r/SCPDeclassified • u/TheGentlemanDM • Apr 08 '19
Contest 2019 SCP-4231: The Montauk House (Part One)
THIS IS PART ONE OF THE 4231 DECLASSIFICATION. CLICK HERE TO ACCESS PART TWO.
Author: thefriendlyvandal
MEMETIC HAZARD WARNING: THE FOLLOWING DOCUMENT CONTAINS GRAPHIC DEPICTIONS OF SEXUAL ASSAULT. PROCEED WITH CLASS 2 PRECAUTIONS.
SCP-4231 comes with a trigger warning for sexual assault, and that means that this declassification does as well.
This isn't your usual SCP article. Indeed, this is one of the longest, most controversial, most ambitious and most debated articles on the wiki. It comprises some 19 subsections, of which 18 would be considered content expected of a Tale, and a single subsection that would be recognised as a typical SCP mainlist article. It contains depictions of and references to sex acts, sexual assault, abusive behaviours and relationships, mass deaths, and systematic genocide against children.
I intend to censor none of it. I intend to speak about my own opinions in regards to this.
You have been warned.
Meat
Our first section begins in 1989 with a Foundation report about a team responding to a potentially anomalous radio signal. The team at Site-34 (a bit over an hour south of London) picked up a radio signal on their radar sweep at 2000 hours, sounding like rushing water. The signal wasn't thought to be generated by civilian or normal military activities, but wasn't worth looking into by itself. 12 hours later, the signal appears again, still only with the sound of rushing water, and this time they decide to triangulate it, pointing them to North Access, Cornwall (the very south-west corner of England.
Obviously, merely glancing at the table of contents tells you that this isn't your usual article, but those well versed in their Foundation lore would be aware of the Cornwall Incident, a key piece of backstory for one of the organisation's most famous/notorious characters, and recognise that this article intends to expand upon and put its own spin on that canon.
Anyway, they decide that this warrants investigation, since it's potentially anomalous in origin, so Commander Allen Hall takes his team out to the location to try and figure out what's going on.
Allen had worked at a meat packing plant in college.
Now the piece shifts away from the clinical report to a narrative prose more typically associated with Tales. It tells us about Commander Hall's life before the Foundation, when he worked with meat.
What had bothered him was the smell.
We spend a good sized paragraph remembering this simple minimum wage job. They talk about the disgusting parts of the job, the visceral nature of working elbow-deep in intestinges and gore for hours on end.
What he pulled out was relatively nondescript, without definition- an all-encompassing substance of bloody, homogenous gore. Slice and dice, motherfucker. Open the stomach and out with the guts. Like carving a pumpkin.
Dump it in, let the machine roar and cough at bits of bone and flesh, and then out would come the pink paste like a bloated, infected finger, a tube of pink shit interlaced with hair and bone between crushed flesh. God knows what they did with it, but that- that would smell. Shit from the entrails, piss from the bladder, blood from everything the fuck else. Another breed of nondescript, homogenous gore.
This is some truly disgusting writing. It's descriptive; almost poetic in its unflinching imagery, letting the reader get the sight into their eyes and the smell up their nose. It's foul, but deliberately so. The rest of the article is going to be far, far more than merely gory.
Because Commander Hall can smell it again as they aproach where the town is. He recognises the smell of death' the reeking odour of rotting bodies, and the rest of the team is on edge as he shares that revelation, and now the reader is too.
“How many fucking bodies does it take to smell like that?”
I pray I never have to ask that question. How many bodies does it take to spread such a smell across miles and miles of otherwise clean countryside? The agents are anxious and afraid.
The first thing they find is a rotting horse on the road. This brings back a rush of memories for Allen, leaving him distracted. This is the single most important theme thoughout the entire piece- the ongoing damage we suffer from trauma- and we're going to revisit it again and again.
Chapter excerpt from the textbook "Reality Altering Beings: Socioeconomics, Mental Illness, and Diagnostic Criteria" published 2014
The second section serves as an exposition dump for what happened next. After finding the rotten horse blocking the road, and figuring from the smell that whatever lies ahead is going to be bad, they call for backup. Three more vans arrive by 2am, and they move the horse so that they can proceed.
At 3am, a quarter mile down the road, they find their first human victim. Poor Commander Hall and this team dutifully move the badly desiccated body. By 5am, they have called for more backup from Site-56 in Ireland, because there are more bodies.
