"Birds."
⚠️ content warning

Hi, I'm UraniumEmpireUraniumEmpire. If you know my work, it's either from The Trashfire, the Fire Suppression Department, Qlippoth and Sephiros, or SCP-6400. Either way: most people know me as an author of the "disturbing" and "transgressive".

Let's get this out of the way: my main literary inspirations are George R. R. Martin, Stephen King, and Neil Gaiman, while my main wiki inspirations are KalininKalinin, RandominiRandomini, and DolphinSlugchuggerDolphinSlugchugger. While I understand my work can get "dark", a lot of what gets called that wasn't intended to be that way. Part of me wonders if it's a matter of desensitization.


The second time Lyanna ever saw someone die, really, physically die, she was staying the night at a shelter.

Cooper was… he wasn't necessarily a "friend", so to speak. They'd met at the Food Not Bombs a few months back, just after she'd gotten kicked out. She wasn't much for talking then — still not — but there's a peculiar kind of camaraderie that comes with living off the same lifeline. Cooper wasn't quite in the last stage of AIDS, not y—


I didn't really come onto the SCP Wiki with the intention of being an author of the "disturbing", "transgressive", or "hard but important1". My first SCP (circa 2010) was about a giant worm the Foundation fed people to, to keep it from burrowing to the center of the earth and ruining the magnetic core; it was written in a notebook, and never put to digital. It bears no resemblance to, nor did it inspire SCP-4947.

My first actual article, SCP-1285, was a weird murder monster; a critic told me it sounded B-Movie, so that's what it was now. My next few articles hewed to the Series II/early III zeitgeist at the time, something I call a "puzzle box": a weird anomaly with a "neat" but hidden story, for the reader to figure out. In 2022, they are now my least favorite kind of SCP (that I'd still upvote) — but in 2013, they were my bread and butter.

I returned to the site in 2018; my old friends ran a server where we made fun of chuds, and I think you know the drill. SCP-3428 and SCP-3472 were old drafts, finished and posted in 2018, and I like neither. In-between them is SCP-952, a 2018 original, and my "breakout hit" as it were.

I wrote Veronica Fitzroy to be the most despicable person I could think of. She's vindictive, hateful, and utterly paranoid; she betrays her friends in the worst way possible, over something (I think I knew then) wasn't even entirely her friend's fault. It shocked me how well she was received, honestly.


Dr. Agatha Drummond smiled. "You've got it good, lass. Good job, good husband…" She chuckled. "Kids still talk to ya'! Christ, how'd y'get so lucky?"

Dr. Rivka Yarkoni smiled, and tried to make it look genuine. If Dr. Drummond was too drunk to notice, then it was all the more important Rivka's boss stay happy. Rivka wasn't sober enough to handle an angry Dr. Drummond. "I… I suppose I must have gotten lucky, doctor."

"Ach, y'call me Agatha." She leaned in, accidentally bumping shoulders with Rivka. "God, the kids! I told you Isabella just stormed out the house? Like nothin'?" Many times. "It's like… how'd you make 'em love you?"

I didn't do whatever it was that you did.

"I…" Rivka chuckled, and tried to mask her discomfort with another sip of wine. "… I suppose it's just…"

"Cat got yer tongue?" Dr. Drummond's smiled widened, as her free hand patted Rivka on the shoulder. "Shame. You've got a nice one.

She winked, and Rivka's blood fr—


My next SCP after 3472 flopped, and I decided I'd throw my all into the next one. The result was SCP-4947 — and between them, I began what would turn into When Will You Die For The Last Time In My Dreams.

The OCT chapters of WWYD are incredibly raw, both in the sense that I put a lot of myself in them, and that I didn't do a lot of editing runs. All of them follow Veronica Fitzroy following the events of 952… except the gunshot, which was now Foundation misinformation. Truth be told, 952 was supposed to be her ending, but it's hard to write about her and a D-Class without involving the SCP Foundation.

Veronica comes out a lot more sympathetic here, primarily due to who she plays off of. D-7294 is a misogynistic serial killer, the Foundation are protofascist weirdos, and Cousin Johnny is… Cousin Johnny. She's not the bigger fish, and therefore she must suffer.

I think it's ironic that of these three tales, the most well-regarded is also the lightest. Time loop stories are some of most triumphalist stories on the market — and people eat them up like candy.2 For someone with a "reputation" such as mine, I'd have expected Baptism to be considered my best.

Well, that or 4947… but I didn't exactly get the reception I wanted on that, did I?


It

That thing.

It is a thing. It exists.

It is distinct — around it, things that are not it.

