Ask an Admin a Question: Part Four
Tis is a fun badwagon, so I've decided to hop aboard. Any questions?
SCP Wiki Administrator | Earth: We're all in this together.
Staff Thread: Ask an Admin a Question: Part Four
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» Staff Thread: Ask an Admin a Question: Part Four
Summary:
I am an administrator on the popular short-fiction project "The SCP Foundation". AMA.
lol, What's up?
Right now? I'm answering questions on a forum, and also snacking intermittently. Mmm, quiche.
SCP Wiki Administrator | Earth: We're all in this together.
Favorite/least favorite SCP, favorite/least favorite tale, how did you find the Foundation, and what is your favorite jam flavor.
Part of the problem with me is an inability to play favorites. I have a lot of SCPs that I like or dislike, but I couldn't pick a single superlative in either category. My favorites might include SCP-085, SCP-089, SCP-1000, SCP-342, SCP-261, and SCP-439.
My least favorites? I can't think of any that I really hate. Maybe SCP-139 or SCP-952. Anything with immersion-breaking errors in science, including the ones where the scientists act like B-movie characters instead of human investigative researchers. Anything poorly written. Anything that substitutes gore for a good story.
With tales, it's kind of the same story. The Lombardi series is fantastic. I really liked Acquisition Log SCP-███-█ for leaving just enough to the imagination. There's Epitaph, and similarly In His Own Image. Happy Free Market Log 17643390. Winding Down. You probably get the picture.
Least favorite tale? Maybe Like a Russian Racehorse, because what was the point? Or Saving Sigurrós Potter. ;)
I found the Foundation while browsing TVTropes. 212 was linked from the Eye Scream page. I read that one, was intrigued, read another, kept reading, stayed up way too late, developed a wholly irrational nervousness about opening my bedroom curtains after dark, and was hooked.
Raspberry jam is earthly perfection.
SCP Wiki Administrator | Earth: We're all in this together.
What do you think of containment breach and the attention it has brought?
How did you find the wiki?
Any cool stories from 'the good ol days' that you want to share?
Whether you like it or not, history is on our side. We will bury you!
Containment Breach is cool! I'm embarrassed to admit that I still haven't played it — I need to nuke-and-pave my desktop before it'll do anything but choke on most games, right now. The screenshots I've seen have been intriguing, though, and the attention it brings is exciting. It's a thrilling and slightly scary time to be part of this wiki.
To quote myself from above, I found the Foundation while browsing TVTropes. 212 was linked from the Eye Scream page. I read one, was intrigued, read another, kept reading, stayed up way too late, developed a wholly irrational nervousness about opening my bedroom window after dark, and was hooked.
Cool stories? Er… I don't have much, I'm afraid, other than the general "I can remember when SCP-[lownumber] was written!" stuff. I joined the site after the heyday of the LOLFoundation and the decoms, just when we were rebounding from that into a more serious tone.
SCP Wiki Administrator | Earth: We're all in this together.
Do you have houseplants? (If so, which?)
God, yes. My apartment windows currently host a hounds-tongue fern, a bird's-nest fern, a resurrection plant (Selaginella lepidophylla), two African violets in little terraria, a Western wild ginger, two orchids (an Oncidium intergeneric hybrid and a Phalaenopsis that recently returned from the dead), a wire vine, a spider plant, a clone of my aunt's fifty-year-old Aloe vera, a pair of adorable little zebra-striped Haworthia, a whisk fern (Psilotum nudum), a trailing variety of pothos, a rooted cutting from a friend's species fuchsia, and about a million Kalanchoe daigremontiana (the parent plant clones itself like crazy). That's not counting the potted squash, bell-pepper, pea, carrot, mint, and spinach plants in the patio windowboxes; the Equisetum cutting that's currently rooting in a vase of water; the invasive but prettily-blooming weeds whose flowers I occasionally cut from the local park and arrange on the dining table; or the unicorn-plant seeds that I'm trying to coax into sprouting, stubborn little buggers that they are.
…I may have a problem. XD
SCP Wiki Administrator | Earth: We're all in this together.
No, seriously.
What is the dumbest SCP you know of? (in your opinion)
How long did it take you to write a succesful SCP?
Dumbest? See a few posts up from here; I have trouble picking superlatives. A few of the -Js rely on fairly dumb humor. I don't like SCP-500-J very much. The procrastination rock, much as it cracks me up (and earned my upvote) isn't a huge intellectual achievement. Ditto the butt ghost and the upvote syndrome.
I'm almost embarrassed to admit that my first article — SCP-713 — took right off. It was my second idea (the first was a joke that nobody else thought was funny), but the first one I wrote up.
SCP Wiki Administrator | Earth: We're all in this together.