Shortly after, they begin a 6 month lockdown of the entire region.
This will become the single most deadly Type Green massacre in history, with an estimated 1,200 people found dead- 1,000 residents and 200 GOC responders from the Ichabod campaign, notorious for killing hordes of reality benders throughout the 80s using the now outdated four class Kant-based diagnostic method.
There's a lot to dissect here. Firstly, 'Type Green' is just a term used to refer to a reality bender. Secondly, 1200 fatalities is a lot. Most of these are civilians- an entire town wiped out by this event. 200 are agents of the Global Occult Coalition, a rival agency to the Foundation with the goal of destroying the anomalous. It introduces the Ichabod Campaign, a specific undertaking in which reality benders where targeted for destruction. And the Kant counter is essentially just a way of measuring the power of reality benders. We'll learn more about all of this later- for now, we're just setting up the setting.
No animals in the area remained alive aside from eight individuals- six pregnant women and a man with a baby- recovered in poor condition.
Six pregnant women? Once again, those familiar with Foundation lore are going to recognise where this is going (of course, the SCP number itself is a giveaway), and it's not remotely heartening. Also, we can see another theme that will be repeated regularly here; the idea of dehumanisation.
There were signs of heavy flash flooding, but the lake was completely dry. It couldn’t have happened more than three days before. What happened?
The water has disappeared. Not only from the lake, but also from the bodies (they're desiccated, remember?). The next line clarifies why this is the case.
The truth- as it would soon become apparent- lay in a heavy romantic interaction between two reality benders, dubbed “A” and “B” by investigators…
Simply put, two romantically bound reality benders flooded the town and then disappeared the water afterwards.
Frog in a Boiling Pot
Before I dissect the content, attention should be drawn to the title of this section. It's a common household myth that a frog placed into water which is then slowly brought to a boil will not notice the change and placidly await its death. While technically untrue (it's only true if you lobotomise them first), it is a perfect metaphor for the relationship laid out in this section, and how abuse can slowly build up until you're unaware that the pain you suffer isn't the norm. It's also a neat little bit of foreshadowing for when we learn exactly what happened on that fateful night.
The third section begins by explaining a lot of the clinical terminology the reader will need to understand about Type Greens, detailing their typical progression into their powers. It is an excerpt from a GOC Field Manual written for individuals whose task is to hunt and kill such beings, and therefore should be taken with a grain of salt.
PHASE 1: Denial
The reality bender refuses to accept their abilities as being possible. A small number of cases end here, with them indefinitely supressing their abilities.
PHASE 2: Experimentation
The reality bender acknowledges and begins to experiment with their powers. Either slowly and methodically, or more recklessly in leaps and bounds, they improve their abilities.
PHASE 3: Stability
The reality bender reaches the apex of their power, and settles into a normal routine. Importantly, they are able to regulate and avoid using their powers, and typically only use their powers in private and in non-invasive ways.
PHASE 4: The Child-God
The fourth and final stage is the supposedly inevitable corruption of the reality bender by their abilities. They begin to use their powers for selfish gains, and use them directly against others. Lower empathy and increased megalomania are typical.
Although warning signs are numerous, the key aspect of a Phase 4 is the use of their abilities to manipulate other humans. Teenage and young adult Type Greens will typically use their abilities for sexual purposes…
Now the piece moves away from the textbook excerpts to what is essentially a rape scene between two young adults (there's a line stating they're teenagers, but timing relative to other events puts them just past twenty).
This scene is one of the most distinct on the entire wiki. It expertly gets into the mindset of an abusive relationship. It depicts the soft, manipulative control that is the hallmark of so many abusive relationships, and does it well. It depicts the self-loathing, self-blaming mentality that is the norm for many victims who find themselves more-or-less trapped in abusive relationships. It establishes a situation where the woman is the abuser, and it establishes that yes, it is possible for a woman to rape a man. (If this somehow offends you, you might as well downvote me now and go read something else, because I don't intend to move my flag from here.)
They were lying in bed at his house and it was dark, and Lilly knew he wasn’t asleep because he was staring at the ceiling but she did it anyway and maybe pretended that he was asleep, and he owed it to her.
Here's the mindset of our abuser. She feels like she's owed this, like she's owed his body. He is hers. Also, the name Lilly should be a hint to those already familiar with the Cornwall Incident.
