Art by SunnyClockwork
As someone who greatly enjoys Groups of Interest (GoIs) and reading articles with/about them, nothing burns me up more than seeing someone mischaracterize them. Don't get me wrong, there is plenty of room to experiment with the philosophy and themes of GoIs, but there is a difference between treading new ground and completely missing the mark.
In this essay, I hope to cover the important and most basic themes of three of the GoIs most known for their love of the of capital, or as Harry Enfeild would say; "Loadsamoney!"
Keep in mind this is not a writing guide, but instead is a breakdown of other articles which use the themes of the group to their fullest extent and explore what these groups bring to the table as far as storytelling goes.
Dr. Wondertainment
Dr. Wondertainment is one of the most popular GoIs both on and off the wiki, likely because it appeals to the sense of childlike wonder we all had when we got a shiny new toy on our birthday as children. Much has been written about the Doctor's products, and a a few have even tackled their motivations and backstory, but we are here to talk about how to write a good Wondertainment article.
Let's take a look at what the hub says about Dr. Wondertainment.
Dr. Wondertainment may be a company, it may be an individual, it may be an individual that runs a company. Most important, however, is that Dr. Wondertainment is magical, and they make toys. Whether they be toys that aren't exactly safe or toys that are beyond anything a kid could ever imagine (or want), the very basics of Wondertainment is that they make toys. Interpretations range from being warm-hearted and kind to either straight up terrible or more than a little misguided. However their intentions / grasp on the world is perceived, they are inarguably tied to children and child-like behaviors.
We all know this, but let's break it down.
Dr. Wondertainment may be a company, it may be an individual, it may be an individual that runs a company.
Due to the nature of the wiki, there are many interpretations of Dr. Wondertainment. They range from being a force of nature, the antithesis to the Factory (which we will talk about later in this very essay!), just a simple toy maker, a cartoon character, and many more. Point is, they wear a lot of hats. Sometimes literally.
The most popular and common iterations of Dr. Wondertainment on the wiki are Isabel V and Holly Light, who are polar opposites. Isabel V is an off-the-wall, larger than life cartoon figure where Holly Light is a motherly, calm, and calculated person.
There is always room for interpretations though, so don't be afraid to create your own iteration. Who knows, it may become the next big thing!
Most important, however, is that Dr. Wondertainment is magical, and they make toys. Whether they be toys that aren't exactly safe or toys that are beyond anything a kid could ever imagine (or want), the very basics of Wondertainment is that they make toys.
Again, simple.
Dr. Wondertainment makes toys and other products a child could imagine or want. This often means that their products are either whimsical, exaggerated beyond what a child could think up, or uniquely bizarre. This usually takes the form of toys, save for a few rare articles such as the Misters, which are truly an anomaly when it comes to Dr. Wondertainment.
A NOTE ON THE MISTERS: The Little Misters were created at a time when Dr. Wondertainment lore (and site lore as a whole, really) barely existed. This means there was very little identity to them, and they were more of a name drop than anything else. In fact, the very first Little Mister article was not a Dr. Wondertainment product at all, and was more of a list of humanoids than anything else!
Interpretations range from being warm-hearted and kind to either straight up terrible or more than a little misguided. However their intentions / grasp on the world is perceived, they are inarguably tied to children and child-like behaviors.
This point is similar to the last, but I still wanted to touch on it.
Much like real children, Dr. Wondertainment can be a little misguided or lacking an understanding of what makes a good toy. This applies to the Little Misters mostly because who really wants something like Mr. Laugh or Mr. Fish as children's toys? There are other anomalies, such as SCP-4949 or SCP-445, which don't make an awful lot of sense for a child to want, but the concept is something a child would realistically think of.
Another thing to keep in mind is that many of the Wondertainments, especially Isabel V and Cornelius, are impulsive and prone to making snap decisions. This behavior mirrors that of children, and is just another layer of commonalities the two share.
