Interviewing Icons - The Administrator, FritzWillie

rating: +159+x

This month, July of 2021, marks the 13th anniversary of the SCP Foundation Wiki on Wikidot. In celebration, I have reached out to and conducted interviews with 4 people who were very influential in our early success with this new platform. These interviews will be released every Sunday of July until we reach July 25th, the first day that other people were able to access the site we know and love today. There is no better way to start such a series than to have our first interview with the one who started us off on Wikidot. I hope you all enjoy my interview with FritzWillie also known as The Administrator! ~ WhiteGuardWhiteGuard




The user The Administrator, FritzWillie's top 3 most popular pages on the site by rating are SCP-085: Hand-drawn ''Cassy'' at +1362, SCP-082: "Fernand" the Cannibal at +631, and SCP-262: A Coat of Many Arms at +446. As an author, FritzWillie has written a total of 17 SCP articles, 1 Tales, 0 GoI Formats, and 2 other pages for a grand total of 20 pages contributed. Along with having a number of popular works, FritzWillie is most known for being the one who started the SCP Wiki here on Wikidot under his The AdministratorThe Administrator account. You can read more about why he chose to have two different accounts in this interview. The following interview will consist of 20 questions from myself with his responses.


The bold text represents the questions whereas the text within the boxes are FritzWillie's responses.


Interview Questions:



Hello, FritzWillie! Once again, thank you for agreeing to do this interview with me and for being willing to kick off my SCP Wiki anniversary series of interviews. In your previous interview for the site, you mentioned how you came to find SCP. You also mentioned how you had always dabbled in writing beforehand. What about SCP at the time was so attractive to you? Why did you feel your writing would be compatible?

First of all, I must apologize for being such a recluse. And, I can not emphasize enough the importance of the word: recluse, for it describes in complete; my nature, my habits, my likes, my loathes, my past and likely, my future. It is the reason I stumbled into the SCP world and the reason I recoiled away from it.

Recoil… I wonder if it’s related to the word recluse. Etymologically, there’s no evidence, but the act of recoiling, over and over again, I imagine, produces a recluse. I’m not antisocial, I love talking with people. I’m not an ascetic, I do not shy away from the vices of this world, rather too long have I revelled and bathed in the selfish sins of society. But, like reflexively withdrawing the hand from the flame, I withdraw, over and over from attention, from both criticism and admiration.

First you ask, “What about SCP at the time was so attractive to you? Why did you feel your writing would be compatible?” Well, I suppose, as a recluse, it was natural to be drawn towards interests and passions that would be considered “fringe.” Mostly in science-fiction, but also in the occult, philosophy, psychology, horror, and religious history. I loved theoretical physics and am still interested in how weird and wonderful the “natural” world is and how all the things we don’t know, all the “unnatural” phenomena, are still able to exist in the margins of all the textbooks, filled with the knowledge of the things we supposedly know.

I had written for years without showing it to anyone. Like most, because our parents didn’t foster it, and instead looked upon our work with a worried eye. Because it was their job to ready us for the “real” world. One without fantasy, without fiction or phenomena, where horror and miracles happened to other people, but not for us.

So, when I did share my passion, of course, it was secretly, anonymously, and on the internet. With the most anonymous site, I could find. And, as a recluse, I wasn’t looking for a community, I was looking for a release. I didn’t want to yell into the void, I wanted to whisper my secrets. It wasn’t for attention, it was for expression.

I thought I would care little for what people thought, but criticism… even a little, I recoil from.


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The above is a screenshot of the home page from the SCP Wiki on EditThis, the Wiki's main platform prior to Wikidot from January 19th, 2008 to July 25th, 2008.

In your previous interview, you mentioned there were efforts to clean up the EditThis wiki and make it look more professional around the time you joined. What did these efforts look like and were there any specific goals? Who were the major figures in this discussion and how successful were they?

Forgive my shaky, dusty memory. The attic of my mind is a place I have sealed away. In the shadows of anamnesis lurk the terrors and monsters of trauma and ghosts of loss.

All I remember was that there weren't a lot of options for customizing anything. Other than adding to the list of SCPs, and again, I wasn’t looking for a community, so I didn’t communicate with ANY of the major players at the time. I had found Wikidot on my own around the same time and found it a better option than EditThis. So I tried finding the administrator of the SCP EditThis and got no response. So the next thing I did was contact EditThis to find that the creator had abandoned it. EditThis offered to sell me the admin rights and even warned me that without an admin, the SCP list was under threat of deletion. I guess I could have purchased the site, however, it was just easier to assume the identity of the original creator and announce that the site was migrating to Wikidot. My goal went from improving the site to saving it.


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This is the original logo for the SCP Wiki while on EditThis which was based on the popular SCP-529: Josie the Half-Cat.

Being instrumental in the move away from EditThis, were you the one who jumpstarted the effort to migrate to a new host, or had this been under discussion for some time? Was there any resistance to moving to Wikidot? What did the migration effort look like on EditThis?

Segwaying into the third question, I didn’t tell people that I was the original creator, but I didn't exactly tell them that I wasn’t. It was a miracle that no one asked. All I did was I announced that I was “The Administrator” and that the SCP list was moving to a new site. I offered major roles to some of the big names on EditThis and rather quickly stepped back into my whispered persona. For several days before the announcement, I spent night after night figuring out how to work the UI of Wikidot, create the forums and set up the list for the first 1000 or so articles. After uploading a handful for practice, I made the announcement to the EditThis site and showed them the few practice pages. I think the excitement was high when people saw the potential Wikidot held over EditThis. With things like an actual forum, comment sections for individual articles, and a robust way to customize and author individual pages, I don’t think there was a single complaint or voice to stay on EditThis.


