SCP Foundation

SCP-4241 — Researcher's Nightmare.

Rating: +93

Genre: Horror

You know what "Astral" is, right?

I like to call this one "My sleep disorder - the SCP". Pretty much all the properties this anomaly possesses are one way or another inspired by the issues I either had in the past or have to this day. Some scenes are directly referencing my IRL experiences too, and when I think about it like this… I guess you can call Dr. Bishop a self-insert to an extent. Although I can't say that the disorders described in this skip are that unique. I'm sure that insomnia, nightmares, and symptoms usually associated with depression are pretty familiar to a lot of people (which is not fun at all).

Another source of inspiration for this skip was the whole "Astral spiders" topics you can find on various lucid dreaming/astral/esoterics sites and forums. Seriously, there are a lot of those. The astral spiders are pretty much always portrayed negatively in those stories. People perceive them as something scary and harmful, some believe that they either trap person's "astral body" while it travels through the astral plane or parasite on it, sucking our energy out and causing us to have bad moods, mental issues, etc. I wouldn't say that I believed in all this mysticism, but it surely gave me a lot of inspiration. Also, helped me to differentiate it from SCP-3966 enough. I've read this article while writing mine and was worrying that people will think that I've taken too much from there.

Overall, this is a pretty personal piece, and while the imagery it deals with is very negative, I'm glad how the article itself turned out (for the most part at least, there are bits that could've been better in my opinion). This is also the first of my SCPs that reached +20 and established me as a contributor, so that's cool too.

SCP-3824 — Dogpile.

Rating: +50

Genre: Weirdness

Over the course of the next three days, D-1318's mental state had deteriorated dramatically due to constant obsessive thoughts and visualizations related to open wounds and bleeding.

Oh God, this one. A jamcon2018 entry for the "Shaggy dog" theme and my first ever contest article. I still remember that I haven't planned to write anything on this day, but the energy in IRC chat was so powerful that I felt like I must contribute.

Looking back at it, I don't consider this one very significant. I just thought of something that would be weird enough for people to like it and short enough to deliver the punchline in a reasonable timespan. Then, I also decided to make the title a pun that would be related to what happened in that addendum. And, to be fair, that article did better than I expected it to (I was actually doubting that it'll survive).

Also, fun fact: Originally, the dogs weren't "remarkably small". I just wanted to make the imagery more remarkable, and since giant dogs were already a thing, I decided to take the opposite route. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

SCP-4165 — The Idea Has Legs.

Rating: +94

Genre: Horror/Mystery

Covered on 24th weekly edition of the SCP Café.

Upon SCP-4165-1 approaching the subject, a large, vertical cavity formed on the entity's head, and black ink started to flow out of it in large quantities.

A very spontaneous work and, to be fair, I'm still not exactly sure where the idea for it came from. My best guess is that it was inspired by the writing block I had while trying to put together another article. I've spent almost three weeks on it and ultimately abandoned my attempts to write it because the concept didn't go anywhere.

SCP-4165, on the other hand, was very easy to write, which is ironic given the concept. It did undergo some changes during the writing phase though: originally, that addendum was a video log and involved skip and the ink monster talking to each other with the monster repeating the word "Write" several times before assaulting the poor guy. Then, it came to me that if I cut that dialog and some details out, the article won't lose anything valuable, and so it was done.

SCP-4363 — Wake Me Up, I'm Living a Nightmare. (Co-authored /w Arbelict)

Rating: +60

Genre: Mystery

I remember it approaching me, trying to do something to me. Something bad. Very bad.

Writing process for this one was pretty tough. Me and Arbelict had a very clear idea of what we wanted to do with the tale, but the skip's concept was a lot vaguer, which resulted in us changing the general idea, the logs, and various parts of text numerous times. Sort of a "breakthrough" in our brainstorming happened when we decided to utilize the concept of subjectivity regarding dreams. Originally, there were supposed to be more logs, but then the idea of making only one log while describing it through the eyes of each test subject stuck with us. We don't know what exactly happened in that dream, but there is definitely some truth behind all that mess.

Actually, we barely finished the skip in time and uploaded during the last posting day (and I'm sure some other collabcon teams experienced the same thing).

SCP-4915 — One Star Containment.

Rating: +125

Genre: Comedy

Listen, this place has cool aesthetics, I'll give you that. But you're not only taking this "secret organization" theme way too far, you also don't seem to care about any other aspects.

An idea that came to me during a vacation on Rhodes. We experienced some minor problems with our room and other things while being there, which I think is the case for most vacations, and I thought it'd be pretty fun to somehow embed this concept into SCPverse. That was the skeleton of the article, and the story was built from there. Still, I suspected that jokes about misunderstanding the situation can only get so much reader's attention, so I added a twist at the end, which suggests why everything happened the way it did. The current story is more about getting scammed than about hotels, but I think it fits well enough. SCP-4915 really did nothing wrong, the guy just trusted the wrong people, which resulted in them taking away his money and him ending up contained. It's probably one of the worst things that can happen to you during traveling.

SCP-5395 — Thought Bubbles.

