05-03-2025, 12:49 AM
Ah, the SCP Foundation. A collaborative horror writing project born on the web's most notorious imageboard, forged from creepypasta and American militarism, chiseled into a vast network of thousands of articles and stories. If you actually don't know what it is, congratulations on being one of the lucky ones to learn about it today! I'd recommend poking around on the website I linked up there, especially their about page and FAQ. I first found out about it myself in 2012, when an obscure little YouTuber going by the strange name of Markiplier played SCP Containment Breach (a very popular fangame) for his channel. This game was one of the first major waves of popularity for SCP and was probably the thing to get the most people into it up until it started going nuclear on Roblox.
Once I got into it, I was hooked. It hit the perfect notes of horror and strange sci-fi organization for me, especially since I was pretty squeamish about horror and I liked the Containment more than the actual Scary most of the time. In high school, I did not have a lot of friends, so I spent most of my free time in the school library reading SCPs on the computers there. I singlehandedly got TVTropes, the SCP Foundation, and several fanfiction websites blocked on the school's internet filter! It took them a while to catch on, though, and in that time I immersed myself in the world of SCP.
Recently, I learned an artist I liked for completely unrelated reasons had written several fantastic modern SCPs, and it brought me right back to my teenagerhood of reading stupid scary stories in the library...so I decided to use that interest re-ignition to go back and read as many as I could, over a decade since I first tried. I'll be doing this until I either get bored, or get so fed up with terrible stories that I don't want to do this anymore.
I should note, the way I'm going to do this is NOT how I would recommend someone first try to get into SCP. What I recommend, and what I did myself, was checking out the top rated pages on the site, both new and old, to get a feel for what authors and subjects you like, and get a taste of the best SCP has to offer. Reading every single one in order is a lot of quality and content whiplash (and starting with the oldest ones is definitely not good for getting the feel of how the site is now), but for writing about them rapid-fire like this, it's the method I wanted to use.
...I say that, and then I immediately make my first exception. I am NOT reading 001 first. If you really want to read them in order with me, don't read 001 first. SCP-001 is not one SCP, but rather a whole lot of "proposals" for the coveted first slot on the list. I haven't even read all of them myself, because there's new ones for every series (every 1000 SCPs marks the line of a "series") and since these are proposals for SCP Number One, they tend to be very long and elaborate deals, or at the very least have a lot of context.
I'll start most of my mini-reviews with a sentence kind of summing up what the SCP is, and I'll end each one with a rating, similar to the ones on the site -- the way pages get popular, and featured, and chosen for deletions and rewrites is through a voting system. Many people will leave comments stating why they're choosing to rate an SCP a certain way, and though I would not dare leave all these as comments on the actual articles (I'm petty in a lot of these and they're not all super elaborate opinions), I have certainly read a lot of comments, and I think the rating system is a good way to sum up what I feel about an article. +1 means I liked it, and support it being on the list. +0 means I wouldn't upvote it, but would let it be as is. -0 means I wouldn't downvote it, but think it needs some work or is missing something. -1 means I don't like it and think it needs a serious rewrite or even deletion.
Now for the actual SCPs! I have a lot of these pre-written already, so this might be a bit of spam at first, but there's thousands of these, so "a lot" is relative. Batches of 20 seems like a decent compromise between scary long posts and spam.
