SCP Foundation

Though I'm past one hundred thousand miles
I'm feeling very still
And I think my spaceship knows which way to go…
…Planet Earth is blue
And there's nothing I can do.

This took me

8 MONTHS TO WRITE

It's easily the longest fiction work I've writen so far in my entire life. A few brief notes about this wild time:
1. This wasn't the kind of tale you choose to write. I don't know how this happened. This started as a fanfic, and then became serious very quickly.

2. I asked theduckman, about a third of the way into this project, if Jack had depression before the amulet in his canon. He said no. I then decided to just kinda casually throw out his entire canon to make my own to make this work, because there is no canon and all associated remarks. So to keep things straight, I have to note here: this does not take place inside theduckman's canon. It takes place, technically, in a separate hell canon where no one is happy and bad things happen to everyone.

3. I struggled for a long time over what to name this, before settling on the famous David Bowie character who becomes lost in space after takeoff and subsequently is never heard from again.

4. Special thanks to Cyan for letting me use their heke rad texting/pager code block format for the texts between Bright and Gears (it's from their super rad and cool tale "Coming Down" and you should read it its good)

5. This was written after me having the worst mental health year of my life last year, and is partially drawn off of that experience

6. All pictures in the weird side-tale thingys are taken by me for the purpose of this tale, and I wrote the code for those myself. I guess you could call me a hacker or something

7. I no longer know what to do with my life now that this is over what do I even do??? we just dont know

A brief weird kind of reflection: 2/13/2019
I just listened to Space Oddity again for the first time in a long time, and I had a second to reflect. It's been a couple years- I wrote this in high school, and I'm almost halfway through college now- but it's absolutely incredible to me how tied I feel to this story. As soon as the opening bars of that song play, I feel almost homesick. I remember everything about this like it's a physical place I can visit; from what I was feeling when I wrote it to what I imagined Jack's surroundings to look like.

It's almost at 100+ now. Unlike some of the other stories I've written I feel like this one really stands the test of time, and as of now I continue to stand by it. There are a few changes I would make if I were to write it now, I think, but for the most part…I still adore this one. I'm glad it's continuing to be special to other people the way it's special to me. I don't think I'll ever be able to forget this story and the unique kind of bleak, melancholy warmth it has, and the weird comfort it brings revisiting it.

NOOOOOOOO I WAS GONNA CRIT IT ;;

You wanna make all the side-pages component pages a la 2998 or 1893 so that they don't take up recently created, get found via Random Tale, and are seen as supplements rather than stand-alone pages.

A few months back, me and Roget were discussing ideas by which we could increase the visibility of tales. We discussed this and we both concluded that we'd really like to see a tale project with scale: something large and frightening in scope that rocks canon to its core, that tears your envisioning of the Foundation from tip to toe as you realise just what you've read.

Whether it's Incident 239-B's large-scale havoc involving giants of the site canon throwing down against one another with an innocent girl's life in the balance, Duke 'til Dawn's pinnacle of self-insert insanity or the slow, creeping, painful dissection of a major character's psyche in In His Own Image, when they're done right tales can split the readerbase in twain and shape the future of site canons for years to come.

Is it too early to say whether or not this is one of them?

Probably, but it won't stop me applauding you on writing one of the most ambitious, well-written and deeply immersive pieces of fiction on this site.

I hope to see someone cite this as a reason why they came to the site in the same way hundreds of newbies have been pulled in by the decommissionings, the Duchamps and the Game Days. Well done.

This is big and deep and ambitious and left me feeling inadequate. Good work.

Well. This is… this is something else really.

This is quite frankly amazing. There are hints, and references to Bright canon in here that just make my day and squee… Stuff like gambling, or him making moonshine.

And you're right, it's not canon. The Bright family were city dwellers. There's no mention of Sarah. Their family, or their father at least, wouldn't have left them alone like that.

But, that being said, I'm not critting it for canon. This is… freaking amazing. I mean, uneblievably huge, and awesome, and… There are things here that fit in despite me not ever putting them out, mostly in the relationships between peoples.

(Also, I've been trying to write an SCP about Space Oddity for YEARS.)

Honestly… yes, it's not-canon. But, in my head, it's not-canon in the same way as Unfinished Business. It's not what I would have done with the characters. It's not nessacarily using all of my head canon. But whereas some stories are simply Not. Canon. This is OFFICIALLY Not-Canon. Like, I'm proud to have created the characters that were used in this.

I really like how bits feel pulled from my brain, like how the first bit doesn't use any names, something I often avoid in my writings. I like how you took it and made it your own, even after hearing from me what I considered canon. Honestly, in my head, it does kind of make me wanna change Bright to depressive before the amulet. It makes sense.

Not only that, but you stumbled on a power I didn't know he had… The universe refuses to let Bright die. Something always happens… until it found an easy way to keep him safe.

Hmmm.

Wishing I could vote multiple times, all of them Plus.

(also congrats on getting the longest response from me in… I think ever.)

By the way, circuit is spelled wrong in the URL.

Whew.

I just spent my entire work lunch and then some reading this and now…now I don't know what to do. This was a sprawling rollercoaster of a read, and didn't just hold my attention from beginning to end, I was afraid to stop. Section 9? With the bull? Hell, that was a mastercraft of a short story right there.

Take my +1. Take a bow.

I need a drink.

Wow, what an undertaking. There've been a lot of "Bright Family" tales lately that just left me scratching my head, like, what am I missing?, but this feels like a good introduction to the concept. It wasn't until part 10 that I realized who TJ was. OH, I said. OH.

And I'm assuming most typos are either there for stylistic purposes or simply because this is so big, but I do want to call out 'heard' of cattle, because no. :C

Holy crap, this is something else. I'm not sure I got all the references (I got who TJ is but not Claire - does she exist somewhere?) and I'm not super familiar with Bright canon beyond the basic concept, but I thoroughly enjoyed this.
Bravo.

I found a few (of what I presume to be) errors while reading, which I'll note here. Didn't want to change them myself in case I was mistaken.

Quick note: Thanks all for the spelling and grammar mistakes. This thing is so huge and dense in portions that it was hard for me to grab everything before putting it up; I'm anticipating there will be many, many more in there that will be pointed out as this tale ages.