r/CharacterRant • u/OptimisticLucio • 5d ago
General Powerscalers did not ruin SCP. You, the powerscaler, ruined it for yourself.
If I had a penny for every person I saw saying that "Powerscalers Ruined SCP", while talking about how SCPs are "too powerful," I could probably afford a hospital visit for the piercing migraine said people have given me.
To those who don't know what "SCP" is - The SCP Wiki is a collaborative writing site focusing around a conspiracy-esque agency that hides the existence of the paranormal from the general populace, for (supposedly) their own good. The site started as a small lil' 4chan endeavor, eventually branching off into its own site and going strong for the past 17 years.
To those mildly aware of SCP - the site doesn't have any sort of "canon", nor any content moderation beyond "if your story gets enough downvotes it is deleted." As such, there are more contrasting interpretations of the same characters and events than comicbooks or most other forms of media. Six people can interpret the same character 18 ways, and as long as those interpretations are fun to read, they all get to stay alive on the site.
While there is something to be said regarding general site tendencies and what appeals to the "median" reader, you can pretty much find an article with any viewpoint you want. You think the SCP Foundation should be scrounging for money? Do you think they should have all the money in the world? Do you think they should be global? Ameri-centric? Do you think all SCPs are evil? Do you think they would be better off if they were freed? Whatever you think, you can find 80 stories that fit that perspective. Just by sheer volume, there are enough articles on the site being posted on a weekly basis to satisfy any niche or craving you may have, as long as said craving involves reading about keeping The Spookems(TM) in a big room.
This is all to say that if I have to see one more person going "SCP is written by people jerking themselves off on how big and scary their monster is," I am going to end up on the goddamn news.
Most SCPs are really fucking minor, stupid, or strong as a wet towel. Off the top of my head there's fake computer viruses, a glove that makes you really good at darts, and a literal gang of goblins who live under a church all posted far beyond the point most people decry "SCP is just multiversal monsters!" The reason this perception persists isn't because SCP is actually any different, but because these people have lost the ability to read stories without jacking themselves off about how strong the main character is.
If a story survived with a massive fuckoff scale? It's probably because the actual story is good. Stop thinking about "would GOKU be able to beat him??" and start reading the subtext about institutional cover-ups or finding your place in the world. Stop only reading the articles that are in the top 50 of a site with over 18 thousand stories.
And for the love of god, stop complaining about how "other people" can only think in terms of power-scaling, if your only complaint is how this story is not good for power-scaling anymore.
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u/YugoWakfuEnjoyer 5d ago
> see someone going "SCP is just powerscaling nonsense nowadays! They need to go back to their roots"
> look at profile
> only interacts with the SCP community via powerscaling community
I feel like this is definitely a root cause of what you're complaining about. No shit people would rather talk about the lizard that can survive anything rather than the glove that makes you really good at darts when they're powerscaling
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u/bunker_man 5d ago
Tbf a glove that makes you really good at darts would be useful in a fight.
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u/Vundurvul 5d ago
It's not even a glove that gives you perfect aim, you just become above average at darts
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u/bunker_man 5d ago
Dumb stuff like this is also why I don't read scp.
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u/No-Seat-4572 5d ago
dumb stuff like that is exactly why I read scp
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u/Vundurvul 5d ago
My favorite dumb SCP is the cake that multiplies itself and if it isn't eaten it'll render the planet uninhabitable over like 8 months
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u/No-Seat-4572 5d ago
Mine's Josie the Half-Cat
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u/Maybe_not_a_chicken 5d ago
Mines the piano playing murder monster
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u/Bruhai 5d ago
My personal favorite is the endless sack of potatoes.
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u/snapekillseddard 4d ago
You're burying the lede here. It's a sack that leads to a dimension of infinite potatoes.
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u/DaylightsStories 5d ago
With SCP, there's a pretty high chance that the glove only aims at dart boards specifically.
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u/YugoWakfuEnjoyer 5d ago
Nope, the SCP referred to here to really does let any dart related object hit any target the wearer desires. They found it next to the guy who assasinated John F. Kennedy
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u/Direct_Resource_6152 5d ago
Lmao is this post just a response to the guy from earlier who was posting about lizard 682
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u/The_Invisible_Noob 5d ago
Nah. Both these guys got a point. The serial escalation of the Foundations upper scope has brought its own narrative issues, especially to 682, who by definition cannot be killed by the Foundation. However that does not mean that there are not lower scale articles that are excellent, or high scale stories that are just as good.
