In anticipation of creating a personnel file for my character, I was wondering what the policy was on creating Foundation personnel with anomalous characteristics that would otherwise qualify them as an SCP. I figure as long as its something relatively subtle it shouldn't be a problem, but I thought I'd check.
Not a roleplaying site, son. There is one for the site this way, though
Also, we don't do that shit any more. Even Clef is toned down a lot from his beginnings. Hell, word of me is that all his adventures never happened.
And of course we all take your word for it.
We have toned down a bit, but many of the staff have odd quirks and kinks. I think Bright is one of the last real "SCP-level Researcher" left, and that's mainly because we have no idea how to undo it. Besides, you can be a severely strange and screwed up individual without rising to the level of Special Containment Procedures. Gears is a heartless monster, Iceberg is a explosive-obsessed perv, Gerald can't pour milk without bursting in to flames, and Dmitri is a bipolar sociopath. All these are strange, but none amount to a SCP.
It seems as if The Foundation has progressed through several stages. At first, they were a small subset of some larger body. Then they grew and formed their own, small being, which grew and grew. Soon, the "military oversight" was almost totally absorbed, and research ran somewhat wild, with SCP getting lax. Now, it seems as if The Foundation is clamping back down, and slipping back in to the cold, monolithic, faceless image of it's infancy, but with much more resources, connections, and power.
There are some exceptions, but generally speaking, if a SCP item can generate valuable research, it's allowed to do so only in containment. Bright, Kain and a few other oddball staff are the exceptions, not the rule.
/me whistles innocently, and sweeps his special snowflake behind an arass.
Admin, SCP Wiki
You pervert, you.
It's a curtain like wall hanging! Jeez, more people need to read Hamlet.
Admin, SCP Wiki
Yes, yes they do.
I'll sweep behind your curtain like wall hanging, Bright.
Naked.
It's spelled "arras", because the name comes from Arras, a town in France that was famous for its textiles.
I know this because I have been to Arras and my father drilled it into me.
Late to the party, but…
I'm certain there's a pun involving arras and unimport's father drilling him. Nothing comes to mind, but there's one there…
I am having trouble understanding what you are saying (Sorry! I blame it on Toxic overload!). Are you talking about the SCP universe, or the website?
Honestly, a little of both. The website, with the mass edit, is booting out a lot of the more…ill-fitting entries, which I feel is bringing up the overall tone and feel of the series. By the same token (at least in my mind), the Foundation universe is following a similar suit.
Hell, in AD (the RP, seen?) even Bright's come down to normal bastard status. Granted, it took some highly creative roleplay twists, and might not necissarily work in wiki canon, but the point is that I think the leadership of the site as a whole has made a decision to grow with the site out of the old silliness and into something more mature.
Personally, I think that's for the best. If and when I ever get around to actually making a profile for myself, I'm not really sure yet whether it'll be in character at all. I like to hope that I as an author and real person can be interesting on my own, without hiding behind some sort of empowered fictional sue of myself. If I must have a character on the wiki, I guess I'll copypasta my character sheet from AD…
Thing is, I do have a character on the wiki. Agent Yoric pops up in several articles, written both by myself and others, and I'm proud of that. But, he exists without the need for special powers or magic capabilities, as a human in a scary world, and I'm even more proud of that.
Honestly? Wiki-Bright is not going to be changing. Some of the reason was brought up in the argument with whats his dick, the fact that Bright himself is NOT an SCP. While it is true he is CONTAINED by 963, he himself is NOT the SCP. If they could find a way to remove him from it, they likely would. (At which point an O5 would likely get themselves put in it, but that's besides the point.)
That said, the actual article for SCP-963 needs some SERIOUS maintenance. I plan on cleaning it up, soon, (soon being an unknown amount of time for me, but hopefully before we get to the 900s) of some of the humorous intent (lapdances for clef?) and putting in more of the things that apparently aren't clear in the current version, like the fact that Dr. Bright is the first and only being to have been in 963, the fact that he relives all of his deaths every time he goes to sleep, and the way he is haunted by the 'ghosts' of those he's overwritten whenever 963 isn't on anyone. As my writing style is rather hit or miss, I would be more then happy with anyone who might be willing to help with such edits. Bueller, bueller, Yoric?
Admin, SCP Wiki
I'd love to help out. I'll talk to you later about which direction it needs to go.
I think some amount of…ahem…"eccentricity"…is kinda reasonable in more senior personnel.
The Foundation needs the best talent it can get so would be prepared to put up with a lot. Also maybe vaguely psychotic oddballs are the kind of people necessary to deal with SCPs (or is a consequence of dealing with them too long).
