SCP Foundation

Overview of series

In-universe, the SCP Foundation is a secret organization entrusted by global governments to contain and study anomalous individuals, entities, locations, objects, and phenomena that defy natural law (or SCPs, as each is referred to by their Special Containment Procedures file number). SCP objects, if left uncontained, pose a threat to humans — or, at the very least, to humanity's sense of reality and normalcy.

The existence of SCPs is kept secret by the SCP Foundation to prevent mass panic and related chaos, and to allow human civilization to function normally. When an SCP is discovered, the SCP Foundation deploys agents to either collect and transport the SCP to a Foundation facility, or to contain it at its location of discovery if transport is not possible. Once SCPs are contained, they are studied by Foundation scientists. Prison inmates acquired by the Foundation (referred to as D-class) are used to interact with certain SCPs due to the danger posed by the SCPs and the expendability of the D-class.

The SCP Foundation maintains documentation of the special containment procedures for all of the SCPs in its custody. These documents describe the SCPs and include instructions for keeping them safely contained. As of 2017, the SCP Foundation maintains containment procedures for over two thousand SCPs; new procedures are frequently added.

Examples of contained SCPs

Writing style

The majority of the works of fiction on the SCP Foundation website consist of individual pieces, each of which purports to be the "special containment procedures" documentation of a particular SCP object. In special containment procedures, the SCP is assigned a number. The SCPs are also sorted into classes, with the majority being classed as: "Safe", for objects understood well enough that they can be contained easily and will not manifest abilities without deliberate activation, "Euclid" for objects that are unpredictable or not well-understood but are not a high-level threat, "Keter" for objects that require extensive containment procedures and which pose a large-scale threat to human life, "Thaumiel" for objects that are used to assist containment of other objects, and "Neutralized" for objects that for whatever reason no longer display any anomalous activity or had its anomalous properties removed. The documentation then gives an overview of the procedures needed to safely contain the SCP, followed by a description of the SCP. Containment procedures may also contain images, the history of the entities, and addenda showing the results of tests on the SCPs. The reports are written in a pseudo-scientific tone and often "redact" information.

The SCP Foundation contains several hundred short stories referred to as "Foundation Tales". The stories often focus on members of the fictional organization interacting with various SCPs. Gregory Burkhart, writing for Blumhouse Productions, noted that some of the Foundation Tales had a dark and bleak tone, while others were "surprisingly light-hearted".

There is no central canon. Rather, each procedure or report forms its own continuity. The genre has been described as science fiction, urban fantasy and horror. The content and the stories on the website are released under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 license.

Community

The SCP Foundation series originated in the "paranormal" /x/ forum of 4chan, where the first special containment procedure, SCP-173, was posted as a creepypasta thread during 2007. Many other special containment procedures were followed shortly after, inspired by SCP-173. In 2008, the SCP Foundation series was transferred to its current Wikidot website.

Wikidot users are required to submit an application before they are allowed to contribute content. Writers from the Daily Dot and Bustle have noted that the website maintains strict quality control standards, and that sub-par content tends to be quickly deleted. Internal forums are used by members of the website to evaluate and provide constructive criticism on posted stories.

The Wikidot website routinely holds creative writing contests. For example, in November 2014, the SCP Foundation held a "Dystopia Contest" in which its members were encouraged to submit writings about the Foundation set in a bleak or degraded world.

The SCP Foundation maintains a forum on Reddit and a role-playing community. Notable contributors to the SCP Foundation include screenwriter Max Landis.

Reception

The SCP Foundation has received largely positive reviews. Michelle Starr of CNET praised the creepy nature of the series. Gavia Baker-Whitelaw, writing for the Daily Dot, praised the originality of the SCP Foundation and described it as the "most uniquely compelling horror writing on the Internet". She noted that special containment procedures rarely contained gratuitous gore. Rather, the horror of the series was often established through the reports' "pragmatic" and "deadpan" style, as well as through the inclusion of detail. Lisay Suhay, writing for the Christian Science Monitor, also praised the SCP Foundation's "tongue-in-cheek style".

Alex Eichler, writing for io9, noted that the series had varying levels of quality and that some of the reports were dull or repetitive. However, he praised the SCP Foundation for not becoming overly dark, and for containing more light-hearted reports. Additionally, he praised the wide variety of concepts covered in the report, and noted that the SCP Foundation contained writings that would appeal to all readers.

Winston Cook-Wilson, writing for Inverse, compared the SCP Foundation to the writings of H. P. Lovecraft. Like Lovecraft, SCP Foundation case files generally lack action sequences and are written in a pseudo-academic tone. Cook-Wilson argued that both Lovecraft’s works and those of the SCP Foundation were strengthened by the tensions between their scientific tone and the horrific nature of the stories being told.

Spin-off works

The SCP Foundation has inspired multiple independent video games. One of these games is SCP – Containment Breach. In the game, the protagonist is a member of D-class personnel who attempts to escape the facility he is stationed at during a containment breach. During the escape attempt, the protagonist is forced to avoid numerous SCPs, including SCP-173, a concrete statue that moves towards and attacks the player when not observed. Other SCP Foundation video games include SCP-087 and SCP-087-B, both based on SCP-087, with the latter being loosely inspired by it.

In addition to video games, a stage play entitled "Welcome to the Ethics Committee" was performed in Dublin during 2014. The play focused on the SCP Foundation's Ethics Committee and its task of limiting unethical tactics utilized by the SCP Foundation to contain the paranormal. A live-action web-series also entered production in 2013 which was based on the SCP Foundation.

Other spin-offs include The Wanderer's Library, a similar writing project focusing on one of the groups of interest, the Serpent's Hand.