#scp analysis

More specifically, the line "Our mission statement is 'Secure, contain, protect'. Somewhere down the line we really should look into adding 'and keep as many human beings alive as possible' to that."

Because this part says so much about him.

DISCLAIMER I have no idea if all this was said before, if it is extremely obvious, and/or if I'm misinterpreting to hell and back.

Anyway.

Let's start with the fact that, when asked about the ethics of killing every sapient being, he turns to the Foundation's mission statement. This isn't about ethics or the preservation of human life, this is about containment. He sees the Foundation's goals as more important than what they were made for: humanity.

We are looking at a STEM major who was not taught the humanities. Tragic, I know.

Secondly, pick and choose much? How about "We die in the dark so that you can live in the light"? He picks the moto that fits his claim, even though there is more that proves him wrong.

He is loyal to the Foundation, even more than he is to humanity, but he also doesn't understand it.

And finally. He's not even correct about the moto.

"Secure the anomalies, contain the anomalies, protect the anomalies. How does it scan otherwise?"

Two of these make sense. Unfortunately, one doesn't. What does "Secure the anomalies" do that "contain the anomalies" doesn't?

Because it's not "Secure the anomalies". It's "Secure information", as in, from the general public. To complete the trio, we have "Contain the anomalies", as he said, and "Protect humanity". How does it scan otherwise?

Have I read SCP-3999 about 5 times? Yes. Do i keep finding small little insignificant details each time I do? Also yes. Do i think way to much about James Talloran and SCP-3999? Absolutely

Reading it so many times, as well as generally really liking the character of researcher Talloran and therefore reading a couple tales in which he's present, i've noticed some patterns that have sort of led me to a completely different interpretation of SCP-3999 then what LordStoneFish had in mind, and I thought i might as well share.

For starters, I ADORE the way SCP-3999 is just in the sense of "twink gets tortured by something we can't even comprehend for NO REASON". That's great, that's wonderful. SCP-3999 was written as part of the SCP-3000 contest, and the theme for said contest was horror. it achieves that horror extremely well. Do i think its the SCARIEST SCP to come out of that contest? No, in terms of the actual horror I much prefer SCP-3000 and SCP-3001. But I think this isn't because of the story LordStoneFish was trying to tell not being scary, but more because of the way it was written. Because end of the day, SCP-3999 IS just a bunch random things that come together into one very absurd work.

While we're on the topic of comparing SCP-3999 to other SCPs, especially the ones from that contest and that general period in the community, I cannot ignore how multifaceted SCP-3999 is. There is so much packed into that pile of seemingly nothingness, and it's why I keep coming back to it, time and time again. Because every single time I found something new.

You have the basic surface level of James being tortured. You have the way it directly mirrors the foundations power struggle with the anomalous world. You have how closely his fight with SCP-3999 parallels LordStoneFish overcoming writersblock. The way it breaks the SCP format as a fuck you to the community from LordStoneFish. Plus the way that LordStoneFish IS SCP-3999, since he made Talloran suffer by simply creating him

All this to say, I understand and ADORE the core themes in SCP-3999. Sure, I believe most people who aren't SUPER invested in the community will upvote it because "hey, this is very different and original". I believe atleast half of the upvotes SCP-3999 has is simply because of how much it breaks the format. Sure, a lot of people don't like SCP-3999 for this very reason, but you have to keep in mind that the people who dislike it for this reason are very invested into SCP, and most people who have read SCP-3999 just aren't that deep into the community. But regardless of all this, I still think it's an incredible piece of work, it's raw, compelling, and as i'll explain later, hopeful and inspiring.

I have made my own interpretation of SCP-3999 as it is in universe, AKA, focusing on the researcher Talloran getting tortured part, not about actual LordStoneFish himself. While I am obviously aware that SCP has no canon, I do still think my "retelling" takes all those core themes that make SCP-3999 good, and kinda just throws it out the window. However, I do still wish to share it just because I do find the idea interesting, and could potentially make for a good, completely unrelated SCP if you were to change it up a bit and just replace the character of James Talloran with some other femme fatale twink.

