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See below for relevant greenlights and image attribution. Drafting critiques were received via IRC.
http://www.scp-wiki.net/forum/t-11931111/what-s-contained-at-site-70
Edit: Didn't see the post about tags, thanks for correcting that magical Tag people!
This is good and well paced but I gotta level with you; this is over-formatted to hell. There's a ton of stuff going on visually to the point that I am almost having trouble staying focused on your work. Having said that, the "busy" elements of this work do not detract from the content enough to stop me from giving a +1.
Roger that. Should I just delete some of the elements to tidy it up some?
Edit: removed a few of the more redundant elements so hopefully that cleaned things up a bit.
this is, an interesting skip that does some interesting things but there's so much going on and it feels like so many really long blocks of text that it ends up being a little boring to read imo; but this might just be that i'm not good at reading lots of information.
I've tidy up the page of some of the formatting and corrected the date formatting on the interrogation log. I'll take a look to see how I can improve the other bits you mentioned. Thanks for the input!
SCP-4730 is a long SCP with an interesting premise that, ultimately, collapses under the weight of several, minor issues. Most of them are lapses in tone which make believing that this was written by professionals difficult.
All containment areas at Site-70 are to be kept at least 300 meters away from any door requiring level 4 or higher security clearance and have at least one 50 cm thick steel wall obstructing direct line of sight between them.
These exact numbers, 300 meters, 50 cm, never appear again. They are arbitary. If a wall is 299 meters away from a door does containment fail automatically? No. It's the X by X by X containment cell issue but in a different format.
A MTF Nu-7 battery of at least 120 members are to remained stationed at Site-70 in compliment to its standing armed guard force of 1000.
Again why is 120 the magic number? Furthermore, anyone reading this wont know what's contained (because that's blacked out below), but will know exactly how many armed guards are on site by default: vital intel for most saboteurs.
SCP-4730 is an anomaly that affects a randomly chosen level 4 or higher security card at Site-70 every 2 to 40 days and activates upon use on a level 4 door.
So there are leveled cards AND doors? If containment is an issue…then why keep using the system that causes issues? Why not use that MTF battery to screen clearance levels in different ways? Why not find an alternative method to the card+door system that causes hostiles with gauss weaponry to invade?
SCP-4730-3 instance covers Researcher Mochizuka's mouth with their hand. Researcher Mochizuka is escorted through various corridors before being deposited in a stark white interrogation room marked 75T. Mochizuka is handcuffed to a metal chair in front of a metallic table and left alone for two minutes and 20 seconds before someone enters the room and sits across the table from Mochizuka. Person is of masculine appearance and designated as Interviewer.
This doesn't read as clinical, official notes. This reads as pure narrative description, as though from a novel. The room isn't white it's 'stark white.' Why do we need to know that the interviewer is of 'masculine appearance' or that the furniture is 'metallic?'
You better damn be, I do NOT enjoy being woken up by a guard ordering me to my computer with no clue as to why.
The dialogue suffers as well. This doesn't sound like one of the people responsible for managing global Foundation operations, this sounds like an unprofessional kid who's never experienced a sudden emergency or meeting before, which is impossible considering Foundation operations in general.
The concept is promising. The execution was not, unfortunately.
Roger that, I'll give it an edit tonight and tomorrow to make it have a more consistent clinical tone. See below for responses to your examples.
I wanted to avoid being vague in the containment procedures. The point of the distance and wall is to make the invading force have to slog through defenders and not immediately pop up in a containment area. I suppose I could replace that with "Containment areas are to be kept a defensible distance away from any level 4 door per Site-70 Nu-7 commander discretion" or something. Same goes for the battery of 120.
I do novel writing as a hobby so breaking that is a bit hard. I will remove extraneous details.
As for why they keep using the level 4 card+door system? The invading forces can actually use whatever door with whatever security clearance they want. Site-70 is constructed around a disinformation campaign to make everyone but the O5s and site command think it is of vital importance. This is to convince the alternate foundation that they don't need to appear anywhere else besides level 4 doors at site 70.
Is there anything I can do to make that a bit more apparent?
The foundation probably wouldn't refer to him as Jesus Christ. It isn't his name, it's a title, and not one that non-Christians use. I'd recommend you change footnote 4 to read something like "the site of the crucifixion of Jesus of Nazareth"
Other than that, I like the concept of a multiversal foundation and I think it was done fairly well. +1
I immensely dislike this piece.
I assume you were influenced by 1730 to make a "big" skip, but you have to remember that you're playing to an incredibly jaded crowd who's seen these things a million times. Ambition will not save a piece; it needs character, and this feels like every other story about "oh woe is me I have to perform mass-scale imperialism to sustain my utterly fucking wasteful lifestyle of being better than everyone else". If you were going for a critique of that idea, then I'm sorry to say that it failed. The narrative's sole position on the matter resembles one of pathos, "they can't do that because it's bad!!", and thus fails as a condemnation.
Your dialogue is also particularly lacking, especially in the second interview. 4730-3 didn't feel like a coherent person so much as an expository vehicle. Several portions even feel like an entirely different person speaking: we've got the "just doing orders", the edgy gloater, and the scared pawn who doesn't want the crocodile's jaws to bite down, without a sufficient transition between these attitudes.
