The Pride Before the Fall
NEWS/OPINION — In the second time in as many months, political sensitivities over the SCP Pride logo have again sparked controversy and heated discussions, this time between members of the SCP Wiki (-EN) and its Spanish branch (-ES).
Context
In October 2021, some -EN authors came into the realization that -ES translations of their articles do not carry over the Pride logo at the top of the header. This apparently is done so at some effort, with the -ES branch going so far as to replace a particular author-specific CSS theme’s Site logo .png with a less florid one (the traditional one), inevitably raising questions about a hostility to a group of -EN authors. -ES maintains that they don’t want to include the images, but not out of homophobia or bigotry.
One of those authors is HarryBlank, and one CSS theme is Site-43's.
Site-43 is the Willy Wonka’s Chocolate Factory of the SCP Foundation. Everything is edible. No, everything is just really wacky. And vibrant. And unrestrained. And subversively cool. And run by an eclectic personality.
The available and official accounts for Site-43 describe it as one “for imaginative, adaptive responses to awkward containment challenges.” This takes the “anomaly that walks around the facility” cliche and pushes it playfully to an extreme. It has, I have to say, the most elaborate hub I have ever seen, with slick vector-like art installments and frolicsome taglines for each article, which are divided into a walloping 10 “phases” of storytelling and lore. If you like academic lore, this hub is for you.
It’s clear that Site-43 prides itself on being weird and different, as if painting itself as a spectacle, or borrowing the credo of Austin, TX. You see, they don’t play by the rules there at Site-43. Those mavericks! Maybe you want to call them a little ahead of the curve on social matters, workplace environs, and containment philosophies, but they wouldn’t say that about themselves; they don’t need to. Their work says that for them. And as you can see, their emblem incorporates the Pride colors.
This is an interesting and weakly-justified inclusion in a canon of otherwise exhaustive detail. If there is an in-universe justification for the pride colors showing up here (the Site, hub, and logo well-predating the tale soon to be looked at here, one tailored for just the occasion) — and I honestly expected an up-front (not retrofitted) justification — , it isn’t apparent. It isn’t in the earlier, more foundational articles or tale installments. Discussion with those who are more familiar with Site-43 and its lore report that the Pride colors were included because sometimes the cannon talks about political things. My best-guess conclusion (I’m not going to read all this, for Christ’s sake, we can solve for x fairly easily) is that Site-43 incorporates the Pride colors as a metaphorical stand-in for an identity political block. This fits the contextualization of it being an atypical and relatively progressive representation of containment, one whose participants are against-the-grain, and unusually “close-knit”, and that takes on political topics at times.
There is nothing wrong with this; after all, the worst people imaginable — Nazis — have an in-universe equivalent at SCP, so why can’t a more wholesome group here? The Foundation has its “cold, not cruel” sectors and interpretations, so why not one that takes the opposite path and offers psychological services to contained anomalies? (I have written with that consideration of anomalies in mind myself.)
To be clear, the hub and its content are absolutely charming. HarryBlank particularly, say what you want about him, is a talented writer who extremely creative ideas seem to fall out of at nearly every movement of the mouse or thumb. You can’t appreciate writing and not smile at some of this stuff here. The purpose of bringing it into the fore in this article is not to bash it or the author behind it, except to show how both play into the bigger, grimmer picture.
Self-Inflicted, Hyper-Inflammatory Auto-Immune Diseases
An odd thing happens when you scroll through the hub’s installments. Towards the bottom, suddenly, we see this, an article titled “Pride of Place” (Correction: This article had erroneously been referred to as “Place of Pride”.):
The blurb here, these usually very bubbly and intelligent, is instead a very curt, abrasive, and out-of-place set of claws that drops all pretense of the Wonka-esque tour of the facility and its many sights. Again, there seems to be no attempt at setting this into the universe of the SCP Foundation, and exists justified as-is. The likely conclusion again suggests itself snugly, which is that LGBTQ+ matters are so assumed into the fabric of the out-of-universe SCP Foundation itself, that it doesn’t need any justification within it. This subject seems to be a unique case; it does not need to be defended in terms of inclusion in this fictional world.
To summarize it, this tale is — think about this — about a researcher who is denied entry into the Foundation Site because there were no “security-feature” colors on this person’s badge; they made a black and white photocopy as a poor facsimile. The character’s colors weren’t correct. We see various scenes of characters casually incorporating the Site-43 emblem, these separated by page breaks. The Pride logo icon’s additional inclusion between the snippets as the page breaks is akin to the Batman symbol flashing between the scenes of a kids show, but then again, their presence in the tale or effect on the read isn’t really the point (which is my point); instead, the point is that if translated into -ES, these incidences of the Pride colors would almost have to be included! And we see this motive painted all over the tale; from the article blurb on the Site-43 hub to the comment section.
