{"body":"11:15 AM <~barredowl> so, guess we shall start with our first impressions?\r\n11:15 AM I was gonna say, I thought we were gonna jump into the discussions lol\r\n11:15 AM — MalyceGraves laughs\r\n11:15 AM <~barredowl> yeah lol\r\n11:16 AM <~barredowl> well, feel free to re-read passages if you want to digest the piece a bit better\r\n11:16 AM I really love this Anthropological Report, it reads very much like reading a report on a tribe/cult and I do enjoy that\r\n11:17 AM <~barredowl> so, i for one very much enjoyed the tone that was set up here. very... magical realist, reminded me a lot of 100 years of solitude. it did a pretty good job at pulling me in, partly because a lot of the details were just very detailed and fun.\r\n11:17 AM <~barredowl> there are a lot of small bits which grabbed me, such as the theology, and the bit about the order of the family. i quite liked a lot of it.\r\n11:18 AM This piece came from a place where I looked at the Sarkic content and saw that it was predominantly white and weirdly euro-centric for a group that originated in Asia\r\n11:18 AM I started contemplating what sarkic groups would look like post-diaspora and what they would take as they assimilated into the local cultures they moved into\r\n11:18 AM <~barredowl> yeah, i've noticed that quite a bit while reading sarkic pieces on-and-off. never really considered its origins.\r\n11:18 AM <%red3> This definitely goes for verisimilitude, and it succeeds at that with flying colors, but I was very bored throughout. During the history sections, I couldn't picture any of the events in my head. During the religion section, I couldn't imagine what any of the deities looked like. It read, weirdly, like an actual report rather than a work of fiction.\r\n11:19 AM I realize that the site as a whole is predominantly made up of North American and Eurozone people, but it's still weird to me that we aren't writing more about Africa or other regions at all, really\r\n11:19 AM <~barredowl> red3: i can see that. there were points where it did get a bit /too/ report-y? but overall i think the individual details were compelling enough to keep me going.\r\n11:20 AM I also structured this to read very much like an actual anthropological report. I didn't want it to read like fiction\r\n11:20 AM <%red3> MalyceGraves: Trueee. Even if the site does have good representation when it comes to queer people and women, it really lacks people of color.\r\n11:21 AM <~barredowl> very appreciative of that, honestly.\r\n11:21 AM I liked that, how they came along with the slaves during those times. Like how the Volutaar described those times was one of their most troubling and difficult time. What fascinates me more is the fact that the Lodge fuses two of their significant deities to make a new one or how the Archons and Yaldabaoth are also part of their pantheon is very interesting\r\n11:21 AM <~barredowl> on the \"actual report\" bit - this feels more 80% report, 20% story for me: the history, the interviews, and the last note all made up the narrative part of this for me.\r\n11:22 AM <%red3> And while I appreciate it as a report, I still expect to find some kind of enjoyment out of it. There were very few moments when I did, especially in the ending, but the rest just felt like reading actual fake reports. While I do have some interest in articles like that, if I can't connect to any of it or enjoy it, I'm not going to like it by the end.\r\n11:22 AM <~barredowl> this doesn't hamper the verisimilitude, i feel (although it could be argued that the last note /does/ pull on that a bit with the flowery descriptions), but i feel it makes sense.\r\n11:23 AM <%red3> It's like choosing to read the dictionary. Yeah, I'm going to gain much more knowledge doing that, but I'm not going to read the dictionary for hours on end. That'd be torture.\r\n11:23 AM <~barredowl> that's fair.\r\n11:23 AM Oh, for sure\r\n11:23 AM that was something else that I realized in writing this\r\n11:23 AM this absolutely wouldn't resonate with everyone\r\n11:24 AM <%red3> Yeah.\r\n11:24 AM But I don't write to resonate with everyone. I write because it was great fun to study the Akan people of Ghana and really delve into the atlantic slave trade\r\n11:24 AM Most of my historical stuff is heavily based upon reinterpretations of things that actually happened\r\n11:25 AM <%red3> BlueJones: I kind of wished it delved more into that. I like the idea of dieties which are real and can affect the real world becoming blended with others and the results that would come from it. But I don't get enough of a taste with each one to really find enjoyment. The description of each deity is far too short and shallow.