Rating: +38

Genre: Fantasy/Mystery

Closer inspection revealed that SCP-5395-C was composed of black gravestones and bones, along with large jaws located across its entire body.

[COMMENTARY PENDING]

SCP-4629 — A Little Easter Egg.

Rating: +75

Genre: Comedy/Weirdness

So, one of us, Fred I think, did it for a minute and then boom. The sheep is in pieces and the poor guy stands there covered in blood from head to toe. Others started screaming and running away, but I personally thought the whole thing was fucking hilarious.

[COMMENTARY PENDING]

SCP-5058 — Our Normal Fellow Humans.

Rating: +181

Genre: Horror

Each of the instances also possesses a small (~2 cm in diameter) organic growth visually resembling a tumor, located between the cerebellum and occipital lobe. Through testing, it was discovered that the growth enables entities to emit signals similar to low-frequency radio waves.

As I pointed out in my author post, the inspiration for this one was mainly drawn from Local58 and the way it approaches alien-based horror. I found its distinct style of presenting alien themes fascinating and decided that it'd work well enough with SCPverse. Thus, some of the depicted topics are inspired by that channel. It's especially true for the last addendum, I clearly was envisioning an obscure Local-style creepy video when writing about the contents of that cognitohazardous transmission. I didn't choose to go all-in with this reference at first though, and an earlier version of the draft had a much more boring ending. However, after the feedback from some people, namely cybersqyd, I chose to concentrate more on what can happen on the satellite, and thus the current ending was written.

The core concept of alien abductions is also inspired by some ideas I heard from Arbelict at discord some time ago. He once voiced an assumption that alien-based fiction can potentially work in SCP, and it's possible to take a more cryptic/creepy approach to it rather than the traditional sci-fi one. The idea that I remembered from that dialogue mostly was that it's not us who study aliens in this aspect, rather it's the aliens who study us.

Those ideas seemed to mesh pretty well in my head, and jamcon was just the perfect opportunity to write this skip. Overall I'm very glad that I participated. If I didn't, this idea would probably make its way into the site a lot later (if at all).

Vivid Visions.

Rating: +30

Genre: Horror/Drama

The images won't stop. They're all around me. I want to stop this, but I don't know how. I can't see people. Please respond.

The storyline for this one is pretty heavily inspired by this video (kinda NSFW). Mainly, it was the concept of someone seeing scary illusions and then, by the very end, realizing that the illusions were actually their true surroundings, which they couldn't accept. So I watched this weird, edgy Luigi video and decided that something like this could potentially work in the Foundationverse, where imagery like this was pretty common.

The idea of conveying this concept through messages came to me a little later, mainly because I really didn't think I could write normal prose well enough, lol. I think there are certainly ways this tale could've been improved, but still, I feel fine about it, especially looking at it as an attempt to write in a slightly different format.

A Business Dinner. (Co-authored /w Arbelict)

Rating: +57

Genre: Mystery

What a strange, yet at the same time, obvious question to ask in a dream. Is any of it real?

The first half of the storyline that I and Arbelict came up with for CollabCon. One of the main thoughts behind this particular piece was "how would MC&D find a way to ask such a mysterious and strange GoI as Oneiroi for help?" We've decided that the most logical thing would be to have some kind of business dinner that would also happen in a dream (for obvious reasons). The main goal of the tale was to introduce readers to the story we were going to tell in the upcoming SCP object, but I think some people were able to enjoy it as a standalone piece, which is very nice.

I have to say that although I've co-authored this piece, Arbelict did a lot more to put it together than I did. This tale is up there mainly because of his writing skill and ability to write tons of words in incredibly short amounts of time.

Roadside Cafe.

Rating: +124

Genre: Horror

I listened closely and heard loud whimpering coming from underground. Those hits I wrote about earlier… It was that thing, no doubt about it. It was trapped there, below the burger place. And it was in agony.

From the moment I saw various people jumping on the Parawatch bandwagon (as they tend to put it), I knew that eventually, I'd want to write for this hub too. I have a soft spot for creepypastas since I used to read lots of them when I was younger. I was very fearful back then, so most of those stories tended to have a giant impact on me. Usually, it wasn't me fearing for my life or thinking that something might hurt it. It was more of an uncanny feeling of weirdness that was going on in those stories.

In this work, I've tried to at least partially convey that feeling of having something weird happening nearby, but out of sight. For some reason, I knew from the start that I'll be writing in some kind of cafe/fast-food location. I guess it's a psychology-related thing: you tend to associate places like this with more positive, light-hearted emotions, so adding something creepy there results in a more polarizing imagery. Besides SCP-2915, which gave me an idea for the background of what could possibly happen in Red and Maroon, I've also drawn my inspiration from other sources. Sources like FNAF's predecessors — Chuck E Cheese creepypastas, and various other stories.

Losing My Colors.

Rating: +147

Genre: Horror/Drama

Her clothes, her hairstyle, lack of makeup, all this catches her eye. It's disgusting. It's wrong. It needs to be fixed.

Slice of Forum Life.

Rating: +107

Genre: Comedy

Brownies are fucking paranormal and that's a fact.