Back in the tale, the character calls up the Site-43 intranet, again so that the Pride colors can be inserted intra-narratively. The author leaning on the fourth wall so closely here carries a body odor with it by the time we get to the lines, “emblazoned with the Site-43 emblem, in full seven-colour glory…”, and the title of the fictional document here that follows this phrase reads “Those Who Can’t”.
The tale decomposes into a sludge of social commentary the more it tries to keep up the front of being about writing something for the SCP universe — an inevitability given the motive — and so the author naturally if lazily recruits pataphysics to do the rest of the job.
“I’m no expert on pataphysics but isn’t it possible we’re dealing with some sort of authorial control thing, here? An author entity just straight-up refuses to countenance any alterations of this single universal aspect?”
He frowned. “Little too on-the-nose, isn’t it?”
Any actor will tell you that a fumbled line ruins the moment, but that recognizing the fumbled line ruins the whole play. There’s a trope in pataphysics where the characters play with their own phasing in and out of the 4th wall, and overlap in hologram with the author’s unfiltered statements, as we see here; a hyper-extended awareness of themselves as pataphysical objects that acts as a noticed, fumbled line does. This compositional folly ruins the whole point and charm of cloaking a message in fiction. It’s as if the author cannot control their internal, caged, pet monster that’s continually clawing and gnawing to get out of the thin veneer of artistry and just make the mess of things that this effort was always destined to be.
He considered the gigantic painted emblem with its prismatic bands of colour, apparently unchanging across all of time and space. He threw his hands up again, this time in defeat. “I guess someone’s really trying to send a message.”
She nodded. “And they’re not even trying to be subtle about it.”
He glanced at the emblem again. “We could be imagining the thing. It might not even be here, in-universe, with us. Not exactly the way we’re seeing it.”
She pushed off the column, walked across the concrete and rapped the painted symbol rhythmically. They both heard the hollow echo of her knuckles on the tiles. He handed her the pen knife; she took it, but hesitated.
“Painters tomorrow,” he reminded her. “They’ll touch it up.”
She nodded, then gently picked at the paint where it had already partially chipped. A few flakes of granular tile fell into her palm, one at a time. Black. Brown. Red. Orange. Yellow. Green. Blue. Violet.
“Well, that settles that.” She tipped her hand, and watched the colours fall. “Definitely here, in-universe, with us.”
She handed back his pen knife.
He nodded thoughtfully. “Guess it’s canon, then.”
And if there was anything potentially preventing this from demonstrating the legitimate complaint that non-radicalized LGBTQ+ community members are trying to get across to authors like HarryBlank here — namely that not everything has to be loudly about and defined by one’s preferred sexual or gender affiliations — the comments left in praise of the tale remove that potential:
As we feared, this truly is exclusively about bashing the fash; fash who actually aren’t fash, mind you, just less radicalized than this guy. But damn if the Overton Window doesn’t move, and it turns out that now anything less than an aggressive colonization of LGBTQ+ lip service is indistinguishable from overt hate. (At what point are words like “bigotry” and “homophobe” just synonyms for diversity?; used by someone trying to lob an incendiary persuasion that you’re not allowed to disagree with them?) It turns out also that when pataphysics is weaponized to attempt shaming people as a moral victory, people who are not as factional or lungs-deep in kool-aid, it is suddenly a respected compositional device and loved mode of pseudofictional expression!
Well, someone’s done it, by God. The bigots have been vanquished by these peace-loving and Marvel-like superheroes of -EN, and the whole site (surely in agreement with them) can rest easy now that both the in- and out-of-universe is safe & saved, and any -ES translation of this article basically has to include a rainbow as canonically celebratory of a political group. (Though removing all those here would be pretty easy still, also hilarious.)
-EN’s Unapologetic Trending Towards Misinformation
But wait hold up. This is very strange in that the Pride colors can be seen in the -ES branch. Furthermore, descriptions of the Pride colors were never discouraged our denied by -ES, just prominent visual instances of it on the main banner, as part of a list prohibiting other such logo modifications. If there was an article about the Pride colors, or that included Pride individuals in a visual way, I’m sure -ES would allow that in-universe and in-article. Much of the site and even staff there are LGBTQ+ and individuals there are allowed to live their truth and express their pride in other, less aggressive ways. So, the premise that this tale is working from seems wrong.
Loud SCP representatives have had a history of running wild with absolutely incorrect takes lately, ones that the larger and more representative -EN either doesn’t correct or endorses, and I’m wondering if it’s going habitual. There was the assumption that the AWCY? Arms collective of 3D gun printers were doing something illegal; this was proven to be false, but SCP’s official social media statements on the matter declined to change their misinformation. They lost legitimacy and reliability as a result of many people who didn’t simply drink the sugary kool-aid as soon as it was placed down for them. And here we have another wild take that is leveled and again instantly believed, with no official statement or counterbalance by greater -EN administration or representatives —against counter-demonstrations with things like facts. (It is in this way that some of SCP’s public statements and loudest positions are trending dangerously towards straight-up misleading propaganda, a discussion for another time.) None of this is about accuracy, it’s about a hope and need for political grandstanding in the minds of the resident radicals.
