SCP Foundation

My central concern with regards to this article is that there's no clear sense of what's going on or why anyone should care. These people appear in a field, act oddly, but don't really do anything that provides the reader with any sense of what is actually going on, or provoking a reaction in the reader. Why should the reader care about what's going on here? What's interesting about it in your eyes?

There are three other main problems here: the ridiculous and hard-to-credit behaviour of the Professor, the Agent, and the Foundation as a whole in the face of a researcher who is acting extremely erratically and is clearly bewilderingly naive about containment. The second is the fact that the anomaly, as it stands, is not very interesting and in spite of the fact that its supposed to be weird, is neither very weird nor weird in a memorable way. The third one is general spelling, grammar and tone problems that permeate the work.

1) The Foundation's conduct as an organisation here is pretty bizarre. The Professor behaves in a way that would probably lead to a reprimand (long before the reprimand appears occurs here)- he doesn't seem even vaguely interested in containment or even reasonable inquiry into the anomaly. Given his actions, I doubt he'd be in a position to unilaterally remove containment apparatus. Plus there's the whole 'casual swearing in a formal document' problem which makes him look even less sensible.

There are other options to the ones specified in the document - if I shared the Professor's concerns, I'd move to install hidden cameras and expand the perimeter rather than remove it completely. I don't know why they'd consider sending D-Class to investigate - they're manual labourers for dangerous positions in containment and test subjects, not anything like the right fit for investigating an anomaly like this. You want to send someone who can act as an interviewer, possibly as a sort of anthropologist.

The agent's behaviour is really bizarre and unlikely as well. For him to get to the point where he is shooting at the skips without reason in broad daylight, there has to have been a pretty protracted campaign of harassment on the part of these things. But you don't give us any information that makes his decision seem reasonable. The [DATA EXPUNGED] is ridiculous, and leads me to believe that you don't actually know what happened with the kite. If he's been receiving 'surreal and somewhat disturbing stickers', why can't we see any of them? If these things are getting into what should be a secure observation post to harass him, why does no-one notice? Hell, why didn't this guy bother reporting it when they did this, or gave him drugs? It's pretty important to report stuff like this, and the fact that the agent didn't goes against everything I would expect a person to do in his situation.

The Professor fucking killed a guy. He fucking killed a guy who he clearly endangered. He fucking killed a guy on his own authority, which I simply cannot imagine is possible. The Foundation are going to want a pretty good reason before they go and execute an agent, above and beyond the word of a man who is acting erratically and should already be under observation for his bizarre decisions with regards to containment, and his own clearly stated dubious interest in the anomaly. There's no reason to kill him. Agents don't grow on trees. The Professor's a deranged, evil bastard who gets away with murder because the Foundation act like a bunch of clueless dolts.

2) The instance that appears in the interview log is, to be honest, pretty uninteresting. You've got a lot of scope here for presenting a surreal character who talks about surreal things in a surreal way, and you've essentially phoned it in and done a rather boring lolrandom bit about balloons before disappearing. Presenting unhinged anomalous characters gives you a really wide canvas to do whatever you want about whatever you want, and you should seize the opportunity to give us something memorable. Instead the whole thing reads like the sort of thing you'd hear from someone in their early teens who thinks randomness is the same as humour and thinks they're quirky and interesting when they're actually really annoying. A similar problem can be seen with the 'harassment campaign', which is neither detailed nor interesting as it's presented now. It's a massive missed opportunity.

3) There are a number of standing errors in this, the main grammar problem I've noticed is capitalisations, particularly in the Professor's notes. Also, 'Professor' should not be followed by a period, as that denotes an abbreviation.

There are a number of stylistic choices here that I dislike. Having the Professor swear in his notes just seems unprofessional, on top of all the other problems with him as a character.

I don't like the scare quotes in parts of the description and the interview addendum, particularly this:

Professor P█████ was unexpectedly approached by an instance of SCP-2420-1, hereby referred to as ‘Noel’, and asked ‘for a chat’.

It doesn't really make sense, nor does it look professional, for the Foundation to use unnecessary quotations in this sense. It preserves nothing of value (there's no reason this should be used over an unquoted description) and looks out of place. 'Professor Psychopath was unexpectedly approached by an instance of SCP-2420-1, hereby referred to as 'Noel', who asked to speak to him/her'. Generally, unless there's a really good reason why the Foundation would need to preserve a direct quote (like, say, if we don't really know what they meant) then a clinical description is fine and generally better.

Conclusion: As I've been writing this, I've gradually come round to the idea that the anomaly here isn't the real centrepiece of the article, and that the idea is to get across the idea that the Professor is being affected. There's nothing wrong with wanting to tell a story along these lines, but the anomaly here is selling itself on weirdness and surrealism, and doesn't really deliver anything memorable along those lines, nor does it try too, because almost all of the examples of such strange behaviour are elided, ignored or glossed over in the most minimal way possible.

What's more, the story that's being focused on is not really believable - it requires the Foundation to have absolutely no oversight of the people it places in charge of anomalies, a staff structure that ultimately makes little sense (why would a research staff member, even a one in a position of authority, be able to make drastic changes to containment procedures unopposed or order the death of a security officer?), and has almost everyone act in an unbelievably stupid fashion, and the result is the Foundation trusting the word of a person who, even if they aren't compromised, is at least a person with a severely distorted view of what his role is and what it is appropriate for him to do.

Essentially, substantial changes are necessary to improve this article, both in terms of making the story believable and creating an anomaly that is something other than, to borrow a phrase from Adam Grey, 'generic crazy people'.

after the men and one's wife were

Kind of awkward wording.

anomalous tenants

What makes them tenants?

Might be better off with the discovery after the object description.

However, SCP-XXXX-1 refers to anomalous

This doesn't flow very well from the previous sentence, as this doesn't have any bearing on what was stated.

administering psychedelic drugs

1) Is that the correct term?
2) Which ones?

narcotics

Are narcotics 'psychedelic'? Narcotics are, like, opiates and such.

are sapient humanoids

How do we know?

disappearing as abruptly as they appeared

Kind of eh tonally.

disappear for extended periods than usually observed

This wording doesn't work.

issue [REDACTED] pistol

Why is this a secret? Why does the type matter?

entities, all the while screaming obscenities at the entities

This phrasing/repetition is kind of awkward.

of class-A drugs

Again, which ones? If they can find the drugs, they should be able to identify them.

was reprimanded and taken

Why was he reprimanded before being taken in?

been dismissed from foundation service

1) Foundation is a proper noun.
2) Why? He's pretty clearly being affected by the thing.

request of the leading research professor currently on site

Would think that would just be a standard thing.

of Entity narcotics

What is Entity?

Don't really get the point of the second addendum.