The Maturation of SCPs

They’ve become far more than creepypastas, fanart, and letsplays

By Quinn McClurg

A mention of the SCP Foundation probably conjures notions of tacky creepypastas, fanart, and YouTube letsplays, all taking themselves too seriously. Yes, the SCP Foundation once was this, but over the years, the SCP Foundation, and its authors, has matured quite nicely, growing into itself in new and exciting ways.

But, before we get too far down the rabbit hole, I’m forcibly enrolling you in an SCP crash course:

  • “SCP” is an abbreviation of “Secure, Contain, Protect,” the three guiding goals of the Foundation.

  • The “Foundation” is a worldwide paramilitary shadow organization, primarily dealing with the researching, securing, and containing of anomalies.

  • Anomalies are anything (beings, objects, people, places, concepts, etc.) that, for some unexplained reason, defy the laws of nature and reality.

  • If revealed, these anomalies would not only endanger the public, but also shift worldwide views of “normal” reality irreparably, creating mass hysteria, violence, etc.

  • Thus, the Foundation must operate secretly to protect the public and its “normal” conceptions of reality; as often stated, they “die in the dark, so [we] may live in the light.”

The only way into the Foundation is through SCP articles, sprawling documents written as lab reports. Each one includes special containment procedures, object descriptions, and sometimes additions such as experiment logs, exploration logs, and interviews, which add a little more texture than the initial write-up can provide. (Sidenote: since reading can be pretty time-consuming, I usually find and explore these articles through podcasts like “the Exploring Series”; these prove to be a little easier to follow/digest).

Here are some of my favorite articles:

  • SCP-093, “Red Sea Object,” a red, carved disk that compulsively rolls itself toward mirrors, and, if pressed to one, opens gateways.

  • SCP-507, “Reluctant Dimension Hopper,” an otherwise normal human who randomly becomes “displaced” between dimensions.

  • SCP-3143, “Murphy Law,” a detective whose mere presence flattens reality into the dimensions of a noir-themed script.

  • SCP-4001, “Alexandria Eternal,” an endless, self-updating archive of every human life ever lived, containing books that, if altered, alter baseline reality itself.

  • SCP-5005, “Lamplight,” a lamp in a snowy human settlement, far passed the fraying edge of the universe.

  • SCP-5322, “And the Road Stretches On…,” a 50-meter-long, one-way country road that terminates abruptly.

  • SCP-7027, “A is for Annihilation,” a dark void that appears within the middle of an infected individual's forehead, leaking prophecy.

Due to the scientific writing style, the lack of clear explanations, and the contrasting in-universe existence of “normal” reality, a reader’s disbelief is suspended much easier than in other speculative fictions. Often, exemplary entries within the SCP database feel far more real and compelling than actual reality itself; the philosophical insights and emotional impacts a reader gleans, then, are transferable to the real world.

The SCP Database is the largest existing and ongoing work of collaborative fiction; it is also the cutting edge of speculative fiction, as the entire database itself is built on subversion of both readers’ and the genre’s expectations. As a result, these articles have quickly become very abstract and experimental; it is speculative fiction pushed to the limits of what the human mind can speculate.

Notable concepts include metaphysics (thinking about thinking), metafiction (fiction within fiction), pataphysics (theoretical realities existing below and above our own), cognitohazards (information that is actively harmful/hostile), antimemetics (things that resist conceptualization), mnestics (drugs that expand perception / prevent forgetting), and endless paradoxes which fold upon themselves, pre-date themselves, cause themselves, continue themselves, alter themselves, obscure themselves, and terminate themselves. Here, these ideas live, breathe, and grow, resisting categorization, conceptualization, convention, and control, both in- and outside of the Foundation’s universe.

Much like real life, the goal of reading SCPs is not to know, experience, or completely understand everything; the goal is to experience some of it, get lost in the whole of it, and be satisfied in only understanding a little bit of it at a time, savoring any connections and syntheses that may be made. There is no “cannon” nor written rules nor themes encompassing the entire universe either; to live and to read SCPs is to willingly be a stranger, to try, and to learn; it is to reject and accept everything, simply by being and perceiving.

To live and to read is to construct a subjective reality; it may all be fiction, it may all be stupid, and it may all be a confusing waste of time, but it can alter our waking realities as we know them as well; so what is there to lose?

Wake Mag