SCP-2041 / Discussion

This is the discussion related to the wiki page SCP-2041.

page 1 of 3123next »

trennerdios 06 Aug 2014 14:00

Well hopefully the feedback I've received through the forums, chat, and Reddit was enough for this to stay out of the red. I'm pretty happy with the fact that I was able to bang this out in a day on nothing more than sudden inspiration and a whim.

I have a feeling it will need some more editing to clarify some things, but I've already cleaned it up a bit in that department, so we'll see.

EDIT: I received permission to use the image from this article: http://loganwv.us/1950s-era-merry-go-round-2/

I asked about removing the watermark, and they didn't address that part of my message, so I've removed it. If that is inappropriate, I will upload the unedited image.

Last edited on 07 Aug 2014 06:47 by trennerdios Show more

Drewbear 06 Aug 2014 14:04

I like the core effects of the hallucinationary merry-go-round and the yellow/orange/red people, but I dislike that note at the end that implies that they're child molesters. I would also have liked some more indication that the Foundation tested the "yellow people" like that Agent, so as to figure out if there was anything abnormal about them.

---

Giving bearhugs to the unsuspecting since 1872.

trennerdios 06 Aug 2014 14:13

Thanks for the feedback!

I want to get something out of the way right now, as this issue even popped up in chat a little. This SCP is not a comment on morality, one way or another. It may be anomalous, but it was still built by a human being, and human beings are flawed. Yes, it detects potential and active child predators, but that does not mean its methods are infallible.

As to the last part of your comment, I don't really know how the Foundation could test a person to see why they're showing up yellow, without first figuring out why the thing does what it does. The proper field testing that I hinted at Dr. Darritz starting at the end of the article was initially derailed by Agent Bjerre, so at this point the article is a snapshot of a point where they're just figuring out what it truly does.

Drewbear 06 Aug 2014 14:50

Having it be a child-predator-detector isn't the problem. It's just that note at the end is too obvious, in my opinion.

As for the testing: get more than one person/adult on the merry-go-round to confirm that the same people look yellow and it's not different for each viewer. Once that's confirmed, give everyone who's had contact with it an extensive battery of physical & psychological tests. Isolate aspects of the yellow/orange/red people that are statistically abnormal from the rest of the testees. Confirm that these aspects are universal across the "warning" people, and identify that the intensity of the psychosexual abnormalities matches with the color. Bam! (potential) child predators identified.

---

Giving bearhugs to the unsuspecting since 1872.

trennerdios 06 Aug 2014 15:04

I unfortunately am not a good enough writer to make that note more subtle. I initially had it as corrupted text, which I figured would be a placeholder until I could figure out something better, but I ended up just getting rid of the garbled text and leaving the message. Perhaps I simply need to come up with a better method of obscuring parts of the message, I dunno.

As for testing, it's basically implied that Agent Bjerre has been doing his best to hinder testing, and delay/obfuscate results. Paasio may have very well been doing testing like your example, without trying to alarm the agent. And I admit that part of that is because I'm not a good enough writer to word the proper testing you expanded on, or knowledgeable enough to work it all out in my head.

Pig_catapult 06 Aug 2014 22:32

If it helps, I already figured out what was going on without the note at the end.

---

Piffy is an SCP Foundation Moderator, Lv. 9001 Squishy Wizard, and Knight of the Red Pen.

Rush 07 Aug 2014 07:37

Me too. In fact I +1 once I got it then shrugged at the final note. I figured the gist was people who prey on or abuse kids. So child abusers and bullies as well. I like this one a lot.

ofmiceandmousemats 06 Aug 2014 15:26

I liked it last night on /r/scp and I still like it here.

I didn't cotton on 'pdf file' === 'paedophile' (unless I'm just seeing things that aren't there) and it feels quite silly now I've spotted it, but its not silly enough to downvote.

Last edited on 06 Aug 2014 15:28 by ofmiceandmousemats Show more

trennerdios 06 Aug 2014 15:58

Ha, it is and it isn't. I work with a lot of PDF files at my job, so that was more of a little joke for my own amusement, rather than the intention of the person who sent the file.

Rioghail 06 Aug 2014 19:35

I liked it in chat and I like it now. It's good to see this one succeeding.

TL333s 06 Aug 2014 23:40

Took until the final note to get the "Oh!" moment, but actually the use of damaged interviews really helps build this up as sinister. Even if you took the above advice and got rid of the child-molesting angle, sometimes seeing people as angrier and angrier colors for no apparent reason is pretty sinister on its own.

