Hey, kids!
My name's Sigma-9, but you can call me Siggy. I'm the living manifestation of the SCP Wiki!
What's this sack I'm carrying, you ask? Why, it's a bunch of dead authors! Arthur Doyle, Charles Dickens, Mark Twain — I've got all their bones in here because I've been digging up graves all night. And I'm not taking them to a museum or selling them at a pawn shop, if that's what you're thinking. No, I'm gonna put them in my SCP article!
How am I gonna do that? Well, let me tell you about something called Public Domain.
When a human being passes away, their soul exits their body and flies towards Heaven. But ever since we started putting people in coffins, these souls get trapped in dirt instead and get stuck there for years. Eventually, after some time, they fade away from the world and the totality of their being melts into the Sea of Souls. This includes everything — their hopes, their dreams, and the rights to all their work. When that happens, the hard-working folk at the U.S. Copyright Office's Psychotronics Division sail across the Collective Unconscious and use harpoons and nets to wrangle these stray authorial rights. After transporting them to the real world, the rights get bound to the domain of living humans, the Public Domain, and they become objects that belong to you and me and everyone else on Earth.
Isn't that amazing? I sure hope I get dissolved into the Public Domain when I die!
Well, anyways, I oughta get going now. I've got plenty of bones to put in my SCP article. And you know, this "bone proposal" isn't gonna write itself, haha!
Thanks for reading! ✌️
WHAT IS PUBLIC DOMAIN CON?
Welcome to the wiki's first Public Domain contest, hosted by yours truly, Yurt-in-Chief 
Rounderhouse and the twin imps resting on my shoulders, 
Naepic and 
syuzhet (also 
psychicprogrammer)! For those of you unfamiliar with the concept of the public domain, read on. For those familiar, read on anyway so as to avoid being the guy that asks a question already covered in the rules!
The public domain is, as it has been called numerous times, a wellspring of creativity. It's the promise of material that is no longer bound by copyright protections, allowing you to use and reuse its contents without fear of a lawsuit. As January is Public Domain Month, the contest team would like to celebrate it by introducing this year's first team contest: PUBLIC DOMAIN CON! You'll be forming teams of three and writing about your favorite characters in the public domain. Reinterpret them, reimagine them, remix them, and revitalize these iconic fictional characters in the context of the SCP universe — whether as anomalies, agents, or something entirely different!
We've provided you with a list of both famous and new additions to the public domain, but you're not restricted to them. Do check to make sure that they are usable, however - see below for a disclaimer on the complexity of public domain.
- Mickey Mouse
- Dracula
- Tintin
- Popeye
- Winnie the Pooh
- Columbo
- Jesus of Nazareth
- The Man Who Laughs
- Sherlock Holmes
- Peter Pan
While these characters and more are in the public domain, and we encourage you to use more obscure characters if you so choose, we find it necessary to inform you that, as with all copyright law, not everything is so clear cut.
Characters go through multiple designs throughout their life as studios adapt to changing times and different audiences, and each design has its own different copyright. Just take a look a Mickey Mouse. If you were the use the design from Steamboat Willie, you're more than free to do so. You can't go past 1929, though, so no red pants.
Or what about Columbo? Peter Falk's depiction of the character is iconic, but Columbo's public domain status comes from how his first appearance is from the Chevy Mystery Show in 1960, where you needed a copyright renewal to maintain a copyrighted status. There, he is portrayed by Bert Freed. So you can't use the Columbo design we're far more familiar with.
Or what about Sherlock Holmes. Nowadays, people would associate the detective with Cumberbatch or even RDJ, but neither is usable. You're best of concocting your own design.
There is a silver lining, however. Though the appearances of the characters cannot match copyrighted ones, the Supreme Court has ruled, during a Sherlock Holmes case no less, that personality traits cannot be copyrighted. If you get your character's personality from a famous film, more power to you.
What I'm saying is that we encourage you to have fun as you explore the world of public domain, but to do you due diligence to ensure what you're using really is public domain. If you have any questions, please contact me.
I'd like to share this passage from the Doomsday Contest, where ARD said it better than I could:
There are multiple ways to approach this project. You can get together with some of your friends, write stuff, and have lots of fun doing it—regardless of winning or losing. Or, you can write, get angry at your friends for not performing the way you want them to. You can complain about them, the rules, the contest, the judges, and hate your life.
Try to be a bit more classy. This is supposed to be a fun opportunity to add more to the site rather than make yourself upset, frustrated, or angry. People have quit over contests. You're better than that.
You'll work together on the collection. Everyone must contribute significantly to the final product. It is expected that each team member will write at least one work. If the contest marshals get the idea that one guy is writing 100% of the content for their team there will be some investigation. I will consume any offenders.
I’m not cruel, though. I understand things do come up. If there’s a real issue meaning someone won’t be able to post - please, contact me. We’ll figure something out.
Once posting begins, your magnificent trio are locked in and cannot change. Choose wisely. Once you’ve picked your team and decided on a captain amongst yourselves, add yourselves to the team roster at the bottom of this page using the provided format.
Looking for a team? Comment in the discussion of this page saying so! Join up with other people also looking for a team!
BONUS AWARDS & HIDDEN ACHIEVEMENTS
BONUS AWARDS
Want to nab yourself a shoutout on the contest page once the results start rolling in? More importantly, want to dance for my amusement? Earn these bonus awards that offer absolutely-goddamn-nothing except my approval and a spot of honor in Valhalla for completing certain requirements in writing your articles! Updated throughout the posting period with new awards.
The Misfits
Place in the top 5 with a team made up entirely of people cut from other teams. Mad respect.