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The current logo for the SCP Wiki was created by early Wiki administrator, far2, back in October of 2008.

Before having to leave the site, something we will address later in the interview, you were here for several months. What were the first days and months like on Wikidot? Was it rewarding to see your efforts being realized? How long did it take for most of the fan base to transfer over?

Again, I must apologize for my memory. But I do remember how satisfying it was to see the positive reaction as people dove headfirst into the new site. Very quickly, others surpassed my own skill on article customization and there was a lot of buzz on the forums as people helped one another and gave advice on how to make the articles beautiful. All in all, it was thrilling to see.


The predecessor to the current O5 Command staff site, the SCP Admin Court of Counsel, has always been private, unlike O5 Command. What can you tell us about the early days of SCP Wiki staff and did you have much of a part in it besides just choosing Kain Pathos Crow and Dr. Gears as administrators?

Again, being a recluse, I wasn’t EVER part of the community at large. I, on reflex, perhaps even subconsciously on purpose, took a long time to get back to people, respond to messages, and rarely took to the forums. I apologize, it is part of my nature I truly wish I could change. I didn’t exactly allow the staff to form their own hierarchy, I simply stepped away from all rank and position of leadership to do so.


SCP-085: Hand-drawn "Cassy" is your highest-rated article on the site. Upon reading the article, you will find out it is the result of a cross-test between your SCP-067: The Artist's Pen and Dr GearsDr Gears' SCP-914: The Clockworks. Were SCPs being the result of cross-testing a common occurrence back then? Do you believe "Cassy" is among your best work on the site?

A lot of people were against cross experimenting with different SCPs, I don’t know why. It’s a shared universe, of course different SCPs are going to be coming into contact with each other. Of course the Foundation is going to try experimenting with them, to discover the nature, conditions, and extent of different objects.

I guessed some people were just selfish and didn’t want “their” characters and creations being utilized by others. To an extent, I can understand that mentality. I, myself, took exception to a few of the ways the Cassy article has been rewritten. Originally, she was audible to everyone within earshot without explanation as to why. Only Cassy was isolated, and that was the point. One-way communication kept Cassy at arm's length, you could see and hear her, (but she could not you), you could give her things or things to do, but you could not “act” upon her, besides straight-up destroying her; making her a truly “animated” figure, otherwise; she’d just be an animated figurine in 2D vs 3D form. I don’t know if I said this before, but Cassy was actually inspired by an old Bug’s Bunny and Daffy Duck cartoon where Daffy is being tormented by the animator but Daffy can’t see or hear his tormentor, and at the end of the bit, it’s revealed to be Bugs.

The “point” of Cassy was meant to be as “meta” as possible. On one hand, she’s a typical “princess” type character. I didn’t want to lean too hard on the typical tropes but yes, I wanted her to be an endearing character, one you could feel sympathy for, that people would want to help, but couldn’t. She’s right there, trapped on the paper in front of you, for some people, the urge would be to fold her up and take her home, for some it would be to find some way of setting her free.

The “meta” point is that she could be surrounded by a room full of people and yet, she’s hopelessly alone despite it. She could be the object of someone’s affection, and yet, she might as well be on the other side of a concrete wall, she’s a prisoner, by her own nature. If she was as free as anyone else, she wouldn’t be as interesting, and yet, like many of us, we are prisoners, isolated by our own nature. Some of us are recluses. I imagine that for most, there’s nothing horror about Cassy’s condition. But I assure you, that there’s a great fear for some of us; to be in a room, surrounded by people, screaming for help, and no one can hear you. No one can reach you.

I don’t know if I consider Cassy my best work. But it is my deepest, and probably my most misunderstood.


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SCP-082
by (from left to right) Batterymaster, galvanic_design, Blinkence

SCP-082: "Fernand" the Cannibal is an interesting article from the perspective that it knows it is a monster, yet it isn't like SCP-682: Hard-to-Destroy Reptile where it hates everything. Fernand is just a giant friendly cannibal. What made you think of introducing a giant, friendly cannibal to the world of SCP?

Fernand is my most favorite of my creations, probably because he feels so grounded in reality and yet so absurd at the same time. To me, he’s one of a kind, and yet, I go out of my way to list all my inspirations for the character at the end of the article. Honestly, he was to be an integral part of a large story arc that would have shed some light on my personal take on the origin of the SCP universe and even the origin of “The Administrator.” The fact that he’s been around for hundreds of years comes into play as does the seeming immortality of “The Administrator.”

I made it clear in a comment, years ago when someone correctly pointed out that Fernand was indeed an “ogre, giant, or troll” from legend brought into the SCP universe. In storybooks, those creatures aren’t inherently “evil” they just have a nature that isn’t human. You’re able to “get” Fernand and a lot of his character because the blanks can be filled in thanks to Tolkien, the brother’s Grimm and fantasy in general.


The only SCP article ever posted with the The AdministratorThe Administrator as its author is SCP-262: A Coat of Many Arms. Why did you decide to post this one using your Administrator account? As for the article itself, what was its inspiration? Was it one of those cases where the title came first and it is just a play on the historical "coat of arms"?

