As discussed in chat, neutral voting. It gets good towards the end but the first bits are rather dull.
SCP-1643 / Discussion
Forum
» Per Page Discussions / Per page discussions
» SCP-1643
This is the discussion related to the wiki page SCP-1643.
This is what I thought until I realized that this guy is planning to nuke Heaven. +1
What I keep getting stuck on is that this isn't my idea of a scipified Tower of Babel, which is silly because this one is really pretty cool. I almost missed the bit at the end about atomic weapons, which would've been a shame because that's what secured my vote. Much better than when I first saw it, overall. Not perfect, but damn interesting enough in my opinion.
(account deleted)Downvoted for being the Tower of Babel without a very interesting twist. Nuking heaven is an alright idea but was not nearly good enough to dissuade me from taking my mouse away from the downvote button, where it had been hanging since the very first paragraph.
I do agree that it drags at the beginning, but I thought the nuclear twist was well-executed enough to carry the rest of the article. +1.
Personally I like it, particularly because you never use the phrase "tower of babel": ie, its an ancient tower that does weird things to spacetime and language. There happens to be mention of something similar in the lore of the Abrahamic Faiths. Make of that what you will.
Very, very important: Pace your reveal, as per this excellent guide.
By putting the language and relocation bit right at the beginning, you show your monster, and you lose anyone who goes "Its just the Tower of Bable. I don't like it" before they even get to your real twist right at the end. Start off with current first sentance followed by the paragraphs describing the tower itself, between this line:
The lower 70 meters of the tower are…
and this line:
…Metallurgical analysis indicates that this section of SCP-1643 was built within the last decade.
Thats your first hook. Someone was trying to pick up where the ancients left off building this tower for some reason, and its got something to do with breaching spacetime. People will then stew on that even after they figure out its the Tower of Babel.
You might also consider redacting the the name of the town:
Based on translations of inscriptions in Akkadian, the town in which the tower was located was named ███████, which translates approximately to ‘Gate of God’.
Given that its implied that they don't want religious personnel deciding that this particular ancient abomination needs to be blown to bits, ergo, the restrictions against Abrahamic believers as staff for the site, this isn't exactly the sort of information you'd want to casually mention in the part of the article available to all personnel. Alternately, you could put this right at the end in a high-classification note. On the meta-level, while interesting trivia, its not worth showing your monster with the name "Bab-ilu". If you've already gotten it this can come across as a "do you get it yet?", and if you haven't, it potentially blows the fridge horror right there.
Lastly, I especially like the idea of using computers and drones to circumvent the effects. Some interesting experiments and questions come to mind:
- What happens when someone actively or passively (re)learns that teir in German means door in English. Do they quickly forget the connection? Do they forget both languages and get issued a third language?
- What would happen if you had a person who knew the computer's rosetta stone template, or programming languages enter the area? Does the computer count as speaking assembly code or java, but not the languages its translating blind-idiot style?
- What would happen if you used a drone that responded to voice commands and could respond with prerecorded messages? Would it end up requesting "Por favor comando repetir", and get shipped to Guadalajara upon leaving the area?
Stuff like that might make an interesting side article- I'd keep it separate so you don't dilute the punch of that awesome twist at the end, but it could make for interesting padding.
Just some thoughts and suggestions, like I said.
Neutral vote for now, but verging on a +1 with some tinkering.
I like the central idea (as said above, nuking heaven…ha!).
The execution feels like slog to get there. Stripping out the fluff would go a long way: details such as the tapering walls and floor dimensions don't really move the story along. The fact that this is the Tower of Babel is made *readily* apparent in the first paragraph of the description.
No vote
I've made some edits aimed at improving the pacing and removing some extraneous material from the beginning of the article. Hopefully this helps.
I also tweaked the last bit of the letter to make the nuking Heaven bit a little harder to miss.
/forum/t-927149/scp-1643#post-
page revision: 3, last edited: 22 Sep 2018 03:57