In contrast to and in perhaps an ignorance of these facts, this tale by HarryBlank and in the minds of these few -ENers dancing around it all seem to think that the Pride colors are hatefully banished on -ES, and that they’ve resourcefully outsmarted and owned this non-existent hate. We start to wonder if this is the hyperbolic straw-manning of a position that isn’t at all what this author and these lackeys interpret it as — or at least what they reflexively hope is the case.
When you put down the tribalism for a second, this is a rather childish and spiteful approach to what are, in even the immediate scheme of things, minor political differences between LGBTQ+ supportive groups. The minority aggressors from -EN here are a sub-clique of the greater, less hyper-partisan, more rational LGBTQ+ group, internationally so, and represent a marginal fanaticism that feels as though non-conformity to their specific sliver of seeing the world — again, that world being all about their sexuality and gender — is enough to remove the more meaningful and shared attributes with their larger set of LGBTQ+ kin.
The tale is directed at a community, that has no problem with people expressing LGBTQ+ sentiments or being openly so, but who want to reserve a portion of their fictional world to not be pulled into the gravity of sexual or gender identity. Aren’t there some things that shouldn’t be annexed into sexual or gender identity? Anything? Could the decade-old and identifying logo of a creative writing site, one that is not the exclusive property of a separatist subfaction of the LGBTQ+ community, be one of these things? This radicalized subset of the LGBTQ+ demographic thinks not.
-ES clearly has a right to want a uniform presentation in something as visible as a thirteen-year-old logo; something admitted to as the correct take by SCP Staff members after the 2018 Logo Fiasco. In addition to that, I — a bisexual man — am going to say something controversial but needed: the SCP Pride logo is ugly. I mean from a strictly aesthetic and graphic design perspective. It is absolutely hideous. It puts ACS to shame. Several colors all sardined into an overly-busy and claustrophobic design. I also think that about the bisexual logo, despite being bisexual. Now the trans logo, that is a good looking logo. Great color combinations; it’s simple and follows basic logo and flag design fundamentals. There’s just something about the SCP Pride logo that loses all hope or semblance of complementarity when it’s all there stuffed into each others armpits in the cramped subway car like that. I don’t blame anyone, honestly, for not wanting to put it up on the front page of anything.
-ES least of all as they have the moral right and also do not have any legal obligation. Their moral and reasonable right to not feature the logo is further reinforced by the SCP community’s own and recent decision in February 2021, a very strong statement about authorial intent, which resolutely established that after a work is submitted under the auspices of the CC BY-SA 3.0 license, author wishes are 100% irrelevant. This includes the CSS header logo, as surely as it includes the more fundamental existence of an article on the site. The decision of the SCP community in February 2021 decided to amputate any and all discussion of authorial wishes at the knee; it is now a legally-literalist nub that does not extend into moral considerations and cannot ambulate anywhere else from right there, the spot at which it was surgically modified. That this smaller tribe of the greater SCP LGBTQ+ community is now attempting ineptly to apply a prosthesis to make a walking moral argument try to keep up with their moving goal posts, the situation different for doing what these authors want in spite of the legal terms of the license is just loopy. Hardly anyone notices; at SCP, the author is dead. What’s left are these -ENers whining about others not being proud enough, and the inaccurate accusations thrown indiscriminately at them are not going to inspire any sympathy from -ES.
It is not an exaggeration to say that this error in 2018 broke SCP. The genealogy of major alt confic communities can be traced to the fallout, and SCP remains with the reputation of a tyrannical model fueled by a misguided sense of moral superiority. Prior to this, SCP was the place to write and participate in containment fiction. Not so anymore.
This is still to this day a sensitive topic to a Staff that has a bit of PTSD from it. After the dust settled, that Staff had to slowly realize that what they had done was the incorrect and un-nuanced thing to do — that enforcing a minority political view uncritically can be a bad idea despite its good intentions — and that they forever marred public relations, even with the group of individuals they were attempting to celebrate, and who were not given the diversity and shading their complexity deserved.
In short, the equivocation of any potential reason to disagree with the supremacy of the Pride logo was hydraulically pressed into only one possible dimension of intellectual complexity; the drooling, dumb bigotry of a ‘phobe.
Everything has been said about the foolishness of doing this fiasco, and apparently very little was learned.
