Q1: What is your headcannon?
KP Crow: My definite headcanon? Well, that's a question that has one hell of a vast answer, depending on what area of canon you're talking about. Well, really, I believe that the Foundation functions a lot like the government, and the various branches of the armed forces. Parts are very strict or lax, depending on what it is they're dealing with, or what they're supposed to be doing. It's made of people after all, and they can't be angry badasses or stone cold douchebags all the time, so I like to think they have downtimes, and families, and occasional screw around, sometimes even on site.
Dr. Gears: Oh man…there's a thread somewhere with this floating around in it, but I'll paraphrase. The Foundation has always existed in some form or another. The current incarnation started as a military branch, with a focus on the collection, containment, and research of these weird items that were starting to turn up. This was good for a while, until it became clear that we would probably never be able to understand a vast majority of the items, let alone be able to turn them to practical/military applications. Meanwhile, the increasing demands of the budding Foundation meant they were having to do more and more internally. After a while, the last ghost of military presence left, leaving The Foundation a totally independent entity.
Yoric: I choose to read the site as though it is a cache of documents posted online by rebels within the Foundation who want to have its secrets disclosed to the world. There's a lot of different rebels posting whatever they can get their hands on, which is why the security clearance differs from document to document and why some stuff doesn't agree with other stuff. I think lower security clearance personnel are often lied to to cover up things they aren't cleared to know, and that not everything posted is necessarily the truth in character. From there, I have all kinds of ideas for day-to-day stuff and such, but as for the “backstory” aspect of things, that's about where I stand.
Dr. Clef: I don't have a headcannon. I have a crotch cannon. My crotch is a hand and the hand has a gun.
Seriously, though, what do you mean by this question? Do you mean what aspects of the site do I accept as canon and which I don't? Broad question, isn't it?
Okay, here are a few of my personal opinions, at least: Dr. Clef isn't a reality bender, neither is he the devil, but he's not an ordinary man, either. The SCP Foundation doesn't actually execute D-Classes every month, but they want you to believe that they do. The reference to surgeon crabs in my SCP-001 article isn't just an artifact of an article number being reassigned, it's a warning.
And finally, at long last, here is what 110-Montauk really is:
あなたがこれを翻訳するこの騒動を経験したら、本当に生活をする必要があります。しかし、のいくつかの実際の内容がここにあるということを仮定します。
DrEverettMann: I actually have a few competing headcanons. One is what I think of as Classic Foundation. That's the one where Clef and Kondraki do crazy awesome things, Mann fights Hatbot, and things are generally more lighthearted. Then there's the more serious Foundation. This is the one that most resembles the Foundation tone we typically go for. This is the one where Lombardi lives. The Foundation does morally questionable things because it believes they're necessary. Individuals do their best with a bad situation, while the Foundation itself may or may not have humanity's best interests at heart. The wrong things crouch at the edge of things, like wolves at the edge of the firelight.
Q2: What do you think is your best SCP (the one you wrote) and why?
KP Crow: My best SCP? Well, if we're talking about how well it did its job, I'd say SCP-076, if only for the fact that everyone remembers it, be it positively or negatively received. Some people get quite impassioned about it, again, some with very negative responses, though a surprising number of positives. But if we're talking more towards a tone of horror or fear that's much more consistent to what a lot of people seem to think the SCP should be about, I'd have to say SCP-035. It's the only serious horror article I've written for the site, and it is technically my highest positively voted.
Dr. Gears: Best…well, in terms of popularity, I think it's between 914 and 682. I love 914 because it's this big, insane device that seems to almost be mocking people. Just when you think you've got it figured out, suddenly it takes a left turn, and you're back to square one. I think it makes a little bit of a statement about obsession and such, while at the same time being a real imagination sparker.
682 is kind of my black sheep. I still love the death-gecko, but it's one of the biggest bones of contention off-site, along with Able. What the basic idea I was trying to get across was that there are some things that just can't happen. It really buggers up humanity to be faced with a problem we just can not get around, no matter what. It's frustrating, and can ultimately drive you nuts if you're not careful…but most people see it as a big, stupid “mary sue”, which makes me wonder if people really understand that term.
184 deserves special mention, because it's one of the ones I've had to think out and defend the longest, and one of the first I ever did a story about. I wrote the container-expanding thing before reading House of Leaves, and the second I got in to the book, realized I kind of accidentally made a house-of-leaves-maker. Then the comment section sparked one of the longest Q/A sessions I'd ever had to deal with, so it's more fleshed out in my head then some of my earlier work.
