SCP-4637 / Discussion

This is the discussion related to the wiki page SCP-4637.

440 Hertz 09 Jan 2019 17:30

Trust nobody, not even… Urself

-@MohamedKamoul, June 8th, 2014.

All images were created by me (I used a .svg file of the Foundation logo for the RAC notices, from what I can gather it's under CC Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 license which would make it OK).
Only exception: I made the picture of subject #035 by heavily editing this photo by Christina Morillo, which is under the very permissive Pexel Licence (transformation is allowed, even commercial use is allowed).

rephlexi0n 09 Jan 2019 18:36

I like the idea, fairly well written too. +1.
By the way, it’s spelled *diethylamide*, you missed the *e*, and you missed a few SCP-#### here and there.

440 Hertz 09 Jan 2019 18:53

Thanks a lot! I fixed it.

+ To anyone who might be interested in helping

I was a bit shy about requesting feedback, the chat intimidates me since I'm not quite fluent enough in English to be super comfortable with instantaneous forms of discussion. So I only got 1 concise reply to my thread in the "drafts" forum (telling me basically "go ahead it's fine submit it"), and then the thread sank down into obscurity. So (despite a few rounds of proofreading) I'm sure there are still mistakes here and there that would be jarring to a native English speaker: please let me know if you think the content is fine, but notice some improper or weird use of language.

(account deleted) 09 Jan 2019 20:54

I would have never guessed you're not a fluent English speaker. The article was amazing, and it stayed really interesting to read the whole way through.

I fixed some small grammar issues in the first two interview logs for you. I might do some more careful proofreading later on, but for now that's what I had time for.

440 Hertz 09 Jan 2019 22:59

Thank you very much! The interview logs are really tricky, especially subject 009 who I tried to write with a strange mix of informal speech and eloquence, to create a sense that he's a bit of an inept weirdo but that he revels in his own non-confrontational personality enough to be articulate about it. I'm worried that my attempts to use very casual speech don't ring authentic.
For example I see you've corrected "and I went, like, whatever" to "and I was like whatever". I know that stuff like "and I went 'no way' and then he went 'I swear to god' " exists, and that "like" is a common language tic, so I thought that maybe the combination "I went like […]" was believable informal spoken English… I almost never speak English IRL, shit like this is really subtle if you've not spent months fully immersed among native speakers.

(account deleted) 10 Jan 2019 02:56

No problem! I do think 009's mix of informality and eloquence came off very well in general, and it made him a pretty likable character for the short time you spent with him.

I have a huge respect for anyone smart and/or determined enough to learn a second language, especially one as complicated and confusing as English. If you ever need someone to proofread something you've written, PM me and I'll take a look.

AFX Neuromancer 10 Jan 2019 03:11

Thoroughly enjoyable, and will chorus occhiolism — I never would've guessed that English wasn't your native language.

I especially appreciated your handling of the interviews — it never made sense to me when the interviewer insists on referring to the interviewee only by their SCP designation or something similar. You'd think they'd address them by whatever they preferred in order to build a rapport and better extract pertinent information.

And I don't think the interviewer ever responded to an answer with an "I see…" Not once!
Kudos!

I think you've still got a slight typo in the second interview:

So save for these itches, would you say you'd re completely

On a sidenote, I feel like acid hasn't really been available around where I live for years. Not that I would every try it, mind you. That's illegal.

Connor MacWarren 10 Jan 2019 15:43

Author, I feel like you should capitalize the first letter of 'allocation' in your title. It reads better if it did.

serpentrose 10 Jan 2019 16:09

I read this yesterday and have been thinking about it on and off since.

It's great when something leaves me satisfied with what's there while also giving me some things to wonder about and question- such as how being on the Autism Spectrum would affect results. Could a nonbinary person wind up with one personality more 'male' and one more 'female'?

