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genesplicer posted:I sorta take it as a weird point of pride that one of my early SCPs was the lowest rated for a short period of time. I was working on improving it when it was savagely (and deservedly) deleted. I've since figured out what was so terribly wrong with it (there was a LOT) and I have rewritten it. Someday I'll cinch up my manhood and resubmit. It's been long enough that nobody should remember it as it originally was. However, every time I think about resubmitting, I look it over and begin tweaking it again. Lowest or highest rated, it's still a record of some sort. I'm really interested in knowing what the original idea was if it was so thoroughly detested. And don't put off the resubmit too incredibly long. Get it to a decent point, sandbox it, and edit it after criticism before posting it. Don't let it stagnate forever due to doubt; writers are their own worst critics sometimes. Better to get second thoughts from an outside source rather than paring the idea away to nothing due to indecision. You may wind up with a perfect product in nine years due to your own fears, but you might get something just as good or better if you allow outside criticism. Macaluso posted:The simple point is that the SCP idea in question is obviously the computer from Word Processor of the Gods. The author even admits as much. Taking an existing idea and adapting it into an SCP as an homage is not allowed. Even if it weren't from that exact story, the idea survives literally in other short stories, skits, and possibly even in an act of a movie (I can't recall whether twilight zone, outer limits, tales from the dark side, or amazing stories (possibly all of the above)). One might as well make an SCP typewriter that writes perfect stories thanks to an elf living in it that only cooperates if it's fed PB&J sandwiches on a regular basis.
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| # ? Mar 9, 2012 06:40 |
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| # ? May 18, 2013 20:38 |
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Zereth posted:... If the problem is overpopulation why do they wait several years for the children to partially grow up, instead of just kill them right away and save on the cost of feeding them? The culling process takes place when the children are old enough to run away, in an effort to have the most fit survive, so that evolution continues. Which is what was happening naturally before they became sapient: they would have ~100 babies but 99% would be killed off by accidents, disease, predators, etc. before reaching maturity, so that the ones who live long enough to breed are the strongest, smartest, healthiest and generally most fit. It is a greater sacrifice to kill older children, but it is for the good of the species. This story takes place after all three races have the technology to alter themselves to some degree.
Likewise humans, while presumably correcting genes that make you more vulnerable to heart disease, cancer, and granting themselves near immortality, decided not to reduces pain. Enduring suffering, dealing with it and overcoming it "builds character" and "makes you a better person." The SuperHappys decided to fix all the things they didn't like about their lives. They are still productive and functional, but their lives are full of pleasure and happiness. No more unnecessary physical pain (presumably they kept some function so that they will notice injury, but without extensive suffering). Much less emotional distress, sadness, depression, angst, and so on. They reduced their own emotional suffering so much, that just encountering sentient species in pain hurts them to the point that most of their crew is incapacitated after just a few minutes. As someone who has had chronic pain and chronic depression, the SuperHappy's don't look too bad to me. MikeJF posted:Don't forget, it wasn't just to give up the ability to suffer. To keep it balanced, each culture was going to be changed to partially accept the principles of the others. We (and the Superhappies) were also going to be engineered to give birth to babies that were entirely non-sentient at first, and to eat some of them whilst they were in that state. Yes, but eating superfluous non-sentient babies who would never have been born if your fertility wasn't enhanced to create them doesn't seem to bother anyone very much. They never spell out how it will be done, either. Since they have to be preconscious, they might even be extracted and eaten before birth, which isn't much more gross than the people who placentas. It was mostly symbolic, as a concession to the BabyEaters. Everyone would end up with the same number of normal children as they have now. Folks seem much more upset by the notion of losing emotional pain, as dealing suffering is part of our identity. Some of the commentators on that blog liken this to genocide, because in their opinion the changed humans wouldn't really be human at all. I've heard the same thing in therapy, people who were afraid that if they gave up too much of their maladaptive perceptions and behavior, they would be effectively dead. They might be replaced by a happier, more successful person with all their memories, but the person they are now would be dead.
