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Parahexavoctal posted:"NOTHING OF VALUE". Is it meant to be unclear what the disappeared book/movie series is? Because I thought it was glaringly obvious from the very first bullet point. Admittedly I am very Online. The anomaly itself strikes me as a less interesting take on ideas that have been done repeatedly, like the self-deleting narratives, or the one about a magic ritual for creating horses but nobody knows what a horse is so they're seen as disturbing alien creatures. I do like the football hooligan bit, and the stinger about other historical events and persons being accidentally created by the Foundation (reminds me of this Onion article. But I agree, it'd work better as an aside in a Tale, and the elaboration into a full article isn't all that interesting.
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Apr 3, 2024 02:31
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ScienceSeagull posted:Is it meant to be unclear what the disappeared book/movie series is? Because I thought it was glaringly obvious from the very first bullet point. It's meant to be glaringly obvious to us, the readers.
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Apr 3, 2024 02:47
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Parahexavoctal posted:"NOTHING OF VALUE". This would be more interesting to me if it weren't the obvious reference, tbh. I feel like the concept of "we lost something that was a major pop-cultural artifact, but the world and normalcy seems stable and we're pretty sure culture isn't meaningfully impoverished by its loss, so it's not worth the cost to try and restore" has potential legs, in terms of when the fight to preserve the status quo just isn't worth it, but doing it to Harry Potter in particular feels trite and jokey. Also the ongoing problem of "putting tons of mental effort into hating Harry Potter doesn't feel like an improvement over that effort going into loving it," tbh. Can we just... talk about something else?
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Apr 3, 2024 03:06
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Antivehicular posted:This would be more interesting to me if it weren't the obvious reference, tbh. I feel like the concept of "we lost something that was a major pop-cultural artifact, but the world and normalcy seems stable and we're pretty sure culture isn't meaningfully impoverished by its loss, so it's not worth the cost to try and restore" has potential legs, in terms of when the fight to preserve the status quo just isn't worth it, but doing it to Harry Potter in particular feels trite and jokey. Also the ongoing problem of "putting tons of mental effort into hating Harry Potter doesn't feel like an improvement over that effort going into loving it," tbh. Can we just... talk about something else? nah, if the thing's gonna be made it'd have to be about harry potter. you're missing a chunk of the point at the center, which is that jk rowling continues to use her fame and fortune to attack trans people & trans people speaking on that point get countered constantly with 'well but harry potter is such a big part of my life that maybe we can just pretend that it had nothing to do with her' as if upholding this specific story about magical children is really supposed to outweigh material harm
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Apr 3, 2024 03:40
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I think that a far stronger story would be about a different, entirely fictional work being erased, with the Foundation charting out the holes it left in popular culture and identifying that Harry Potter only got popular because the other thing never existed. The real-world impact of the Harry Potter franchise—and of JKR’s platform—is well documented, and an article that made a good-faith effort to estimate what might change, for better or for worse, if the Foundation instigated a CK-class reality-altering event in order to “correct” the timeline would make for some engaging commentary. Couple that with a meditation on how meddling with the timeline is inherently dangerous because the results are entirely unpredictable, and you have a solid basis for a story about the Foundation grappling with taking action to do the “right” thing versus doing nothing and letting the status quo survive. “Should we undo 25 years of history?” is only an interesting question to ask when the answer is maybe. 8317 clearly states that, no, nothing of value was lost, and as a result, it doesn’t have any impact beyond its punchline.
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Apr 3, 2024 04:14
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Yeah, it also feels kind of... easy to just say "look, the thing the Bad Person made (and which platformed the Bad Person into doing a lot of harm) never really mattered, we can just leave it erased." If you're trying to tell a story about preserving art versus wiping out its repulsive artist's impact on history, it's shooting yourself in the foot to have it solved with "this doesn't matter, it's totally fine."
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Apr 3, 2024 04:56
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I agree, and the theory that Harry Potter had no meaningful effect on fantasy literature, children's literature, or popular culture more widely is a bit hard to believe. The idea of the Foundation deciding not to fix an anomaly in history is an interesting one, but this isn't a very interesting execution of the concept.
