Let's see what you have. This is going to be short so I won't even collapse it.
The anomaly is basic but original; shrimp inside shrimp inside shrimp. As expected, the writing and clinical tone is solid, I didn't catch and SPaG issues. One issue I did notice was the "500,000 K" light they can produce. At that point, wouldn't the heat evaporate the water around it? It's almost 900,000 Fahrenheit. Actually, would that destroy the Earth? A quick google search tells me the surface of the sun is only 5,778 K.
Though I do think a weird animal concept could work (I'm a fan of that genre myself), I feel that there really isn't enough here right now for me to do anything other then neutral. All it really is is shrimp within shrimp and that's all the article tells us. Maybe it's just me, but it really doesn't interest me that much. I would suggest making a story, but I feel like that would go against what you seem to be trying to do here, just a short, simple animal skip. Maybe try to imply something through the document, like that they can;d do it now, but they are slowly learning how to enter and control other crustacean? I don't know though, that also feels like it goes against what you want to do with this article.
Get some more feedback, as this could just be me personally not finding it interesting and not a problem with the article itself.
I hope this helps a little.
A few things to say:
One issue I did notice was the "500,000 K" light they can produce. At that point, wouldn't the heat evaporate the water around it? It's almost 900,000 Fahrenheit. Actually, would that destroy the Earth? A quick google search tells me the surface of the sun is only 5,778 K.
IRL, the actual pistol shrimp can produce a temperature close to the surface of the Sun. I do think it has to be reworded, or have some reference to what normal pistol shrimps can do before moving onto the SCP directly, and maybe have readers extrapolate what could happen if the bubble made is larger.
All it really is is shrimp within shrimp and that's all the article tells us.
I suppose that the fridge logic that even the larger shrimps originate from larger versions of themselves infinitely is not felt here? Or that with the existence of larger shrimps and their bubbles, it could well be a super-sized laser.
One issue I did notice was the "500,000 K" light they can produce. At that point, wouldn't the heat evaporate the water around it? It's almost 900,000 Fahrenheit. Actually, would that destroy the Earth?
A scientist can explain this better, but here's a basic rundown…
A bolt of lightning has a temperature of about 53,000 °F, which is hotter than the surface of the sun. The fact that we don't have constant global wildfires from lightning strikes (or the fact that getting hit by lightning is survivable) is the same reason why cooking a turkey at 700°F doesn't make it cook twice as fast.
For heat to affect anything, it actually needs to sit there for a period of time and heat something else up. If you've got something really hot that only exists for a fraction of a second, it's not gonna do much in terms of heating something up.
Which is why you don't immediately roast your hands and arms when you pull a turkey out of the oven that's been sitting there for 4+ hours at 350°F. They're just not in the oven long enough to be cooked, basically.
That said, I'm not sure how long/short 500,000k can be "safe" to be around before it starts superheating everything, and/or if that "safe" time is more or less than the time a typical pistol shrimp causes water to be as hot as the sun.
Ok, let's see…
Big thoughts:
- Is the #-<metric>A a placeholder, or is that going to stay in the article? At the moment it was really needlessly confusing. I think a lot of this is due to the fact that the article uses their designations a lot before you get around to defining them and the relative size. This made the description of the alternate dimension incredibly difficult to understand/picture, which was a pretty major issue.
It probably wouldn't be bad for a gimmick if it weren't for that, maybe if you moved the -A description and table before the alternate dimension. The containment instructions for the different sizes might still be confusing, but honestly that part could use some trimming or rearrangement anyway.
- For the little-shrimp big-shrimp story element, it's not bad, as a sheer mental image. It sort of reminds me of SCP-2031 and that one that was humans all the way down. The implication that they might be working towards something at powers of 10, or that something is already happening in their dimension at very high powers of 10, is neat, if very… faint. Building an SCP off a single neat mental image is tricky. (Ask me how I know...)
- I think my biggest issue here is with the portals, and the disjoint between the two main story elements. The fact that the portal is selectively one-way made me assume some kind of intention, either a Pacific Rim style invasion or an act of banishment, but that doesn't seem to be the case. The way this is discussed, I really have no idea why these portals are happening at all or what they have to do with shrimp world. The paragraph at the end did not help this.
Other thoughts:
- Some of the description is rather confusing or unclear. Are the exoskeletons of each -A completely hollow other than smaller -As? I think that's implied but never directly stated, and the description mostly describes them like normal shrimp.
- Why are the powers of ten different for every step? I don't know if a 37mm shrimp would be able to fit everywhere in the exoskeleton of a 37 cm shrimp.
- I guess a minor point, but why are the kA making cavitation bubbles? I mean, they punch prey and they're ambush predators… are they punching the bigger shrimp's chitin? It sort of seems like you're just having it happen so you can describe it.
Very specific:
You've got some very odd wording… I guess throughout, but I mostly noticed in the containment. Examples:
most evidently through reports of blast fishing and undersea explosions of unknown origin.
"Evidently" is either weirdly indirect or the wrong word. Just instruct them to monitor for that.
Structural integrity of containment chamber is to be maintained once per week.
You want to do maintenance on the chamber once per week. Structural integrity should be maintained at all times. :P
Per the section I mentioned above about what to do with all the shrimp, I'd at least suggest reordering it, start with specific. Like, cut the floating single sentence, then say "One dA is to be maintained in <x>. <Chamber specs.> All other dA's are to be dissected, and their constituent -mA's <whatever>. <mu and KA stuff>."
maybe if you moved the -A description and table before the alternate dimension.
Agreeing to that as a solution. I did have concerns about the arrangement, largely due to my headcanons on how sub-components in an SCP work. I suppose readability is more important.
Is the #-<metric>A a placeholder, or is that going to stay in the article? At the moment it was really needlessly confusing
I hope to use them in the final product. I would be rethinking over it.
I mean, they punch prey and they're ambush predators… are they punching the bigger shrimp's chitin? It sort of seems like you're just having it happen so you can describe it.
I think you gave me some ideas to further establish the context in my mind.
