Art by SunnyClockwork
Howdy!
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…
uhhhh
*throws a dart at a board*
The Chicago Spirit and…
*spins a wheel*
Nobody!
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.
JUST AS A HEADS UP, THIS ESSAY CONTAINS SPOILERS FOR THE MAN WHO WASN'T THERE AND THE COOL WAR.
The Chicago Spirit
The Chicago Spirit is the real wise guy's GoI, the stuff only made men write for. I joke, of course, but the Spirit is a fun little GoI that has an interesting history on the wiki, and some unique themes. So without further ado, let's get right into it!
If tag search were to be trusted, which it is not, SCP-2600-J is the oldest article with the Chicago Spirit in it, but this is not accurate. The mention of the Spirit, which is minimal by the way, was edited in after the GoI had gained some popularity.
According to PeppersGhost, the creator of the Spirit, the GoI started as an empty hub with some worldbuilding and empty links. At the very beginning there was the implication that all the entries had been deleted and retroactively removed from site history a la Stimson1, but that was quickly removed shortly after posting.
The hub was created concurrently with the 2014 GoI Contest, so GoIs were a popular thing on the site at the time. However, the hub remained empty for almost 2 years until A Random Day wrote the very first Spirit article, SCP-2680. It used the original setting of the Spirit, Prohibition era Chicago, and filled out some lore on the hub.
It wasn't long until the Spirit was reinvented, however. The very next Spirit article, Hypervelocity, created a modern version of the Spirit called the Spectre, where The Rookie goes on a high octane adventure through Eurtec and is gay and does crimes. Thus far, the Spectre has mostly been relegated to Third Law, but has appeared in other articles such as UTE-1919-Discofather, which is part of a series called Black As Night. Black As Night deals with both the Spirit and Spectre, and a mysterious individual named Mr. Night who is responsible for the longevity of the Spirit/Spectre, though the Spectre of Black As Night isn't quite the same as the Spectre of Third Law.2
Speaking of Mr. Night, he and Richard Chappell, whose first appearance outside of the Hub was in SCP-3855 by ObserverSeptember, started the Spirit. Chappell was ultimately caught by the Foundation and designated SCP-046-ARC. His anomalous properties have never been strictly defined by any one writer, but in SCP-6380, he is capable of fae name-stealing magic.
Kinda funny how so much has come from an empty hub, isn't it?
The Spirit is where the anomalous meets blue collar crime. Whereas MC&D are white collar elitist jerks, the Spirit is who your grandpa who was in a union would hang out with when he wanted to get his fix during Prohibition. They use anomalies for crime, violence, and alcohol. All with a gangster coat of paint.
Obviously, some mafioso tropes come into play here, at least for the Prohibition Spirit. These are traditional wise guys, hard boiled detectives coming after them, guns, loose dames in red dresses, speakeasies, etc. The type of stuff you would find in pulp novels.
Of course, there is also the gritty crime aspect of it all that cannot go understated. These are people breaking fingers and bashing skulls over racketeering money. They are not good people. At least not the high ranking ones anyway. For a look at how brutal the Spirit can be, here is a quote from SCP-638:
Detective Pick's corpse was discovered stuffed into a closet and in an advanced state of decomposition, indicating he had been deceased for at least a week prior to the heist. Tufts of hair were missing from his scalp; although he had sustained heavy internal trauma and beating, the cause of death was determined to be exsanguination.
Lovely.
So you want to write a Spirit article, eh? Wise investment. Here are some ideas.
The Spirit, operates within Prohibition and early 20th century America. They commit crimes and do not fuck around. They aim to facilitate the production of illegal alcohol, all the while running other profitable business ventures such as racketeering. If they're anything like Al Capone, they probably would open up a soup kitchen just to launder some money and build communal good will.
Think of a crime that the Spirit could get up to. Illegal gambling, alcohol distribution, intimidation, you get the idea. Then, drum it up a bit with something anomalous. Maybe you can make it an anomalous enforcer, like SCP-7853, or maybe its an anomalous means of hiding corpses like in SCP-3138. As long as the anomaly is an implement to facilitate or commit crime with, you're on the right track.
Another key thing to consider when writing a Spirit article is the historical and psychological aspect of it all. Much like the previous essay on Government Alphabet Soup, research can be very important to a piece! For a good example of great historical writing and the Spirit, look no further than Carroll #155: The Five-Mind, which details not only the Spirit, but their interactions with the Fifth Church!
Back to the question of research though. To get your mind jogging, what were the demographics of Chicago in the early 20th century? Which minority group was the most discriminated against? Who was more likely to join the Spirit's operations? What makes someone commit crime? To add to that, what makes someone commit to organized crime? As always, be sure to check your sources. This website dedicated to the history of Chicago is a very good source, while simply Googling Chicago history will give you AI slop.
Nobody
Nobody is a GoI that, much like Dr. Wondertainment, wears many different hats and whose depiction changes dependent on canon and headcanon. In some people's mind palaces, Nobody is a single person operating beyond time and space, following an agenda only they know. To others, Nobody is one of many who have lost their name and face. As a note, I will mostly be using he/him tor refer to Nobody here since its most common appearance is that of a man in a fedora.
So what, or who is Nobody? Let's find out.
