 Ahoy, ahoy, and welcome to the channel. I'm Dr. Sumerian, not a real doctor, and today we're going to talk about something that is so important that I used to end videos by saying it way, way back, maybe three or four years ago, when this was more of a podcast than a YouTube channel. I used to end the episodes by saying, and remember, there is no canon. Or was it I started the episodes? I need to go back and listen to some of regardless. It was a central fixture of the actual, the creations that I was making at the time, the podcast, that's the right word. And I've done videos before that have detailed what that means. But more recently, I've started to come to the conclusion that a lot of people still don't understand what that really comes to mean. And the reason I stopped saying it was less that it's not valid and that it's a little misleading to say there is no canon because, of course, there are cannons on the SCP wiki. The phrase, there is no canon is quite old. It started, you know, short, probably shortly after the fishmonger debacle where they used to be an interconnected single sort of cannon on the SCP wiki because that's the standard for fiction. And we'll get into why that's actually part of the problem later. But that's sort of the standard for fiction. So when the wiki was started, the idea was that there was a single interconnected canon. But then an author came along who just demanded that their stuff be taken off the site. And other people who had built stuff around that person's articles were then left orphaned. And so what was one canon fractured? And then from there, everyone just decided screw it. Every article is its own thing. We don't want to have to deal with that again. And that sort of early problem with just a few people has now ballooned since there are literally almost, oh, gosh, I think with tails and Geo eyes and SCPs combined probably over 10,000 articles in the SCP wiki. And in a sense, every single individual article is its own canon. And that's the more important thing to say. Instead of there is no cannon, think of each individual article as having its own cannon. And of course, there are cannons as well. So this is another reason why there is no cannon can be misleading. There actually are cannons on the SCP wiki. There's quite a few of them. Two, three, maybe even four dozen cannons now exist on the SCP wiki. I've helped create of four or five and been personally like the driving force behind the creation of three. But for the main lane cannon of the SCP wiki, there are some standards for what makes what it what makes an SCP an SCP, for example. And they're very limited. It's there are. There is an SCP foundation. That SCP foundation is involved in the cover up and containment of anomalies and anomalies are essentially magical or unexplainable things that need to be contained or it need to be contained for either the safety of humanity or for just the preservation of the idea that they're the idea in the world that they're that magic doesn't exist. So out. And by the way, individual cannons that I was just talking about do up in some of the like that's their whole conceit is that they up in some of those conventions. So that's the important part. Like that's what differentiates them from a standard SCP story. Unfounded is the greatest example of that because it's about an SCP foundation universe where the foundation wasn't created or broken masquerade, which is about an SCP foundation universe where everyone knows that magic exists. And so those cannons of those cannons on the SCP wiki are are are created as exceptions to what is the baseline cannon. Now, what is it about the SCP universe that is difficult to grasp for new or even I'm going to say this with no sense of superiority in my heart, younger fans. And that's the idea that almost every piece of fiction you consume has an internally consistent lore. And a canon as it were, which is what an internally consistent lore is. The every story has to meet at least a minimum requirement of standardization with the overall medium that it's in. Let's take a look at, you know, the Marvel Cinematic Universe, because it's maybe one of the best examples and not. Well, the best example. I don't know best is the word that a lot of people might dispute. I don't dispute, but it's one of the best examples in modern fiction of an internally consistent universe. Now, there are some and this is the important part. Like there are some inconsistencies. I can't off the top of my head name any. But I know I've seen, you know, you've seen YouTube videos about logic plot holes and logic flaws, but they get the majority of things correct. Like the hometown, I don't know what it is in the MCU. But if they listed a hometown for Tony Stark, it's not going to change. Once it's set in a movie, that's it. It is fact, five movies, 10 movies, 20 movies down the line. That is Tony Stark's hometown. But if you look at someone in like, we'll just say Dr. Sumerian, because that's the character that I originated. His hometown is not defined and will never be fully defined. In the stories I write, I like to think he comes from Alabama, but I have written stories where he comes from somewhere else, where he immigrated in from Crimea. There are also plenty of stories where he is straight up, well, not straight up, but he's the son of two Ukrainian immigrants. Say they kind of, if you think about it, they do evolve around the same idea, but they're not exactly the same. But other people have written stories and not a lot of people go into the background of Dr. Sumerian. But if other people wrote stories and he was from Oregon or Canada or. Or Saudi Arabia, it wouldn't matter because there is no canonical definitive single representation of Dr. Sumerian. Dr. Sumerian is a more nebulous character that meets certain that fits certain archetypes and requirements. And if you use them, great. And if you don't use them, you don't have to. There are plenty of universes with Dr. Sumerian. I should say plenty of articles where Dr. Sumerian doesn't exist. There are plenty of articles where the ethics committee doesn't exist. The SCP Wiki is a wide and open space. It does not follow the same rules as standard fiction. And this is difficult for especially younger fans to understand and not just younger fans. And I'm not saying this is a sense of like, you know, immaturity. It's not. It's just a matter of not being exposed to enough fiction of a particular type. If everything in your life as an internally consistent lore. Why would you expect anything different from the next piece of fiction that you consume? So when so many shows up in a discord server, which has happened a lot recently, or an IRC chat or just in person is talking about like, why do you think the old man is the way he is? Well, that's a question that assumes the the existence of the old man. And you can actually answer that pretty easily. But in the back of your head, you're like, well, in my version of the SG universe, the old man doesn't exist. Or why is it that the SCP 682 is completely indestructible? Again, that assumes a lot in your version or my version of the SCP universe. It might not be. So when you ask that question, you're asking a question that not everyone agrees with the underlying assumptions about. That's the problem in living in it. Well, not living in writing and reading in a universe where there is no canonical representation of anything, no single canonical representation of anything. What you have to do is when you frame your question and this is not this is not conducive to easy conversation. When you frame your question, you have to say in article X, why is why? That's confusing when I say, why is why in universe X? What is the reason that Y is Z? Yeah, that'll work fine, fine, fine. I made it more complicated, but it's still, I think, easier to understand when I say it that way, because if you don't tell me which article you're basing your things around, I have no idea because and a lot of articles do interconnect, by the way. But if I write in, let's say if 682, off the top of my head, I don't remember if it does or not. But if 682 is core article, no, it doesn't, for sure. It's in the testing log. But if 682 is core article, it's technically separate from its testing log, in a sense. But even if it wasn't and you consider them the same thing, just because an SCP shows up in SCP 682's testing log doesn't mean that that article. So let's use 343 as an example. 682, canonically, in its article, has interacted with SCP 343. That does not mean that in its article, that 343 has interacted with 682, period. If a tail connects two articles together, that's great. It means that they are connected by that tail in the sense that that tail has them connected to each other. And one of the articles might even rewrite a little bit. To change it so that it is connected to the other one. But if only one of them does it, then the other article is not strictly speaking, automatically connected by this thread. That's not how the SCP wiki works, because there isn't a single internally consistent lore. Anyway, let's just end it there before it gets much longer. If you enjoyed the video, hit the subscribe button and then hit the notification bell next to that so you're notified when I upload new videos. And then head on over to patreon.com forward slash D. Cimmerian and pledge at any level like everybody here on the screen already has, including Doc. Wow. That's an old patron that came back that suddenly I was about to list his name off again. He hasn't been pledged above $10 for quite some time. Yeah, that's right. I know my patrons somewhat personally. But anyway, Centuriki was pledged $100 and MC Casimo was pledged at $50. It's nice to know that I'm not alone out here and I will see you all again on Tuesday, maybe Thursday.