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| # ? Mar 9, 2012 06:44 |
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Angela Christine posted:Yes, but eating superfluous non-sentient babies who would never have been born if your fertility wasn't enhanced to create them doesn't seem to bother anyone very much. They never spell out how it will be done, either. Since they have to be preconscious, they might even be extracted and eaten before birth, which isn't much more gross than the people who placentas. It was mostly symbolic, as a concession to the BabyEaters. Everyone would end up with the same number of normal children as they have now.  Whether the net number of children would end up the same or not, I'd find distinctly uncomfortable the notion of being 'adjusted' to eat preconscious children.
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| # ? Mar 9, 2012 06:52 |
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Strudel Man posted:
Well, yeah, but uncomfortable enough to kill yourself, and murder your existing children? Surely killing a 10 year old that exists would be worse than killing a preconscious fleshlump that can't even feel pain.
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| # ? Mar 9, 2012 06:55 |
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Angela Christine posted:Well, yeah, but uncomfortable enough to kill yourself, and murder your existing children? Surely killing a 10 year old that exists would be worse than killing a preconscious fleshlump that can't even feel pain.
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| # ? Mar 9, 2012 06:57 |
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One of the things about this is we're only going to be horrified at this BEFORE it happens, since after, we're all SuperHappy and nothing bothers us in any way. I think I'd be among the 25%. Being happy all the time sounds all well and good, until you remember that every advance we've ever made was caused by someone being unhappy about something. Indeed, every time we get somewhere in our own lives, it's because we were unhappy about the way things were. I know you said that he writes the SuperHappys as still productive and such, but that seems mutually exclusive to me. A species that never got unhappy would have no reason to advance as a species any longer, and it would stagnate and die. Another race written to be happier than humans are the Pemalites, from K. A. Applegate's Animorphs series. They have the major difference that they can feel pain and unhappiness, they just don't most of the time. That's a lot more believable and it, unlike the SuperHappys, is still a working evolutionary model. I hate to say it, but the BabyEaters in their unaltered state are a lot more sound in that regard than the SuperHappys in their perpetual engineered bliss. And besides, is it true happiness when you have no choice but to be happy, or simply mindless content akin to that of livestock?
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| # ? Mar 9, 2012 09:25 |
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It's worth pointing out the exact reason for the "surprise sex is legal in the future" thing. The humans in the future aren't morally comprehensible to us either. A significant number of people from our time are surviving, and once tried to overthrow the new order to keep surprise sex illegal; since then, we've been forbidden from holding executive power.
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| # ? Mar 9, 2012 09:44 |
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Angela Christine posted:Well, yeah, but uncomfortable enough to kill yourself, and murder your existing children? Surely killing a 10 year old that exists would be worse than killing a preconscious fleshlump that can't even feel pain. The thing I found stupid about all of this was that the two "horrible things" were not in any way comparable. Humans are "forcing" their children to feel emotional and physical pain (the "the children! thing is drilled in several times), but this is being done by people who also feel emotional and physical pain. The other aliens are hunting down intelligent beings and devouring them alive, whereas the decision to keep eating people is being made by the "winners" of the eating contest. Deciding not to get rid of the "Don't do stupid things" feedback mechanism is a far cry from ritualised murder, even excluding the difference in perspectives. And even if they were comparable, the advanced alien's proposed "compromise" is even more retarded. The stated rationale behind continuing the murder thing as opposed to using birth control was to allow evolution to progress as normal. The "Make a bunch of nonsentient bonus babies and eat them" thing is entirely superfluous to this goal! Their "make everyone always happy" thing also contains no provision to replace the "Making stupid decisions is bad" function of pain! It's an interesting concept (we encounter a species that is abhorrent to us and feel compelled to save them from themselves, then another to which we are abhorrent, same response, forced to look at assumptions blah blah) but it's ruined by being written by someone who is not even close to as smart as he thinks he is filling it with pointless, stupid bullshit. It's also so ridiculously over the top heavy handed (Maybe they have a quick death? No! It takes DAYS for them to be digested!  ) that looks it's just terrible.Edit: Exactly like that Harry Potter thing. It starts off interesting (the Harry Potter universe with a protagonist who is not as dense as a brick) but it quickly turns into flatluigi posted:a huge transhumanist and rationalist wankfest Splicer fucked around with this message at Mar 9, 2012 around 10:11 |
| # ? Mar 9, 2012 09:57 |
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Splicer posted:It's an interesting concept (we encounter a species that is abhorrent to us and feel compelled to save them from themselves, then another to which we are abhorrent, same response, forced to look at assumptions blah blah) but it's ruined by being written by someone who is not even close to as smart as he thinks he is filling it with pointless, stupid bullshit. See, everyone does this. They claim they understand the story, and that the idea behind it is interesting. But then they proceed to make objections like quote:The thing I found stupid about all of this was that the two "horrible things" were not in any way comparable.