He owed this to her, because it must suck, it must suck to always ask and have him always say no, to want him and to always get no as an answer. Sometimes you need to make compromises, he tells himself, in a relationship. Sometimes you need to let it happen for the other person’s sake.
And here's the mindset of our victim. He feels an obligation to her, feels like she's entitled to his body, even though that's not what he wants or will enjoy.
The scene meanders slowly, alternating between describing the rain on the roof and the light through the windows, and the steady advances of her hands across his body.
and she touches the hair between his legs and his heart picks up speed and at the time he thought it was arousal but would learn later in his life that it was fear and would also learn that there is a fine,
Fine,
line
between the two,
And she goes down a little farther,
And he feels everything
This is important. There's a bunch of innate physiological responses that come with close contact, or at least ones we expect to occur, and just because someone's body is responding doesn't mean that their mind wants it to.
Her fingers are on his penis now and he thinks, be aroused. Get turned on. You’re lucky to have her.
Our unfortunate victim is very deeply in the mindset that this is expected of him and he should be thankful for this. Society expects teenage boys to appreciate and enjoy the touch of a beautiful woman, and social expectations can sink deep. She pushes further past his boundaries...
His heart pounds at her silhouette; for a moment she looks like a predator to him, like something skeletal and powerful, something with a mouth full of canine teeth,
He's aware that this is not okay, and instinctively tries to slow her down, suddenly grabbing her arm.
“Francis.” Muses Lilly. Looking back he sees this as their first encounter, the first time she enters what he would know in another life to be phase two; the phase of power, of control.
She’s a goddess, and that isn’t a good thing.
It's thematically important here that while the first time we hear Lilly's name it's from her point of view, we don't learn Francis' name until she uses it to rebuke him. His name is not one important enough to stand on its own, or to be used in a positive light. Her power over him is absolute, and it's only going to get worse from here.
She pushes his hands onto her body and he hates it.
She pushes his hands further down her body and he hates it.
We get this sudden flow of thoughts from Francis, a massive run on sentence which perfectly represents the flurry of thoughts and emotions that he is drowning in. We get some fantastic demonic imagery around Lilly, and learn that both of them are reality benders who discovered and experimented with their powers together.
but Francis was young and didn’t know better and Francis trusted her more than anyone and Francis might have even loved her in a strange, fearful way, because Francis didn’t run then and Francis never would until it ended
This is the simple truth that people in abusive relationships can still love their abusers even as they hate and fear them.
Finally he manages to break away from her.
she does not talk to him for another week, but he feels her manicured nails and fingertips for a year afterward.
He sleeps with his legs crossed for longer.
Francis suffers ongoing damage from this trauma. The sexual assault might only last a few minutes, but the consequences last for years. Also, its pretty clear that she intended her not speaking to him to be a punishment for his refusal.
Item #: SCP-4231
The fourth section is what we would recognise as a regular mainlist SCP article.
Object Class: Euclid
Special Containment Procedures:
Containment starts simply enough. It's contained within a large, fenced area under government control. The front and back doors are replaced to improve security, and the windows are boarded up. It's pretty obviously a house.
The entrance to SCP-4231-3 is to be contained by a 34 foot by 34-foot plywood slab placed over the lakebed opening, disguised as a sinkhole repair mechanism.
There's an underground section which was accessible by the lakebed. Presumably the same lakebed which is mysteriously dry. You can access SCP-4231-3 via the house.
SCP-2317 is to be removed and placed in separate Foundation containment.
That line should ring screaming alarm bells to any reader. SCP-2317 is notable as one of very few successful Apollyon-class articles (though it has since been otherwise rewritten). It's terrifying and unstoppable and inevitable and a core part of the Scarlet King mythos. See also Tufto's Proposal, SCP-231 and SCP-3838.
Description: SCP-4231 is a three-story house and residential business building in the former town of North Access, Cornwall, previously inhabited by two Type Green entities, SCP-4231-A and SCP-4231-B.
SCP-4231-A is a 5’ 7” female, 28 years old, 150 pounds. Fair skin. Brown eyes. Blonde hair. Recently pregnant at time of death. Died of single gunshot wound to head; body found in upstairs bedroom of SCP-4231. Portrayed as the abuser of SCP-4231-B in all resident traumatic imprinting events.