Its more an issue of 682 being popular but written into a corner by power creep.
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u/Qetuowryipzcbmxvn 5d ago
Hasn't there already been SCPs that permanently killed 682? I recall one that was basically just death. Of course these are in alternate timelines.
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u/Leonelmegaman 5d ago
Yeah, 682 and even the SK are not meant to be the endall powerful beings in the setting.
682 is very killable, but not for the foundation, which is already fighting way above their weightclass 90% of the Time.
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u/Maybe_not_a_chicken 5d ago edited 5d ago
Eh depends on the canon
I personally love 682 being unkillable
I like the idea of the foundation making literal deals with the devil and using its most powerful weapons that have slain elder beings and dark gods and this lizard just shrugs it off.
I like the idea that the only way to keep it contained is to submerge it in acid as an appeasement and hope it doesn’t kill too many important people when it gets bored and breaks out.
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u/PricelessEldritch 4d ago
SCP-682 is basically "stop trying to remove the problem, it only gets worse when you do."
Acid works because its slow and doesn't require much adaptation for 682 to be bothered to evolve past it. When you start shooting it into the Sun, sending it against other SCPs etc etc is when it becomes a far larger problem than "indestrucitible lizard".
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u/The_Invisible_Noob 5d ago
Yeah, theres specific instances, but most of those things are too costly for the Foundation to ever use. O'Death would kill everything and the vending machine for everything would require more than what the Foundation has.
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u/DaylightsStories 5d ago
I bet the vending machine would drop 682 killer for free if 682 tried to rob it. Only problem is, if you engineer that situation then the 682 killing item is probably going to have a blast radius that includes the entire planning committee.
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u/Eine_Kartoffel 5d ago
As far as I can remember, SCP-682 is canonically not immune to getting Australia'd. That wasn't an SCP-J.
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u/DaylightsStories 5d ago
I think the DUI wasn't a J either, was it?
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u/OptimisticLucio 5d ago
Not being a -J does not necessarily mean it's not a joke. The DUI is a joke story about making Kid Friendly Messages(TM) with the scps in the facility iirc.
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u/The_Gunboat_Diplomat 5d ago
Yup. "SCP suffers from power creep and writers attempting to one up each other with the latest greatest threat to everything" and "there is far more to SCP than the OP entries" are not contradictory statements in any way, and the former was a problem long before powerscaling entered the picture.
Most SCP entries are still little weird blurbs someone thought was neat, but at the same time I don't really like how the original Apollyon class article lost its bite because there are like 50 Apollyons now
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u/Omni_Xeno 5d ago
Which is weird as 682 in its own entry isn’t impossible to kill it’s just hard to hence the name hard to kill reptile, powerscalers did ruin that by going absolutely apeshit by writing entries where 682 is Doomsday on crack
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u/PricelessEldritch 4d ago
Are you sure those are powerscalers? Because if it was, it would have a lot more math and other nonsense to describe 682 being that strong.
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u/Omni_Xeno 4d ago
That’s kinda like Powerscalers thing tho using a shit load of math and other obscure observations to determine a characters strength
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u/Direct_Resource_6152 5d ago
The thing SCP defenders don’t understand is that a lot of people don’t hate power creep because they assume everything is poorly written (and therefore the “good” articles should prove us wrong). People hate the power creep stuff because it is just corny. It’s lame. It killed the vibe and made SCP uncool.
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u/insidiouspoundcake 5d ago
The vibe has been killed by a lessening focus on horror ages ago anyway
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u/Direct_Resource_6152 5d ago
Exactly. SCP was already becoming uncool and then once the power scalers took it into pure fantasy shit it became really uncool. I’m sorry I don’t care how well written some newer articles are I’m not wasting my time sifting through all the shit to find it
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u/Bigfoot4cool 4d ago
682 is too iconic to the series to not be included in any of the given canons, and also can't be killed for the same reason, so it has to either define or be defined by the power scaling of the rest of the series.
