+1 welp
we got one good page
tbh i thought "Level # is nothing." was better than "Level # is an absolute nothingness."
but this is good
this is real good
You promised you'd take me there again some day… but you never did.
Unnumbered Level - "Ataraxia" / Discussion
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This is the discussion related to the wiki page Unnumbered Level - "Ataraxia".
I will say, I’m quite disappointed.
When I heard that the great DivineAtlas, one of if not the most coveted and well-loved author for the past 2 years, was pairing with the quick-to-fame DrAkimoto with 70+ pages on SCP, I was expecting you both to blow this contest out of the water.
I wasn’t necessarily expecting spectacular, but I’ll say that I certainly wasn’t expecting this.
By no means am I saying that this page is bad. It is incredibly well-written. The careful choice behind each word and phrase, the refinement of the prose, the brainstorming and discussion that must’ve surrounded this page’s drafting process, it has certainly paid off. The two of you have a way with words, and it’s important that we recognize that fact.
That being said, this feels… incomplete. Rushed, even. This page was almost a guaranteed home run, but it’s as if you just stopped at first and waited for the outfielder to run up and give it back to the pitcher. There’s effort, I recognize that, but there’s no nuance. There’s barely even despair in my opinion.
I understand that’s kind of the point, that nothingness is neutral, it is neither hope nor despair, but when you put it in the context of it being an escape, it feels more hopeful than what you’re intending.
The horror with escapism is that it works. It’s comforting, it’s safe, and even if nothingness is a perfect 72°F, it’ll feel warm and cozy to those who have been trapped in the confines of a -10°F winter.
There are a million avenues I can imagine this page going down, a million ways that you could’ve made the idea of nothing horrifying. You could expand on the horror of escapism, you could go the opposite direction and talk about how numb and dull it is in comparison to a loving and heartwarming past and you’re now stuck in endless voids of null. You could even just talk about the idea of nothingness itself and that would’ve also worked.
But this just… doesn’t.
There’s a way to make short pages good. To make them emotional, to really grab your reader by the shoulders and pull them into something so dreadful and depressing that they’re left crying behind their screen. I know because short n’ sweet is arguably my niche on the site, and what I’ve learned is that every word is valuable. Every word needs to hit the nail right on the head, because there’s so little room to work. You need to pack each phrase with so much raw emotion or else it doesn’t work. And this just didn’t for me.
I felt bad for the kid, sure, but that was just about it. You can dress up a page in fancy prose and flowery language, but literature and art needs to envoke emotion. There were so many ways you could’ve struck me down with fear and misery, use the theme of despair to your advantage, but you just didn’t.
This page is but a fragment of what it could’ve been, and for that, I’m novoting.
I hope you both receive this well, and I look forward to what you post next.
Hard disagree, the point was to not overexplain what it is. This is despair because it's the place you go when you despair, it's where you hide from it.
Unfold
Re: novote (slightly downvote-leaning but I’m not that mean) by 
DivineAtlas, 22 Jul 2025 03:48
I get that but that doesn’t really change the fact that this page didn’t really make me feel anything.
I get how it’s supposed to work for despair, but it didn’t really work for me.
But I know that I probably have a very different definition of what “despair” is than the next guy, so that’s why I novoted
I'm gonna address your post in two parts.
First, the part that's about the article's content.
There’s effort, I recognize that, but there’s no nuance.
I felt bad for the kid, sure, but that was just about it.
If you can't relate to this, that's fine. Or maybe you can, and it still didn't speak to you. That's okay, this page isn't really for you. The situation put forth in this page, described extremely vividly through prose and dialogue that is just heartrending, is horrific. Having parents who violently quarrel is traumatizing for any kid who experiences it, and this page does a good job at portraying how that feels.
One particularly good detail — which was good even before I dressed it up in CSS — is that it not only shows the fight, but the moment when the father comes upstairs afterwards. We don't get to see what happens next — physical abuse, verbal? An attempt at gaslighting? We block the possibilities out and flee with the kid to the darkness. It's so honest, it's so real. I feel like you gloss over a lot of what's here, the attention to detail spent bringing this scene to gruesome life. Your claim that there is no nuance in this page is patently ridiculous.
