Hi there everybody! I’m Merehrab1 (he/him), and I have been reading articles on this wiki since 2020, and have been trying to write articles here since February 2022 (well, my first account that is. My current account is actually my second account, which was made in August of that year). I like Lord of the Rings, I like to read contemporary fantasy and science fiction novels, and I’m also a huge fan of the SCP wiki and all of its lore, which is obvious considering I’ve written stuff for it.
The stuff I like to write is mostly character-driven, kind of long, sometimes slice-of-life, and sometimes I like to write some emotional articles as well. But what I really like to write are the hopeful stories. Hope to me is not some delicate, ephemeral thing made of whispers and spider’s webs. Hope has been knocked to the ground several times, with dirt on her face and blood on her knuckles, and she spats out a tooth and rises to another go anyway. It’s like David and Goliath, with Goliath being the unstoppable evil that will take down anything in its path, and hope being just a little thing, who looks out for others and rises to the challenge no matter how great. It only takes a single match to start a fire. Those are the kind of stories I really like to write for the wiki.
Of course, I also want to expand on what I want to write and do many things. I want to write for some canons that I really like, I want to write tales, I want to write articles that’ll scare people, I want to do many things. And I hope that I’ll get to check off all the things I want to do.
It’s been a lot of fun reading and writing for this wiki, and I am very grateful for all the support that I have received while being here. I’ve read many great articles written by fantastic authors, big and small, and I can’t wait to see what everyone cooks up next.
But first, a few words from some other authors.
Quotes From Some Cool Folks
“Merehrab is the only SCP author I’m not afraid of for some reason or another — which means he’s either really nice or a coward, and I’m not interested in researching further.” —ThatGuyThatTime, who made Skibidi Toilet before it was cool.
"Mere- Mer- Merehr- Fuck." —AwhRyan, who is struggling to spell my name, but a lot of people have the same struggles as well, because I made a username that’s hard to spell and hard to pronounce. Whoops.
“Hahaha, Merehrabbi” —Cicada3301Fan, who is a master at SPaG crit, but also I have no idea what he’s trying to say here. Like, what in the actual fuck is he talking about?
“This Merehrab gets the ParallelPotatoes certified stamp of approval” —ParallelPotatoes, who also gets the Merehrab certified stamp of approval for being a very good author who makes a lot of good articles. You should check their stuff out some time!
"Can you put this in your author page it'll be funny." —MisterFrown, who shitposts too much.
“CRAB ATTACK 🦀🦀🦀🦀🦀🦀🦀🦀🦀🦀🦀🦀🦀🦀🦀🦀🦀🦀🦀🦀🦀🦀🦀🦀🦀🦀🦀🦀🦀🦀🦀🦀🦀🦀🦀🦀🦀🦀🦀🦀🦀🦀🦀🦀🦀🦀🦀🦀🦀🦀🦀🦀🦀🦀🦀🦀🦀🦀🦀🦀🦀🦀🦀🦀🦀🦀🦀🦀🦀🦀🦀🦀🦀🦀🦀🦀🦀🦀🦀🦀🦀🦀🦀🦀🦀🦀🦀🦀🦀🦀🦀🦀🦀🦀🦀🦀🦀🦀🦀🦀🦀🦀🦀🦀🦀” —Rhineriver, who attacked me with crabs. Ouch.
"yo momma so evil she dated the four most evil men in history" —TroutMaskReplica, who failed to make a funny your mama joke. I’m disappointed.
Alright, now let’s get into the good stuff.
The Part Where I Start Rambling About My Stuff
SCP-7550 - Dungeons and Demons
Ah, my first article. Now this one’s a fun one.
I formed the idea of this one while in high school, and I was a big fan of D&D at the time2, and I used to watch Critical Role religiously. I just watched a lot of 3 hour VODs of that series on YouTube every day. And at the time in high school while I was reading SCPs, I didn’t even know that there were actual people writing these things. Once I figured it out that there were actual authors, I knew then that I had to write one, just so I could. Because I always loved the SCP wiki and the stories that it tells, and actually writing an SCP would’ve been an accomplishment that I would always be proud of myself for.
So I formed an idea. It was dumb. It was basically “what if the Matthew Mercer from Critical Role that we knew was actually a demon the entire time?” Well, part of it was that. And I have the original idea right here for all to see. Here it is:
Elevator Pitch: An online D&D game gone horribly wrong. It has cognitohazardous influence in its advertising, a demonic DM, and players who are forced to play the game for eternity. If their characters die, the players die as well.
Central Narrative: Foundation webcrawlers discover an anomalous advertisement on Roll20.net, where the ad forces players into joining an online D&D game. Once they join the game, instead of getting an invite to join a discord server or other online service, the players get sent into a hell dimension, where they meet the DM, who is a demonic entity who calls itself Xornos. Xornos hates the current climate of D&D, and wants to improve on its DM skills by kidnapping players from lots of different dimensions and forcing them to play his homebrew campaign.
The Foundation then send D-Class to this dimension with hidden audio recorders in order to find out how the campaign works. The campaign is just your average campaign, except for the fact that if your characters die during the game, the players will die the same way as their characters. For example, if a character dies by getting stabbed multiple times by different weapons, the same exact weapons described by Xornos materialize in front of the player and move by themselves to maim and kill the player. The player’s remains then disappear. The players cannot escape, and they are forced to play for eternity. Once Xornos says that the campaign is officially finished, the players get sent back to their home realities, and a new campaign gets made.
The Foundation then try to infiltrate the dimension using many resources. These methods do not work, because the dimension is impenetrable. Xornos finds out about these methods, and then kidnaps many Foundation researchers to cease the Foundation from working on how to stop it. One of the kidnapped researchers, Dr. Prescott, convinces Xornos to stop what it’s doing and join Critical Role, to improve his DM skills without causing harm to anymore people. Xornos disguises itself as Matthew Mercer, and hosts Critical Role to this day. The real Matthew Mercer is given amnestics and is sent home, and is watched by the Foundation to prevent him finding out about Critical Role.
Hook/Attention Grabber: D&D is a really popular role-playing game that is loved by many. By adding lots of twists and turns, horrific events, and good writing, this SCP could work.
Good god. Yeah, a lot of this idea had to be reworked, and thank Christ I got all those people from idea crit on the forums to help me rework this, but some other parts of this made it to the final cut. Ultimately, the idea turned into a story about a Demonic DM who tries hard to be a successful DM, but due to obvious differences between himself and the players, his rules are draconian and painful, and the campaign gets heated to the point of no return. But things will get better for Xornos, in time. He just has to learn from his mistakes, albeit very slowly.
When I was writing this, it took me months to get my SCP greenlighted. It took me even longer to find someone to look at the draft. And I got only one person to look at it. I tried to get more people to critique my work, but it just wouldn’t happen. I got frustrated at myself, and I was extremely anxious about posting the SCP to the site regardless of how many people looked at it anyway, so I just quit. I deleted my account and left the site in June. Because my self-doubt got to the point where I didn’t think I would ever be able to post anything at all on the wiki. I didn’t think I was a good enough writer.
But then in August, I decided to come back. Because after my little break I still wanted to post an SCP, and after rethinking things a whole bunch, I figured that my D&D SCP would still be able to survive. So I made another account, got my idea greenlighted again (even though I didn’t really have to), somehow got another person to look at the draft (thank you DrRevan), and then I just said “fuck it” and posted it on the 7550 slot, right in the middle of Anthology 2022. And it survived! I was so happy that it did.