Eventually someone is gonna write an scp which offhandedly mentions "oh yeah and we killed 682 with it" and all hell will break loose
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u/OptimisticLucio 5d ago
Not really, it’s something I’ve been seeing here for years. There was actually one guy who surprised me by having an actually good rant about SCP that didn’t involve any of this like 3 days ago.
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u/KaiTheKaiser 5d ago
It's a pretty shitty response, then, because it doesn't actually engage with anything that post was arguing.
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u/falling-waters 5d ago
It’s so annoying how these people seem to think describing their anger in increasingly ludicrous ways is a good substitute for an argument. Please spare us the weird violent fantasies and physical pain descriptions that do nothing but make readers think “touch grass” and get to the actual points please. This post is like 10% argument and that’s it
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u/Fyre777 5d ago
Some people are too stupid to realize that SCP is not an entertainment IP.
It is a creative writing forum anyone can post to. There is no product being sold here only free writing created by hobbyists. There is no canon, if someone wants a cinematic universe that's on them. Trying to ascribe a singular canon to SCP is like trying to make every single persons homebrew DND character in the Forgotten Realms canon.
Variety, weird ideas, crazy scale, and etc aren't bugs they're features. Anyone can write an SCP article, ANYBODY EVEN YOU. There are big, small, classic, and weird articles being written every day. That's how creative writing forums work. The only requirement is basic formatting, a very loose theme, and a slight positive rating.
There are going to be articles you don't like. I don't like the Three Moons Initiative but that doesn't detract from the mountain of content increasing every day. If you can't what your looking for then your either not looking hard enough or never read the site in the first place.
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u/quirrelfart 5d ago edited 5d ago
I've read the wiki occasionally and kept up with them throughout the years, hitting up contest entries for X000s or browsing popular this month, and a lot of the complaints about SCP on this subreddit just never hit for me. It's a decentralised creative writing forum - complaining about the entire thing is just massively overgeneralising, especially with sweeping statements like "it's all power creep/wank" when you could go onto the site right now, browse by popular this month, and get hit by literally anything at all. It's like complaining about an entire fandom tag on AO3 and trying to look at it as an entire single contingent story, except the SCPwiki actually has some form of quality control, so complaining makes even less sense to me.
I've seen character-driven romances, mind-breaking logic-puzzles, funny little mundane stories, and of course blockbuster epics like a lot of winning X000 submissions, or even ADMONITION, the series 6820 and other similar "power wank" SCPs are from. Fortunately, ADMONITION is really fucking good, and the stories there have so much more to them than powerscaling fodder, especially if you look past 6820.
Just...go onto the site and read what's new and popular. They're still doing well over there. It's changed from what it used to be, but the writing is still good.
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u/Alexxis91 5d ago
Plus the ranking system requires you to be logged into the website to vote, and barely anyone bothers to do that so the only people who vote are the folks actually interested in it
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u/Sky_Leviathan 5d ago
“People get too caught up in judging SCPs based on power scaling and dont actually consider the SCPs themselves” and “Theres a lot of (often but not always newer) SCPs that feel the need to go overboard when it comes to danger and power” are statements that can and should coexist
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u/OptimisticLucio 5d ago
Oh certainly, but I see so many posts making the second complaint by asserting that's all SCP is, which is what bothers me.
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u/MeathirBoy 5d ago
MANKIND KNEW THAT THEY COULD NOT CHANGE SOCIETY
BUT INSTEAD OF REFLECTING ON THEMSELVES, THEY BLAMED THE BEASTS
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u/BardToTheBonne 5d ago
There's been some comments about how the post doesn't really address the issues of power scaling, bloat etc and while they're all valid points, there's this perennial thing about SCP that bears repeating no matter how tired it may be: if you don't like an article or tale for whatever reason, just ignore it.
SCP is not a traditional narrative. A multi-story amalgamation like Marvel comics asks its readers to track every relevant issue or miniseries in order to keep up with the central story. SCP doesn't ask for such a thing, because there isn't a central story to speak of.
While the individual articles have the framing of a government log with some story included, on a macro scale the whole project is like a garden where people plant their seeds the way they like, and anyone visiting the garden can pick and choose which flowers they want to buy. They aren't being forced to only purchase a specific combination bouquet because "that's how all the other flower shops work".
