RTME STAFF BOX

August 2020
SCP-5217: Liber Monstrorum (JohnstonFilmStudio)

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I'm left kind of unsatisfied here. The concept isn't completely bad, I'll admit. A book that changes a person depending on what they write is a novel concept. My primary issue is with how this is executed.

I'm going to skip over the glaring flaws (such as the redactions and the containment procedures) since those are covered in the How To Write An SCP guide. I'm going to focus on how this was delivered. We're told that the book changes people. We're told that it completely transformed someone. And we never get to see that. It's a missed opportunity. The potential to detail the body horror of such an event is strong, but it's overlooked in favor of exposition of the event from an interview.

Furthermore, the event of exactly how they came across the notebook's capabilities is such a long stretch. I would have believed it if someone read some instructions somewhere, but for someone who "isn't right in the head" doing the very specific thing to activate it and then having it be the automatic worst outcome? It breaks my suspension of disbelief.

Hence my downvote.

SCP-5118: The Trenches (12345679)

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This concept doesn't really go much of anywhere. Sparing some of the glaring grammatical errors and the bits of strikethrough and blackboxing in the containment procedures, nothing about this article is remarkable. It's a straightforward anomaly: trenches in which images of World War 1 soldiers manifest and do war against each other.

And that's it. Nothing really happens. Researchers are asked to direct permission requests to their Head Researcher and the article ends.

I would have liked to have seen more out of this concept, but it's so bare bones that I don't really know what direction this could have been taken. People hear and see the terrors of war… and then what? Any more expansion on this article would have been a step in the right direction.

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