To start off, I just want to clarify that when thinking of all this the MAIN article with James Talloran in it that i actually chose to base this off was SCP-3999. Obviously I used some of his traits from "Portraits Of Your Father" and many other tales with Talloran in it, as SCP-3999 doesn't illustrate Talloran's character at all, and so I had to obviously use tales from outside that article. Plus obviously i used my knowledge from other works in the community to base this all around I think this was all originally inspired by that one line in SCP-3999:

"Researcher Talloran is not SCP-3999"

Okay, so you're saying he IS SCP-3999? I can work with that.

For this whole idea to work I chose to use the way SCP-4231 explains human reality benders in it's canon. Humans are born normal, and with time develop their abilities and slowly get stronger and stronger. Typically happens before children enter their tween years, but it was heavily implied in SCP-4231 that this is a general rule and doesn't apply to everyone.

I see a lot of works with a general trend to make James a generally troubled person, even before any of the stuff with SCP-3999 happened. I cannot say exactly from which work this originated from, but whatever, i'll go with it. Plus come on, he works at the foundation, name one member of staff there who isn't mentally unwell.

I haven't figured out a super epic sad anime villain backstory for Talloran, as I generally don't think it's necessary here. What i'm generally getting at is that in this canon James is just sort of a wreck. He's functioning of course, but he's not living la vida loca. I can generally imagine him as a very self doubting person, someone who has a tendency to self sabotage and hate themselves.

going off of the canon that I THINK was established originally in "Portraits Of Your father", James originally worked at site-17. When I think of site-17, one of my first thoughts is "SCP-239: the witch child", possibly the most powerful reality bender just, you know, EVER. I truly doubt SRAs would do shit against this girl, but I also refuse to believe site-17 isn't litered in them as a "safety precaution".

So now we have a couple things established here in my weird little brain child: -SCP-3999, who is a reality bender, IS researcher Talloran -reseacher Talloran works at a site full of reality anchors -a class green can technically develop their abilites at any point in life -James is a self loathing little bitch boy And so around this point is where I slowly started putting all these ideas in my head, and this was around the time I even came up with this idea.

SCP-3999 seemingly didn't have a reason to just go out and pick James Talloran specifically. Everything it did for 10 times longer then humanity itself has existed was to torment James. It seems to have infinite power and is strong enough to destroy reality itself.

If, theoretically, a type green would start developing their reality bending abilities while almost constantly around reality anchors, they'd have no way of knowing this. These powers show up gradually, allowing the person possessing to them to learn how to control them before shit turns south by accident. Not to mention reality bending is just the will of your mind itself, and therefore is heavily influenced by emotions and ones mental state.

And therefore, in my little canon/headcanon/IT'S ALL CANON, this exact thing happened to the subject of this unbelievably long post, James Talloran. his shitty little powers developed under his nose and he had no idea.

We know reality benders have a high hume count, and we know the foundation has found a way to measure a subjects hume count, as it's stated in "An FAQ; Or, What The Hell Is A Hume?". I do not think it is uber far fetched to say "Hey, what if the foudation suddenly realized they have a really damn strong reality bender on their hands, and said reality bender is either hiding his abilities or straight up does not know about them?".

Site-17, as far as i'm aware, is the second largest site the foundation owns. It is very well equipped to contain all sorts of nonsense. I'd argue its safer then the actual biggest site, site-19, as site-17 is much newer, so it obviously just has better structural integrity, defenses ect. And while site-17 does contain some pretty dangerous anomalies, like the previously mentioned SCP-239, it is still primarily to house humanoid SCPs. SCP-073, SCP-105, SCP-166, SCP-343, to name a few. Named those off of the top of my head, and that's just the first series for crying out loud. Yes, James Talloran is a human, duh. But he is still a very powerful reality bender, one originally classified as Keter. And there is one site that is known for specializing in Keters and hard to contain anomalies.

Site-118, the same site SCP-3999 was contained in, the same one James Talloran was sent to right before getting tormented for several million years.