It resembles something. A worm, perhaps.

It must be alive.

It must be aware. It must feel.

It must have a sense of itself, of its own existence.

It feels what it's like to exist, its own mass interacting with that which is not it. It feels that every moment it exists.

It hates that fe—


My grandpa had dementia. So did my great aunt, actually. Different kinds. I think the worst night of my life was when I accompanied him to the hospital after a fall, was told of his condition, and spent the night trying to sleep in his room as he called for help.

4947 suffers from the same problem a lot of modern horror has, in that it's a bit too direct about what it is. Once you know it's a metaphor for dementia, a lot of the power in the [DATA LOST]s is dulled, fear of the unknown replaced with stiff dialogue and a heavy-handed metaphor. If I'd written 4947 today, I'm sure I'd do a lot better — but back then, 4947 was supposed to be what "put me on the map", and its initial reception was majorly disappointing.

I fumbled my Gift Exchange, but A Random DayA Random Day was kind enough to finish his. It got me reading SCP-2669, and I knew I had to step up my game.

In February, I posted SCP-3721, and thought it'd be the darkest thing I ever wrote.


"Hey."

Demura Tamiko looked up from her drink. She shouldn't have bothered: dude looked like one of those pushy freaks she'd been warned about, the ones that dressed like Americans and got mad when you told them 'no'. This one's tan looked real, at least.

He sat down next to her, and she pretended to smile. "Digging Germany? Not too loud for you?"

At least he wasn't negging her. "Germans certainly know how to party."

"Tell me about it. Back in Spain, you'd think the heat would at least take the sticks out their asses." He grinned — cute enough to smirk back, not cute enough to commit over the other men and women — and held out a hand. "Name's Alonso. You?"

"Junko." Tamiko took his hand, and tried not to cringe. "What's your deal?"

Alonso held on for way too long; any time at all was too long with this creep. "Well, I came here with me, myself, and I, and I was looking for a pretty gal to make it four. I guess you're pretty enough."

Ah, there's the negging.

Tamiko grinned, and pulled her hand away. "Great. I hope you find her. Maybe she'll have a thing for creeps."

His face soured, but she was already back on the floor before he could make another move. Hopefully, the next person to come up to her would show a little more res—


SCP-3721 was me wrestling with the "nazi superscience" trope, and I think it's one of my better pieces. At the time, I thought it'd be the darkest thing I wrote for the site — it was, after all, about an abusive relationship between a nazi scientist and a Jewish slave, both of them stuck in a kill-sat network. Either way, it was a hit.

INTcon came around shortly after, and 3721 had me on enough of a high that I entered with the Germany 4th Reich GoI; I figured someone else would only do it worse. Black and White and Red All Over was the result.

Fun fact: I entered with three other people. If they'd posted, and canon tag rules had stayed the same, we might have been able to throw together a canon! Probably wouldn't have been able to throw Trashfire together, but that took a year and a half to thematically congeal, didn't it?

Almost by accident, however, I'd already surpassed SCP-3721 in "darkness".

Last Minute Resistance was originally supposed to feature Acolyte Fels, but he didn't seem like a compelling character. For one thing, he was too strong in terms of the verse; for another thing, his character seemed entirely too removed from the plot I wanted. Instead of forcing him into the story, then, I made a new character: Initiate Andino, an insecure pick-up artist who got in the game to prove his masculinity.

4R's thing is about crafting and summoning demons, so with him came "Zoey". I don't know if her design or dynamic was conceived of first, and I don't think it mattered: one followed through to the other. It's a story that writes itself… with a little help from Rex AtlasRex Atlas.

Incidentally, between Degenerate Art and LMR, a misheard conversation about a user's unposted 001 stuck the term "black fly" into my head, and a conversation with The Great HippoThe Great Hippo3 helped develop what would later become one of my favorite — and perhaps, most despicable — villains yet.


Subject: A crowd of people, taken in downtown Berlin.
Photographed Activity: Behaving normally. Closest to the center of the photo is a blonde European female, approximately 196 cm in height, walking to the right with a sour expression on her face.
Photo Result: Entire scene has changed. Several members of the crowd are dressed more modestly, with dour and downcast expressions. One man is being arrested by two policemen; another is being beaten by three. All of the storefronts and much of the city furniture has been rearranged. In particular, a set of gallows is visible from the right half of the photograph, from which two bodies hang; both are bloody from the waist up, though their faces are obscured by the edge of the photograph. Finally, the woman at the center of the photograph remains unchanged, save that she's openly scowling.
Note: The woman in the center has been identified as Theresa Arianna Petrucci, a Canadian expatriate working as a lab technician for Ozone Laboratories at the Haberlin Lichtenberg Research C—


If I had to pick a favorite character to write, it's a tie between Isabella Kawajiri, Madeleine von Schaeffer, and Theresa Petrucci. Let's talk about the latter.

