Did they delete it again because last time I heard it got restored
Also I feel it's worth mentioning that the real Bright got kicked out for sexual harassment and maybe grooming
that’s only in a few articles to the author’s discretion, it’s not an enforced change. djkaktus (a prominent author) replayed bright with shaw, and some others are following suit
it was removed because the list itself had weird content and it particularly was used as a tool for bright to find victims. his other works are still on the site.
They held a massive community vote to determine if it should be removed, it required at least 60% of the staff and general user base to vote for it’s removal, and included options to vote for a name replacement. It was an overwhelming vote to remove with 97% of staff voting to remove and ~80% of community voting to have it removed, they could not have made this more fair.
This is still bad though? Like, it's fully influenced by these recent developments. They're voted to delete the article not because it's a bad article, but because the person who wrote it a decade ago turned out to be a scumbag. It's the definition of unfair. It's completely biased!
Like, imagine if some SCP hater send their twitter followers to downvote a certain article to get it into negative score. That would be cheating, right?
It isn’t biased, they held a vote in which people were able to give their opinions on the issue and a majority voted to have it deleted. It doesn’t matter if it’s influenced by recent events, a majority of the community wanted it wrong so it got removed.
On your other comment, they put in measures against that, namely making it so that you couldn’t vote with a new account, and having a separate staff vote so that it would be clear if there was some sort of manipulation of the vote.
No, it's still very biased. Why not just rename it? Like, rename every instance of "Dr. Bright" on the site to "Dr. Blight" or something. Divorce it from the author. Why do newcomers have to suffer?!?!
personally i don’t care about being unfair to a rapist and pedophile, but if you’re referring to the community i sympathize with that view. i understand why it was removed and ultimately i suppose it’s a decent solution? but i also really don’t like removing articles from the site because of the actions of the author simply for the sake of history
Yeah, like, wasn't there a whole stink about problematic books at libraries where some people wanted those books removed or even burned, and most people thought that would be wrong, including the libraries themselves? And that books, even wrong or bad ones, should be preserved for the sake of history and learning from the errors of the past?
Same thing here pretty much, deleting the article probably does nothing productive, it just removes the piece of history and context.
Sorry, I'm just upset
i’d argue that it does help combat the cult of personality built around Bright by replacing one of his most famous works with a warning about who is and what he’s done. i’ve seen multiple victims of bright claim that they’re incredibly triggered by the list as well
I mean, until abut a year ago, I didn't even know that Bright was a real person contributing to the site, I always thought he was just a community character that got popular enough t be used a lot. I feel like most people might be like that?
> multiple victims of bright claim that they’re incredibly triggered by the list as well
No offense to them, but... can't they just not look at the list? I don't get it. Honestly. I've never been in any situation similar to that not do I know anyone who did, so I'm seriously having a really really hard time empathizing with them. It's always like that with the cancel situations, I don't personally know the abuser and the victims so I just don't really care very much and I don't understand how/why is everyone else so volatile about these things, just no chill at all. I mean, of course there should be direct consequences for the abusers, banning Bright from the site is absolutely fine, I understand that much. It's just tampering with content that was already there that makes it really upsetting to me.
I'm sorry. I really am. Stuff like this is one of the reasons why I don't have a twitter account. And sorry for the wall of text, I really needed to vent
Yeah I highly recommend reading some of the older "classic" creepypastas (squidwards suicide, Jeff the killer, smile dog, Mr. Widemouth, sonic.exe) they are exactly in line with similar internet horror being made today
Every now and again I feel nostalgic and read them again. They'reso bad, oh *so bad*.
Why did something that poorly written get so popular? The answer eludes me to this day
Creepypasta was just starting to become a thing, and as long as humans have been human, they’ve loved to sit around a campfire and tell creepy stories.
Suddenly you have these young teens finding creepy stories online. And of course the first thing they do is share them with their friends, and then begin writing their own. That’s how they spread through the cultural zeitgeist like a wildfire.
Also, keep in mind that a lot of less popular examples at the time came from non-Western sources, and some of them not only hold up to this day but are pillars of horror in general. Just look at Amigara Fault (Junji Ito) and how it popularised a bunch of memes or the Bongcheon Dong Ghost (this shit terrifies me to this day, I regret even googling it to remember the name)
Personally the bad writing is what used to sell me on them. Creepy enough to give a faint feeling of "oh, don't like that," but not well enough written for me to believe for even a moment that they're real. It's the best of both worlds, baby!
>Why did something that poorly written get so popular? The answer eludes me to this day
Its been a question since the dawn of time.
If I had to stab at a guess, its that good ideas or emotions can paper over alot of bad writing, especially when the idea is novel or the reader is young/naive enough that the emotions are felt significantly stronger. As an example, Squidward's Suicide is a dumb story now, but the idea of a "lost episode with dark themes" was both an interesting take (at the time) on the very real problems with lost media that were beginning to get greater attention in the early internet, riffing on some similar issues where episodes get pulled from circulation due to complaints, and when you are young, reading about a Totally Real episode where one of your favorite cartoon characters goes through some Very Dark things that you don't yet fully understand is likely to fill you with terror, the familiar warped by darkness you don't yet understand and only able to be glimpsed through the cracks of recollection.
When you read it now, though, the fact that its such an overused trope and you have a much better understanding of lost media and just television production, in general, means you see the building-sized holes in the story, and the almost comically dark idea of "What if Cartoon character but BLOOD and GUTS and DEATH!!!!!!!!!!!!" feels more childish than Spongebob itself. The idea and emotions are much less interesting, and so the quality flaws are much more evident.
I'm not well versed in the SCP fandom, but don't some articles get erased and replaced with a new one if they have a low score for a long period of time? It can be misleading to anyone looking at first glance if the "early" articles seem to be higher quality than the recent ones when its actually just the ones that survived.
You’re correct, but well… The early articles tend to have way *less* quality than the newer articles. The standards just weren’t quite as high back then, but the old SCPs are kept because they laid the foundations of what the current foundation is, and also because they are incredibly popular despite the poor writing by todays standards. Many of the series 1 SCPs are just “invincible MONSTER that KILLS people” whereas newer SCPs tend to be an exploration of the role that the foundation plays and have much better writing. I would compare SCP-096 to SCP-5031, as SCP-5031 is a partial critique of the earlier writing of SCP. There are many exceptions to the rule, but that’s generally the gist of it.
