Secure. Contain. Protect. Or--special containment procedures. You see, it depends which way
you look at it, really--or more importantly--which direction your head-canon is pointed, so you
can then somehow manage to comprehend the mind-boggling anomalies of the SCP Foundation.
And you might be thinking--what the hell are you talking about, Jack? What the hell is
a head canon? And why would anyone ever want to wear such a strange mixture of headwear
and artillery? Well--as many of you may already know, and the rest of you will soon find out--there’s
a lot to wrap your head around when it comes to the inner workings of the SCP Foundation.
So, for our next stop on the Lore Explored--let’s see if we can shed some light on the matter.
Yeah. We’re probably gonna need backup.
Hello horror fans, what’s going on--and once again, welcome back to the scariest channel
on YouTube, Top 5 Scary Videos--as per usual, I’ll be your horror host Jack Finch--as
today, for our second part of this series--we explore the lore, behind the SCP Foundation.
Roll the clip.
For the curious amongst you, that clip was from a fan made short movie--duefully named
SCP: Dollhouse, written and created by Evan Royalty--which you should certainly check
out, because for an independent piece of cinema, it’s incredibly well made--but most importantly,
it shows an understanding of the subject matter--made by a fan *for* fans of the SCP Foundation.
As you will soon realise--that’s an incredibly important modicum as we step into this world.
We’ll leave a link down below so that you can wrap your ocular lenses around it for
yourself. AND--that also leads us to our first and most important point--what the hell is
this all about, anyway? You keep saying words Jack, but all I’m hearing is S. C. P.
Now, whilst I understand that we’ll be delving deep into this particular organisation, I
also understand that we’ll have to bring everyone else up to spend. So, for those of
you that don’t know--let’s have a quick history lesson.
Way back when, in 2007, during the simpler days of the internet--when Newgrounds was
still in full swing and World of Warcraft wasn’t quite a pandemic just yet--something
was happening over on the paranormal /x/ boards of 4chan. It was a place known for its relatively
imaginative taste in horror--more science fiction than the supernatural. A place where
sci-fi was obtusely blended with more off-the-wall interpretations of horror, shall we say, and
a place where Creepypasta’s were quickly becoming a dime a dozen. Treedog, Ted the
Caver, Polybius--you see, the more gloomy corners of the internet had been saturated
for quite some time with the same old tried and tested formulas of longform, chainmail
horror. People wanted something new. And whether a particular episode of David Tennant’s
Doctor Who had something to do with it--we’ll never know.
But then--this arrived. A post simply titled SCP-173. Seemingly, a meta-document of an
organisation whose sole purpose was to contain this strange entity, titled 173--a creature
made from concrete and rebar. It appeared to be some sort of statue of unknown origin,
that unless eye contact was maintained with it at all times--it would snap your neck.
The document was short enough to pique many peoples interest--but also, just long enough
to allow for the gears of imagination to begin turning. What was this place? Who was behind
this organisation, that seemingly had *at least* 172 other creatures like this under
their containment. Well, as far as these special containment procedures were concerned--this
was of course, the beginning of the largest collaborative writing project--ever. And really,
there has been nothing like this so far in our cultural history. Which in many ways,
is exactly why it’s so difficult to fully comprehend. There are so many moving parts
to this hulking behemoth of literature, all being worked on independently--and then collaboratively,
in huge swathes of upvotes and downvotes--where the community decides what is good and what
is bad.
It is a self regulating system--where taste for literature is decided by the masses. In
many ways, this is as if a hive mind had been tasked with writing the most complete anomalous
novel known to mankind. And that’s exactly what we’ve got. The SCP Foundation, now,
in its most complete form--is an archived wiki that has compiled over 4999 of these
entries--and although in a relatively long hiatus, it is still being worked on. Now,
whilst there are nearly 5000 of these separate entities, items and phenomena clearly detailed
and document--there are also tens of thousands of supporting documents. Each of them slightly
augmenting any given SCP entry.