Having said that staff verging on superheroes kind of spoils the feel of a bureaucratic and dry organisation dealing with crazy shit.
I guess my feeling is I like the idea of the Foundation surviving because it has planning and genius-level magnificent bastards on it's side rather than supernatural staff.
Here, as I understand it, is the way that the site leadership seems to feel about the creation of SCP like Foundation staff.
"DON'T.
We did it, and we're sorry we did. It wasn't worth the backlash in terms of badfic and mary sue type entries from those incapable of sensing the invisibble barrier between rediculous and suck. Our characters were grandfathered in to hopefully establish a sort of Able-line, but time and time again new members have missed the point. Just don't."
Just as they were grandfathered in, many senior staff type characters seem to be on the road toward being grandfathered out. As Gears and Clef mentioned, the majority of S-Staff have been reduced to badass normal at most, with plenty of downsides to reflect the trauma and horror they experience on a daily basis. Clef, author of one of the most hardcore badass OTT line-crossed-twice motherfuckers to ever grace the internet has gone so far as to state plainly that none of it ever happened. To me, that's a vaguely regrettable good thing. I hate that I don't get to participate in the free-for-all that seems to have been the early days of the SCP Foundation, but I am fucking honored to be a part of what I believe this community will become.
See, the SCPs began as creepypasta. /x/-files fodder to shiver the mind and warp the dreams of the readers into something a little more nightmarish, and the internet rejoiced. Over time, an undercurrent of sillinness crept in, and it was still good, but not as good. Now, through a tightening of standards and general edits of the entire SCP listing, the powers that be seem to be steering this wiki toward that original goal, and I for one am stoked. Once the edit is complete, once the standards are tightened and tuned, once the Foundation is set on the path the admins are building for it, each and every one of us will be part of one of the finest communities of writers, editors, and readers on the whole damn internet.
Eh, nah, I think it has to do with what you have and how well you can pull it off. The feel of the site may be changing, but if the page is good and interesting, who cares? The Personnel Pages aren't necessarily canon or anything, and what you put on them doesn't matter that much, but if you're going to do something unusual, maybe the best idea would be to put it up here or in the main chat so we can tell you whether it's funny or stupid.
You know, the only reason Kain is a dog is because I liked the picture enough to set it up as my profile pic. I thought it'd be funny to have a small corresponding little passage to go along with it. I never once thought folks would turn it into canon.
*Shrugs*
Hey, a worthwhile discussion has happened while I wasn't looking!
The SCP Foundation is all about the unnatural being confronted by the extra-ordinary. In order to face the insanity hidden behind the veil, the Foundation puts on its best, dryest, most unemotional suit to go to work. The impossible is dressed up with cold, stale language, both to disguise it, and to drag it kicking and screaming into the realm of the human mind. The SCP article is a straitjacket: a pin nailing an artifact or entity to a cold, real corkboard. It's a device that allows us to pretend that what we deal with is graspable by the intellect.
So, I'm glad there's been a movement towards more ordinary Senior Staff. The O5s that govern the actions of the Foundation, after all, are (almost) as normal as can be. The heart of the Foundation is indifference. The ability of a human being to step right up to the horrifying, sneer, straighten their tie, and say "So what?" This Mass Edit is a step in the right direction. It cuts the weak and the unspectacular, but also it reflects what I tentatively refer to as the "modern" sentiments of the site.
Kain: what about SCP-244?
That came after Fishmonger made Kain an actual character. And it was funny at the time.
Admin, SCP Wiki
I am happy that the Foundation staff aspect of the site is going to eventually be fixed. While I love this place, all the Mary Sues were a detriment to the site, and frustrating. Real, normal people are by far more interesting.
That doesn't mean, though, that everyone should be normal. Dr. Bright's character, for one (Accidents happen)… And it's realistic that many of the staff exhibit psychological problems, on account of where they work.
Agreeing with ya. Even though the Foundation is 'normaling up', the normal doesn't have to be thorough and lifesucking. In a way, it's the effort to balance the chaos and the order…
I'd like to think of it this way: Bright and Kain is not SCP-level, but comes the closest to that line, because well, accidents happen and they are still valued in Foundation terms. And yeah, they themselves are not SCPs. And what Clef said about it all 'not being true', I sense a hint of 'swamp gas'. Clef's secrets are to his own, methinks? And Fishmonger, who was somehow classified as a reality bender, doesn't show that property, anyway, not while we're looking…
So, the SCP pond is calming down on the surface, but who knows what torrents start to stir deep beneath the surface?