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Entity 101 - "The Squires" / Discussion
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This is the discussion related to the wiki page Entity 101 - "The Squires".
+1 for 10/10 goober action
was a pleasure to do a little bit of css for
You promised you'd take me there again some day… but you never did.
WOOHOOO love these guys so glda 2 be the first 2 b enlightened about them
Very good. VERY minor SPaG errors, though, but they're not very noticeable.
CharaDotArchivist
The demon that comes when you call her name.
interesting concept, dull execution.
-1
Could a explain a little more on the dull execution part?
The core idea of this article involves a group of four entities that imitate Entity 71 by collecting souvenirs from the Red Knight's battlefields. This is a decent start for a concept, albeit you confuse it by insinuating in the Do's and Don'ts that these entities dislike being compared to the Red Knight? Regardless, the description itself covers their basic attributes and also reveals that the fourth squire is in possession of a gem that teleports them to random levels. This artifact is unrelated to the Red Knight.
The behavior section states that they act exactly like the Red Knight, assisting wanderers. The text then tells us that they work well together as a team, and all bear distinct personalities. Do's mention they share stories amongst themselves.
Do you see how bare-bones this execution is? In the span of thirteen paragraphs, all you've told us is that these entities are the Red Knight but smol, yet they don't like being compared to the Red Knight. They also have a gem of unknown origin that teleports them around. They're very friendly with each other and are generally good folks. So, what's supposed to be the reader's takeaway?
Before you start writing, it helps to set the theme for your piece. Let's compare your article to the Red Knight page on-site. Entity 71 begins by introducing us to the titular Red Knight, a medieval knight that springs up in random levels to helps wanderers. We also learn that despite his profession, he isn't much of a talker, setting up a hint towards inner conflict down the line.
Throughout the memory logs, the first thing we see is him saving a member of the Lost from Level 200, demonstrating his heroism and linking him to nostalgia (keep this in mind for later). This serves as a great baseline, elaborating on his behavior covered in the clinical sections while providing readers with a first-hand account of how he functions. Despite his name, violence actually isn't his first solution: the log shows him talking down the entities in lieu of using force.
In your article, you tell the readers about the personalities of the squires, when you really should be showing them and letting your readers draw their own conclusions. It's also odd in-universe that a clinical MEG page would mention the personalities of sapient entities in writing. Imagine reading a wiki page on you that describes you as a short-tempered, gruff prick that is quick to anger. You see? Descriptions of personality are subjective. Going in-depth on these kinds of things only exhibits the unprofessional attitude of the documenter, which I don't think is your intention. Instead, try showing them through dialogue, interactions, etc. This avoids the issue of subjectivity by placing the task of interpretation onto the readers, and also creates a fun opportunity for your characters to be put on display.
The second log following the encounter shows that despite his strength, the Red Knight is not perfect. He loses, he has a messy history, and countless enemies from the past. This is the conflict of the character, brought forth into the limelight.
You have hints of tension with your characters, such as the second squire's hostility and the fourth squire's immaturity. However, these personality attributes never result in anything, nor are they ever drawn to attention by the plot. Back to the detail of them disliking comparisons to the Red Knight, have you ever considered why that was the case? A few well-placed hints or a full narrative could do wonders to clue the reader in on their whole deal. I personally follow the rule that you can't just include details in your page for no reason. Everything ought to come together to build the cohesive whole that is your article.
Lastly, we have the third log, which features the entity chatting with an archivist. She wonders if he's a robot, and invites him to reflect on all the things he wants as a person. This entire conversation is defined by an exploration of the knight beyond his duty. The Red Knight makes an effort to express himself, something the article previously stated that he had issues with doing, and the two's conversation concludes that irrespective of everything, the Red Knight is wholly his own being.
In summary, third log shows that despite these imperfections, the Red Knight presses on. He is the closest thing humans have to a god in this wretched place, and he never ceases to watch over them. It also brings up his sister, Nostalgi Gaius, further cementing his role in the lore of the site. We still walk away at the end with a lot of questions, but we have a solid understanding of the core of this entity's being.
On the other hand, your page explains basically nothing about the squires. We don't know why they emulate the Red Knight, nor why they help wanderers, nor how they came together, nor what the green gem is. They're the Red Knight without character development.
Despite being told through a mostly clinical document, the Red Knight contains a full story on the nature of person-hood and duty for the reader to chew over. It's not a particularly complex story, but it gets the job done. Compare that to this page. What are the themes? The conflicts? What do your characters want? What do you have to say on the topic you chose to write about?
Just something to mull over.
After reading. I can say that I understand why the downvote it was warrant. Granted this came out 3 years ago, though I am not allowing an excuse of age for the article. I had this plan in mind to express more of The Squires through tales which are now finally finished lol. But I do understand what you mean by its lack substance.
Back then I wasn't really that expressive yet in writing and maybe even now I am not but I'll take it on the chin. I maybe hope that the tales can try and explain a little more to The Squires, it was a process that I planned for years now but couldn't really execute well, This sounds like I'm making excuses but I'm trying really hard not to make it sound not.
