 As of this video's recording, SCP-049 is the fourth highest-rated article on the site. To say that it's popular would be a massive understatement. The article itself, though, leaves a lot of things unexplained, and frankly, it's changed quite a lot in the last year and a half, so let's talk about how you're probably wrong about SCP-049. SCP-049 is a humanoid entity roughly 1.9 meters in height, which bears the resemblance of a medieval plague doctor. While SCP-049 appears to be wearing the thick robes and the ceramic mask indicative of that profession, the garments instead seem to have grown out of SCP-049's body over time, and are now nearly indistinguishable from whatever form is beneath them. X-rays indicate that despite this, SCP-049 does indeed have a humanoid skeletal structure beneath its outer layer. That's the first paragraph of the article, and it tells us a lot about the object itself, but it doesn't really tell us much about how the article came to be, or how it evolved over time. See, SCP-049 was first written at the end of 2009, and it gained a bit of traction in the community. It wasn't super popular, like some of the other series 1 articles, but it wasn't particularly unpopular, and its first 6 years, the article really only managed a rating of just under 400. That early popularity would likely be fairly attributed to sources, first and foremost, SCP-049 has been an SCP containment breach for over 7 years, and it's been voiced by the Vulgan for at least that long. Independent of the game, the Vulgan is a fairly influential and popular SCP YouTuber, and he's been voicing that character on his channel during that time as well. So much so in fact that I've actually done SCP-049's voice once or twice on this channel, and the comments were along the lines of it didn't sound enough like Vulgan's version, so it wasn't a good version. But these have combined to keep SCP-049 popular for many years, and around the middle of last year, the article was rated at just a little bit over a thousand upvotes. Now since then, the article has achieved a meteoric rise in popularity, it's close to 2400 upvotes now, so what's changed since last year? Well in December of 2017, DJ Cactus, another prolific writer on the SCP Wiki, wrote a blog post on his own website titled DJ Cactus Deconstruction No. 1, The Pestilence of SCP-049, and in that article he went through the explanations of how it did and didn't work, and the critique was harsh but fair, and for a while that's all it was, a critique. But Gabriel Jane, the original author of SCP-049 is not wholly inactive, he never really has been. I mean there have been long periods where he's been gone from the site, but he's been in and out over the years so often that getting a hold of him isn't entirely impossible. Now I could talk more about the interactions of Gabriel Jane and DJ Cactus, or I could let you listen to what Jade has to say on the topic. I remember Cactus was working on like his version of it for a while. If I read an article that he put out on his on his site, the Deconstruction of 049. Right, yes. Yeah, that, and I just remember reading it, and at this time, mind you, I'd been away from the site for a better part of a decade. I had no idea who Cactus was other than some dick that didn't like my article. However, he brought up some cogent points, and I can only tell he had a passion for the anomaly, even if that passion at the time took the form of this sucks and needs to burn, but it seemed like if there were a person to go to to say, hey, let's fix what's wrong with this, it would be the guy pointing out everything wrong with it. So I did that, and it just turns out that Cactus is in fact a fucking guy that apparently writes a lot or something, I don't know. What in the current rewrite do you like the most, we'll say, and we'll say in comparison to the old version as well. Right, of course. I really, really, really love the extended interactions he gets with people, and that's the main thing that was, I want to say missing from the first one was was a chance for him to interact and explain himself beyond just I am secure, you know. Right, and he becomes a character instead of a plot device, I get you. Exactly, and that's actually what I really enjoy about it most anymore is really the law. It's like those are the what to come for nowadays, just watching this person have this utter breakdown and kill this guy, convince himself that no, had to be done, he's, you know, sick, you know, and then leaving us sitting here wondering, you know, is he completely out of his fucking off his rocker or, you know, are we, you know, dying and we can't tell. Right. And I don't know who did the voice acting for those logs, but I think whoever did Dr. Ham did a really good job. Yeah, Dr. Ham, boy, he sounds, uh, I will say I didn't realize that the voice actor for Dr. Ham did his voice Intel said voice actor told me as such. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, whoever it is, though, handsome devil. I do like that when I did that, I'm going to come out and say I do like when I did that, though, most of the people that I was like, what do you think of this? And they're like, who is this? And I'm like, it's me. And they're like, what? Which is a good feeling. You know, that's how you know you're doing a good job with your voice acting. Yeah, the character definitely has this very, very sort of British kind of to his rights. Yeah, exactly. And that's just so disconnected from the way that you don't like talk that it's just one of those things unless you're listening specifically for it. Yeah. Once you know, you can kind of catch it, I think, like I listen to it sometimes and I'm like, is that me? Yeah, that's me. But like if you're listening, you have to listen pretty closely. Oh, yeah, you have to know that you're listening or you're yeah, you can catch that