What Contest?
Post two non-contest articles in the posting period.
Stans
Name all articles in your series after songs from the same artist.
> tale author
Finish the contest with one SCP and at least three tales.
A Random Day Memorial Jamcon Award
Produce and post one or more of your articles in under 48 hours.
Method Actor
Write one of your entries in the same style as the source material your character is from.
Sir Arthur Conan Doyle Award for Achievement in Murder
Kill off your chosen character at the end of your series.
spiderman_pointing.gif
Beat out another team writing the same character as you.
Syuzhet Bingo
Include as many characters from the hub's list (see above) as possible in your articles.
HIDDEN ACHIEVEMENTS
Periodically through the planning/writing period until the Posting Period begins, this page will be updated with bonus awards with the requirements redacted. The title should give you some idea of what you have to do, but if you want a hidden achievement and the bragging rights to go with it, you're gonna have to work for it!
Tournament Arc
Have a public domain character get in a fight with characters from several other entries.
Weekend at Bernie's
Have your public domain character exclusively appear as a corpse.
Bribe The Judge Award 2: Electric Boogaloo
Horrifically injure or mutilate Director House in the course of your team's entries.
Buzz the Tower
Post your qualifying with less than 5 minutes to the contest close.
How Did We Get Here?
End up with a total wordcount longer than the original source material your character is from.
DATES
Writing begins: 25 Jan 2025 05:01 / January 25, 2025 05:01 UTC
Posting begins: 15 Feb 2025 05:01 / February 15, 2025 05:01 AM UTC
Posting ends: 08 Mar 2025 05:01 / March 8, 2025 05:01 AM UTC
Voting ends: 19 Mar 2025 05:01 / March 19, 2025 05:01 AM UTC
RULES
- Rule 1: Read the rules. I'll smack you if you don't. I'll know.
- Your team must consist of three people, all of whom must be announced. You may only be on one team. Each team will have a captain, but the individual members are responsible for posting their own work. Please pick someone who is actually around to be Captain, as all communication and questions about the contest should go through them to the organizers. Any other responsibilities the team chooses to invest in the captain should be discussed among the members of the team. Follow the example below for how to format your team.
- The character you pick must be in the Public Domain, and you must write them in a way that lines up with the public domain version. If you're at all concerned about whether your pick fits with this, check with Naepic. It's a lot better to do it now and to be able to pick a new character than find out midway into the contest and have your team disqualified and possibly the articles deleted.
- Your chosen character may be beyond a simple literary character — they may be a folk hero, or from music, or even from a movie, so long as they're in the public domain. They also must appear in every article your team writes, though you may have additional public domain characters that show up in your pieces if you'd like.
- Furthermore, you may NOT use drafts that existed before the contest went up. All entries must have been created after the contest page went up. Any entries found to violate this rule will be subject to disqualification.
- SCP format screws are fine. The tale should be substantive and long enough to show that you've invested some time in them.
- A minimum of 3 articles must be written for the contest; there is no maximum number, but only the four highest-rated articles will count towards point total. Once again, at least one of these must be an SCP, and at least one must be a tale. Art submissions will not be considered for this contest. Edit: for clarification, if an article that qualifies for vote aggregation is in the negatives, it will still count towards the point total. However, due to the nature of the contest and the stay of deletion on articles, the most a negatively rated article will count towards scoring is a -10.
- SCP supplements such as separate exploration logs, experiment logs, revised versions, etc. will count as extra entries past the main three. For example, if you have two tales, and one SCP with two supplement pages, the highest-rated of the two supplements will count as the fourth entry for voting purposes.
- Teams may create hub pages for their work. However, hub pages will not count for scoring nor for the minimum article requirements. Furthermore, they cannot be put up until your team has posted the minimum required number of articles for the contest (3). Edit: following discussion within the team, if evidence is provided that at least three drafts are completed and a plan is given to the team for when each article will be posted, you may be given permission to post a hub early.
- You may not delete or edit an article once posted, regardless of performance. Articles that dip to the deletion mark will be subject to normal deletion practices, but they will not be removed until after the contest has ended. This should encourage everyone to work hard with their teams to have a superior product. What's posted is posted. Small corrections are fine, but significant edits are not. The only deletion of articles once the contest begins and before it ends is if an article is found to not be in line with the public domain.
- Small corrections are defined as: fixing minor sentence wording, correcting grammar usage, changing spacing, etc. Large, substantive changes are not allowed until the contest has passed.
- Each entry must be posted by its primary author. Collaborative entries between teammates are encouraged but each author must contribute at least one (1) entry which was mainly written by them. If you rewrote someone’s work entirely, it's not really theirs anymore, and it wouldn't be fair for them to post something you spent four hours revising when they only invested ten minutes writing it. This does mean that one or two people will be writing more than one entry.
- Any member who takes unusual and/or negative actions to increase their vote total, or decrease that of their competitors, will be disqualified for the involved contest and potentially banned from further contests. Site members who are not participating in the contest but do this sort of thing may be subject to Disciplinary action, in addition to the personal wrath of the Yurt.
- Examples of shenanigans include, but are in no way limited to:
- Downvoting all of your competitors' work within minutes of them being posted
- Spamming people with PMs about your work
- Spurring Malicious Upvoting/Downvoting, whether on your work or anyone else's
- If you're not sure if something counts as shenanigans, then it probably does, but feel free to PM me asking.
After posting your entries, tag them "publicdomaincon2025" and link them to your team's blurb at the bottom of this page. Winners will be decided by the total points across the team's four highest-rated entries. The winning team will have their work featured on the frontpage.