440 Hertz 10 Jan 2019 18:24

I'm really thrilled that it was that engaging to you, my #1 goal with this item was to share the excitement that this simple thought experiment makes me feel ("how much would two versions of me diverge if they started to have slightly different experiences right now? What would they think of each other?").

For what it's worth, my idea behind "men and women tend to react differently, and someone with less marked sexual differentiation has more agency over the effects" was as follows:

+ show block

In order to duplicate the mind, the prions use (among other things) vestigial structures in the male brain that would otherwise have been dedicated to "female-ness" (and vice-versa for females). I have no personal experience with gender dysphoria, but from what I can gather identity as a man or a woman is partially hardwired and has an incredibly strong effect on your conscious relationship with your body.
It makes sense to me that one of the easiest way to make a distinct copy of someone's sense of self would be to take advantage of parts of the brain that get more active at the slightest input of testosterone/oestrogen, and that already deal with body image. Just like male nipples or female Gartner's duct, but in more subtle less well-understood brain structures!

So with all of that in mind, purely based on my questionable blurbs of biological justifications for the effects, the β consciousness of a nonbinary person would tend to match more closely with the gender opposite to the one assigned at birth!

While writing the SCP, at some point I started assigning a bit more importance to gender, but in the end I just kept it to make it very clear there is some logic behind the ability to control the effects (which is very precious to the Foundation), and thus justify the huge amount of research (if the effects were too unpredictable, it would not make sense to me that the Foundation would retain some hope of developing applications for the product).

Shaggydredlocks 13 Jan 2019 08:54

Not fluent? Totally fooled me! The tone here is top-notch.

In terms of narrative, it is unfortunately a bit dry, but in terms of good technical writing, it's above and beyond. Easy +1.

440 Hertz 17 Jan 2019 21:36

Thanks a lot! Getting someone who's not even really into the premise to upvote just because of tone makes the compliment feel especially meaningful.

If someone else reads this and shares your opinion (or if you find time and want to indulge me) I'd really love more details on "the narrative is a bit dry": like, did you just feel like the effect is too banal to pique interest, or were there some specific "meh" details I focused too much on? I'm trying to hit a sweet spot of not being dramatic and hooking the reader with simple mundane feelings portrayed a bit wrong (rather than with horror/extreme weirdness/sadness). Polishing a "Woah dude, what if" style without being too obnoxious. So opinions from those who weren't really into it would be super helpful to help me improve!

440 Hertz 01 Feb 2019 12:17

I just discovered WrongJohnSilver's brilliant SCP-3966. I added a footnote at the beginning of the description pointing out the similarities, in the spirit of the Wikiwalk team's crosslinking project, since it's also an anomalous prion with very precise effects on cognition (I've checked and found a few other prion-based skips, but they are either just lethal or have general actions on tissue rather than odd, specific mental effects).

Last edited on 01 Feb 2019 12:17 by 440 Hertz Show more

Asdfaslas 15 Oct 2019 10:53

It's moderately terrifying that you've identified how it feels to have something so whackadoo happen to your brain, and from what I can gather, without it having happened to you?

Like, I get this. Non anomalously and different, but, "I'm not the person normally in here, I'm the same person but I'm a different her, and when she comes back I'll be stuck again" kind of weird-ass stress induced dissociation/derealization/whatever and just, even WITHOUT worrying about "the other one's" intent or possible collusion, it's still terrifying. Even in your own bed, not a cage, it's terrifying.

Anyways they could stand to be more scared. Maybe one of the failures can be more scared and have a part to play.
Because heck yeah, I agree, if you're looking for someone to experience this without being *fully incapacitated by it* that's gonna be rare. Because it literally is the knowledge that you will disappear for an unknown amount of time, or possibly die but nobody notices and you keep on going but with a fully different consciousness inside you and nobody EVER notices unless you tell them. Nobody. Not a parent, not a best friend, not even a spouse, can tell you from them when this happens, because there's no difference other than the sense that you've just started to exist and weren't existing earlier.