The next few months it slowly started to gain upvotes, until the person who originally looked at the rough draft (thank you Fireknight) put it on the Reviewer’s Spotlight in December. I was literally on the front page! And then after several more months, I got to the milestone of 50 upvotes. I thought I would never actually get to that point until then. And it happened because of all the support I had from the community, and I could not thank you guys enough for this. I’m still super glad that I managed to make a mark on this wiki, and made so many people’s days just a little brighter than before.
As for the actual SCP, I still enjoy reading it from time to time, but there are some parts that are a little unpolished to me (especially the beginning, I’m still eh about the beginning). Also, this SCP has been described as “cheesy” by someone once, which after some reflection I completely agree. If you don’t like excessive amounts of cheese in your story, this SCP might not be for you. But I don’t hate this SCP, and I still like it a lot when rereading it, regardless of all its flaws.
Also, another cool thing is that Darnell and Tanhony read this SCP for their extremely good podcast, which I still can’t believe even happened. You can click the link to that episode here.
I’m super proud of how much success this SCP has gotten. It means a lot to see this little SCP of mine keep on reaching new heights.
SCP-7163 - I Will Be Here Whenever You Need Me The Most
I really like this one.
This one was my Art Exchange gift for HarryBlank, and I absolutely had a blast writing this. Before AE, I was in a writing slump. I had a lot more negative thoughts about myself again, but I knew I always wanted to participate in an Art Exchange, and the fact that I was able to participate in one, my giftee absolutely adored my gift, and the gift then became my third successful SCP made those worries and doubts go away in an instant. I am so proud of this one, and let me tell you how I made it.
So this one started with me thinking of writing an SCP about Udo Okorie, one of my favorite characters from the On Guard 43 canon. Originally, the SCP was going to be an Alagaddan mask, and Udo was going to do research to learn more about the revelation that she had about herself while in Corbenic during the events of SCP-6500. The mask was going to know information about what Udo was looking for, but it was also very mischievous and wouldn’t tell her anything while also throwing insults at her.
I eventually realized that Harry probably already had plans about that revelation that Udo had, and I would most likely be stepping on his toes with that idea, so I scrapped it.
I then began to start looking for some images about sand sculptures, because Udo is a thaumaturgist who specializes in sand, and I thought it would be good to find an SCP that would be aligned with her specialty in sand. I eventually found an image of the silliest looking frog sculpture, which I decided to keep and use for my SCP.
I reworked my original idea to focus on all the important things that happened to Udo, and how she’s dealing with those behind the scenes. Basically an overview of all the tragedies and revelations about herself that she experienced, and how she’s dealing with all that. So I changed my SCP into becoming a pseudo-therapist that telepathically gives advice to personnel at Site-43 who are dealing with personal issues that are affecting them mentally. The catch is that it only does this once a year, and the Foundation never knows when it returns to give advice to the next person, since it’s all random.
Now that I had the foundations of what I wanted to do, I needed the final cherry on top to make this work. And so I randomly googled what kind of symbolism a frog has one day, and I found out that in terms of symbolism, the frog stands for growth, transformation, fertility, potential, prosperity, and harmony.
You know another character who’s associated with harmony on the wiki? Pangloss.
I had it. I had what I needed to make my SCP. And the best part is that I always wanted to write something about Pangloss for the wiki. Pangloss is a character that I’m extremely fascinated by, and when I found out a way to put him in this SCP, I immediately took that chance.
I am also planning to write more stuff about him, so expect more Pangloss articles in the future. Maybe.
I also decided to add Dr. Ngo and Ibanez in the SCP as well, because my plot literally required them to be there, so I added them in there and called it a day. I was also trying to figure out how to justify the interview logs, since the SCP spoke telepathically to personnel, which makes everyone else not able to hear it, then I remembered that SCP-2922 exists, which led me to add a reference to that SCP that also made sense for the story and how the Foundation was able to transcribe the conversation between the SCP and Udo.
While writing this, I had to reread thousands upon thousands of words just to get the characters and the timeline right. I’m a continuity nut, so if I see even the tiniest misstep in a story’s timeline, I will go absolutely ballistic. That’s why I forced myself to read all of Harry’s words just to make my SCP work with the timeline that’s been already set in OG43. And ultimately it worked out perfectly, so I’m glad it did.
I think my dialogue for this one is significantly better than the previous two, which is great! I always had a dialogue problem, and whenever I wrote dialogue that I thought was natural, I then would show it to other people and they would say it’s not natural in the slightest. Luckily I am slowly beginning to improve on my dialogue. There’s a learning curve when it comes to writing dialogue, and I was on the slower side when I went up that curve, and still am now, but at least I’m improving!
I had a lot of fun writing this, and I am so glad that it succeeded. I would like to thank Harry once again for writing an absolutely fantastic canon that I still read to this day, and for inspiring me to help make my SCP writing dream a reality.
SCP-8035 - I Have Seen What The Darkness Does
I’ve got a lot to say about this one.
This article was a damn rollercoaster and a half when it came to writing for it, because during the 8000 contest I was scrambling for critters and praying to every god that existed that the article would do well. It’s so funny that I come up with these great ideas in my head, but when it’s time to actually write the finished product my articles always end up not exactly as I want them to be.
I think what ultimately killed the article during the contest was the fact that my writing process was very unrefined, to say the least. I never do outlines for my articles (except for tales, which I’m doing for my first tale as I’m writing this), I never get enough crit before posting my articles, and I never had the chance to actually sit down and examine what I was writing, due to the fact that I only had the motivation to write during contests, where you don’t have a lot of time to get crit and edit your article. Needless to say I got absolutely whacked during the 8k contest. I know everyone else was also stressed about the contest, but I was especially stressed out because that was my first ever kcon, and I didn’t want to disappoint everyone.
Ultimately I wanted to get at least top 30, but ended up in 81st-82nd place. Oh well, what’s done is done.
But eventually I decided to rewrite my article, and I’m not disappointed like I was last time. I fixed a lot of pacing issues and got rid of a lot of awkward dialogue. It might get slept on, but hey I’ll call this a win anyway.
Now let’s get to the part where I came up with this article.
I came up with the idea of the forest many months before the 8k theme was announced. I was inspired by stuff like SCP-4000 and Sloth’s Pit, so I created a forest made up of nightmares and fear. The forest takes the fear of whoever enters it and manifests these fears in reality. This can include any type of fear, including childhood fears. For example, if you were scared of the dinosaurs in Jurassic Park as a kid, those dinosaurs will show up in the forest to hunt you down (here’s a secret I’ll tell you: I’m making a sequel tale to this in the future, and the main threats will be dinosaurs that’ll show up just like I described, especially the Carnotaurus. I hope I can actually start to work on that tale in the future).
I think I changed a lot of the mechanisms of the forest after the kcon theme got announced, because I didn’t just want my characters to fuck around in the forest for the entire article, I needed to incorporate important themes in it. I thought since this was a kcon, I needed to bring something extra special to the mix.
Then I decided to bring in my personal fight against ableism.
