SCP Foundation

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Adding this part since I beat my record! (…though it wasn't a hard record to beat…) And I kinda like talking. Don't take any of what's in here as 'canon' if you don't like it.

• I was able to figure out which gender my critters were from how they referred to Dr. Lawler with a good degree of accuracy. Before I figured out what Sutcliffe was meant to be, I intended to make both Lawler and Sutcliffe gender-indeterminate (A la 'Frisk' from Undertale). Sutcliffe had to have a gender of some sort, given that I needed to refer to Wellington using a pronoun of some sort. I already headcanoned (Is that a thing if you're the author?) Sutcliffe as a guy, and since he's from the 30s Foundation he most likely he would have been, anyways. Officially, Dr. Lawler is nonbinary, using they/them/theirs in the two cases where I actually use a pronoun for them. I was debating switching them over to xe/xir/xirs to make it more blatant (And I'm still debating it), but I kind of like the ability for the audience to drop into the shoes of Lawler to that extent a bit more. It's not really noticeable to the reader, but amusing as an author.
  • Not criticizing you if you referred to Lawler as he or she- I actually had to reread this paragraph to make sure I didn't refer to Lawler as 'she' myself. I deliberately obfuscated their gender to achieve the 'Frisk' effect.
• A more cynical look is that Sutcliffe isn't Wellington's ghost/astral projection/soulself/etc. That, in fact, the first person to discover SCP-4408 was a Foundation agent. The SCP reacted by creating what it thought was an uninhabitable environment, once it discovered what Wellington's intent was. It didn't kill the civilian because Weber was just an ordinary gal- no ill intents towards the anomalous. Additionally, it needed to figure out a way to handle things if another Foundation member came in. Thus, it created the "Sutcliffe" persona based off of what it knew from Wellington and Weber- perhaps Sutcliffe was the name of Wellington or Weber's boyfriend or something. Or maybe the SCP just really liked the name Sutcliffe. And perhaps we can take a closer look at the Foundation, and see that behind the scenes, they were going to send in Lawler, who wasn't so good at the "work" portion of their job but was more specialized than the other people the Foundation had sent through. There might have been errors in the data that the SCP made and the Foundation was catching on to. The SCP knew that Lawler was catching on, and reasoned that Lawler or another researcher might find a way around the wipe- it could be as simple as sending in someone with a supply of mnestics. Thus, the SCP decided to take a risk and go all in on the Sutcliffe persona, reasoning that if the Foundation saw the SCP as being on "their side," then they wouldn't be watching as closely or acting harshly.
• It probably makes for a better story to take Sutcliffe at face value- but he did get caught out on a lie, even after Lawler discovered the truth.
• I'm glad I was able to improve my writing this much. Honestly, I think the "How to Write an SCP" page needs a caveat- though it's true you shouldn't try to post an SCP right away, you should definitely start writing and drafting them right away. Like, I was concerned I was going to start annoying the forum crit team with the number of drafts I would put into the forums- I think I spaced them out well enough. But hey- there's only one way to get better. I'm happy with a double-digit score, especially this quickly. I don't want to sound like I'm tooting my own horn here- even if you downvote this, you gotta admit it's objectively better than what I did in SCP-3862.