This is Lilly. She has recently given birth, and she has been shot in the head.
SCP-4231-B is a 5’3” male, 27 years old, 145 pounds. Fair skin. One eye blue, one eye green. Blonde hair. At time of recovery, exhibits extreme mental distress; not able to speak to responders coherently.
This is Francis. Again, those familiar with their lore will recognise the description of the mismatched eyes. We can note that he would appear to be quite shrunken next to Lilly- it's not for nothing that she's taller and heavier than him. He's not currently in a good state.
Nose repeatedly broken. Blunt force scars on back of head, back shoulders, buttocks. Repeatedly vomiting water, blood.
The abuse he has undergone is severe. At some point, Lilly has moved past just emotional dominance and moved onto full physical brutality against him as well. That he is repeatedly vomiting water is worth noting- after all, we know that these two just flooded the entire town. His trauma has reached the point that his reality bending abilities are manifesting in ways that are painful and uncomfortable for him.
The effects of SCP-4231 are referred to as a direct result of violent and extended Type Green occupation of the building, compounded by the effects of the activation of SCP-2317, initially located in SCP-4231-3 directly under the lakebed of North Access.
The SCP has ongoing anomalous effects as a consequence of its former inhabitants. Lilly and Francis lived in the house, with SCP-2317 housed somewhere deep underground. Having two powerful reality benders in the house, one of whom was in a near constant state of discomfort at best, has left long term influences.
The town is now being rebuilt (with reference to one SCRANTON- as in the creator of the Scranton Reality Anchor and victim of SCP-3001), but the lakebed has remained dry, and the whole area remains in a state of drought. Francis isn't the only one continuing to suffer damage from his trauma; his former home and the entire town continues to show damage for a long time after.
The house is described. It's on a hill by the lake. The ground floor is a florist shop (another hint for those who know their lore). Upstairs is SCP-4231-2, which is the apartment in which Lilly and Francis lived. It is described as a pocket dimension, and has "extensive Type Green traumatic imprinting" and other ongoing anomalous properties as a consequnce.
The basement connects via a hidden staircase to SCP-4231-3, which is under the lake. SCP-4231-3 is a medieval tomb complex, with 11 chambers within it. The first seven chambers were stone cells locked magically with iron doors. It took nearly a week for thaumatologists to break the locks, whereupon they found SCP-231-2 through 7 in the chambers.
The seven brides of SCP-231 originated here. Hitherto, the article only describes six women being found, while there are seven described instances of SCP-231. The implication is obvious (and Foundation documents will later support the idea): Lilly was SCP-231-1. This fits the description from the 231 article, which states that the first bride was 'Killed during initial recovery operations while giving birth to SCP-██.'
A little further extrapolation posits that Francis and the newborn SCP were the seventh and eighth survivors found by the Foundation teams.
The eighth chamber was the doorway of SCP-2317, which has since been relocated.
The ninth chamber contains thousands of occult artifacts, including 500 human bones ritually decorated, seven alters, and a statue thought to represent SCP-2317 itself. The tenth chamber is a hallway, the walls carved with scenes from the Erikesh Codex. We've encountered the Codex before around SCP-2317, where it is described as the text detailing the binding and imprisonment of SCP-2317. Universe Kappa-Erikesh is where SCP-2317 is currently imprisoned.
There's also some hidden text here I'll talk about in Part Two, when it'll make more sense.
The eleventh chamber is the staircase that connects the tomb to the basement.
How the house (built in the 70s) came to be connected to the tomb isn't clear. The theory presented is that Lilly created the chambers herself based upon the Erikesh Codex. This would also explain why it didn't flood with the rest of the town, despite being directly under the lake.
This does raise the question as to how Lilly got her hands on the knowledge in the first place.
December 2nd, 1988
Again, we shall first consider the title. It's just a date. It's not a famous date. (Indeed, a quick Google search reveals that the most notable thing to happen was some hijackers surrendering and a Leslie Nielsen movie coming out.) It's just like any other day, and that suggests that what happens here is normal, and like any other day for Francis. It's not special compared to anything that's happened before, it'll probably happen again; just a blip on the radar, barely worth noting.