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| # ? Mar 9, 2012 10:14 |
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Amarkov posted:That is entirely the point. They're not supposed to be comparable by human standards, because the author does not think that human ethical standards are universal. If your response to the story is "but surprise sex and eating babies are more immoral than the existence of pain!", you didn't really get it. The "bad thing" the aliens do was impossible to take seriously, and the proposed "compromise" that would be imposed on the Humans by the apparently super-smart aliens was nonsensical. A good author would have come up with an horrible alien thing that was impossible to reconcile with our moral code yet the reader could still sympathise with, and the proposed compromised would have been abhorrent to us yet still make some kind of sense. Edit: No, "still make kind of sense" is not what I mean. I mean that the proposed compromise would cause the reader to focus on the "do they have the right to do this" aspect, not the "What the gently caress, why on earth would that help" aspect. Splicer fucked around with this message at Mar 9, 2012 around 10:55 |
| # ? Mar 9, 2012 10:30 |
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I see what you're saying, but I think that the nonsensicalness is relevant. Any decision or analysis that makes sense to us must fit to some degree in our moral framework; even if we don't like it, we can at least understand why someone else would. Unless we presuppose some kind of objective, universal morality, it's not at all obvious why aliens would share enough of a moral framework for their decisions to make sense.
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| # ? Mar 9, 2012 11:30 |
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I feel that a better author could have introduced an alternative moral framework and ultimate compromise that came across as alien and untenable, but not stupid. The author went for heavy-handed shock value with a lot of the important details, and the unimportant details include things like the SuperHappy aliens' greeting message of interspecies porn being sent for amateur analyses over the ship's internal "chans". There is a core of a good story here, but it's ruined by the specifics.
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| # ? Mar 9, 2012 11:40 |
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Splicer posted:I feel that a better author could have introduced an alternative moral framework and ultimate compromise that came across as alien and untenable, but not stupid. The author went for heavy-handed shock value with a lot of the important details, and the unimportant details include things like the SuperHappy aliens' greeting message of interspecies porn being sent for amateur analyses over the ship's internal "chans". There is a core of a good story here, but it's ruined by the specifics. Yeah, I'd have to agree with that. There were some interesting ideas, but the execution was questionable. I'd even be willing to give the SuperHappy aliens a little leeway in coming up with a kinda dumb plan just because they were in extreme distress. They had nearly eliminated pain within their own species, but retained a high degree of empathy. So when they encounter sapient beings in pain, it hurts them and they have no experience in dealing with it. All but 3 members of the crew were incapacitated simply from the knowledge that somewhere other sapient creatures were suffering. It is going to have that affect on nearly every SuperHappy that learns about the humans or the BabyEaters. They MUST make it stop. They come up with a fast plan, not a good plan. It gets harder to handwave that away when so many other bits are weak.
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| # ? Mar 9, 2012 13:14 |
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A damned good interpretation given the facts to be honest, but one which changes the core theme to "Oh poo poo a bunch of aliens who have been driven literally insane are going to royally gently caress up the human race for all time, do we roll over and let them make or do whatever the hell is required to get these crazy fuckers away from us. Also something about eating babies". Or "Don't make civilization-changing decisions while under extreme mental stress". Which is as good a moral as any I suppose, but again shows how if you're writing a story to make a point, details and tight writing are important. \/I considered it on-topic because the same "Good core idea but such lovely execution" applies to so many SCPs\/ Splicer fucked around with this message at Mar 9, 2012 around 13:56 |
| # ? Mar 9, 2012 13:25 |
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Could we maybe discuss SCP stuff in this thread instead of lovely singularity-wanking cannibalism and moral relativism fetish stories? More on topic, the current lowest-rated story is hilariously bad. http://scp-wiki.wikidot.com/scp-1077 Not only is it really poorly written, it doesn't even seem to have much internal logic to it. Is there something to the Irish mythology angle that is ham-fistedly referenced in there that makes it less terrible?