slight slight nasal tone to it. And you're like, ah, that's it. Yes. Yeah. Okay. So you you like the logs because it, like you said, it makes it makes them more of a character in less of a in less of a in less of a monster manual entry. That's fair. In the end, the article is much better for the changes. And the rating doesn't lie. Not only has it brought in a huge amount of new readers and upvotes, but a huge number of extant writers also reversed their own downvotes when the changes came out. And since I had Jade in a conversation about its most popular work, I thought I'd ask him a few more questions. We talked briefly about the origins of SCP 049 as well. So do you understand how wrong you are? Or do I need to explain it to you? Well, here's here's my take. Anyone that having read the article that thinks that I knew what the hell I was talking about at any point during the writing of the article or of the rewrite is completely out of their minds. It was a fever dream from start to finish. And you are ashamed of yourself, right? Well, only only the same kind of shame that follows like a really intense session of vomiting. Like, you know, like, holy, that was in me. Like, it's a little bit of pride, but also shame. Yeah, like, how did that come out of me? Am I, you know, am I still, am I technically still human at this point? You know, some questions. More seriously, though. Just because I could riff on this all day. What were you thinking when you first wrote SCP 049? I know it was a really long time ago. And yeah, this site was really early. But right, this is back in the damn day. And honestly, and this shows my unrepentant weeb side, I suppose. The original bare bones exploding zombies version of 049, which is what he did back in the day, was my send up to fucking Datara from Naruto. Changed Clay to Zombies and basically changed nothing else about the character. That didn't go over very well at all. So I guess to really answer your question, I don't, in any manner of honesty, recall what my true thought process was at the time. And I was a young idiot. I'm not going to pretend I had some grand old career. It was just like, this is cool. I like it. Right. And I, you know, at the time was clever enough to figure out a way of couching everything in enough. Well, maybe it is, maybe it isn't that it worked for the time. And I mean, that's, that's, at the end of the day, what the character is, is a fun character to use to ask the questions of, well, what if he's right, or what if he's crazy and, you know, I feel like it sets off, could set off, you know, a lot of stories, what have you. It's fun to work. It's a fun idea to work with, but it doesn't have, it can't have an answer or it stops being a fun idea to work with. What exactly is the pestilence? In the article, SCP 049 is obsessed with curing some unnamed and undefined pestilence. And I've always thought the article makes sense from a narrative perspective with how it treats that element. That mystery is more valuable to keep reader interest than showing you what the pestilence is, would be. But from an in-universe perspective, SCP 049's evasive answers would sort of be a red flag to an organization like the SCP Foundation. And I can't imagine why they're just ignoring it. Like, they're just like, hey, what is the pestilence? And he's like, you don't know, how can, how can you not know it's all around us? Instead of going, yeah, okay, that's great. You said that last time, but what is it really? Let's assume I don't know and just tell me. They just go, oh, okay, let's move on to the next question. Which bugs me a little bit. I feel like the SCP Foundation would have done a lot to understand what the core driving principle of this very dangerous SCP object is. But I also talked to Jade about this exact question. If you personally had to make a decision, and let's say death of the author, things change, whatever. What would you say is the pestilence? So I kind of don't want to say, because for when it's dumb. So what I'm actually going to do is I'm going to cheat and steal a very awesome theory that I read a while back. And that is that the pestilence is actually the full blown, I forget what SCP and its number it is, but it's the, you don't really die, but you just are stuck in your body for eternity to suffer after life. What happens after? What happens after, yeah. Basically what happens after is the pestilence and his cure prevents you from ever dying and experiencing that. Even if you answer the question, it doesn't nail you down to anything specific. What do you think personally the pestilence is? Anymore, I don't know that I could give an honest answer to that. Back when I originally pinned it, perhaps something like, I think my original working thing that I was trying to get with was it being some manner of lack of understanding or of some kind of ignorance. In a way, yeah. But that, see, and that's the problem with boiling it down to a single thing is it sounds dumb no matter what it is. The fun is in what's not said. But since you were young, I know for a fact you had an idea in your head of what it was. Well, I've had several different ideas that I had over the years of what it is and I've been very certain of each one each time and I've eventually come to being like, no, that's stupid as hell. Yeah, it's like that Don McLean answer. What does American pie mean? It means I'll never have to work again. Right. I don't want to take up any more of your time. This is just a little short and formal thing. So it was great talking to you and thank you for coming on. I think that people will quite enjoy this little interview. Yeah, man, it was a blast to talk with you. Anyway, that's that. What do you think the pestilence is? And does this change your mind at all? Let me know in the comments down below. 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