The spoopy archives of the SCP call to me once more to plunder their depths in search of some juicy nugget of truth. So I return once more to have a look over yet another selection of proposals that could be the description of the ever illustrious SCP-001, a designation as eminent as it is vague. Of course, this means that once again I'll be entering the murky waters of alternate dimensions and straight conflictions as each one of these tales exist co-currently and separately from one another; think about the most confusing canon you know and multiply that my one hundred. But at the end of the day these are all just make-believe scary stories anyway, so nothing really matters. (Or are they...)
First comes Tanhony's Proposal, and it is presented in a style that I positively love! The chat log presentation that jumps between the perspectives of 2 AI's is simply so engaging and useful for controlling perspective, something this particular author understands how to perfectly utilise. But literary analysis is not the point of this blog, what about the SCP itself? This version of SCP-001 is quite interesting in that his existence is more divorced from the Science-fiction aspects of the SCP lore and more in tune with the fantastical. it is an 84 year old man who, through unclear methods, has been fused with the concept of death. This essentially means that anything you do to this man has some effect on how death effects the rest of the general world. It's unclear just to what extent this could be used for, but we get a hint of it in how the O5 council have abused it. By imbuing this man with a selective prosopagnosia, thus making him unable to recognise the faces of any of the 13 council members which seems to have ensured the council's immortality for as long as he lives. This incarnation does pose that classical quandary of morals and hubris, alongside making us question the act of playing god. Although I was surprised that this tale lacked the typical 'monkey's paw'-esque twist that SCP stories typically showcase. Is that for the better or worse of the story? Who knows. It really comes down to personal preference. Overall, though, a compelling entry told in a very cool manner.
I'll be honest, I really wasn't a fan of Wrong's Proposal. The presentation aside, I found this whole iteration of SCP-001 to be incredibly dense and I feel that may be due to this version of SCP-001 being conceived retroactively. (I don't know that for sure, but that's just the feeling I get.) SCP-001 is essentially an event wherein the reality of the world was altered from this steampunk-esque war torn hellscape on the verge of total mutual annihilation to the world we live in now. (Never really a fan of an SCP being an event rather than an object; it sort of robs the urgency from the position.) This iteration did, however, provide a helpful description of who the O5 council is, which is nice because up until now I've been guessing. Essentially, there were thirteen organisations that were created by folk who remembered the world before SCP-001, or rather they were controlled by leaders who did. Somehow they all ended up coming together to form The Foundation, and that's how I met your mother. (Or how SCP started, whatever.) Although, to be honest, I'm not even all that happy with this lore nugget as it completely removes the classically shadowy figure of The Administrator, who I've grown quite fond of lately. (You know, despite his wildy fluctuating personality, backstory and drives.) So Wrong's Proposal is surely not the one for me, I'm afraid.
We go back to form, however, with WJS' Proposal for SCP-001. This one is another fascinating iteration of the SCP as it is itself not an anomalous entity but a set of guidelines for determining what the Foundation labels as abnormality. Essentially it's a collection of documents that present a list of ideas and concepts that we know to be natural to this reality, be that physics, the laws of gravitation, basic chemistry and the like, and uses that as a baseline to determine what new occurrences throughout the world are natural progressions of what we know and which need to be secured and contained by The Foundation.
Of course, due to the importance of such documents it is imperative that no one be allowed to edit it and thus only the O5 Council are permitted to know of it's existence, let alone confer with it. I positively adore this iteration as it opens and closes this brilliant logical quandary that I'd never even considered; in a world that evolves everyday how can you accurately determine what isn't meant to be there? I mean sure there's the obvious; when a blue alien starts shooting radiation out of it's eyes you can be sure its probably not a local, but what about the more subtle anomalies, like those that alter people's perception of what's real? By providing this SCP as a control through which to test all else, the author has provided an almost Socrateian solution that I just can't stop fawning over. It's genius. Simply sublime. (Bonus points for the extra document that I somehow remembered the password to access. I'm not 100% what I was supposed to learn from it, but I like the interactivity on the page. Super cool.)
Kalinin's Proposal for SCP-001 is- a lot. I don't just mean conceptually either, there is a lot of material to read through and not all of it is exactly pertinent, some of it is just stories. Never the less I did and this is what I got out of it; SCP-001 of this reality is weird. From what I can tell, SCP-001 appears to be some unknowable, yet intelligent, primordial entity that has some sort of vendetta against the inhabitants of Earth. This thing lacks a snappy name like 'The Scarlet King', but seems to be just as preeminent, with the power to alter our very reality as we know it should it so wish. For a while the Foundation managed to inhibit whatever powers SCP-001 might hold with the use of another SCP, but in late 2016 that no longer became tenable and all the world had to bear witness to what SCP-001 had in store.
To be brutally honest, I was very confused by much of what I read in this entry, and bear in mind that I've scanned through a great many SCP-001 suggestions by this point! I think the reason this all got to me so much was due to the vastly shifting tone that documented the fallout of this SCP-001, which was so distinct that it felt penned from vastly different authors. Of the many attached documents to this proposal, we learn both that SCP-001 has the ability to slightly alter other SCPs to be slightly more malignant (or slightly less so, there's no definitive pattern there) and that it has the desire to reshape all of humanity to it's divine subservience. (At least that's what I think the whole 'Planet of Hands' thing was about.) After going through everything, I'm afraid that I'm left without a clear picture of where the author was really going with this SCP and that seems like a big shame, as I feel they did have an interesting idea in there somewhere. That being said, the documents themselves are exceptionally well written and the last story (Casa de Jacinta), although almost completely out-of-sequence in my mind, is particularly evocative and strange. I won't say I particularly enjoyed this interpretation, but it wasn't bad either. Just a bit too vague for my tastes.
You know, I had a lot more SCP-001's planned for today but that last one literally drained my soul to read through. Not because it was bad, just so predominately depressing that I really don't feel like looking at another for the next 6 days at least. That being said, I did enjoy today's SCP-001 Proposals and was kind of struck by how many of them seemed to predominately feature the shadowy O5 Council. (Literally, all the stories today had them in chief positions.) Of course, I just provide a brief glance and my opinions on these proposals; there is so much more to each on them on the SCP website itself, (Especially Kalinin's Proposal. If you can decipher anymore about that proposal then I'd be grateful if you could decode it to me.) so I certainly recommend you look it up for yourself. As for me, I'm uncharacteristically busy so I have to wrap this up early, but next week should be interesting as we get to the bottom of the last of the SCP-001 proposals. (I hope, at least. If there's another 8 document long one like with Kalinin's Proposal, I may have to extend this series once more.)
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