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Well, here it is. I want to thank Dr. Hysteria, Galboros, and all of those in the chat that gave me feedback on this.
To me, the problems with this start from line 1 of the description.
SCP-2294 is a severed, Caucasian hand measuring around fifteen centimeters in length and eight centimeters in width. The hand partially extends beyond its wrist, and the end of the hand is covered in scar tissue and badly damaged in some areas.
The primary anomalous feature of SCP-2294 are the thumb and fingertips of the hand, which have been replaced with heads which strongly resemble the former US president Richard Milhouse Nixon.
- That comma doesn't belong betweensevered andCaucasian I'm not sure of that. It's a nitpick anyway.
- Caucasian is useless as a term to describe what I assume is meant to be its skin tone, asit doesn't tell you anything useful.
- What's the use of telling us its size? Or does it infer the size of the penis that goes with it?
- The hand partially extends beyond its wrist, and the end of the hand is covered in scar tissue and badly damaged in some areas. ->and badly damaged in some areas is confusing. I assume you mean that some areas of the end of the hand (but what end is that exactly?) are badly damaged, instead of being covered in scar tissue. Or are they badly damagedand covered in scar tissue? It's entirely unclear.
- Its primary anomalous feature isn't the fingers and thumb, it's the fact that it's a severed hand that somehow isn't decaying.
- the former US president ->the is superfluous there
Although SCP-2294 is capable of movement through the use of its fingers in a manner similar of certain insects or spiders, it is usually found laying palm up with the fingers raised so that the the instances are facing each other.
- How does that work? It's walking on the faces?
- Insects and spiders have a very different limb layout, so to speak. I'd imagine this thing moving around is actuallynothing like insects or spiders. But I may be wrong about that
Some of these are nitpicks, others represent a very basic flaw in this article: its execution. Aside from that, there's the fact that it's basically a variation on "it shouldn't be able to talk, but it does!". I can't help but feel this is retreading old ground, and not in a particularly entertaining way.
This sums up all the issues I have with this article. It just feels so… mediocre
Pretty torn with no-vote or downvote, guess no-vote for now as I think about it.
Downvote, I feel like this is a bare minimum to successful scip. It's technically mediocre but at the end of the day you have a story but it's uninteresting and I don't care about anyone in it, it might as well be a bad one with those regards.
The article is well written, and although as Crayne has said the idea has been done before, the writing of the article makes it a good read and kept me interested until the end.
Again, apart from what Crayne has said I don't really have anything else to say, apart from +1.
Upvoted at Nixon.
Also, a small nitpick, the first and only footnote could be removed for the better. If you want to leave it in, you don't need the brackets anyway.
Great article, m8.
I went ahead and removed it, it isn't really necessary. And thanks!
I rather like this. Very high WTF quotient, with just enough grounding and hints at the missing chunks of backstory to keep me interested to the end. +1
Um…What did I just read…weird…+1
I reject your reality and substitute my own.
(account deleted)23 Mar 2016 15:17By itself, the latest deployment of the convenient note from the skip maker left next to the item trope is enough to make me downvote. It's a weak writing device, and it's been done so many times now that I roll my eyes and downvote whenever I see it.
I don't really care for the item itself either, which strikes me as carrying a sort of facile Important Lesson coupled with something that's weird for the sake of weird. The recovery log serves as narrative filler, extending the article for no seeming reason other than a reflexive need for more backstory.
I agree with all of this, to the point where I'm struggling to articulate some of my problems with this piece in a way that isn't 'what Kalinin said, but less clear'. The Important Lesson here, whatever it is precisely, and the attempt to boil the political spectrum down to four stereotypes, does strike me as pretty facile. It also seems like the weirdness is an attempt to excuse the piece from attempting complexity or nuance in its political sensibility, as if the piece is saying that if you think the Important Lesson is cheap, that's because it's supposed to be 'wacky'.
I think this site has actually produced some really ambition work from similar source material, and this seems like it's mining the set dressing of those articles and tales without having a strong understanding of what makes those works tick.
I'm also in total agreement as regards the recovery log and the note. I tried to read something interesting into the recovery log, but I couldn't find a reading of it that wasn't either wildly speculative or totally uninteresting. The note is similarly rote, and both adds almost nothing and totally undermines my suspension of disbelief. Between the two of them, there was absolutely no way I could see the events of the article occurring organically and it became very obvious that they only happened to fill the article out into the general 'shape' the author felt it should be, without actually fitting into the world of the story at all.
If I may, there was a bit more of a backstory in the sandbox before edits were made.
Something along the lines of a guy trying to gather people for a new political platform and integrating the consciousnesses of the few that joined him into Richard Nixon Fingers here.
Might be slightly off, but I only read it once or twice before those edits were made, and he (author) ended removing the back story as a suggestion made by another person.
Seems like a preference related thing, but it's a decent point considering some other articles that do it about as well or even worse/better.
I chose Kansas because it has many rural wooded regions that, while not being completely isolated from society or people, is still is somewhat hidden and away from general population.
I hope the answer is "neither". It fits well with the theme of the article, that there's no such thing as a clear-cut answer regarding abstract political beliefs.
The hand's got a thumb, though. Unless said thumb is sticking out of the center of the palm, it's probably positioned somewhere that indicates left/right hand.
Although, it would be pretty creepy to see a hand that was perfectly symmetrical, and either had a smooth palm/fingerprint skin on both sides or back-of-the-hand skin with hair on both sides. Ewww.
It isn't even topologically conceivable, which while a direction that an SCP article might take (e.g.,SCP-2719), it would be a serious conservation of WTF problem in this article.
I didn't think of political affiliation (although that's a cool interpretation). My point is more along the lines of, it's one of the more obvious characteristics of the SCP, and yet there's nothing in the document to suggest one or the other.
Let's compare to the first line of the description ofSCP-2913:
SCP-2913 is a severed right hand, formerly belonging to James Hallman (deceased), which is capable of independent movement.
Admittedly, we don't see handedness withSCP-2158:
Description: SCP-2158 is a Remington Model 1875 revolver clasped in the disembodied hand of Joshua Graham (1868-1893).
But we can probably assume it's whatever hand was dominant for Joshua Graham.
The big thing for me is that we see no evidence that the hand came from any of the kidnap victims, nor the fifth man, nor which hand it was. It's just a novel hand, severed from nothing.
While I like what Comparing Realities said about abstract political beliefs, this is a hiccup on my part. I had intended for it to be a right hand (representing Nixon's party choice, Republican, and thus, Right-wing, but nothing particularly meaningful beyond a minor bonus for those who may have noticed), and I was fairly certain I had included that, but maybe I didn't save that change. This is fixed now.