SCP Foundation

Part of the reason this tale took so long to finish was that last section, where Florence and Kartal are on the boat. I had most of this written out by June of last year, but when I got to the boat, I hit a wall. I knew what Florence looked like going into it, and I knew who she was coming out of it, but that scene, where she becomes Florence Thorne, was a puzzle for me. I had a few different ideas on what her motives could be, but when I finally wrote the scene it ended up being just a simple "I won't let the Foundation dictate my decisions any more".

There's some deliberate asymmetry in the symbolism here: The first tale of this series opened in late autumn, and was full of fire and fury (I mean, it's literally called "Minneapolis Burns") while this last tale here ends in early spring, and is dominated by water. A few other parallels, in no particular order, and almost certainly not comprehensive:

• In "Minneapolis Burns", the Foundation fakes several deaths as part of a trap to capture Florence; here, Florence fakes her own death to escape the Foundation.
• In the first tale, Florence inadvertently incinerates her civilian clothing, which get replaced by a Foundation jumpsuit; here, Florence discards that jumpsuit in the lake and dons civilian clothing.
• Florence picks up the title of "Agent" at the start of this series; here, she sheds both that title and her previous name.
• There's probably a lot of comparisons to be made between the controlled environment of Site 246 and the anarchic free city of Three Portlands.

Other thoughts, organized into bullet points:

• The names "Peckinpaugh" and "Fitzgerald" are references to the Day Peckinpaugh, one of the last dedicated motorships to operate along the Erie Canal, and the Edmund Fitzgerald, the giant lake freighter that was made (in)famous by Gordon Lightfoot.
• "LIGHTFOOT BALLAD" is a not-so-subtle reference to the Edmund Fitzgerald again, which, of course, is best known for sinking with all hands in a November gale. The fact that both the UIU and the Foundation use codewords associated with the ship for operations related to Florence can be chalked up to the principle of "strange minds think alike".
• "GRAND SLAM" is the Foundation's codeword classification for the Special Asset Task Force Program.
• "TRITON POINT" is the Foundation's codeword classification for Site-246.
• The USCGS Mackinaw is a real ship, and was in service with the Coast Guard until 2004, when it was decommissioned and replaced with an identically-named but smaller icebreaker. If you're ever in Cheboygan, Michigan, go check it out.
• The DSRV-3 Merlin is not a real submarine; there are (as far as I know), only two Mystic-class submarines, the DSRV-1 Mystic and the DSRV-2 Avalon. The Navy has them in case they ever need to rescue people from a sunken submarine. In fiction, the Merlin was commissioned by the Pentagram and kitted out with a bunch of nifty paratech so they could do stuff like salvage magic Nazi submarines or loot Atlantis or whatever.
• The Operational Record section here is actually taken from a new UIU GOI-Format that I've been working on over the last few months. Now that PNM is done, you might actually get a chance to see that at some point.
• The reason Kartal appears to be glowing when Florence first sees her is because, in her exhausted state, Flo is unable to separate her Observation from her normal sight, so she's seeing Kartal's aura when she opens the door.
• That necklace is going to be important later.

• Currently, myself, TyGently, ch00bakka, and tawny are doing an actual play podcast for our Three Portlands/SCP Foundation RPG campaign called Three Ports in a Storm. Kind-of-sort-of canonical with Third Law, we're trying to put out an hourish long episode each week.
• I have a draft of a Secure Facility Dossier for Site-246 that I've been working on, which might be done soon. Want to make it actually function as a stand-alone page, but it will also be a sort of epilogue for this series.
• Working on a couple UIU GOI formats using that alternative format that I mentioned above, both of which will involve Florence to varying degrees.
• The follow-up to Vital Signs is also on the agenda, and should hopefully be done… eventually.
• In the middle distance future, I've got another long series planned (right now the outline calls for 7 to 8 tales), which will focus on Robin Thorne investigating the circumstances of Florence's death.
• Got an idea for a sequel to SCP-2206 kicking around that might happen at some point.
• Off-site, I'm still working on a novel manuscript, and I've got a couple short stories that are making the rounds with editors.