SCP Foundation

HOLY MOLY I PROCRASTINATED AND JUST GOT THIS IN ON TIME. I HAD TO COLDPOST.

There will be more content to come.

Well, an Edit to this comment is a long time coming.
First off, here's my author page if you're interested in my other work: http://www.scp-wiki.net/author-page-zzuxon

At the risk of sounding like I'm tooting my own horn, I adore how 4410 turned out. Everything was riding against it. It's a pataphysics SCP, which many on the site have an automatic distaste for. It's an entry to the 4000 contest, so standards are automatically higher than your everyday skip. It is very ambitious, and therefore very easy to screw up. The basic premise is "The SCP wiki is an anomaly documented by the Foundation," which has also been the premise of many a new user coldpost that got soundly elbow dropped into deletion. Most of all, it was a coldpost itself.

In spite of all that, it is now my highest rated SCP by a wide margin. +67 may not seem like much, and it isn't, really. But I honestly doubted I would ever hit +50, and now I have, on the work I feel is the best and most worthy to have my highest rating.

The idea for 4410 originated in seeing a joke on /r/DankMemesfromSite19 which suggested that by Series XI, cognitohazards would crawl out of your computer screen and punch you in the face. The joke of course was about the way that SCPs and site expectations have tended to become more complex over time. I imagined site users eventually figuring out how to make actual anomalies to satisfy the communities hunger for increasingly sophisticated and immersive fiction. I originally conceptualized it as a joke 001 proposal, then realized it could be portrayed seriously as well, and thought that it would be my serious 001 proposal one day. One day being far off, because I was very intimidated by how high-concept the idea was. I thought I'd screw it up if I didn't have enough SCPs under my belt. But when I learned the 4000 contest theme was history, I knew I had to write it before I felt ready. I didn't feel like I was a good enough writer to do the concept justice, and I kind of still don't. But I do think it works, it does what I wanted it to do. I'm proud.

I want to give big thanks to Roget and /u/modulum83 (Probably a user here too, someone please tell me who he is on wikidot), whose History of the Universe and Modern Introduction to the SCP Foundation: Part 2 respectively were invaluable resources and influences for this skip.

Also big thanks to FloppyPhoenix for the slick AF Pataphysics CSS.

I'm not sure how much I like this. It's deliberatly very meta, and I feel that the fourth iteration takes that too far.

On the other hand, it's a fun read, and feels like an excellent homage to the history of the site.

+1

It's So Meta Even This Acronym.

You talked to me about this at the start of the contest, and I whole-heartedly approved of the idea. I wish I'd gotten to read this before now, but even as a coldpost, this is great. It broke my brain trying to read this, but in a good way.

One thing I'd fix up after voting period ends: you don't need a lot of redundant portions. There's an article which excises redundant portions in the revisions.

Also: mind changing the alternate text color from Green to something else? Doesn't stand out too well against the Pataphysics theme.

Huh.

See, my knee-jerk reaction is to chastise this for being unduly self-congratulatory, but I realize all too well how hypocritical that is because, y'know, I write SCPs too. :B

The only real criticism — other than the length, I suppose — is that it's too much like Swann's Proposal, writ large, to the point of referencing it in-text. And… that's not really enough to prevent me from upvoting after the contest, at least. This is pataphysics done not excessively aggravating, which I know is faint praise.

Meanwhile, fix your "it's"es. Just about every single one should be "its". (The rule of thumb: if you can replace it with "it is", then use "it's".)

I'm a very lenient canon-enforcer. I feel weird when I downvote for concept. I feel extra weird when I act like a pedant about a particular canonical element someone introduces and actually bother to comment about it, but I am fundamentally opposed to this.

I am so tired of pataphysics. This is the article that's making me admit that. I don't even have the words for it. It's a wave of exhausting over-meta that is going to tire the site of meta content in general very quickly because it takes it so damn hard and makes it so overt. We could have stuck with the existence of the Multi-U Department, the implications of Swann's Proposal, and Timeline R-zayin-H-517/6. That was enough. I respect any author's approach to meta, as its very subjective, but this pataphysics business is almost objectively going to burn up all the site's meta juice. Give it a few months; pataphysics is too much of a gimmick to produce unique content after a certain period, I guarantee it.

There ain't shit I can do about it other than be annoyed, and the upvotes prove that I'm in the minority, but it's not something I can let myself be quiet about.

The only thing this article has going for it is that it's meta, which is a recurring problem with pataphysics articles.

-1

I’m also tired of Pataphysics and to me meta articles have to be amazing to get an upvote. For instance, Ihp's proposal is meta and while it falls into the same rabbit hole all pataphysics articles do ("we can live normally despite being actually controlled by our authors and knowing we are controlled") it's charming and a beautiful read. This wasn't. This was a long exposure on meta and not much else. I liked the framework of the article, with Enkidu and the more informal tone of the researcher, but this still feels too much like a circlejerk of this wiki.

-1.

I'll straight up admit I'm not super into the pataphysics trend that has swept through some corners on the wiki, however, I'd like to think that an article that was executed well enough could still wring a +1 out of me. This is not that article I'm afraid.

Not only do you basically serve us the entire wiki as a kind of bizarro version of itself in this SCP, the handling of the authorship in the O5 discussion at the end just kills the piece for me, as it's not only rather hamhanded but also dull exposition on how this brand of pataphysics works.

Even if the above were not the case, in the end, the whole affair just rings far to close to Swann's Proposal for my liking.

Perhaps if this was more subtle about how it does business things would be different, but then again would that not just be Swann's proposal again?

-1.

The history/timeline table says SCP-3000 where it should say 4000. I assume that's a typo, but with meta I'm never entirely sure.

I love this to pieces. I actually laughed out loud at it at a couple points.

I mean, I admit I'm biased, I'm a huge fan of meta. But your approach here is very unique; by the end of the article you downplay EVERYTHING and suggest that the entire phenomena is just normal development. It's like an anti-SCP in that sense. I agree with some of the reviewers here that it crosses a couple lines, but you're obviously self-aware of that, and address it within the article. So no real complaints here!

(And yeah I know this has been out for a while but I felt obliged to leave a comment; I liked it that much.)