A Re-ENactment: Revisiting Un-Learned Lessons from Summer 2018
We can note by the occurrence of these Pride logo controversies in the months of October & November that official Pride celebration and catering-to is no longer expected to be contained within the month previously allotted for it, June. On the one hand, this is insultingly obvious as appropriate, as the celebratory worth & value of no group of people — defined by their preferred sexuality and gender identity or not — can be relegated to a single month. On the other hand, it communicates the inability of a hyper-insistent subgroup to be satisfied with that uncontested celebration being relegated to just one month… a recognition and celebration that may seem meager and artificially siloed, but is nonetheless one that many other identity-based groups (all equally creative and valued) don’t get.
Since June 2018, the more appropriate compromise has been that authors can place all kinds of logos in CSS on their pages if they want, and the answer now is very clearly — certainly if history is to be any guiding figure — to uninterrupt that decision towards the translators in other branches. After all, these translators are the only means by which a given -EN author may find more audience and appreciation in other languages and parts of the world; translations being badges of honor for authors as notoriety, and a moment of braggadocio; an indication of popularity if not quality. These translators are doing the brands of SCP authors an unpaid favor, and yet the militant author here discounts this if their sexuality or gender preference doesn’t accompany their works. This is odd in that no other element of an author’s identity, personality, or philosophy is expected to be necessarily agreed with and proclaimed as a requisite to read the work. In this way, an authors loud signalling of being part of an in-group is more valuable and important to them than their writing itself… something that should be communicating more loudly their philosophies and individual truths than the abstract rubric of a collection of colors.
The demand for the Pride logo on translations is happening the first year that the Pride logo returned to SCP’s main page in the 3 years after the Logo Fiasco. This hesitancy is its own volume of commentary. But instead of being reason for a moment of pause for the militant at SCP (how can they demand -ES abide by this so suddenly when they didn’t for 3 years?), the re-emergence of the Pride logo seems to have unfortunately encouraged the more destructive side of the situation, and into an emboldened charge. We see the same statements and sentiments awakening again along with it, the historical memory and tact of some Staff seemingly maxing at about 3 years (or who, in their defense, might not have been in the thick of that fiasco, or been made aware of the public apology over it on O5):
In an exact re-enactment of the 2018 June Logo Fiasco errors, some members of -EN took -ES’s declining to perpetuate the Pride colors on their translations as homophobia, unilaterally, and without the possibility of it being anything else. This is word for word. The new O5 thread is a thinly-disguised call to arms; a dogwhistle in its own right, duplicitously framed as a twisted opportunity for something dubbed a “celebration” but that is totally diametric to that. The hope for some haven from omnipresent political galvanization seems dire.
Fortunately, some more experienced and tenured SCP Staff, as well as some of the general userbase — the real Marvel heroes here — swoop in and shoot down the more misguided proposals. It should be noted that, all sentiments being the same from 2018, the only difference this time is that the proposal is put to a discussion prior to being simply enacted by the well-intended fiat of upper Staff. It is no coincidence that the proposal fails this time.
Despite the resurgence of ignorance here, the ultimate bottom line is that the proposal will not pass. It is political suicide; a lesson well-learned from 2018 to those who (thank goodness) remember it. Those who experienced the wreck waiting at the end of this train of thought expressed by some individuals in this modern O5 proposal know better than to let it happen all over again. That is their nightmare. It is no mistake that those who were around at that time are the ones advising against it, and those who advocate for it — and resurrect the rotted corpses of so many failed and demonstrably catastrophic arguments from then — are younger, newer members, some of whose WikiDot profiles show they were not around until after the the Logo Fiasco. Thankfully, this proposal is, like the arguments in favor, dead on arrival.
Now I wouldn’t mind seeing some non-competitive events or even a LGBTQ+ hub result from this, but the true purpose of the proposal — a suckerpunch to the -ES community in the loving name of tolerance and unity — has flopped. Certain people have made their political radioactivity known; they glow with incompetence. And this is a very good thing for the LGBTQ+ movement, because these radioactive individuals would reduce the success of it to performative gestures that, as they admit with the need for a second go of the same play three years later, don’t actually overcome or win anything lasting.
-EN’s Radical Splinter Cell: Masks Off
However, in other formats of discussion outside the wide publicity and greater accountability of O5, there are no such redemptive and heroic efforts from wiser -EN reps to stay the rabid and paradoxically sectarian calls for inclusion & tolerance by members of this regressive bunch; a bunch including at least one member of SCP who has a history of running into other communities’ chats to tornado up some reputational damage to SCP. In no exaggeration, these extreme representatives of -EN bring the attack in real time to a public Discord server:
These highly un-diplomatic -EN members — who do not represent the larger -EN or the larger LGBTQ+ demographic — accuse -ES (the whole of it) of bigotry and homophobia. They then moralize their way out of an apology: “The only apology I can possibly muster at this time is that I’m sorry I didn’t call out your bigotry and hatred at an earlier point in time.” At least one member of this -EN clique have apologized genuinely for this; one is captured here in the above screenshot (Calibold). At least one other member though has doubled-down on the accusations and demand via their Twitter page.