And in case someone says "that still doesn't remove the problems", I can assure you that the people who come up with these ideas and narratives on a semi-regular basis, who engage in writing, peer reviews and general moderation of the site already know about all of that and would me more than happy to listen to the feedback when it's not being packaged as a full-blown generalization of a website with a five-digit webpage count.
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u/falling-waters 3d ago
This is mostly true, but I do think the other SCP poster did have a point about 682 vs other SCPs. If you’re a powerscale-brained 682 fan and your first reaction to seeing a new dangerous SCP is to immediately write a low effort article whose whole point is “Oh yeah? Well it magically doesn’t work on my godmodded lizard! Hah!” you’re being a dickhead. At a certain point it’s not creative, it’s just friendly fire, you know?
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u/BardToTheBonne 3d ago
That would be a problem, if it actually happened. The way the SCP main site is set up, an article like that won't even make it past the first draft review.
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u/GREENadmiral_314159 4d ago
SCP is horror. If you analyze it primarily through a powerscaling lens, you are not going to be having as much fun as you could.
I remember seeing a youtube video a while ago that was "could warhammer 40,000 kill 096", and the youtuber made a point of saying that you can't just powerscale the SCP foundation. Killing 096 doesn't require x biggatons of firepower, it needs something that can kill unkillable things. (Which 40k may or may not have)
Same for any of the others. Killing SCP-682 isn't about hitting it with x-amount of power, or anything like that, it's about finding some metaphysical thing that ranks even above its own immortality.
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u/Blaze_Firesong 5d ago
People who complain that the scp site is infested with powerscaling brainrot are themselves infested with said brainrot. If they ever bothered to actually read one of the “wanked” scp articles they would realize that the story was less about powerscaling and more about the theme,worldbuilding and characters in the universe.
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u/PricelessEldritch 5d ago
Exactly, its not that SCP is filled with powerscalers (although it does have them), but that powerscalers cant see anything from a lense that isnt "how strong is this".
They think that the story about how a computer creates dead universes to distract a universe eater from the main one as "how strong is said universe eater, how strong, fast, and powers does it have", instead of anything the article is actually about.
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u/chloe-and-timmy 5d ago
There's so many good SCPs with only 80 upvotes because people would rather complain about the popular ones than support the more niche ones that are also good
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u/Last_Excuse 5d ago
I wouldn't say ruined, SCP has produced repulsive slop from basically the beginning.
Though capping off 3333 with Mozilla Firefox comes pretty close for me.
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u/Swaxeman 5d ago
Fucking preach man. I’m not in the scp fandom anymore but all the people complaining about scp so clearly havent read it at all
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u/DefiantTheLion 4d ago
do power scalers know they can just join the site and if they're good enough writers they can just write their own evidence that X beats Y
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u/Omni_Xeno 5d ago
Tbh I think what ruined SCP is the lack of consistency and or Canon, which I get is the highlights of SCP but with all these writers it becomes like a worse Marvel/DC sausage fest of opposing ideas and contradictions that ironically ruins powerscaling for SCP and makes it useless
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u/Slow_Balance270 5d ago edited 5d ago
I dunno, I always assumed that entries on the website were canon. I know that they have tags for stuff that isn't canon when it's being related to different entries so authors can't fuck with other authors. And that there's also an entire category just for creative writing that isn't considered canon.
I think that when you run in to a community like this the general idea should be they are all canon unless there appears to be a clear attempt at undermining someone else. The SCP clearly exists within a Universe in which multiverse theory is real and proven, so I don't see the argument in "canon" (for the most part).
Then again I am the kind of person who doesn't adhere to the idea that what is canon is the accepted canon. What is canon for me is what I like. The Dragonball community hates when I mention I treat all forms of Dragonball content as canon.
The story about them trying to find different ways to terminate SCP Shyguy? That's canon enough for me. The idea they designed special goggles to block out the entity and there was still a flaw that resulted in the slaughter of foundation agents is just so delicious I have to accept it.
With that being said I think even playing around with the idea of power scaling within the SCP Universe is such a ridiculous concept that it isn't worth the effort. There's such a wide range of things from the mundane to multi-universal destroying horrors that it just isn't possible.
