The following is an interview of SCP Wiki author LordStonefish, conducted by PixelatedHarmony over Discord.

Q: How did it feel to see 3999 blow up and become a hugely important and influential article?

A: Odd. It was personal in a way that feels more and more remote as time goes on. That fourth wall breaking section was essentially completely true, but on the other hand the suicidal depression was a couple of months removed and so the whole thing was kind of written as a prankish thumb of the nose at the contest a little bit, an attempt to one-up the attempts at horror by making the audience go, “what if the author was actually in danger/crazy/insane” because I knew that that 1. Hadn’t been done yet, and 2. Would scare the pants off people in a very deep and real way. And it worked! I’m still happy when people get mad at it being an indulgent cry for help because that means it worked even on them!

But I find myself less and less interested in its impact on the SCP community because the whole point was to turn the first three series I liked on their head, and so to see the stories become a lot of that didn’t interest me quite as much.

What does make me happy is the impact on people. A lot of folks have latched on to Talloran in a way that still feels really cool. People have made fan art, music, written fanfiction, all of that is wonderful and I love.

Q: How do you feel about the influence of that article vs the article you called your magnum opus, SCP-4012?

A: Rather put out, now that you mention it. 3999 is basically a character study and a provocation. 4012 is messy, yes, but to me it has more to say. It’s an attempt to tie together some of the more outre parts of the wiki’s mythos with both a detailed and earnest exploration of what the afterlife might be like. I know that sounds pretentious but it really was a swing to put all the Big Questions in an article at once. I researched a lot of accounts of near death experiences to create the end of the log, specifically incorporating details from Dr. Eben Alexander’s book Proof of Heaven, which is probably bogus but fascinating cosmic horror nonetheless. I composed music for it. I edited a short video. It’s a sensory experience intended to overwhelm you, and in the end I find it the scariest thing I’ve written. The fact that it got basically a golf clap and confusion with no follow up (no amazing art, no TV tropes entry, no reddit declassifier, nothing) is still very frustrating. It ended up reinforcing a lot of notions I have about the wiki userbase’s taste.

I feel like I kind of already did the sensory overload thing with 3999, but Talloran is more of a character than the D-Class or Command in 4012, so I guess that was easier to connect with. I also have very specific guesses as to why people there don’t care very much about the horror presented in 4012. The kinds of people who upvote SCP stories will probably relate more to teenage anxiety, addiction, depression, and parasocial bullshit than the fears presented in 4012.

Q: Do you still feel the same way about 4012?

A: Yes. I still 100% feel that is the most complex and ambitious thing I’ve published

Q: How was the writing process for the two articles which are staking out such different spaces similar, or more dissimilar?

A: 3999 was written in a fever pitch of about two days after a couple of ideas fell through. The meta twist was added after an addled brainstorm on how to shock the reader more. 4012 was conceived in its totality during a hike through the Boothbay Botanical Gardens in midcoast Maine, and the “garden” part of the story’s afterlife is essentially a description of the place. The rest was drafted over and over on an iPad in the car during the all-day drive down from Maine the next day. Elements were salvaged from a failed 001 proposal, a video-based ARG called David Lynch’s Proposal that sunk me a couple hundred dollars in filming costs. So the article was basically much more carefully thought out and planned than 3999.

Q: What was the writing process for 4302 like, was it anything like those two?

A: The title came first. I pitched the title with a very different story to MaliceAforethought months ago, but they never wrote it. The idea came while I was working on a terrible student film and had to babysit the car and equipment in an abandoned parking lot while the crew ran home for batteries. Spooky place. I took the photos and spent the next day cranking it out. Most of my stuff is written that way: An experience, a dream, or a vision, then a fevered getting it down on paper. The actual prose process is quick and fleet, 4012 aside.

Side note: someone in the comments of 4302 described my work as follows: “An article that’s intentionally underexplained and sloppily written is still underexplained and sloppily written.” And I say with all my heart that guy is a complete philistine.

Q: What’s your approach to writing containment procedures when you’re writing in the SCP format?

A: On your question, Hippo taught me that you need to have them preview the story, act as a teaser. I try to realistically consider what might be done to suppress this thing, and drop some hints here and there, so for the most part I find many containment procedures who don’t do either of those things very boring

Q: Does it become formulaic or something that’s closer to the core of the writing process?

A: Let’s just say I’m thankful for Creative Commons and copy/paste

Q: How would you describe how the SCP format of containment fiction has changed over the time you’ve been in the SCP writing community?

A: There’s been a distinct move towards epic queer fantasy as opposed to tightly contained horror, which I don’t mind from a reading standpoint, but from an optics standpoint isn’t great. I think 8,000 word epic tales about the Wanderer’s Library or a trans ghost in a computer are not going to be widely read outside the wiki and only foster a sense of increasingly insularity. There’s definitely less of an emphasis on clinical language, which I actually like as that was all a weird sham anyway, but at the cost of precision. I often feel like, some authors aside, people don’t really do much specific research much any more, stuff feels based on stereotypes and can be quite generic, see Three Portlands being just downtown Portland Oregon with wizards. Part of what give certain articles their jolt is their odd versimilitude, which is why I hold that SCP-1981 is a jawdroppingly effective article. In the time since I’ve been writing I’ve seen a lot of that shift towards more the conventions of regular fiction, and even of fanfiction, which unfortunately can invite mediocrity.

Q: Has mediocrity been invited?

A: When people are more interested in writing about the meaningless miniutae of internet culture than anything else, because it “reflects their own experience,” I gotta say yes. I think the climate of the wiki certainly allows people to feel small. It’s addictive, a built-in audience of supportive friends. There’s no need to publish elsewhere, or even to try, so with few exceptions a lot of writers on the wiki who are very talented stay there. There’s that climate of envy, the creeping moralism that dictates that the more pathetic you can be, the higher ground you have. This in my estimation is why they have so much trouble running the site, dealing with the childish bitterness of upvote envy, the trolls, the obnoxious political radicals, the traumatized people who don’t how to correctly hand out justice. It’s all so insular. I saw this sort of bizarre celebrity worship when it comes to me, trolls moan and whine about how I get all the upvotes, when i fact I have one popular article and no one on the wiki is at all a celebrity worth discussing, they’re all just regular people living boring and unimportant lives. That’s the big thing, nothing on the wiki is important, or feels important. I wouldn’t say the quality of writing has declined, because it’s actually relatively consistent, but the sorts of people now who gravitate towards the wiki have different aspirations and goals than the sorts who were there in your time and earlier. There’s a reason the old series I articles get widely read and seen. Mediocrity has been invited there as it has been invited to communities across the internet, because everything is blown out of proportion.