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Apr 3, 2024 05:07
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i still think y'all are looking at an SCP that is about something very specific & real and going "well what if it stopped being about this at all" to the point of being instead about something entirely fictional. sure, you could do that, but it'd be different -- maybe in a way you'd like better, even -- and it'd stop being about why it was made in the first place idk maybe I'm just in different circles and y'all aren't as familiar with the cultural baggage it carries these days
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Apr 3, 2024 05:44
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I'm familiar with the cultural baggage, but I just think taking another shot at HP this way doesn't achieve much, compared to rewriting the piece to function as earnest SCP fiction ("how do we triage fixing changes to normalcy?") or doing a more general riff on the concept ("what's more valuable, preserving art of major cultural impact, or preventing that art's artist from causing harm via their platform?") Hell, even explicitly stating "the cultural damage and erosion of normalcy caused by removing Harry Potter from the time stream is justified to excise JKR and her bigotry from the popular consciousness, and the world is better off thereby," without saying "actually none of this matters and it wasn't a real dilemma." Right now it's just a cathartic vent-joke, and that's fine, but it's just not much.
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Apr 3, 2024 05:53
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Is the similarly cringey yelling at twitter one about trump and the supreme court wizards still up
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Apr 3, 2024 05:56
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If that's the "Trump is a massive reality sink and the 2016 election was rigged to defeat an antimemetic demon that lives under the white house" one then yeah I think so
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Apr 3, 2024 05:59
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not only that but its oven +700, which is insane
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Apr 3, 2024 06:39
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It’s because it feels bad to vote down something that you politically agree with. so you agree that the president is very bad and don’t think about how it’s badly written and really just sort of a weird vent piece and a comforting fictional conspiracy about what it has to happen.
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Apr 3, 2024 06:44
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ScienceSeagull posted:The anomaly itself strikes me as a less interesting take on ideas that have been done repeatedly quote:Two World Wars is plenty. We do not need to hazard a third. Also, on a personal note, I just finally got around to checking out Garth Nix's work earlier this year (highly recommend the audiobook as read by Tim Curry), so it's fresh in my mind how drastically the dates do not line up for that to be the "replacement" film series; their respective Hollywood pitches were a full decade apart.
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Apr 3, 2024 07:46
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Gotta appreciate the extra dose of "UGH" that comes with the Harry Potter one including a cross-link to another SCP which has, apparently, been up since 2017 and can be summarized "it's a youkai, but we added in Harry Potter references"
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Apr 3, 2024 08:08
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I have zero love for The Bad Person and their Subpar Series of Books, but the Foundation looking through all known anomalies and all the absurd about of effort they put into suppressing them, often for little to no benefit beyond 'status quo', and choosing this one as the one to ignore is Extremely Online. We can feed hundreds of D-Class a day to controlling anomalies, but football hooligans and train stations is just too hard. I guess its ok for an SCP but the question about preserving art vs the harm caused by an artist feels about as meta as you can get, and the veneer of an SCP being stretched over the author just stating their (not incorrect) opinions is paper thin. I can totally understand not liking it. Refusing to acknowledge The Bad Person and their Subpar Series of Books is doing at least as much to deplatform them as writing a mean fictional story about them on a wiki of fictional stories. I don't have an account and don't vote, but if I did, it would get a 'present' vote.
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Apr 3, 2024 08:42
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Akumeoy posted:I'm inclined to agree with Djoric in the discussion page -- this is only worth a brief aside in a tale.
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Apr 3, 2024 09:02
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AmiYumi posted:Also, on a personal note, I just finally got around to checking out Garth Nix's work earlier this year (highly recommend the audiobook as read by Tim Curry), so it's fresh in my mind how drastically the dates do not line up for that to be the "replacement" film series; their respective Hollywood pitches were a full decade apart.
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Apr 3, 2024 09:32
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Whoa, I just clicked on this thread and it reminded me that I actually wrote some poo poo for the site, like, actually 14 years ago. I'm so old. Looks like some of it is still up but it's not very good so not going to link it.
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Apr 3, 2024 11:24
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two posts itt, ten years apart, amazing
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Apr 3, 2024 11:45
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Goa Tse-tung posted:two posts itt, ten years apart, amazing guess we'll see them again in 2034 then
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Apr 3, 2024 12:46
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Goa Tse-tung posted:two posts itt, ten years apart, amazing edit: eh gently caress it, here's the bad thing I wrote: https://scp-wiki.wikidot.com/documents-recovered-from-the-residence-of-agent-waters TURTLE SLUT has a new favorite as of 13:11 on Apr 3, 2024 |
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Apr 3, 2024 13:09
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I have a buddy who thinks "arch-arcanist of jurisprudence" is one of the funniest things he's ever read
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Apr 3, 2024 17:00
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TURTLE SLUT posted:Holy poo poo, I did not even realise. I like it.  It doesn't overstay its welcome and the scanned documents add a physicality that's otherwise pretty uncommon.