And if this sounds like the kind of case work that would rival even the FBI. That’s because--that
was exactly the intention. How do you *create* an organisation whose sole purpose it is,
is to scour our planet--hell, even other dimensions--to round up all of the things that go bump in
the night--whilst still managing to diligently do the paperwork? You do exactly that. You
don’t just create it, you live it. You *do* the paperwork. You compile hundreds of thousands
of separate documents to comprise your existence out of thin air. And that is exactly the framing
device for we--as an audience--to then attempt to understand it.
Imagine if you took an alien--who had no concept of our planet, our laws, our shared culture--anything.
And then you sat them down and tried to explain what the FBI was? Yeah, well instead of that--imagine
saying nothing, throwing them into a dark room--and just giving them a box of documents.
Archived records for them to work their way through. This is where we’re at.
And now that we’ve covered the --initial framing device-- we can now talk about the
lore behind the organisation itself, or more importantly, the people behind it--the characters.
Because you may be asking yourself, alright--alright, I’m hooked--but who the hell would, or even
*could*--run this kind of show? Who’s in charge here? Who’s calling the shots when
it means keeping 5000 cosmic horrors under lock and key? Well, this is where things get
interesting--and we can talk about hierarchy--if you could even call it that. For the sake
of parity, though. Let’s start at the bottom.
As Orwell famously said--the power lies in the proletariat--but in this case, the proletariat
are instead--erm, vile, murderous criminals on death row who are either given the chance
to “work” for the SCP Foundation--or, well, die. It’s like that Eddie Izzard sketch.
Cake--or death. Except in this case, the cake is a lie--and how is *that* for a three-way
crossover of a reference for you. The SCP Foundation. Eddie Izzard. And Portal. Phew.
This is meta-fiction for a reason, am I right?
Anyway, the point is--in the SCP Foundation, the D-Class Personnel do all of the heavy
lifting. Why? Because, well--two reasons. One--in the eyes of the Foundation, they’re
entirely disposable--and being the janitor in a massive, complex web of underground facilities
is quite the occupational hazard. And two--part of the Foundation’s directive isn’t just
to keep these anomalous entities under constant lock and key--but to understand them, too.
And for every experiment--you need lab mice. Yeah--you can see where I’m going with this,
right?
The thing is though--take everything I’ve said with a pinch of salt. Because do you
know that head-canon I was talking about earlier--well the entire point of the SCP Foundation is
that there are paradoxes upon contradictions--and yet the nature of this sprawling mass of fiction
is with how *you* interpret it. All D-Class Personnel might not be death-row inmates.
In some cases--they might be kidnapped individuals or political prisoners, and the Foundation
are running a terrifying human trafficking racket. Or--as is the case with SCP-2000,
they may just be a series of cloned humans from an off-site facility, being put to use
in a more mundane yet equally brutal manner. Either way--these guys do the heavy lifting,
and if there’s an endless darkened stairway to plummet--as is the case with SCP-087--the
Foundation are more than willing to send a few D-Class downstairs to see what all the
fuss is about.
Above them--in a more mundane and also kind of grey area--are the Foundation’s research
staff. And yes, there are characters in the Foundation who work 9 to 5, Monday to Friday--checking
boxes and conducting experiments. But that's not all there is to it. Now, this one is really
going to be difficult to touch on because--well, put it this way. If we jump out of canon for
a moment--the core group of people who started the SCP Foundation back in 2007 and 2008--well,
whilst they are researchers in both the literal and meta sense--they also have in-world characters
that kind of fit into this role--but also, completely blow the doors of it.
You see, whilst they were administrators in the literal sense, running the SCP wiki from
a technical perspective--in the canon of the Foundation, they also had their fictional
counterparts. Doctors. Research Staff. Dr. Bright. Dr. Mann. Dr. Clef. Dr. Kondraki--and
many, many more--all written and woven into the many SCP entries and their supporting
documents. Although they kind of *are*--to call them just research staff would be completely
sidestepping their function entirely. And because of that--we’ll probably just jump
up to the next rung on the ladder.
