Staff has discussed the matter and have put forward the following questions:

• Can you explain why your draft mixes UK and US spellings?
• The discovery and interview logs in the draft appear to have been added, at the onset, nearly if not complete in single edits each. Do you happen to have any in-progress versions of that text?
• Why did you remove "the periods at the end of my last message to seem more "human"" in your earlier message?

1. I'm Canadian. Canadian english mixes UK and US spellings, so (for instance) we use "colour" instead of "color" but "tire" instead of "tyre". The line's pretty blurry between what's CA and what's not, so people sometimes use both without noticing. I usually try to use CA, but my browser's set to US and I can't be bothered to change it, so I'll mix up the two pretty often. I finally got sick of all the spellchecks and changed my browser language from US to CA english halfway through writing, so that might explain some more of the mixups if I didn't cause them myself.

2. I'm pretty busy, so I was working on the article whenever I had time (usually in the evenings). I had July 4th off since it was a Saturday, so I finally had time, and spent most of the day writing. I've learned momentum is pretty powerful with creative writing, so long sessions > short bursts. I also did all my writing directly in the sandbox since it renders the article as I write it (so no external drafts unfortunately). The point is, I spent hours writing parts of the article together, and usually took breaks after I finished a single log.

I don't know how the sandbox works but I assume extending the page lock means extending the session. If the session ended, I'd just "recreate" the lock and keep writing. I assume that means, by effectively doing all my writing in the same session, hours of work would get squashed into a single page edit. So it makes sense that it'd look like all my work was getting added to the page at the same time.

I'm sure this is the most important question for me to answer, but that's really it… I just kept writing and didn't save until I was done a log. At one point, I even had an hour or so of work deleted because I didn't save the page before my internet bugged out (luckily the wiki saved a draft I could continue, maybe that's still saved somewhere?) Otherwise, I've got nothing except for a basic plot plan sketched on my whiteboard, if you'd count that. Everything else was written directly in the sandbox.

3. This is more of a personal gripe and probably won't help you much, but I'll say it anyway because I feel like an AI wouldn't write this. I also need to write this like a rant if I want it to make sense… Anyway. My writing has been mistaken for AI before. At first, em dashes were the big AI dogwhistle. If you used an em dash in your writing, it'd be immediately seen as slop. Fair, since 90% of AI writing used em dashes, but it sucked for the HUMANS who actually used them. I like what an em dash can do in writing, so it sucks that you can't use one anymore since it's now a trait of AI rather than a regular part of writing. You can go on reddit and read the posts of students who use em dashes having their assignments flagged. But even then, at least you could avoid the dogwhistle.

Nowadays, AI is better and there's nothing clear you can avoid. Anything that seems remotely like professional (or at least clean) writing is labelled as AI. Punctuation, proper grammar, even CAPITALIZATION means you're an AI. Check linkedin (the social media site that's supposed to be "professional"), and you'll find people using messy writing to seem human. I can't stand messy writing, but it seems like the only way to seem human. This is stupid too because I've seen social media bots write the same way, even (and especially) on linkedin.

I still want to write cleanly though. So I'll write normally, but I've found myself messing up my writing afterwards just to seem human. AI has made me pretty self-conscious of my writing. I don't like to, but I'll usually remove some punctuation and maybe do some abbreviations like "dunno". And I can't use em dashes anymore, no matter how much I like them. As a result my writing hasn't felt very cohesive.

At the end of the day this is all a lot more complicated given that it's SCP writing. The whole point to use "clinical tone", which is at least somewhat implies professional writing. So how am I supposed to seem human, if I'm supposed to write the same way AI does? I guess clinical tone matters less in these messages, but I still want to write cleanly. Removing punctuation is part of my humanization process. It's not a good process, but in honesty I haven't figured a better one out yet.

Sorry for the wall of text again. Probably not the best responses I could give, but what I've got.

Can you provide a reference page where you found the template for the description setup? Specifically, the use of subheadings/"power names" for the abilities, followed by bullet points with listed effects.