How close are you to graduating?
I graduated with my B.Sc. in June 2011 and am currently working in my field, in part to give myself time to decide whether I want to go to grad school.
SCP Wiki Administrator | Earth: We're all in this together.
Congratulations! (Not sure why I thought you has already started Grad School madness.)
Haha, thanks!
SCP Wiki Administrator | Earth: We're all in this together.
If we were still doing author avatars with amazing magical powers what would yours be?
Oo, tough one. The obvious one would be literally-photosynthetic skin, but that'd a bit silly, so I'd probably caricature some other facet of myself. Maybe my tendency to poke things. Telekinesis? Either that, or prehensile hair. I've got Hermione-Granger-hair IRL…
SCP Wiki Administrator | Earth: We're all in this together.
What's the difference between an orange?
Giving bearhugs to the unsuspecting since 1872.
Okay, seriously, though:
What SCP in-joke/meme do you most like/dislike? for instance: Shark Punching Center, consult an alchemist, Mexican 173 in a sombrero, etc.
Giving bearhugs to the unsuspecting since 1872.
My favorite is Dr. King and his apple seeds. It's just funny, especially when you consider that (at least as far as I can tell) the whole thing is a run-on from the consequences of fucking around with the vending machine. Poor bastard's being haunted into insanity by the vengeful annoyance of a snacks dispenser. XD
My least favorites are the ones derived from really bad SCPs — jester-goblin, alchemist, bush-baby, etc. The articles already crashed and burned; do we really need to keep making fun of them? (I'll admit, though, I do find them funny on occasion…)
SCP Wiki Administrator | Earth: We're all in this together.
Possible answer 1: Bathtub full of power tools.
Possible answer 2: It's the most popularly-cultivated member of the citrus family, it's subject to some interesting viruses, and it's got a delightfully evocative botanical descriptor. (The highly-specialized fruits of citrus plants are called hesperidia, after the golden apples of the Hesperides.) Also, it makes tastier juice than a kumquat.
SCP Wiki Administrator | Earth: We're all in this together.
Why is there so many individual threads instead of a single "ask the admins" thread?
The better to direct your questions to an individual admin, my dear…
SCP Wiki Administrator | Earth: We're all in this together.
Alrighty, in your opinion as a professional plant person, what is your opinion on the Batman villain Poison Ivy?
Meh. She's a caricature. I pretty much shrug, snigger, and let her go.
SCP Wiki Administrator | Earth: We're all in this together.
Favourite plant species?
Least favourite plant species?
Fourth time: Any favourite moments in the Foundation's history that you have?
Favorite/least favorite plants depend entirely on context, and I've got too many to name them all. Do you mean my favorite ornamental flower? That's the daylily or gloxinia. Favorite tree to climb? European beech. Favorite fall color? Sugar maple. Favorite for drinking? Tea. For wild trail snacks, it's Indian cucumber-root or red mulberry. For being my chosen harbinger of spring, forsythia. For vegetable gardening, snap peas. For sheer survival usefulness, cattail. For scenery, Chionochloa tussock-grasses or the myriad tiny jewels of the alpine tundra. To study, the leptosporangiae ferns with leaf dimorphy. To find unexpectedly, slipper orchids. I've got a whole suite of different plants that I love to see when hiking, because they indicate pristine or well-recovered habitat: redcedars in Ohio fens, southern-beech forests and tussock grasslands in New Zealand mountains, scruffy elegant sagebrush steppe in high-desert Idaho…
Least favorite plants? Again, context. Personally, poison ivy/oak/sumac and stinging nettles are not fun. Ecologically, invasive weeds like cheatgrass and garlic mustard piss me off. But even the nastiest weeds are peaceful-enough competitors in their native ranges, and poison ivy would probably be a popular ornamental if it weren't for the contact dermatitis. (Big glossy leaves and striking white berries? Yes please!)
My favorite moments with the Foundation don't tend to make site history: they usually happen in PMs. It's the really good critique-and-development sessions that I love the best. Whether I'm the one critiquing or the one critiqued, it's always wonderful when the exchange of ideas ignites, and suddenly the bland draft that came into the session is blossoming. Drewbear's and my brainstorming for SCP-1400 was the most recent one of those: we went in with nothing but a single evocative mental image, and came out with the seed for a mythos. :D
SCP Wiki Administrator | Earth: We're all in this together.
amused but pleased chuckle at your longest response to anything being to someone asking you about plants.
A little button reading "Ask me about my plants!" has been added to my mental image of Photo. Which means my mental image is now a fern wearing a button.
Heh. There's a reason I went into botany. ;)
SCP Wiki Administrator | Earth: We're all in this together.
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page revision: 1, last edited: 02 Apr 2021 15:16