Because although these are very valid indicators as to who calls the shots in this strange,
fictional world--the real big players, of course, are a group of individuals at the
top of the pile--referred to as the 05 Council. And no, there are not five of them--there
are in fact 13--and the five in their name refers to their level of security clearance.
One, Two, Three, Four, Five, there is none higher--and if you read a particular entry
titled 05 Command Only--then, well, you know it’s going to be a good one. Thirteen Individuals.
All of them arbiters of such grand secrets and anomalous mysteries that it’s any wonder
that these guys ever get the time to make any form of clerical decision. You see, in
the classic manner--even their identity is ambiguous. The vast majority of the 13 council
members are merely guesses, and many of the Foundation’s records are speculative dossiers
as to their true identity.
Take 05-1 for example--often reported to be the most powerful Council member, if there
even *is* such a thing. There are several possibilities as to their identity. The first,
a document dubbed--The Founder--describing a European man, seemingly of over 150 years
of age--who is alleged to be the founding administrator of the Foundation--after the
witness of SCP-001 The Factory--but hey, that’s a story for a different video.
Contrary to that--05-1 could also be a woman named Eve--an individual of Ancient Sumerian
origin, who claims to be Adam’s Third Wife--and is anywhere between 10’000 and 15’000
years old. And yeah, that’s a head scratcher. You see, the truth of the matter is--we can
only partially cover the massive mechanics that surround these individuals, and yeah--more
than likely, we’re going to have to do more than just one party of this Lore Explored
Series--perhaps solely focusing on who the hell the 05 Council could possibly be--if
that’s even possible to discern, because I’m not entirely sure if it is.
You see--the point is, when we talk about head-canon, this is exactly what we mean.
If this entire video seems loose and ambiguous and not entirely sensicle. That’s because
that is the Foundation’s intention. It’s very nature lures the curious mind, to keep
digging--scouring through records--finding small compendiums of information and compiling
them into larger, more fully formed areas of imagination. The SCP Foundation challenges
us to just keep digging--and to make our own connections between the true extent of this
piece of literature. Because that’s exactly what it is. The SCP Foundation is a novel,
spanning thousands upon thousands of pages--a word count that would make a million Shakespeare’s
pale in anomalous embarrassment. It is a work of art, contributed to continuously by countless
individuals. It is the democratisation of literature--and we’re witnessing it, right
now, ever since that small snippet of a post emerged on 4Chan back in 2007.
And--that’s a pretty exciting thing.
Well, there we have it horror fans--and now, I’m pretty sure it goes without saying--but
of course, this is just a fragment of a tip of the iceberg when it comes to even attempting
to glean any kind of specificity here. And yes, obviously--we will attempt to dive down
some much more specialized rabbit holes in our next adventure--but hey, hopefully this
gives you an idea as to the extent of things. Well, in that case--what do you guys think?
Do you want to see more of the Lore Explored in the SCP Foundation? Let us know your thoughts
down in the comment section below.
Before we depart from today's video, let’s first take a quick look at some of your most
creative comments from our first Lore Explored -- Vampires In Literature.
First up--Timothy Dull says--
Direct quote from my wife: I like their videos, but that one was COOL. So there you go, Jacky
Boy--keep on going with this theme. From me, maybe something more obscure like the Wendigo?
-- Well! That is the only praise that I need, thank you very much indeed. Yeah, I’m hoping
we can keep this line of Lore Adventuring going. And yes, I’ve seen a boatload of
people calling for the Wendigo--so yeah, it’s on the list!
And finally--St-Dan says--
Awesome! That’s it. Wish more words existed for this description but no--just awesome.
-- Well, Dan, you know what? Awesome’s good enough for me.
Unfortunately, that’s all we’ve got time for in today's video--cheers for sticking
around all the way until the end. If you were a fan of this video, or just Top 5 Scary Videos
in general, then please--be a dear and hit that thumbs up button, as well as that subscribe
bell, and I’ll be seeing you in the next one. As per usual, I’ll be your horror host
Jack Finch--you’ve been watching Top 5 Scary Videos--and until next time, you take it easy.