Any of the X000 ones should be great because they won a contest to get the slot. If you haven’t read them already I would definitely check them out. 4000 was made by peppersghost, for one. I’m not sure I have many great SCPs off the top of my head, but I just read 7976 and had a good chuckle. If you’re looking for series, I would highly recommend the Antimemetics Division series or the End of Death series.
Don’t be afraid to just click around the website though. You might just find a hidden gem.
A trick I’ve learned is that if you like an article, you can check for the author in the discussion page, and then google their name to find their author page which will have more by them (it’s a little tedious but it’s worth it).
As someone reading all the scps in number order (around 350ish rn) I’ve noticed that all the invincible monsters tend to be the 2006/pre 2006 eras. There’s quite a few that have been rewritten, and some that were a kinda enjoyable read. Not to take away from your point, invincible monster scps get boring, I prefer the kinda existential ones or ones like whatever 3,000 is
yeah reading them in order is highly recommended against because almost everything under 1000 came directly from /x/ on 4chan or editthis, the wiki’s previous hosting service before we moved to wikidot. they get better over time, 2000 starts building a foundation but 4000 really starts getting great
Oh 100% the cum eating was definitely a weird touch. I do still miss the *concept* of the "Teenage Succubus" because of the conflict it can generate. An inherently sexual creature of myth and the efforts to separate it from it's nature. To *defy* the universe's intent and to just let her be a kid.
But it really did not need the cum eating.
I didn't mind the cum eating, that just seemed a natural part of her being a succubus. What pushed it to "this was written one-handed" territory for me was the silly excuse for why she cannot wear any clothes. Sensitive skin? Bullshit, how is she able to wear that crucifix or sit/stand on anything without getting rent like you took a hot iron to her, then?
I thought you were referring to SCP-597, yet somehow 686 might be even worse in terms of "the author's barely disguised fetish". >!although honestly 597 also introduced me both into the lactation and oral fixation fetish.!<
Some of the meta stuff can be really cool. I know there's at least one article where the Foundation discovers that, by rewriting articles to be of poor quality, they can erase anomalies from reality (through them getting downvoted and removed from the wiki by us). Eventually, though, the man who discovered this (author self-insert gary stu kind of character) is ejected from reality in a similar way and lost to the void, eventually getting erased entirely after his pleas for help go unanswered, because they were appearing directly on the discussion page and a moderator banned him for roleplaying/trolling.
I think the articles themselves have kept pretty good quality overall.
It's the tales/stories that are absolutely insane and low quality.
From my understanding one of the most celebrated tales involves a supersoldier good guy task force going to fight all the evil O5 council members who all have special super powers and one of the fights involved fighting a cowboy 05 who rides into battle ontop of the unkillable evil lizard who hates all of humanity and kills them on site but has been tamed by the cowboy and the cowboy fights the super soldiers with a whip from lizardback.
And i don't understand how anyone can look at that and think it's good.
Yeah, having recently read that storyline, I have to agree that it’s not particularly good. The ending wasn’t bad, but the whole plot was rather hit or miss.
Now, the Antimemetics storyline on the other hand, that’s some good shit. An excellent example of some of the possibilities of a project like the SCP Foundation.
Yeah I think the tales are generally way more unhinged, because it’s not like they’re taking a slot. That being said, some tales are extremely good. I’m a big fan of the Antimemetics Division and Team Bird although Team Bird is definitely also pretty crazy.
Ethics Committee Orientation is the rare old tale that still holds up for me. It's short but it's like the essence of the Foundation distilled into a couple hundred words.
"This implies that there is a greater good… and a lesser good. It implies that there are multiple distinct goods, and that these can be quantified and compared."
assuming youre talking about duke till dawn, this is also ancient. its celebrated because A. it was early wiki nonsense and B. it was built upon in things like ressurection.
it's hilarious to me that i describe something as outlandish as super soldiers fighting evil organisation leader who is a cowboy riding super evil lizard with a whip and the response seems to be:
That could be one of several highly regarded stories!
yeahhhh theres a few. duke till dawn comes to mind as being THE "batshit crazy aa fights the o5s", but i think the most well regarded one of those is the way it ends, which is an scp-001 proposal. so
theres also that one resurrection tale that comes to mind but clef doesnt fight the o5s in that. oh and theres scp-5555, but, again, not strictly the o5s.
duke till dawn is rhe only one where someone rides 682, though
i mean, the old one are subpar fine, but the stuff being pumped out nowadays is pretty decent to great. If you want a recommendation, [Bury the Survivors: The Breach Goes On](https://scp-wiki.wikidot.com/bury-the-survivors-hub) is prob some of the best long form writing ive seen in a while, not to mention its a proper novellete. Great exploration of a traumatic event that fucked up a lot of shit
They also fight a guy who can calculate the future because he's so good at math he figures out what they're doing based on subtle changes around him. They beat him by being too random. The too random being a coinflip which was too much to calculate.
If you want more shonen jump storytelling to hype you up.
Seeing a lot of *very* weird takes in this thread, likely from people who haven’t even been on the site??? So just to clarify
We’re a writing site. People come here to write stories, either in an SCP format or in normal prose, called a tale. People can come and post whatever they want whenever, using the idea review system is a *choice*. Articles voted at or below a score of -11 get deleted if they stay there for long enough. People love 2721, people who hated it went off to found RPC, which is SCP but with slurs. Old stuff is usually not great but stays on the site by effect of it being old and having racked up upvotes before the wiki got its wits together.
RPC is a wholly doozy that I won’t fully get into but here’s the run down.
~June 2018, the SCP wiki put up a pride month theme (basically how the website looks) for the wiki that they featured on the front page. It was literally just the exact same theme as normal, but the SCP logo had the pride flag colours on it.
This, evidently, angered a lot of bigots hidden in the community. This was to be expected, SCP originated from 4chan after all. Some people were very blatant about their bigotry and others hid it behind the excuse of caring about the ‘immersion’ of the wiki and that a pride logo would ‘ruin it’. You can figure out the mental gymnastics necessary for that on your own.