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Apr 3, 2024 23:31
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Your Uncle Dracula posted:I like it. Totally agree, I've been reading this dumb scp poo poo for years and the physical paper pictures redacted after the fact and the pen drawn annotations were enough that it made me smile, this was good You gotta explain the AAAAAAAAAAs though, please
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Apr 4, 2024 08:23
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postmodifier posted:
AA'A AAAA AAAAAA 
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Apr 4, 2024 10:10
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AAAAAA I see
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Apr 4, 2024 10:43
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postmodifier posted:You gotta explain the AAAAAAAAAAs though, please
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Apr 4, 2024 10:46
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Ariong posted:That train is where she would have grabbed a napkin and written the words that defined a generation of readers: “The snake is an Indonesian woman.” And then on the back of the train ticket "Dumbledore is gay. There is a jewish wizard called goldstein. Wizards poo poo themselves until the early 20th century"
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Apr 4, 2024 10:48
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Lib and let die posted:I have a buddy who thinks "arch-arcanist of jurisprudence" is one of the funniest things he's ever read (it is about 100x worse than that description made it sound, but I am considering the target audience when I make this post. also I hope I have the right Grossman brother, it's by the one who didn't write The Magicians)
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Apr 4, 2024 18:39
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DACK FAYDEN posted:you should recommend them Austin Grossman's Crooked, a book written from the perspective of neophyte magus Richard Nixon about the magical conspiracies underpinning the Cold War and his struggle against the thousand year old sorcerer known as Kissinger and what happened at Watergate It’s fun how it makes Nixon the magus just as pathetic and venal and frustrated as the real Nixon.
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Apr 4, 2024 23:21
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Interesting method of storytelling.
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Apr 7, 2024 17:51
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Okay, this is interesting. Can you guess the punchline?
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Apr 15, 2024 17:53
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Parahexavoctal posted:Okay, this is interesting. Can you guess the punchline? so the SCP is Obama? Who got erased somehow due to making a deal with a demon?
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Apr 15, 2024 18:16
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Tunicate posted:so the SCP is Obama? Who got erased somehow due to making a deal with a demon? The SCP is the whole phenomenon resulting from the deal with the demon. The demon is "known for stealing the appearance, function, and memories of the thing that the individual who summoned it loves the most, in exchange for boons." The guy who summoned the demon admitted that he was basically "married to his job". He told the demon "You take the function of what you steal, right? Look at where we loving are! The headquarters of a loving drug agency! You have any idea how much money you could make?" The agency he worked for, the thing he loved the most above all else... its name is on the half-destroyed sign on the wall. The sign reads partm t of Anom lou Drugs and Ordinan. What do those initials spell? Parahexavoctal has a new favorite as of 18:48 on Apr 15, 2024 |
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Apr 15, 2024 18:41
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Is the department of abnormalities supposed to be like a take on the series 1 foundation, with its rooms of simple generically spooky stuff and sparse descriptions
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Apr 15, 2024 19:15
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So the agency… made drugs? And the demon gained the ability to make drugs and became dado?
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Apr 15, 2024 19:17
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FrancisFukyomama posted:Is the department of abnormalities supposed to be like a take on the series 1 foundation, with its rooms of simple generically spooky stuff and sparse descriptions it's a vibes thing I think minimal description, let your head fill in the horror but also constant references and I think probably a future 20k word article at some point destroying all the mystery
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Apr 15, 2024 20:07
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Ariong posted:So the agency… made drugs? And the demon gained the ability to make drugs and became dado? They were the agency that managed the seizure and storage of anomalous drugs and weapons. Now the demon is doing that instead. And using its stolen status as a government agency to procure reagents and other supplies. And then, because it's greedy, it tries to sell the stuff it has stockpiled. the article's talk page posted:90% of the articles featuring him have him as a one-note, one-dimensional joke. He has three basic elements to him: he doesn't communicate well, he's greedy, and he makes anomalous pharmaceuticals Not sure how well it works. It's ambitious, though. Also, "'Rights to the Corpse of Ronald Reagan' ($90)" as a budget item, pleases me.
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Apr 15, 2024 20:34
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Eh, it's not badly executed, but I lean towards "this particular character did not require a backstory or deep lore." I was more interested in the background interactions between the Foundation and the feds, tbh
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Apr 16, 2024 05:05
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