Personal favorite…god, that's like asking me to pick between my kids. If pressed…I'd have to say 882. I think it's a good symbol of The Foundation as well…this mass of deadly stuff, working for some unknown purpose. If I were ever to see one of my SCP on the big screen…I'd have to say 882 would be the first request I'd have. Also, being my first, it just has a special place for me.
Yoric: Depends on how we're defining "best", here. SCP-228 is my highest rated, but SCP-1110 is my favorite. Overall, I think my Foundation Tales are better. The GOI "Are We Cool Yet?" was my idea, and started as a Tale of mine.
Dr. Clef: SCP-231 is certainly the one that gets the most hits and attention and has gotten me the most infamy, but I'm most proud of my work editing SCP-342 (Ticket to Ride), mostly because I felt like there was a great idea under the original writer's convoluted prose, and also because I love the way the final version plays out.
One might say the inevitability of "the ride" is a metaphor for mortality and the inevitability of death, which is why it's so effective. One might also stop trying to be a literary critic and enjoy the creepies.
Dr. Bright: I really like my most recent one, 1590, because of the subtle little touches I included.
DrEverettMann: I'm rather partial to SCP-774, Whistlebones, and I'm often surprised it isn't rated higher than it is. But I suppose my best overall effort is SCP-1983.
Q3: What were your FIRST impressions of the site (back when you first came here)?
KP Crow: I had no real first impression of the site, because when I arrived there wasn't one. At best, there was a very small, badly kept wiki, where no one talked to each other. Eventually, we moved to the new site, courtesy of The Administrator, who made the three most active people on that little wiki admins, being Gears, Fritzwillie (since inactive) and myself.
Dr. Gears: I was really excited, actually. I've always wanted to be a writer, and suddenly there was this whole ready-made style, that I was actually half-way good at, waiting to be explored. I just thought it was the coolest idea. I still feel mostly the same now, but it's tempered with this sense of “holy [Expletive Redacted], this got big” now.
Yoric: I was always a fan of horror writing, particularly short stories like "The Horla" by Guy De Maupassant and many of the stories written by Poe, so I liked the site immediately This was a cool way to put a modern spin on the genre, and I felt like my own writing would fit in on the site. I've also always been a fan of how our format uses false censorship to imitate visually the look of declassified CIA documentation; not only is it a cool way to add realism, but it's a nifty storytelling device to use for foreshadowing.
Dr. Clef: First of all, that SCP-173 was creepy.
Secondly, that the other SCPs were also creepy and I wanted to write one too.
After I got reamed for writing a Mary Sue reality bender, I thought everyone was a bunch of dicks.
Then I got my feet under me, wrote a couple of good articles, got to know everyone better… and confirmed that yes, they are indeed a bunch of dicks. But I'm a dick too, so I guess I'm just one more dick in the dick bouquet.
That's a weird visual. I don't recommend thinking about it too long.
Dr. Bright: Pretty damned awesome.
DrEverrettMan: Like a lot of people, I came to the wiki through TV Tropes. My first impressions were colored by the over-the-top elements that TV Tropes tended to focus on, like Kondraki riding 682, the War of the Doctors, and things like that.
Q4: What do you think qualifies for a real scary SCP/tale?
KP Crow: Leaving a good deal to the imagination I believe. It's run up, build up. As Hitchcock said, "It's the gunshot that brings the tension in people, it's the anticipation that precedes it." (Though my wording on that quote may be somewhat off.) It's a trope that accompanies the scariest articles on site, such as SCP-231, as it never explicitly states anything, and you're merely left with your imagination and the implications it leaves behind.
Dr. Gears: I like more psychological stuff. Not as in brain-melting things, but entries where you don't get scared right away. It's later, after your brain has had time to work on it a bit, that you realize you're actually pretty creeped out. I'm all for gore and such, but it's that kind of thing that lasts for me. That's what I strive for, when I write…I don't want to scare you right away, with a shock or anything…I want to scare you hours from now, when you suddenly realize you're shaking too bad to walk by that dark, open doorway.
Yoric: There's a level of verisimilitude I like to see in an article; not only does it have to be something I can understand, but it has to be something I can believe if I try to. If an article actually makes me glance behind me, it's a good article.
Dr. Clef: Stephen King has a famous quote: "I recognize terror as the finest emotion and so I will try to terrorize the reader. But if I find that I cannot terrify, I will try to horrify, and if I find that I cannot horrify, I'll go for the gross-out. I'm not proud." He defines terror as the moment just before the Big Reveal, the suspenseful moment just before you find out what the horrifying thing really is.
