SCP-173 Will Soon Be Free
February 2, 2022 5:35 AM Subscribe
On February 1st, the Twitter account for the SCP Foundation, made an announcement
SCP, aka "Secure, Contain, Protect", is a wiki-based collaborative fiction site hosting the stories of an agency the protects the world against dangerous anomalous threats. The stories unsurprisingly vary in quality, but one of the best is SCP-173, concerning a...thing (creature? statue?) that requires extreme caution in dealing with.
Unfortunately, the image that's been used to illustrate the story is a copyrighted photo of a piece by Japanese artist Izumi Kato, who has not been thrilled about the re-purposing of his work. The image's copyrighted status also makes it an anomaly on the SCP site, the entire content of which is otherwise licensed under Creative Commons . The artist has refrained from demanding that the image be taken down, but the administrators of the site have decided that keeping it up violates the spirit of the Creative Commons license, as well as the artist's rights.
Because this is happening during our "Doubles Jubilee", it might be worth looking at some of our previous discussions about SCP:
The earliest mention, as far as I can tell, includes a first comment that's a textbook "tl;dr" complaint of the type that would almost certainly get flagged to oblivion today.
Four years later, another post, which presumably escaped deletion due to an unofficial statue of limitations.
In 2017, we got a post concerning a new round of submissions to the SCP wiki, including a very odd space that looks like an Ikea store.
2018 gave as Containment, an animated YouTube series based on stories from the site.
Happy Jubilee, y'all
SCP, aka "Secure, Contain, Protect", is a wiki-based collaborative fiction site hosting the stories of an agency the protects the world against dangerous anomalous threats. The stories unsurprisingly vary in quality, but one of the best is SCP-173, concerning a...thing (creature? statue?) that requires extreme caution in dealing with.
Unfortunately, the image that's been used to illustrate the story is a copyrighted photo of a piece by Japanese artist Izumi Kato, who has not been thrilled about the re-purposing of his work. The image's copyrighted status also makes it an anomaly on the SCP site, the entire content of which is otherwise licensed under Creative Commons . The artist has refrained from demanding that the image be taken down, but the administrators of the site have decided that keeping it up violates the spirit of the Creative Commons license, as well as the artist's rights.
Because this is happening during our "Doubles Jubilee", it might be worth looking at some of our previous discussions about SCP:
The earliest mention, as far as I can tell, includes a first comment that's a textbook "tl;dr" complaint of the type that would almost certainly get flagged to oblivion today.
Four years later, another post, which presumably escaped deletion due to an unofficial statue of limitations.
In 2017, we got a post concerning a new round of submissions to the SCP wiki, including a very odd space that looks like an Ikea store.
2018 gave as Containment, an animated YouTube series based on stories from the site.
Happy Jubilee, y'all
Extra earliest (Wow, Metafilter is a way more positive place now).
posted by Mitheral at 5:56 AM on February 2, 2022 [4 favorites]
posted by Mitheral at 5:56 AM on February 2, 2022 [4 favorites]
One of the best books I read last year is There Is No Antimemetics Division. SCP contributer qntm took a bunch of his submissions and worked them into novel form.
posted by Nelson at 6:02 AM on February 2, 2022 [17 favorites]
posted by Nelson at 6:02 AM on February 2, 2022 [17 favorites]
I'm actually quite chuffed that the team from SCP is voluntarily removing the photo and that this isn't the culmination of some long cease-and-desist thing. Good on them!
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 6:02 AM on February 2, 2022 [15 favorites]
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 6:02 AM on February 2, 2022 [15 favorites]
Board meeting got very heated when someone suggested using a photo of SCP-096 instead.
posted by Drastic at 6:17 AM on February 2, 2022 [4 favorites]
posted by Drastic at 6:17 AM on February 2, 2022 [4 favorites]
This is long overdue, although I do not blame anyone for not doing it in the beginning. Nobody knew it was going to become the seed of a whole thing at the time, and in the early 2000s people were even more casual about the sources of photos than they are now.