002: A literal living room. Still holds up, surprisingly for being #2. I really like the simplicity of this one. +1
003: Motherboard that uh...grows? And is a brittle star? You can really feel the Cthulhu fever of the late 2000s in this one. It's too cluttered in concept IMO but I like the final log. +0
004: Some fucked up doors and keys. This is just all over the place. There's like...two good ideas and then a bunch of suspension-of-disbelief-breaking stuff. Nah. -1
005: A "skeleton key," SCP style. I love how obvious and simple this one is, but with a quirky little twist. It's the exact right thing to be an early SCP. +1
006: The fountain of youth, also SCP style. Similarly "simple, obvious idea for an early SCP" but this one is less fun. SCPs that are kept double-secret always feel like they're trying way too hard. Like, we're already here reading it, you don't have to put it under even more layers. Series 1 does this a lot, probably because people thought it was cool and creepy to make people feel like they were accessing something forbidden. I remember it scared me when I was a stupid baby teen who didn't quite grasp what on the site was real and fiction. -0
007: It's a guy...with a miniature planet in his abdomen. Series 1 humanoids are so hit or miss. Mostly miss. This one is boring. It mostly just focuses on how smart the guy is. Why should I care about that when he's got a planet in him? -1
008: A pretty straightforward "zombie virus." This one was really cool to me as a teenager fascinated by prion diseases. It's also an interesting time capsule of the pop culture zombie mania of the time. It could be almost charming if not for the shoehorned-in note about SCP-500. Sigh. Incorporating random other SCPs is a bit of a trademark of Series 1, and some are more jarring than others. +0
009: Red water with reversed states of matter (solid when it's warm, gas when it's cold). Cool concept, clunky execution, bad exploration log. At least the new image is better than the old one was...I remember being amused by the Photoshop job on the old one even as a teenager who couldn't tell an edited image from a real one half the time. -0
010: Mind control collars for slaves, I guess. Why are the slave collars inexplicably Russian? -1
011: A Civil War memorial statue that's alive. I remember this one being funnier than it is. I can only guess it had some kind of editing war long ago, or my sense of humor when I was 13 was even worse than it is now. Also, someone bonk this thing for being heterosexual. -0
012: An unfinished musical score that makes people go insane trying to complete it. It may be short, but it's a classic. It's both scary and hilarious, because the music the people go insane to write is complete garbage. +1
013: Cigarette that gives you dysphoria. I'm pretty neutral on this one: it's decent, especially for a Series 1 article involving a woman in any form. The new image is cool. +1
014: A guy who had a delusion that turned out to be real. Surprisingly well-written for a Series 1 article about a mentally ill person, honestly. Series 1 humanoids are already a very mixed bag, and thankfully this is one of the better ones. +1
015: A bunch of pipes made out of stuff pipes aren't usually made of. I always hope this one's going to be more interesting than it is. It's not really anything. I am not reading that linked tale, sorry. -0
016: A disease that makes you bleed a lot, but if you're in a life-threatening crisis, it makes you mutate in ways that might help you survive it. I like it more than 008 and the testing log is interesting. I liked it more as a teenager, but it holds up better than I expected. +1
017: Shadow that eats things that cast shadows. I could've sworn this one once had a testing log. Maybe it didn't. either way, it's missing something. Maybe if it just targeted the shadows themselves and wasn't a complete murder monster, it'd be more interesting. -0
018: A super bouncy Super Ball. I love this ball so much. Sadly the entire article is ruined by the addition of the stupid documents. The concept of a bouncy ball that bounces at 200% efficiency is so funny and really does require containment. Literally just cut it down to the procedures and description and it'd be perfect. -0
019: A Greek vase that's full of little violent creatures. Sorry I can't really focus on this one because the image they use for the creature is a really blurry picture of a hairless kitten and it's really funny. The article is fine. +0
020: Mold you can only see in photos, and also it makes people crazy and violent because it takes over their minds to spread the mold further or something I guess. Series 1 articles really like to incinerate things and people and entire towns. It's not the worst S1 gets but it's not the best either. +0