If y’all didn’t know already, I was diagnosed with social communication disorder, but it’s more likely now that I have Autism and ADHD. I dealt with a lot of bullshit over the years. People treating me like a child, people calling me stupid, and in general people weren’t patient with me at all and just told me to “start thinking through things” instead of respecting my needs and trying to give a shit about me. I’ve also seen several stories that are similar to mine, a lot of them even worse than what happened to me. Sometimes I feel guilty because I got “lucky” and I only got berated infrequently. I had to write something to address all the horrible stuff that I’ve seen.
But then I discovered that since the forest I created was based off of perceptions and those perceptions becoming a reality, I then formed a connection between these experiences and that idea. I had my message that I could tell to others like me, that they aren’t alone, that they are not a burden, that they are just as human as the people around them.
And so I went to work.
I think one problem I had while writing the article was that I only cared about the overall message and story in the article, and not the characters who are equally as important. I got carried away and kept adding and adding more ideas to the pile. This eventually culminated in the article having 17,000 words and being a fucking slog.
Having such an unrefined article and not getting enough people to say “hey, maybe you should rework this” is a guaranteed way to kill that article. Thankfully, I posted my rewrite, and it’s not complete dogshit.
There were also a few ideas that did not make it to the final draft of the original article. There was one character who was cut out entirely, and that one was a cyclops who only spoke in rhyme, and who was the personal bodyguard of the Mother. I had too much stuff in the article to begin with, so I regrettably took him out. I don’t 100% regret that I took the character out, though, because he will show up in the tale. When I get to writing it.
Overall, yeah this was a fucking journey lmao. I learned a lot from this, and going forward I’ll take things more slowly when writing and I’ll get at least 5-6 people for crit.
I don’t want to jinx myself again, but let’s see if the next contest I join will turn out better for me.
SCP-6461 - The Cave
Woot woot, I got a Series 7 slot!! Let’s go!
The initial idea behind this is I think one of the oldest ideas I’ve ever come up with. It’s been such a long time since I initially formed it, I don’t think I can even give any of you the exact date. I’m very grateful that this idea has finally got to be in the mainlist, it’s been so long and it absolutely deserves it.
Now initially I came up with the character of Madeline to basically just be a “contained anomaly that eventually gets some freedom as a site director.” At first it was very hard to figure out how exactly Madeline could become a director, because normally the Foundation would not let that happen under any circumstances. But eventually I figured “if it can happen, it can happen.” So I just started to pull shit out of my ass and throw it at the wall until something started to stick. And that’s why everything else about the story is the way it is.
The backstory for Madeline and the character of Vandendriessche were initially going to be part of a tale (which will still happen when I get to writing it, as that tale will elaborate on the relationship between the two characters and explore the incident at the cave in detail), but then I decided to use her backstory as an anchor for the rest of the story to happen. So it all worked out.
Vandendriessche’s backstory was taken from here. According to the article, Geel taking boarders in to take care of them is in fact a real thing, which I think is really cool (shoutout to the town of Geel). I used this article to create the character of Vandendriessche and it was also partially behind the creation of the themes of this story.
But also, god I loved creating the character of Madeline and I hope to write her more often in the future. She’s empathetic toward her subordinates and the anomalies under her watch, she loves insects and how they interact with the world, she’s frighteningly competent and calculating, and she will do anything to make the world a better place for anomalies that are cast away from society and the world. I love her so much (platonically), she’s honestly one of the best characters that I’ve ever created.
I hope she gets the love that she deserves.
SCP-8926 - It All Started With A Rabbit
So this was made during the Public Domain Contest, and I first came up with the initial concept along with my friends ThatGuyThatTime and winkwonkboi. While we were looking for what public domain character to use, I did a Google search of different public domain characters and one of the suggestions was Oswald the Lucky Rabbit. I then remembered Oswald’s story of his rights getting taken away to Universal and then never getting used again for decades, until Disney reacquired the rights in 2006. I thought about his impact during the early days of animation along with the other greats that popped up during that era, and how he continues to be an absolute icon even today. He still isn’t used that often, but I wanted to tell his story and send a love letter to him and how much I appreciate him as a character.
So initially I went with something akin to Bendy and the Ink Machine, of a cartoon character coming to life and then being trapped in an abandoned studio for decades. I couldn’t figure out what his origin should be at first, but then I thought, why not make it so that he was made by a literal wish upon a star? In retrospect it was kind of a silly decision to make his origin go like that, but it all turned out alright in the end.
The story’s themes then naturally became ones of being forgotten, of the fears that creators have of becoming irrelevant in the grand scheme of things, and being left behind by the world and how one could still live in spite of it all. In order to do this, I had to make Oswald have a bunch of self-image issues.
Oswald the character is supposed to have a bit of an ego, he’s described by a Disney historian as “Mickey if he were a little more egotistical or fallible, or imagine Bugs Bunny if he talked the talk but wasn't as good at walking the walk.” This also led me to separate Oswald the living entity and Oswald the cartoon character in the story, and have that be another insecurity for Oswald that he has to overcome. One could make the argument that this is a change too far for the character of Oswald, but I say it works for this story as he learns to become who he wants to be.
Now the backstory that Oswald tells to Director Webb in the story is in fact the real events that led to the rights of Oswald the Lucky Rabbit being acquired by Universal. There really was an overbearing producer (his name was Charles Mintz) that hired away Walt’s own workers and tried to force him to take a smaller cut than a raise like he wanted, and Walt did refuse that order and lost most of his staff and the rights to Oswald as a result. I thought if I made things more historically accurate to Oswald’s story, then it would make his plight even more emotionally effective. And according to my reviewers, I was right and everything worked out.
As for Director Webb’s inclusion in the story, I wanted a character that could relate to Oswald’s plight, and someone who was also there to see the original cartoons so that they can prove Oswald’s perceived inferiority to be wrong. And fortunately for me, there was one character that I could use, and I think that Madeline’s inclusion was a great decision by me for the story, however I do agree with the criticism that I could’ve done her reveal near the end with the crosslink better.
We were going to continue Oswald’s story after this, however the irl obligations curse had taken hold of my teammates and we couldn’t get the full story done by the time that the posting period for the contest ended. To make sure that our ideas aren’t lost, I will recount what we originally planned for to the best of my ability.
First, we had random throwaway thoughts and ideas that we pitched around until we had more concrete thoughts about our larger story. The only one I remember was that we pitched using Grendel from Beowulf as an antagonist, because he hates singing and Oswald likes to sing and play on his banjo. That idea did not fit our overall story in the end, but I think it could have worked if we went in a different direction for our storyline.
Now let’s go on to the more concrete ideas. ThatGuy was going to focus on the Walt Disney Company itself and explain why Oswald was abandoned, and he also was going to work on an SCP that was about 5 different pens that had different abilities involving creativity and combined together would have the ability to create living ink people just like Oswald. I think his storyline was about the inevitability of greed and the stifling of creativity in companies like Disney, and what happens when the majority of creative works is owned by a monopoly. When creativity falls into the wrong hands, well things aren’t going to go very well.
Meanwhile, Wink was going to explore Oswald’s time while living in the workshop all alone, and vivid dreams that he had about him and his place in the world. Knowing Wink, it would’ve been a very emotional roller coaster as we would see Oswald’s inner thoughts about himself and how he feels about being abandoned while wasting away in the workshop. I was very excited to see what he would come up with, but I know that shit happens and we’ll take what we can get.