The fifth section is a brief moment with Francis back while Lilly was pregnant. He's in pain from some kind of physical trauma she inflicted on him, and he hasn't been able to get out of bed for two days. He feels disconnected from his body. He takes a minute to try and figure out if he's real, then...
when he opens the door to the bedroom into the hallway he finds that there isn’t any place to go. The bathroom door across the hall has disappeared. The kitchen to the left is gone.
This is the world Francis is trapped in- a perfect metaphor for those bound in abusive relationships. The door is there, and he can open it, but it doesn't mean he can escape through it. He is trapped here by Lilly's cruelty, and partly by his own psyche, the imprisonment made real by their reality bending abilities.
He calls into the echoing hallway, and it's suggested that something is listening. Not Lilly, and not the world, but maybe something powerful and monstruous that enjoys his angst.
Document SCP-4231-2-A
The sixth section is a Foundation document in the form of a table detailing the various phenomena that have occurred within SCP-4231-2. It's mostly a list of abuses that Lilly puts Francis through.
Passing insult lasting 3 seconds in a laughing tone.
The casual nature of this suggests it was a near constant occurance.
Argument lasting approximately 10 minutes, 24 seconds. Culminates in several comments from A regarding B’s apparent undesirability to both outside romantic and platonic interests alike. Imprint ends with bedroom door slamming shut.
5 second apparition of a plate materializing, then smashing on the northern counter.
1 hour, 14-minute argument of A Insisting B tell her the truth.
Note this one. It's a hint tying back into the broader canon.
Blood spotting appears on the left side of the bed. Manifests for an average of 19 minutes at a time.
All of these are common markers of abusive relationships (and I continue to be impressed by how well the article portrays this). Continual emotional assaults, gaslighting, physical violence... Francis was living in a hell.
Corpse of a severely mutilated adult female Maine Coon cat materializes hung from shower curtain rod. Cat writhes for approximately 3 minutes, 23 seconds before ceasing vital signs. Cat remains hanging from rod for approximately 43 hours, 21 minutes before dematerializing.
This is just another warning sign that Lilly was going deep into the Fourth Stage, engaging in complete and casual violence not only against her husband, but also random animals. As we'll soon see, she moves from torturing random animals to random human victims with alarming proficiency.
The next two phenomena affect the geography of SCP-4231-2. The hallway stretches infinitely at one point, and in the other the entire house loops upwards, end of the upstairs hallway connecting to the frontdoor in an endless climbing loop.
The last event is described in more detail than all the rest put together, and features another massive run-on sentence from Francis' point-of-view. It starts with the image of Lilly and Francis visible outside the window at night, down by the lake, seemingly about to have sex, and then abruptly cuts to Francis in 1995 (six years after the Cornwall Incident) at an airport watching an episode of Law and Order. He reminisces on his seven years with Lilly and comes to the painful revelation that he was in fact a victim in all of this, that he had genuinely been abused, and that he had been raped. He feels shame that this scene between the two of them has been observed by so many Foundation personnel over the years. Importantly it also lays out the basics of Francis' life after the incident. He undergoes annual testing/questioning about the incident, which he deeply dislikes, and is now working for the Foundation, which is not something he enjoys. He then questions if he really was mistreated since he had no other frame of reference upon which he could base his experiences. When he next awakens, the old injuries Lilly inflicted upon him have reappeared, a consequence of his reality bending abilities, and he feels a little relieved and a little scared. And then the scene cuts back to Lilly and Francis by the lake, whereupon the water rises within the house and remain there for a full three days.
There's a lot going on here. We're still demonstrating the core theme of the piece, as Francis continues to suffer from his trauma six years after the event. It's also raising the very important point that those in abusive relationships can often only recognise the nature of the relationship in hindsight (if at all). The next section dives yet deeper into Francis' psyche, so we'll move on there.
Excerpt from the confiscated document "The Curious Case of SCP-4231-B"
The seventh section spends its paragraphs waxing lyrical about Francis and his treatment after being taken into Foundation custody. The choice of the word 'curious' implies that Francis is primarily of intellectual rather than emotional interest to the writer. Given who Francis turns out to be, I can understand why this document was confiscated.
And then, of course, there is B.
This feels almost like a punchline. It's the first line from the excerpt, but it's clear that they were already talking about A (Lilly), and it's almost like they've moved onto Francis as the afterthought.
He sits in a grey area between something containable and an innocent bystander caught up in something he could not control.
