 Oh this is way too funny to be a mainlister. Have you thought about turning it into a joke article? Far too often that particular criticism is leveled at maybe slightly sillier mainlist articles. I personally think it's a bit of a problem and today we're going to talk about it. So let's explain why you're probably wrong about joke SCP articles. There are many different kinds of jokes and there are many different kinds of mainlist articles. There's nothing wrong with taking an idea and turning it into a joke article and there's nothing wrong with taking a joke and turning it into a mainlister. However you're going to run into people all the time on the SCP wiki and this is not just with regards to joke articles but that's what we're talking about today but you're always going to run into people who feel like they know what the SCP wiki should be about and sometimes you're going to get something I like to call soft gatekeeping where you're like oh no no this is definitely allowed to exist. I just want it to be in a place where I don't have to see it which is generally how people treat funny SCP articles because most of the people who say that are the kind that believe that the mainlist should only contain serious articles that examine things seriously. A lot of these people are saying people who will tell you they've got to be scary they've got to be serious. Without really giving you a reason why that is that's just the version of the SCP wiki they have in their heads and so whenever anything runs against that idea they immediately balk and they want to change things and they want to complain about it. Unless you really trust someone's opinion really very rarely should you listen to what they think something should be and of course there's the problem of trying to limit the types of articles that can show up on the main list. Taking something and saying that it's too funny for the main list is to me mind boggling because what you're saying is that it's something is too good at what it does to be on the main list. Like the whole point of the SCP wiki is to have good writing. Comedy is a type of writing and I say this is someone well I'm not gonna say that I have a particular amount of experience with this I do tend to write things that are a little bit funnier than the average scp article not because I'm necessarily particularly good at humor though I think I am but mainly because it's just my style is a little bit less serious and I've done serious main list articles but I tend to like them a little bit less than the other stuff I've created I think my favorite scp articles are generally one of them is a dash j it's a it's an anaconda who is capable of speech but can only tell the truth when asked questions and is capable of reshaping any flat areas of geography that are either described to it or that it sees and he's asked to explain what he is and he says he likes big buttes and he cannot lie which is completely and totally accurate and I turn that into a dash j but it's treated in a serious way and in fact I could probably have done that as a main lister if I just tweaked it a little bit but then I want to I like the punchline as it was and so did the rest of the scp wiki generally I think that's rated uh probably over 300 it's been a while since I've looked but also my most popular article which is over 500 is an article about a bunch of seals that really hate a guy called Carl and that's it and it plays up the joke as much as possible and that is a main lister so you can do both there's no problems with that and yes in that article's comments you will find people saying I don't know this is a little too funny for the main list and me personally I don't know how to respond to that other than to just tell them to shut up so I don't usually say anything I do wonder in a serious way where people got the idea that funny doesn't belong on the main list like were they going along one day and they were reading scp articles and they ran into something that was that made them laugh and they were like I can't stand this being here how dare they ruin my scp wiki this is unacceptable I don't get that response to me it was it seemed to me it seems like a bit of an overreaction to the problem although maybe it spoiled somebody's immersion because of then the scp wiki is only a place for grimdark stories about people who are very very terrible people but that's the problem with anything that's super grimdark in the first place I mean like I mean this reminds me actually and when I use the words grimdark and I'm thinking about the warhammer 40k stories which are all very dark like we're talking as dark as a story can get sometimes but also that universe is fleshed out in the sea of his cane books a sea of his cane hero of the imperium which injects a little bit of humor into the whole concept where it's got this guy who it's a bit more complicated than this but I'm just gonna oversimplify it for you it's a guy who basically looks into heroism right and like it's a joke but also not a joke it's treated seriously but it's also funny and that is a valid path for any grimdark setting and in fact I would argue that less serious main list articles act as a palette cleanser of sorts to allow you to appreciate the darkness more and maybe for some kids who read the scp wiki they feel like the juxtaposition is bad because they only see it as the one thing but I feel like as you get older you start to appreciate nuance so I don't know that I want to ascribe this particular instinct entirely to youth though I am sounding older and older every day when I talk like that but the problem has always been and this is the thing and like kids don't take things seriously but maybe they look at the scp wiki and they're like ah this is the only place that I treat it seriously death destruction sadness I must have more like I said the the comedy acts as a palette cleanser for it and maybe that's why they think it should be separated out to them they think that a dash j is something you can go to yeah of course that's why they want it on the wiki obviously kids it has a place but it needs to be separated from the real content I personally can't see a world that way when I write be it a tale or an scp there's always an undercurrent of you know jokiness to it to me anyway because you're dealing with the infinities and and anomalies and a little bit of everything that's terrible in the world you can't live like that forever the characters involved can't live like that forever there's gotta be something to lift things up or else most of these people wouldn't still be around and sure there is a dividing line like you can't have an scp on the way you could have an scp on the main list depending on how you justify it but if you don't justify it properly you can't have an scp on the main list about you know a talking pink bunny that works for the foundation unless you justify it properly like I said like if there's a reason some sort of anomalous property that makes it so people once the people either can't fire this guy that would be an interesting idea actually a pink bunny who works for the foundation whose only anomaly is that he can't be fired and somehow he applied and got a job and now they have to keep him employed well you could still keep him contained that way oh no I'm currently thinking of an scp idea while I'm trying to record this thing maybe I should stop and wrap things up anyway and if you think about it like normal writing with a twist which is half of what the genre that we write in is about I think the twilight zone of the outer limits this kind of weird paranormal fiction even the x-files any paranormal fiction has a strong strong basis in the narrative twist and you know what most people don't seem to get this but there's very little difference between a narrative twist and a joke both of them set up expectations and both of them subvert those expectations by the end at least with a normally structured joke I mean not all jokes are the same there's comedy is very subjective but but there's a one-to-one with the basic joke setup you know uh two bacteria walk into a bar the bartender says we don't serve bacteria here and the bacteria say well what do you mean we work here we're staff the joke is obviously and I'm going to explain it which makes it not funny the joke is obviously that staff is a type of bacteria and also a word you could use to describe people that work at a place that final line subverts the expectations of the listener in a way that gives them an incongruency and makes them laugh that incongruency is important because it recontextualizes the entirety of everything that comes before it the same can be said of a narrative twist when we watch the sixth sense and we find out spoiler alert at the end bruce willis was dead all along it recontextualizes the entirety of the story it is a long joke except it's treated entirely seriously so this is the important thing especially for people who eventually want to write for the scp wiki in order to understand narrative twists which are integral to the genre we write for you really need to understand how basic jokes are structured and if you think that there's a gulf between jokes and writing normally then you need to learn more about how to write and that's simply the way it's going to be and also readers who don't plan on writing but think that that's the way it should be need to understand that the reason why jokes show up in this genre as well is for the same reasons and you're dealing with absurdities okay anomalies are at their core absurd and because of that there will always be a potential for jokes anyway that said thank you very much for listening if you'd like to support this channel please scroll down and hit the subscribe button just click on that and you'll be notified well if you hit the notification bell next to that you'll be notified as soon as i upload a new video and if you really want to support this channel right now is the perfect time to do that 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