SCP Foundation

My first published SCP. To be honest, I'm immensely proud with how it turned out, especially for my first article, and I was extremely happy when I saw how much it resonated with some people.

The inspiration for this article stemmed from a less-than-favorable trip to an old childhood park of mine. I was mostly expecting to be flooded with nostalgic warmth and happiness while traveling through it, but instead I accidentally uprooted a lot of bad memories (kids being shitty to me, other personal stuff). That was really the impetus for making this — I wanted to tell a story which related to my own experiences during elementary school and spin it into a weird, shape-shifting anomaly.

The original drafts for this SCP actually included a subplot about a person of interest who made the park to perform a ritual in a nearby hotel to resurrect the memory of their dead friend and — yeah, I ditched that. In those earlier drafts Poplar was less fleshed-out, and everything was in audio format, so you constantly had characters describing to other characters what happened to Poplar. That got real messy real quick, so I decided to keep it in video format.

One of the last structural changes I made to this was including the interview. Originally, I thought that ending the article at the exploration log would make the ending suspenseful. But then I found that it was way too open-ended of an… ending to be emotionally satisfying; hence, the interview. I'm actually the most proud of the interview, and I really think it helps give the piece some emotional depth.

My critters were incredibly helpful in bringing fruition to this article, so I'll list their lovely names here:

Idea Critters: cybersqyd, Dr Whitney does not match any existing user name, FISH35

Draft Critters: cybersqyd, DrUnoriginal, Pedantique, rioludoodle

I'll admit it, my main motivation for making this SCP was to make a pun on my username. It was also my first attempt at a comedy-type article.

When I was first ideating about making this article, I originally wanted to make it about the owl and a junior researcher (her name was going to be Naomi Green or something like that) gradually coming to tolerate each other. As the owl gradually gave up the act of being William Shakespeare, the researcher would soon learn to have a warm spot for the fellow. I think the owl was supposed to attack one of the researchers by poking out their eye with their beak. Oh yeah, and the owl was supposed to talk. (shudder)

Anyway, after that, I started leaning into the group of interest storyline. Originally, the person chosen to become an owl was an unwilling participant, a businessman captured from off the streets, who gets more and more confused about his eventual fate of getting turned into an owl. However, in my drafts of this idea, I changed it into a more willing participant (a friend of the ritual setter), which made the storyline a lot less confusing and a lot more realistic (I mean, about as realistic as you could make a guy about to be transformed into an owl).

There are some parts which I do think could do with some cleaning up in the future, such as the incident log, but overall, I'm happy with the finished product. I do have to give due respect to the critters of this when it was still being drafted, who I will list here:

Draft Critters: Alces_alces does not match any existing user name, cybersqyd, DrUnoriginal, rioludoodle, RockTeethMothEyes, Zoobeeny

Special Thanks: Nagiros, Petrograd, Zyn for convincing me to finally publish the article!

If I had to say, probably my favorite skip to make and see finished. Combined with the fun I had writing the Dissector's dialogue, the decommissioning reports, and the description, this made for a very enjoyable writing experience.

The roots of this SCP's making was right after I made 4529. After I got comments explaining how much people wanted to see more of that narrative-type structure, I was overwhelmed, and felt kind of obligated to make something as ambitious as that. That's where the idea of an alien making YouTube videos and uploading them onto people's computers came from: originally, instead of being a caustic film critic type, it was going to be a mellow, friendly alien who just wanted to be accepted by the human world. However, I couldn't get that right, and I eventually scrapped that draft.

A month or so after that whole debacle, I revisited that idea, now with a little more writing experience under my belt and a will to write for one thing in particular: the Decommissioning Department. I soon found out that this type of story involving the DeD could slot itself neatly into the old alien-uploading-videos concept, and I got writing.

There was one major thing which changed from first draft to published piece: namely, the Dissector's character. Originally, the Dissector was a lot more caustic, leaning far too much into some unlikable, bigoted character traits. However, after the ending took a turn towards getting the reader to sympathize for the anomaly, I decided to not make the Dissector such an unlikable douchebag. In the end, that was probably for the better, as a lot more people empathized with the Dissector than I originally intended.

Anyway, my draft critters were all really helpful in taking a look, critiquing, and encouraging me to publish this, so I will go ahead and list their lovely names here:

Draft Critters: Calibold, DrUnoriginal, Ihp, JakdragonX, TSDTom

[COMMENTARY UNAVAILABLE]

Draft Critters: Calibold, CityToast, cybersqyd, Cyvstvi13 does not match any existing user name, SharpEmbrace, MalyceGraves, Popsioak does not match any existing user name

My first page submitted to the wiki. Actually, before making this, I wasn't too experienced with pixel art, and was way more comfortable with just regular drawing. However, after I tried out some stuff with the lospec palette list, I got a little more accustomed with using it to make art. A lot of the line art for the SCP drawings is a little rough, but other than that, I'm satisfied with how the art turned out.

This is, indeed, an author page.

Yeah, I only drew the picture for this, but it certainly was nice to be working with RJB_R. I'm actually not too familiar with the Technical Researcher Rosen character — I was going for more of a 90's feel (i.e. the Amiga keyboard, the beige palette), so it was kind of a surprise to see that Rosen was supposedly employed in 2012. Anyway, it was a great honor to be working with Roget for the brief time I could.

Co-Author: RJB_R