Theresa Petrucci, introduced in Degenerate Art as "Acolyte Dunst", was not originally supposed to have as big of a role as she had. I knew she was an ex-TERF who wanted to go "legit", but BaWaRAO was always intended as action pulp, so I had no reason to actually develop her. ~WooOOOooo, she has spooooooky mist powers~. What's she going to do, pyrotechnics for a RAC show?

Then, in a conversation with Hippo, we developed BLACK FLY, and Dunst had the potential to become my scariest villain overnight.

We never finished or posted the draft, but our work laid the basis for some of my "darkest" pieces yet. Acolyte Dunst was now a mad chemist, obsessed with a world that conformed exactly to what she believed it should. Difference became an ontological evil — no action to "fix" it was wrong. BLACK FLY was the way, and it didn't matter if it left broken husks in its wake, because a "knowable" world full of rubble was preferable to something Dunst couldn't control.

Having Dunst be a dangerous and unhinged villain was fine, but I doubt it would have congealed on its own. The Ambassador of Alagadda is dangerous and unhinged; SCP-106 is dangerous and unhinged; Alonso, as fun as he was to write, was dangerous and unhinged. There needed to be some other factor.

It would take until 2020 to realize what I needed to play to; until then, let's talk about SCP-0166.


09:00:00: SCP-166 stands in the opposite corner, staring directly at the security camera.

10:00:00: No change.

12:00:00: No change.

15:00:00: No change.

19:00:00: No change.

00:00:00: No ch—


I had a few well-regard articles under my belt by late summer of 2019. There was SCP-3721, SCP-378, SCP-44954, even a collaboration with MetaphysicianMetaphysician. However, I was still only the "Veronica author", and it didn't help that she was becoming my least favorite of the HoS cast.

It's possible SCP-0166 was what cemented a different kind of reputation for me, even if it was a bit delayed.

I assure you that it was very popular to hate SCP-166 back in 2019, at least among the authors. Part of 0166 was me airing my grievances with the way the article was written, but another part of me engineered it to be something that would get people's attention, something they couldn't just ignore. I don't think I could have written it outside of when I did.

It's embarrassing, now that SCP-166 has been rewritten, but people still seem to like it. Still: if 3721 was when I stopped fucking around, SCP-4886 was when I put all my skills together, and made the most disturbing piece I could think of…

…at the time.


My dad hated the Empire. Hated, hated, hated it! If he could, he'd have gobbled the cities up, took the Matriarchs in his manifold jaws and crunch, crunch, crunch until the worship stopped. Heh. Statesmanship was my own kind of teenage rebellion, I guess.

You have to understand what it was like without us. All these stupid little ape-things, making mockery of the bodies they shared with the daeva. Wallowing in mud, fighting like dogs to be king of the anthill. You know they used to let the animals rule them? Two of my stepfathers had to step in to stop that. Daevite Autocracy is the solution to human indignity — nothing else.

I know I'm not supposed to do what I did. The terrorists, they deserved it, but the peasants… it's not their fault they all looked like animals. I know that. But you see them, day in, day out, dirt-caked degenerates who secretly thought they knew better than us. A bunch of dumb animals. One or ten wouldn't be missed. It's just… keeping the population stable.

I'm sorry. I want to be a good boy, but I just can't hel—


You'll notice a lot of my works have a song, essay, or quotation in the author post. 4886's was a bit… on the nose, but it made for great writing music. Events during the process of writing definitely contributed to the piece, even if they turned out to be nonsense.

I consider SCP-4886 to be the "sequel" to SCP-4947, and I consider it a hell of a lot better. There's still a metaphorical angle — SCP-4886 is "representative" of the failures of police accountability — but it's also about other stuff, like the leeway afforded to abusive men, or the failures of Western land management, or serial killers, or how much it sucks to be attacked by an animal.

4886 was written to be read twice, or at least once and a half times. On the first read, it's a wilderness horror story about intelligent monsters; on the second, it's a decidedly more horrifying story about how the SCP Foundation gave a serial killer license to rape and murder an entire town. I expected it to remain my most "disturbing" story for quite a while.

I was wrong, and I'd been working on what'd prove me wrong since before 4886 was posted.