As for me, besides 8926 I was going to explore how Oswald felt about the modern world that he found himself in after he escaped from the workshop, which I have already finished and posted to the wiki in the form of a tale. I also wanted to elaborate on the other ink people that Oswald met, but I didn’t have enough time to get started on that. It was going to be a nexus format about that community, and I was going to call it Toontown, which is named after the area in Disneyland. But I didn’t have enough time to work on it before the contest ended. But hey, who knows, I might actually come back to that idea in the future. We’ll see.
In the end, while we as a team didn’t get to qualify in the rankings and we didn’t get to finish our main storyline like we wanted to, I’m still proud of my teammates and myself for what we’ve accomplished. I hope I get to write more about Oswald in the future, and he gets the attention that he deserves.
SCP-9696 - Floods
When the 9000 contest was first announced, I started to think about writing about a structural issue in society, one that makes people feel like they’re drowning in a world that systematically excludes them and disposes them like trash. I don’t know how or why I got the literal manifestation of drowning from that, but that’s how this thing started.
I remember learning about a concept in a queer studies class, termed as homonormativity. It involves the adoption of heteronormative ideals and constructs onto LGBT cultures and identities, and it’s predicated on the assumption that the norms and values of heteronormativity should be replicated and performed among queer people. It doesn’t contest heteronormative assumptions and institutions but rather assimilates queer culture into the prospect of domesticity and consumption, and it’s the drive to social acceptance and integration into society as a whole. I thought this would fit in well with the Foundation and their whole obsession with normalcy, and I thought it would be a great in-universe explanation as to why there are so many queer employees working for the Foundation. Well it’s because these are the type of people who want to be socially accepted by these heteronormative institutions instead of contesting these societal norms!
So I had two ideas to connect. I had the drowning aspect, and the assimilation aspect. The reason I added the noosphere into it was because it fit in nicely with the whole playing around with the collective human consciousness and societal dynamics, and it gave me an excuse to make 9696-1 a wider reaching consequence of the whole Foundation. This drives the idea of a conform or die approach within the Foundation home, doesn’t it?
Yeah, I also know that we all can see how on the nose and in the reader’s face this is. The drowning part is literal to the point of it being obvious, and the log at the end repeats and reiterates what I’m trying to say at times. Personally, I still think I executed it well enough to create striking imagery and a reprehensible overall horror, but yeah the article would’ve been better off had I let the symbolism and the implications carry the article further instead of it having a more straightforward presentation.
There also was a missed opportunity with having more interesting commentary on how the Foundation’s obsession with normalcy affects other minorities, such as autistic people or people with invisible disabilities or anyone who’s had to code switch in professional environments to be taken seriously. The concept I had here could be applied to other minority groups, but I didn’t think about that at the time because I was too focused and locked in on my initial concept to think about the implications of my anomaly otherwise.
Regardless of its flaws, I’m still proud of what I managed to accomplish with this article. I had twice the amount of positive votes than the original version of 8035, and I landed in 63rd place, which is still in the top 50% of all the contest entries. I was initially worried that I wouldn’t be able to surpass my 8k entry by that much, but now that I have a way better reception with my 9k entry I can say that I’m pleased with the result. I wanted to get top 30, but I’ll take what I can get.
The twist with O5-1 was actually suggested by my good friend Nico, where they suggested that O5-8 should comment on -1’s shoes being wet and then comment on the weather to foreshadow how he’s being affected by 9696-1. I liked that suggestion at first, but then I realized that I had no idea where to put it in the dialogue. So instead I had my first line of dialogue being -8 complaining about the constant appearance of wet floor signs in the hallway outside. I didn’t know if that would work as foreshadowing or not, but apparently it has worked for a lot of people, with some saying it’s their favorite part, which I’m glad to hear. Thanks to Nico for helping me make the ending of this not shit and for being the coolest!
Fun fact, this probably has one of the only appearances of intersex people on the wiki; I can’t recall any other prominent mentions or depictions of intersex people on the wiki, which just goes to show how underrepresented they are in mainstream spaces and even the wider queer community. And in this article the representation is only limited to a single paragraph, along with the other identities that I depicted. It took me a lot of research to get them all to be depicted accurately (except for the aromantic one, I’m aroace so that one was easy for me), and I hope that in the future intersex people can get the representation that they deserve.
SCP-9239 - Unloving
This was my Art Exchange gift for stellyfins. These are the two prompts that I picked from them:
- SCP-053 and SCP-239 are both really interesting characters which sadly never got to be fleshed out as much, and I'd like to see more things featuring them!
- I think we need more transmasculine, plural, polyamorous, aromantic, or objectum representation on the site. You know what to do, soldier!
I was immediately struck with an idea of making SCP-239 aromantic, because of how her whole life in the Foundation was made from a lie, and was made with the Foundation curating her actions and who she could be by giving her a spellbook and telling her she’s a witch. Her story resonated a lot with me as someone who is constantly worried that my feelings aren’t real and that I’m invalid compared to everyone else. Us aromantics are always doubting ourselves because of the systemic culture that we live in, one that promotes romance as the only way to live, and which pushes down everything else as secondary. So I decided to hit her with the aro beam and see what happens.
And that’s how the story of this article came to be. The knight character is a representation of Shelby’s inner doubts, her past fantasies that she can’t seem to let go. I may have gotten a bit too carried away and made him too campy, but whatever I think he’s a decent stand-in to the amatonormativity that’s trying to force Shelby to conform to something that she doesn’t want to be. A lot of aspects of this article were stuff that I came up with on the fly, particularly the fight with the dragon. That fight was supposed to be longer than it was, and so was the climax in general, but I still had time constraints to work with and I didn’t want to get even more carried away than I was already, so the fight had to end with a giant hammer bonking the dragon’s head.
I think it’s quite disheartening that there isn’t a lot of asexual and aromantic representation on the wiki. It makes since we only get scraps of representation in mainstream spaces, and even then most of the time that rep is either garbage or just there because it’s there (looking at you Alastor). There’s a few SCPs that tackle asexuality, but none that I can think of that explicitly have aromanticism in the front and center. So this gift was me trying to rectify that, and I’m glad that it provided me the opportunity to continue my crusade of adding more ace and aro characters to the wiki!
There are a few things that I regret about this. One is that I should’ve slowed down and waited until the thing was actually ready to post. I gunned for posting the article right on the 28th, and that’s what ended up hurting it. That’s also a good segue into my second regret, that being how I posted this article right as each gift for Art Exchange slowly began to trickle in. Why did I decide to take the risk of posting during the flood of articles right after the gifters were revealed? So I could post the article as early as possible before the year ends, and I thought that if I was one of the first few gifts posted then I would be fine. Boy howdy was I wrong. I really should’ve done what I did the previous two years and waited until a few days have passed, because now as of time of writing, this thing is stuck at +16 after three days, which are numbers that I’ve only managed to do with my first few articles.
I’m okay, though. I’m going to be okay, because it still survived. I learned something important: to not rush things and to do something different and switch things up. I can’t do the same thing over and over again and expect different results each time. I can’t worry about numbers anymore. And the only thing that matters is that I will keep sharing my experiences to let others know that they don’t have to conform to what people expect of them, and they shouldn’t have to hide who they are. They should feel free to be themselves, and I hope that somewhere out there, at least one person can resonate with what I write and I can reach out to them and comfort them with my words, because they have the right to be proud of who they are.
I will keep on writing, I will keep on learning and growing, and I will not let any setback get in my way.
Yep, this is my first tale. I’m quite proud of it.
