# Pastebin JZ5efUKw 4:17 PM I was having a lot of trouble trying to figure out a theme for the series. That's somewhat due to "the past" being something that can be interpreted in many ways and somewhat due to the canon not really choosing a theme and just going for "Cool old characters doing new cool shit". So I kinda got to thinking about, like, the difference between how people view the recent past versus the distant past. Like, how a person views 4:17 PM the 2010s versus the 1950s. 4:17 PM For something like the 1950s, very few of us have lived during that time period, so we can only really guess at what it's like. We can almost get a mood for the atmosphere of the time, but we can never get there. That's very different I feel from the 2010s, where each year felt like it had its own... aura. 2016 was very different from 2017 and 2017 was very different from 2018. 4:18 PM Okay, I can already tell this is going to be a bit of ramble. I wrote some notes when the idea first came into my head, but I was half-asleep so bear with me lol 4:19 PM haha no worries 4:20 PM So for a very basic explanation of the villain, I imagined the thorn to be the conceptual personification of the idea of things getting worse over time. Basically, imagine some eldritch creature that doesn't have a form. It doesn't have a body. It doesn't even have worshipers. But it's something that you can *feel*. It's something that constantly looms over you every day, like it's a ghost that's watching over your 4:20 PM shoulder but never doing more than that. 4:23 PM And this entity, this feeling, is what I believe the thorn is. I don't like the term itself, but degeneracy fits very well. As the Foundation and legends like Clef and Bright grow older, they start to worsen. They become more and more unhinged, unable to do their job, unable to protect humanity. And this is physically expressed in the characters as time moves on. Some try to blind themselves in the past, literally 4:23 PM "resurrecting" better memories, and some lose hope entirely and do whatever the hell they want. 4:25 PM I like to picture things in scenes, so the scene that I imagine is the one with the two characters doing the same thing but across different realities, like I said a few days ago. In the Foundation's reality, they try to activate some machine to fix all of their problems, but it doesn't kill the monster. It just stops the cracks. The Foundation's choosing to blind itself again to the reality that things are going to get 4:25 PM worse and there's nothing they can do about it. More anomalies will come. More people will die. Humanity will eventually be destroyed. 4:26 PM And in the conceptual reality, the one inside of the crack, this feeling is personified as an inunderstandably massive machine whose only function is to destroy everything it touches. Machines, people, concepts, time, all of it gets swooped up and crushed and obliterated and set on fire. The character experiences utter nihilism, knowing that this thing, this entity, will eventually, one day, destroy absolutely everything. 4:28 PM And in the final tale, the two teams meet back up and begin to discuss the things they saw. This is where the core theme, I think, comes in. The character who witnessed the creature believes that there is no hope in the Foundation, that there's no point in trying to protect humanity. But the other character, the one that started the machine and closed the crack, counters this. They (I imagine they're a high-ranking member 4:28 PM of the Foundation. Maybe an O5) already know about the creature and that everything they do is hopeless. 4:28 PM But they continue to protect humanity, regardless. 4:30 PM The nihilistic character asks "Why?" And the other character states that the Foundation has an even greater job. It doesn't just protect humanity, it gives humanity hope. That's why they don't let their researchers know they're researching in vain. That's why they keep Clef and Bright and every other delusional psychopath of a legend around. To distract everyone from this terrifying reality. 4:30 PM That was my idea. I apologize if it's really confusing. 4:32 PM So I really like this conceptually, but was hoping we could avoid the lovecraftian elder god thing... unless we have a reall original thing, what if its just the natural process of the bloom dying? The cracks will continue, just like you say, and the conflict of our two characters with their two views of the usefulness of the Foundaiton stays, but as a process without personality... 4:32 PM or if we desperately need a entity, then it is faceless... mindless 4:32 PM but I like the thematic stuff, and that fits so well with my "outline" 4:33 PM <~Calibri_Bold> I also want to express my hesitance with the sort of hopelessness thing here. 4:33 PM Yeah, I pictured the entity more as a mindless thing. 