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This is so disturbing.
I love it.
Minor technicality:
My mouth was numb from the second electrocution.
…the proper word here would be "electrification" or even just "shock." Electrocution means death.
Dude, you've been a member for 3 hours and you wrote that? That's a fantastic coldpost if I've ever seen one. You, sir or madam, are going places.
We, as the readers, get to see the whole article for all the skips. The people dealing with these things on a daily basis only get to see the containment procedures. Or part of them.
Thank you for the reminder of just how horrifying that is. +1.
It strains believability at times (why would Jay not be briefed on an SCP he was interacting with? why would the Foundation neglect to prepare him for interacting with a humanoid?) but it was entertaining and well characterized enough to warrant an upvote. +1
Given that you're such a new member, I'm pleasantly surprised to see your first contribution to the site is a tale. I don't think this is a perfect piece by any means, but it's /very/ strong for a first showing, and I look forward to seeing what you'll be able to do when once you've found your footing on the site.
I like to imagine that in this version if the Foundation they don't tell him about these things because they can't let him reveal any information about the creatures to others. Also, he's just considered a disposable resource in the grand scheme of things so they don't feel obligated to brief him about the SCPs. It was probably Marta's job to properly brief about Danny, but she neglected the proper briefing because by that point she didn't care anymore.
Thank you for your feedback. I'm glad you enjoyed the story.
I like this overall, but I can't help but note that the staff's protocols and procedures seem kind of slack. Let the basic food service staff hang out in an object's cell unsupervised, without so much as letting them know that the thing inside may have some slightly deceptive tendencies? To prepare for experimentation, just walk in, jab it with a cattle prod a few times, then toss it over your shoulder like a beach towel? Perhaps it's just a headcanon thing, I guess I just see the Foundation as operating, even at the 'lower' levels, a bit more strictly than that.
If:
And:
Then I am so jelly right now.
As PeppersGhost said, it drops my sense of desbelief from time to time (in my case, that means that the cell's numbers didn't reflect the actual skips, so you lost a good chance there), but this is a decent first contribution.
As for McLeod. I took two years to contribute a single article. Take your time for perfection.
Yeah, I decided not to have the room numbers match up with the SCPs themselves because certain things like inanimate small objects would not be held in a giant cell right next to a humanoid monster. They may in Foundation canon, but for this universe I decided against it.
There's an implication in a few posts in this thread that somehow the standards are different for first articles. I hope that's not what the users in question mean, because that is most certainly not the case, and I would not want to encourage that view among our newer users.
As for the tale, this interpretation of the Foundation is not one that I care for at all. You have the whole "monthly terminations of D-Class because humans are apparently cheaply available for experimentation" thing, the Foundation capping people when they retire (and apparently not bothering to hide it), the Foundation vivisecting people for no real reason, and all of the employees are essentially prisoners themselves. And in combination with Evil Foundation, you have Insanely Inept Foundation, where non-security employees are apparently allowed to open cells by themselves and interact with anomalous phenomena. I mean, a certain amount of suspension of disbelief is necessary, but the idea of an organization run basically like a super-villain's private island is not really giving me any immersion into the tale.
There's a lot of weird little dissonant notes in this that also detract from my experience. The retiring lady cracking on the narrator for being gay was kind of out of left field, as was her "ho-hum, guess they're going to shoot me, lol whatevs" attitude. And why does the Foundation inform its low-level service employees the nature of what organization they're working for? And why does the protagonist all of a sudden get bothered by what the Foundation does if he already knows that he works for a place that practices human experimentation? And I can't help but feel that there's a slight problem with a first-person narrative where the narrator is dead at the end. I mean, I guess he could be a zombie or something, but it's not like that's really addressed anywhere in the tale.
This is one reason I don't necessarily like the congratulatory "yay you did a coldpost" thing, because this piece, while it apparently will survive on the site, could have used a substantial amount of additional work.
Sorry you didn't like it. I agree, it could be much better. I'll try to do better next time.
As for my potrayal of the Foundation, I've decided to make it look generally inefficient a careless because the US Foundation has suffered serious budget cuts in this economy (like NASA, schools and prisons have). I'm exploring that a little more in this next story. Basically, this version if the Foundation doesn't have all the resources it used to so all personnel are underpaid, there's less of them and they're all sick of it.
Thanks for your feedback!
Honestly, everything you have mentioned is valid and it's why I'm doing some effort to keep my upvote on the tale, but I have a soft spot whenever I see someone who wrote something with a lot of effort (and despite this is far away from perfection, I can feel a good amount of that in this piece). Although I admit my opinion, and thus, my upvote, is biased by the fact he's a newbie who tried really hard.
Oh, and Nonsense, I think the way you picture the Foundation reflects the fact you have a lot left to read man. The Foundation has not economical bounds with any country in specific, and it's rather cold, not cruel. And well, if a skip that can swap bodies through physical contact is locked in a rather mundane office, I'd be worried if said skip suddenly screams that he's another person.
The Foundation doesn't have to be bound to the economical state of countries in general. But in this version this particular Foundation institution in the US is funded by the government as they work hand-in-hand. So when the economy in the States collapses then everyone gets hit. There is no canon, but this is the concept I'm going with. Sorry if it doesn't match up with other stories.
As for Danny. I tried to imply he had been telling everyone that he had swapped bodies with Jay as soon as he met him. They ran tests to see if this was true, he was lying, and he continued to swear he was actually Jay up until the point when he actually swapped bodies with Jay. That way nobody would believe Jay when it did actually happen. Sorry if that want clear. I could have made that more obvious or just constructed it better in general.
For the record, the newness of the author had nothing to do with my upvote. I just felt like it was worth praising the author for not following in the footsteps of a lot of other new members we've had lately.
There's a lot of posts here implying the Foundation can't be bumbling sometimes, or inefficient, despite it's enormous size and constant growth.
The sacred law is
There is no canon. This is his and it makes sense and is written well. And I'm very, very uncomfortable and I think a few commenters might be too. :3
+1
Nonsense, I'm glad to see you're taking the constructive criticism well while shrugging off the silly restraints being thrown at you. I hope to see more!
(account deleted)