I of course wanted to keep the FritzWillie account and The Administrator account separate, so that people didn’t upvote my content on anything other than whether they actually liked it or not, but I wanted The Administrator to have at least one authored SCP article to his name, so it would give credence to “the man behind the mask.” That the author behind The Administrator was at the very least, a decent, valid author. I do consider “The Coat of Many Arms” to be a good SCP by very nature. Something that thoroughly belongs in the SCP Universe. It’s NOT too overpowered, distinctly NOT good or evil, it IS wildly bizarre, and yet, it is (at least I imagine) something that is easily conjured up in someone’s head; easily visualized when just hearing the name of it.

The idea of The Coat of Many Arms came from thinking about The Administrator and his past. If he is immortal, then he would probably have many different identities; and if he was immortal; then he would have probably been someone in power, over and over in history. Which meant that he would have been nobility for much of his existence. But then, he’d have to switch identities, to hide his immortality, which meant that he’d bear many different Coats of Arms. And of course, it’s not a big jump from Coat of Arms to “Coat of Arms.”


There are seven SCP articles of yours that came from EditThis which survive today. These include SCP-036: The Reincarnation Pilgrimage of the Yazidi (Kiras Guhorîn), SCP-041: Thought-Broadcasting Patient, SCP-061: Auditory Mind Control, SCP-067: The Artist's Pen, SCP-082: "Fernand" the Cannibal, SCP-085: Hand-drawn "Cassy", and SCP-968: Tar Baby. Out of curiosity, is your first ever article among these? Was your work well-received from the beginning?

Of those, I’m pretty sure Tar Baby was my first article. It really was the one that carried the most pride for me for the longest time because it has so many connections here in reality, but due to American Culture, it is widely dismissed and forgotten.

For me, Tar Baby originates from being a kid and watching the old Disney movie Song of the South, a flick that I'm sure that Disney wants you to forget they ever made. One of the stories told by one of the characters is that of Br’er Rabbit and the “Tar Baby.” Br’er Rabbit touches the Tar Baby and it sticks to him like glue and the more he struggles, the more he becomes enveloped and trapped by it. As a child, the horror was fascinating, it was something you’d think you would see from H.R. Geiger, something LoveCraftien, but this was a Disney cartoon! I loved it, I had to know more! Even as a child, long before the internet, I researched, much to the horror of my parents and teachers when I told them why it interested me. Why did a child, who is supposed to be interested in He-man and Ninja Turtles, want to know about this ooze that stickily trapped people. Yes, I think I was destined for the SCP world from a young age.

And so, I learned that it was actually a legend that many, many cultures around the world possessed, seemingly independent of one another. That filled my head with thoughts, that maybe, just maybe, this thing, this creature made of pitch, could be real. So, for years, in my head, I was writing stories about it and other phenomena like it; for some ten or fifteen years before I discovered SCP. So, when I discovered the SCP Universe, you can imagine how excited I was.

And maybe, you can imagine how heartbroken I was when it wasn’t well received. Yeah, it was shot down almost immediately. I don’t really remember what was actually said, but I don’t think there was maybe, but ONE positive comment on it, “the article is well written, but….” And that was it, that was the recurring theme of my writing, “it’s written well, but…” over and over. There was always a “but…”

I don’t think there was ever wide acceptance or fanfare of my work. There was always a “but…” I mean, that’s what I wanted, right? That’s why I kept the accounts of FritzWillie and The Administrator separate, right? So I could get honest opinions, to get all the “but…”’s, right?

And yet, each “but…” broke the heart a little more, of this recluse.


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The Artist's Pen
by Luxkeeper

SCP-067: The Artist's Pen remains one of your more popular articles today. What inspired the idea behind The Artist's Pen and what was the thought behind the final test with the monkey?

So, to be honest, if I remember right, The Artist’s pen isn’t actually an original of mine, but it is heavily and completely rewritten from its prior posting. I say “heavily” because I think the only idea that carried over was that it was a pen that allowed anyone to create beautiful art. And I say “completely” because I don’t believe any text from the original posting made it into my final rewritten draft. I believe it was one of two rewrites I performed. The other I believe was completely removed and replaced on the list, a testament to my mediocrity.

I remember reading the original article and falling in love with the idea of a pen that could allow people to draw. Besides writing, drawing was my greatest passion in life, and the only passion that I shared with others. When I drew, I felt like I was giving up control of my hand to the pen, like my art was inspired by a force external to my own will, and so I put that in the article. I remember eagerly asking the original author if I could add or rewrite his/her article, and I don’t believe I ever got a response. It has been abandoned, and so I claimed it for myself. I do believe that 99% of The Artist’s pen is mine, but yes, it was there before I was. And I do feel like this is what gave me the gall to move the SCP wiki from EditThis to Wikidot when the time came.

I added the bit about the monkey at the end to keep the tone of the item innocuous. Before the addendum; the item seemed too benign, too good to be true, too good to be an SCP item. I had to level the field, bring it back to a shade of grey, nothing dark or evil, but make it more than a one, pleasant note. That’s just not the tone I hear when I work out the beats of an SCP. At the same time, I wouldn’t want to create anything that was 100% evilany more than I would want to create something that was 100% good, either. Like a painting, you’ve got to balance the contrasts of light and dark.

