IDEAS

SCP FOUNDATION

the strange site of society, language games, and rules

By Pierce Parker

Figure this Out

What are the rules you play by in your life? Of course, you have to eat, drink, and sleep. Those rules are simple. If you don’t play by them, then you won’t last long. Nearly all of us also play by society’s rules. We dress ourselves, obey traffic laws, get a job to make money, and buy things. After that we have some choices. When you log into your social media of choice to consume and post, you play by a similar, but different set of rules (X, Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, etc.). When you read a post, you understand what's happening because of the rules. You know the top left shows who posted it, you know underneath is the main image or video, you know underneath that are the creators’ description or thoughts on what they posted, and finally you know under that are comments from other users. These are rules that you follow in order to play in an online game or society.

The rules we chose to follow are interesting, but even more intriguing are the rules we set in our own lives. These rules we make bring structure and familiarity to our lives, our habits and routines. They make the everyday more comfortable and familiar. When you begin reading a novel, you are entering a world in which there are a set of rules that you learn and discover as you go through the book. By the end of the book, what was once confusing becomes familiar. The comfort we get from rules allows us to have a deeper, more meaningful connection with the world. And from that moment on, anything is possible, as rules spark new rules and new possibilities. It is a thrilling thing to watch and in an entertaining fashion what the SCP Foundation is trying to get us to understand, see, and experience.

The SCP Foundation is an online collaborative writing Wiki that focuses on horror, science fiction, and comedy. It hosts almost 10 thousand unique short stories which come in all kinds of formats and genres.They all center around a universe where monsters and magic are real and the job of the foundation is to Secure, Contain, and Protect the world from these threats. The universe is centralized around one site, but contributors have created video games, art, audiobooks, YouTube videos, full novels, and much, much more. Like any real society or the universe, it is never-ending and always expanding.

All the content created around the SCP foundation is user made. There is no license owner or individual in control, just a passionate community. Most of these stories follow the special containment procedures which outline what is necessary to keep these unexplained phenomena from breaking free and then a description of the entity. They can also include various attachments which spell out a bigger picture like notes, field reports, and interviews.

The Original

The wiki was not always this vast and it actually began with one single post in 2007 on 4chan, SCP-173. The post mimicked a scientific report by describing in a distanced tone how to contain an entity that would snap your neck if constant eye contact was not maintained at all times. This post went viral and within weeks people began making their own SCPs with their own new scientific lingo and documentation. The allure of being able to write and claim your own SCP number and this unique format of analytical and pseudo-scientific writing is what I believe made more and more people want to join in the game of writing and creating their own reports.

So, let's say the concept of this site interests you and you want to begin reading some of these containment procedures. You can get to the site and are welcomed with the dull look of almost every government site in the world.

Is this really classified?

The website stays within its own universe and behaves as an immersive experience, if you choose to treat it as such. You can take on the role of a junior researcher entering into a nearly endless list of files and scientific articles that are strictly formatted just like highly classified government secrets. A great place to start is with the top-rated page where you can find the most popular articles. These are an excellent place to start because they’re often one-off short reads that other more niche articles reference later. Let's look back at SCP-173 to see the base format for an article.

Well, this certainly is classified

All standard SCP articles follow the list of Item #, Object Class, Special Containment Procedures, and Description with some articles adding additional field reports and addendum. Writers can put anything they can imagine within these boundaries, but articles are required to take on this format. You may be wondering what the article above called, Euclid, means by object class. Invented language like this is typical on the site. Euclid is one of the standard object classes: that means an object is containable with a reasonable amount of effort.

For instance, if it is an object or entity that requires no effort other than housing it and proposes little threat, it would be considered object class safe, as it is for SCP-1689. 1689 is a standard burlap sack of around 200 potatoes which is actually endlessly deep, enough that people can enter and explore its contents. On the other hand, SCP 173 requires some effort and man power, but poses little threat if proper containment procedures are followed and maintained.

The third common object class and most dangerous is keter, SCP- 2875, which is a town in Wisconsin populated by 50-to-a-100 grizzly bears every three days. If lots of resources are not continuously dumped into SCP- 2875, there is a risk for mass casualties, and thus its classification, Keter. As the site has progressed, more and more complexities have been added. All of these unique symbols and terminology can be daunting at first, but once you're familiar it is a rewarding reading experience. Modern SCPs have their whole own UI and logo system that are in the header of each article.

Like some strange scorecard

This unique lexicon, UI, and symbols create a much more immersive experience for community members and lets informed readers understand more about the SCP before even beginning an article. In a real way, you are immersing yourself in a society by immersing yourself in the rules, which, if you think about it, is how it always works. Language rules are always the bulwark of society.

This formatting leads to the desire to learn more about the entity in question. The article works like mystery, unraveling before the reader the dangers, risks, and finally the procedures for containment. And then finally, the actual description of the SCP.

The mysterious cargo ship

For instance, open an article like SCP-3241. It is labeled as object class: Keter. Under Special Containment Procedures, you learn there are no active containment procedures but there are two committees keeping an eye on it. The SARC (Sommerfeld Assessment and Containment Group) as well as the real JMSDF (Japan Maritime Self-Defense Force). This is a somewhat common practice of incorporating real government or official organizations and invented ones, like SARC, to create an immersive world that takes on aspects of the real world. The procedures end with the note:The use of SRAs (Scranton Reality Anchors) within SCP-3241's exclusion zone is strictly prohibited. Pending completion of the inquiry into the events on November 5, 2015, no personnel (Foundation or otherwise) are permitted to enter SCP-3241 without O5 approval.

