs7c-fJwprT-9VytyL-9VytTN-dQ2grT

Image of Countertop (background)
Image credited to: BAY_DRAGON
Used under a Creative Commons License, 2005
https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/legalcode
Source: https://www.flickr.com/photos/thiesson/3785337

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Edit II: CC-compliant images are here, thanks to the amazing Scorpion451!!

Image attribution here:
Butterflies and some of the background texture, both from wikicommons under CC-BY-SA:
- https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Papilio_maackii_on_Rishiri_Island4.jpg
- https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Chorinea_sylphina_2.jpg

Planetary Nebula NGC 6302, public domain image from Hubble Space Telescope, retrieved from wikicommons:
- https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:NGC_6302_Hubble_2009.full.jpg

Last edited on 12 Dec 2017 05:48 by Zyn Show more

Re: Author's Notes

Cloud 13 21 May 2014 13:35

"SCP-2332: Is it strange that light can pass through glass?" And with the conclusion of that sentence +1
I was pulled in from the start ,but when I read that last sentence it hit me on how differently it sees and interacts with things(I also found the sentence a clever mind boggler). Very nice.

Re: Author's Notes

TL333s 21 May 2014 22:34

This is what would’ve been my SCP-2000 contest entry

I'm surprised, because this reminded me of nothing so much as the raspberry. Now I'm kind of sad they aren't related.

Re: Author's Notes

HollowsKido 22 Mar 2017 11:16

+1 is it odd I want a butterfly plushie that looks like this?

I like the concept of other realities existing in the same place at the same time divided. A many sided mirror is a great way to explain it too. I wanna be like you Zyn when I grow up. :D

Re: Author's Notes

Zyn 23 Mar 2017 06:12

I wanna be like you Zyn when I grow up. :D

Awwwwweh. :3c

_{keep a log of the little things that make you smile, take care of something alive that lives with you (for me, it's eighteen small potted plants and two fish), hold a serious conversation about dumb questions with yourself once a week, and enjoy a nap from time to time. The rest is up to you.}

Re: Author's Notes

DrMagnus 23 Mar 2017 14:25

For realsies, that might be some of the best life advice I've ever seen.

Re: Author's Notes

tarkalak 25 Jun 2021 11:30

It has the "Ending of the Meaning of life by Monthy Python" vibe.

Re: Author's Notes

Kaiza Toshiyuki 31 Mar 2019 23:37

I feel like there was a huge missed opportunity not calling this thing "The Butterfly Effect".

Re: Author's Notes

Zyn 01 Apr 2019 08:16

Eh… it's not really thematically related to that term though? Also if I recall correctly there's already another SCP with that title or a similar reference.

(account deleted) 21 May 2014 06:12

I see what you did there, with the nebula and angel…

OZ Ouroboros 21 May 2014 06:21

Great job, Zyn! :D Definitely gonna draw this one up; love how you implement all the little tidbits of information in your articles! (^_^)

djkaktus 21 May 2014 06:55

Absolutely killer interview. Totally digging it. Well done.

A Random Day 21 May 2014 11:29

I don't know.
The concept sounds extremely intriguing, but the article itself ends before you really do anything with it and I felt that it lacked a suitable payoff.
The nebula easter egg is cute, but I felt that the article really lacked a hook.
It is a transdimensional butterfly, which is neat, but I felt that the execution was missing a certain charm.

Last edited on 21 May 2014 11:30 by A Random Day Show more

Zyn 21 May 2014 15:57

A lot of people in the draft stage thought that adding more would bog down the article (one person thought the description as it is was too long), but I can understand your view. This is shorter compared to my other articles.

It is a transdimensional butterfly, which is neat, but I felt that the execution was missing a certain charm.

It's not just that, per se. Did you get the implications of how the butterfly was created and by whom?

A Random Day 21 May 2014 21:51

I understood it AFTER you explained it in the discussion. However, I feel like you did not do enough with that concept. I won't down vote primarily because I like the concept, but I won't up vote because I dislike the execution.

Zyn 22 May 2014 02:13

I see!

Out of curiosity, what more do you think could've been done with the concept? I know that I do have an issue with crossing the line from subtle to too vague, and if a lot of people aren't getting the subtext without the discussion, I'm all for making edits so more people can enjoy it after the first reading.

A Random Day 22 May 2014 18:47

As a fan of Fringe and Eureka, alternate universes and timelines are some of my favorite science fiction concepts. I wish you'd done a little bit more with the concept of this alternate universe.

What is happening over there? Can the Foundation contact them? Are they trying to contact our universe's Foundation? What was the message they were trying to send?

You focus entirely on the messenger itself, which is cool, but what is a messenger without a message?

Zyn 22 May 2014 23:28

Show replies to questions

What is happening over there?

Business as usual.

Can the Foundation contact them?

This dimension's Foundation cannot.

Are they trying to contact our universe's Foundation?

No. The butterfly was never supposed to end up in this dimension.

What was the message they were trying to send?

Something that would possibly alter this dimension's timestream if it was passed on to the wrong Mark Kiryu.

My initial take on this was that it's inherently not that big of a deal to see these light butterflies flying around in other dimensions, but they're not supposed to exist at all in the current dimension, at least not for a hundred years or whatever. The Foundation wanted something fast (hence the light) and smart, to a degree (hence the nerve cells and the passage of words directly from one iteration of a Foundation staff member to another).

Potential spoilers

This dimension's Foundation finding it was entirely a mistake. Two messenger butterflies got smashed together en route to the same place, crossed the streams, quantum entanglement, what have you. Admittedly, I'm not sure if that got through in the interview, but I wanted to leave enough room for the reader to put together their own comprehension of the little dimension hopper messenger butterfly.

TheShrike 21 May 2014 17:52

I can only read the butterfly dialog in the voice of the pkunk from star control 2.

GG Crono 22 May 2014 16:33

Does this mean that the butterfly is one with the pootworm?

Sensei Le Roof 22 May 2014 16:34

All that font changing must be difficult.

(account deleted) 21 May 2014 19:37

As stated previously in chat, I'm close to an upvote on this one. I enjoyed the interview, which is a neat trick because interviews are difficult to write successfully, both from the proper execution and article enhancement angles. As a whole, there's a pleasant degree of puzzlement that I get from this article; not enough is given away to make things immediately apparent, but it's not so veiled as to be meaningless nonsense.

That said, I'm left with the feeling that I've read three-quarters of a good novel, and it's stopped before I've found anything out. That's okay sometimes, since mystery is a frequently employed tool around here that I enjoy very much, but this needs just a little bit more to get it over the finish line. Not much more, because I don't want this clearly explained and in a sense disenchanted, but maybe just a little more suggestion. I mean, what kind of message is this? Hints of that nature could add an extra layer to this article in terms of the background tone. As it stands, I'm in high neutral-vote territory.

RecursiveRecursion 21 May 2014 20:11

I loved it, but it seemed kind of odd when it had an interview. You might want to mention in the description that it can speak, as I don't believe there was anything about that in there.
Actually, I just read a little closer, and it turns out that I'm an idiot, I saw the speech bit now.

Last edited on 21 May 2014 20:12 by RecursiveRecursion Show more

SoullessSingularity 21 May 2014 21:20

Making me fall in love again, zyn.

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Living the dream, or dreaming the life?

Mulciber 21 May 2014 22:01

Everyone thinks that something that travels as fast as light needs to look like other things that are fast. In another time, you think differently.

Very nice.

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