4:34 PM <~Calibri_Bold> Because if the ending is just "we tried our best but oh well," then it feels like all the effort the characters went through, and by extension, the reader's time perusing it, was for absolutely nothing. 4:34 PM Calbri_Bold: see at the end of my outline I said the cracks will continue... as something as large as this shouldnt be fixed so quickly... the arc of this set of tales is that this crack is sealed and the immediate danger is resolved 4:35 PM Its not that its hopeless necessarily... but at the resolution, there's not an immediate answer how to fix this entirely 4:35 PM <~Calibri_Bold> I'm not saying that it even needs to be resolved within this arc, nor that it should go without sacrifice. 4:35 PM Red is saying one character feels that its hopeless while another is saying "no look, we can make a difference" and that being a juxtaposition 4:36 PM ^ 4:36 PM <~Calibri_Bold> But they're not really saying that they can make a difference, they're just saying they can keep everyone happy until the inevitable end. 4:36 PM its not us, as the authors, saying "there is no solution and we're all dead" its presenting two perspectives 4:36 PM no, it doesn't have to be that way 4:37 PM <~Calibri_Bold> Alright. 4:37 PM Yeah, this is even assuming that the thing the character sees is real. I was hoping to add another layer to this whole thing by making the character that sees the creature be the same character that got rejected from A-9, so there is evidence that this whole creature is just their interpretation of the Foundation: a mindless, soulness machine that crushes all hope that enters it. 4:37 PM we don't say which is right, we just present both perspectives and let the reader decide from themselves... which at the end we clearly indicate the foundation and these characters will be on the lookout for more cracks, as they know they'll be coming. 4:38 PM good I was hoping we would send lucretia (if we use her) into the breach with a couple others. 4:39 PM I do think that Grigori brings up a good point that we should just present both perspectives and not say one is right. So I don't think we should have a character say that the Foundation knows of the creature's existence. Maybe that ending part can still be there, but it's just the hopeful character saying that to try and convince the nihilistic character to stay hopeful. 4:39 PM I think this ^ would be compelling 4:40 PM — ~Calibri_Bold nods. 4:43 PM Sick. So do we just wanna stick with the first six tales and then fan out from there with a few personal articles if we have time? 4:46 PM I mean, I think we focus on getting these tales done then we discuss if we want more... but first we need to establish what our cast of characters are. Threw a bunch of suggestions in that second tab 4:52 PM I like the idea of making Lucretia be the one that experiences utter nihilism. Her time at the Black Lodge would give her a realistic motivation to go "Okay, this entire thing is pointless. Pain will still happen. Death will still happen. The apocalypse is now". 4:54 PM I also like the ex-UIU character you suggested. Having someone who didn't have any real experience with the anomalous until suddenly being shoved into the Foundation could be similar to how Lucretia didn't know about this creature until suddenly being thrust into gaining knowledge of its existence. 4:56 PM The blue diamond stone skip thing could be a good way to shut down the crack. How do you stop something that's constantly shifting reality around it? Throw something that can never be altered inside of it. 4:56 PM wellllll UIU does have experience with the anomalous tho 4:56 PM but she wouldn't have to 4:56 PM Yeah, but like... *anomalous* anomalous stuff. 4:56 PM yea, i thought the diamond thing would be good for that 4:59 PM I can imagine, like, right before the climax, Lucretia would kinda get thrown into the very center of the crack and experience extremely vivid hallucinations as reality shifts around her. Maybe we could tie this to Bright, who knows that he will outlive the heat death of the universe. And during the climax, just as Bright's amulet always stays around (assuming we're sticking with that idea) the diamond could stick around. 4:59 PM Lucretia finds it at the last minute, slams it on the ground and boom, crack just disappears. 5:06 PM Wow that's a lot of upscroll 5:06 PM Sorry for the activity drop-off. 5:06 PM Just the first episode in my new series: Red Rambles For Like Half-An-Hour. 5:09 PM But let me know if you like the idea, Nagi. I think we should have the UIU girl and Lucretia be the main characters, sort of foils to one another, and then have a more minor cast surrounding them. The UIU girl can be controlling the machine and Lucretia can be on the ground. 