In this canon, the foundation, apon realizing "hey, we have a problem", chose to attempt to discretely trick Talloran into containing himself. He is still a worker of the foundation, You can just send his ass to site-118 under the pretext of being needed there and what's he supposed to do? Refuse? I really doubt that's how that works.

So the foundation does just this, sends James off, once he gets there they lie to him like "ayo you gotta go interview this anomaly in that big containment cell", and just straight up lock him in there and PRAY the reality anchors hold up.

But they don't, because this is still SCP-3999, and we need pain and suffering.

I imagine it's the general distress of the situation that causes "SCP-3999" to "manifest", in the sense that the entity torturing Talloran still obviously exists. Except in this canon SCP-3999 is nothing more then a manifestation of Talloran's tendency to hate himself and self sabotage. A being that still IS James Talloran, but it's just his own insecurities given form, Were their only goal is to be just that, an insecurity, something that hurts Talloran.

Talloran still causes a ZK-end of reality senario, until there's nothing left but him and his own insecurities and issues. He's stuck in his own head figuratively and literally.

James is unaware he is the cause of this, he is still unaware he is a reality bender and that does not change. The story of SCP-3999 goes as normal from here, except for the fact James only thinks SCP-3999 is some entity he was sent in to interview, when in reality it is his own self hatred given form.

I think another thing that really made me kind of cling to this idea is that SCP-3999 is still very hopeful. It has a bitter sweet ending. Sure, James dies, but he still won. He died a fighter, someone who stood up and refused to give up and be snuffed out by the world because he IS at the center of everything that happens to him. He is at the center of his own universe, and he won't let himself be forgotten. He will live and will make a change. And if it hurts once it all ends? That's still good, because that meant it all meant something, and it wasn't just a pointless jumble of horrible containment procedures, crossed out notes and terrible jokes about a family dressing up as one another.

No matter if its some eldritch horror seeking to torture James for shits and giggles, or his own self hatred given a body just to hate him, James still fights. He still overcomes both, laughing in their face and calling them out for what they are, which is nothing compared to him, for he is alive, and they never will be.

I had to create connections between SCP-035 and SCP-049 to a lot of dualities inside the SCP universe; I had to compare 049 to Mekhane and 035 to Yaldabaoth.

BEAR WITH ME, BEAR WITH ME, LET ME EXPLAIN WHY

As we all know, 035 is basically a creauture of chaos. He does things just because he felt cute doing them. But its not entirelly unrational, just unhinged. They know very well how to manipulate others into doing what they want and how they want. She is also a master of acting, so she can create complex yet coherent-enough stories for her.

As for 049, he is waaaaay more analytic, the entirely of his work is based on the scientific method afterall; He is a doctor! All he does is calculated and well-thought, sure he can take risks, but prefers not to.

So with that in mind, I personally, see 049 and 035 as the duality between rational and primal. Chaos and order. Mekhane and Yaldabaoth.

035 hates more than he can love, and 049 loves more than he can hate.

Because it's like. Once you gaze up the narrative layers, you can never quite stop seeing it. You close your eyes, and you can almost hear the clackclack clack of the keyboard typing into a Word document. You look Up, not in the direction that is up but in something unexplainable that you can only call Up, and you can see them reading at you. Maybe they can see your eyes gazing back, though you doubt it.

They have Documents on everything. Because Everything is Written, and they can copy it word for word. They know things that even some of the Overseers don't, things that would terrify them if they felt real at all.

Once you've read the world you live in, it's like you're in both places at once. Something killed 23 agents this morning (it's a Thing That Does A Thing that has cool concept but botched execution). The trans allegory with that Murder Monster was awesome, if a bit heavy handed (it tore through the walls of your lab like it was paper, we still can't recontain it). No one outside the Department understands, no one who hasn't read the Documentation too.

The younger researchers just go with it. They become fans, of sorts. They have favourites, celebrities, and none of them are real and that's okay, because who is? Are you, dear reader? Are you sure? Because they certainly are.

And once you've accepted that, what's the limit? Once you've read it all, once you know you're written… what's stopping you from dabbling in writing yourself? And indeed, a lot of Pataphysics department members were written by other department members. Dr. Thaum, before he was terminated, was the most notable example.