Despite these apologies, and really as evidenced by them, this has worsened relationships between -EN and all international branches of the SCP Wiki, not just -ES, as the latter recognize the inability of this rhetorically aggressive clique of -EN to be satiated with anything less than the most extreme march of LBGTQ+ “pride and celebration”; a way of thinking (or not thinking rather) that clearly cannot be pacified by now-smaller doses of celebrations that were once satisfying. There is no celebration left, for example, that Pride logos exist as a voluntary option on the -EN site, when there were zero of them 4 years ago. The appeasement will always be transitory; never enough.
The minority of -EN representatives who went into the -ES Discord to demand an apology represent an aggressive, chauvinistic spirit. (Correction: This sentence previously stated that -EN representatives also entered the -INT Discord.) Their insistence and bulk reduction to all of -ES as homophobic is also in corollary the reduction of people to a subhuman status who don’t deserve that, and certainly not for the reasons -EN levels at them. Somewhere nearby, there is a comparison and kinship to the historical ire and term-slinging against LGBTQ+ individuals, who just wanted to live their truth in a relative peace and allowance, it not hurting anyone. The fact that this skirmish takes place during trans appreciation week is also a bit poorly placed. The “poorly handled debacle” is not -ES’s, it’s theirs.
Likewise, Blank’s “’phobes” is reductionist, and would be actionable as libelous in a court of law were he ballsy enough to directed it at a specific person who has decided to not place the Pride logos atop a translation. This might not be “hate”, but it is hateful. You think this minority militancy of LGBTQ+, themselves once the objects of such blustery domineering and intimidation, would learn, but here they perpetuate the cycle, and in the name of what’s right! They are now the grain that people are becoming against, out of necessity and not from a place of enjoyment. This is a very bad look, and anyone who cares about LGBTQ+ issues should be asking these from -EN what the hell they are doing and plead with them to stop before even more damage is done.
What the LGBTQ+ maximalists at SCP don’t realize is that there is a type of valid LGBTQ+ person who doesn’t want to wave the Pride logo. Not continuously at least. They don’t want the special treatment. These are the true LGBTQ+ champions, the true heroes of the movement. These individuals would define successful normalization and celebration of LGBTQ+ as being treated the same as everyone else. This should be the goal, and is the message communicated by those who have experienced true bigotry, and who don’t appreciate the false conflation of a Pride .png to literal and verbal violence.
From a public Discord:
Immersion vs Militant Pride
In addition to the ill-advised preservation of these time-proven missteps in logic, a resentment for immersion itself also continues to this day as part of a false rivalry between it and Pride. It’s a false rivalry in truth, but the headbutting of immersion and this sort of Pride are inherently at odds with one another, when you charge and give an extreme polarity to Pride. Then, it becomes a manifest destiny as a pataphysical totality; Pride’s placement and relevance above all else, in-universe and out.
It is no surprise then, that we see a school of thought at SCP (the community), and adjacent places of ideological/political reinforcement (Twitter), that appears to have a hostility and militant mentality against the innocuous, by-standing, and originative element of immersion in the medium and genre of containment fiction:
And clicking on the aforementioned tale on Site-43’s hub, we see this in the information box:
The hostility is odd because immersion certainly has an important place in containment fiction. Arguably, immersion is what the genre’s uniqueness is based on, in that what differentiates confic from fanfic is the epistemological strictness in being limited to a pseudoscientific terminology and format, and sustaining those boundaries for the effects of mystery and intrigue; leaving the reader with as many questions as answers, and making the prose thereby more engaging, more relatable, more creepy, subtle, and memorable. Confic authors should be striving for immersion. DrGears famously has argued this, and agreed alongside djkaktus in a 2016 episode of The KaktusKast, that the effect of believability and the suspension of disbelief are crucial ingredients to the initial vision of the SCP Wiki. Breaking the suspension of disbelief in confic is like breaking wind in a romantic moment.
So the side of this divide that many active and immoderate -EN authors subscribe to seems to have lenitively seated Pride into in-universe material, like the inexplicable Pride colors of Site-43. As we have observed on this blog previously, numerous successful mainlist articles have adopted a more cavalier and unprofessional tone that was formerly & formally reserved for the -J designation, with very little mind or effort paid to the initially-important considerations of in-universe justification and immersion. The recruitment of pataphysics as a means to convey Pride, as it is used in HarryBlank’s tale, is again not surprising.
