gee0765 site crits 2: electric boogaloo

Both the "let me fucking die" diary entry and the drawn out commentary at the end were wholly unnecessary, and ruined what could've easily been a good -EX article. The first one is an extremely overused trope, especially on the wiki, and the second didn't add anything beyond forcing a message that I didn't need to enjoy the article down my throat in the least interesting way possible.

The "bear arms" pun is mildly entertaining at best, and this article has no real content beyond it. The log doesn't bring anything new to the table, and is an entirely predictable series of events. And this is all looking beyond the fact that it would be ridiculously hard to completely remove the second amendment.

As is all so common with pataphysics articles, this article attempts to impress the reader with concepts, at the expense of a compelling narrative. It attempts to survive solely off of hinting at parts of the SCP Wiki website, with the actual story of the foundation managing to control what's written about it being drowned in surface-level references to IRC and the forums.

The vast majority of this is just setting the scene for nothing actually interesting to happen. Any hints at actual content beyond what essentially feels like the introduction to a sitcom (e.g whatever's underneath the restaurant) are left undeveloped in favour of unfunny jokes.

The problem with this is one that's common with -EXs, in that I knew exactly how this would end as soon as I'd read the description. And unfortunately, for me, the intended idea (to emphasise just how cold and uncaring the actual universe is) really didn't land, leaving me ultimately just disappointed at how predictable this was.

This follows exactly the same pattern as so many other -EX articles (the foundation used to think a thing was anomalous but it turned out that it actually wasn't), which would be more than enough for a downvote even without ascribing the tragic deaths of several real people to the foundation, which is in exceedingly poor taste.

This article really drags, which is almost impressive considering that it's less than 800 words long. The discovery (which makes no sense coming before the description) starts off with the SCP- prefix being forgotten and continues in a similarly sloppy manner, while also being mostly irrelevant and something that would have made much more sense condensed down to the important information and slotted into the description. The subpar tone continues through the rest of the article, which would be something I could probably have looked past if the story being told was any good. It isn't.

I'm spoon-fed exactly what's being hinted at with zero effective subtlety, with the article trying to make me feel bad for characters (who have not been characterised in any way) purely because they're orphaned children, an approach which comes across as cheap and ineffective. Finally, the story is pretty much entirely wrapped up after the first addendum; the second one feels entirely bolted on and a failed attempt to add another angle to the story.

The repeated collapsibles to "check vitals" were gimmicky back in SCP-2316 and are even more so now. It's instantly obvious how they're going to progress and this didn't stray from that pattern at all.

Beyond that, the actual horror really doesn't land, since the (pretty decent) exploration into the mandela effect is dropped in favour of a generic jumpscare, and one which really isn't even that scary (Tom Hanks is probably one of the least scary people alive).

There's quite a few problems with this. Firstly, the SPaG and clinical tone are very weak in parts, and could definitely do with being looked at a little.

Beyond that, the interview is far, far too long for the amount of important content in it. It doesn't attempt to characterise either the mannequin or the interviewer, and apart from some information about how exactly the anomalies work (which I don't really care about as a reader) the only part that's remotely relevant to the rest of the story is Hiveldyll being assigned to the SCP. The dialogue is also incredibly unrealistic at points.

The log at the end feels like forced wholesomeness. It relies on the Foundation doing things completely unlike them (allowing two anomalies to interact, even if they're Safe-class, is unnecessarily dangerous) and because of the complete and utter lack of anything resembling effective characterisation in the interview log, it seems out of character. All I can think of that justifies it is them thanking the researcher for giving them tasks and a purpose, but seeing as they were totally capable of doing tasks (the birthday party) without being given instructions, this doesn't really work.