SCP-085: Hand-drawn Cassy

SCP-085: Hand-drawn Cassy Cassy is one of those SCPs where the experiment sounds fascinating and the treatment of the person it creates makes me increasingly uncomfortable. SCP-085 started as a drawing made with SCP-067, the Artist's Pen. Putting that drawing through SCP-914 on its Fine setting produced a living, aware woman who exists in two dimensions. She prefers Cassy, communicates through writing and signs, and can move between touching paper or canvas surfaces. There's a lot to enjoy in the idea itself. Drawn objects can become usable to her, and entering different artwork changes her visual style. In a comic, she can even communicate through speech and thought bubbles. As somebody who writes, I can see why a character who literally lives inside artwork would be hard to leave alone. But creating someone also leaves you responsible for what happens to them. That's where my interest shifts away from what the researchers can test and toward what kind of life they're actually giving her. They initially hide her nature by telling her she's the last human in a ruined world. She eventually discovers the truth by entering a copy of her own containment report. Some researchers then argue for destroying her. That decision is overturned. I really don't like the logic of claiming you're protecting somebody from distress while supplying them with a different, enormous reason to be distressed. How is believing everyone else died supposed to be a comfortable life? And once the deception fails, treating her existence as the problem feels especially ugly. The part I like most is her building a Mustang from technical drawings, piece by piece, over a year. That gives her something to do beyond being observed. To me, that matters more than another clever demonstration of her abilities. A project can give somebody a reason to look forward to the next day. It doesn't have to fix every problem to be worth doing. I'd much rather see the people around her keep looking for things she wants to make, learn, or experience. The interesting question becomes what a decent life could look like for her, instead of how many tricks they can get out of a drawing. https://t.co/6UW1Y5ggYU