On a personal side note, my passion for art has played a major role in my life, for better or worse. As a child, teachers lauded my art to my parents, encouraging them to focus on that skill. My parents, on the other hand, saw my art as proof of intelligence; which, over time, I think has proven them wrong (cue a chuckle and a sad sigh). So instead, my folks pressured me to study hard, touted me to friends and family as some kind of prodigy and genius, and while they didn’t exactly discourage my art, I was pressured to place it on the back burner and focus on more “practical studies.” They insisted that I was destined to become a doctor.

And yes, up until senior year of college, that was the plan. I was on my way to becoming a doctor, whether my actual passions were writing and art or not. Let's just say that 20 years later, I don’t have a medical degree, nor am I a writer or an artist. Well, maybe not yet… I’m about ⅔ of the way through writing a book right now and a few months ago I started drawing again. All in all, I’d say that this might be the happiest I’ve ever been in my life. At 40, I think I found what I finally want to do when I grow up. My book is still a few months away from being finished but you can see some of my art now. If you google fritzwilliedraws, you’ll find my Instagram and Twitter where you can see me practicing on some retro-anime from my youth. Characters I used to draw in middle/high school and college.


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SCP-165
by forthcracy159

The original pictures, as well as the current ones found in SCP-165: The Creeping, Hungry Sands of Tule, are taken from a ghost town in Namibia called Kolmanskop. Was this article the result of seeing the images first and writing about an idea you derived from them, or did you come up with the idea before ever looking for these pictures?

Like many of my favorite SCPs, I believe the picture came first and sparked the inspiration for the SCP that followed. Of course, many people would see the pictures and think “oh, look at that abandoned town,” but of course, my twisted brain went straight to, “wow, look at how that sand took over that town and ate its inhabitants!” This article was one of the ones I had the most fun writing, because coming up with “how” a sand dune can eat something like a cow or horse is devilishly, wickedly, horribly fun. I imagine it’s what the writer of Alien felt when he wrote out the “chest-burster” scene or how anyone working on a zombie flick feels when their zombie creations chow down on a hero. Especially because the insects of the creeping dunes aren’t evil, undead, or even that far out of reality. It actually feels like something that nature could have actually cooked up. much like piranhas or quick-sand.

Think of “Tremors'' or the giant ants of “Them.” If there was an SCP begging for a low-budget sci-fi movie, it’s this one.


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SCP-144
by TheGrandAdmiral

SCP-144: Tibetan Rope to Heaven was the first SCP you wrote after you opened up the site on Wikidot. Was it a nice feeling to actually get to post a new creation on the new site you had just set up? What did you envision being at the top of the rope?

I didn’t remember the “Tibetan Rope” being the first outing on Wikidot, but I do remember loving this one as I wrote it, because while I love horror and unstoppable world-ending calamities; I also feel like most world-shattering, weird and unexplainable occurrences would actually be pretty harmless or forgotten entirely by the world at large. However, revealing them would put the population into such a state of disbelief and worry that the Foundation would take great efforts to cover them up. So this SCP is my attempt to expand into that premise.

And yes, I do have an idea as to what is atop the summit, and no, I won’t tell you. It’s something I side with Stanley Kubrick and Christopher Nolan on. The ultimate value and fun of the story is letting the audience decide for themselves what is at the top. Telling you what was at the summit, much like telling you what Kubrick's space-baby was about, takes that away from you.


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SCP-044
by maxalate

SCP-044: World War II Era Molecular-Fission Cannon is the last article of yours that you posted to survive the test of time. Since your SCP-067 is also of German-make between WWI and WWII, it makes it seem that you had a particular fondness of that age of history. Is that true? What inspired this special howitzer?

SCP-044 was my final entry? Huh… anyway, it was another case of image begat inspiration. The idea of a nuclear explosion cannon inspired many, including myself and Hideo Kojima.

WWI and II being a favored time for writers has mostly become a troupe in the science fiction community because of Hitler’s/Nazi interest in the occult as well as science. Germany was on the verge of the nuclear bomb, jet fighters, they had already established rockets like the V2 and even had plans for going to the moon. At the same time, their interest in mythology, archeology, and ancient relics inspired movies like Indiana Jones and Marvel’s Hydra villains.

I might be wrong, but isn’t there an Anti-Foundation group spawned from leftover Nazi scientists and researchers?

Making the Cannon German was a way to keep it mysterious, as its designs could easily have been lost in the fall of Germany and its occult nature felt at home in the German marriage of science and the cabal.


You did also happen to post one other article a couple of months after your SCP-044. In the SCP-286 slot, you posted an article you called "The De-evolution Stone". What was that one about and why do you think it didn't survive?

Oh, I think the De-evolution stone is lost to the memory purge that was chemotherapy. While it’s fairly self-explanatory, I’m sure I had thought of what I thought to be a halfway decent experiment log or funny punchline like the Auditory Mind Control or the Rewind Man. Maybe one day it might come back to me, but not today.


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The Administrator
by SunnyClockwork

Today, The Administrator is a very prominent character among many SCP articles and tales ranging from an all-powerful overlord to a simple humorous man with a shady background. This is a character you set up and had plans for, but took a life of its own during your absence. When you returned, were you disappointed with what the character had become, or did you find it interesting? Who is The Administrator as a character for you?