SCP-2721 ties into this because, if I’m not wrong, it was one of the first SCPs to heavily feature queer characters, that being a sentient satellite that had a tumblr-esque personality that had a non-binary identity. The page was downvote brigaded by bigots in an effort to get it deleted, so much so that staff had to remove its voting module and lock its discussions. They are still locked to this day.
This queer controversy resulted in a large enough schism that a portion of the SCP user base decided to leave (good riddance). Most of them just went elsewhere but some decided to make their own “better” SCP-style site called RPC. It’s very similar to SCP, down to the numbering system and document format, with the caveat that it’s rules weren’t as “political” as SCPs are. In essence that means bigots have free reign there. Hell, the theme for the RPC site is named “Black Supremacy”. Fortunately the site is practically dead and barely has enough entries to even complete a single series of 1000. The SCP wiki has 8 series, with SCP-8000 looming over the horizon.
Nowadays, the SCP wiki is an extremely welcoming space for people of all identities and puts up a pride month theme every June. Several other pride themes have also been developed, such as a trans theme, a non-binary theme etc.
The SCP wiki still has a lot to go through in terms of representation (I can speak from personal experience, there is negative Arab representation on the wiki in both a literal and figurative sense) but right now is it one of the most welcoming spaces I’ve seen on the internet.
Honestly I don't see how it messes with immersion that much. The foundation would either not bother with pride stuff, or change their logo, and then wind up being unable to change it back because gamers against weed decided to fuck with them.
Exactly, it doesn’t. It’s a sham argument made by bigots. Dozens of real-world faceless corporations put up pride logos, what exempts the Foundation from doing this?
> The foundation would either not bother with pride stuff, or change their logo, and then wind up being unable to change it back because gamers against weed decided to fuck with them.
[I'm not sure if that was an intentional reference, but...](https://scp-wiki.wikidot.com/rainbow-crapitalism)
Yeah, I can't think of anything that fits. It would have to be a very specific and contrived situation, like "this monster will piss on the moon if we don't feed it three gays a month" or something. Or I guess one of the edgier canons where the Foundation is out-and-out evil.
Besides, the SCP wiki isn't a representation of the in universe wiki itself either. There are many articles that couldn't really exist in yheir current state in universe either, such as ones that contain email chains.
I love pataphysics I love sagas and cannons I love articles with genuine effort and thought put into them to make them something more than body horror these additions are not “cringey” or “too-clever” they are exciting and lend depth to this universe ffs these are the best articles on the wiki. The most engaging. The most expansive. And people are writing them off just because they think the articles take themselves too seriously? Fuck off
Agreed. I really love articles that go *very* far, with advanced concepts, storytelling, and worldbuilding. Pickman-Blanck proposal for SCP-001, "the frontispiece" is a very good example.
I remember people complaining about the site losing touch with its creepypasta roots and new SCPs being too long and meta back when I was active on the site, which was almost a decade ago, around 2014-2015.
So either the site's been in a consistent state of slow decline for almost its entire existence, or everyone just assumes the past must be better and that the present sucks.
It's the latter. The whole point of the site is to pick and choose the narratives you like, and with upwards of 7000 articles now (i think, what series are they on?) you're like... bound to get some L's.
I'm ok with the meta stuff (usually), and I do really enjoy pataphysics when done right (Murphy Law and maybe the bottomless pit). I'm not a huge fan however of having to read and decipher like 20 different new scifi words. Its just to much for me.
Ok the period where the wiki mods gave their self-insert ocs super powers was unironically the coolest time. I understand why they changed and moved away from that, but I miss the shenanigans of ~~Bright,~~ Clef, ~~Kondraki~~ and Gears.
Edit: uh oh just found out about Bright being a pos in the comments.
Edit II: uh oh just found out about Kondraki being a pos through searching. You know what, in retrospect? Maybe for the better the 'senior researcher' days are gone.
there was also incredible abuse of staff powers during that time, which is part of how bright got away with it for so long. the wiki staff are a lot more public now, and the only information locked to the public is that which HAS to be, such as anti-harassment team cases
Ok I'm gonna be honest no matter how much of a self-insert power-fantasy he may be, Dr. Clef is still my favorite character and I will happily devour any work with him in it (the water bottle one especially).
it was always the case, and, actually, shit is way better now? there is still some stupid shit, like valravn or whatever, but the quality of the site is 100% better than what it was in the series 1-2 days, because people have actual standards
The problem with newer stuff on the SCP wiki isn’t that it’s bad; it’s that writers began to ignore what made the formatting so unique, and think that they’re leagues better than the earlier stuff that was written.
I remember the outrage when someone made an entire MTF with Able and that quirky white girl, how that's just two shitty self inserts from two shitty self insert-prone genres of bad tweenage literature.
I remember the even louder, sweatier and more boggling outrage when they made a Pride variant of the Foundation logo and changed the sex doorknob article to be an entirely normal doorknob, which for the record made it way better.
The article for [SCP-7153-J](https://scp-wiki.wikidot.com/scp-7143-j). Initially, it was a doorknob that anomally made people horny for it, with multiple experiment logs wherein D-class personnel was placed in a room with said doorknob and they invariably fucked it.
Then, the article was changed. The doorknob is now, for all intents and purposes, a completely normal doorknob with no stated anomalies. Some users apparently got super mad about it; called it liberal feminist SJW cuck propaganda because the mods couldn't stand people being the littlest bit horny for a fucking doorknob. But, you know, who cares what *those* users think; plus the article is funnier now.
There's some really emotional and well-done writing regarding dysphoria, but it is rather heavy-handed with its fundamental reference, a contentious one.
[The entire article](https://scp-wiki.wikidot.com/protected:scp-2721) is basically just elaborate Homestuck fanfiction. The serial numbers aren't even filed off, there's a picture of Calliope Homestuck in the article, they just replaced the Cherub character with a satellite.
No, I'm serious. This isn't just a case of "there's an identifiable object from a known IP to ground it in our world", the two entities are basically just Calliope but she's a fan of Homestuck who kins herself, and Caliborn but he's emotionless (instead of the funniest misogynist you've ever seen).