5:10 PM well we also should have some tech character for trying to shut the breach 5:11 PM <~Calibri_Bold> So who's gonna be in charge of recruiting these SCPs? I presumed Light, but will she be engaging in personal interactions with SCPs? 5:14 PM Mm. Okay. 5:15 PM I imagine Light would be doing so. Bright might be cool, adding that extra wrinkle of a person who's going to live past the end of the universe and who experiences a totally different kind of nihilism, but that might be adding too much. 5:16 PM <~Calibri_Bold> Mhm. 5:16 PM I don't really know how to interject here but I have thoughts on the broader structure. 5:16 PM shoot 5:17 PM ^ 5:19 PM So I think we're contributing to a literary environment that's been saturated with this sort of story. I don't necessarily balk at using an Elder God archetype, but... eh. I have a way I would handle it but I don't want to impose. Regarding the "vibe" of the ending, though — 5:19 PM lay it on us, if you have a different idea about structure and ending, go for it 5:21 PM I'm not much of a fan. You seem to be shooting for ambiguity (is there hope for the Foundation or no?) but I just don't find attractive. We've seen it before. Instead of posturing and leaving the reader on the edge of a cliff, I think it'd be much more powerful to answer that question, preferably with a yes, but in a sort of "Gurren Lagann" way where they're intent on taking on the impossible. 5:21 PM that sounds good to me 5:21 PM ... Any thoughts on that take before I talk about the Thorn as a villain? 5:22 PM "this may be impossible but it doesn't me we give up" sorta thing 5:22 PM honestly what we've been talking about would only need to be tweaked a little to fit that 5:23 PM Honestly I just want to capture the energy of Kondraki riding 682 and channel it towards something... constructive. Informative. 5:24 PM I have no reference for that is, other than Kondraki was a jerk character and lizard bad 5:24 PM link? 5:25 PM http://scp-wiki.wikidot.com/duke-till-dawn 5:26 PM The idea is that it's bombastic, outrageous, and hopefully cool. But I don't like the scene, because it's just "cool" for the sake of it. 5:26 PM gotcha, I can get behind bombastic! 5:26 PM red3: You got anything to add on my take above? 5:27 PM So, are you saying we structure the ending with a “Character gazes into the abyss and then flips it off and rollerblades away” energy? 5:27 PM That's... nah. 5:28 PM One sec. 5:29 PM Old tale of mine called A Hymn for Pandora with this line: 5:29 PM > We have chained the indestructible lizard. We have kept at bay cosmic horrors for centuries, ten at a time and all eager to cleave our world in twain. We have cheated Time, we have defeated Death, we have protected the world from the unknown, and we have not failed in all this time. We have not merely stared into an abyss but plunged headlong into it, armed to the teeth to fight whatever lies at the bottom. Do you 5:29 PM think a god can stop us? Do you think that anyone can stop us? 5:29 PM That but without the track-record of cheating time/defeating death etc, within the context of Rez. 5:30 PM Ooh. So not rejecting the abyss, but fully believing that they can survive it because they’ve survived everything else before? 5:31 PM also I absolutely veto the actual usage of 682... but bombastic sounds fun, and outside my norm... Well I don't think we have them jump into the abyss in the end, they could do something crazy and "ride 682" metaphorically out of the breach 5:33 PM Something like that would be nice, yes, although it would ring a little hollow if they entered the breach willingly. 5:33 PM yea 5:33 PM You know, solving a problem they created for themselves willingly. 5:33 PM red3: Again, that minus the track-record of surviving everything. Rez!Foundation seems kinda fragile. 5:34 PM More the tenacity of the human spirit or something. 5:34 PM Does that theme shift scan for you? 5:34 PM So are you chill with the overall structure I suggested? but with a tone of bombastic in the ending/throughout? 5:35 PM Oh, absolutely, basic narrative structure seems great. I just took issue with the ambiguity of the ending mostly. 😅 5:35 PM Yeah, I can get behind that. Again, I’m used to writing very grimdark tales, so writing something more hopeful would be good. 5:35 PM ... Same, really. 5:35 PM <~Calibri_Bold> ^ 5:35 PM This is a departure from my norm. 5:35 PM Regardless; if we're on all board can I ramble about the Thorn? 