 Criticism may not be agreeable, but it is necessary. It fulfills the same function as pain to the human body. It calls attention to an unhealthy state of things. Winston Churchill Welcome to episode 009 of The Foundation. First of all, I'd like to say hello to the Site 42 fan works community, and I'd like to thank The Sherm for hosting this half of the episode on his own channel. Today, I'm going to critique an SCP draft by an established site author, who goes by the name Weryllium. Now this critique has already been given, I'm going to use the critique that I gave him in chat directly in order to structure the podcast. As always, majority of this podcast will contain my own opinions and thoughts on the SCP Foundation, the SCP Wiki, and the writing process. Regardless, remember that there is only one real rule in the SCP universe. There is no canon. Part one, what the draft does wrong. Item number, SCP-XXXX. Now that's normal, because this is a draft and not a finished product. Object class, Keeter, special containment procedures. Agents embedded within car companies. Okay, we'll stop here. Car companies is a somewhat informal word to use. This should probably read the automotive industry for tone. As an aside, when you say car companies, people make less of a connection to Ford, GM, or Volkswagen than they do if you say automotive industry. So this does double duty in that it is better at delivering the information it intends to deliver and it's better for tone. Better tone does not mean obfuscation of meaning and can very easily enhance it instead. Now back to the draft. Agents embedded in car companies are to modify all newly produced car computers and again we can use internal computers for tone rather than car computers to render them incapable of generating SCP-XXXX. All reports of spatial anomalies in parking lots are to be investigated, traced, and the person here will use the word individual for tone instead of person who caused SCP-XXX amnesticized. Description. SCP-XXXX is a two-dimensional hypotrocoid curve represented by a pair of parametric equations. SCP-XXXX's anomalous properties manifest only when several conditions are met. At least one loop of SCP-XXXX must be traced by a vehicle's center of mass. The vehicle must be controlled by a human driver inside or onboard the vehicle. Now I pointed out to the author that this seems to imply they tested it with animals. The author clarified that the point was actually supposed to be that this doesn't work with automated vehicles. So rephrasing this to something like the vehicle is not automated would be more exact and better informs the reader. The vehicle must be in a parking lot with at least one other vehicle. When all conditions are met, SCP-XXXX will cause a parking space to become available to the vehicle through one of two ways. If a space is available anywhere within the boundaries of the parking lot, cars and other obstacles will be shifted until a space is within direct view of the driver. If no spaces are available, three-dimensional space within the boundaries of the parking lot will warp gradually until an additional parking space manifests. This effect will revert once the car that invoked SCP-XXX leaves the parking lot. So I'm going to stop here for a moment and talk about how the article is simply taken too much time to get to the anomalous properties of the item. Know your audience. Unless the non-anomalous elements are particularly compelling, the reader is here for the anomaly. The first or second sentence of a description should deliver on that at least partially, and the rest of the description should continue to expand on that promise. It's a basic rule of reader engagement. If you need to make them wait for the best parts, you gotta tease them from the start. A better way to lead off the article might be to say, SCP-XXXX is a two-dimensional hypotroquoid curve represented by a pair of parametric equations when certain conditions are met. Reproducing this pattern with a motor vehicle will cause a parking space to become available in direct view of the vehicle's driver. With this, you immediately understand what makes this object anomalous. It takes a very complex premise and breaks it down into two sentences while still allowing for expansion, because what conditions, you might ask. The rest of the details can be outlined in the following paragraphs, and because it's fulfilling the introduction's promise, it will keep the reader more engaged. In this draft, the information is delivered in list form because it's a complex concept, but one can simplify without having to resort to listing off details. Retain a paragraph structure unless it is absolutely necessary to go into a list. You'll find it's easier to expand your concepts this way. Anyway, back to the reading of the draft. In either case, the speed of this process is directly proportional to the radius of the SCP-XXXX instance formed. Observers outside of the vehicle but inside the parking lot will fail to notice these effects. Of note, a king vulture, Sarkarampas Papa, hereafter designated SCP-XXXX-1, will always be seen circling over the vehicle, even if SCP-XXXX is used outside of the king vulture's natural habitat. Attempts to capture or attack SCP-XXXX-1 universally fail and revert all effects of SCP-XXXX. Discovery. SCP-XXXX was first observed in the parking lot of a shopping mall in Aguas Calientes, Mexico, when the construction crew reported consistent discrepancies in their work that could not be explained by machine error or user error. Local agents investigated the mall but could not replicate the anomaly and the incident was designated as a singular, extra-normal event. EE-11605. EE-11605 was confirmed at least six more times by the