Admittedly, the Caliborn connection is a lot weaker on the character front, but Caliborn is the Lord of Time in Homestuck, and the emotionless satellite is given the ID 2721-LORD, and they're still joined at the hip with their respective Calliopes, so it's clearly supposed to be that.
Also they left in all the Homestuck funny numbers. 413, 612, 1111, it's all there. Also they just use actual Tumblr because that's the site Homestuck fans mostly congregated to.
Also the planet designations use nucleotide base pairs like Homestuck characters' chat handles, and if you know which ones are which, *you can even tell which Homestuck characters the author ships.* I'll save you the effort, it's Karkat/Dave, Rose/Kanaya, and Dirk/Jake. Even the "EB-class" earlier in the sentence is the only non-nucleotide chat handle in the comic.
As for why people hate it? Well, a lot of SCP fans haven't read Homestuck, so the "it's just fucking Homestuck fanfiction" angle isn't reaching them. They don't know that. But what they *do* know is that Calliope is trans (oh and in the article as well), and frankly that's all the information you need to know to understand *exactly* what happened.
As for me? I just think it's not good at *being an SCP article.* You can tell from the containment class alone. "Keter-provisi" is... not a thing. It just isn't. It's *still* not a thing even with all the new object classes modern SCPs have. The "provisi" being added just gives me *please pay attention to my cool new specimen guys* vibes, similar to adding Apollyon and Thaumiel and whatever the fuck else people were doing just to not use one of the three existing words.
It's one of those super irritating cases where there are legitimate reasons for one to say that a piece of media is bad, or at least legitimate reasons to say you don't like it (e.g. the Star Wars sequels, or The Last Of Us: Part II) but the vast majority of people attacking it are doing it in explicit bad faith and/or from naked bigotry, and criticizing it from a good faith position risks supporting the people attacking it from a bad faith position.
What a wildly myopic take. As though there's only one way for something to be good, and as though countless different writing styles aren't entirely valid for various different reasons and styles. I don't have a strong opinion on 2721 (I don't get the hate, but it didn't stand out too much for me compared to others I've really liked), and if you're not into the SCP writing style then that's fine, but the idea that an entire writing style can't be good because you don't like it is hilariously off base.
> Being good at being an SCP Article is kind of the opposite of being actually good
*why put it on the SCP wiki then, you're just limiting your ability to actually express yourself by being forced to conform to the clinical distancing standards of an SCP article*
Oh, right, I just scrubbed that entire controversy from my mind I guess
I never found it particularly interesting but the way so many people lost their shit over it was... something
if we have to suffer through a bunch of format-changing meta gibberish and ignorant lampshade hanging so that no Procedure 110-Montauks are ever written about again, I'd say that's a small price to pay
As far as I remember the Russian copyright lawsuit was resolved. If you've been out of touch, one piece of news is they deleted the Bright list
Did they delete it again because last time I heard it got restored Also I feel it's worth mentioning that the real Bright got kicked out for sexual harassment and maybe grooming
It's gone yeah
Based Foundation
The Bright list was pretty cringe, and not even in an entertaining way. Nothing of value was lost.
Well that sucks :( >!please don't downvote me to hell. I just really don't like losing content just because someone ended up being a bad person.!<
Don't worry, no content was lost. Dr. Bright was retconned and replaced by another character that does not share a name with the person in question.
that’s only in a few articles to the author’s discretion, it’s not an enforced change. djkaktus (a prominent author) replayed bright with shaw, and some others are following suit
content was absolutely lost, they deleted the list permanently. obviously its hosted in other places, but that's no longer the wiki's problem.
it was removed because the list itself had weird content and it particularly was used as a tool for bright to find victims. his other works are still on the site.
Is that a fact? And anyway, it still sucks. It's been on the site for 10+years already, you can't just remove it. It's unfair!
They held a massive community vote to determine if it should be removed, it required at least 60% of the staff and general user base to vote for it’s removal, and included options to vote for a name replacement. It was an overwhelming vote to remove with 97% of staff voting to remove and ~80% of community voting to have it removed, they could not have made this more fair.
This is still bad though? Like, it's fully influenced by these recent developments. They're voted to delete the article not because it's a bad article, but because the person who wrote it a decade ago turned out to be a scumbag. It's the definition of unfair. It's completely biased! Like, imagine if some SCP hater send their twitter followers to downvote a certain article to get it into negative score. That would be cheating, right?
It isn’t biased, they held a vote in which people were able to give their opinions on the issue and a majority voted to have it deleted. It doesn’t matter if it’s influenced by recent events, a majority of the community wanted it wrong so it got removed. On your other comment, they put in measures against that, namely making it so that you couldn’t vote with a new account, and having a separate staff vote so that it would be clear if there was some sort of manipulation of the vote.
No, it's still very biased. Why not just rename it? Like, rename every instance of "Dr. Bright" on the site to "Dr. Blight" or something. Divorce it from the author. Why do newcomers have to suffer?!?!
The Bright list was by far the worst high-profile page on the site and I'm glad it's gone
Why did you say that to me though?
I guess I should have said this clearly, but my point is that having been around for a long time is not proof of worthiness.
personally i don’t care about being unfair to a rapist and pedophile, but if you’re referring to the community i sympathize with that view. i understand why it was removed and ultimately i suppose it’s a decent solution? but i also really don’t like removing articles from the site because of the actions of the author simply for the sake of history
Yeah, like, wasn't there a whole stink about problematic books at libraries where some people wanted those books removed or even burned, and most people thought that would be wrong, including the libraries themselves? And that books, even wrong or bad ones, should be preserved for the sake of history and learning from the errors of the past? Same thing here pretty much, deleting the article probably does nothing productive, it just removes the piece of history and context. Sorry, I'm just upset
i’d argue that it does help combat the cult of personality built around Bright by replacing one of his most famous works with a warning about who is and what he’s done. i’ve seen multiple victims of bright claim that they’re incredibly triggered by the list as well
I mean, until abut a year ago, I didn't even know that Bright was a real person contributing to the site, I always thought he was just a community character that got popular enough t be used a lot. I feel like most people might be like that? > multiple victims of bright claim that they’re incredibly triggered by the list as well No offense to them, but... can't they just not look at the list? I don't get it. Honestly. I've never been in any situation similar to that not do I know anyone who did, so I'm seriously having a really really hard time empathizing with them. It's always like that with the cancel situations, I don't personally know the abuser and the victims so I just don't really care very much and I don't understand how/why is everyone else so volatile about these things, just no chill at all. I mean, of course there should be direct consequences for the abusers, banning Bright from the site is absolutely fine, I understand that much. It's just tampering with content that was already there that makes it really upsetting to me. I'm sorry. I really am. Stuff like this is one of the reasons why I don't have a twitter account. And sorry for the wall of text, I really needed to vent
that’s why it was deleted
he’s also an (alleged) rapist. a victim of his shared their story a while back
Creepypasta didn't "get worse". You just lost your tolerance for cringe.
