 This episode of Object Class Explained is made in partnership with SCP Declassified. If you're interested in the full declassification by Blazing Trail 42 of the SCP discussed in this episode, or any other of their declassifications, check out the SCP Declassified subreddit. Links will be in the description below. This episode was made with the support of patrons like Zach Spuds, The Sherm, Roshna Mathias, Lurker GG, and viewers like you. Fear names. Names of power and identity. Others can use names as weapons. Names are a hook that can be used to track you across the planes. Remain nameless, and you shall be safe. Planescape Torment There are numerous times in ancient folklore when someone's true name is spoken and it gives the speaker power over the one named. Perhaps the most familiar story is that of Rumpelstiltskin, where a woman is given certain gifts by the eponymous imp in exchange for a first child, and she is only freed from her promise if she can guess his name. And once she knows it, she has the power to banish him forever. This story is likely related to the ancient concepts of the changeling where a fairy comes in the night and replaces a baby in the cradle with another. And some scholars say this is only possible in those myths because the child has just been born and has no name. So what are true names and fairies have to do with what we're talking about today? Well, everything. Today, we're talking about SCP-4000. Taboo. Overhead, without any fuss, the stars were going out. Arthur C. Clarke, the nine billion names of God. SCP-4000 is, honestly, an incredibly simple story and anomaly. And yes, I will be referring to it by its proper name for the entirety of this video. If you want something that does a better job of following the in-universe rules of the SCP, you're going to want to check out the reading I did on this channel last week. In the meantime, let me explain what I mean when I call this almost 4,500-word article simple. Take a look at this. It's a listing of all the rules and protocols regarding SCP-4000, and it's over one-fifth of the article's length. But you don't need to know almost any of it. We can condense most of the plot's significant parts down to don't refer to SCP-4000, anything inside of SCP-4000, or allow anyone inside SCP-4000 itself to refer to you by the same name twice. If you break that rule, weird things might happen, including possibly the switching of identities. There are other parts here that are fun world-building, like accepting all gifts with two open palms, or apologizing in bowing when you have to say no to a request, or not eating anything offered to you, but still accepting the gifts. These are some classic fairy tropes, and they really do help flesh out the world. But for every line like those, there's a listing of, like, three injury protocols, depending on if you're a first, last, or middle-born child, which are important to fairy lore, but not really all that important to this SCP. Again, the consequence of using or being called the same name twice is the most important thing to remember. This is incidentally, while there's colored text everywhere. Each instance of that is where the writer is describing something inside SCP-4000, the object itself, or the entities inside it. It allows the reader and the writer to better understand that while it uses different ways to describe the object, they are all describing the same thing. Everything green describes SCP-4000 itself, for instance. Everything brown describes the path you have to walk to get from the entrance to the exit. Everything blue describes the entryway, and there are more colors than that, like the red of the entity in the final log. This is all structured, though, around the central theme of the piece. Names have power here. And that theme is, really, the only thing you need to understand for the final twist in the final log to hit home. If I'm going to tell a real story, I'm going to start with my name. Kendrick Lamar. There's a whole incident log set up before the rule listing that really drives home the consequences. Agent Ethan uses the word Mercy more than once in describing an entity inside the anomaly, and his name becomes Agent Ethan-Mercy-Mercy-Mercy-Mercy. Harvey Mansfield's name becomes Desk Desk, and he's found trying to write on his Harvey Mansfield. Michael Ashley Vincent screws up and describes a house of two of his colleagues, and they're described as nameless later in the log without pause or curiosity by most of the writers or readers. They just never had names now. This helps set up for the final interview log between Dr. Jaypers and an entity from Inside SCP-4000. This entity is somewhat rabbit-like and definitely has a rabbit's head. It's quite polite and forthcoming with Dr. Jaypers, and over a period of three encounters, Dr. Jaypers gets to know it a little bit better. But really, Encounter 3 is where all the interesting bits are. First of all, there's backstory here in the form of additional reading. The phrase The War Against the Factory is actually a hyperlink to a tale called SCP-001-05. And once you've read that bit, you'll find the line there to be somewhat significant to the story this article is telling. 1911 was when it all went wrong. Things, we call them fairies, an entire race of things living beside us. They could look the same as you or I. Now it's at this point that I can mention a recurring detail I left out earlier. The mention of iron. SCP-4000 and the entities inside it really do not seem to like iron at all. And that follows from the next line from the backstory tale. The only obvious difference was an allergy to iron. So if somehow you hadn't picked up on all the mythological underpinning, this is an explicit note to you that SCP-4000 is the home of fairies, and the entities inside it are fairies. That includes the people, the objects, everything. And a long running undercurrent throughout the article finally pays off here. The rabbit entity switches places with Dr. Jaypers, who perhaps more accurately it takes his name and his identity and then leaves SCP-4000. Now this has been a long time coming actually. Desk Desk and Harvey Mansfield is the first time we really get an idea that some sort of switch could happen. There's hints early on in the description. The development of non-human physical characteristics among exposed subjects such as feathers and pollen sacs and extreme iron deficiency in exposed subjects with an absence of expected negative side effects are tucked into the list of possible consequences for using consistent nomenclature relating to SCP-4000. Now that we watched the rabbit creature call Dr. Jaypers fellow scholar twice, and Dr. Jaypers answer to that name, and then immediately suffer some sort of personality shift along with the rabbit creature, we can understand what's happening here. Personnel aren't developing feathers and pollen sacs, they're switching identities with entities that already have those features and they don't have an extreme iron deficiency. They're just fairies and iron is poisoned to them, it's not in their systems. And again, even if you miss all of this, the SCP still holds your hand one last time in the SCP's very last line. It was initially theorized that Dr. Jaypers was exposed to an anomalous influence on his physiology during his most recent mission. However, thorough analysis showed no genetic abnormalities in the fur he'd shed on his expedition gear. Anyway, that's it. Hope this was helpful. 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