I hope you all like it. This was my very first SCP on the mainlist, and it's the first one I actually was passionate about and was a good idea. All my previous ideas were either one or the other.
I own the image, I took it myself.
SCP-5710 / Discussion
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This is the discussion related to the wiki page SCP-5710.
I can't believe Johann Sebastien Bach, Composer, was a time traveler
So glad this one made it to the mainlist! +1.
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I can't believe Johann Sebastien Bach, Composer, was a time traveler by 
lleapinllamas, 22 Mar 2020 02:35
Re: I can't believe Johann Sebastien Bach, Composer, was a time traveler
Bach wasn't a time traveler, he just worked with them.
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Re: I can't believe Johann Sebastien Bach, Composer, was a time traveler by 
Voct, 22 Mar 2020 03:31
Re: I can't believe Johann Sebastien Bach, Composer, was a time traveler
Fair. Sorry about the misunderstanding!
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Re: I can't believe Johann Sebastien Bach, Composer, was a time traveler by lleapinllamas, 22 Mar 2020 14:24
I'm so happy to see this article up after having followed it through the forums. I love the idea that a composer like Bach was secretly designing memetics for the Foundation. It's made of awesome. Great stuff!
Great and unique article. I was glad to give input on it. Your improvements really brought it to the next level! Congrats man, +1.
I have some issues with the execution here — some troublesome sentence structures, the ending feeling personally unsatisfying — but I think the overwhelmingly positive reaction here speaks volumes about the article's quality.
Good job, and thanks for posting!
Well if there are some troublesome sentence structures, I think that can certainly be remedied. Which ones did you have in mind?
I'll use the following paragraph as an example:
SCP-5710 has been deemed safe and reliable by the Foundation. Its use is necessary for continued interaction with Johann Sebastian Bach. The memetic musical compositions of J.S. Bach are of unusually high caliber. These compositions are stored by the Foundation in the Memetisch-Bach-Werk-Verzeichnis (Memetic Bach Work Catalogue) or MBWV.
The sentences here are short, all simple subject-predicate structures, meaning it feels very choppy to read. If you could combine a couple of them, it'd flow a little better.
It's just stuff like that. Another nitpick is how many exclamation points Bach uses in his interview, but that's not a big deal. Oh, actually, another thing:
I've dwelt on it for days and yet I can't quite figure out where it is the imperfections in it lie.
This stuck out to me because the "in it" feels like its in the wrong place. This comes down to personal preference, but perhaps, "and yet I can't quite figure out where its imperfections lie"?
None of these are big deals, but it made my reading experience a little harder.
I'll take a look, and I can definitely fix up things like the second example, but as for the first example, many people recommended separating those into smaller sentences for the clinical tone. I've noticed there are some different perspectives regarding how that's handled.
Things like these tend to be pretty subjective and you should honestly value your own authorial style over your readers' preferences. If you're happy with what you have right now, then that's good enough, honestly. 👍
Pretty interesting collection of cognitohazards. The only one, that really sticks out and doesn't quite work with the rest, is the first one, as it has a physical and not a mental effect.
Yes, I'm thinking I might change that to an increase in pain tolerance rather than skin toughness. Think that might fit better?
I appreciate that, especially from someone very experienced here. What exactly do you find good about it?
I mean, this is great fun. The Foundation hiring J. S. Bach in the past and using his compositions in the present day is a good and creative spin.
Also, I think the page is kept nicely simple and clean. Not too many tests or experiment logs which is good, since I feel like that would be too distracting from the core concept.
The idea of the anomaly is maybe a bit bland - music with memetic, cognitohazardous or even temporal effects is out there - but I adore that Bach's passion for the arts was the key engine behind it all. As a pianist that makes me smile.
Were you perhaps inspired by the "Who wrote Beethoven's Ninth from Doctor Who?", in terms of the Bootstrap Paradox?
+1, as I smiled my way through Bach's comments on the Foundation's requests.
I am a whovian, yes, so you could say that got some of the gears going on this idea. And yeah, the main engine behind this was supposed to be Bach. There's definitely musical anomalies and temporal/spacial anomalies, but there's only one Johann Sebastian Bach. And I just thought it would be cool to now say, there's only one Johann Sebastian Bach, SCP Foundation Agent.
This was pretty fun to read! The idea was very creative, and as I read through the article, I never felt disappointed because of poor execution or anything like that. I love the idea of Bach being frustrated with the Foundation because their music lacks emotion and passion, something which is so deeply engraved into the core of his music.
My only real issue would be with the way that the German song titles are formatted. In German, the first word of titles is capitalised as well as all nouns (which are capitalised everywhere else as well, regardless of whether they are common or proper), and nothing else is. I also think it would've been cool if this were used as a way to explain Bach's existent work instead of creating hypothetical new works for him, although that's just a personal preference, not something that's actually objectively bad or wrong in some way. You just had a different idea for where you wanted to take the concept than I would have, and there's obviously nothing wrong with that; it's your work, after all.
Overall, this was a very enjoyable read, and you've certainly got an upvote from me :D
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page revision: 7, last edited: 17 Nov 2020 06:16