SCP-8245. It was the first SCP I read and the first I referenced when writing. I couldn't figure out how to start describing my character and its abilities, so my first description line was written almost exactly like 8245' was (name and super general physical description). Plus, the article's description section says the abilities in list format, so it seemed acceptable for me to do the same.

I made up the "power names". One effect a) is literally caused by spiraling into nihilistic thoughts and b) is supposed to represent the manifestation of that nihilism on reality. It's supposed to take after the word "Annihilation" in the sense that the effect could be capable of "Annihilating" reality, but I wanted to focus more on the NIHIListic part. Originally (you can check revision 23) I called it nullification, but I changed it later after I did some googling and found the word "Nihilification" which means basically the same thing as "Annihilation" (to reduce to nothing) but moves focus from pure destruction to the Nihilism that's supposed to cause it. As for Vitalization, it was supposed to be the opposite of Nihilification. Where one sucked the life out of reality, Vitalization added to it ("giving life to it" as the definition says).

The bullet points I put for each of the abilities are just my interpretation of what it would feel like to have the life sucked out of reality. I'm not trying to write a character that destroys stuff, I'm trying to write one that absorbs until there's nothing left, like diluting a drink until the original taste is gone. Feeling alive vs being alive are two different things, and feeling alive seems correlated with feeling in itself. If you don't feel connected to reality, then you probably don't feel very alive. I feel disassociation and nihilism can go hand in hand. Thus, spiraling into nihilism has you disassociate and feel less alive by having your "living" experience dampened. You can't see colours, have a hard time thinking about things, plus I threw in the temperature chill for a more blunt expression of hopelessness and feeling numb. For Vitalization, again the opposite is true. You see richer colours, and again feel euphoric (what I feel is be the opposite of a nihilistic feeling).

Sorry for writing this whole essay, but I see the writing on the wall and it seems like my writing style and choices are probably going to seem like AI no matter my justification. I know you guys are volunteering to read these emails and manage the wiki, and I'm sure there's also a torrent of slop articles made daily (especially since the Lost Series' release), so I can't blame you. I'd probably flag my own work too :( Anyway I decided to fill this message with a bunch of the references and whatnot else I made during the article's creation because that's probably my best defence.

Dr. Marsden is a reference to a favourite TV show of mine called Burn Notice. In one of the episodes (S5E10 if you care to check, here's the wiki link) the main character makes up the name "Jack Marsden" and spends most of the episode trying to convince his enemies the guy a) actually exists and b) is trying to kill them. I won't get into the plot too much but the point is that Jack Marsden is a great name to use when you want to make up a name. I have no idea if someone's already written about a Dr. Marsden, but I used Dr. Jack Marsden since it's my favourite alias.

In contrast, I handpicked the name Apollo Vili by googling name origins. I wanted to find something that translated to "Reason for Life" but couldn't find anything that fit nicely, so I expanded the search a bit. Apollo refers to the god of (a few things but mostly) art, which is the focus of most of the article and eventually the remedy to the SCP's nihilism. So you've got some foreshadowing there, (maybe some irony too). Vili apparently means Will/Desire in Norse, and the irony of this SCP is that it's a nihilist and lacks both the will and desire to live. So the whole name effectively translates to "the Desire for Art". Maybe not exactly, but I couldn't find any other names that sounded as good so… Apollo Vili it is. I might do the same thing with Dr. Marsden's name later.

Again for formatting, I was following SCP-049 as the golden standard. It does the "clinical tone" pretty well, and it's popular, so clearly it's not just me feeling that. That article bolded all its annendums, log headings, section labels, and whatnot else so I thought I should probably do the same. Besides, it looked clean. That's the same reason why I wrote the nested list in the description section, being that it just looks nice. It's clean and gets the point across in what I find to be the least amount of text as possible. SCP articles are supposed to be official-looking documents, so it seems like a good idea to be concise. Besides, I'm used to nesting stuff. I'm sure I'm not the only guy who's written code in the fandom, and I usually do a lot of nesting when I program stuff, so a two-level list feels natural to me.