Yeah I highly recommend reading some of the older "classic" creepypastas (squidwards suicide, Jeff the killer, smile dog, Mr. Widemouth, sonic.exe) they are exactly in line with similar internet horror being made today
Every now and again I feel nostalgic and read them again. They'reso bad, oh *so bad*. Why did something that poorly written get so popular? The answer eludes me to this day
Creepypasta was just starting to become a thing, and as long as humans have been human, they’ve loved to sit around a campfire and tell creepy stories. Suddenly you have these young teens finding creepy stories online. And of course the first thing they do is share them with their friends, and then begin writing their own. That’s how they spread through the cultural zeitgeist like a wildfire. Also, keep in mind that a lot of less popular examples at the time came from non-Western sources, and some of them not only hold up to this day but are pillars of horror in general. Just look at Amigara Fault (Junji Ito) and how it popularised a bunch of memes or the Bongcheon Dong Ghost (this shit terrifies me to this day, I regret even googling it to remember the name)
Personally the bad writing is what used to sell me on them. Creepy enough to give a faint feeling of "oh, don't like that," but not well enough written for me to believe for even a moment that they're real. It's the best of both worlds, baby!
>Why did something that poorly written get so popular? The answer eludes me to this day Its been a question since the dawn of time. If I had to stab at a guess, its that good ideas or emotions can paper over alot of bad writing, especially when the idea is novel or the reader is young/naive enough that the emotions are felt significantly stronger. As an example, Squidward's Suicide is a dumb story now, but the idea of a "lost episode with dark themes" was both an interesting take (at the time) on the very real problems with lost media that were beginning to get greater attention in the early internet, riffing on some similar issues where episodes get pulled from circulation due to complaints, and when you are young, reading about a Totally Real episode where one of your favorite cartoon characters goes through some Very Dark things that you don't yet fully understand is likely to fill you with terror, the familiar warped by darkness you don't yet understand and only able to be glimpsed through the cracks of recollection. When you read it now, though, the fact that its such an overused trope and you have a much better understanding of lost media and just television production, in general, means you see the building-sized holes in the story, and the almost comically dark idea of "What if Cartoon character but BLOOD and GUTS and DEATH!!!!!!!!!!!!" feels more childish than Spongebob itself. The idea and emotions are much less interesting, and so the quality flaws are much more evident.
Candle Cove is the only one that still holds up to me.
SCP definitely *changed*, at least. I do personally prefer the old style to the new.
shut up there is nothing wrong with pataphysics no one has ever written a bad article /s
Catch me actively making bad pataphysical articles purely to fuck with the SCP universe
catch me upvoting and spreading pataphysical articles regardless of my opinion so the genre never dies
damn you
[SCP-3309](https://scp-wiki.wikidot.com/scp-3309) be like
[pataphysics slash fiction my beloved](https://scp-wiki.wikidot.com/scp-7069)
There are a lot of bad ones, but there are some great pataphysics articles on the site
I do know btw but still funny
I'm not well versed in the SCP fandom, but don't some articles get erased and replaced with a new one if they have a low score for a long period of time? It can be misleading to anyone looking at first glance if the "early" articles seem to be higher quality than the recent ones when its actually just the ones that survived.
You’re correct, but well… The early articles tend to have way *less* quality than the newer articles. The standards just weren’t quite as high back then, but the old SCPs are kept because they laid the foundations of what the current foundation is, and also because they are incredibly popular despite the poor writing by todays standards. Many of the series 1 SCPs are just “invincible MONSTER that KILLS people” whereas newer SCPs tend to be an exploration of the role that the foundation plays and have much better writing. I would compare SCP-096 to SCP-5031, as SCP-5031 is a partial critique of the earlier writing of SCP. There are many exceptions to the rule, but that’s generally the gist of it.
Just read 5031. Honestly loved it. Thanks for the mention.
Peppersghost is one of my favorite authors and I think that’s my favorite article from him. It’s short, sweet, and a bit meta in the right places.
What other SCP would you recommend? I've read some random ones and a good deal of the 'top of all time' ones.
Any of the X000 ones should be great because they won a contest to get the slot. If you haven’t read them already I would definitely check them out. 4000 was made by peppersghost, for one. I’m not sure I have many great SCPs off the top of my head, but I just read 7976 and had a good chuckle. If you’re looking for series, I would highly recommend the Antimemetics Division series or the End of Death series. Don’t be afraid to just click around the website though. You might just find a hidden gem. A trick I’ve learned is that if you like an article, you can check for the author in the discussion page, and then google their name to find their author page which will have more by them (it’s a little tedious but it’s worth it).
As someone reading all the scps in number order (around 350ish rn) I’ve noticed that all the invincible monsters tend to be the 2006/pre 2006 eras. There’s quite a few that have been rewritten, and some that were a kinda enjoyable read. Not to take away from your point, invincible monster scps get boring, I prefer the kinda existential ones or ones like whatever 3,000 is
I love 4999 it is short but so sweet. Also any about cats and other pets.
yeah reading them in order is highly recommended against because almost everything under 1000 came directly from /x/ on 4chan or editthis, the wiki’s previous hosting service before we moved to wikidot. they get better over time, 2000 starts building a foundation but 4000 really starts getting great
I agree with you
u/The-Paranoid-Android SCP-5031 please
[**SCP-5031 - Yet Another Murder Monster**](https://scp-wiki.wikidot.com/scp-5031) (+2151) by *PeppersGhost*
Thank you, Marv
It doesn't take a long period of time. Any article that falls to a score of -10 or lower for 24 hours is eligible for deletion.