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| # ? Mar 9, 2012 13:53 |
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I think my favorite part of these isn't the creepiness entry, but the "weird object test logs" that go on for pages with occasionally hilarious results, like the 914 log and the extra dimensional vending machine. Aside from the green slime, any other entries with great experiment logs like this?
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| # ? Mar 9, 2012 17:17 |
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Zelmel posted:Could we maybe discuss SCP stuff in this thread instead of lovely singularity-wanking cannibalism and moral relativism fetish stories? I actually spent a little while trying to work out what this might be referencing and couldn't turn up anything at all. It's also weird that the author hasn't bothered to turn up in the comments at all to explain or defend anything. I mean maybe he came back to find it at -25 and left in shame, but normally there is at least some sort of 'oh' response.
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| # ? Mar 9, 2012 17:28 |
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Vegastar posted:I think my favorite part of these isn't the creepiness entry, but the "weird object test logs" that go on for pages with occasionally hilarious results, like the 914 log and the extra dimensional vending machine. Aside from the green slime, any other entries with great experiment logs like this? (Save for the occasional "girl is killed by imaginary monster that vanishes when she dies"  )
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| # ? Mar 9, 2012 17:30 |
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Zelmel posted:Could we maybe discuss SCP stuff in this thread instead of lovely singularity-wanking cannibalism and moral relativism fetish stories? This is so bad. At first you're like, oh, this is kind of stupid, but i don't see what's so bad about - and then you get to the part where it creates tiny replica swords and implodes. I can't stop giggling now, it's so awful.
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| # ? Mar 9, 2012 17:59 |
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Zelmel posted:Could we maybe discuss SCP stuff in this thread instead of lovely singularity-wanking cannibalism and moral relativism fetish stories? Thank you. By the way: To everyone who is reading this thread, if anyone brings up surprise sex again, I'm closing the thread for a week.  DON'T TALK ABOUT surprise sex. THIS ISN'T THE TVTROPES THREAD. WHY THE gently caress IS THIS SO HARD TO GRASP.
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| # ? Mar 9, 2012 18:29 |
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Because the topics are so intertwined, it would probably also be best if we avoided the subject of ducks as well.
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| # ? Mar 9, 2012 18:42 |
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saberwulf posted:Thank you. Thank you.
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| # ? Mar 9, 2012 18:57 |
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flatluigi posted:Hahaha are you seriously recommending this? I haven't read the former but the latter is a huge transhumanist and rationalist wankfest on top of carrying on the suggestion that women are intrinsically worse than men. It's horrible. Yeah, I am. While I agree that some parts of it drag on and there are some ideas that aren't carried off too well, I found it more enjoyable than not. Even better, after reading what's been written so far I went back and re-read all the Harry Potter novels, and they are infuriating after all the logical mis-steps and irrational behavior have been pointed out by HPatMoR. I expected it to be a rationalist and transhumanist wankfest - it's obviously intended to be a vehicle to explain different facets of those two concepts. I'm quite interested in both topics, so I enjoy the... uh, wanking, I guess. However, I took the issue you mention about women an entirely different way: that society incorrectly views women as intrinsically worse than men. The last few chapters seemed to be about Harry campaigning for Dumbledore to grant Hermione (and other girls) the same type of support that he'd given Harry and other male wizards with lots of potential. But I can see how it would be grating to a lot of people, too. And though it may contain occasional inaccuracies, a thorough reader always double-checks facts, too. Generally if the story introduces me to a new concept/theory/whatever, I'll go look it up on Wikipedia and do some research before coming back to the story... but again, that may just be me. Anyway, I'll stop the derail here. edit: beaten edit2: No I'm not the drat author. Can't a guy honestly enjoy something anymore? isochronous fucked around with this message at Mar 9, 2012 around 22:57 |
| # ? Mar 9, 2012 22:45 |
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Are you the author?