021: A tattoo that's alive. It's a really neat concept, but the article itself is so dated it hurts. The Series 1 lore of D-class personnel being mass executed every month is so shit. Also, why does this article mention that the tattoo can transfer to someone else through sex and then immediately swerve to say "actually it hurts and is bad so don't have sex." Anyway. I like that it can eat other tattoos. I think that would be a fun thing to expand upon if this article got a much-needed rewrite. -1
022: A morgue that does some spooky shit. I really like this one, actually. It still holds up, even the interview logs. There's a lot going on but it's a nice build of anomalies that actually work with each other instead of just being the 5 scariest things some teenager thought of in 2009. All in all, a better-than-average zombie SCP. +1
023: Dog-thing that kills you if you make eye contact with it. This one was highly relatable to me as an autistic teenager who had the soul of a badly-socialized puppy and a hatred for having to mask my autism. The SCP itself, though, is somehow both more and less interesting than I remember it being. The tale does tie it together, but I'm not a fan of having to read a tale to get the entire experience of an SCP, especially not a Series 1 one. +0
024: A soundstage that houses a game show that kills you. I still love this one. I'm always a sucker for game shows. The article is very well paced for something from Series 1, too. A fun read. +1
025: A wardrobe with damaged clothes that hurt the wearer in a way related to the damage. Kind of wordy when I try to explain the concept like that, but it works really well in practice. Even the random inclusion of SCP-173 isn't entirely momentum-destroying, and that's saying something for me. A well-paced article with a really funny central concept. +1
026: A school that traps people who fall asleep in it. This was actually the first one on this read-through to inspire some genuine dread in me. It starts out feeling kinda silly and Wayside-y, but the moment the Sleepers come up it goes into scary world. Some aspects of the article are a bit dated, especially that last interview with its campfire-story pacing and phrasing, but that's a nitpick -- I really like this one. +1
027: A curse that makes the guy who has it inexplicably attract vermin. Simple enough concept, and just interesting enough to make me want to know more about what the hell is going on. It could use a little less disdain for homeless people, though. -0
028: A place that makes you suddenly know everything about a random subject. This one is really funny, and for once something that makes sense to include other SCPs in, because hey, that's something you can learn about. The part where the Foundation just steals the knowledge of the SCP's Patient Zero is really funny to me, probably funnier than it was intended to be. Like, yeah, that's what an agency like this would do. +1
029: A young woman who uh...can kill people really good? And control men? But only when it's dark? This one sucks. It's misogynist and racist, whoopee! This does not deserve the 400+ rating it has. -1
030: A classic Grey alien that knows a bunch of shit and invents stuff, I guess. It might be a robot? I don't really know what's going on here. It would be more interesting if less was going on, IMO. My eyes kind of just glaze over when I try to process it. -0
031: Some kind of hivemind thingy that lives in a hotel in North Korea. Nothing about this is compelling. There's not enough to make the monster more than just a generic horror hivemind, and why North Korea? Why is the email conversation at the end so long and boring? There is not enough to care about here, so it has no business being as long as it is. -1
032: A homunculus or robot or something that destroys anything non-manmade just by being near it. I think the article's trying to say that it's like, a clone or version of some guy's wife? It would be way more interesting without the interviews and GoI connection. With the interviews, it'd work better as a non-SCP standalone fiction. Also, it's also classic Series 1 misogyny, so I don't really care about it anyway. -1
033: An equation where the sum is a number that doesn't exist. This is a fun idea, and one that actually uses the containment procedures to add more intrigue rather than just be an annoying thing you have to get through at the beginning. When I first started reading SCPs as a teenager, I always skipped the containment procedures, because I was mostly reading Series 1 and 2, which tend to have either really boring or really shitty conprocs (slang for containment procedures, which I am going to start using from now on to save myself a few precious typing seconds). Anyway, I do really like this one. It's nerdy in a fun way, and does a good job at being a "thing that shouldn't exist" without being too cliche. +1