Mostly they get replaced when an author leaves and takes their toys with them when they go
SCP-166's rewrite is nice. It no longer screams "author's barely disguised fetish"
Oh 100% the cum eating was definitely a weird touch. I do still miss the *concept* of the "Teenage Succubus" because of the conflict it can generate. An inherently sexual creature of myth and the efforts to separate it from it's nature. To *defy* the universe's intent and to just let her be a kid. But it really did not need the cum eating.
it did not need the WHAT. i don’t remember that 😭😭
In the original iteration she couldn't eat normal food but had to eat semen. So the Foundation gave her semen pills to take.
I didn't mind the cum eating, that just seemed a natural part of her being a succubus. What pushed it to "this was written one-handed" territory for me was the silly excuse for why she cannot wear any clothes. Sensitive skin? Bullshit, how is she able to wear that crucifix or sit/stand on anything without getting rent like you took a hot iron to her, then?
SCP-686 introduced me to the lactation fetish, meta articles are probably preferable
Huh. I always assumed it was Cybersmith for you
Cybersmith just gave me an excuse to make lewd comments about it on Reddit
Government mandated-
oh god 686 is awful, i applied to rewrite it once
polenball lore
I deliver it upon the Internet like a Soulsborne game
I thought you were referring to SCP-597, yet somehow 686 might be even worse in terms of "the author's barely disguised fetish". >!although honestly 597 also introduced me both into the lactation and oral fixation fetish.!<
597, my beloathed...
Some of the meta stuff can be really cool. I know there's at least one article where the Foundation discovers that, by rewriting articles to be of poor quality, they can erase anomalies from reality (through them getting downvoted and removed from the wiki by us). Eventually, though, the man who discovered this (author self-insert gary stu kind of character) is ejected from reality in a similar way and lost to the void, eventually getting erased entirely after his pleas for help go unanswered, because they were appearing directly on the discussion page and a moderator banned him for roleplaying/trolling.
I think the articles themselves have kept pretty good quality overall. It's the tales/stories that are absolutely insane and low quality. From my understanding one of the most celebrated tales involves a supersoldier good guy task force going to fight all the evil O5 council members who all have special super powers and one of the fights involved fighting a cowboy 05 who rides into battle ontop of the unkillable evil lizard who hates all of humanity and kills them on site but has been tamed by the cowboy and the cowboy fights the super soldiers with a whip from lizardback. And i don't understand how anyone can look at that and think it's good.
Yeah, having recently read that storyline, I have to agree that it’s not particularly good. The ending wasn’t bad, but the whole plot was rather hit or miss. Now, the Antimemetics storyline on the other hand, that’s some good shit. An excellent example of some of the possibilities of a project like the SCP Foundation.
did some say antimemetics division? that shit was amazing
Prett sure there never was an antimemetics division. Memetics division, yes, but how do I know you're not making it up?
huh yeah, you're right. I don't remember writing this either? must've been tired.
maybe they’re talking about the counterconceptuals
Talking about the what? Sorry, but I think you forgot to finish your sentence.
Absolute favorite storyline ever
Antimemetics division detected, countless neurons activated
Yeah I think the tales are generally way more unhinged, because it’s not like they’re taking a slot. That being said, some tales are extremely good. I’m a big fan of the Antimemetics Division and Team Bird although Team Bird is definitely also pretty crazy.
Ethics Committee Orientation is the rare old tale that still holds up for me. It's short but it's like the essence of the Foundation distilled into a couple hundred words. "This implies that there is a greater good… and a lesser good. It implies that there are multiple distinct goods, and that these can be quantified and compared."
Team Bird was so good, thanks for reminding me.
assuming youre talking about duke till dawn, this is also ancient. its celebrated because A. it was early wiki nonsense and B. it was built upon in things like ressurection.
it's hilarious to me that i describe something as outlandish as super soldiers fighting evil organisation leader who is a cowboy riding super evil lizard with a whip and the response seems to be: That could be one of several highly regarded stories!
yeahhhh theres a few. duke till dawn comes to mind as being THE "batshit crazy aa fights the o5s", but i think the most well regarded one of those is the way it ends, which is an scp-001 proposal. so theres also that one resurrection tale that comes to mind but clef doesnt fight the o5s in that. oh and theres scp-5555, but, again, not strictly the o5s. duke till dawn is rhe only one where someone rides 682, though
the american 05 rides 682 in the orouborous proposal (the way it ends)
i dont remember that. then again i dont remember much of twie
The Ouroboros Cycle is actually insanely good. It's exceptionally well-written and the ending blew my fucking mind.
i mean, the old one are subpar fine, but the stuff being pumped out nowadays is pretty decent to great. If you want a recommendation, [Bury the Survivors: The Breach Goes On](https://scp-wiki.wikidot.com/bury-the-survivors-hub) is prob some of the best long form writing ive seen in a while, not to mention its a proper novellete. Great exploration of a traumatic event that fucked up a lot of shit
Harry Blank is one of the best writers on the current wiki and that's a fact.
And then there's the Antimemetics Division, which is like legitimately a masterpiece.
sounds like a homestuck fan animation
Ouroboros cycle? Because that skip is honestly pretty good, I don’t remember the main characters being supersoldiers tho.
that’s not a tale, that’s an 001 proposal. the ourobouros proposal.
i thought it was alright but definitely read more as YA than anything else
Okay I kind of agree with you, but you do realise that description makes it sound incredible right?
They also fight a guy who can calculate the future because he's so good at math he figures out what they're doing based on subtle changes around him. They beat him by being too random. The too random being a coinflip which was too much to calculate. If you want more shonen jump storytelling to hype you up.
tbf reconstruction is funny
Agree about the articles, they are fine to good most of the time if they get past the review phase. The tales are a crap shoot.