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| # ? Mar 9, 2012 22:55 |
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isochronous posted:edit2: No I'm not the drat author. Can't a guy honestly enjoy something anymore? No, no one enjoys anything sincerely anymore. You must either enjoy it ironically, or else through some manner of agenda. In SCP-related news, I'm currently working on my first humanoid. It may also end up my first deletion. Stay tuned, I'll post it when I finish it.
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| # ? Mar 10, 2012 08:32 |
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saberwulf posted:Thank you. Why don't you just report them so a mod can deal with it, instead of trying to stamp down with your own authority? In other news, I kinda like this one about something that drums up urban legends and feeds on them: http://scp-wiki.wikidot.com/scp-1448. The only downside is that it turns to violence and death at the end as usual - rather than staying as a menacing "hey this thing is messing with the minds of your kids!" background occurance, it just turns it into another "yep it compels people to kill, ho hum" SCP.
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| # ? Mar 10, 2012 14:08 |
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Vegastar posted:I think my favorite part of these isn't the creepiness entry, but the "weird object test logs" that go on for pages with occasionally hilarious results, like the 914 log and the extra dimensional vending machine. Aside from the green slime, any other entries with great experiment logs like this? Hmm. How about the Self-Inserting Character? Or, really, everything here?
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| # ? Mar 10, 2012 16:11 |
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You know, for all those "Why haven't we just destroyed this" things, and "wouldn't SCP-whatever be cool with SPC-another" questions, why not add two more spots on the template to be filled in? "CLEARED FOR CO-EXPERIMENTATION:" and "APPROVED FOR DECOMISSIONING:". Have them both be pretty much only modifiable by O5 (IE, not at all), and there ya go. A lot of the stupider questions stopped, if only because O5 won't approve stuff that might be common sense. Might even have the listed status be a link to a more overall explanation page; sort of like if Safe, Euclid, and Keter all linked to quick summaries of what their levels meant. Which would also be a nice idea, if you could get a 'bot to go through the wiki and convert mentions of the word to wiki links to the articles.
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| # ? Mar 11, 2012 05:49 |
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Because the last thing the site needs is "My super awesome SCP can beat up your SCP" right now. For every one time it can be alright, there will be a dozen situations where it'll be terrible and stupid. Edit: See: Immortal Anime Man and the lizard.
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| # ? Mar 11, 2012 07:08 |
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Not to mention, the fact that since we don't really have any idea how these SCPs work, the results of crosstesting could be disastrous. Sure, it might seem like a good idea to expose SCP-173 to SCP-894-3, to keep it from seeing people, but what if that merely made it so it couldn't tell it was being watched? Suddenly, 173 cannot be stopped.
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| # ? Mar 11, 2012 17:17 |
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The most bizarre things D-class personnel have been told to do.
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| # ? Mar 12, 2012 02:36 |
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I'm sorry, I think I was misinterpreted. What I meant was, that both sections would ALWAYS say "NO". Unless someone came to a mod with a great idea or something, the sections would be uneditable and always deny both. No, O5 hasn't said you can smash twenty SCPs together. No, you can't throw the little girl who hears voices into the Sun. No, we don't care that you think this SCP could solve world hunger if mixed with this SCP. We don't even care if you have good reason to believe it. O5 said no, and that's final, so shut up.
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| # ? Mar 12, 2012 03:10 |
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Kurui Reiten posted:I'm sorry, I think I was misinterpreted. What I meant was, that both sections would ALWAYS say "NO". Unless someone came to a mod with a great idea or something, the sections would be uneditable and always deny both. Jesus exactly yes this. A lot of the SCP X + SCP Y absolutely reeks of the same slashfiction/"shipping"/general fandom bullshit that is routinely mocked elsewhere on this forum. It's all seems to boil down to people trying to latch onto other works to one-up other stories, or to generally sperg out and overanalyze independent and separate works.