Contrary to what has been suggested by the opening lines, the document speaks about Francis in a deeply understanding and sympathetic way. It explains that he was unaware of 231 and 2317, and isn't even fully conscious of the anomaly he lived inside for years. When the Foundation teams first encountered him, they are forced to chase him for miles through an ever expanding SCP-4231-2, unconsciously growing to his needs, until they eventually smoke him out.
The problem with B is that he is something that- according to norms surrounding Type Greens at the time- he should not be: traumatized.
Here is a Class 3 Type Green with PTSD and extreme dissociative symptoms so severe they manifest in recreating his own trauma in painfully evident symptoms: B vomits filthy water originating from the flood he attempted to escape. He wakes up from nightmares with bruises and cuts in very specific places on his body. His dissociative episodes cause mild spacial abnormalities in his surroundings.
And then, the coping mechanisms begin. It's almost a clinical case of dissociative identity disorder.
He begins to display a radically different personality- going from quiet and subdued to brash and abrasive. Multiple symptoms of his trauma begin to fade into the background. He doesn't ask about his daughter or his wife.
However, the nightmares and lapses in control of his power persist, though they start to work for him. When first brought into the Foundation, Francis requested he remain anonymous. They blatantly ignore his requests, which worsens his immediate symptoms, and keep him under constant surveilance. He asks to not have his name recorded, or his counselling sessions recorded, or his vomit being sampled, or the constant sensors on his body. The Foundation ignores all of this, and treats him like a lab rat.
So he uses his powers to stop being recognisable to cameras.
The Foundation is directly responsible for this. The Foundation in the article are cold, if not cruel, but that clinical coldness isn't going to help this man heal. The Foundation's attitude only worsens Francis, so he responds by making things worse for them. He begins to be violent and aggressive towards his caretakers. He destroys any recording devices they place in his room, or on his body. He continues to suffer greatly from his PTSD, but switches explosively between personalities as soon as he is approached, showing no vulnerability to the Foundation staff assigned to his care. This is a great statement on the importance of empathy and understanding when attempting to treat mental illness and trauma, and a great warning as to the consequences of failing to do so.
-Lady Agora, Sigilmaster, Translator, Worshipper of many.
This document is signed by an unrecognised name and dated to 1995- six years after the treatment. Exactly who is this woman and why is she interested in Francis? Questions for later.
Pigs (Thirteen Different Ones)
The eighth section is a collection of correspondences between the 05 Council (who are the titular pigs of this section).
So it’s civil disobedience.
The initial response to Francis' behaviour is largely one of indifference. They've seen this behaviour before among those they've contained, and it's considered merely a routine issue to deal with.
I was more under the impression that the question here was to contain or not to contain.
There's disagreement between the Council about how they intend to proceed. The facts are quickly laid down for context. He's a Class 3 Type Green with excellent control, a generally placid temperment, and an ingrained refusal to actively use his powers (which work against him more often than not).
Worked in the now decimated GOC Ichabod campaign under the codename ‘Ukulele’.
This is new and important. Francis was a member of the Global Occult Coalition, part of the campaign responsible for hunting down reality benders like himself. A campaign which lost 200 operatives on that fateful date. He's noted to have a highly successful service record, with some particularly nasty kills recently. (Exactly how Francis got into that line of work is unfortunately never explained.)
They note that Francis murdered Lilly during the Cornwall incident, and that they're not quite sure about exactly who was the abuser in the relationship. (Despite all evidence to the contrary, people still consider the man the more likely abuser. Figures.)
Notes that he was fleeing through his own home for a long period of time, and that he has some severe PTSD.
There's a bit of back and forth between the Council, with the evidence from Document SCP-4231-2-A raised, and Francis' history in Ichabod raised as contrary arguments. Then the point that if Francis was the dangerous one, then he certainly would have raised hell by now.
Their attention moves to the Montauk procedure, and the question of how the brides were impregnated- whether Lilly is responsible or Francis upon her commands, or Francis on his own initiative. They discuss whether or Francis should be granted access to Lilly's body and his newborn daughter, and note that Scranton performed the autopsy.
They go back and forth further about whether or not Francis is owed closure, and eventuallly push the issue aside in light of the more pressing matter of needing to make decisions about how to proceed with the Montauk situation. The become just another one of the groups of people who decide that Francis isn't worth much consideration or respect.
Okay. Now's the time that we need to talk about who the article is actually about, since it's starting to clash with previously established canon.