Extra Credit (http://www.penny-arcade.com/patv/episode/where-did-survival-horror-go) defines horror as the juxtaposition of curiosity and fear. "It's why we cover our eyes at a scary movie but peek through our fingers."
So yeah. A good scary story should keep you wanting to find out more even as you're dreading what you will find out when you get there. If you want an example of someone who was a master of this, read H.P. Lovecraft. Almost without exception, the actual revelations in the stories he writes are kinda lame, but the journey there is amazing.
That, by the way, is why SCP-087 (the game OR the article) works so well. It keeps you wanting to keep playing and/or reading even as you fear what's coming next.
Dr.Bright: Good writing.
DrEverettMann: The scariest SCPs/Tales are the ones that hint at something bigger, and more dangerous, than what's in the text itself. SCP-1717 is a great example of this. While I think it could use a more paranormal angle, the basic idea is absolutely horrifying, once you invest a little thought into the implications. It presents the effects very plainly, and it doesn't tell you what the effects of all grasses dying off would be. But if you know just a little bit of ecology… Well, that's pretty goddamned terrifying.
Q5: Are you disappointed by the lack of a story in Containment Breach?
KP Crow: Honestly, I've never played it, so I don't really have an opinion on that question.
Dr. Gears: Actually, no, and there's a reason. There actually is something of a story in CB, it's just not knock-over-the-head obvious. I've actually written a lot of stuff for the notes and records you find on computer screens and papers…which I watch every single “let's play!” guy just walk past. As I understand it, there's talk of putting in more as development continues, but at the moment it's not a big worry, at least on my end.
Yoric: Not really. I can't see a story driven game working as effectively from a horror standpoint. The lack of a driven story or real goal can sometimes make the player feel more vulnerable, and that vulnerability is an important part of being afraid.
Dr. Clef: There's plenty of story in Containment Breach. It's just that most of the story is about a guy running away screaming from horrible monsters.
I think we need to break away from the idea that you need voice acting and a plot to have a story. I could tell you an epic tale about hubris and loss, determination and despair, about men who do great works and have them cruelly torn down and get back to their feet to start all over again.
That game would be Minecraft. Fucking Creepers.
I see Containment Breach as possibly going the same way. Put in enough content and enough things to do and people will make their own stories. I'd personally like it if food, water, and sleep became things to regulate along with blinking. It would be neat if you could try to barricade doors and gather resources. It would be even more awesome if you could find a gun… and if you could make the choice to eat your last bullet rather than be taken alive by something horrible and suffer a fate worse than death.
I just realized I mostly described Rogue Survivor. I should play that game again.
Q6: Why did chose "your" personality?
KP Crow: I'm the Labrador in a suit with glasses and several Ph.Ds. As for choosing it, I originally just used the picture because I liked it, and originally, authors were separate from the sites canon. However, a few users, one specifically, used several of the staff in some stories. It pretty much took off from there….
Dr. Gears: Ahh, actually, that's 4chan's fault. While the SCP were still primarily a /x/ thing, I made one or two abortive “tale” attempts, one of which had a concerned scientist named Dr. Gears. As a interesting note, this particular note hinted that 682 was actually the result of cross-SCP testing. My tripcode name at the time was “COG”, so it seemed to make sense to go to “Gears”. Anyway, I got ripped on for being too “dramatic”, so I made Gears this profoundly repressed person. This is also why some of the old folks, mainly Kain, still call me Cog.
Yoric: I didn't. Yoric as he appears in a lot of tales was an RP character in the Fieldwork and Active Duty roleplaying games, and other authors sometimes choose to include him in their works. I've never actuallly used him in a tale; my only recurring characters are a lazy censor who never actually appears but tends to sloppily black out information in my articles and a female lab assistant named renfield who dies in a lot of articles. The character bio on my author page is a joke written by DrMann; there's been a few other versions too.
Dr. Clef: I thought it was funny.
Dr.Bright: The actual Bright is stuck in the amulet, and I chose him for shits and giggles, really.
DrEverettMann: I wanted a personality that could be either played straight for horror, or else played for laughs. Doctor Mann, the character, is a complete monster, but he wants to be accepted. He wants to be normal (or rather, he wants what he is to be considered normal). There's a dichotomy there that I think can make for some good stories.
Q7: What do you think was the best year for the site?
KP Crow: In my opinion, there is no best year for the site. Different years have different strengths and weaknesses, and it's hard to place one above the other. That said, I do think that this year is especially good for the sheer influx of new readership that we're getting in, and the influx of change we're going through.
