Hey everyone! This is my third SCP and my contest entry for Cliche Con 2019. The cliche I chose is D class = Disposable Class. I hope you enjoy.
Ooh, quietly corrupt doctor, doing the wrong thing for the right reasons. Well, most of the D-class are selected from deeply antisocial populations, so this is their chance to, ahem, give back, so to speak.
Proofreading notes:
1) "Glial" persistently misspelled as "gilal", despite the correct spelling of "neuroglia". Should be easy to sort with a find-replace.
2) in one of the middle paragraphs we have "for the continued sustenance SCP-4063", I presume there should be an "of" in there somewhere.
Otherwise, solid compo entry, if otherwise unremarkable. There's probably a few other instances of Doctors Doing What They Shouldn't To Keep Family Safe inamongst the other ~4500 articles…
Thanks for catching those errors, and I'm glad you enjoyed the scip.
While I was disappointed that the anomaly wasn't actually an infohazardous supernatural being, reanimating the corpse of a little girl, I can appreciate the level of detail put into the containment procedures and I think this does the "lying to Foundation to protect family" trope better than other articles I've seen do it. Then again, the only other article I've seen do it is SCP-4057.
One question though: is the part about Anne not having her personality and memories another lie to the Foundation? Or is it true and meant as an allusion to family's who keep relatives alive despite the relative in question having gone through brain-death?
I came back to edit this comment because I realize it is spoilery. Then again, who reads the comments before the article?
So we have this little girl with a brooch who needs brains to live. I understand the girl has no control over this, and we know her mother and grandmother died as a result (this is already too damn sad). But if researcher Cary is still alive, that means he rarely gets to visit his daughter because too much contact will kill him. So all of this death and destruction are to keep a girl alive who:
A) Rarely sees her father AKA the one keeping her alive,
B) Never gets to go outside and live a normal life, and
C) Can't get attached to anyone because her caretakers all die within a month
I like the idea of the article, but the text itself is a little dense. I think it could be shortened a bit.
It's been a while since I've done much critique, but here goes.
The big issue is it's too wordy. I estimate it could be rewritten to be half as long without losing any content. There's also some unusual/unprofessional wording, such as " is to be " and "popular conjecture"
The use of an MTF here makes no sense to me. Why create a Mobile Task Force to guard a small fixed location? Regular Foundation security guards on a rotation would be sufficient. I suggest something like:
ACS-Homestead must be guarded at all times by four security officers residing in an outpost constructed on the edge of the property. Officers are to detain unauthorized individuals approaching the farmhouse and administer class-A amnestics before removal from the site. Under no circumstances are officers to approach or enter the farmhouse.
Permission to expand research beyond the responsibility of the acting Steward of SCP-4063 is pending review by the Ethics Committee, but is strongly opposed by Head Researcher Ambrose Cary.
Why is the Ethics Committee reviewing this? Shouldn't a senior researcher or a site director be doing this?
In fact, how did this situation even occur? The official timeline is:
- Ambrose Cary, the head researcher of anomaly █████, visits his daughter
- His daughter becomes anomalous
- █████ ceases to be anomalous
- Ambrose Cary establishes the containment procedures for his daughter, which:
- prevents anyone else from knowing the details of the anomaly or its exact location
- requires feeding the anomaly 39-78 D-Class per year
- creates an MTF to make sure no one leaves the farmhouse with knowledge of whats inside
- The Foundation actually caries out the procedures and retains him as head researcher of the anomaly
I'm frankly shocked that Cary wasn't immediately detained. The Foundation just accepting everything he said and approving funds/resources for containment breaks any suspension of disbelief.
The concept definitely has merit, but nothing about the execution drew me in. There's no deeper mystery, no creeping fridge logic, and the revelations aren't shocking or impactful enough to carry it.