As a technique, the pataphysical approach is the cheapest, most blunt-force, least skillful, and lowest-hanging way to justify the Pride colors in-universe, because it thins to microscopy the pretense of a distinction between fiction and reality. It’s the couch potato dealing with it by scooting one cushion over. Instead of taking the challenge head on, it backs away until it is off of the playing field and pataphysical. In “Pride of Place”, we see this thinning between the characters & story —tale writing itself, essentially — and the author’s unfiltered itchy statements, bringing as it progresses the content closer and closer to merely posting a comment. To this point, the first line of authorial commentary in the discussion page (“Definitely, explicitly cannon.”) is seamless with and a continuation of the last line of the tale (“Guess it’s canon, then.”). The semblance of character is quickly eroded by the end of the tale; the voice of the author is not restrained, it has no tact, to the point where it is completely dissolved (unlike something along the lines of SCP-DISC-J, which maintains separation via characters & fictional posture throughout) and you have the last line intentionally written with the rest of the walls, not just the fourth, collapsed as well. It is much more difficult to achieve the justification without the erosion and collapse of the entire stage via pataphysical corrosion. There is an in-universe resistance to it, and you have to somehow blur the lines in order to get around it. This would be the same difficulty I would have if I wanted to make a CSS theme and in-universe logo justification for my favorite band, for no other reason than it’s my favorite band.
This resistance is why a school of thought in SCP is so hostile to the idea of immersion; theirs is a radical political movement to LGBTQ+-ify as much as is possible, and this at some point becomes internally incompatible with the site, the medium, and the genre’s centrality around immersion. Not because progressing the name of LGBTQ+ is bad or wrong, but because this is a writing website, not an advocacy platform, and one that attempts to have some internal consistency. In spite of this, they will cry “bigotry” or “homophobia” when any resistance is met because that’s all they can do… you resort to these sorts of things when you are on the weaker side of an argument. These terms will doubtless be hurled when faced with resistance over a mandated political appreciation; certainly too for immersion’s sake and/or site presentation purposes, as with -ES.
So, the idea of immersion is mocked. It is minimized so as to more solidly allow the premise of the political consideration to be the incompressible component here.
What you are seeing is the rending asunder and ripping upward of the very roots of containment fiction in the SCP Wiki out of a desire to replace it with a mandatory political identity; an infiltration of a rabid political euphoria from the out-of-universe into the in-universe for the sake of entirely performative social gestures. To these containment fiction authors, the opportunity to parrot loudly overt political peculiarities is more prioritized than the writing itself. This would be like an author saying you can’t see their work if you don’t put a Bible in your hand while you read it. The proclamation of their affiliation with & participation in this group is more important to them than the basis the foundational vision and premise of the genre, which includes immersion. (Again, this despite demonstrating otherwise via their actual works.)
So we might not be surprised after all to see Site-43 suddenly and without rhyme or reason topped by a Pride logo, this obtuse and inconsistent aggression towards the idea of immersion from radically aggressive LGBTQ+ authors, and this untoward, uncharacteristic outburst from the Site-43 blurbs when it comes to this lone, particular topic. The moment is in a tremendous and telling amount of contrast to the exhaustive amount of background detail and lore in the Site-43 hub… something, ironically, done for the sake of immersion.
Ultimately though, the primacy of immersion remains dominant and is still the larger point inadvertently conceded to by HarryBlank. Via a compositional admission in his tale, the need to justify something — if sloppily — into the in-universe is something still required. Immersion’s centrality is here evidenced by his use and capitulation to it as a domitable prize, a still valuable and meaningful thing in the SCP genre; otherwise capturing the Pride colors in it would not be the victory his and his sect’s ritualistic dancing around it would suggest.
After all that, “Pride of Place” doesn’t provide any more explanation of the presence of Pride colors in-universe. It still assumes them as a given (“…It was emblazoned with the Site-43 emblem, in full seven-colour glory”…), baked-in as an existing and granted part of the Site and universe, same as before the tale was written. The only difference now is that instead of HarryBlank, a pataphysical God-like entity is responsible for it. Thus in attempting to justify the Pride colors, the author’s go-to is a compositional move that, like all of pataphysics, indulges the author as God.
If a security measure is the in-universe justification — which seems like the better play, given what is presented here — that’s fine, but you’ve essentially had to rip out any actual presence of Pride in-universe to do it. We would be asked to imagine that this arrangement of colors is chosen for security purposes, making it not Pride colors at all, any out-of-universe similarity a coincidence. It’s now just a rainbow. No actual justification has been done here, just a blind coincidence. The other interpretation in-universe is that someone at Site-43, aware of Pride colors, simply chose them as their security measure, which raises the same ethical questions and concerns we ask here, except now in-universe (a bit more odd as in-universe questions, actually). This is not really a different move from HarryBlank slapping on of the Pride logo onto the Site-43 CSS theme out-of-universe, and we haven’t moved from our initial spot.
Maybe because both are problematic, the author actually goes with neither of these — the justification is that some mysterious God-like force mandates omni-versal consistency over just this one quality of just this one Site. Odd, and an exceptionalism that rivals anything seen in traditional religion.
This pataphysical maneuver then is a self-insert, and just as tacky as the history of SCP has regarded them as, just now a composite one. It would seem also perhaps as the only sure way to achieve a justification that doesn’t completely abandon the ethos of the Pride colors on its way in. A tale or article exists where it can be better justified in-universe I’m sure, but HarryBlank hasn’t done that yet. The celebration from the -EN clique here is premature and a little funny to watch.
