I was going to write a long and rambling discourse on my history on the site, but I don't think anyone would care. Instead, I'm going to focus on a subject that exemplifies my time here: Decommissions.
Really, you can blame Danteson for the whole thing. Danteson was a user who wrote very well, but tended to write pretty young female SCPs that he felt very protective of. The prototypical example of this was Iris: camera-girl. Up until Alice showed up, she was who all the males on the site fapped to, and yes, we were all males, Rights is the first confirmed female I know joined the site, and until then the closest we had was Diogenes, who claimed to be a trap.
So. Danteson writes an article, SCP-239. An omnipotent witch-girl. She is cute, she is powerful, and she sets off a major shitstorm. At this point on the site, there were fuck tons of humanoid HE WHO MUST BE OBEYED articles, that needed to be placated or they would rampage and destroy all, guys that tried to duplicate 076's success and failed. I should know. I wrote one: look at the original of SCP-953 for an example. But at this point, the backlash was starting to build. Poor Sigurros was just the last straw.
Dante had written a story where Siggy had demonstrated extremely powerful reality changing abilities. At the time, I didn't know how to best express my problem with it: now I would say that the item is not only uncontained, it is uncontainable. Also, I was bothered that the user reaction was mostly, "How cute." Wasn't this supposed to be a creepypasta site?
At the time, it was acceptable practice to comment on another person's article in the voice of your nebulous author avatar. Here is what I wrote, for posterity's sake:
Dr. A. Clef's Report: My analysis of the situation has led me to the conclusion that SCP-239 is an unacceptable containment and security risk. Although several proposals have been made re: using her for containing other SCPs, the example of SCP-953 and others must serve as a stark reminder of the risks of underestimating the Foundation's ability to control SCPs with reality-altering powers.
I would therefore like to make the following proposal: a piercing implement will be constructed of SCP-148, capable of penetrating SCP-239's otherwise impenetrable skin. This tool will be used to kill SCP-239 while she is asleep and her powers are neutralized. Because of the danger of SCP-239 awakening and resisting termination, it is my recommendation that the selected operative carry SCP-668 as well, in order to minimize complications.
One of the dangers of this procedure is the possibility that SCP-239 will awaken and perceive the operative as a friend or "good person," thus changing reality to match. It is for this reason that I would like to volunteer to carry out the procedure personally. A review of my personnel file should indicate that my [DATA EXPUNGED] should allow me to carry out the operation even after a reality shift of this nature.
- Clef
Oh, the shitstorm that resulted. Read the discussion on 239 for a taste of it.
Anyway, in the middle of this discussion, a user whom I'd seen before but not really talked to, named Kondraki, PMs me. He says that if Clef tried to kill 239, Kondraki would be obliged to try and stop him. We immediately see the potential for a story here. We come up with the idea of the war of the doctors. I open up with Clef firing off a flashbang and tranqing security guards. Kondraki responds with illusionary butterflies.
Things quickly escalate. It soon becomes clear to me that in order for any interesting story to develop at all against the damn butterflies which basically give Kondraki UNLIMITED ILLUSION POWER, I need Clef to bypass them somehow… I need to powergame. And so I make a decision that has haunted me for my entire career here.
I make Clef the Devil. Inspired by a throwaway joke line in my profile that he always lies, I make him the father of lies himself.
… If it helps, I'm very very sorry.
Now. At the time, there was also no accepted way to get rid of shitty articles. Users were expected to police themselves. End result: a lot of low-rated articles people didn't like and wanted to get rid of. Kondraki has a brilliant idea: why not use this "war" to kill some of them off as collatoral damage? The first casualties are: 122 (some weird dog-thing) and 547 ("Coldplay"). This was very popular. So people start talking about other bad SCPs they can kill. 531, a mary sue emo reality bender, comes up.
I propose the idea of a sequel to the Clef/Kondraki incident where the two doctors can work together, kill a shitty SCP, and patch up the bad blood. I fire off a story called Termination Order. It is very popular.
At this point, we get a little stupid. We start decommissioning SCPs left and right. People are competing for the funniest and most imaginative decoms. And it all comes to a head with Duke till Dawn, the most over the top decom report of all time. And that's when it hits us: we've become the monster.
In our efforts to get rid of mary sue SCPs, we only succeeded in created mary sue researchers.
My history on the site since then has been devoted to trying to fix everything I fucked up. I don't regret what happened: the energy and excitement led to some of the best writing we've ever had, but while we were roaring down the highway at 90 mph with the wind in our hair, we didn't realize we were heading straight towards a cliff. We managed to hit the brakes with two wheels hanging off the edge, climb gingerly out of the car, wrestle it back onto solid ground, and now we're doing 65 on a road running parallel to the cliff.
And with that tortured and drawn-out analogy, I'll end this post.
(account deleted)