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| # ? Mar 12, 2012 03:18 |
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Some interactions or crossovers can be interesting. I thought it was hilarious that when they tried to get a liquid to destroy the lizard monster from the magic coffee machine, it basically just vaporized the entire complex. And then there's the eyeball aliens that go together perfect with 173. Or the tickle blob's interaction with the monster lizard. I also like some of the more sinister ones that are implied to be horrible if they ever came in contact with each other, like the evil mask that can't be allowed anywhere near the lizard monster or other dangerous SPCs. I wouldn't have minded the lizard monster's interaction with the rabbit-that-can-eat anything so much if it was just an idea that got denied for some reason. As it is, there's absolutely zero reason why they tried it, he ate his way out of the room and then they just aborted it and didn't try again.
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| # ? Mar 12, 2012 03:30 |
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After reading all of SCP v2, anyone else wondering where Telekill went? There are a lot of new memetic SCPs that are pretty good, although maybe part of why they're so good is that there's no magic way to stop them anymore. To be fair, if telekill and the appleseed gag die along with anime dude and dr clef and dr bright and dr right circlejerking then so be it. To be also fair, that list of things that Dr. Bright is not allowed to do is still pretty drat funny.
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| # ? Mar 12, 2012 03:34 |
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Macaluso posted:Some interactions or crossovers can be interesting. I thought it was hilarious that when they tried to get a liquid to destroy the lizard monster from the magic coffee machine, it basically just vaporized the entire complex. And then there's the eyeball aliens that go together perfect with 173. Or the tickle blob's interaction with the monster lizard. I also like some of the more sinister ones that are implied to be horrible if they ever came in contact with each other, like the evil mask that can't be allowed anywhere near the lizard monster or other dangerous SPCs. Eh, it still comes off a circle-jerk fanwank. It's really no different than, "hay guys read my story about what if hermione hooked up with neville and ginny watched from inside the fireplace and then". It's creatively the laziest thing you can do, basically.
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| # ? Mar 12, 2012 03:34 |
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Slanderer posted:Eh, it still comes off a circle-jerk fanwank. It's really no different than, "hay guys read my story about what if hermione hooked up with neville and ginny watched from inside the fireplace and then". You do know there's a whole other section of the site called "Foundation Tales" that can be used to mix and match stuff in the universe? Like, they've discouraged cross SCP interaction in the articles themselves simply because they want each one to stand on their own, but there's no problem writing a Foundation Tale about them?
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| # ? Mar 12, 2012 04:13 |
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Slanderer posted:Eh, it still comes off a circle-jerk fanwank. It's really no different than, "hay guys read my story about what if hermione hooked up with neville and ginny watched from inside the fireplace and then". It basically depends on the quality of the writing. "What if" is a perfectly valid writing prompt. It doesn't have to inevitably end up as Harry Potter fan fiction. I liked 682 vs Walter. I could see the logic behind putting those two in a room together. (If it worked, they'd be rid of their lizard problem. If it didn't work, so what?) It wasn't high prose, but it made me smile, and I'm pretty sure it wasn't meant to do anything more than that.
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| # ? Mar 12, 2012 04:21 |
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Sindow posted:After reading all of SCP v2, anyone else wondering where Telekill went? There are a lot of new memetic SCPs that are pretty good, although maybe part of why they're so good is that there's no magic way to stop them anymore. They made telekill suck. I think it absorbs and regurgitates whatever psychic phenomena it absorbs and it gradually makes people retarded over time. Also what they have of it is probably gradually expanding in size and will likely end the world at some point. I liked it better before. As far as cross-SCP interaction goes: it can be done well and it can be done poorly. I think http://scp-wiki.wikidot.com/experiment-log-187-1 is pretty interesting and doesn't seem like the 'goku can beat superman' type of thing you guys are worried about.
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| # ? Mar 12, 2012 04:32 |
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| # ? May 18, 2013 20:38 |
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Macaluso posted:Some interactions or crossovers can be interesting. I thought it was hilarious that when they tried to get a liquid to destroy the lizard monster from the magic coffee machine, it basically just vaporized the entire complex. Thanks! That one was mine, to get the new kids to SHUT THE gently caress UP, about asking the machine about it. That's also why i wrote the 343/682 crossover.
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| # ? Mar 12, 2012 05:39 |
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