Yes, I definitely had plans for The Administrator, but I am glad that other people have taken him and used him for whatever they wanted or needed him to be. I imagine it’s a lot like how Bob Kane created Batman or any other superhero. At some point, it’s no longer your character, but the community’s. The difference might be that I created The Administrator specifically for the community, as I did for every entry. I never once felt ownership over Fernand, The Administrator, or Cassy. And I delight when I see them in things like the animated series “Containment” or other people’s fiction.

One day, yes, I’d like to tell people my story about The Administrator, his origin, and what he really is, to me. But my work on my own book comes first, my novel is my priority, and then I might return to the world of SCP. In the meantime, I hope people continue to enjoy and use my characters. And I hope what I’ve added has helped to inspire others as the original SCP-173 inspired me.


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This chart represents the impact of the release of SCP - Containment Breach in terms of page views with the red line representing the game's release.

The release of the SCP - Containment Breach game by Undertow Games in 2012 greatly increased the popularity of the SCP Wiki and its related fandoms. I know you had a lot going on during that time, but what were your general thoughts on hearing that a game was made for the SCP project and the popularity that ensued from it? Was it a bit surreal to see something you helped set up become so popular?

Oh I always had a soft spot in my heart, whenever I saw an SCP reference in a comment, fanart, or cosplay on the internet. While it made my heart soar with pride, knowing that I played a small part in its history, I never let it go to my head, because the part I had played was so small. Perhaps it’s me being a recluse, but I feel like the success of The Foundation had little to do with me and more with the talent and hard work of others. I’m just happy to say that I was there, that I got to stand amongst great people and witness their success from their place in the spotlight by looking over their shoulders and whispering in their ears. Not by telling them what to do.

I think it really hit home when I saw Stranger Things on Netflix. I know that people at my work were saying things like “Twin Peaks” and “Cabin in the Woods,” but for me the inspiration was obvious. The facility in Stranger Things was exactly the way I envisioned The Foundation. And later, when the video game Control came out, when one interviewee specifically mentioned The SCP Foundation by name, I nearly fell out of my seat. The game itself is surreal in how much it borrows from SCP. I mean FBC literally sounds like someone mispronounced SCP and the entries and items are clearly an homage. Control came out after I had done a few interviews, one in which I’m sure I had mentioned that I work in the Radiology field of medicine. So, I wonder if that inspired an “Item of Power” in the game, an X-ray View Box that, for some reason~, allows the player to control the minds of enemies. !?! Was this a personal homage to me?! I can’t be certain, but yes, my career, during my time in the Foundation, since and to this day, involves x-rays, x-ray film, and x-ray view boxes. Such a weird coincidence in a game full of easter-eggs for people knowledgeable of the Foundation and its members. I can only imagine, I don’t even wanna know the truth, I’d rather just like to offishly soak my feet in the uncertain waters of maybe


Like how cancer has recently affected our beloved Dr GearsDr Gears, you had a run with it, which contributed to you leaving the site within the first year of its creation. Many of our members are curious as to how you are doing nowadays? You briefly returned in 2015. Was it a shock to see what had become of the site you had set up?

Like Dr. Gears, I’m cancer-free, at least in remission. Health-wise, I suppose I’m doing fine. Mentally, I’m in a better state now than I’ve probably ever been in my entire life. In all honesty, Stage III cancer was probably the least traumatic occurrence of the events of my life. To put that into perspective, I was given a 50/50 chance at one point. I underwent a very complex, major surgery that unfortunately went very poorly. I had an RPLND, a retroperitoneal lymph node dissection, where they removed the lymph nodes of the abdomen. While they do it, they take your intestines out and rest them on a tray on your chest while they scrape the LNs off the major veins. While they were doing that, a resident thought that they needed more of a challenge and severed the left common iliac vein coming from my left leg. The injury was so severe, my family was told that I would likely not survive off the operating table, and my ex-wife was even offered the opportunity to come say goodbye while they worked on me (we knew the staff of the hospital very well, most were coworkers). It took 11 hours and more units of blood than the hospital had in their own bank, but I survived the procedure and spent the next two weeks on life support.

It was hell, the pain in my abdomen and tube in my throat caused nightmarish hallucinations under sedation. I broke out of restraints 3 times until they basically had to cuff me to the bed. Now, there’s an uncomfortable truth around anesthesia, one we don’t talk about, because, you see, we need anesthesia to work, we need it to remove people’s wisdom teeth, we need it to amputate gangrenous feet, we need anesthesia to perform life-saving surgeries, we need it to perform RPLNDs, and we need it to be perfect. The truth is… anesthesia is not perfect, we hardly understand how it works, only what it does, and even that we’re only beginning to see the double edge of the anesthesia blade.

Of course, no one is going to disagree with you that drinking alcohol and smoking weed is going to kill a few brain cells, but what about hard drugs? I’m not talking about opiates and meth, cocaine, and LSD; I’m talking about the hardest of them, the kind that completely shut off your brain. Make you functionally dead to the world, dead to the pain; not sleeping, there is no dreaming in the anesthetic “sleep.” What kind of damage does that drug do? Well, the kind we don’t want to talk about, the kind that you don’t even know is there. The kind that most people will never know they have. The kind that medical science doesn’t want the world talking about, so they don’t.

So, instead of keeping someone under “general anesthesia” for two weeks, and causing a great deal of brain damage, they instead use a form of “conscious sedation.” One where the conscious mind is still awake and functioning. Using a cocktail of sedatives, they try to alleviate pain by inebriating the brain; they try to dull your senses until you’re drunk to the pain; drunk to the world. But, even those must be used sparingly because of the toll they take on the body. So the most important tool in the toolbox is a drug that basically puts someone in a drug-induced state of amnesia. It doesn’t alleviate the pain, it’s supposed to make you forget that you were ever in pain.