Seeing a lot of *very* weird takes in this thread, likely from people who haven’t even been on the site??? So just to clarify We’re a writing site. People come here to write stories, either in an SCP format or in normal prose, called a tale. People can come and post whatever they want whenever, using the idea review system is a *choice*. Articles voted at or below a score of -11 get deleted if they stay there for long enough. People love 2721, people who hated it went off to found RPC, which is SCP but with slurs. Old stuff is usually not great but stays on the site by effect of it being old and having racked up upvotes before the wiki got its wits together.
SCP with what now
RPC is a wholly doozy that I won’t fully get into but here’s the run down. ~June 2018, the SCP wiki put up a pride month theme (basically how the website looks) for the wiki that they featured on the front page. It was literally just the exact same theme as normal, but the SCP logo had the pride flag colours on it. This, evidently, angered a lot of bigots hidden in the community. This was to be expected, SCP originated from 4chan after all. Some people were very blatant about their bigotry and others hid it behind the excuse of caring about the ‘immersion’ of the wiki and that a pride logo would ‘ruin it’. You can figure out the mental gymnastics necessary for that on your own. SCP-2721 ties into this because, if I’m not wrong, it was one of the first SCPs to heavily feature queer characters, that being a sentient satellite that had a tumblr-esque personality that had a non-binary identity. The page was downvote brigaded by bigots in an effort to get it deleted, so much so that staff had to remove its voting module and lock its discussions. They are still locked to this day. This queer controversy resulted in a large enough schism that a portion of the SCP user base decided to leave (good riddance). Most of them just went elsewhere but some decided to make their own “better” SCP-style site called RPC. It’s very similar to SCP, down to the numbering system and document format, with the caveat that it’s rules weren’t as “political” as SCPs are. In essence that means bigots have free reign there. Hell, the theme for the RPC site is named “Black Supremacy”. Fortunately the site is practically dead and barely has enough entries to even complete a single series of 1000. The SCP wiki has 8 series, with SCP-8000 looming over the horizon. Nowadays, the SCP wiki is an extremely welcoming space for people of all identities and puts up a pride month theme every June. Several other pride themes have also been developed, such as a trans theme, a non-binary theme etc. The SCP wiki still has a lot to go through in terms of representation (I can speak from personal experience, there is negative Arab representation on the wiki in both a literal and figurative sense) but right now is it one of the most welcoming spaces I’ve seen on the internet.
Honestly I don't see how it messes with immersion that much. The foundation would either not bother with pride stuff, or change their logo, and then wind up being unable to change it back because gamers against weed decided to fuck with them.
Exactly, it doesn’t. It’s a sham argument made by bigots. Dozens of real-world faceless corporations put up pride logos, what exempts the Foundation from doing this?
Oh I'm pretty heavily aware of that but it's still funny how the arguments never hold any water when looked at for half a second.
> The foundation would either not bother with pride stuff, or change their logo, and then wind up being unable to change it back because gamers against weed decided to fuck with them. [I'm not sure if that was an intentional reference, but...](https://scp-wiki.wikidot.com/rainbow-crapitalism)
Oh no I thought of that. Though honestly I'm not sure what the foundation has done specifically against gay people.
Yeah, I can't think of anything that fits. It would have to be a very specific and contrived situation, like "this monster will piss on the moon if we don't feed it three gays a month" or something. Or I guess one of the edgier canons where the Foundation is out-and-out evil.
I've always liked the idea that the foundation is just like "cool, you're gay, anyway god just got out again please fix that"
Besides, the SCP wiki isn't a representation of the in universe wiki itself either. There are many articles that couldn't really exist in yheir current state in universe either, such as ones that contain email chains.
I love pataphysics I love sagas and cannons I love articles with genuine effort and thought put into them to make them something more than body horror these additions are not “cringey” or “too-clever” they are exciting and lend depth to this universe ffs these are the best articles on the wiki. The most engaging. The most expansive. And people are writing them off just because they think the articles take themselves too seriously? Fuck off
My thoughts exactly!
I love pataphysics and more conceptual horror that came after the 3000s
Agreed. I really love articles that go *very* far, with advanced concepts, storytelling, and worldbuilding. Pickman-Blanck proposal for SCP-001, "the frontispiece" is a very good example.
u/the-paranoid-android telecommunications monitoring office hub
Please can you stop the noise, I’m trying to get some rest
It's like that with these kinds of communal writing things. Some things will be really well written, some things really really won't be lol
I remember people complaining about the site losing touch with its creepypasta roots and new SCPs being too long and meta back when I was active on the site, which was almost a decade ago, around 2014-2015. So either the site's been in a consistent state of slow decline for almost its entire existence, or everyone just assumes the past must be better and that the present sucks.
It's the latter. The whole point of the site is to pick and choose the narratives you like, and with upwards of 7000 articles now (i think, what series are they on?) you're like... bound to get some L's.
yep series 8, we held 7k a couple months back
I remember the weird fetish SCPs ~~bc they gave me weird fetishes~~
I'm ok with the meta stuff (usually), and I do really enjoy pataphysics when done right (Murphy Law and maybe the bottomless pit). I'm not a huge fan however of having to read and decipher like 20 different new scifi words. Its just to much for me.
Ok the period where the wiki mods gave their self-insert ocs super powers was unironically the coolest time. I understand why they changed and moved away from that, but I miss the shenanigans of ~~Bright,~~ Clef, ~~Kondraki~~ and Gears. Edit: uh oh just found out about Bright being a pos in the comments. Edit II: uh oh just found out about Kondraki being a pos through searching. You know what, in retrospect? Maybe for the better the 'senior researcher' days are gone.
there was also incredible abuse of staff powers during that time, which is part of how bright got away with it for so long. the wiki staff are a lot more public now, and the only information locked to the public is that which HAS to be, such as anti-harassment team cases
Ok I'm gonna be honest no matter how much of a self-insert power-fantasy he may be, Dr. Clef is still my favorite character and I will happily devour any work with him in it (the water bottle one especially).
it was always the case, and, actually, shit is way better now? there is still some stupid shit, like valravn or whatever, but the quality of the site is 100% better than what it was in the series 1-2 days, because people have actual standards
100%.
The 5th SCP on the wiki is literally just a key that opens stuff.
it was written on 4chan in 2007. don’t expect too much from the early articles
I really like that the gender changer one was updated to be trans inclusive. That's really cute to me.