Dr. Gears: That's hard to say, just because I have a really cruddy sense of time. I think the first year we were on the new Wikidot wiki was one of the best. Lots of ideas, lots of iconic stuff getting made, and it was still small enough that the community was really tight-knit
Yoric: Things are certainly better now than they were a few years ago. When I first joined, the site was a lot smaller, and had only recently made the transition from old /x/ copypasta meme repository to a separate force unto itself. A lot of the old writing was really… cartoony, I guess is the best way to put it.
DrEverettMan: The next one. Always the next one.
Q8: What/who inspired you to write SCPs?
KP Crow: Nothing in particular. I saw the first couple of articles were pretty neat, so I thought "Hey, maybe I could do that. Other people are, and I think I could pull some off." The first one I wrote, which is somewhat dated by this point, is SCP-063, "The World's Greatest Tothbrush". It's… not too great for an SCP, but it got me started… I really should revise it at some point.
Dr. Gears: Like many, it was 173. Saw it, opened the picture, then CLOSED IT AGAIN. It stuck in my head for days, so when it was posted again, I looked more. I started to think “you know, these are short as hell…i could do this…”. Tried a couple abortive attempts to do creepypasta, but for some reason this format really clicked.
Yoric: I've always been a writer. I love the world and concept of the SCP Foundation universe, so writing works for the site came pretty naturally. As for different article inspirations… Well, a lot of my stuff is inspired by the pictures, or by things I see or experience. SCP-102, for example, was based on a photo my girlfriend took of some boarded up condos near her house; it's the image on that page.
DrEverettMan: I'm an egotist. I got linked to SCP from TVTropes, and thought to myself, "I bet I could do that."
You have to have an ego to write. Whenever you post something, you're saying, "My writing is good enough to be worth someone else's time." Even if it isn't, you have to tell yourself that, or you'll never post anything. Of course, to get better, you have to look for the flaws in your work. You have to be a bit schizophrenic, that way.
Q9: Were your articles bad at first, or were your good right off the bat?
KP Crow: Like I mentioned in my previous question, my first few articles were… adequate? Most of them have survived multiple purges of the site, but others have been redone by other members of staff, or re-worded, the most noticeable of these is the fix-up of SCP-076 by Clef. The original was a good deal more weeaboo, I must admit…
Dr. Gears: That's the thing, I have a really humble opinion of my own work in most cases, so it's hard to say. Going by feedback, I did pretty well at the start, and after a few stumbles here and there, have gotten better. I worry sometimes that people might hold back a bit because of my “notoriety” on the site, and let bad stuff pass, but it hasn't seemed to be the case.
Yoric: Very few people ever write well for the wiki at first. My first attempt at an SCP article was awful, and was deleted within a day. I stuck to Foundation Tales for a while after that, until I'd developed a feel for the Foundation universe. Even so, I still have some pieces that are hit or miss; SCP-607, for example, was nearly purged in the mass edit, but was saved by a rewrite by a user called Zaeyde, and my most recent article was nearly deleted but rewritten by Voct. Both are pretty positively rated now, though, which I suppose shows that even bad writing can always be improved. Most of my stuff sticks around; according to the bot, I have 10 articles and 22 Tales up so far, with an average overall rating of 37ish. Compare that to two articles and one Tale deleted, and I'd say I'm doing pretty well.
DrEverettMan: Well, I don't think they were bad. Fred (SCP-423) is still one of the more popular articles on the site. But at the same time, I think I have gotten better. I never would have written SCP-1983 or SCP-1171 two years ago.
Q10: What do you think makes *insert popular SCP they made* better then *insert another popular one* (in the fans' opinion) ?
KP Crow: I don't think Able is more interesting than Cain. I think they both have roughly the same sort of appeal, albeit in different ways, and that without the other, those article might actually be weaker for it. It's just everyone seems to jump on the Able bandwagon for some reason. I have no idea why.
Dr. Gears: If I had to guess, I'd say just because they are a bit more dramatic. 914 fires up the imagination, just look at the test log. 682 does the same, but it's also a mega death lizard thing. It's the go-to monster for city-wrecking fantasies. 882 is (to me) creepy, but more sedate.
Yoric: It's {1110} just my favorite one. 228 is probably my most famous article, and certainly my most successful; it's one of three pieces I have on the site that are rated in the triple digits. It's famous because I worked with a user called Gnosis to set up the page such that every time it is loaded, a different image appears. The images are selected randomly from a pool of a few hundred possible pictures. It took me quite a while to collect enough photos to make that viable.