An “amnestic,” it sounds like something straight out of SCP fiction, but there I was, for weeks, hallucinating, not sedated, in pain, awake, and I wasn’t supposed to remember any of it. Now, this is important, even when I was athletic, running 2-4 miles a day, doing 500 push-ups and 500 sit-ups a day, I was still 245lbs and 6’5”; so you could say that it’s a little difficult to “dose” me properly. I was also born with Hep B, so I have an overactive liver, so I metabolize drugs and alcohol quicker than I should, so all in all, you could say I have a high “tolerance.” This worked against me, as I was supposed to not remember the time I was restrained and hallucinating. I can tell you that today I remember those weeks vividly, often in my dreams. For over ten years, I’ve been plagued by nightmares of people holding me down, forcing tubes or snakes down my throat, my guts spilling out and onto the floor, and night terrors of being suffocated because the respiratory therapists didn’t understand that, despite having a blood oxygen level over 90%, my lung capacity was DOUBLE that of a standard patient, and their low ventilator settings made me gasp for breath while intubated. My wife and I sleep in separate beds, because of how often I wake up throwing punches while fighting off my anamnestic demons.

And… I will lose my leg. Despite all that I’ve gone through, the damage to my left common iliac vein is done. The repair didn’t take. I have no left CIV anymore. The blood flow coming out of my left is supported by collateral vessels my body made to get the blood out of my leg. The collaterals are small and temporary, they can’t do the job that the common iliac did, so they’ll eventually fail. I’ve already had a dozen blood clots because blood can get into the leg, but has trouble getting out. One day, I’ll form a blood clot that can’t be resolved by my blood thinners or surgery. I’ve come to terms that I’ll eventually lose my leg. In a way, I’ll be relieved of the pain and discomfort it’s given me for the last 10 years.

All this, and I still consider the cancer, and the repercussions of it, to be the least traumatic event of my life. Understand that I was a recluse long before any of that.

The second half of your question asks if I was shocked to see how the site had grown. The truth is nothing “shocks” me anymore. Not covid, not the police brutality on the American citizenry, not the Capitol Riots, not how a Russian imbecile had tried to copyright something that wasn't his and especially not the growth and expansion of The SCP Foundation. I’ve never actually turned a blind eye to the Foundation. I've been subscribed to the r/SCP subreddit for a very long time, youtube is constantly feeding me videos of SCP content (I’ve enjoyed listening to people like The Volgun read through articles for years and was blown away when “Mr. Ferdinand” was the subject of the first episode of Containment.


When you think about the wiki nowadays, what emotion(s) comes across your mind? You are responsible for the setup of the site on Wikidot and for the first several months of maintaining it, but then you had to leave. You put in a lot of effort but didn't necessarily get to enjoy the fruits of your labor for long. Do you feel like you had many more stories in you had things gone differently?

Thinking of SCP fills me with a lot of hope. Personal hope, a belief in myself and others like me. People who long to be called writers, people who brim with a passion they can hardly contain, whose cups overfloweth with ideas and words. When I was young, the idea of a great author was one of a solitary individual, hunched over a typewriter, locked away in a room, surrounded by books and notes, alone with his ideas, and ultimately, solitary.

But, now I think about the great authors of today, the writers of the SCP community.

To think, the next great works of fiction are being written not by an individual, not by a hermit in solace, but are being passed around, tweaked, rewritten, killed, revived, cut, and expanded upon by person after person. A huge world of fiction, rivaling that of Tolkien, Stephen King, and others, all crafted by a community. In my mind, that is the achievement of The SCP Foundation. An achievement that we can ALL revel in, an achievement that even the smallest contributor can take part in.

And that is what I have done, all that warmth and glow from that spotlight of achievement; I have taken the tiniest little bit of it. Not even a handful, but just enough that I can put it in my pocket and take it with me. And when I need to, I can take it out, hold it, marvel it, make my heart swell. Just enough to keep me going, enough to surge a little hope when I need it the most.

Yes, I still think of entries to add from time to time, and I’d still love to tell my tale about the origin of The Administrator and the start of Foundation, but the effort of adding them feels overwhelming, which is probably due to my reclusiveness. Honestly, I feel like if I could just pass off entries from time to time and let someone else upload and close them out, I’d be more inclined to “make a return.”


So, who really is "FritzWillie"?

“Who is FritzWillie?” I’ve always considered “Who?” to be two questions in one; What? and How? As in, “What are you?” and “How did you become that?

I feel like I’ve firmly established that what I am is a “recluse”.

How, I’ve become a recluse is a much longer, arduous tale, but one I will tell ardently if given the chance. I mean, that’s why you’re here, aren’t you? Why you’re reading this interview and not, say; playing a video game, watching sports, climbing a rock, exploring outer space? You’ve come for a story, right? For my story.

My story, like many, begins long before I. It begins with my parents. My father, unlike me, was anything but a “recluse.” The son of a WWII soldier, he grew up in the American dream, an All American Boy; playing football, running track, going to church, while being popular in high school, he was also a moral pillar and compass for others. He was good-natured, had a good attitude, was hard-working, strong in spirit and uncorruptfully, virtuous. For him, “life came easy.” He was a White Knight, at least, a White Knight in a football helmet. And a “Knight” needs a princess to save.