Another thing I feel like I should probably say… This is just how I normally write. I even removed the periods at the end of my last message to seem more "human". I don't even know how to write anymore. I'll admit it's become problematic since AI became a thing, since this isn't the first time people have thought my original handwritten work is generated, but I can't stand writing like I'm DMing someone. No punctuation, horrendous grammar, THIS LOWERCASE LETTER (i) in the middle of sentences, I can't stand it, it looks ugly. I guess nowadays looking ugly is be preferable to looking like slop.

For what it's worth, if anything, here's a list of some other choices/thoughts I made when writing the article that hopefully give it enough depth to seem authentic:

- I started writing just before the Lost series came out, but when it did, I was hoping this article could use SCP-L042. When I saw how fast the slots were filling up and how long the writing process would take, I planned to stick with 8757 or any random number (I wanted 42 because it's the number everyone associates with the "Meaning of Life" and thus the article. I haven't even read the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy and I know this reference).

- I put a dumb little bit of comedy in preface sections observation logs 1 and 2. I also put some more with what 8757 chose to paint in log 1. These aren't particularly important but I feel like an AI wouldn't do either.

- The first time I ever did sculpting, I made a phoenix. I distinctly remember zoning in while making it and using a toothpick to add feathers to the wings. So, I added that to log 2.

- I can't stand heavy metal music, so I added that to Apollo's personality. Same thing goes for country (lol)

- And for the most obvious part: I have an interest in philosophy. I though writing an article about Nihilism would be interesting. A logical (as the interview shows) character who's Nihilistic because he can't see a logical reason to live? The original idea was to have him consume the universe if his nihilism consumed him, and he'd be contained so that he doesn't learn about formal nihilism (hence the "Absolutely no formal philosophy" line in the special containment procedures) which would act as the logical justification he needed. I changed my mind because a) that character felt like too much of a murder monster and b) I feel like I can do subtler, more interesting writing with a character that can share its joy with the world but must suffer alone (I got that idea from this poem I like, link).

Sure. Since I'm still pretty unfamiliar with the SCP style of writing, I thought the best formatting I could use would be in established/popular articles. SCP-049 feels like the gold standard of SCP writing to me, so took most formatting choices from it and other articles I've read. So for instance:

1. When writing the special containment procedures and description fields, I mostly looked at SCP-8245 and SCP-343. Haven't figured out how to fix the listing in the description yet, so both phenomena are #1 still

2. For the annendum 3 section, I wanted to use something similar to the 20-Murgatroyd log from SCP-9005, but swapped to the observational logs from SCP-049 for simplicity's sake (and they'll probably work better anyway). For Dr. Marsden's note, I also used the note formatting from SCP-9005 (minus the right-justification since I haven't figured that out yet)

3. I saw the ACS classification bar on SCP-8245 and liked it more than using regular text. I don't think I fully understand how to use it yet, so the disruption/risk classes are probably off. I also heard on reddit that you get your SCP number by just picking one that isn't being used, so that's why I'm using 8757

4. I found a thread that outlined how to write an interview log, but I generally used log formatting and numbering from SCP-049 (The same goes for annendum numbering)

I'd eventually like the whole article to be written as a story like SCP-8245 or SCP-9005, with multiple pages and logs that update along the way. I initially planned out the article to have three pages, one prior to containment (for the hotline call), another during containment (for the observation logs), and the final one would be for a faked death. The SCP writing guide on the wiki says to just write a basic first draft though, so I changed my plan midway and I'm writing it as a single page for now, which is why my description field explains the Vitalization effect even though I haven't written an observational log for it yet. I keep switching the order I write it in, so a lot of content is probably out of place right now.

There's probably a couple other things I could say, but this is the basic gist of it. Hopefully this is enough :/