\r\n11:25 AM The slave revolt on S John actually happened\r\n11:26 AM ⇐ +DrAkimoto quit (uid389547@synIRC-16B4DAC7.hathersage.irccloud.com) Quit: Connection closed for inactivity\r\n11:26 AM <~barredowl> hmm, i suppose\r\n11:27 AM red3: True, but also the fuses are all from the sarkic pantheon so it would be a bit hard to go into detail on beings like Ion and Lovataar becoming one in such a small section\r\n11:28 AM I will say that I had a bit of trouble understanding the ending with the ritural. Even after reading Mal author post with the spoiler bit, I still struggle wrapping my head around what really happened\r\n11:28 AM <%red3> Yeah, and I appreciate it on that level. I just wish that it incorporated more elements of traditional fiction to make everything more enjoyable. Hell, just giving examples of what happened to people would bring me further into these scenes. Instead of stating \"There was a bloody revolt. Thousands of women were raped and murdered.\" give me a graphic depiction of a woman getting raped and murdered.\r\n11:29 AM <%red3> BlueJones: That's true. I did enjoy the ending, though, because it showed the events more clearly and I was able to picture them in my head better. But I agree that I was a bit confused as to what was actually happening.\r\n11:29 AM red3: That would 100% work in a piece that was a retelling of that. But I'd find it difficult to justify giving graphic descriptions of that in the context of an anthropological report on the modern group\r\n11:31 AM I mean, it could totally be done\r\n11:31 AM but that wasn't what I set out to accomplish\r\n11:31 AM <%red3> I can see how that would be difficult, although there are ways of getting around it, I think. The interview is one of them. I had hoped that it would give me a character to empathize with, but it felt more of the same retelling of history, just with a different tone. I also enjoyed the artistic flourishes in the journal, since it made the scene feel... more alive?\r\n11:32 AM <%red3> But yeah, my whole argument is framed around me wanting something that this article isn't trying to go for. Take it with a small mountain of salt.\r\n11:32 AM Ya, for sure. Your points are legitimate\r\n11:33 AM The journal is done in Beaumont's \"real voice\", not her \"report voice\"\r\n11:33 AM Also, by the time this was released, the character of Dr. Beaumont was already dead\r\n11:33 AM I feel like this would get more traction if it was done in more personal tone, like the journal. Just to make it feel more fluid and active. That would probably be something that could work better but I digress, this is a fantastic piece either way and I love the history behind the Lodge very much now\r\n11:34 AM <~barredowl> right.\r\n11:34 AM <%red3> ^\r\n11:34 AM <~barredowl> so, do y'all have any final thoughts about this piece? before we move on?\r\n11:35 AM <%red3> While this article gets something of a pass for being strictly like a document, this suffers from something that I see a lot in historical articles that try to present fantasy in as real terms as possible: not grounding the story in characters. You can describe events for years, but if I don't enjoy reading about them and there's no characters for me to latch onto, I'm not going to enjoy it.\r\n11:35 AM <%red3> If you're going to describe a fictional war, don't tell me about how many people died each day, tell me about the generals and their motivations and relationships.\r\n11:36 AM <~barredowl> i think i'll concur that some parts of this get a little too report-y, some of which i sorta skimmed over, but overall the amount of fun little details present in this piece captivated me and really made me feel like this is part of something larger. i'm a sucker for this kind of thing.\r\n11:36 AM <%red3> And I feel like this falls firmly into the first camp. This is a light downvote from me.\r\n11:36 AM None from me, this has earned from me a solid updoot due to the historical details that mal put into this. The Lodge certainly feels much more of a key group within La Rue now and the rituals they do are certainly bizarre so updoot!\r\n11:36 AM <~barredowl> i'm +1'ing this\r\n","name":"Darkwater Lodge","extension":"txt","url":"https://www.irccloud.com/pastebin/66g1fAY4/Darkwater+Lodge","modified":1596825448,"id":"66g1fAY4","size":9090,"lines":55,"own_paste":false,"theme":"","date":1596825448}