On the other hand, it is patently silly to expect immersion on the SCP Wiki. The website is not and never fully was immersion-facing, and now features social media buttons on the top left corner — the first thing you see on the page perhaps and what by its placement is taken to be a most important part of the site. (This makes sense given that SCP wants to network itself across its social media presences.) Authors like faminepulse and HarryBlank are correct actually to mock the idea of immersion at SCP in the modern day; it hasn’t been viable or a respected component for a long time, is cachexic beyond recognition, and — as the authors are more and more OK with making the site into a advocacy mandate— it isn’t coming back.
All that aside, the curious hostility to immersion here feels like a consolation. It stems from the sole use of it as a counter-justification for the serial placement of the Pride logo in places on the site that it usually hasn’t been. This was at the heart of the issue during the June 2018 Logo Fiasco, where a large swath of individuals were banned for speaking out against the conversion of the traditional SCP logo to one with Pride colors. The (so inclusive) wholesale ban of anyone who didn’t like it included those who felt that the placement of the logo was unnecessary or inappropriate — even while it wasn’t something a selection of these were against politically.
Because in-universe, the Site-43 emblem are the Pride colors, HarryBlank gave believed he found an adroit way that would, given a sympathetic translator, force -ES to adopt it, against individual and policy wishes. But there is no rules against describing the Pride colors in a tale, and so no such need for the force. Nonetheless, there is as much hostility and rhetorical aggression in this move using the disastrously titled “Pride of Place” as a weapon, as in refusing to fly the Pride logo on -ES translations. It is taking the immersion argument, skinning it, and draping it around a rainbow so that it can be vindictively included extra-universally as the Pride logo, by virtue of that now slaughtered immersion argument. Recall that this is being done with a component of Site-43 that has no clear in-universe justification (the pataphysical cheat code aside), and is present as a naked attempt to force-feed more LGBTQ+ Pride into the universe.
Extending “Flag” into “Flagrant”
The need to wave the SCP Pride logo around continuously and with complete submission at every possible moment, or else be a homophobe, is the ongoing metastasis of an out-of-control insecurity that unsurprisingly was not remedied by placing a Pride logo on the main page during the month of June, 2018. It’s as if that placement was not a meaningful or lasting victory after all, certainly not worth the loss of the genre itself, and just a very mild act of slacktivism, one that can’t in itself possibly herald the acceptance of LGBTQ+; acceptance not by those who are in opposition to the equal treatment of LGBTQ+ folks, but who are in opposition to the special and privileged treatment of them, in either direction.
The real need for acceptance here is in the part of these few but vocal and detrimental guerrillas; they need to accept that LGBTQ+ success and acceptance is not defined by the inclusion or exclusion of an image on the top of a writing site. A CC site at that. That the LGBTQ+ community is not more privileged than any other political category, minorities included.
There’s an intolerance that is as ugly as ever here, but it is within these extreme -EN representatives who refuse to distinguish between bigots and actual critics; who can’t see the absurdity in putting the refusal to wave a .png Pride logo on par with a homosexual’s suffered physical and emotional abuse; who need all other areas outside their immediate control to assimilate to their insular cultural views; who give the more moderate and understanding LGBTQ+ community a bad name; who fling mono-terms of shame and hate like bullets, and who grind the use case of these words into dust by misuse until no one can take them seriously anymore even if they wanted to; who are blind to the tunnel vision that will dominate one’s worldview once it’s decided to look and find bigotry in everything; who are becoming as cannibals to their own group by harassing LGBTQ-supportive people for not going to their flagrance of extremes; who process any information that gives them anxiety or any sort of flack as “phobic”; and that a way to get people to consider and value your sensitivities and ideas is not to call them such names, and certainly not in such ill-judged, inaccurate ways.
The actions of these very loud -EN representatives are tone deaf to the people they are hoping to “celebrate”. They have overplayed their hand. They would rather see the enforced, mandatory celebration of LGBTQ+ over the enlightened, voluntary celebration of it, and would prefer to excommunicate anyone who didn’t — up to and including an entire and historically allied branch of the Wiki, or all of them if necessary. As such, this has been another disaster for LBGTQ+ PR in the confic space, and has repulsed in a “fool me once” moment many more individuals; a moment when the mask slips and the territoriality and insatiable zealotry of a fundamentalist religion unique to SCP is shown as something that’s as verbally abusive and dictatorial as anything it nominally operates in opposition to.
The decision by many to give up on SCP as a result of this, as some did in 2018, will be for reasons that the perpetually angry and dissatisfied members of SCP’s maximalist LGBTQ+ sect won’t be able to understand due to chronic close-mindedness. They will double down and again auto-convert any reason into the least charitable, least humanitarian, least accommodating, least understanding, least nuanced, least tolerant, least inclusive, and least accurate motive possible; which is the hate they now represent more fully than anyone else in this picture.