I haven’t done any of this kind of prose since middle school, where I wrote a short story about Luigi time traveling to save his brother Mario (yeah, it was a little silly). I did do some prose for school assignments, but the only one I can remember was doing an autobiographical paper for a writing project. It was about my persistent procrastination. I remember writing about how I was going to prevent myself from procrastinating too much; that part didn’t particularly age too well. Hah.
Tangent aside, this was me writing my first piece of fiction in a long time, so I really wanted to get it right. All I had was what I learned from reading tales for the past 4 years, although what can really help your prose is to read actual novels, which I haven’t done yet. Once I get my hands on some books, hopefully my prose can improve.
For Pridefest, I wanted to write about my experience with being asexual and aromantic, and the struggles that come with being aroace. I actually had this idea for a long time, and I originally planned to release the tale during Valentine’s Day, as an ironic jab at the holiday. I don’t really like Valentine’s Day, for obvious reasons. At least I get discounted chocolate, that’s nice!
But yeah, being asexual, aromantic, or both can be a pain sometimes when you’re living in a sex and romance-obsessed society, which is what I wanted to capture in the tale. I think I’ve done that successfully, as it's gotten a decent reception and some extremely nice comments. At first it was stuck at +5 for almost a whole day, which kind of got to me a bit, before I realized that:
- Tales don’t get much reads
- I don’t get that many reads the first few days
So looking back, I kind of feel dumb for being disappointed. It’s at +15 at time of writing, so I’ll call that a success for my first tale.
For this tale, when I went into the crit process it was a little different than what I normally go through. Normally I get crit from one person, I edit the article to address that crit, then I move on to ask another person for crit. But this time I was approached by two different people, and both did their crit for my tale at around the same time, which kind of overwhelmed me. I was also on vacation at Cedar Point at the time, so I couldn’t address their crit for at least four days. And before I came back, another person asked if they could look at it, even though I wasn’t even done editing it. But ultimately I pushed through and ironed out my tale enough to post it on time, although I did miss most of the month. Typical Merehrab luck.
I do want to thank my critters though, they were tremendously helpful with fixing the problems that this piece had, especially Lapis and how she pointed out all the “she did x” sentences and the weird punctuation with dialogue tags. The dialogue tags were the biggest pain in my ass while I was writing this tale, because I didn’t want “said” or “asked” to be thrown around all the time, but I also didn’t know where I should add physical descriptions or if I needed some dialogue tags at all. Luckily Lapis showed me what to do with those, which I am incredibly grateful for.
Overall, this was an interesting experience, and I’m glad that this tale is resonating with so many people. I am very proud of my aspec friends, and we belong in the LGBTQ community.
Also, definitely check out the fanart of this tale that I got here, on the July 2024 tab. It’s genuinely amazing, like my heart was in tatters after seeing it, I love it so much. Please check out ashiningmoon’s artworks, they are a wonderful artist, and they deserve all the attention that they receive.
This one’s got an interesting story behind it.
It started when I wrote 7550. I needed to create a somewhat generic researcher with an affinity for helping people, so I came up with the name ‘Michael Prescott’ and shoved him into the story, trying to solve how the Foundation could possibly contain 7550-C. I thought he was a one-off. I wanted him to be a one-off.
But fate had different plans for him.
I started to reference him in my other works, and then to full on appearances. He transformed into a therapist for anomalies and personnel alike, always looking for ways to help others, even in a world that hated the anomalies for who they were. I started to develop him more and more, eventually reaching to a point where he was my most developed character out of all of the ones I came up with. And I also started to do something else.
I started to put more and more of myself into him. It was just the little things at first, like his appearance, but soon it became clear that a lot of things about him were taken directly from me, the author. Things were starting to turn into self-insert territory. So I needed to think of something to address this development.
I decided to embrace it.
This tale is so far the most personal thing I’ve ever written for the wiki. A lot of events from my life that I personally experienced were written in this tale. Sharing Pokémon cards when I was a kid, sleep problems I had in the past, some of the harassment depicted in the story, all were real things that happened to me. Of course, I couldn’t make everything real, for example the mother character having an acoustic guitar and singing her favorite song. My mom never had a guitar, and I don’t think her favorite Beatles song was Blackbird.
None of the characters beside Michael were based on real people. I think you can tell how dumb that would be. I remember reading about one author who based her antagonistic characters off of real people from her life, and then they found out and were rightfully pissed off about it. Especially the fact that she was doing it without their knowledge or consent, yeah it’s just not a great idea in general.
This tale isn’t self-insert wish-fulfillment. It’s not me venting out to the world to get sympathy from people. Because we SCP authors write about our problems instead of seeing a therapist like the losers we are, am I right? Yeah, no.
I just wanted to write about myself, in a reflective sense. It’s a self-reflection. That’s it.
But this also wasn’t just written for me. It was written so that people who may have had similar experiences don’t have to feel alone.
I’ve always been fascinated with how people continue to push boundaries on what type of articles can work for the wiki, especially regarding autobiographical and personal articles. And I think these kinds of articles have their place on the wiki, for a number of reasons, but especially for how meaningful they can be to others. It can make them feel seen and heard, validating their experiences and who they are. The fact that I can reach out to someone across the world who I don’t even know about and make them resonate with these feelings and make them feel like they matter with just words on a page, it makes me happy. It makes me very happy.
So that’s pretty much it. I wrote a 16k word story about myself.
I knew the risks of writing this before I posted it, but it looks like it survived as I’m writing this. It’s above +10 currently, which isn’t completely terrible for a tale. I wanted this to be higher than my last one, but I’ll take what I can get, and I’m still grateful that this even survived in the first place.
Remember: you are never alone. There will always be someone out there who will care for you and appreciate you for who you are, no matter what. I hope that you find peace and stability in your life in the near future. Stay strong. Stay alive. 💚
The idea behind this was conceived a few days before the signups for Art Exchange happened. That was when I first stumbled upon N.I.B. by Black Sabbath. I’ve liked a few of their songs before, but I never became a superfan of them until I first listened to this song. And god do I love that song. The bass solo at the beginning, the heavy guitar riffs, Ozzy’s voice, it’s all just so goddamn good and I still love listening to it to this day. But the reason that I was inspired to write this tale was because of the lyrics.
Since I’m aroace, I don’t particularly care for love songs. There’s far too many of them, and to me most of them are vapid and shallow. The only way that you can make me like a love song is if it has great storytelling and/or lyricism to stand out from all the rest. And boy does that song stand out. It really wowed me with its lyrics, and the bait-and-switch of Satan being the actual subject of the song completely got me. It gave me a ton of inspiration for me to write something similar for the wiki, but I had no idea how to fit everything together. I needed an inescapable situation for the main character to have to choose between Satan or the placeholder bad fate set out for them, but I couldn’t think of anything that would work.
That was when I saw Queerious’s prompts on the signups page for AE, and remembered the existence of the absence entity, which is basically an entity that makes everyone forget about you and slowly erases you from existence. I know, it’s nutty.
So, out of the blue, this turned into a story about romance (can’t believe I even pulled that off), marginalization, trying to survive in a world that wants to forget about you, and still living in spite of that because of the people who care about you. I’m really glad that Queerious enjoyed it, and I’m frankly surprised that this even happened in the first place. It was like all the pieces were perfectly aligned together for this story to exist. It’s crazy how unplanned and spontaneous some of my articles are, but as long as they work, it all works out in my mind. I’m grateful to have written something for Forgotten Memories, as I really like that canon and all the wonderful stories that exist within it.