Also, I have to ask, shouldn't the speed be measured in some kind of angular velocity? I am not a physicsman, I will have to leave this question to others.

trennerdios 07 Aug 2014 00:25

Glad the logs worked for you. I'm going to wait and see if I can get more of a consensus on certain things before I decide to retool the child predator issue or not. It's impossible to please everybody, and the opinions from here and from the people I received feedback from before I posted it have been all over the place on nearly everything. On the plus side, it's been pretty positive, with people liking it overall despite issues they've had, which I'm grateful for.

I don't even need angular velocity specifically, but I should probably figure out an appropriate amount of revolutions per minute to replace the km/h. I don't have any idea what that might be for a merry-go-round with that diameter, but I'll see if I can figure it out.

Scorpion451 07 Aug 2014 04:07

We could get one about twice that diameter on my elementary school playground up to about .5~1 rps for about 30 seconds with twelve kids pushing it for all they were worth, it if that helps.

Last edited on 07 Aug 2014 04:08 by Scorpion451 Show more

Scorpion451 07 Aug 2014 03:55

Freaking love this one. Definately need to leave the pedophile/bully/abuser aspect in. Without that, this is just a weird cartoon vision merry go round that makes random people look like monsters. With it, this is something legitimately dark and creepy; someone's attempt to save kids from a very real breed of monster using a child's view of the world.

Doctor, do you know what kind of people gravitate towards schools, towards playgrounds, towards children? Whoever invented that thing was a genius. I'd like to shake his hand someday. For now, you may want to watch your back better than I watched my own.

Perfect note to end on, by the way. Just enough of an anvil drop for those who don't get it yet.

Agent MacLeod 07 Aug 2014 04:58

Good guy (gal?) Wondertainment, watching out for the children.

I know this has nothing to do with the good Doctor, it's just a joke. As for the article, if I weren't an emotionless, hollow shell of a man (Holy Hell, I'm Dr. Gears), I'd be legitimately creeped out, but also cheering this wonderful thing on. You get a +1.

tapnek 07 Aug 2014 08:59

While the paedophile protection thing is neat, I don't think it connects to the suicides of both an adult and a child.

trennerdios 07 Aug 2014 13:21

I'm not sure what you mean by this. The object didn't cause either of those suicides, one of which wasn't really a suicide at all.

Agent MacLeod 31 Oct 2014 03:47

Ok, I don't know how this question didn't cross my mind when I read this earlier, but what's the deal with the suicides, anyway? Like:

…one of which wasn't really a suicide at all.

implies that the agent killed the researcher, but what about the kid? Any story there, or just some tragedy?

trennerdios 31 Oct 2014 04:12

Implication that the researcher faked his own death. The kid did commit suicide.

I will probably try to work in the researcher's faked suicide into my current tale series if possible.

Agent MacLeod 03 Nov 2014 03:49

Ok. Thanks for the clarification.

SoullessSingularity 08 Aug 2014 08:46

I think the paedophile/bulling/etc. is rather contrived. I would've preferred it to be some other kind of alternate lens of a spinning kaleidoscope of some other reality just under the surface of our own, an offering from that reality to our own in the form of a gift to our most precious offspring…

But eh, I guess an asshole-detector is OK too. Neutral vote.

---

Living the dream, or dreaming the life?

trennerdios 08 Aug 2014 15:38

Awww, oh well. Funnily enough, that was the very, very first thought I had for this SCP, but I quickly moved on because I figured that had probably been done and didn't feel original enough for me.

The next idea I had was that this SCP was allowing kids to see the effects of another, completely different SCP. So this SCP itself wouldn't have been terribly notable, with the hook being it leads to the discovery of a different one after the Foundation figure it out.

Then I remembered hearing how there was a disproportionate amount of sex offenders living around the university campus, and the (now closed) elementary school near it, in my city. That gave me enough inspiration to flesh out the current idea into a complete article so I went with it.

Last edited on 08 Aug 2014 16:14 by trennerdios Show more

Major Blackwood 26 Sep 2014 02:06

I felt as if I didn't really get it, so I headed to the comments to try and understand it. I honestly hadn't thought of the whole pedophile detector thing at all. Maybe I'm just thick?

Litfried 13 Aug 2014 19:33

Welcome to the club of writers of hallunicatory playground equipment! I think you handled the 'detector of people who might hurt children' angle very well: a nice spectrum of bully through paedophile through molester to murderer.

For what it's worth, I got it without the note and cringed a little at 'PDF file' pun. I also got the hint of one suicide not being suicide.

Clever and subtle, I like it. Also I'd ride the hell out of it all day long.

Last edited on 13 Aug 2014 19:35 by Litfried Show more

page 1 of 3123next »