Your attitude towards this page honestly comes off as condescension.
The horror with escapism is that it works.
You analyze this page from the standpoint of the intended horror angle being the escapism, seeming to reach the conclusion that it misses the mark. And you're right, it's not that page. It isn't literally about how escapism hurts you, that's all in between the lines. The overt horror seems to be instead coming from the parental and marital abuse. Anything deeper about the way escapism can harm an individual seems to be what comes after this page, not what is within its scope. That's okay — this shit's got franchise potential!
Now, the part about the article's creation process
Note: I know you deleted this paragraph, so for context, here's what was in the original post I first began writing this reply to.
I feel that this is largely a result of the production process of this page. I know this is a backup, because Akimoto said it is. I’ve seen how much you both have gone from one thing to another to another to another, hopping between drafts like it’s nothing. Hell, you even changed who you were writing with in the first place multiple times. This is truly the page of a team of procrastinators, because I know exactly how rushed you both were to get this out. Your talent is notable, and you’ve written this well, but it’s clear you didn’t really give this the time in the oven that it needed to really land.
Your recinding of this paragraph due to Atlas' initial reaction to it in TS is appreciated, but I still want to reply to address the fact that this was an extremely rude thing for you to say and it cut deep.
This is truly the page of a team of procrastinators, because I know exactly how rushed you both were to get this out.
Honestly, how dare you? You don't know anything about what was happening on this team. Many members of our team — like Akimoto himself — were constantly doing herculean amounts of work, far from procrastination. And he's a guy with a job and a kid.
Collabs can break down for reasons that don't have to do with procrastination. Timezones can prove troublesome, ideas that seemed good can turn out not to hold water. Sometimes you run out of steam on a page, and want to write something else. Sometimes, you were writing one thing, and then you have a better idea. Which… he did in this case, no shade to what came before.. That's why ideas were switched multiple times in the creation process of this piece.
Despair team's morale also has been gravely hit by users who are not on Discord and find it hard to get critique because of this — I mean, no wonder we're basically phasing out non-Discord users by requiring people to enter the server to apply for the site — posting pages that are of a low degree of quality and bombing the team's rating, spoiling the plans we had been crafting together. That's not your fault as the contest organizer, but it's also not really the fault of the constituent of Despair that were really working as a team in our team Discord server. A team of hardworking, dedicated people.
I've already expressed by dissatisfaction concerning this contest, and I feel you're blaming its apparent failure to provide a fun experience for all on the apparent sloth of my team. You express this on Discord all the time, too.
But even if Animeroar's amazing despair page will now be postponed since he set his scope too large what a procrastinator , even if Alba has had to focus on his masters degree and his real life how dare he and even if Wynths is a new author who has produced thousands of words of impressive prose but needs to take time to modify them to fit the wiki better because procrastination always leads to writing thousands of good words,… I will know no matter what the result is that our team did try. We are not a team of procrastinators. Not all of us, at least!
And whether or not this was a backup, or a result of procrastination, or from a team of procrastinators… doesn't really impact the high level of quality you too acknowledge this piece has.
You promised you'd take me there again some day… but you never did.
Unfold
Re: novote (slightly downvote-leaning but I’m not that mean) by 
scutoid studios, 22 Jul 2025 05:06
Very much agree, especially with the mention 🔥
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Re: novote (slightly downvote-leaning but I’m not that mean) by 
Anime_Roar, 22 Jul 2025 05:30
I decided in the end not to do the contest because I set my scope too high. Better to make a work that lives up to the idea than to rush it. It realistically will take me like 6 months to make this work, not a mere 1.
Plus Javascript wizardry like I am making probably would get a lot of votes just for being cool. It may not really be fair on the good writers like Atlas, who make simple yet emotion-evoking pieces. It also wouldn't have been as clear cut for the theme of whichever team I ended up on, though based on this page, that may not have been as much an issue given the possible angles of interpretation.
