6 Tomes in ~5 Years---Thanks For All The Joy and Wonder, SCP Foundation

Staring at the ``Thematic Projects'' section of my reading list should reveal a big omission: the entire series of the SCP Foundation is no longer present.

Well, I've completed the series, and hence it is no longer there.

Just for records purposes, I got them from this location in the SCP Foundation website, specifically under ``Foundation Tomes''. The date of the dump was in 2017-02-01 (in ePub), which I converted into the Kindle-friendly Mobi format on 2017-02-20 (incidentally, the best Mobi format reader on the PC isn't SumatraPDF nor FBReader---it is unironically the Kindle program for PC). The astute will realise that there are twelve tomes in total, while my last read tome in the last read list is only Tome 6.

The absolutely anally retentive will observe that SCPs have gone all the way into the 6000--6999 range now, while Tome 6 stopped at SCP2999.

So what in the blazes do I mean?

It means...

1. I have indeed read 6 of the 12 tomes and have called it a day.
2. The 6 tomes covered till SCP2999.
3. I am wholly satisfied with the fun I derived from reading these 6 tomes of nearly 3000 SCP articles.

The remaining 6 tomes from the original dump were more of fan-fiction based on/around the implied world where the SCPs exist in---they lack the kind of faux seriousness the way the SCP article is structured (for the confused, an SCP article shares similar structure to other technical documents like MSDS or Material Safety Data Sheet). That official-looking structure encourages concise writing, with specific characteristics elucidated as clearly as a technical report would, but without sacrificing the kind of science-fiction creativity that is needed.

The fan-fiction stuff were more prose-y, and the quality is all over the place. I didn't read SCP articles for the story, I read them for the kind of Lovecraftian ethos of trying to secure, contain, and protect these barely understandable Eldritch objects, delivered in as pithy a way as possible.

And after 3000+ of them, it's enough. There is definitely a gradual decline in the quality after a while, and this is talking about what's within these 3000+ articles. It's kinda what happens to most world-building situations---the initial works are always the most interesting for the novelty, but as time goes on, each new work is always trying to make itself stand out just a bit more than being mediocre, but they can barely succeed just due to how cramped the space is for exploration after the initial burst of creative energy.

SCP articles are a guilty pleasure, and I loved them when they weren't blown up into this massive 7000+ articles thing. And so I keep them at where I love them the most, and gently put away the rest.

The SCP Foundation, what it stood/stands for, and the strange, scary, and sometimes horrifying objects that they try to secure, contain, and protect, will always be there. Perhaps in the future, when the itch strikes again, when what is old becomes anew, I might just see if I can stand to read the next 3000+ SCP articles.

But for now, this thematic project is done.

Till the next update.