SCP Foundation

My first submission to the wiki. Please let me know what you think. Unless you vehemently hate it, in which case, shush!

Kendal mint cake isn’t proper cake, like a nice, light coffee and walnut sponge, or a strawberry gateaux; it’s just this weird, crumbly slab of sugar and glucose flavoured with peppermint, and sometimes covered in chocolate to hide it. I don’t like it very much, but I imagine it’s the kind of thing that a knock-off Shoggoth might be into..? Right?

Don’t even get me started on Azathoth and Curlywhirly bars.

Huge thanks to my wonderful reviewers: Kakroom, Reverend Fox, RockTeethMothEyes, and mayoculpa.

Also, thanks to everyone who reviewed my earlier attempts which I decided to shelf for the time being; They gave me a lot of great advice which (hopefully) prevented me making the same mistakes again in this article. Including (but not limited to) Jacob Conwell, DarkStuff, Eskobar, Zyn, UraniumEmpire, Roget, Meserach, and Rimple!

Image attribution:

“Quiggins-Kendal-mint-cake-factory” by Sladen. Sourced from Wikimedia Commons. This image is in the public domain.

ETA: Thanks to Accelerando for adding the tags, thanks to Shaggydredlocks for sharing the article on the Reddit, and thanks to ashausesall for translating the article into Chinese! That’s wild!

Oh my gosh, this is such a delight… in exactly the way one of those mint cakes probably wouldn't be. I wanted to upvote so bad after this masterful line:

Directors of these companies will be responsible for ensuring that no metric of performance over time could feasibly result in the production of a line graph matching the form of any lengthy section of the Transantarctic Mountain Range, as viewed from any angle.

and the rest of the article didn't disappoint. I love the conceptual connections you've made, love the analogy between the mountain range silhouettes and growth charts, and the inclusion of Eldritch as a phylum is genius to me.

Emphatic +1, great first submission.

The bit where the expedition wasn't wiped out by hostile shoggoth guards or awakened from suspended animation elder things justifiably upset about waking up in a frozen waste dissected by apes, but because the shoggoth stole their food and scampered like a amphorous giant racoon is probably one of the best bits I have ever read here. This is a weird wonderful thing.

I'd prefer this as a -J, but other than that I've no complaints.

This is wacky and offbeat in exactly the right way. The idea that Kendal mint cake is inherently anomalous and requires the Foundation to monopolise its production, the concept of sales graphs correlating with mountain ranges to alter them, and especially "the phylum Eldritch" … it's all great, even if the monster itself is a bit bland by necessity.

I do think the Lovecraft connection feels kind of shoehorned, and the fact that the sales graphs can alter the topography isn't clearly established prior to the "Update" section, but on the whole this is a great entry.

Silly Quiggan, mint cakes are for humans!
This is seriously good, you've weaved a lot of disparate concepts into a coherent and extremely original and entertaining whole.

So, I was responding to a thread where Waxwing asked for crits on a different draft in their sandbox. But I liked this article so much I dropped in a review of it simultaneously in the same post.

Shoggoths springboarding off a geomathematical weakness in the fabric of our reality in order to steal tasty minty cakes?! That is a glorious fusion of wacky hijinks and genuinely inventive eldritch horror that just tickles me right in the funny bone. And the dread bone. And… several other bones.

This is an absolutely brilliant and absurd anomaly and I fell in love instantly. Excellent first skip, author!

Hot shit, this is a real treat! Crazy original, and hilariously absurd. Love it! +1

I told ya readers were gonna love it, Wax.

It's well balanced between charm and dread.

Have a well-deserved +1!