I'll give my thoughts on this page in a separate post, but my points are that "procrastination", as it is described, really doesn't do justice to the work people do in this small time-frame. Those who can salvage something out of such big plans are doing a lot more work than you'd think, and there's no shame in taking more time to make something work if you have slow periods. Writers block is also a very real thing (just ask Robert. He suffers from it a lot, often weeks at a time)
Unfold
Re: novote (slightly downvote-leaning but I’m not that mean) by 
MC_Crafter_24_7, 24 Jul 2025 18:35
I have never made an effort to read a whole page. I usually lie saying that I read it all or that I'm just too busy to read it. It's not the fault of time, but of my interest. I tend to lose interest and drown in boredom when I read something and there are times when I don't even get halfway there. Alone… I abandon it. It's not the fault of time. It never is. I tend to just get bored when the text overwhelms me and I feel like I'm not going to get anywhere with the information.
I'm from the hope team, but I really admit that this is good and at least for me. The writings here were not suffocating or excessive. It doesn't seem that there is filler and I like that, I admit. This is good. As I read, I thought I would abandon it as I always do with other people's writings, but that wasn't the case.
Everything seemed superficial, and the more I read, the more I managed to feel myself in the child's body, in his mind… From his perspective. Desperate, in my room, wishing that the screaming would stop and that everything would go back to normal, and that the painful experiences were just nightmares or memories that never existed. I wanted to save the child, I wanted to put myself on your level and be able to rescue him from his life and tell him that everything would be fine, that this little one would play and that his toy would be repaired.
I didn't want to leave him alone. It hurt me to even think that the father was about to take it out on him when he went to his room.
Everything became so sensitive and I could hear the screams exploding in my ear. I don't wish this on any child.
It really touched me, and I have no pride but shame to say that I am a very unsympathetic person and I can pretend empathy at times, but this really touched me and made me to have a kind of desperation for wanting to rescue the little one.
But I couldn't. And that was my despair.
I am not lying when I say that this did not touch me in the depths of my soul. I'm not lying when I say that the screams felt so real. And I'm not lying when I say that I wanted to be in Ataraxia sometimes.
Rhauniel Strange-(Yilda Dagger) "Author of Horroria"
jesus christ
as someone that experienced this as a very, very young child this hit really really hard.
been there done that.
goddamn
i hate the way this makes me feel
perfect job, y'all,
easy upvote for me
As a child, I'd press my fingers against my closed eyes lightly to see shapes dancing around. For me it was a source of amusement and wonder. For others, it was a mean to not exist for a few short seconds.
No kids should go through that.
+1
I think this is an interesting take on despair and also on levels aa a whole. While yeah maybe the depiction of abuse leans slightly towards stereotypical I don't think it really disrupts the page. Plus the page captures an aspect of abuse which is massively overlooked and that is the fear of consequences at the end. We don't know what the dad does and even an outcome where he tries to comfort the kid is still an awful outcome because it is still instilled with a horrible sort of fear. All in all I like this page.
not used to leaving comments other than on ao3 but ill do my best !!
so read through it
tried to put myself into the story
was going fine at first
got some sad music
but uh
its a bit too short for me
and i think i miss the more in depth descriptions you could have done
ive never lived it but i know friends who did
and yea sure it described it well
but i think it lacked more emotions than that
i want to feel more than the physical perception of stuff
i want to read about how the body reacts
how i feel cold, i shiver, my throat tightens, my hands seek for purchase i feel frozen and helpless
because essentially
there is nothing i could do to stop this from happening
and its a vicious cycle and i figured it out but i'm still scared everytime it repeats and damn does every time their voices module a tiny bit up into decibels it makes me jump
my heart beats so fast i can feel it in my throat and i feel tears on my waterline but, no,
i shouldnt cry, everything is going to be okay, i'm going to be fine, we're going to be fine and i close my eyes and find relief in how soft and heavy my comforter feels
thank god it stops
thank god the feelings stop pouring in
i must become nothing
nothing is my friend
so yeah big comment to all in all say that this anyways was a good introductory
but it made me feel like i was missing something for some reason ?
i need moar
gimme more feelings raaahhhh
if it was a bit longer i wouldve given an easy upvote !!
anyways, i think this could be easily fixable by expending on this, maybe dropping some tales to complete it but ye, overall good job guys :3
stix
I never finished my critique on this, but the TLDR was generally that this was great! It had a lot of emotion, especially in the ending bits that sort of resonate with how I felt in my younger years.
