🌻

thefriendlyvandal:

some observations on that one specific kind of scp writing that i pulled from an unfinished answer in my drafts: 

scp comes from 4-chan, as you may be aware; more specifically from 4-chan at the height of creepypasta culture in the late 2000s. the 4-chan style of storytelling at this time is very interesting to look at from a literary standpoint (although i’m by no means claiming to be an expert in the field, lmao). there’s a very distinct campfire story vibe that comes from 4-chan stories of this era, and in it’s form it’s very effective. a good example is anasi’s goatman story, posted on the /x/ board in 2012. overall it has a very literary mumblecore/mumblegore kind of feel, where the story 1. is centered around younger characters of the same age as 4-chan’s demographic of the time, 2. is centered around interactions between these younger characters and their mannerisms, and 3. feels very natural and believable in how they interact, and centers the horror of the story around this natural vibe. you and ur online friends sit in a thread-turned-virtual-campfire in the dark of ur room, only lit by the light of your screen, and you read a greentext story that feels just believable to be real told by someone you have never met before. it fits into the space of a longer post, is often accompanied by an image and/or associated online content, and you are thrown into it with little knowledge of what’s about to come.

on scp specifically, this kind of fast-paced open-ended online story starts in the same campfire form and morphs into a more adventure-based vibe in the tales that start being written. some have reoccurring characters and spaces; this is a big change from the one-off 4-chan style (side note: you’ll see that the ‘jump in and be freaked out along the way’ one-off 4-chan style persists in the modern scp format, where each scp is a separate snapshot of a different situation and time in a unique unified creepypasta format). a lot of the writers are young amateurs and many of them, at least initially, are from 4-chan. many are just looking for a good time. this gives birth to a very unique kind of adventure story that has a really unique literary style all of it’s own, and is usually portrayed through tales; if i may take a moment to coin a term, i call it ‘skipcore’.

skipcore stories will be 1. fast-paced and exciting, 2. utilized on a digital format, occasionally more creatively, 3. very creative and ambitious (many skipcore authors are amateurs, which gives them the advantage of an unbiased kind of excitement that really works with this kind of story), and 4. set in the scp universe to some degree. stories will often encompass a variety of characters with different ethnic and social backgrounds. some may dip back into mumblecore territory with focusing on relationships of people in their late teens, 20s, and early 30s, with worries about their careers, gender, sexuality, and livelihoods. from a literary perspective, these stories often use shorter paragraphs with a lot of dialogue, which is a remnant from the digital format and the 4-chan roots of the site’s writing style. some stories will switch between multiple formats of displaying the action. many stories focus about being short and effective. 

when you read skipcore, you’re in it for the ride. a lot of people on scp will approve of skipcore because it’s fun to read in the way that 4-chan stories are fun to read, and because it’s in the ancestral vein of how the site writes in general. it’s a very different type of literature than if you say, read a book or professionally-published short story, although that’s not to say that it’s better or worse than one. i’d even venture to say that just like the story dictates the form in traditional prose, the same kind of thing has evolved here, and it fits perfectly. 

i’m…actually not very good at writing in the skipcore style, which is something i’m kind of disappointed by. it’s a very different kind of writing that personally, i kind of admire. one of my fave examples of this is the antimemetics division storyline(s), which i remember burning through in a few hours in high school, completely transfixed and caught up in the story; i had the same experience with the bellerverse, the gulf, and a few stories in resurrection. although i haven’t read the cool war myself, i suspect from what i’ve heard that it’s very much the same kind of writing. it’s lovely and in my opinion very under-appreciated.