I’m also excited to see Amber and Lucy’s future on the wiki, wherever that may lead!
This was my second entry for the Public Domain Contest. For this one, I wanted to write poetry so that I could really get into the thoughts of Oswald and how he sees himself and the world around him, and so I could express those feelings in ways that really resonate with readers. That’s the power of poetry, it excels at expressing complex emotions and feelings in a concise and impactful way.
My biggest inspiration is from the work of Hanif Abdurraqib. That man is an amazing poet, I admire his vivid imagery, the intricate metaphors and the powerful themes that he does in each of his poems. I wish I can be nearly as good as he is with my style. The profound way that he uses his words is so inspiring to me as a writer and as a novice poet. Fun fact, Hanif is from the same state that I’m from, Ohio! I think that’s pretty cool.
Through Oswald, I wanted to channel some recent feelings that I’ve been having about the world around me. Particularly the feeling of hopelessness, and feeling powerless as nothing you do matters while the world crumbles. But, like what Oswald learns, we can make things matter. Whether in our communities as we aid each other or in our friend groups, our actions can impact lives in so many positive ways. Our voices still matter. We should use them as much as we can, to help whoever we can as much as possible.
And even if AI muddles things or corporations try to push against art and make pacifying near-commercials instead, art will live. The act of artistic expression has always been here, and it is never going away. There will always be something to fight back. Art will live, no matter what.
I’ve been seeing that my teammates have been frustrated and disappointed in themselves because we weren’t able to qualify and they didn’t have enough time to get their articles finished. It can be frustrating to see that you’ll never be able to accomplish what you set out to do. I understand that feeling completely, as someone who has done poorly in previous contests. But I could never be disappointed in my teammates, because they’ve always been my friends and I’ve always been appreciative of the support that they give me to this day. Our brainstorming sessions during the first few days were also some of the most fun I’ve had on the wiki in a long time, and I’m incredibly grateful of both of them for being the absolute best.
What matters the most for these contests is not how your team places on the rankings, it’s the newly forged (or already-established and now strengthened) bonds that you have between your teammates that were made because of this contest. What matters the most is the collaboration and the kinship between you and your teammates. That’s what kept you going, that’s what sparked your motivation to write. It was your teammates. And I will always appreciate my teammates for their continued support of me and my works.
We might not have qualified as a team in the end, but I’m still proud of us as a team, and I always will be.
It’s pretty funny that the title of this tale is the exact opposite of the title of my previous tale above, don’t you think?
That was ultimately a fun coincidence, but I had this one in the works for quite a while. It’s a sequel to my Pridefest tale from 2024, Turning Out, starring the janitor character from that tale who only shows up like once or twice in the story. I wanted to give him a character of his own, and explore someone reminiscing on what could’ve been and blaming himself for a failed relationship because of his naivety.
I first decided to spice things up by making the character a gay man, because why not? I think it’s a good thing for me to be writing about a perspective that’s different from my own, so I can put myself in other people’s shoes and see how people experience things differently from me. But then, at the last minute, my aromanticism decided to somehow sneak itself back into my writing, and I added an aro perspective to the story that I think really added a lot of depth to the story and my character in general.
Because yeah, the original idea of this is directly from the song that it was inspired by; instead of loving someone for who they are you’re only loving the person who you thought up of that you wanted to love. It’s more of a cookie cutter situation, the person you idealized to love not reflecting reality at all. That’s what happens when you go based off the love that you imagine in your fantasies instead of caring for the person you care about in reality, which is what I was originally going for.
But also, can you see how the aromantic perspective can work for this? You’re basing it all off on what society presents love as, and you really care about the person, but you don’t “love” that person like how everyone says you should. The way you imagined it doesn’t reflect reality, and the way that everyone told you how it was like didn’t reflect that way either. Once I started thinking about it, it all made sense to me and I started adding those last few pieces in to complete the puzzle.
And yes, I planned this to be a trilogy the whole time, and only ever got around to writing the second part almost a year after I wrote Turning Out. Because that tale was inspired by the song with the same name, and there are two sequels to that song, so inevitably I was going to make a second and third tale. I could’ve left it with the first one, but I wanted to see if I can make something more connected than standalone tales and articles, as a first step towards writing a series or a larger setting. So this is my attempt at that, and hopefully I’ll be able to complete the third part once Pridefest rolls around again.
I’ve got some fun ideas involving all four of my characters from both tales, and how these themes of trying to navigate the world around you as an asexual and aromantic person connect together. I hope to see this through, and make something that I’ll be proud of.
Fun fact: the inspiration for the janitor character’s first name was from Cliff Burton, Metallica’s former bassist (rest in peace). I don’t have a last name for him yet, because trying to find a last name that rolls off the tongue as well as Burton is actually a lot harder than you think. I’ll figure it out.
One Side of an Interview with a Contained Anomaly
This was my Art Exchange gift for Angryman22. His prompt was simply this:
An emotional dialogue between two people with no other lines. No dialogue tags or actions. It's all spoken words. Build everything into it. If you want a challenge, let us only hear half of it.
I had a vague semblance of an idea a long time ago about writing an experimental piece that delved deep into how the environment of containment can affect a person’s psyche, and I made up a character for that exact perspective. Their name is Avery, they’re a reality bender who was transferred from Site-17 to Site-35, and they’re non-binary. That was all I had in the deep recesses of my mind before I got that prompt from Angryman.
From that prompt, I decided to take the extra challenge of cutting the conversation in half in stride, and I came up with the idea of creating an interview between Avery and their therapist, but removing the therapist’s questions and leaving the answers from Avery intact. This made it so I had to bring out my A-game and add in more of an emotional punch to the story, but it also gave me one less character to work with, so I saw that as a plus.
I actually finished the first draft in only a few hours, which was a surprise to me. Even though the tale is short, I didn’t think I had it in me to write it all that quickly. After that I got crit from a good friend of mine and I thought it was good enough to send the gift over.
And then I waited. For six months.
I don’t think it was exactly my fault. This tale just kind of fell into the backburner, at first because I had PDcon to deal with, then I had more important things to work on. But I always wanted to post it, as I thought that I had something good going with the emotional gut punches in the tale. And then Pride Month was coming up, which to me was the perfect time to post the tale. Once I posted it for Pridefest, it shot up to +30 in a few days, which is insane to me!
Both this tale and the previous getting a sudden spotlight and a lot of attention made my head explode. All this new appreciation from authors that I respect and admire makes my heart feel full, and it gives me a reason to stay here on this godforsaken site. There’s a lot of bad, but there is also just as much good, and a lot of amazing articles and authors that I would miss out on if I left completely like I originally did back in June of 2022, before I rejoined in August. I may be underappreciated, I may not be a big author, but I am still perceived. I am still acknowledged. I still matter here. And I will always be grateful for that.
Fun fact: the missing perspective here is my AA, Dr. Prescott. Another fun fact: I didn’t even write the other side of this conversation at all. I only wrote Avery’s half. You might think that may have been more difficult for me, but considering the fact that I finished the first draft of the tale in only a few hours, it wasn’t as difficult as previously thought.
This was my second tale posted for Pridefest 2025. It’s also the conclusion to the Turning Out trilogy, which began back when I posted Turning Out the year before.