My only real critique is the beginning of the section, which felt fictional, if that makes sense. My abuse wasn't the same as everyone's, so I can't speak for everyone, but the beginning part telling me I was afraid didn't resonate with my experience as much as I just hated the fact my parents yelled more than what they were saying and just sort of dissociated as soon as I knew it was happening (which was shown later, but you get my point I think.) So just a bit of trimming, really, and while it definitely was on the more stereotypical side of how abuse is portrayed with how I see it shown in fiction, that doesn't really diminish my +1 or how I see the article.
Glad I was able to crit the article with what I was able to and I'm even more grateful I got to read it!
So, this page has a lot to talk about. I'll break it down into my initial thoughts, as well as my thoughts upon giving it a second read.
It is surprisingly short for a collab. I do understand that length does not determine quality by any means, and for the little bit that is there, it is very well-written. I love literary and descriptive writing. And I love the theme choices to convey a dreadful, yet serene nothingness. A lack of personal stylistic choices is actually why I feel that my entry from the last blitz, Teddy, is not my favorite work, not by a long shot. Was it bad? No. But I much prefer Level 175 for sticking to a theme and allowing me to write more freely (even if at the time, I was trying to stick to a very Goerman-like format). I definitely have room to grow with my works before I feel that I produce my absolute best ones. The point is, I love the touches this page chooses to include, and how it goes for very emotional imagery and descriptions.
As someone who deals with a lot of depression and existential dread, I can understand these kinds of feelings. Granted, everyone's experience with pain and trauma is different, which may explain the differing interpretations of this page and how it makes people feel. I do think that for those who went through a similar experience, this will hit close to home. I'm fortunate to have a good family, so it probably doesn't hit me as quite as relatable as it does for others. The closest experience I've ever had that pressured me into wanting to disappear in that very moment is probably my social anxiety when making speeches and the like. The deeper, darker emotions I've felt were more subtle, long-lasting ones that gave a more gloomy perspective of the world at times. There was no pressing desire to disappear in my cases, and instead, lots of times where I questioned existence and the meaning of life. Maybe wanting to sleep and not wake up on some days is somewhat comparable to wanting to see Ataraxia, even if it was just due to feeling tired of everything, as opposed to dreading it?
The psycho-analysis of this goes very deep, and I think the biggest reason it is a novote/downvote to some people is due to how it does not speak to their own personal experiences/feelings in some way. It relates to a very niche, albeit traumatic, dreadful situation. To connect it to only one kind of pain, or at least such only one such specific example of it, may be the limiting factor here, which is a symptom of it being so short. Perhaps there is a way to only give one story example and have it hit the nail on the head for more people, but I couldn't tell you how to do that. If anything is hard to predict, it is human nature. I feel like there are many different kinds of pain or intense emotions that would make someone want to retreat to Ataraxia: deep depression, great anxiety, primal dread, fight-or-flight, loss, and so much more. This stuff is no doubt all worse as a kid. Though this is also where you have irrational fears of things that can invoke dread: seeing faces in the dark, hearing sounds and thinking there is a monster under your bed, the closet nobody ever touches and the stories your mind comes up with to avoid going near it. Stuff like that. Fear is irrational, and the human experience paints a clear picture of that when you look back at things that scared you in the past. Some things are more based in reality, such as the example you gave with an abusive parental relationship, but the human mind also forms so many fears not based in reality. Anxiety and doubt are some scary things.
My experience with primal dread is a strange one. I've had that situation where I've seen faces in the dark, been afraid of great heights, feared drowning, and am gravely afraid of even the smallest of spiders. The only fears that still hold to this day are the last two, but as a kid, things like those always made me feel fear beyond any rational feeling. Sometimes I would randomly get a dreadful fear with no explanation, just sitting in the dark. Then my mind would wander "Is something watching me? Where did this sudden feeling come from? Why am I shaking?" That feels even worse than my phobias, to the point where I'm still uncertain about the nature of those moments to this day. If ever there was a moment I would want to close my eyes and disappear, that would probably have been it were it not for me being so hyper alert in those moments (though a few times, I woke up in the night, saw stuff that spooked me, and closed my eyes hoping it would go away. A heater we have used to reflect light at night in a way that looked like a creepy face. Gave me horrible shivers to think about). That is my experience in life, and why this specific situation, while definitely worthy of the feelings it evokes, does not land as close to my core as you may hope. These days, my feelings are more things like being alone in life, anxiety about the future, loss of control over my life, and the more "adult-rational fears", as opposed to the weird ones I had as a kid, outside of my phobias I still hold of course.