This is my favorite set up for an SCP file. I’m immediately wondering “What is an SRA and why are they banned?” “What happened to this ship and what is SARC doing with it?” The use of invented language and the rules of order for procedures coming before a description and logs creates not only a tangible sense of reality, but also a mystery.

The article describes the SS Sommerfeld, a repurposed foundation ship that had been used for the “transport for low-risk anomalies and anesthetized biokineticists from the decommissioned Site-97 to Site-82.” There is a lot of information there. Ontokineticist are “'reality-benders', people who alter their surroundings with their mind. Readers learn these terms as they read more, almost like how a child picks up new words and phrases once they enter school. It is a kind of language acquisition. In the SS Sommerfeld article, we find out that the ship was lost in 1998 with 5 Ontokineticists on board and appeared again in 2015. The ship's failure was linked to the 6 SRA’s failing and we learn that an SRA is “a device designed to suppress ontogenetic fields by projecting a stronger ontogenic field over it.” You get used to new sci-fi words being explained by other sci-fi words. The article continues on to its Addendums where the story is fully fleshed out. What we can see is a juxtaposition of the scientific and sterile writing in the first part of the file and then in the attached emails, interviews, and field reports a much more emotional and human response to these extraordinary events.

The Addendum begins with the account of the Sommerfeld spontaneously disappearing from all tracking in 1998 and then an Inquiry into the company that produces the SRA’s. A representative from the company defends any wrong doing on the SRA’s fault and says that none of this would happen if they spent more to have onboard technicians and more SRA’s. In a following interview a Foundation paraphysicist responds to that statement: The SRA is a tiger that we use to tame other tigers. We think we've domesticated it. We think it's our pet. But a pet tiger is still a tiger. You can cage it, train it, teach it cute tricks — but it's still a tiger. It still has claws. It still has fangs. And we've surrounded ourselves with them.

The story is beginning to unfold, but there are still unanswered questions and the real effects that have yet to be seen. In the next Addendum another ship, The Silent Spring, goes missing in 2015 for 3 days and then is found covered in an alien-like barnacle system that upon dissection reveals a full vascular system still interlinked with the crew of the ship. Upon retracing the path of The Silent Spring, the Sommefeld is found and is determined to be the cause of The Silent Springs transformation. A crew is assembled to approach the Sommerfeld but most of the crew refuse to make the trip because of the belief of the danger of SRA’s. Unmanned ships and drones are sent in which both fail before any meaningful progress is made. Eventually the director giving the orders to approach the Sommerfeld, boards a patrol boat, mounting 3 SRA’s to it. He brings along with him a young SRA technician and 2 other crew. The final segment is told from the perspective of Jackson Voccola, the stated sole survivor among the patrol boats. I believe it's worth reading in its entirety.

Quite a report, huh?

Here is the payoff to the whole mystery. We learn what a failed SRA is capable of. This story is not actually about the SS Sommerfeld, but is about the use of SRA’s which appear in many other articles and the foundation’s internal politics about the use and misuse of them. This article is a beautiful example of what happens in the SCP world as it intertwines new and old concepts, building out the universe in a meaningful way by following the rules of the site.

What about the articles which don't quite follow the rules or like to bend them? Well, this is where the fun begins and our understanding of language and rules. Some writers have learned to flip the rules on their head to the strength of the article. SCP- 2521 is one of the many non-traditional articles that do so. There are no words used in the article for a very specific reason.

Interpret that

From these images we can glean that this entity will attack anything that knows its name and speaks or writes about it, thus the format must be communicated in a different, more symbolic language. Other articles make jokes of the system itself like SCP-____-J which is quoted in full here:

Tricky information or tricky language?

This object also prevents itself from being written about, but in a different way than the previous one. It takes the rules we expect articles to follow to create long-winded scientific explorations and turns them into the shortest version possible, because that's its one power. This is an example of both resistance and fluid forms of communication working at once. If you think that language is important and the ways we put language together, then the SCP is full of living examples of unleashing creative mayhem through order and rules.

With all of these 1000’s of articles some of them start to meld together and form an overarching tale. These groupings of articles that cover a more specific narrative and have their own rule set are called canons. There are over 40 canons and 12 of these canons have 60 plus full articles. One of the largest is the Broken Masquerade canon in which the veil of secrecy of the public not knowing the foundation exists is broken. In this universe, the public has become aware of the SCP foundation. Despite this awareness, they are still in the dark about what is happening. The article I referenced earlier about the SS Sommerfield is from the Broken Masquerade canon and features multiple moments where the foundation and government agencies, which in normal writing would be unaware of each other, are working together. Many articles cover the response of the public to this new information, which comes in the forms of headlines and forum pages:

They've got the news

The implication is that the foundation is overwhelmed with absurd amounts to contain and begins to ask the public for assistance in containment.

The information is everywhere

These new rulesets allow new ways of telling stories while still maintaining that core ideal.

©Pierce Parker and the CCA Arts Review