The final bit about containment feels like it's intended to be shocking, but to me it's just talk. Compare to SCP-2669, another skip about doing bad, bad things in service of containment, which actually explored the grotesque consequences of the Foundation's actions. The deaths are imaginary; you need to trick your reader with a vivid depiction of the consequences.
Altogether, it just doesn't flow well. It feels like four plot threads from a marvel movie haphazardly mashed together, and with over 4500 of these on the mainlist alone, I honestly do expect better.
Thanks for the input. Not sure what to do with some of it but I will give the article a hard look this weekend.
I hoped the video logs of the other world would show enough consequence for failure. I do get what you mean with the second interview, though. I don't know how I can make the implications of the last log have more impact at the moment, I'll have to find some inspiration.
A future of a lifeless planet covered in drills and colonialist technofascism isn't so much a vivid depiction of horror as it is an unpleasant reality of humanity today. It also doesn't address the consequences of containment itself; I still come shrugging my shoulders and asking myself why I should care.
Come to think of it, "we gotta bomb the shit outta ourselves to escape ecological collapse" would make for a fun satire of Posadism, but that would require a thick dollop of black comedy to achieve.
I might try to make what is happening to the lifeless planets clearer. They eventually become "Nowhere". Information from them starts to fail the more crosses go up until other aspects of what makes something exist fail, hence why the captured soldier can't remember much if anything about their home. I want the implication to be that this alt-foundation is unknowingly feeding gods and realities to something void-like. The foot soldiers of the invaders aren't aware of it but they are actually fleeing the same effect they are causing.
Thanks for the input. Harsh criticism is often more valuable than positive and I believe that to be the case here.
This reply really sums up why I don't like this article. It feels like all the excessive formatting, pictures, namedrops of well-known task forces, etc. is the article's main ammunition in creating some kind of "wow" factor, rather than the writing itself.
Ambition isn't bad, but you need to be very careful that it doesn't surpass your skill level.
This is a largely unfocused skip. I don't know what I need to care about here or why I should care about it. The interview with -3 was a huge turn off for me, since I can't properly visualize what kind of person they are.
It stinks because "containment realities" could be a great concept and could be a fun thing to play with. This, however, doesn't carry any real weight to it.
Gotcha, I'll keep that in mind if I try and salvage this. I definitely see how the interview with -3 needs to change or go entirely. I was worried about making it too long or I would include more logs, flush out how the -3 are actually rather concerned about their situation or sympathetic. Don't know if I'm just drilling uselessly or not. Looking back on it, it just feels bland.
Well it needs work, but it was way better than my first SCP I submitted so, +1.
Sorry, this is a downvote for me. It was a neutral vote awaiting some improvements, but it seemed to get worse the further I went.
First, I would remove the second picture entirely. It in no way looks like footage from a security camera. It's also clearly a picture of a US military exercise, using equipment that would clearly be outdated considering the nature of the -3 MTF instance.
The method of accessing our universe makes no sense. If they've done this dozens of realities, why is it that they can only enter ours through a randomly selected level 4 or higher keycard at one site? That seems a pretty poor and uncontrollable method of entry.
The properties of the Gauss rifles are never explained, but I'm not sure you have your principles correct. Popular conception of a Gauss rifle has a lightweight piece of metal accelerated to high speed. Conventionally this would mean that there is no such thing as a "high caliber" Gauss rifle as the projectiles are typically theorized to be several factors smaller than modern rifle projectiles.
I really didn't like that I felt like 4730-3 could have been replaced with Fallout's Brotherhood of Steel seamlessly.
There were many elements that were thrown in out of nowhere that were disorienting. I have no idea what was going on with the giant crosses. The evil space baddies mining everybody's reality for resources is very cliche.
The whole lot with the captured researcher was bewildering to me and I don't know what I was meant to get out of it. I'm also skeptical of the preservation of all of this conveniently important dialog over a video stream that is sending data to a different reality.
The -3 interviewed can't decide if he's a member of a supreme reality, a thoughtless bruiser for hire, or an imbecile who doesn't understand the most basic functioning of the organization he works for and proclaims dimensionally superior.
The portrayal of the O5 council largely felt like a throwaway gag with little to no thought into how members in that position would react or even much research into their communication in other well established tales.
I like the idea of a decoy site containing an anomalous entity that attacks it for the purpose of securing the SCPs. I absolutely hate the method (since when is blowing things up containment? Why does this nearly omniscient Foundation only enter one site at specified doors? Etc.)
I do like the idea of a competing Foundation reality that has antagonistic goals to ours and is possibly under the persuasion or a power they themselves don't understand.
I think this SCP is all over the place. My downvote is in hopes of it being removed and going back to the drafts forum where I think it should have spent more time and far more criticism.
If you're attached to this universe, my suggestion is to strip away all of the logs and spend some time picking it apart. Write it as an SCP and leave out the section that's trying to be a tale. Put your work into establishing your baseline, create a really solid foundation (pun intended) and create it as an SCP. If that's accepted by the community, that's when I would begin trying to expand the story via tales
I also saw at least one instance of SCP-XXXX-3 that should be replaced.
Ya missed an SCP-XXXX-3 in one of the logs