5:35 PM So cool, I feel like we're making real progress 5:35 PM <~Calibri_Bold> nagiros: Go for it. 5:35 PM yes 5:35 PM please 5:36 PM Okay pls note that these are just my observations and I'd be open to writing other interpretations. 5:36 PM 👍 5:37 PM > this feeling is personified as an inunderstandably massive machine whose only function is to destroy everything it touches. Machines, people, concepts, time, all of it gets swooped up and crushed and obliterated and set on fire. 5:37 PM So I'm not really down with giving the Thorn a personified form from the outset — 5:38 PM same 5:38 PM I want it to be a "natural" result of the end of incident zero 5:38 PM and the broken reset 5:39 PM It makes it too tangible. It gives the reader something they could imagine the Foundation killing; machines break down after all, and the Foundation has very big guns at its disposal. So having it be entirely non-physical (or even absent) during the majority of the story may be better. Until — 5:39 PM A character "enters" it near the end. Descent into the underworld, you know how it goes, and they find only a void of pure abstraction, hate, and "degeneracy" (we need to find a different word). 5:40 PM And from that void they shape the Thorn. Give it form through sheer force of will, then they kill it or something. You know, then we can introduce this giant machine. 5:40 PM And this wouldn't solve the breach problem either. It wouldn't fix the timeline. 5:41 PM Sorry. Losing track of myself. Thoughts on that? 5:41 PM Yeah, that's perfect. You summed up what I was thinking better than I did lol 5:41 PM So structure the “journey” through the breach as a catabasis... cool cool 5:42 PM (I think I spelled that right) 5:42 PM Having it be a formless, inexplicable *thing* was what I tried to say when I talked about it being a feeling that people had. A *thing* that people just noticed sometimes. 5:42 PM Like a scar on reality 5:42 PM Ooh, we're throwing out all of the literary terms today. 5:42 PM <~Calibri_Bold> I like this. 5:42 PM Haha 5:42 PM Ignore my pseudo intellectual nonsense haha 5:43 PM But yea I like it 5:43 PM Nah, you're good. Don't even worry about it. 5:43 PM Ending on a note like “so what if these things keep happening, we shut this down, we’ll do it again” sorta thing 5:43 PM Fists pumping to the sunset haha 5:44 PM This is good, this is way outside what I’ve written which is good 5:44 PM Exactly what I wanted to stretch 5:47 PM So... yeah. The scope of everything seems a lot more manageable. 5:47 PM Have we considered just making the site SCP-2000? 5:48 PM But isn't SCP-2000 right under Yellowstone, which was destroyed in Incident Zero? 5:48 PM I need to check. 5:48 PM I think that makes some sense, there’s already a facility there... the thorn is still there after all. 5:49 PM Not 2000 then. Whatever area they have set up around the thorn 5:49 PM Even if 2000 is destroyed by incident zero, it’s implied something of the foundation has remained. 5:50 PM Yeah, in Part 2 it explicitly states 2000 was destroyed, or at least heavily damaged. http://scp-wiki.wikidot.com/incident-zero-part-2 5:50 PM A normal site but one that has a secret layer for the thorn, as no one but O5-10 knows about that... and we could use her to explain some shit to our characters 5:50 PM But part 2 is before the reset 5:50 PM Oh that's true. 5:51 PM The finale references 2000 5:51 PM When the O5s are talking 5:52 PM So would the crack be something similar to what happened in IZ? Something that threatens to destroy it again? 5:53 PM So... what can we infer about the Thorn, though? It's a remnant of the bloom because of the flower motif 5:53 PM Maybe... well, one sec... 5:53 PM > Besides, how much of the 20th-2█th centuries do we really want to re-write, and how many times? Isn’t one ‘Great War’ hard enough to keep track of? 5:53 PM Not gonna lie, I pretty much know nothing about what the Thorn actually is or is meant to represent. 5:53 PM From 2000 ^ 5:54 PM Let's say the thorn is the tendency for each reset to get worse. At least in the context of what we're doing. 5:54 PM Or at least, imply it; don't want the audience to get too comfortable with it. 5:54 PM The thorn is almost untouched by Rez so far 5:54 PM I think it’s wide open for this interpretation 5:55 PM Yeah, that would make sense. Maybe have a tale where the world continuous to reset over and over again and show the same day of one researcher progressively grow darker with each iteration. 5:55 PM Sounds like a plan, red. A prologue? 5:55 PM Yessss 5:55 PM Makes sense 5:55 PM Or a side story, one that's not connected to the main plot. 5:56 PM Something short to set the context 5:56 PM Almost like an... overture. 5:56 PM Yea! 5:56 PM Anyways. If that's what the Thorn is, then let's continue the flower motif and say that it's rotten now. It's tunneling into Yellowstone's magma pools and infecting the earth itself. 