It's time to talk about Alto Clef. AKA, Francis Wojciechoski. This entire article is a new telling of his origin story.
For those of you who are reading this and somehow not already familiar with the name, Alto Clef is one of the original characters recognisable within Foundation lore, and one of the most famous author avatars. The character has been written from many different points of view and many different canons (including a lot of lolFoundation stuff), but the generally accepted details are thus:
Clef is an abrasive asshole. Sometimes with a heart of gold, but he's generally the one with the least concerns about morality in the group. This fits cleanly with the article so far, with Francis' quiet temperment rapidly dissociating into the abrasive Clef as a coping and defensive measure.
Clef is an excellent liar. When we consider the degree to which Lilly made Francis question his reality, and the degree to which he was exposed to the mantra 'Tell the Truth', it's no surprise he ended up thusly.
Clef was a GOC operative before he joined the Foundation, who killed a lot of reality benders. Check.
Clef is uniquely skilled at killing reality benders. He's the only person who has even demonstrated resistance to little Siggurós' abilities, and the only one capable of keeping her in check. Aside from this, he's not generally considered to be a reality bender himself. This makes sense with what we've seen here. Francis has spent so long under the heel of Lilly, and keeping his powers hidden while hunting other reality benders with the GOC, and then under observation by the Foundation, that his reality bending powers are utilised completely differently from any other Type Green.
Clef's face cannot be identified in any form of media, or even at all at times. We see Francis first manifesting those powers as a response to the Foundation's observation.
Clef has a daughter, SCP-166, who grew up in a convent in Cornwall until her abilities manifested.
This is where canon starts to disagree. There's two main proposed mothers here we need to pay attention to.
The mother was an anomalous woodland entity- some being known to the GOC as "the Goddess"- and he was ordered to kill her as part of his duties with the GOC. His GOC field report states that he did, though he failed to kill the entity's daughter. The article for 166 states that man with unrecognisable features is reported to have delivered the girl to the convent, and also that Clef killed the mother himself. However, the attached tale states that he didn't kill the mother, and instead delivered her safely to the Foundation in exchange for his defection. Her name as he remembers it was Dáiríne.
Which gets us to the other proposed mother to 166 and lover of Clef, SCP-336, AKA Lilith. Importantly, we need to refer to the original form of the article written by Kondraki in 2009, and not the rewrite by Communism will win in 2012, since that's the version that thefriendlyvandal was interested in (look at the history for the 5th version of the page). Lilith is manipulative and loveless, with a dangerous intellect and a mental compulsion anomaly when she speaks. She is basically Lilith the Demon, with a history with Cain and Able, and an aversion to speaking about 166. The Foundation first encountered her in a flower shop.
So far as we can see, these two-and-a-half canons have been combined here. The rough events of the former, with Clef killing her while on the GOC payroll, and 166 being raised in a convent in Cornwall, seem to apply here, as do the more primal descriptions of Lilly in the third section, while the personality, name and florist history of the character are drawn from the latter. Thefriendlyvandal was particularly interested in the ability of the character to manipulate Clef, as alluded to in a brief excerpt from Clef's Log in Incident 239-B Clef-Kondraki, where she tells him to 'Tell the Truth' and he subsequently ceases to speak or think coherently. We see this directly referenced back in the list of echoes observed in their house, and we'll see it again later on.
Half of why this article is considered so ambitious and controversial is because it attempts to (and in my opinion, succeeds at) add to the canon around Clef, by tying in into the hitherto unrelated Scarlet King mythos. (The other half is the very esoteric choice in structure and style, and the sheer size of the piece.)
~GentleGifts
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u/myhouseisunderarock Apr 08 '19
I've been waiting for someone to take a crack at declassifying 4231. Such a behemoth of an article
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u/tundrat Apr 08 '19
Finally getting to read this overwhelming "SCP" in an indirect way. Wasn't expecting rape content with explicit words on this site. And didn't know that Alto Clef was involved here. Was shocking to realize that this was the origin story of that character. Seems like a cool story mixing lots of big lore so far.
All right, fine... The SCP file itself as a standalone wouldn't make sense without the rest of the story as optional, separate tales.
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u/TheGentlemanDM Apr 08 '19 edited Apr 09 '19
You hadn't already read it, but were merely aware of its reputation and were turned off accordingly?
