A series of straw man arguments fighting for a point that didn’t need to be made, feeding into the misguided notion that somehow the only thing holding people back from writing “correctly” is some nebulous thing called “proper clinical tone.”
How did the SCP Wiki, a creative writing site that celebrates a lack of defined canon, unquestioningly accept something that spits on this core value in favor of pedantry? There’s not a single word here that isn’t telling people how they’re allowed to think and nothing about how they can use an iconic SCP visual element in new, creative or interesting ways, instead urging them to not even consider the tool and to throw it directly in the trash.
We do not need to emulate any real-life institutional style guide because we are not them. They are real and have valid reasons to use rigid rules to govern their speech, we are a facsimile using our speech to make interesting fiction. So if that means defying the conventions of a field we’re not even participating in, what is wrong with that?
I know none of this was done intentionally, no honest writer wishes to limit how they or anyone else could use language. The guide accomplishes only that chilling effect.
(account deleted)
