SCP Foundation

Basically, the concept is anomalous silkworms that have humanoid cocoons. These cocoons are in human size and virtually similar to human (beautiful girls in particular), including the ability to think, speak and move. If they get boiled and processed before the moth within them emerge, then they can be preserved as a doll. Otherwise, they still "expire" after the moth emerge, and the bodies will decay rapidly.

Now I need to flesh out the concept with some details, but I am not sure if they are good.

• How long will it take from the cocoon's formation to the moth's emergence? Not determined yet. Maybe sixteen moths or sixteen years. If it's sixteen months, then the cocoon will be in the shape of a young girl, or if it's sixteen years, the cocoon might be in the shape of an infant at the beginning and slowly grow into a young girl. Not sure which one is better.

• Where the cocoon's knowledge and personality comes from? I currently have some options in my mind, but basically it depends on the cocoon's lifespan. If it's sixteen years, they can just learn as normal humans. If it's sixteen months, I think either they learn much faster than ordinary human or they might inherit their memories and personalities from something else.

• How many silkworms will it take to form a humanoid cocoon? I prefer that the silkworms are in the size of normal ones, and many silkworms form a cocoon together. The reason is that I think that countless moths flying out from a girl's body can be an amazing picture.

• background story: These silkworms were kept secretly by a family. Before the Foundation took over these worms, there were two brothers of that family taking care of these silkworms (and cocoons). The younger brother was a medical doctor and tried many method to extend the cocoon's lifespan. Some of these methods are even inhuman. But he did really love these cocoons or at least one of them, so he kept conducting experiments. The elder brother killed the younger and told the Foundation things about these worms. (I haven't determined why the elder brother did this.)

Please let me know if you feel these details are good or bad, or have any further idea about this concept.

Hmm. The anomaly is something I don't think I've seen before, but I feel like the backstory is pretty lacking and doesn't match how good the core idea is. Why does this "family" keep the silkworms anyway? Why would one of the sons want to extend the life of the cocoons anyway? What were the cocoons even used for? Why did the older brother want to kill anyone at all? How did he even contact the Foundation when it's a secret organization? It feels too random and not compelling enough.

Why not something that reflects more of the relationship between humans and silkworms?

Why not something like… the cocoons belong to a silkworm emperor who had started to notice his subjects disappearing. When he realized that humans were raising his children only to kill them before they could get their wings, he was furious and saddened so he tried to find a way to still collect his dead subjects so they could return to [whatever afterlife silkworms have] or at least be given a decent burial.

So he used his magic to transform some of his most talented servants into human girls, whom he would teach to weave the finest silk in the land, finer than anything made by humans who killed silkworms for their jobs (you can look up the numbers, one source states that it takes about 2500 dead caterpillars to produce one pound of raw silk). The emperor set up his own shop, and eventually the silkworm ladies began to train as silk weavers, eventually infiltrating plenty of other textile shops all over [whatever country you want to have this in] so they could collect the bodies of the dead caterpillars and bury them according to custom.

Or something like that. But something that connects together more coherently, so if your reader ever asks "why?", the story can answer it for them.

I get it. Zyn's story sounds pretty good, but I think it is not what I want to convey through this SCP. What I want to depict is people (or a person) falsely focusing on the superficial things. Take this story for instance, the anomalous silkworms forming humanoid cocoons which would eventually expire is somehow a natural thing, just like normal worm's life circle. The superficial thing is that cocoons act like humans, but the more profound thing is that they are not humans from the very beginning. How they are born or decease is not the way humans do. They are just a stage in the silkworm's life circle. So the falsely focusing is to think as if they are humans, love them and even try to "correct" their form of death or extend their lifespan.

Originally I made the younger brother the character who tried to extend their lifespan is because I think as he is younger, he is more likely to be deceived by the superficial and also more likely to do something breaking the ground. The older one is who obeyed the convention the family passed from generation to generation, but he is also too indecisive so he did not stop his brother when he first notice the experiments. And, as a family closely related to anomalous things, I think it's quite reasonable that they have some connection with the paranormal community. So they might acquire information about the Foundation there. But I think the reason making this family keep the silkworms is a question needing to be answered, and I would think about that.

Question: What is the specific, core idea, and why is that specific, core idea compelling? (I don't really care about any of the other details about how it works if its existence isn't itself significant).