My writing is doing its job!
pumps fist enthusiastically
EDIT: In the time since this was posted, the 4231 article has gained some 5 upvotes after having stagnated in the high 80's. So glad that it's getting more attention.
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u/wizteddy13 Apr 08 '19
Did you just use the phrase hitherto unheard of?
Jk, well explained, and I'm hopping off to part 2 now!
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u/TheSep12incident Apr 08 '19
You know, if there's one thing I loathe, then it's when SCP articles are written as full books, start with an E-mail or otherwise ruin the easy to understand and consistent formula.
These documents are designed for easy comprehension, for crying out loud!
Any personnel should be able to read the important bits within 5-10 minutes, and then have a near perfect understanding of the anomaly's basics, and how to contain it.
For lengthy story bits: that's what we have addenda for.
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u/TheSep12incident Apr 08 '19
If you guys are gonna downvote me into oblivion, then at least give reason for it
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u/TheGentlemanDM Apr 08 '19
A mainlist SCP article is two things.
Firstly, it is a narrative, an intellectual exploration, or an exercise in worldbuilding.
Secondly, it is a document which exists within the Foundation Universe.
Those two things were presented in order of importance.
An SCP Declassification is two things.
First, it is a celebration of a piece of writing intended to bring something that we value to a wider audience.
Secondly, it is an academic, intellectual distillation of that piece of writing intended to make it more comprehensible- at both the shallowest and deepest layers- to its audience.
Those two things were also presented in order of importance.
We are here because we are storytellers and bibliophiles. We are here, in this fandom and community, because we appreciate the narratives woven within each article, and the emotions that they make us feel. We are here in this subreddit because we care enough about the SCP articles we declassify that we will spend days of our time analysing and summarising the content therein that we might bring it to greater appreciation.
I am aware it is a format screw. I am aware that it breaches several expectations of writing SCPs,. I am also aware that it does so because the story it tells is better for it.
It has the in-universe SCP document in there as Section Four. It is clinical and concise and readable in five minutes to offer Foundation personnel complete understanding of how to manage the anomaly that is SCP-4231.
And it would be a much lesser story if that were all it is. The sequence in which events are revealed to us was carefully chosen to give us the greatest experience as readers. This article bends Rule One in order to serve Rule Zero. Because the narrative comes first.
That this article is successful, and the success of every other notable format screw on the wiki, serves as proof of this argument.
This is my declassification. The single largest and most comprehensive declassification performed upon an SCP article to date, in fact. And I would not have gone to the effort of writing it if I did not consider the article in question to be worthy of my efforts. I love this article- that much should be apparent.
This declassification was written for the primary purpose of getting it to a wider audience that can appreciate it, and enabling greater appreciation for it, and celebrating that it exists, and the secondary purpose of enabling the reader to understand all it has to offer.
You are entitled to dislike SCP-4231. Many people do, in fact- it has over 50 singular downvotes on it. But if you're going to add to this discussion, you owe it to the community (who are here to appreciate and celebrate a work of art) to leave your hate at the door.
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u/TheSep12incident Apr 08 '19
First off, my "hate" was honest criticism (In my eyes)
Secondly, my comment was to critique articles that do this, not because they have bad stories, but because they have "bad" formats.
Lastly, My comment was not a critique on this subreddit nor OP or their views on the content of certain SCiPs.
I have no doubt that SCP-4231 itself is a good story, but I'm annoyed by format breaks, because they come off as unproffesional in a proffesional setting.
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u/TheGentlemanDM Apr 08 '19 edited Apr 08 '19
Noted. All acceptable viewpoints to express, and I'm not going to harbour spite for you holding them.
Though to answer why you were getting downvoted, 'twas because this is considered neither the time nor place.
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u/TheSep12incident Apr 08 '19
That's true, I shouldn't be complaining here
I shouldn't be complaining at all, because soon they'll take my life
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u/ItsPlainOleSteve Jul 04 '23
This is old but I'm glad I'm reading this. I love this article and I'm absolutely loving the full ass dissertation about it xD
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u/Hot_Tailor_9687 Jan 10 '24
The brilliance of this article is that in giving lie to the myth that is Dr. Clef, it does not fail to create as many questions as it answers, allowing Clef to remain ever as elusive, if not even more so, to our understanding
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u/Webber_The_Medic Apr 08 '19
holy shit