034: A really sharp obsidian knife. If you use the knife to cut some skin off a person, you can stick that skin on you to make yourself look like the person you cut the skin off of. It's kind of hard to describe, but you can become impostor just like everyone's favorite video game. This concept has potential, but the article itself is just too bogged down by a boring Foundation-infiltration plot and some weird racism with the supposed "ritual use" of the SCP. The S1 stink is just a little too much here. -0
035: A comedy/tragedy mask that oozes corrosive goo and compels people to put it on so it can possess them. Sure, it's a classic, but I just...don't like it. There's too much going on and it escalates way too fast to an "uncontainable" state. The other SCP namedrops are also classic, sure, but they really don't add much to the article and break any momentum it had. At least the new image is pretty cool. -0
036: An anomalous religious pilgrimage plane flight. I like planes and airports very much, but the rest of this I feel completely neutral about. It seems to have care put into it, and it's well-written, I just start to zone out when SCPs talk about religion and politics at length. +0
037: A miniature star. Like, the kind in space. The absurdity of the Foundation just having an entire miniature star underground is amazing. I'm neutral on the article itself, but the concept alone is hilarious. +0
038: An apple tree that grows clones of anything that touches it. It's got that old-school cross-testing cringe factor, complete with annoying trying-to-be-funny notes, but I can't help but be amused by it for what it is. The mentions of 500 and 173 but no other SCPs make it feel particularly old, so I appreciate this as a relic of sorts. +0
039: Some monkeys that have had their faces removed. I do not like this one. For one, it's got that modern header with the sub-classes and icons and shit on it that I don't personally like on modern SCPs, but really don't like tacked onto old ones. The article itself is really long and doesn't hit for me at all. The gimmick is that the monkeys have their "monkey brain" removed so they're smart and emotionless and whatever. I don't know why they had to have their faces removed to do that, and it really just makes things way more confusing and makes me like the article way less than I might have if it was just the one gimmick. Also, there's so much focus on humans in an SCP that's technically supposed to be about monkeys. I like animal SCPs, but this is one about removing the animal, and I'm just not here for that. -1
040: A kid who can use her powers to modify living things. The article is pretty bare-bones and the formatting is strange, but I have a soft spot for this one. S1 has a lot of little girls with powers, and a lot of them are plagued by senseless torture. It's nice to have one that isn't, especially one that's so old. I also like the modified creatures a lot. It combines my like of "childhood wonder" type SCPs with creature SCPs, and ends up with a character that was very relatable to younger me. +1
041: A guy in a coma who broadcasts other people's thoughts to the minds of others. Not sure how I feel about this one. Kinda unfinished-feeling, also vaguely ableist but I can't pinpoint why I feel that beyond "I don't trust S1 SCP articles about disabled people to not be ableist." It's fine, I guess. -0
042: A pegasus with its wings ripped off. This one is just sad. There's not enough intrigue or horror to make the misery worth it, IMO. The "horse girl movie" addendum at the end is honestly the best part, I think the article should be rewritten to focus less on the torture of a miserable animal and more on its desire to fly at all costs. -1
043: A Beatles record that has a ghost in it or something. The article itself is very short and has both a tale and another SCP linked to it, and I'm not reading either of those, so I'm incredibly neutral about this. I guess it's funny that it refuses to answer Beatles questions. +0
044: A super-powerful railgun made by Nazis. Boringggg. -1
045: A 4-dimensional shape made of ice that creates life in salt water. It's strongly implied to have started life on Earth. Neat idea presented as a bit of a brain puzzle to put together over the course of the article, so sorry if I spoiled it for you. It can get a little overly-technical at times, but I can't really fault it for that, and I think it's really cool for what it is. +1
046: A plant that makes people with disorders feel calm and if they lay down in front of the plant they get overgrown by it and die peacefully. Half of the article is dedicated to a "fake" description that emphasizes how evil and scary the plant is, and I don't really get it. It has that S1 crust of "people using SCPs voluntarily and selfishly" that was so popular back in the day. I also don't love how it implies people with chronic pain and trauma (not even specified what kind, just those words) "just want to die peacefully." It just didn't age well in a lot of ways. -1