The more radicalized LGBTQ+ subgroup here at SCP has solidly become the ugly thing that they believe they are fighting against. The hearts of these individuals are a place of pain masquerading as a place of pride, the term commandeered and pirated into a fugitive permission to hate others as they were hated. In that it counts itself loving in its pouring out from them, this hate is doubled in depth and darkness. Members of this factional LBGTQ+ arm who behave in this manner are nothing more than a bullied person who has gotten their opportunity to now be the bully, and who revels in it without regard to their history and emotional past selves; they regard equality and equity as the chance to throw the whip at someone else for a change, as long as it is in the name of their preferred views. They think it’s OK to use hate to cure perceived hate.
Do I understand the slight from the perspective of an author whose LGBTQ+ emblem wasn’t included on an -ES translation? Sure, I imagine it is pretty angering. But is it egregious enough to erroneously consign a swath of individuals to the hateful term “bigot”? Is the singular degree of separation in calling the policy bigoted but the people not any different than hating the sin and not the sinner? Is it worth souring decade-long diplomatic relationships in the course of a few hours? Is it the best way to represent the love and inclusion that the LBGTQ+ movement should pride itself over? No.
We can ironically force a passage from HarryBlank’s SCP-5382 to also become cheap pataphysical commentary, to push it smooshed against the 4th wall, and ask if it rings any bells in the current context:
Zwist: … his agents scoured the empire, recruiting the few Giftschreiber who had survived in the wilderness and escaped our censure. He pressed them into service… I am sorry to say, they were not sorry to serve.
… On the first of May, 1645, at Herbsthausen, von Mercy snapped. He confined us to our tent, withheld our rations, and called us traitors… We didn’t possess enough materials to truly weaponize our words, to break free of our bondage, and in any event we were reluctant to act against our own people…
… It had such potential. Not to sell dry goods, or prop up politicians, but to uplift all mankind through the power of words. With the right words, was there anything we could not accomplish? Could we not end this bloody, stupid war?
… But I can do these little things, cure these little poisons which plague human hearts. If we are to remain ignorant, we might just as well all perish in red flame.
And a line in the article’s comments, providing analysis of the villain — ironically named “Mercy” — in the article:
That Mercy guy -he was a serious brat. Killing valuable assets because they won’t cooperate, instead of running through various ways to make them cooperate, just reeks of spite and immaturity.
Conclusion
The falcon cannot hear the falconer indeed: pride colors are stamped into a canonical tale by way of heavy-leaning pataphysics, like playing a video game on Very Easy, in a universe where there is not supposed to be any canon, and is taken as a decisive political victory by an echo chamber that misses the point entirely and celebrates their ignorance of a larger point and truth as glory; the debate of extra-legal, supra-CC-license authorial intent and personal preference is inadvertently necromanced from the dead to this time be definitive but in the opposite direction; and those who are operating under the supposedly most loving and tolerant colors are the ones displaying the most egregious and determined exclusion. The whole edifice of supposed morality and principles here turns like a wavering top on the thin tip of an outlying extreme, and the solid moral statements of yesterday and yesteryear are too many spinning plates adding up. The center definitely cannot hold, and those caught in the gyres will be patting themselves on the back the whole way down.
It’s no wonder then that so many LGBTQ+-friendly and LGBTQ+-adjacent individuals are themselves calling for an end to this sort of overzealous evangelicalism, now swung far from the 2000s all the way to a more nefarious and camouflaged extreme today, unrecognized as such by its anesthetized priesthood because it is a fundamentalist religion in all but name. The Overton Window continues to thin, until those looking through it can only see a wall, and that only as far as their up-tilted noses allow.
It’s not, as this priesthood likes to imagine, that the Pride colors are like a crucifix to a writhing demon, one that gnashes in response to its display. It’s that slightly different humans just don’t want religious zealots perpetually lunging crucifixes in our faces and being reduced to demons if we get tired of it. That’s called a witch hunt, and there are three things a witch hunt never runs out of; witches, timber, and those eager to burn the two.
You cannot force someone to be proud of you. Your pride should not be based on your ability to bully, slander, shame, and force others to adopt your viewpoints. There is nothing celebration-worthy in demanding the continual and increased patronization of an artificial group — something made up of nuanced and diverse people that spill over these and all attempted boundaries — above the respect for other, equal and non-hateful groups. More lasting disunity is the ultimate consequence of this nonsense, and it’s a shame the greater -EN and -ES branches have to have this odor between them as the result of a few childish and babied actors.
How unfortunate that these beautiful words can become so ugly when they are taken off the page and placed back into so rotted of a mouth:
“…they did not last long… their fire burned both ways, as fire does.”
© Lack of Lepers