Nelson: I'm glad you say so, because I have wondered if there was good compiled SCP writing.
I guess my favorite SCP is the Shy Guy. He's not the single scariest or most powerful, but he's himself, and he's got a simple request: don't look at him. That's all! Don't look.
posted by Countess Elena at 6:19 AM on February 2, 2022 [3 favorites]
Nelson: I'm glad you say so, because I have wondered if there was good compiled SCP writing.
I guess my favorite SCP is the Shy Guy. He's not the single scariest or most powerful, but he's himself, and he's got a simple request: don't look at him. That's all! Don't look.
posted by Countess Elena at 6:19 AM on February 2, 2022 [3 favorites]
Exploring the SCP Foundation: SCP-6001 - Avalon
This is one of the rare happy SCPs. An investigator is treated to a tour of a utopian reality where all the SCP anomalies coexist on a peaceful Earth. The tour is given by a talking cat named Primrose.
It's a great palette cleanser after all the doom and gloom ones.
posted by adept256 at 6:38 AM on February 2, 2022 [2 favorites]
This is one of the rare happy SCPs. An investigator is treated to a tour of a utopian reality where all the SCP anomalies coexist on a peaceful Earth. The tour is given by a talking cat named Primrose.
It's a great palette cleanser after all the doom and gloom ones.
posted by adept256 at 6:38 AM on February 2, 2022 [2 favorites]
real-fern, I quite like the stuff DJKaktus has written, especially the Ouroboros Cycle (his SCP-001 proposal). It's silly and ridiculous, but I like his particular interpretation of the O5 council.
Also, my favorite blogger, Bogleech (whom I learned about from a Metafilter post about his Pokemon reviews), has written a few SCPs. SCP-1904 is pretty heinous!
posted by TheKaijuCommuter at 6:39 AM on February 2, 2022 [1 favorite]
Also, my favorite blogger, Bogleech (whom I learned about from a Metafilter post about his Pokemon reviews), has written a few SCPs. SCP-1904 is pretty heinous!
posted by TheKaijuCommuter at 6:39 AM on February 2, 2022 [1 favorite]
There is also the SCP Archives podcast masterminded by John Grilz of Small Town Horror and Creepy. I gave up listening because, well, all three are very much creepypasta, which is not to my taste too much of the time, but, if it's to your taste, you might check out any or all of them.
posted by GenjiandProust at 7:34 AM on February 2, 2022
posted by GenjiandProust at 7:34 AM on February 2, 2022
adept256: thanks for linking the exploring series channel. I really like the content there and I was going to link but I forgot.
posted by real-fern at 7:46 AM on February 2, 2022
posted by real-fern at 7:46 AM on February 2, 2022
SCP-173 is a chunk of the game "SCP - Containment Breach", including the image. I wonder if there will be changes made.
posted by hanov3r at 7:58 AM on February 2, 2022
posted by hanov3r at 7:58 AM on February 2, 2022
SCP-2030 is my favorite. Really freaks me out. The “still” associated with the entry especially freaks me out for some reason.
posted by Don.Kinsayder at 8:18 AM on February 2, 2022
posted by Don.Kinsayder at 8:18 AM on February 2, 2022
SCP-173 was the original SCP. It is pretty crazy how much has sprung from a throwaway 4chan post made shortly after Doctor Who introduced the Weeping Angels.
posted by interogative mood at 9:04 AM on February 2, 2022 [6 favorites]
posted by interogative mood at 9:04 AM on February 2, 2022 [6 favorites]
SCP-871: "A collection of 237 cakes... No deleterious effects have been observed to result from the consumption of SCP-871, even in cases where several instances have been consumed, excepting those expectable from eating large amounts of cake." The Foundation is forcing people to eat these cakes at gunpoint. The fate of the world is at stake.