5:56 PM Too cartoony? 5:57 PM I don't think we have to be that literal with it, but the idea that is a degeneration of the bloom is certainly fitting 5:57 PM I like the idea of the flower rotting over time until eventually, all that's left is the thorn. 5:57 PM yea 5:57 PM Maybe have it just be a metaphor. Like over each iteration in the prologue, the researcher has a flower at their desk that eventually rots away to nothing. 5:58 PM Well, no, what happened with Able cut the Bloom and left the thorn, right? 5:58 PM Ooooh and the researcher does the same at the end of the tale? Destroys the flower, leaves the stem? 5:58 PM Right, it was Able that short circuited the bloom 5:59 PM Yup. Eventually, they give up and just throw the entire thing out. 6:01 PM And even though Able thinks that destroying the Bloom was a good idea, he failed to realize the threat that the Thorn posed. As it died, it split the timeline and affected the local area with the Thorn's influence. So everyone there gets that *feeling*. Maybe O5-10 can use Nagi's analogy of the flower rotting and infecting the Earth when explaining what the Thorn is. 6:02 PM Okay. Okay. We're doing good work here. 6:03 PM https://usercontent.irccloud-cdn.com/file/StWa6baR/27d.jpg 6:03 PM I'm embracing my inner Facebook meme-sharing dad. 6:04 PM I was thinking of this but okay https://usercontent.irccloud-cdn.com/file/mflV0SRf/Screen%20Shot%202020-09-01%20at%209.03.49%20PM.png 6:05 PM Erm, anyways, final concern: the premise seems a bit cut-and-dry. Entering the thorn willfully as part of an organized mission gives the audience too much "ground" to stand on. 6:05 PM Moreover how does the foundation know you can "enter" the thorn, whatever that entails? 6:05 PM I don't think we're doing the "physical tears in space" thing, like we said earlier. 6:07 PM I imagined that the Foundation would take actions similar to the ones they took during IZ, with them entering the Site and investigating the things that are happening there. Maybe the Foundation can find out that there's a kind of "hotspot" for activity, one where reality seems to stop and start infinitely. And then once a character reaches that point, they get sucked in and experience the climax. 6:08 PM I also envisioned the team that we're creating here as a kind of beta team, one that scouts out the dangers so that the main team (Alpha-9) doesn't get blind-sided. I'd imagine the Foundation would want their best team for something like this. 6:11 PM Mm... maybe there's some intra-site politics going on, with GOI moles and such. And that culminates in something about the thorn changing and some characters are sucked in 6:12 PM I'm trying to think of like... what reality failures are you referring to? 6:14 PM > How long ago did the Daeva Civilization fall? Is SCP-343 God or not? What is SCP-001? 6:14 PM IZ 5 indicates that these are historical/conceptual holes. 6:15 PM Um... I recognize that my ideas for the failures might not fit well into the structure Grigori set up, but I imagine that the Thorn's influence starts off small, affecting the characters in only minor ways. And that all culminates in a massive reality failure that starts a breach. But then, half of the researchers don't even recognize that a breach is going on. And then anomalies and entire MTFs just start disappearing. 6:15 PM If that's the case then maybe we can have... shoot, it's hard to describe, but having some mole or character exploit one of these conceptual holes in an effort to do something (kill the thorn maybe?) but which just incites the main action and sucks everyone in 6:16 PM Well, I think that might tread a little too close to the "cultist of the abyss" thing, with the character almost representing the holes. 6:16 PM That could work! 6:16 PM Hmm? How do you mean? 6:18 PM Like, you know how early on we said that we didn't really want the antagonist to be a singular character? I feel like that's what would happen if we have a mole-type character that exploits the holes. I like the idea of having a mole in the first place, though, since it forces the Foundation to distrust the team that they assembled and could open the door for some Grade-A manipulation like having the Foundation test each 6:18 PM character's loyalty by making them get closer and closer to the Thorn. 6:19 PM But to tie it to the rest of the outline, the Foundation recognizes that there is something massively wrong with this Site, Light meets Bright or someone else and starts assembling a team. Lucretia gets recruited. Badda badda boom, the rest of the story happens. 6:19 PM Mole wouldn't be the main villain or anything but all that sounds great! 6:20 PM Sounds sick.