Anyway, I do hope that provides some insight into the crux of the matter. That was just my experience. Everyone is different. As for the writing itself, as I said, I love the style and it poses no issues to speak of on its own. The ending was nailed in terms of the uncertainty of what is going to happen next. I love narrative-driven emotional stories. I tend to watch shows and read things for that very reason. If we're looking at it from a story perspective, getting a little more "exposition" to get behind the psychology of the child might have helped people to relate to his feelings, at least in terms of sympathy if not empathy. As far as we know, this is just some generic kid going through a typical parental abuse situation. While it is emotional, many stories and novels do cover this type of thing, so that kind of exposure may require it to stand out on its own. I love self-insert scenes, but even then, the more personality you can inject into someone, the more relatable they become, even if they are different from you in some ways. You focused almost solely on the interaction between the parents, and only really described typical stuff like the heart pounding and the retreat of the kid, without much to speak of their own unique feelings or views about it, or for other aspects of their life that could lead to this being an even harder hitter of a situation. I would say that I'd be most curious about the thoughts racing through the kid's head, the anxiety, the fear, the things that could have led to it, maybe the outcomes he/she dreads most, etc. It still brings uncertainty, yet gives good insight into the nature of the dread they are experiencing. Stuff like a pounding heart and running away could be fight-or-flight, primal terror, or even just a desire to distance him or herself from the hurtful words and actions that made him cry. I think sadness is a possible interpretation here as much as fear. He could have already been used to seeing stuff like this and is just begging inside his mind for it to finally stop.
I'm a very introspective person, and something that hits me hard is the thought process. To know one's thoughts is to get a window into their soul. Descriptive scene setting works, but I think when you place the scene in such a way where the audience has to draw their own conclusions, that can go any number of which ways from raw description. There are some things that are universal, like a creepy atmosphere or fantastical imagery (since everyone fantasizes of the bright and vibrant, or feels uneasy around the dark and ominous), but when it comes to a situation that depends on specific experiences and feelings, if you don't set some kind of vibe to it from the character's viewpoint, that can be tricky to nail down for a larger audience. It is always important to know your audience, as well as to speak your own thoughts and feelings into the work in subtle ways, but the presentation will determine how it gets interpreted.
That's my two cents on it. Again, wonderfully written, and I am +1-ing this, since even if it didn't hit me as hard as it may some, it still is well-composed and full of raw emotion. I just think the execution could have gotten even heavier-handed and been made more impactful to people of a greater range of past experiences, especially given how people may retreat like that for more than one reason. Some enjoy doing it outside of pain, and I actually think that is the reason everyone does it. It is a means of escapism, the desire to disappear or to fantasize somewhere better. That is something general to human nature, and why I think, that no matter who reads this, it will still have some level of impact on them, even if not as great as it could be for some. That is the one act in this entire page that everyone understands on some level, no matter their history, even if they cannot get behind the reason for doing it here.
Anyway, I didn't mean to make a review that is longer than the article itself… I think it does well for the smaller audience it is likely designed for. Do I think it is the best work of yours? That's a tough one because of the metrics different people may use for rating it. In Atlas' case, Level 1.3 is more memorable to me, but that may just be due to length and more going on in it. Fear of complete nonexistence, like what the decay presents, is equally as valid as the fear of reality and wanting to be erased caused by suffering. That's such an interesting dichotomy now that I think about it. Fear of the unknown is also a potent thing.
Of course, Goerman upvotes it.
He upvotes everything.
Not entirely true.
I may not downvote much, but I novote, for a number of reasons.
Reason # 1 = "I may not have read it."
I read this. I felt this. +1 because I know that fear.
Thank you.
Your friend and colleague,
Goerman
http://backrooms-wiki.wikidot.com/goerman
/forum/t-17168754/unnumbered-level-ataraxia#post-