DrEverettMan: What makes one SCP more popular than another? Popular SCPs have to strike the right chord. They have to invoke just the right mix of emotion, and they have to do it in a way the reader hasn't felt quite that way before. Some are frightening, like SCP-087 or SCP-106. Others are humorous, like the -Js, or SCP-1171. And some strike the Sense of Wonder. That is, they make you feel as though you are a part of a much larger and stranger universe than you thought. SCP-914, SCP-085, or SCP-1193.
Q11: Do you guys get asked by anyone if it was okay to make some sort of series/movie (even if it just goes on youtube)?
Dr. Gears: We get questions about this now and then, and we've batted around the idea. Basically, we would like something a bit like the “monster of the week” episodes of x-files, with a bit of a “storyline” episode here and there. Nothing has ever come of it, but I'd love to see something like this happen, someday. At the same time, it worries me, because if anything like a real TV show was made, I would think they'd probably fool around with things, or dumb it down or some such.
KP Crow: We've never been asked, to my knowledge. There was a scammer or two, but that was about it.
Yoric: All the time. The wiki is currently posted under a creative commons license, which means material and concepts related to the SCP Foundation can be used with author permission so long as it's not for profit. As long as no one is making any money, people can make whatever they like! There have been a few youtube series, in fact, a couple of which were pretty good.
DrEverettMan: Yes, someone was going to make an SCP movie as a student project. Unfortunately, the project stalled out and was never done. There are some SCP movies on Youtube, but we were entirely uninvolved (though flattered and impressed!).
Q12: What do you think is more interesting? An SCP that is a little bit creepy and very weird or an SCP that is extremely scary?
KP Crow: An SCP that is creepy and weird, hands down.
Dr. Gears: It depends, honestly. If it's a good, solid weirdness, then it works. However, I'm a horror SCP purist at heart, I still feel the best ones make the world more creepy.
Yoric: Personally, I prefer a horror bias, just because I'm a fan of the horror genre. I feel that we started as an exclusively horror oriented site, and I like to stay true to that. That said, there's a lot people do in an attempt to make their writing scary I don't really like, and a readthrough of my own writing will show a lot more weird than frightening. I guess it'd be correct to say that I prefer SCP articles that are well written.
Dr. EverettMan: What do you think is more interesting? An SCP that is little bit creepy and very weird or an SCP that is extremely scary? Depends on the mood I'm in. Honestly? So long as it's done well, I like both.
Q13: What is your favorite GOI?
KP Crow: My favorite GOI would have to be Nobody. I dunno, I've always had this thing for the fabled Men In Black, and to have an individual or organization who was that to an organization of MIB is something else entirely.
Yoric: I like the Church of the Broken God. My Tale "His Clockwork Servants" is a look into my own mental image of how they operate.
Q14: What GOI would you expand and improve on?
KP Crow: Probably the Chaos Insurgency. They don't really get any love, or any tales or anything really. I mean, they're self serving and ruthless, but you never hear anything about them, aside from slight articles saying they basically gave the Foundation a crappy SCP that's more hassle than it's worth.
Yoric: I feel like the Chaos Insurgency is really underdeveloped, at least on the SCP Foundation wiki proper. I'd really like to see someone make the CI into something more than "ominously named bad guys who do stuff.
Q15: If there was a GOI that was based off an SCP (ie a Deava faction off 140) what would it be?
KP Crow: I'm pretty sure you just answered that question yourself there mate.
Yoric: Well, that's how most G'sOI get started. 140 is a pretty good example, really. I'd like to see some development of the cult surrounding SCP-231, or that one cancer causing hospital ward whose number I can't remember.
Q16: How much has this site changed your life?
KP Crow: Changed my life? I don't know really, I've never gotten to experience my life where I didn't do this. But it has given me a good perspective on writing communities, administration, working together, and a host of friends around the planet. Honestly, I think it's done nothing but good for me, aside from the few sleepless nights certain articles have given me.
Yoric: I actually met my girlfriend in site 19, the site's IRC chat. She's Cherry Pict, the author of SCP-900 and the really awesome "Wednesday" series of Foundation Tales. She was called Cracklobster at the time… We hit it off and developed a relationship that's been going for over two years now.
Q16: What made you write specific SCPs (ie Cain and Able but not Adam and Eve, a group of art terrorists but not some hipster internet guys)?
KP Crow: I wrote specific SCP's because I felt like it. It's… hard to explain creative process in terms of why, because a lot of the time, the answer is simply… because.
Q17: Do you think a brief simple SCP is better or an elaborate one with logs and supplementary material?
KP Crow: It depends. Both can be very good articles, it all comes down to how they're written and what their subject matter and implications are.
