Board Thread:Writer's Workshop/@comment-5614678-20180904175226/@comment-10502460-20180905014456

Maybe I'm biased since I've never been a big fan of pastas that follow the "hasty lab journal that slowly descends into darkness" formula to begin with, but I agree with Bloody. This is basically SCP meets Russian Sleep Experiment minus any of the elements that made either of those things good.

To start off, your introductory paragraphs that are supposed to form the "official document" part of the story don't read like a professional document at all and fall well below the standards of clinical tone on SCP (although to be fair even a lot of prominent SCP writers have shaky professional tone.)

"The following document is compiled from the informal journal entries of Doctor Keter* and should only be viewed by high-level personnel."

This text is presumably part of the document, so it would't be "the following document." "Compiled from the informal journal entries of Doctor Keter" is a clumsy way to put it for a top-secret document, and "high-level personnel" is too vague.

"If you refuse to submit to the process, you are warned that you could face severe consequences, such as total lobotomization or even demotion."

This sentence is also extremely clumsy for a supposedly professional government document.

As for the body, it's frankly a mess. For starters, I don't really get what the "Shriekers" are supposed to be beyond generic crazy people with special abilities. You seem to assign their characteristics haphazardly; for example, first the doctor refers to them as "walking telepaths" but then later it appears that their predominant abilities are telekinetic, not telepathic. Then he goes back to referring to them as "psychic" and even ascribes "alchemy" as one of their abilities.

The protagonist has no discernible character arc other than maybe "he goes insane." His educational background, credentials, place on the agency hierarchy, etc. are all unclear, and not in a good way. Furthermore, the journal entries do not read like someone with an advanced degree in STEM. While I don't mind the choice to have him speak in a more casual and informal tone as opposed to being all official and clinical, all the entries seem to reflect a spastic state of mind rather than an ordered and disciplined mind. When he relates his methodology, it's a sixth-grade science class level of procedural depth. It actually kind of makes me imagine some crazy guy impersonating a doctor who is just performing brain surgery on random subjects without having a clue what he's doing.

And again, it's fine to have him use an informal tone, but even his informal tone should bespeak of a level of eclectic knowledge beyond what is presented here. For example: " Another one apparently found a way to blast lightning out from his cranium." Does this sound like something a top scientist working for an elite top secret agency would put in his log, even an informal log.

Then there's the agency he works for. I don't really mind that the agency is left unnamed, but I do mind that there is absolutely nothing provided in terms of this entity's mission, values, resource base, core competencies, legal legitimacy, or ultimate agenda. The protagonist says "they'll make for great labor and shock troops." Erm, what? So is this agency a professional organization dedicated to researching and containing humans with special abilities, or is it a bunch of power-hungry mad scientists who want to take over the world? Either is find I guess, but it can hardly be both.

Overall, having read through your other stories on this wiki, this seems well below what you are capable of.

Now on to the question of whether this violates the spinpasta rule. I don't think there's a problem in that regard except for maybe the "Keter" thing. My speculation is that the admins might take issue with that not because it makes the story a spinpasta per se, but because it could give the impression to others of being somehow directly connected to SCP. I mean think if you were a new user to this wiki unfamiliar with the spinpasta rule, you read the spinpasta rule and see that it basically says no stories are allowed that are based on well known pasta material including but not limited to SCP, Smiledog, Abandoned By Disney, Jeff the Killer, Slenderman, etc, etc, but then you see a story by a prominent author on this wiki that uses the word "Keter" and seems to have something to do with SCP based on that fact. Us regulars here may understand that you mean it as an homage and nothing more, but that could send mixed signals to people who are shaky with the spinpasta rule, and beyond that it seems like a pointless reference to me personally anyway. So while I don't think it violates the rule prima facie, I'd omit "Keter" just to be safe. As for the other things that may be seen as SCP-like such as "redacted" and "clearance level", those are probably fine, and "redacted" in particular I have seen used in other official-document type pastas without being sanctioned for violating the spin rule.