At first I didn’t even think I could write a connected series of articles instead of only standalone ones, but since the song that the first tale was based on had two sequels, I kind of made that goal for myself around the basis of those songs existing. None of this would’ve happened had I not listened to those three songs by AJR, which are very aro-coded and got me through some tough times when I was questioning myself and thought that I was worthless because of who I was.
And when the second tale got an insane amount of attention after being featured for Pridefest (and it got past +50, which makes it my first tale to get that accomplishment), I knew I had to make a third one, so that I can make something that I would be proud of and look back on fondly in the future. My plan was to take both characters of Sylvie and Cliff and then explore different facets of aromanticism and how it differs between each person, and how each of them face the challenges that come with being aromantic, especially with how society expects them to be something that they’re not and excludes them for not being of the norm.
I definitely wished that I gave myself more time to develop the dynamic between the characters, and particularly develop Cliff’s character, because in the second half he doesn’t get to do much besides help Sylvie out and I could’ve had his resolution be less rushed than it currently is. I started working on it a month before I had to post it, and after a vacation and searching for summer jobs and spending time with my family, the deadline got closer and closer and I genuinely thought that I wouldn’t be able to post it by the deadline that I made for myself. Which wouldn’t be that bad, if the contest in July didn’t exist. I should’ve started working on it in March, but oh well.
The crit process for me was even more abysmal than what I had to go through for my first tale. I only had 6-7 days to get crit, then when I finally got the one piece of feedback that I needed I got sidelined by a bunch of errands that I had to do for an entire day, skipping a lot of time I needed to make those changes that I wanted to make. So when I got the chance to make those changes, it was during the morning of the day that I set my deadline for, causing me to get my last minute SPaG check in the middle of spending time with my family and posting the tale way later than I would have liked.
The result? It’s doing decently, actually. I thought I wasn’t going to make double digits, especially with how close I was to the contest, but I was proven wrong.
This was the culmination for what I wanted to explore with these tales, something that dives deep into the fluidity of intimacy and human connection, something that represents an aspect of the aspec experience, something that reminds the world that we exist, and our stories and experiences matter. No relationship is superior to one another, no matter what society expects of you.
And I already touched on this in my author post, but yeah I didn’t feel like I belonged anywhere until I came to this wiki, and the amount of support that I get from my friends and the people who read my works is really motivating, and it’s something that I cherish each and every day. It’s something that I’m grateful for, something that keeps me going whenever I feel like I’m a nobody. Because the work I’ve done here, no matter how small, it still made an impact on so many people. And I could never thank you all enough for your support.
Cheers to all my aspec friends! We are worth it, regardless of what the world says about us. We deserve to be free to be ourselves.
This was my bonus gift for Uncle Nicolini during Art Exchange. I wanted to write something for their canon, World Kept Turning, which is a canon set in the aftermath of Quiet Days. There’s so many perspectives of the Foundation universe that are out there to explore how they’d react to a scenario where all the anomalies disappear, it’s rife with potential and I’m glad that I got the opportunity to write something for this canon.
I wanted to explore how a site would react to the initial deaths and disappearances, because that hasn't been touched on much in the canon, and I also wanted to give an in-depth look at grief that doesn’t end with the protagonist accepting what happened and moving on. That’s a common ending for a lot of stories involving grief, and I wanted to mix things up by reminding readers that grief is a complex thing, and is different for everyone. Sometimes that grief sticks with you, and doesn’t let go. Sometimes the world carries on without you.
And then, one day, before Art Exchange officially began, I was struck with an idea.
You see, there’s another thing on the wiki that I’ve always wanted to write for. And that is the Anomalous Entity Engagement Division, created by my friend Wink and co-creator Deadcanons. It’s got everything that I strive to write on the wiki, a spot of hope in the ever-expanding darkness, a lighter side of the Foundation that’s realistic because they are hated by most other sites, and are the black sheep of the organization. But they still persist to treat the anomalies with dignity and as people with human rights. I had the perfect opportunity to see what would happen if the anomalies that the AEED kept under their care would no longer exist to be protected.
I think what I made here worked out splendidly, as my giftee loves it and other people who’ve read it have had their hearts shattered into pieces. Mission success! There’s also a personal reason for why I wrote this, but that’s already covered in the author post so I won’t belabor on that point here. I will say, it was very interesting to dig deep into the depths of my personal feelings and express that in words once again, as I haven’t done that since my second tale written for the site, which didn’t work out as well as it could have. I’m glad that this time, I was able to express difficult emotions that I’ve been having while also creating a good story for the audience. It’s best to balance both worlds if you want to get personal with it.
Here’s a few other neat facts for anyone who cares about that:
First, it’s been a year since I’ve written for a canon, and about three years since I’ve written another author’s characters until now. It feels nice to be back in that collaborative spirit, which is what made this wiki great in the first place. I hope to at least write for more canons soon, although I doubt it lol. Second, I find it amusing that Deadcanons thought Moses Feghoot was “well-characterized by his absence,” because the only reason why I made that decision was due to the fact that I hadn’t reread 8961 before writing the tale, and I didn’t want to get his characterization wrong, so I just kind of wrote him out of the story and didn’t give an explanation at all as to why. It’s pretty funny. Don’t get me wrong, I did read every other AEED article to get the other characters to somewhat match up with their previous characterization, but for Moses that didn’t really happen.
Once again, thanks to Wink and Deadcanons for creating one of my favorite Foundation departments/divisions, and to my wonderful friend Nico for having a great canon that I hope gets the love that it deserves.
Originally for Pridefest 2026, I was writing a different tale about the experience of being aromantic, set in the S&C Plastics canon. I was making good progress on it, but then I got hit with the horrors (extreme sickness). It was the worst fatigue and nausea I’ve ever felt in my life, and it was terribly inconvenient as well, leading me to be unable to work on my tale for days on end. I was already kind of running out of time to work on it to begin with, but after getting sick everything fell apart like a house of cards.
I still wanted to write something for Pridefest, though, and I hated how little time I had left. I’m the only person actively writing aromantic stories for the wiki, since we lack so much meaningful representation in wider media and there’s only one prominent aroace character on the wiki (Allan McInnis, who I love since he’s literally the best aroace character and I’m not exaggerating). The only other aspec thing written for Pridefest this year was my friend Dio’s article about the asexual experience, but there weren’t any aro works, so I wanted to step in to make sure that changed. The thing was, I was still sick, and I had no idea what to even write.
I wanted to write something about amatonormativity, and how alienating it can be to live in a world that prioritizes romance and sees experiences that go against that priority to be invalid, and that you’re unable to truly escape from what people expect you to be. My first idea was to write an SCP that involved marriages and how they exist to devalue other experiences and ways of living, and that the Foundation was keeping the intrinsic existence of marriages intact to benefit the status quo, but in order for that idea to flourish, I would have to do extensive research on the history of marriages and how they are perceived by different cultures, and I did not have the kind of time for that.
So instead, an idea randomly popped in my head one day, and it was too perfect not to use.
I was mainly inspired by TheChunk’s SCP-9626, which involved the inherent bigotry of HR bureaucracy and how they bully and single out marginalized employees, and I thought that kind of idea would fit perfectly with what I was going for. The Foundation’s HR representing society’s views on alternatives to romantic relationships and how it alienates these perspectives works so well for what I was attempting to accomplish. I then needed characters to use for the tale, and then I realized I had two blorbos who’d work well as the main protagonists, that being Sylvie and Caoimhe, and their QPR together. When I realized I could use them, the gears started turning in my head, and the focus then shifted to what the tale is now.