TL;DR
Dr. Wondertainment is a reflection of us as children, whether that's for the better or for the worse, is up to the author and reader. They can be many things and characters, sometimes even in the same article, and are associated with childlike wonder and whimsy. Their connection to capitalism is a bit strenuous compared to the others on this list, but in certain incarnations, they can be described as being part of the cynical capitalistic machine preying on children.
If you want to write a canon-agnostic Dr. Wondertainment article, I would recommend putting yourself in the headspace of a child. What kind of toy would a child want? This often involves taking very basic ideas and taking them to their logical extremes. For example, SCP-846 is a toy robot with a flamethrower and an arsenal of weapons. SCP-4046, on the other hand, shows you what your dream career would be like should you choose to pursue it, leading to somewhat saddening and sobering results. Dr. Wondertainment is a lot like the fae; whimsical, yet often dangerous.
Also, don't let the Little Misters define Dr. Wondertainment for you, since they predate any sort of lore for the GoI.
If I had to assign Dr. Wondertainment an alignment on the 3x3 chart, at least the canon-agnostic version, I would place them under Chaotic Neutral. They're not inherently malicious, nor are they the most well-intentioned of the group. They just sort of exist to pursue their own goals, whatever those may be.
The Factory
This would be the part where I dissect the writing guide from the hub. However, the Factory's hub doesn't have one! Instead, it has multiple different GoI's perspectives of the Factory. So we're gonna do this one a little different. Ready? Let's go.
Despite appearing in Bright1 and Ralliston's Proposals, the Factory is not a very commonly used GoI on the wiki. I suspect this is because a lot of its themes are not super coherent between iterations. Bright, the GoI's creator, originally envisioned them as making shoddy knockoff products of questionable quality. This is evident in a lot of the early Factory works, such as SCP-133.
As time went on, the Factory evolved into a more menacing entity, a sort of universal constant tied to the very concept of capitalism. Wherever there exists an exploitable workforce, the Factory would appear and force them to work in its rusty, non-OSHA compliant hell pits. Grim stuff.
So how do you write the Factory?
Well, they are first and foremost a business, so I would like to imagine that their products are effective, though a bit macabre. For example, in Carroll #280/R-01221, the Factory makes a deal with the Chicago Spirit to offer them barrels that create alcohol when a body is stuffed into it. What most of the Spirit outside of Richard Chappell don't know is that the Factory takes these corpses and reanimates them into workers for themselves. Personally, I view the Factory as extremely selfish, so any deal they make will usually be more favorable to them.
Though one could still go with having them be purveyors of shoddy off-brand products, that age has passed and other groups, such as Professor Funtastic, have taken up the role in a more specific capacity. And again, why would they make low quality products? Its understandable that they would cut corners; any capitalist would do that, but not at the expense of a repeat customer.
As for how to characterize the Factory, I personally enjoy them as a malignant tumor embodying capitalism. They are evil, willing to exploit the disadvantaged, and eager to line their pockets with money. What an extradimensional entity wants with money is beyond me, but I'm sure someone somewhere can come up with a good reason.
So yeah.
TL;DR
The Factory is assembly line capitalism at its worst, though the bar for that is in hell right now. They represent the all-consuming and destructive nature of the very ideal of capitalism. When writing a Factory article, imagine a time before safety standards, unions, the five day work week, and ethics. Or just read Upton Sinclair's The Jungle2. It's based on real and true events, which makes it all the more harrowing!
When writing a Factory article, I feel as though capturing the feeling of cogs in the machine crushing souls as it ever turns, seeking more resources to plunder. Good buzzwords to keep in mind are dread, soul-crushing, bleak, grimy, and oppressive. They can absolutely have managers/slave drivers, which are just bigger parts in the machine than those they oppress. They are the complicit "what if I one day became one of them?" type of capitalists who long for riches and see themselves as higher and mightier than those they manage despite barely making more money than them.
To continue with the alignment chart stuff, the Factory is what I would define as Neutral Evil. They don't care about order, honor, nor hold any particular beliefs aside from "more money!" Out of the three GoIs in this essay, the Factory is probably the most dangerous, and not just because you could lose an arm working on their machines.