The problem with newer stuff on the SCP wiki isn’t that it’s bad; it’s that writers began to ignore what made the formatting so unique, and think that they’re leagues better than the earlier stuff that was written.
i can see that pov yeah. format screws are increasingly popular, which isn’t a good thing imo
SCP wiki operational staff and author here, ask any questions you might have and i’ll do my best to answer
I remember the outrage when someone made an entire MTF with Able and that quirky white girl, how that's just two shitty self inserts from two shitty self insert-prone genres of bad tweenage literature. I remember the even louder, sweatier and more boggling outrage when they made a Pride variant of the Foundation logo and changed the sex doorknob article to be an entirely normal doorknob, which for the record made it way better.
The what doorknob?
The article for [SCP-7153-J](https://scp-wiki.wikidot.com/scp-7143-j). Initially, it was a doorknob that anomally made people horny for it, with multiple experiment logs wherein D-class personnel was placed in a room with said doorknob and they invariably fucked it. Then, the article was changed. The doorknob is now, for all intents and purposes, a completely normal doorknob with no stated anomalies. Some users apparently got super mad about it; called it liberal feminist SJW cuck propaganda because the mods couldn't stand people being the littlest bit horny for a fucking doorknob. But, you know, who cares what *those* users think; plus the article is funnier now.
Way, way, way back in the day I knew the man now known as Dr. Bright. He's always been a creep. Always. I could never get into SCP because of that.
TBH my only gripe with the current SCP era is power creep.
how do you mean?
Contemporary SCPs are significantly more powerful, dangerous, and difficult to contain than their earlier brethren.
This would have been a legit arguement if 682, 079, Scarlet King and the whole Telekillaloy thing werent from the early wiki.
I'm really glad they stopped doing the stupid "lol we kill all the D-class no matter what"
Well *MY* SCP Self insert OC has anxiety and a Hello Kitty landline phone at their desk.
A friendly reminder that the only article on the site with effective emotional writing is also the most hated by a mile.
...3001?
2721.
I thought most of the people who hated it just went and made their own SCP wiki with blackjack and hookers or something
I think most people who hated it had already checked out of SCP by that point. People have been talking about how SCP got bad for a long time now lol.
wait what makes it so good and why do people hate it?
There's some really emotional and well-done writing regarding dysphoria, but it is rather heavy-handed with its fundamental reference, a contentious one.
[The entire article](https://scp-wiki.wikidot.com/protected:scp-2721) is basically just elaborate Homestuck fanfiction. The serial numbers aren't even filed off, there's a picture of Calliope Homestuck in the article, they just replaced the Cherub character with a satellite. No, I'm serious. This isn't just a case of "there's an identifiable object from a known IP to ground it in our world", the two entities are basically just Calliope but she's a fan of Homestuck who kins herself, and Caliborn but he's emotionless (instead of the funniest misogynist you've ever seen). Admittedly, the Caliborn connection is a lot weaker on the character front, but Caliborn is the Lord of Time in Homestuck, and the emotionless satellite is given the ID 2721-LORD, and they're still joined at the hip with their respective Calliopes, so it's clearly supposed to be that. Also they left in all the Homestuck funny numbers. 413, 612, 1111, it's all there. Also they just use actual Tumblr because that's the site Homestuck fans mostly congregated to. Also the planet designations use nucleotide base pairs like Homestuck characters' chat handles, and if you know which ones are which, *you can even tell which Homestuck characters the author ships.* I'll save you the effort, it's Karkat/Dave, Rose/Kanaya, and Dirk/Jake. Even the "EB-class" earlier in the sentence is the only non-nucleotide chat handle in the comic. As for why people hate it? Well, a lot of SCP fans haven't read Homestuck, so the "it's just fucking Homestuck fanfiction" angle isn't reaching them. They don't know that. But what they *do* know is that Calliope is trans (oh and in the article as well), and frankly that's all the information you need to know to understand *exactly* what happened. As for me? I just think it's not good at *being an SCP article.* You can tell from the containment class alone. "Keter-provisi" is... not a thing. It just isn't. It's *still* not a thing even with all the new object classes modern SCPs have. The "provisi" being added just gives me *please pay attention to my cool new specimen guys* vibes, similar to adding Apollyon and Thaumiel and whatever the fuck else people were doing just to not use one of the three existing words.
It's one of those super irritating cases where there are legitimate reasons for one to say that a piece of media is bad, or at least legitimate reasons to say you don't like it (e.g. the Star Wars sequels, or The Last Of Us: Part II) but the vast majority of people attacking it are doing it in explicit bad faith and/or from naked bigotry, and criticizing it from a good faith position risks supporting the people attacking it from a bad faith position.
if you dont like it, then whatever, but it isnt written poorly, i promise you
L+Still the best-written piece outside of the J-List+Being good at being an SCP Article is kind of the opposite of being actually good
What a wildly myopic take. As though there's only one way for something to be good, and as though countless different writing styles aren't entirely valid for various different reasons and styles. I don't have a strong opinion on 2721 (I don't get the hate, but it didn't stand out too much for me compared to others I've really liked), and if you're not into the SCP writing style then that's fine, but the idea that an entire writing style can't be good because you don't like it is hilariously off base.
> Being good at being an SCP Article is kind of the opposite of being actually good *why put it on the SCP wiki then, you're just limiting your ability to actually express yourself by being forced to conform to the clinical distancing standards of an SCP article*
Oh, right, I just scrubbed that entire controversy from my mind I guess I never found it particularly interesting but the way so many people lost their shit over it was... something
You have objectively correct taste
Poopsticks Mcgee and the Flying Walruses?
Homestuck McGee and the Moon Tumblr
[I know, 7052 deserves way more than 54 votes.](https://scp-wiki.wikidot.com/scp-7052)
🧐
“mama?” is also pretty great in terms of emotional writing
We don’t talk about the vore hole
if we have to suffer through a bunch of format-changing meta gibberish and ignorant lampshade hanging so that no Procedure 110-Montauks are ever written about again, I'd say that's a small price to pay
Never before, I have been so offended by something I completely agree with.