Help Us Capture Speculation!
In any unfolding mystery, speculation is at least as important as evidence. Now that I'm working on the new Evidence section for the Eldritch Errors main experience site, capturing that community speculation into pages about individual elements of the story is proving a challenge. After all, I don't want people to read into that speculation any "official status" but, at the same time, want to provide a springboard for new participants into the theories of their peers.
So I'm going to need your help. In the perfect world, we're writing all of each Evidence page except for the "speculation," where we're faithfully curating your various takes on the topics. This would be the place to help us do that, by posting your comments here with references on the best of that speculation. If you're feeling really froggy, start a Sentry Wiki page and submit that as your link!
We've got 28 different topics in 4 categories to take that first swipe at an Encyclopedia of Eldritch Errors, and our plan is to launch a handful of them each week. We might as well let you dump your speculation on the whole pile of them, though, so that you can imagine how they fit together as a set.
So, first off, those 28 topics I'm hoping we'll hit together.
- PEOPLE: Devon Conrad, Bryce Droher, Spukhafte Fernwirkung, Arthur Lydney, Howard Philips, Dr. Elizabeth Riley, B.A. Saint-Feline, Peter Severn, Dr. U / eXu
- EVENTS: Telescope Collapse (11/88), Taylor Run Incident (10/99), Prophetic Packages (04/07), Alphabet City (05/07), Atlanta Ritual (08/07), Feast Before the Scream (10/07)
- ARTIFACTS: The Finger of Hope, Lucky 5, the Nightmare, the Scream, Trussed Swan HD
- GROUPS: Chorazos Cult, The Council, Dreamers, The Esoteric, Knights of Mars-Nodens, Miskatonic University, Providence, Sentries
Then, it's useful to illustrate what I think of as the difference between "what you know" and "what you have theorized" -- let's use B.A. Saint-Feline:
- YOU KNOW: Since April 2007, she has documented many of her nightmare prophecies through an elaborate series of Craigslist personals.
- YOU THEORIZE: She might suffer from Electromagnetic Hypersensitivity because she reports headaches around some kinds of technology.
Don't expect any of us storyteller-types to be chiming in on your speculation, but we might occassionally jump in and ask if you can pick one link that would let someone jump into the discussion on that particular theory.
yay! The new Evidence pages! I have to admit, I'm really excited for this part of the site to go live. It's like a little tasting of the Eldritch Errors Universe - just enough to whet the appetite and get people thirsty for all the stuff that you guys have done and are doing - on the forums, the blog, the wiki, and elsewhere.
As we collect the story that you guys have uncovered and built in order to show it off on the main site, it's really important to us that we present it in a way that is true to the experience. As Brian mentioned, this is fairly easy when it comes to the known facts, but not so much so when it comes to the speculated ones. We could go through and link to information that catches our attention, but what use is that? People want to know what stands out to you and shows where you guys might be taking the story next, not just where we want it to go.
So use the comments to highlight and link to your favorite speculated facts. Don't feel like you just have to dig into the past, either. If you have some pet theory that you haven't yet thrown out there or only talked about in chat, throw it up on the Outpost forums or wiki and then come back and give us a link.
I can't wait to see what all you guys point us to!
I just wanted to drop in to let you know that you are not forgotten. However, I personally find the task of concisely and carefully arranging my thoughts and speculation into an easy-to-read, linkable format quite daunting. It's either that or provide an assload of links to let you sort through (which, I gather, is not the intent as you already have the ability to sort through massive amounts of posts and wiki pages on the subject :P ).
Not to say that your request for help on this front isn't valid or needed, I think it is a great way to get feedback direct from the sources. However, the sheer amount of information and the number of factors / characters / events involved has left me little time to gather my thoughts and arrange them in my own head, let alone to write about them. I'm currently trying to help re-order the wiki and, in doing so, am able to re-visit alot of the information. It has helped immensely to re-organize and re-work the information to get it straight in my own mind. Perhaps after that exercise I will be able to put together a cohesive post for you. :D
I'm also formulating my corpus speculatus offline to be posted when I have some meat in it. It's chock full of wild assumptions and leaps of logic, so it should be an entertaining read. For me at least.
It's not complete, and I've lost some thoughts along the way due to many distractions, but I hope this helps.
Follow the bouncing.....spec