Marshall, Carter, and Dark
The Mickey D's hub lacks a general "How to write" section, instead opting for a philosophical perspective on the group's ethos. Let's look at that, yes?
Why do rich people care about making money?
[…]
The rich want to make money because they can always become richer.
This is pretty simple to grasp, at least I think so, but we're gonna break it down anyway.
Ever notice how most CEOs around the would rather fire entire departments and teams than take a pay cut, all the while raking in massive bonuses from a "profitable" fiscal year? These soulless individuals are willing to forsake those that got them where they are for the sake of a little more wealth.
As the hub continues to say: "There is always another echelon of wealth to rise above, some degree of opulence that is beyond their grasp."This illustrates just how lacking in humanity these people are; willing to sell their mother for a quick buck and step on the faces of those beneath them in pursuit of another dollar.
To Marshall, Carter and Dark, the rich are unto ants.
And here we have it. This shows us just how much of the 1% MC&D truly caters to. The 1% of the 1%. This sentence also functions twofold, it shows us how the typical MC&D customer views other people with less money than them. So picture old money blue-bloods who sneer upon mere millionaires and billionaires as they hoard their trillions.
Marshall, Carter and Dark convince the rich that the impossible is invaluable, while any anartist on a street can twist a die into a hypercube.
This means that MC&D provide goods and services which, to the unveiled world, may seem regular, but to the veiled world, is miraculous. This doesn't mean that they are only selling low-end anomalies to their customers; far from it. MC&D have sold functional cure-alls, immortal bodies, and many other outlandish products.
While organisations such as the Foundation, the GOC, and the Horizon Initiative resent the company's existence, they are unable to deal with such an unassailable economic powerhouse. With a glance, Marshall, Carter and Dark could level a city, bankrupt a country; with a single call, they could plunge the planet into a thermonuclear war. Yet, to the eternal relief of all, they are the least volatile players in the anomalous field.
This section tells us about MC&D's interests. Though they wield incredible power and sway over the world (no doubt because of all their money), both non and anomalous, they choose to not show their full hand. Hell, they even aid in the maintenance of the Veil in canons such as The Gulf because they know that if the Veil were to fall, their products would tank in value.
So how do you write MC&D?
It's always bothered me that price tags are part of the MC&D GoI format. These guys probably wouldn't have price tags on anything, and would instead just hold auctions for the highest bidder. Anyway, there's always been one particular take on MC&D that I have always enjoyed, and it comes from SCP-5579.
Take this wine, for example. I can appreciate its taste, yes, but what about its history? The artistry in its production? The brutal, beautiful seizure of property we performed to claim the wine cellar where it sat for nearly two hundred years? I can’t taste that, but I can experience it.
This is such a good line. Why, you may ask? Well, it tells us that above all else, MC&D customers value the experience of superiority over something. This is the mentality you should adopt when writing MC&D. That, and of course, the whole "Loadsamoney" thing. SCP-5579 is probably the most quintessential MC&D article, and I really recommend it as not just research for writing MC&D, but as an article in general.
Much like Dr. Wondertainment before it, MC&D have several different interpretations to them. The most popular ones are Acidverse, All That Glisters, and F120A. Though they are similar in many ways, they differ in the minutia. I don't want to get lost in the weeds explaining that here, seeing as I want to remain canon-agnostic, so my best suggestion is to go forth and read! Find a headcanon that you like, build your own, so on so forth.
Out of the three GoIs we went over in this essay, MC&D is probably the most Lawful Evil. They're playing the game, and they play it well. They follow all the rules and like the hub says, they will often place their opponents into 'check' but never 'checkmate' in the proverbial game of chess that the world is to them.
TL;DR
MC&D are the dragons of the SCP universe. There's not many of them, they are old, hoard gold, and are incredibly powerful. They cater to the elite of the elite, the real cream of the cream of the crop. They look down upon those beneath them with contempt and are only interested in amassing more wealth. They also all look and act like Bobby Kotick.
Gross.
Stay tuned for the next essay in which I explore whatever the fuck Alexylva University is.
And that's all I wrote.