use of Minkowski spacetime monitors and was eventually traced to a single vehicle belonging to a Mr. Rodolfo Marquez. The car was successfully acquired by Foundation personnel and contained, along with a large number of occult items inside the car. After another instance of EE-11605 and after extensive testing failed to show any anomalous properties in either the car or its contents, the car was returned to Mr. Marquez. And he was interrogated. Now, we'll stop here for a moment. It's best not to throw the word interrogated around. Interrogation has a very specific and somewhat hostile meaning. The word you should use in this situation is generally interviewed, unless there are serious efforts to get information out of the individual and that effort is made clear in the text. Back to the draft, Mr. Marquez claimed that the shape that would later be designated SCP-XXXX was taught to him by his late father during childhood and that he continued to use it in his memory. Now, here I suggested that the author use the words his father's memory because at this point you're drawing around several male pronouns and it can become very difficult at the end of the sentence to understand what is referring to what. Mr. Marquez also claimed an awareness, which again, I had to give it a suggestion for wording here. Claimed an awareness is technically correct, but you can tell just from the way it sounds. It sounds awkwardly phrased. Normally, when you want to communicate this idea, you would use the phrase claimed to be unaware. Back to the draft, Mr. Marquez also claimed an awareness of any anomalous phenomena resulting from SCP-XXXX. During the initial investigations, a junior researcher at Site 104 accidentally, and we'll talk about that word later, invoked SCP-XXX in the Site 104 parking lot. SCP-XXXX appeared as usual, but landed on the car and pecked at the window. When junior researcher Eastman, unaware of SCP-XXXX, opened the window slightly, SCP-XXXX-1 vocalized in Spanish before flying away and disappearing. However, Eastman did not speak Spanish, so the reason for the unexpected landing is unknown. Immediately after SCP-XXXX-1 disappeared, Eastman found a die-caste toy car matching the make and model of his own car in his glove compartment. This toy car was decorated with vultures and partial SCP-XXX instances, and matches no existing toy models. Additionally, the toy car has a small sticker fixed to the interior of the windshield reading Estacionamiento Reservado, which is Spanish for reserved parking. Review of the comprehensive log of items present in Mr. Marquez's vehicle included one custom die-cast toy car with similar decoration. When questioned about it, Mr. Marquez stated that it had been given to him by his father. He was then amnesticized and released. Alright, so that ends the actual draft, but we're going to spend a little bit of time first talking about the last three paragraphs. Now see, the primary problem is the accidental invocation of the ritual. Why is an accidental invocation an issue? Well, the Foundation is already fully aware of this anomaly, and at some point they're going to be testing it because the exact conditions are already outlined in the description. Those had to have been tested for. So this sort of thing could have happened during those tests. Beyond that, having an accidental trigger by Foundation staff right as the anomaly is being contained, that's just a bit too unbelievable. See, we as writers play on both sides of something called willing suspension of disbelief, and it's the idea that a reader will suspend some of their objections based on realism or logic in order to enjoy a piece, but you can't ask them to go too far or it spoils the illusion you're building. This accidental trigger goes a bit too far and, worse, does so unnecessarily. Beyond that, the last three paragraphs spend time dealing with an emotional undercurrent that developed around the beginning of the discovery. This article evolves essentially into two different stories by the end. An object description about anomalous parking, and an emotional father and son story. Now there's nothing wrong with that. It weaves them together fairly well at the start of the discovery, but it starts to focus harder on the father-son story towards the end. There's a bit of narrative fuzziness that leaves the piece as a whole feeling weaker than it otherwise would. I suggested to the author that a testing log might help to resolve the focus a bit, that he should cut the last three paragraphs out and use their content along with additional content in a set of testing logs that expands the piece in a way that better interweave the two disparate story threads. Ultimately, this draft has several flaws which make it mediocre. However, fixing that problem is part of the drafting process. So of course, at this point, it being mediocre is not a problem. However, even given that, I believe that this could survive on the site as is. Now without outside factors being involved, I'd give it at most plus 75, and probably a more realistic rating of plus 50 by the time it plateaus and voting. Although that's just an estimate based on the current draft. This could change dramatically between now and posting. Now you're going to get a link in the second part of the video to the article itself as posted and you'll be able to make your own judgments there from how it's changed and you'll be able to see what the rating is. This article still does a lot of things right or else it wouldn't be able to survive on the site as is. And we're going to go over what it does right in part two on my own channel. Click the video link on your screen now to check it out. And don't forget to subscribe to both my own channel and Site 42.