SCP Pet Peeves and How We Can Be Different.

Summary:

Essentially just a rant on issues I have with the SCP mythos, with some suggestions for what we could do differently.

SCP Pet Peeves and How We Can Be Different.

Gearhart 19 Mar 2019 17:48

Alright, so I joined the SCP Foundation a few months ago, and like I always do whenever I join a new fandom, became fixated with it, reading all the background info, trying to catalog things by Site, etc. However, in my binging of lore, I discovered several plot holes, cliches, and other pet peeves in their lore. Some of these were minor things that only affecting an article or two, while others were major things that affected the entire site. These, coupled with the stifling environment I found by looking at the forums for what not to do in articles and a thread flat-out calling for harsher criticism, ultimately led to me abandoning SCP and heading over to this site.

When I joined this site, I was pleased with most, if not all, of the changes made (putting "research" in the name, in the first letter even, avoids one of the biggest issues I have with SCP lore), however, I also saw some of the same plot holes being implemented in RPC. With this being a relatively new community that is still developing, I thought this would be an excellent opportunity for me to share my pet peeves. However, I do not believe in showing problems without suggesting solutions, so in addition to my pet peeves, I will also be suggesting things we could do instead to both avoid the problems and further differentiate ourselves from the SCP Foundation.

Ok, now that all that backstory is out of the way, let's move on to the actual content:

+ Pet Peeve #1: The Ultimate Authority

The Problem: When I was with SCP, I found that the least believable thing on the site wasn't any of the anomalies contained, but rather the Foundation itself. Specifically, the idea that they were able to get every major country to not only agree to let them operate in their country, but also agree to give them diplomatic immunity[footnote] "Operating clandestine and worldwide, the Foundation operates beyond jurisdiction, empowered and entrusted by every major national government with the task of containing anomalous objects, entities, and phenomena." [/footnote]. I mean, getting all these different countries with their own beliefs and ideologies to unanimously agree on anything is already stretching suspension of disbelief, but having them all be cool with letting some secret organization go around locking up stuff, including their own citizens, without having to adhere to any of the local laws, is a real deal-breaker for me.

What We Can Do Instead: We could make it so that the RPC Authority operates in coordination with the local government. While this might initially seem restrictive, having the Authority butting heads with the local government opens up all sorts of narrative possibilities by adding an additional source of conflict.

+ Pet Peeve #2: "I hid this from you to protect you"

The Problem: The Foundation maintains strict secrecy for the same bullshit reasonings of the MIB, most portrayals of the Illuminati, and all those parents who don't tell their kids vital information until at least halfway through the movie. The logical fallacy is best illustrated with this analogy:

A father wants to protect his daughter from predators. He knows that they tend to target people going through dark alleys. So rather than telling his daughter not to go through dark alleys, he instead follows his daughter around on her trips through the city, suggesting that they go a different way whenever she tries to go through a dark alley. One day, the father isn't able to go with his daughter on her trip through the city. Because he wasn't there to stop her, she goes through a dark ally and gets ambushed by predators.

Do you see the problem here? If the father had simply warned his daughter about the dangers of going through dark alleys, she most likely would have avoided them on her own instead of needing her father to constantly follow her around and steer her away from them. The same thing applies to the RPC. By not telling the population about these anomalies we're trying to protect them from, we blind them to the danger. As a result, if even one of our anomalies makes its way to a population center, it will wreak major havoc on them.

Additionally, the idea that a globe-spanning organization with thousands of members is even remotely capable of keeping such a strict level of secrecy is kind of ridiculous. All it takes is one worker to spill the beans, and with thousands of workers spread around the globe, the probability of an information leak is too high for anyone to realistically prevent.

What We Can Do Instead: There are two different ways we could avoid this fallacy. The first and simplest method would be to not have the Authority try to keep its existence a secret. It would still classify information on operations and contained anomalies, but it wouldn't need to keep the existence of anomalies from the public.

The second method would be to give the RPC Authority an ulterior motive for secrecy. Maybe they don't want to be held accountable for casualties that result in a breach of containment. Maybe they don't want to deal with the scrutiny of humanitarian organizations. Maybe they don't really want to protect the population at all, but are trying to use the anomalies to serve their own nefarious purposes. Cute stuff like that.

+ Pet Peeve #3: "You Can't Handle the Truth"

The Problem: This is kind of an extension of Pet Peeve #2, but I find that their motivation for keeping things a secret is equally bullshit. The idea that we are so fragile that the mere knowledge of the existence of things that go against our current sense of "normalcy" is enough to send us into a mass panic is frankly quite insulting. I find it humorous that our about page has a quote from MIB where Agent N follows up a statement of humanities fragility with 2 examples of new information upturning commonly held beliefs. Spoiler alert: we didn't "descend into chaos" when we discovered the Earth wasn't the center of the universe. There was aggressive opposition by the Catholic Church, but those guys were in aggressive opposition with a lot of things. Likewise, when Christopher Columbus proved that the Earth was actually round, we didn't respond with mass panic. Instead, we rapidly adapted to this new information, almost immediately attempting to use this knowledge to find a more direct trading route between the west and the east.