posted by justsomebodythatyouusedtoknow at 10:22 AM on February 2, 2022
posted by justsomebodythatyouusedtoknow at 10:22 AM on February 2, 2022
People are so creative when they’re working within a framework like this. Something about the prescribed style and limits results in amazing stories. I wonder how much of this would have been written in any form without the central idea/theme to work from.
posted by Vociva at 10:49 AM on February 2, 2022
posted by Vociva at 10:49 AM on February 2, 2022
I really love all of the Mekhane mythos stuff.
posted by Meatbomb at 12:13 PM on February 2, 2022 [1 favorite]
posted by Meatbomb at 12:13 PM on February 2, 2022 [1 favorite]
Like libraries have L-Space, there's Billy-Space. I've used SCP-3008 to travel between cities within my country and once, when there were no cheap flights, a jaunt to Portugal. I thought it was common knowledge.
posted by k3ninho at 12:18 PM on February 2, 2022 [1 favorite]
posted by k3ninho at 12:18 PM on February 2, 2022 [1 favorite]
Am I reading too much into this to assume that the unspoken reason for pulling SCP-173 is to prevent the NFT goons from trying to claim ownership of Kato's work?
posted by JoeZydeco at 12:24 PM on February 2, 2022 [1 favorite]
posted by JoeZydeco at 12:24 PM on February 2, 2022 [1 favorite]
Oh man, I've found at least three different SCP-related NFTs out there. I mean, of course there is. Creative Commons has a blog post on NFTs and CC BY-SA licenses saying something like it's complicated but it might be OK to make NFTs of CC works.
posted by Nelson at 1:06 PM on February 2, 2022 [1 favorite]
posted by Nelson at 1:06 PM on February 2, 2022 [1 favorite]
Some of my fav SCPs are the ones handled by the antimemetics division.
Sadly I never seemed to get any comments on my antimemetics MeFi posts.
posted by solarion at 3:00 PM on February 2, 2022 [8 favorites]
Sadly I never seemed to get any comments on my antimemetics MeFi posts.
posted by solarion at 3:00 PM on February 2, 2022 [8 favorites]
Am I reading too much into this to assume that the unspoken reason for pulling SCP-173 is to prevent the NFT goons from trying to claim ownership of Kato's work?
Or this is a cover up in the wake of the SCP Foundation's discovery that daily an increasing number of people die after blinking at just the image of SCP-173.
posted by otherchaz at 4:22 PM on February 2, 2022 [1 favorite]
Or this is a cover up in the wake of the SCP Foundation's discovery that daily an increasing number of people die after blinking at just the image of SCP-173.
posted by otherchaz at 4:22 PM on February 2, 2022 [1 favorite]
Man, I posted one of these videos awhile ago but was completely clueless about the whole SCP universe beyond it. And what an intricate beyond it is. Not to mention creepypasta, which is so great a concept and a word. All this was new to me.YouTube threw it at me, which I now wonder whether it was from coming here over the years. Which is the creepiest thing about the whole deal -- am I being tracked and shown interesting offbeat things possibly picked for me the unique individual. Or is it that there are no such things as unique individuals and we are of a set, a certain demographic slice, formation and class, boho bobo or bozo, picked and tricked out by the invisible hand of the deus ex algorithm. I just don't know how paranoid to be about it.
posted by y2karl at 3:08 PM on February 3, 2022 [1 favorite]
posted by y2karl at 3:08 PM on February 3, 2022 [1 favorite]
SCP-1281 is one of my favorites, even though (or possibly because?) it's against type for most SCPs.
posted by DevilsAdvocate at 4:01 PM on February 3, 2022 [1 favorite]
posted by DevilsAdvocate at 4:01 PM on February 3, 2022 [1 favorite]
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I'm a pretty big fan of TheVolgun who reads SCP articles... I think his best one is scp-2521 (original article) which is narrated here with a twist.
What are some of your favorite SCPs?
posted by real-fern at 5:48 AM on February 2, 2022 [5 favorites]