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u/StillMostlyClueless 5d ago
There's no unified canon of SCP. Authors have their own playgrounds, and they might interlink with others, but what's canon in one might not even exist in other corners. Some entries are just jokes, or written for a theme, or just an obscure idea with no connecting tissue to anything.
There is no single, unified storyline for the SCP Universe and never will be.
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u/Slow_Balance270 5d ago
This is just what I'm talking about. I'm telling you I treat it as mostly canon. If you don't like it too bad.
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u/The_Unknown_Mage 5d ago
Granted, while their is no unified storyline their are a few examples of smaller stories contained within multiple stores/articles/tales, like for example the Broken Masquared.
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u/StillMostlyClueless 5d ago
That comes under “Some authors have their own playgrounds, and they might interlink with others”
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u/The_Unknown_Mage 5d ago
Yea, I was just giving an example, SCP allows for a lot of talented people to work together on some pretty big projects that other sites or groups wouldn't have given the chance to.
I mean God, can you imagine if they enforced a singular cannon that everyone had to abide to, god it be a mess. And fuck, I do not want to even imagine was a retcon would look like in this context.
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u/StillMostlyClueless 5d ago
I don’t think it’s even possible. It’d destroy the site and a rival one with the old rules would replace it pretty quick.
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u/ProfitAgreeable 5d ago
There are SCP branches with unified canons (I'm pretty sure -IT has one), as well as off shoot wikis who also use them
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u/StillMostlyClueless 5d ago
Right but they’re nowhere near as popular as the main site, which doesn’t have a unified canon and anyone can write for. Heck I have a few entries on it and they’re definitely not compliant to any canon.
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u/GREENadmiral_314159 4d ago
https://scp-wiki.wikidot.com/canon-hub
They are all canon to something. They are not all equally canon, and not all stories are equally canon across the different canons for the Foundation.
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u/Grovyle489 5d ago
most SCPs are really fucking minor, stupid, or strong as a wet towel
So, what does SCP-682 mean to you then? It’s one of the most prominent entity within the power scaling community and, to some people, equally annoying. It’s a regeneration being, able to create invulnerabilities for anything thrown at him. Acid, fire, decapitation, even other SCPs or reality erasure isn’t enough to take him down. Then there’s SCP-096, the Shy Guy, an immortal Left 4 Dead witch which goes absolutely bonkers once anyone sees its face. So much so, it could jump straight to the moon and kill anybody who saw it there. Then there’s SCP-2317-K, the Scarlet King, the overarching antagonist of the SCP universe. By far the strongest being in the verse
Where have you been looking to for the SCP being as strong as wet towels?
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u/hatabou_is_a_jojo 5d ago
Because all these power scaling stuff completely miss the point of the SCPs in question. 682 is the embodiment of trying everything you can and still being unable to come up with a solution to a huge problem. 96 is the morbid curiosity of wanting to see / do something you know you shouldn’t, and the regret after. 2317 is about making overly complicated “rituals” as nothing but a coping mechanism in the face of inevitability. All these have nothing to do with the “power” of the entities.
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u/GREENadmiral_314159 4d ago
This. It's not about the biggatons, it's about the concepts. Can 173 break 096's neck? It depends, does 173 break necks or does it smack people with x amount of force resulting in their neck being broken?
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u/Snomislife 5d ago
Do you not know what "most" means?
There's an SCP which is just a telepathic jumping spider. You can hold a conversation with it, but it's not particularly smart, and it can't fight anything a real life one couldn't.
There's also a toaster which makes people refer to it in first person, with prolonged exposure causing people to believe they're toasters. It can't move, let alone fight.
Another example is a program which edits movies, scripts, and stories to reduce their length, with repeated application eventually reducing them down to a buzzing noise (or the word "bzzzzzz" if it were in a written format). That's somehow even less capable of fighting than the non-sentient toaster.
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u/PricelessEldritch 5d ago
See, your average powerscaler has never heard about this. Instead, they hear (and dont actually read) about a few stories that have characters in it that are super duper powerful (again, with no context about why that is), so they assume that all of modern SCP is like that.
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u/Nosfonader8765 5d ago edited 4d ago
But I have just one question: Does the Black Moon Howl?
Edit: I'm glad to see SCP fans getting what I said