Additionally, the idea of "protecting normalcy" creates many issues, largely due to the fact that "normalcy" is relative. Imagine the RPC locked up an anomalous mineral that attracts iron, can attract or repel other instances of itself, and can even spread its effect onto iron. This seems like a textbook anomaly until you realize that I just described magnets. Practically every discovery or invention ever made would have been seen as strange or even alien when they were first discovered. Look back at the example of the Catholic Church opposing the idea of the Earth revolving around the sun. They tried to suppress Galeo's discovery because it went against their teachings[footnote] I'd like to clarify that these were the teachings of the Catholic Church, and not actually based off of any scripture [/footnote]. Similarly, Gregor Mendel's discoveries on heredity were suppressed because they conflicted with the current theory of evolution, slowing down scientific advancement by 72 years. Imagine if there was an entire organization that was soley devoted to suppressing new discoveries, and the havoc it would wreak on scientific progress.

What We Can Do Instead: Give the RPC Authority a different motivation. One alternate motivation we could give them is preventing people from utilizing forces they don't properly understand. Think of Jurassic Park; Hammond tried to create a zoo/theme park for dinosaurs that they brought back to life, but in their excitement of discovering a way to clone dinosaurs, they failed to make sure they were able to successfully contain and control the populations before they started mass producing them, resulting in them accidentally using DNA sequences that allowed the dinosaurs to change sexes. And because they didn't account for the possibility of population control failure, the systems they had in place to account for the numbers of living dinosaurs didn't count past the number of dinosaurs that they produced, resulting in large number of dinosaurs that they weren't aware of, allowing for dinosaurs to escape containment without the parks knowledge, even before the massive containment breach[footer] This is mostly explained in the book; the movie adaption briefly mentions that the dinosaurs were able to reproduce despite their supposed population control systems, but it was never explored further [/footnote]. The RPC Authority could exist to prevent similar incidents from happening; making sure they have an adequate understanding of the anomalies (not necessarily how they work, but enough to safely utilize and/or replicate it) before releasing information to the public.

Again, these are just my own personal pet peeves, feel free to disagree with them.

Re: SCP Pet Peeves and How We Can Be Different.

Russell Shipp 04 Apr 2019 08:03

Kay…. This kinda goes at the heart of "cannon is what you make of it" and I think that is an idea that should be kept. A good item is a good item, A good tale is a good tale, A good series is a good series, and if a good deviation is made then let it exist in its own right.

The main list is one thing. It is the thing we can base all other things off of. However, if we want to do a broken masquerade world OR a complete failure breach world or whatever… as a tale using things from the main list that is another idea entirely and could be a great read.

The world is a scary place.

Restrict, Control, Protect.

We dont need to kill these things , in fact, trying to kill them might do more harm than good but, Restrict their influence, Control their effects, protect the populist from their anomaly.

And leave our ego at the door. Take the AA approach. Dont endorse or support shit. Take no stance. Just focus on what it is we are here to do. And that is interesting stories. I dont give a fuck if your gay, strait, non binary, alicorn pansexual, or magical toaster. As a group we should only focus on our one main goal of creative writing. If this site ever pulls some identity politics like papa did it will fucking end us. and ill reee against it with my last breath. Let us just enjoy a good read.

Last edited on 04 Apr 2019 08:05 by Russell Shipp Show more

DrPierson 21 May 2019 23:07

Hi Gearhart! Welcome to the Authority (late welcoming ik) and I just wanna respond somethings you've suggested. Before I begin, I just wanna say that I will only be covering Pet Peeve #1 since it's the only thing I can talk about. So without further ado, let's go:

What We Can Do Instead: We could make it so that the RPC Authority operates in coordination with the local government. While this might initially seem restrictive, having the Authority butting heads with the local government opens up all sorts of narrative possibilities by adding an additional source of conflict.

Okay let me explain about the whole jurisdiction and government cooperation part:

There is an international organization known as the United Nations Anomalous Activities Committee, or UNAAC. Now, this isn't the Global Occult Coalition. No. This is a United Nations agency that is responsible for enforcing and regulating anomalies in the international community as established under the International Anomalous Accords (IAA). Also, the IAA was signed by every UN member, since the UN's establishment in 1945, who recognized that anomalies should be regulated and prevented from being used for beneficial purposes.

For more information in re. to UNAAC lore, check here.

Some of these IAA regulatory codes include:

• Unauthorized use of anomalous objects in warfare.

• The use of anomalous objects for exploitation and/or would benefit a member state.

• Unauthorized transaction of anomalous objects to member states, groups of interests, and/or persons of interests.

And many more.

You also have to keep in mind is that every member state who signed the IAA have also established their own anomalous agencies (i.e. Military Intelligence Section 13 - United Kingdom; BündesOkkultAbteilung - Germany, People's Committee for the Acquisition of Anomalous Objects - China). These government agencies follow [secret] legislative acts and current established international regulations in regards to the anomalous. The RPC Authority is a member of the UNAAC, and acts as a consultant organization and a member state.

With these government agencies, the Authority doesn't have to worry about sending in a team to this location without any jurisdiction dispute. These agencies report their anomalous findings in weekly UNAAC sessions.

Feel free to ask me a question!

— Dr. Pierson.

---

"Curiosity Always Defines Reasoning"

Last edited on 21 May 2019 23:09 by DrPierson Show more

Re: SCP Pet Peeves and How We Can Be Different.

PaladinPizza 28 May 2019 19:24

Personally, my main issue with SCP is that there seem to be a lot of self inserts and anomalous characters that go against the whole point. For example, certain characters are anomalous but are not contained and are allowed to roam freely. I feel that the Authority should be a bit more strict and not employ talking dogs or body swappers.

I don't dislike the SCP Foundation, I'm still a fan, but I just have my gripes.