SCP Foundation

I started this off as a solo project, originally posting it in a barely-recognisable form onto Ideas & Brainstorming. After I got my two greenlights, I started working on a draft. While I was throwing the sandbox link around in #thecritters, Boogey caught sight of it and took interest in co-authoring. I accepted, and we started reworking my messy draft.

While the basic elements were always there, Boogey supplied an overarching narrative, focused the scope, and brought the Foundation into the UIU-GOC party. They were ever-present in that stage of that process, and I don't think the article would've turned out as well as it did without their help.

If you're wondering, my personal favourite part of this tale has to come down to this line:

"Far away in Washington D.C., Theodore McKinney settled into a polished wooden chair, at a polished wooden table, across from a wooden Polish man."

Don't remember which one of us came up with that line, but it's still hilarious.

This is what I originally joined the site to write, pretty much. SCP-079 stuck with me for whatever reason, and when an idea for a tale around it popped in my head I joined up and tried to pitch it as my first. Didn't go over so well, so I shelved it.

Fast forward a month and a half, and I've got three articles on the site and pull it back out. After a month of drafting it, cursing my choice to use so many divs every time I forgot a bracket, and showing it to anyone in #thecritters that'd listen (during which time Cerastes put up their excellent take on -079), I put it up. It's been my favourite to write, and I hope you enjoyed it too.

Quick note: a full explanation of what I was going for with the skip is on the author post.

So, this changed a lot when I was writing it — it started with a much more junior main character who was struggling with a lot of insecurity, but that strayed a bit too close to a lot of other skips that did it a whole lot better. In the end I ended up keeping the general idea — main character gets increasingly dependent on the app, to the point where their sanity starts slipping — but also included a lot more implications that the app is manipulating them. I'm generally the type of reader that needs to be bonked on the head with a baseball bat shaped like the article's narrative, so I'm kind of surprised it ended up the way it is. It was a fun thing to try though, and regardless of whether that part clicked right away, I hope you enjoyed it.