<PromiseMeNed has joined chat>

PromiseMeNed: PINK FLY hey shithead

PINK FLY: Sure, she's a dyke. She's also the foremost Catholic ethicist on gender ideology. If not

PINK FLY: Ugh. Sara's friend?

KeeLee: Hey PromiseMeNed! Just so you know, we don't allow eVePNs on JGTIRC.

PromiseMeNed: fuck off

PromiseMeNed: PINK FLY: listen here, shithead

PromiseMeNed: you fucked with my friend

PromiseMeNed: you brainwashed kids

PINK FLY: The one who gave me a virus?

PromiseMeNed: there will be consequences

<PromiseMeNed has been kicked from #JGT_GeneralChat by KeeLee (KeeLee)>

PINK FLY: Come at me, fr—


SCP-5444 and Filled To The Brim With Girlish Glee are companion pieces written under extremely different circumstances.

Anyone who tells you mental illness "makes you a better writer" is only somewhat more wrong than the person who tells you mental illness is always bad for writing. 5444 was written when I was doing pretty well, but a lot of it is based on times I've felt like a worthless fuck-up. While I don't recommend cycling between anxiety and depression even for "realism", the process itself taught me… quite a bit.

SCP-5444 might have been a bit too personal, however. Many of the people who read it later contacted me to ask if I was okay, and while that certainly speaks to its effectiveness, I don't like worrying my readers. Nevertheless, it was almost immediately overshadowed by its companion piece, posted a few days later.

I critiqued the original Just Girly Things piece, SCP-4319; when I read the original FttBwGG, I knew it could be a lot scarier. The finished rewrite is almost entirely different from the original — Lolly the Clown is replaced with Sara Yarkoni, the crux of the piece is about a bullshit coding job, Theresa Petrucci is there — but I don't think I could have written something like this without that initial inspiration.

I… didn't expect it to disturb people like it did. Sure, it was a horror story about an abusive employer, but I didn't expect people to tell me they loved it and never wanted to read it again. It was genuinely shocking, especially after someone pinged me on discord to tell me it triggered their PTSD as a compliment.

Around this time, I started listening to I Don't Speak German, Behind the Bastards, and The Magnus Archives; this, I believe, significantly altered the way I wrote "disturbing" topics.


Agent Spiegel fingered the grooves of the tape, like he might unlock its secrets. He wouldn't have been the first, nor the most thorough: RTF-Multiocular-3 had checked for serial numbers — none — dusted for fingerprints — only the victim's — examined the label for anything erased — nothing but a "6" — listened for background noise — a Spanish brand of white noise device, actually, but that's where the lead ended — and had even sent a member of the 'Pataphysics department inside — he didn't come back — and so far, it'd all come to nothing. The Screwfly Tape was good for exactly two things: sending the Screwfly's message, and desensitizing cadets.

Dr. Hackenholt had advised him not to get so worked up about it, but how could he not? The Screwfly had tortured an agent to death, cut it onto VHS, and got away scot-free. He was just supposed to pretend that was fine?

They even stuck him on training duty. What a joke! As long as the Screwfly was out there, Agent Spiegel should have been putting every second of work to taking them out.

Agent Spiegel looked back to the cadets, and tried not to scowl. This would be the easiest desensitization day y—


I believe Theresa comes together not because she's the worst of the fascists, but because as a woman, she has to be the worst. In almost every fascist movement, women have two options: submit to being a tradwife, or become scarier than the men. Even then, a constant pressure hangs over these women. What will happen to them after the revolution? How do they navigate the continuous onslaught of misogyny in the movement? What do they have to do to earn the respect of their peers?

Theresa makes her first major in-person debuts in the next few chapters of BaWaRAO, along with the BLACK FLY compound. She's a violent zealot, willing to step over her own teammates if it gets her what she wants — and with BLACK FLY in hand, that's easier than it sounds. Even off the battlefield, the ramifications of her decisions and the threat of BLACK FLY are felt loud and clear by the people of Outer Lichtenberg.

I've been thinking about whether or not I should continue work on the BLACK FLY SCP — I've already scrapped an associated tale. The trouble is that taking such a hard magic approach to BLACK FLY feels like it will interfere with its reputation as one of the worst fates in the Trashfire universe. Perhaps all the reader needs to know is that it's used to rewire, modify, and mutilate souls.


December 4th, 1984

I don't like Private Stone. Never did.


Christ in Scarlet



Sex is a lot like Polyester Dress. It's shorter than it could be, old money child-rapists want to control it, it ends in brainwashing, Theresa is there.





Special thanks to my cat Rambam, who attempted numerous times to contribute.

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