The story of Nobody doesn't begin with it's first article, Nobody Knows, but rather with a character named Foo and the infamous user fishmonger. I won't go into detail as to why they were infamous, but back in the early days of the wiki, Foo functioned as a mysterious character that served as a deus ex machina in their storyline. They were a mysterious character who operated under an even more mysterious agenda.
And then everything involving them got deleted. Long story, and not one for this essay to cover.
Anyways, not long after, DrEverettMann decided it was a shame the wiki didn't have a mysterious trench coat wearing man(?) of mystery, and wrote up the tale Nobody Knows. This tale, part of the excellent Lombardi tale series, by the way, was about an agent talking to a rookie about how Nobody plays such a seemingly inconsistent role from the Foundation's point of view.
Nobody consistently remained as a mysterious man in a fedora who was uncannily able to blend in with those around him and truly disappear in a crowd. This continued leading into New Years Con 2013, otherwise known as Canon Con, which resulted in the creation of The Man Who Wasn't There. This canon fostered the idea that Nobody was more of a title, which could pass from person to person. This was only further solidified in the site's canon-agnostic view when The Cool War revealed that Nobody was also the Critic, and Agent Tangerine became Nobody at the end. Cool! Things remained relatively the same until a few years ago when DarkStuff made Nobody into a timeline traveler as well in their tale This Toy Facsimile of Life.
Other than that, things have remained pretty much the same for ol' Nobody.
So what are some core themes of Nobody?
I'm glad you asked! Nobody is, most of all, an enigma. He can help the Foundation one moment, and turn around and antagonize them in the same minute. He excels in stories with intrigue, espionage, and subterfuge because of his very nature as an ethereal person of mystery. Nobody can also be used to explore identity, or the lack thereof. After all, authors love irony, and what's more ironic than someone questioning their identity becoming Nobody, or vice versa.
To say that Nobody is versatile would be an understatement, as he can be played as a vessel for serious pieces about identity, espionage, or even be reduced to a one-off joke. Nobody cares. He cares. See?
Isn't that great?
Hey, for the first time in a while in this series we have a "How to write" section on the GoI hub. Awesome. Let's take a look at it.
Mystery: Sure, you knew this one already. Still, this can be tricky to write if you are not careful. After all a mystery is only as good as its solution. As I mentioned previously, I think the most important thing here is that you start with a concrete plan of who Nobody is, what they want, and how they are going about accomplishing that goal.
This one is pretty straightforward.
Nobody is a mysterious guy, and this means the main rule to writing him is that he will be an enigma to everyone but himself. His motivations are his own, and no one but him knows what he's going to do next. He can help the Foundation one moment, and turn around and antagonize them in the same minute. He excels in stories with intrigue, espionage, and subterfuge because of his very nature as an ethereal person of mystery.
That being said, his actions should still follow some form of internal logic. Sure, it may seem chaotic at first blush, but you should write intent and purpose into Nobody's actions. Think about what he wants out of an anomaly, or what he could do with it. Think about what his end goal is. Even if we don't see his full plan unfold in one page, it should still make coherent sense.
That is, of course, assuming you're using Nobody as more than just a joke for saying nobody =Nobody.
Tangled Webs: Nobody is often involved in everything. He has his fingers in a lot of pies, and, Nobody is perhaps more involved with other GOIs than anyone else. Because of this, I think a good Nobody story has to have solid world-building. I'm not sure that it is possible to have a good Nobody story in which he doesn't interact with another group… though that might make for an interesting writing challenge.
The only advice I can really give here is to read up on other stories on the wiki. Try to imagine what Nobody would think of certain events and characters. If he could have involved himself in the plot of the story, how do you think he would have accomplished it? How do these groups' actions affect Nobody and his goals?
This advice is a little outdated, as some excellent stories involving just Nobody have emerged on the wiki recently without having him interact with another GoI. However, the idea of having him interact with other GoIs is still good advice. Since there are so many GoIs on the wiki, and even more on other INT wikis, there's an endless number of combinations you could pull off for interactions between Nobody and other groups.
Fate and Control: This is a big one that I tried to focus on in my writing. When Nobody appears in a story, it is always significant. And, there is often no real way to fight against Nobody. Usually, even the almighty Foundation has to just allow him to do what he wants.
This brings up some interesting points about agency. If Nobody can appear anywhere and just mess everything up, how much control does anyone really have over their surroundings? In my writing, I tried to invert this theme and show that it is actually Nobody that has little control. Regardless, I think asking the question "Who's in control?" in your writing will really help make it interesting.
This is a very cool point, but one that mostly comes from the olden days of the wiki. Nobody was often used as a deus ex machina and usually got his way no matter what happened. This isn't as common nowadays, but Nobody can still be used in this fashion, however effective it may be. The canon-agnostic version of Nobody is still used this way, by the way.
HOWEVER, if you are writing a weaker individual Nobody, this doesn't apply to you. Feel free to make him as weak of a bystander as you want if it will make your story more interesting.
Some other musings on Nobody that aren't included on the hub are the use of identity, or the lack thereof. There's something interesting about losing yourself and becoming a background character in life. Or maybe you can use Nobody as a metaphor for gender expression. Or perhaps even as a metaphor for minorities and the overlooked people of the world.
Stay tuned for the next essay in which I talk about the Horizon Initiative and ORIA, or die trying.
And that's all I wrote.