At first, I only had the HR log, and I wanted it to be exactly like 9626, with the HR liaison slowly making Sylvie and Caoimhe feel alienated and feel shame about being in their QPR, but I realized I did not have the chops to make it as good with the HR conversation alone. The prose bits came later on, and I’m glad I included those bits, as they show the reactions of the characters and their distress at being classified as “dating” each other, and being treated as if they were in a romantic relationship.
Unfortunately, since I only had a couple days to write the whole tale, it does feel a bit rushed and I wish I could’ve elaborated more on how an amatonormative society is affecting Sylvie and Caoimhe and their partnership. I also barely got any crit and posted on the very last day for Pridefest, meaning that I did not receive a good enough amount of attention from readers. It kind of sucks that I only got to double digits after two entire days, but it is what it is. I can’t blame myself too hard, since I was very sick.
At least one good thing came out of Pridefest for me: I got featured on the main page three times, with my works getting a ton of recognition and appreciation, and so many good comments for me to cherish. So I guess it worked out for me after all. As for that other tale I mentioned earlier, I am working on it, so we’ll see if I’m able to finish it before the other events that are coming up this year.
Alright, to be honest, I only have a few ideas for some certain GOI formats, but this tab won’t have a lot of them, if at all. But I will write something in a GOI format. Eventually.
SCP-9259 - SCIENTOLOGY RUN
Where do I even start with this one?
Before Sportscon, which I thought would permanently remain as an in-joke and not an actual contest, I was in an SCP slump. Nothing I wrote came to fruition the way I wanted it to, and what I did finish got hammered in the feedback stage and was subsequently scrapped. So when Sportscon came around, I didn’t know what to write for it, and I was pretty much done with trying to write an SCP for the wiki at that point, so I planned on turning my attention to what I was working on for this year’s Pridefest and then sit back and read the other contest entries.
But then something unexpected happened. My friends DoctorLilithSophia and
MasterTman2 were collabing on a Sportscon article about Scientology Speedrunning of all things. Soph was asking around if anyone else would like to work on the article with her and Tman, and I guess I saw an opportunity, and took it.
The result is probably the dumbest SCP that I have ever written for the wiki. We took real Scientology lore (Xenu, thetans and body-thetans, real shit that L. Ron Hubbard had actually wrote down and said, etc.), and combined that with a more gamified version of the speedrunning trend with video game glitches such as collisions and going out of bounds of the game and stuff like that. My contributions were specifically Addendum 2 and Addendum 5. With the former, I had to do some research on real speedrunning methods and infamous glitches, which I could have done more with and made more entries in the log itself, but we were in a time crunch so what can you do? The other, more glaring issue is that I’m not very good at writing comedic articles. Every time I try to be intentionally funny, it never works out for me. Tman and Soph have better experience at writing funny articles, so I had that going for me, but I also added some humorous contributions as well, somehow. My proudest moment while working on this article was coming up with footnote 8 and having the agents play a 2v1 of Jeopardy, with the stupidest agent of the bunch somehow winning. It came to me in a vision before I went to bed one night, and I do not regret it one bit.
As for Addendum 5, well that had to get an overhaul and my dialogue was unfortunately replaced with more comedic dialogue to ramp up the absurdity of the overall tone. It’s a shame, but it had to happen. You see, originally I came up with the idea of having these speedruns not be very effective with stopping the Scientologists, since its members are so dedicated and radicalized that it would play right into the indoctrination that’s emphasized in each recruit that the outside world is a violent and hateful place, one that only wishes to disrupt the “virtues” of Scientology. I thought that would be an interesting angle to explore, since it confronts how cults indoctrinate and manipulate their followers, but unfortunately it didn’t fit with the comedic tone of the earlier sections. It’s regrettable that we weren’t able to balance the comedy with the serious aspects, because what I wrote with the original ending was very compelling in my opinion, but it is what it is, and since the people wanted silly dumb fun, they were getting silly dumb fun.
I did have a fantastic time writing this with my coauthors. They were absolutely wonderful to work with, and we had a blast coming up with utter bullshit such as the obstacles that the MTF had to face with their speedruns. But I’ll be honest, at first when we posted the article right on the last day of posting and immediately got two downvotes in the first ten minutes, I didn’t think the article would survive. I wasn’t too upset about that possibility, since Pridefest was coming up anyway and I was already disappointed with my writer’s block in the past few months, so I couldn’t get any more disappointed than I already was with myself. But, surprisingly, our entry did pretty well, and we got 20th out of 46 entries, which is actually my best performance for a contest so far. I figured it was because of the social media promotion, since we sent that stuff to Internet Outreach and all that, and yeah, it was, because we got hundreds of likes and plenty of people being bewildered in the comments about our entry. I had a good laugh reading people’s reactions; there was this one dude who was like “what is SCP even about anymore” and I imagined this person acting like a dejected cartoon character, and man that had me rolling. Never change, offsite, never change.
So yeah, we wrote an SCP about a trend that will no longer be relevant in about five months, if we’re being generous. Was it worth it? I’d say it was!
If anyone has an idea for a collab that I would like, feel free to hit me up! I always want to collaborate with another author on this wiki, so if you have any ideas, feel free to contact me via Wikidot PM or preferably by DMing me via Discord (my username there is Merehrab).
Here’s some miscellaneous stuff about me if you want to know more about me specifically, I guess.
- I’m asexual and aromantic.
- My favorite written works are the Lord of the Rings trilogy and literally anything written by Terry Pratchett.
- I am a big pasta lover. My favorite type of food is literally Italian food. I crave pasta. I’m so crazy for pasta that I’m going to go over to Italy right now and steal all the pasta there just for myself.
- I’m a fan of the horror genre. I especially like the original Halloween movie, creepypastas in general, and the games Bendy and the Ink Machine and Alien: Isolation.
- Some music artists who I like to listen to are AJR3, Green Day, Jethro Tull, Megadeth, Black Sabbath, The Beatles, The Killers, Slayer, Sepultura, Mumford and Sons, No Doubt, Kendrick Lamar, and a whole lot more!
- I’m a big tabletop game fan, and a fan of the web series Critical Role. I still have not played an actual tabletop game once in my life.
In the case that I am inactive from the wiki and uncontactable for longer than two years, here is what I want for my written works:
- All my SCPs that are under 30 upvotes and all my tales and GOI formats that are under 20 upvotes are to be put up for rewrite. That means that they should have the rewritable tag and anyone is allowed to rewrite the SCP or tale.
- All my co-authored works should go to their respective co-authors.
- All of my Art Exchange gifts should be given to their giftees.
Everything else should stay untouched besides SPaG fixes and licensing stuff and tags. Thank you.
To everyone who posted an article to the wiki, is a member of site staff, left a comment on an article, and upvoted or downvoted an article, especially the ones featured here, and to all those in the community who supported me every step of the way, thank you. You all are the reason why I succeeded, and I cannot thank you all enough for this. I am extremely pleased that I got to write the articles I want to write for this wiki, and that was all because of you. I am happy to be part of this community, regardless of all its flaws. Thank you.
Cite this page as:
"Merehrab’s Musings" by Merehrab, from the SCP Wiki. Source: https://scpwiki.com/merehrabs-musings. Licensed under CC BY-SA.
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