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Comment by outsidetheparty | Hacker News Reader

SCP Wiki has really matured over the years; it started out as creepypasta and murder monsters -- many of them well-written, to be sure, and an interesting setting -- but still just basically straightforward horror stories.

In recent years some of the writers there have really upped their game, they're tackling much more nuanced and complicated issues than "SCARY THING WILL DESTROY WORLD". I'm particularly fond of http://www.scpwiki.com/scp-5031, for example, which directly addresses those aspects of the early site in a very humorous way.

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This is a good long form SCP read: http://www.scpwiki.com/antimemetics-division-hub

I really loved reading through this one. Such a great idea for a story.

If you liked this story line, check out the author's other work on http://qntm.org.

thanks for ruining my sleep schedule

Amazing story.

At least one of the authors of that section ("qntm") has Kindle and print versions of those and other stories on Amazon (search "There Is No Antimemetics Division") if you want to support them...

Bravo. 5031 was a brilliant read. (“Salt”, OMG.)

First encountered SCP by chance, absolutely baffling - so much fictional detail. Favorite is the self-filling whiskey tumbler.

My personal favourites outside those already mentioned are SCP-5000 (rather difficult to understand without a decent bit of knowledge of the other SCP-X000's), When Day Breaks, and End of Death.

http://www.scpwiki.com/scp-5000 http://www.scpwiki.com/shaggydredlocks-proposal http://www.scpwiki.com/end-of-death-hub

Also for good fun Three Portlands is enjoyable.

http://www.scpwiki.com/three-portlands-hub

In my eyes, this maturation has come at the expense of the creativity of SCP. Everything feels so sterile now. You have angels, demons, racist monsters that communicate through condensation on windows... SCP, and similar works of fiction, thrive off letting the _reader's_ imagination run wild. In practice, the more you write, the more is known about an SCP, the less interesting it becomes.

The writers of Control knew this. The "Pinstripe World" dead letter[1] is better than any recent SCP I've read, and it's literally just a single sentence repeated ad nauseam. The SCP writers might be better now, but I find their writing much less interesting.

[1] https://control.fandom.com/wiki/Correspondence:_Pinstripe_Wo...

Personally I tend to find the "Tales" less interesting -- the creative constraints imposed by writing everything in terms of containment procedures are where much of the fun comes from in my opinion -- but in general I can't say I agree that over-explaining is a new problem. Finding the right balance of how much to explain vs how much to leave to the reader's imagination is pretty much the whole deal in this type of writing (or horror writing in general!) and not everyone hits the mark, that's been the case all along I think.

Aww, a genuinely heartwarming scp. I love it!

Very cute story, although I was hoping by the end of the story that SCP-5031 would be fully rehabilitated and inducted into SCP as an operative or something. It'd be cruel to continue to imprison this sentient being who has learned not to kill. Also, why Keter class? It doesn't seem to have any magical ability to escape captivity.

The author explains the Keter classification in the discussion: "It's a slightly meta nod to the old days (and the coldposts that ape them) where every spooky murder monster had to be Keter. I imagine there was a similar tendency in-universe as well."

having Gears shoot Kondraki was the smartest move that O-5 ever made.

I love this :)

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