 One of the most popular iterations of SCP-106, The Old Man, is a story on the wakey tale called The Young Man. Today I want to talk about how that and other things relating to SCP-106 kind of ruin the potential of it as a horror monster. So let's talk a little bit about SCP-106. So, first of all, for those who don't know, the SCP-106 is an entity that is all black covered in oil. There'll be a picture on the screen here. But yeah, it's all black covered in an oily substance that's corrosive. It can pass through solid material and when it does, it corrodes them. If it reaches into a person, it can corrode a person, which is, you know, bad. In the end, SCP-106 is a monster that's its purpose. It's series one, obviously, maybe in 106. And a lot of series one SCPs are purely just horror monsters or monster manual entries. What makes it interesting, what makes people want to see more about it, is that it is, what's the best way to put this, undefined. There's a lot of mystery about it. And when people talk about series one stuff in comparison to future articles, often times they'll complain that there's, the mystery is gone somehow or the mystery of the story in a series three, four, five article is absent and therefore it's worse. What they miss, I think, is that, and I mentioned this before, series three, four and five and some series two articles kind of depend on their narrative because they can't expect you to read any of the 5,000 SCP tales that are out there. Whereas back when SCP-106 was first written, there were maybe a dozen, two dozen at worst fifty tales on the entire site and it was possible for you to read all of them pretty quickly. But the young man is probably the most influential piece about SCP-106 and the young man tells a story of a messed up kid on the front lines of World War One. And I was thinking a little bit about this because I'm doing a D&D campaign in Aberon which has got a sort of a World War One thing that just finished up. So I was thinking a lot about World War One and he got me thinking about SCP-106 and of course got me thinking about the young man tale. But yeah, in this story, the young man is already a very troubled or even possibly slightly anomalous dude who goes over to some other location at German trenches and falls into some sort of anomalous goo and turns into what he eventually becomes. Part of the problem with the young man's story is that it kind of gives you most of the answers as to what's going on with the old man. When I think of horror, and I'm not personally a huge fan of horror, but my favorite things are generally when you don't show the monster or at least not at first. I think what's it, A Quiet Place, which is another horror movie about a monster essentially, I mean it's about the characters too, but the core monster is your fear. It's the thing on the out on the other side, you know, over here, just off frame whispering, clawing, going to reach in and get you. But once it reaches in, once you see it fully, it loses most of its mystique. Now it better be about your characters or your horror monster is no longer important. And I think the young man screws up the story of the old man in that exact way because you're no longer questioning what's going on with it. It's like with the SCP049 when people constantly want to know what, you know, what is it trying to cure? What is the pestilence? You actually answer these questions. The character becomes less interesting and it allows for less interpretation. But the problem is, is that the SCP Wiki is a collective writing site. There's just so many people available. It's like with the Little Mistress catalog when they created the list. There's probably no expectations that it would be filled out. But when you have thousands of people wanting to write for the SCP Wiki and they see the list and they get inspired, it's going to get filled out. And so people want to do their own explanations of it. And then certain explanations have become particularly popular. And then people go, well, that's the answer. That's what the old man is, but it's not. That's the problem here. The story of the young man that, you know, the old man was a soldier in World War One and that he fell into a pit of some sort of black, corrosive material that turned him into what he is now. Nah, doesn't have to be true. That's the joy of the other half of being a collaborative writing site. Just because something is particularly popular doesn't mean it has to be your version of the thing. I could write a tale right now in which she's not that at all. Has no origins in that whatsoever. To be honest with you, if I write a tale about the old man, I'm probably not going to include much about his, or if I write one for myself anyway. Probably not going to write a whole lot about his origin because his origin doesn't matter. This is like with SCP-5000. And I talked about this when SCP-5000 was becoming a thing, like the question of why. So you've got your story already. You don't need to answer the question why. Asking is fine, honestly. But actually answering the question, that's a whole other matter. And the thing about the old man is that, like I said, like it's made to be the monster just off screen because it has its own little portal. It could make a hole in the wall at any time and go through solid objects. You could also just create a portal underneath you and you would sink into it. That's its strength. The less you know about it, the better it is. But so many people, and especially new writers and or like new fans of the site, the first thing they want to do is explain away what makes the articles work. And I just I just wanted to make a point about how that doesn't work anymore. Like and to be fair, even in an SCP article, in the later, like, you know, three, four and five, that you don't explain everything, obviously. I mean, we just had to ask if you five thousand, which is a mystery. The whole point of most of those articles was that there's a mystery that's unsolved. That's fine. That engages a reader and keeps them interested. And when it comes to a horror monster like the old man, you want to leave the reader without that knowledge. Because if you try and give it to them, you're just going to ruin your own story. Anyway, thank you very much for watching. If you enjoyed the video, please scroll down and hit the subscribe button and then hit the notification bell next to that. So you're notified when I upload new videos. It's critically important that you hit the subscribe button, because if you don't, how am I supposed to know of people like the content? And after you're done with that, head on over to patreon.com Ford slash D Samaritan and pledge at any level, like everybody here on the screen already has, including VV and Dr. J redacted, who have both pledged at $100. 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