My mother was beautiful, and she was a princess that needed saving. But she needed saving because she grew up living the American Nightmare. The daughter of a WWII soldier, she was a princess that grew up under a drunk and abusive dragon. “Abused,” by the dragon’s best friend, she was beaten further by her dragon for it, for years it went on, her imprisonment, her hell. There was no rhyme or reason, no justice to her situation, just misery. For her, “life came hard.”

That’s why I think my father fell for my mother. Yes, she was beautiful, but more importantly, she needed saving. And, I think, that’s what my father longed for more than anything, to be someone’s Savior. And, while my mother was beautiful, the years of torture had turned her ugly inside. The princess had become the dragon.

She knew it, openly admitted to it, used it as an excuse, a crutch, as to why she lashed out. Why she breathed fire towards the ones she loved, why she terrorized those closest to her. But God forbid if you attempted to suggest that she get help for it.

She came from a large extended family, she had 8 brothers and sisters, I had over 20 cousins and dozens of second cousins, and many more aunts and uncles that were actually just friends of the family. And they all feared her, her wrath, her tongue, her fiery breath. She was the one who ruined birthdays, made grown people cry, made family leave from Christmas parties, and it happened over and over ALL the time. And no, you couldn’t just NOT invite her, that would only make things worse.

So, as a child, I was pitied by the adults, shunned by my fellow children. And, the dragon treated me like the pile of gold that she sat upon. Her pride and joy, the gifted child who could write well and draw beautifully. Who worked tirelessly in school and was so well-read, he made adults around him sound inarticulate. Her future doctor.

I was told, over and over, by the dragon, by all around me, to be like my father. To model myself after the outgoing, good-natured, virtuous knight. After the person, who “life came easy” for.

But life came at me hard. From a young age, over and over, the dragon’s breath made me recoil back into my lair, that mental shell I wore on my back. I recoiled so much, that by nature, I became a recluse. Over and over, I retreated back into my shell at the slightest sight of fire.

Still, others insisted that I come out of my shell, my father insisted that I needed to be not just like him, but greater than him. Insisted that I was smarter, that I was gifted and talented, that I would achieve things much greater than himself.

But I wasn’t. All I could do was paint the exterior of the shell I retreated into, and wear it like a mask. So, when I got to high school, I changed my name to my father's name. I did the things my father did. I joined sports I didn’t want to join. I joined the clubs I didn’t want to join. I worked harder than I would have liked to. I would have rather written and drawn, but there wasn’t enough time in the day for it. I had to do all the things my father did and more. They decided that I needed to become a doctor.

So, when I went to college, I went to the same University my father had gone to. And again, I had to do MORE, so I joined the most prestigious part of the University, the military academy portion. The old, “traditional” part of the University, of a school known for its traditions. My parents were ecstatic. Not only would I become a doctor, but a military doctor. My father, the All American Football Knight couldn’t have been more proud.

It was stressful, being out of my shell, wearing the mask of someone that I wasn’t. It was quite a load to carry. It didn’t help when at University, I met people who did all I did and did it effortlessly. While I spent ALL of my time outside of class and drill, training my mind and body, studying instead of sleeping, doing the things my parents wanted instead of what I wanted; there were people who eclipsed me without seemingly putting in all the work I had to put in. People who could ace tests with minimal study, because they were smarter than me, people who were stronger than me, though I was a hulking six and a half feet tall. People who were social butterflies, who had no shell to come out of. People like my father, I was surrounded by gifted, natural-born knights, and it was clear that I was an imposter, pretending to be one.

In fact, I was forced to partner with one. A kid so smart, so talented, filled with so much charisma and natural leadership (he was even younger than me), He was the child my father wanted, he was a natural-born Knight, it all came so easy for him… … and I loathed him for it.

We have a tradition at my University, so, so many traditions, but this one is the most special: every year we build an enormous bonfire, so big that, for a time, it was the tallest man-made structure for over a hundred miles, sometimes over 100 feet tall. My father helped build it every year at college and the one I helped build had to be taller than his. The days of cut, the evenings build, the night of the burn, it’s all a way to bring the students closer together, and like all traditions, it’s meant to bring us together as a family. Yes, all those traditions are a bit cult-like, but these crazy events and experiences serve to give you something in common with strangers and bring people from different worlds together so that you’re no longer strangers anymore. You’re family now because you have these wild experiences that no one else, other than those people, can relate to.

In a way, The SCP Foundation is a little bit like that. We all share knowledge and traditions that few others can relate to. The SCP community is family in that way, a very weird and wonder-filled family.

All of this is important, because that kid, that natural-born Knight. I took his life.

I took it, the time that was meant to be his, I took it at that bonfire, that stack of wood that we were building, one night when it collapsed. He wasn’t supposed to be on it. I was. But instead of relieving him, like I was supposed to, I begged him, for a little of his time. Just 30 minutes, while I talked to this girl that I had fallen for.

I meant just to take 30 minutes of his time, not his entire life. But life has a funny way of doing that to you, taking a small decision you just made and making it the biggest decision of your entire life, one that dictates yours and other people’s life or lack thereof.