047: Gas canister that mutates microorganisms and makes superbugs. It's spooky but doesn't have much to make it stand out from other disease SCPs. I'm never a big fan of "someone stole it" plots in articles either. -0
048: A "cursed number" that has been removed from the catalog due to superstition. Stupid, but in a classic way. I think it deserves to be kept as is, for history's sake. Vampyre Boat is still funny to me. +0
049: A plague doctor who operates on living beings to "cure" them of an unknown "Pestilence." This one is one of the real legends, but I've never really cared that much about it. The article got a revamp to make it more modern and fancy, and it's nice and clearly has a ton of love put into it, but the SCP itself is still just not my thing. It mostly just makes me think of high school. +0
050: A monkey statue that is bestowed upon "The Cleverest." It cleans whatever office it's left in, but leaves traps for its owner. The idea is pretty neat, but in practice, it's simply a vehicle for one of the most circlejerk-y pages on the site: the Great Researcher Prank War. I read this whole thing back in the day, and I'm not reading it again. It is so much that I do not like about classic SCP culture, but mainly for petty reasons. Aside from Dr. Bright being the author insert of a really shitty guy, he's not a funny character, and I don't really like any of the popular Researchers from the old days, especially since they're mostly all self-inserts of the most self-important nerds of the site circa 2011. Also, so. Many. Crosslinks. I can forgive a couple of precisely placed crosslinks, especially if they're not necessary to understand the main article. But this is all just "haha look at all these SCPs you know them." I have spoken enough about this article. I don't like it. -1
051: A model of a pregnant woman that makes pregnant women feel a compulsion to take the baby out of it, and that makes them miscarry and/or give birth to a demon. Some real nasty S1 misogyny vibes, plus it's inexplicably Japanese in origin, so it's weirdly racist too. Also, what the fuck is the phrasing of "non-sterile females." Gross. -1
052: A NYC subway train that sends people who board it back in time. Cool idea at first, rapidly devolves into being all about the Foundation instead and then hits you with the Dr. Bright mention at the end with a link to a tale I'm not reading. Ugh. -1
053: A little girl who makes people want to kill her. That's about it. The new image for this article is really weird. That kid is clearly older than 3, for one. And it looks more like a YouTube thumbnail than an article image. The writing has also not held up very well at all. It's one of those articles that's well-known enough to probably never be rewritten, but it could really use one. -1
054: A woman made out of water. The article primarily consists of the Foundation torturing her for no reason. This sucks. -1
055: A "self-keeping secret" that is knowable only by what it's not. This is a real classic, and gets pretty clunky after the main description, but I still have a soft spot for the "not a sphere" conversation. +0
056: An entity that changes to be a superior version of the entity interacting with it in order to cause jealousy. It suffers a little from Male Writer Syndrome but it's too funny for me to hate. The conprocs are weird and dated, as most S1 humanoids are, but the rest is great. +1
057: A chamber full of monoliths that move around until the person in the chamber gets crushed. Has potential as a random weird thing for the catalog, or even a funny game show parody, but the exploration logs feel kinda gross with the extreme distress of the test subjects, and it just ends up being another unnecessary torture SCP. -1
058: A cow's heart, with legs, and sharp tentacles, and a stinger, and it runs around really fast trying to kill people. It's not very interesting and especially combined with the "interview," it feels like the lolrandom of horror. Tales and crosslinks as well, no thanks. -1
059: A radioactive mineral that grows radioactive fungus, and infects people which makes them immune to radiation and also merge with the fungus, and try to spread the fungus. There's a lot going on in here, but none of it is very interesting. It's okay, I guess? +0
060: A grove of trees that, when burned, generates a flaming skeleton that runs really fast. It's not amazing, but it's funny enough that I can't really hate it. I have no idea how funny it was intended to be, but come on, it's a skeleton. +0
Joined: Mar 2024
Eggs: 1,080
(05-04-2025, 07:13 PM)Unknown Wrote: I loveeee 055 so much!!
I really do have to give it points for being a classic SCP that's not a murder monster. It's such a cool idea.
Joined: Mar 2024
Eggs: 1,080
I love the memtic/antimemetic stuff for SCP. It’s a pretty fun concept.
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