Thanks for crit either way.
All right crit time (since you asked for it and I know you're rewriting them)
The squires have the makings of a solid page to fill out the entity roster, and have a lot of great setup that the page doesn't pay off on. Now, I understand that this is to serve as an "introduction" to the overall story of the squires, but in order for that to properly land, you need to actually write an introduction.
What do I mean by that? Well, in simple terms, to effectively land what you're trying to do, you need to write a prologue. You've instead written a D&D character creation sheet.
What I mean by this is that to an outside reader, if they don't already know the story of the squires, this page doesn't really aid them in understanding them any better. It doesn't really hook you in— you get a "oh cool, there's goobers. Anyway hey look a squirrel—" In other words, you've got the right pew in the wrong church.
The way this page reads as it currently stands is nothing more than a "look at my characters" page. Now granted, there's nothing wrong with adding a page that serves no other purpose than to flush out the environment of the Backrooms— take Transporters, for example. Take windows.
However, I know that isn't what you want to do here. I'd have been happy to give some suggestions for that route though.
Ok ok now that we've addressed the elephants in the room, how are we going to remedy the situation?
This is the part where your "pick your lane" question comes in (from the vc that one time)
However, I don't want to just leave you here, so I'll give you my suggestion if I were rewriting the squires.
Go balls to the wall on individuality. You've got four guys that you clearly want to be distinct from each other, but outside of a few lines of flavor text and an image, we don't get anything else. They simply exist as "the squires." At that point, why have four? We don't even get a super clear definition of which squire is which (granted, there are a few lines for help [like the ones explaining the artifacts and who has them,] and while I have nothing against subtlety, if we're operating from the in-universe perspective of a GPD page, it doesn't make a whole lot of sense to have this lack of definition.
What I would have you do is really spend time defining the squires from each other, and developing them individually. Make them clearly defined as their own characters. If you want to include art, split them up into individual pictures, and have a section of the page focusing on them one at a time, sort of like a list. You could do this in offsets if you wanted, or in tabs. Either way, giving it a "wow, here is the file on the squires. I would like to find out about squire #3. I am going to open the squire #3 file" feel would help it feel more grounded, and give you much more space to do the oh so important task of developing them as characters.
Now, you've properly established each squire from themselves— how do you end the page?
This is when you do a bit of a mini-tale format screw. Perhaps a journal entry from one of the squires— maybe it could be payoff from something mentioned earlier, like "oh squire #2 has been seen carrying a journal" or something (do not do that example, its a shit example lmao. Just trying to give you an idea.) This would explain why these 4 different individuals came together— why they choose to do what they do. Why do they have this connection to the red knight?
Now, if you want to go beyond and take the page from "good" to "great," I suggest mirroring the Red Knight's format for each individual squire, to subtly make the reader go "wow this is kinda like the red knight!"
For each squire, consider adding some sort of individual mini-tale that reveals something important and unique to their character. As you know, the Red Knight has multiple of these, each showing a different important aspect of the character. This would be a great way to parallel this entity but still leave them separate and defined as their own things.
For the sake of brevity I'm going to stop the essayposting here, but I'm going to leave a short list of things you might want to consider adding/removing from the Squires in order to accomplish your goals with the page at their fullest potential
Give them individual character flaws. The point of the Red Knight (in my opinion,) is that it is supposed to be the perfect, literal interpretation of the "Knight in shining armor" trope. Currently, you have "Knights in shining armor but they're silly." Don't write King Arthur, write Don Quixote.
Remove the artifacts in the initial descriptions. Yes, I know this sounds ridiculous, but if you just casually drop "oh and by the way they have artifacts from this one really cool dude who they want to emulate" it just kinda… kills the setup. Save those pieces for the *end.* Perhaps save them for that "wrap everything together narrative tale thingy." This is the part where you need to be subtle. Let the reader figure out for themselves that the Squires are connected to the Red Knight— you don't need to tell them.
I don't know why this green gem is there eye of agamotto lookin' ahh (/j)
For the art, if you can, try to go for something similar to what you did with fandom. (assuming you're going with everything I just said above. If you want them to be sillycore funny goobers, I kinda… don't know how to help you fully with that because I'm bad at those things lol.) Make the squires look serious. The more serious they take themselves, the more serious the reader will take them. When you see dunks and blub cats, you don't think you're about to read a story of gut-wrenching trauma. Likewise, when you see the dentist or Chef, you don't think you're about to read a silly happy story where all the funny goobers get together for tea time.
This one is a more subjective thing so you can do what you want I just think it'd help a lot.
But yeah that's about all I have to say. I regret to inform you that I have changed my previous upvote to a novote, but hopefully I've made the reasonings clear. Unfortunately, I think this page has just become outdated as the mood and standards of the site have shifted. Still miles better than most old entities, and definitely not deserving of a downvote at this point, at least in my opinion.
/forum/t-15678560/entity-101-the-squires#post-