A 60ft. foot stack of wood that had taken us weeks to construct fell over faster than I could turn around from the sound. Moments later, I was climbing that pile of wood, looking for my partner. I found him, halfway up, alive, talking, afraid, but strong…. And crushed from the waist down. I wanted to comfort him, to tell him things were going to be okay… but my studies and what I knew of anatomy and medicine, I saw his fate the moment I couldn’t see his legs and pelvis, and it was in that moment I realized what I had done. That was supposed to be me. “That was supposed to be me.”

As I said that, in my mind, I could see him say it too with his eyes, as he looked up at me.

For days I prayed that I would be wrong, that the doctors would find a way, that there would be a miracle. But the internal injuries were too extensive, few other than I had seen the giant log on his pelvis and left leg. Fewer could comprehend the terrible damage that must have been done to his pelvic vasculature. If they could get his blood pressure high enough, they planned to amputate his legs and maybe save him, but I hear that they ran out of blood.

The next few years were a blurry mess of cross-eyed studying and sleepless nights. I now had two weights to carry, the expectations of my family to become a doctor, and the burdening knowledge that I had to now fill the boots of another, someone who was effortlessly intelligent, effortless virtuous, one who was a natural-born knight. I now had to live the life of someone who was destined for great things.

In the end, it was too much for I, the imposter. The closer I got to the MCAT, the more trouble I had sleeping, the more my grades slipped, the less the fellow cadets of my outfit saw me leave my room. I don’t remember snapping, but I do remember the long car ride home after my father picked me up from school. I don’t remember saying a word to one another.

A better man would have been able to cope with the stress. A better man would have taken the experience and used it as fuel for his fire and worked twice as hard for himself and for the life he took. A better man died from his injuries.

And so, I recoiled from the world and into my shell for the next few years. What got me to come out of my shell was… well, a rekindling of an old passion of mine. One day on the internet I stumbled upon a few guys on 4chan, telling each other stories about something called “SCP.”

And with that, it’s come full circle. The story of a recluse. No morals, no lessons learned. Just some dude on a couch, slowly succumbing to vascular disease of the pelvis who no longer speaks to his family but has finally started to find happiness in the passions that he’s neglected for most of his life.

Oh, and if you were confused about me mentioning ex-wife vs. current wife, it’s because my ex-wife was cheating on me during the last few months of my cancer treatment/marriage. I mean, I understand why she did it, the cancer put a lot of stress on her, and the chemo turned me into an idiot who couldn’t even tie his shoes. I don’t forgive her, but I understand her. That, and because of what she did, and what cancer did to me, it put me on the road that led me to my wife today, who is amazing and deserves better than some old recluse. So, I’d say that it was totally worth it in the end, and if I had to, I’d go through that all over again.

The bonfire collapse though, if I could go and do that over again, I’d give that boy his life back. Life favored him anyway, I’m sure he would have done great things with the time I’ve taken from him.

Um, wait… when you asked “who really is FritzWillie?”; were you just asking about the origin of the name? Ah, shit… just forget everything I just said. Lemme see, so “FitzWillie’s” was a bar on the edge of campus that my best friend and I visited over and over. For years, we had called it FritzWillie’s, and when someone finally corrected us, it kind of had a Mandela effect on me that totally broke my sense of reality for a day. Actually, that wasn’t the first reality-bending moment for me, but it became an inside joke between us. It became my Xbox live handle; which became my messenger handle; which became my screen name, which became my SCP author handle, and so on, lol. So yeah, I guess I didn’t need to write an autobiography, after all, you can just [redact] the previous information if you don’t think it’s interesting.


Did The Administrator ever get reimbursed for his truck being shot through 044?

No, he wasn’t because classified video shows The Administrator loading the truck into the cannon himself. Was he trying to hide something, was it for the insurance money? I’ll let you contemplate as to why… In my mind, nothing The Administrator says or does makes any sense to anyone other than himself.



Bonus: This month marks the SCP Wiki's 13th anniversary on Wikidot. We have lasted this long largely thanks to the foundation that you laid for us. Is there anything you would like to say to the readers of this interview?

To those who were able to put up with the ramblings of a recluse, know that you can’t choose your family, but you CAN choose your friends. You can also choose your Passions, you don’t have to put them on the back burner. And if your passions cross with the passions on another, don’t be afraid to jump headfirst into a community. Don’t be a recluse! Also, if you’re tired of matching socks in your sock drawer, just throw them all out and buy a whole bunch of the same kind of socks! Subscribe to my newsletter for more life-changing tips!

Ok, so seriously, I’m so incredibly proud of you guys. I meant it when I said that the next great movement in literature will come from the SCP Community. I was a cog in the machine, but the overall machine is greater than the sum of its parts. J.R.R. Tolkein published The Hobbit less than a hundred years ago and his world stopped growing when he died 50 years ago. A hundred years from now, I think that the SCP Foundation will be even MORE influential because its readers can actually take part in building its world. Unlike middle earth, it’s a world that will NEVER die. It was born on the internet, and as we all know, the internet never lets ANYTHING die. So I say, jump in, contribute. Even if your words are crossed out, chewed up, spat out; at least you’ll know that you contributed, you were part of something, even briefly that will have an effect on the world long after yourself.



This concludes the first of four interviews to be released this month in celebration of 13 years of the SCP Wiki being on Wikidot. I hope you enjoyed it! I would like to thank FritzWillie for answering my numerous questions and for being wonderful to speak to. The SCP Wiki truly would not have been what it is today without him.

Thank you for reading!


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