THE DESCENDANTS OF YGGDRASIL ARE BACK AND AMFC IS COMING BACK WITH A BANG: THE DRAFT COLLECTION

THE DESCENDANTS OF YGGDRASIL ARE BACK AND AMFC IS COMING BACK WITH A BANG: THE DRAFT COLLECTION

Solid Angle 04 Jul 2025 01:46

HELLO HELLO HII HELLO!!!!!!!!!

it's been a long time since i've showed my face around here

and i come back here because i need to revive DoY and people told me that they are interested in writing for the GoI

and in the search for drafts and articles i found one that i never published with an author that left the site like 4/5 years ago

so what better way to rekindle the interest of the DoY with a small document explaining some terminology of the GoI?

all types of critique and helpfull reference is appreciated

http://rpcsandbox.wikidot.com/soydoc-1

Re: THE DESCENDANTS OF YGGDRASIL ARE BACK AND AMFC IS COMING BACK WITH A BANG: THE DRAFT COLLECTION

antdem0n 05 Jul 2025 06:26

+Overall Crit

This pamphlet starts far more interesting than it ends. Having in-universe recruitment propaganda for a GOI is neat, and I do want to read more about it. Unfortunately, the pamphlet is very lackluster, and is mostly an accessory to the overview. The overview, unfortunately, also suffers from the same issue where I started more interested than I was when it ended. I understand that this is meant to be not entirely accurate to the group, but having the entire group depicted as cuddly uwu tree huggers is not particularly interesting. Their willingness to cooperate with the Authority comes off as strange and even nonsensical at times due to the Authority’s entire reason for existence being to take the things they want to do and work towards and shove it in a vault to never see the light of day again.

I can understand this group being a lower priority than say, Malthus, due to their inactive, pacifistic nature, but I don’t feel like that should extend to “very cooperative”. Maybe dial that aspect back. As proven with KK the Authority is content to leave smaller, less threatening GOIs be disregarded for larger threats. It isn’t a stretch to say that instead of being cooperative with the SoY, the Authority just prioritizes taking out the sculptors and/or the anomalies themselves while leaving the group as a whole alone.

The Authority trying to infiltrate the group is fairly interesting, having agents attend meetings and rallies, trying to ingratiate themselves is cool as a concept. It makes up the premise for how the document got into Authority custody, but once the overview begins it just gets completely disregarded. The Authority clearly has an agent that was inducted as a member, which is how they got it in the first place, but the most interesting part of this premise is quickly forgotten.

The sudden interest of computer science into the GoI also muddles the concept and leaves it less focused. The focus on the natural world was clear and concise, but them also being significantly interested in modern technology leaves them closer to the already existing GoIs and sheds away the identity that was being established in this pamphlet. They don’t need to be computer wizards, they’re already the plant people, and that’s a solid enough identity to build things around.

The humor in the last section of the article comes out of nowhere, isn’t particularly funny, and just distracts from the main point of the article. It does bring focus back to the plant aspect of the GoI, but at the cost of almost everything surrounding it. I understand that the Authority is made up of people who can and will do dumb things for a laugh, but it shouldn’t end up in the finished document that’s meant to be displayed and distributed to personnel working on the case.

+Line By Line Crit

desk at ██████████ extension ███

Why are these censored? This is an in-universe document meant to be sent to members of the Authority to give them necessary information. If someone gave me a document where the people I am meant to direct questions to censored themselves out of the document, I would strangle them.

I understand the desire to censor stuff that’s specific to maintain a ‘vibe’. But this is not a time or place to give in to such a desire.

[close]

As a quick aside, it would be nice if you relabled the ‘hide’ option to say something ‘Close Attachment #’ instead. Just a quality of life change so people don’t lose their place when reading through the attachments.

The distal sides of the rectangular cut have matching floral imprints, have been identified as Hydrangea macrophylla normalis, commonly referred to as the 'Lacecap Hydrangea'

This sentence needs to be reworded. It’s quite long and it’s not grammatically correct. You should also probably have the informal name of the plant be in a footnote rather than the body. Perhaps a sentence like “The distal sides of the rectangular cut have floral imprints which have been identified as Hydrangea macrophylla normalis.”

disturbing the natural lilac tone of the nonstandard paper blend.

A few things about this line. First of all, this isn’t clinical, it reads too informally and more like someone is selling the pamphlet to me. Second, we already know this is a nonstandard paper blend, and it being nonstandard is not important enough to repeat it twice. It reads strangely in what is meant to be a cold, clinical document about a piece of essentially propaganda from one of the Authority’s many enemies.

The back cover is marked with an emblem positively identified as belonging to the "Sons of Yggdrasil," stamped near the relative "lower-right-hand" corner

This sentence’s wording is scuffed, and needs fixing. It contains unnecessary words, and is potentially confusing. Perhaps something similar to “The back cover is marked with the emblem of the Sons of Yggdrasil on the bottom left corner.”

"arbores serit diligens agricola, quarum adspiciet baccam ipse numquam," a common quote from Roman philosopher Cicero's seminal work, the "Tusculan Disputations" series. This quote is generally translated as follows: "the diligent farmer plants trees, of which he himself will never see the fruit."

I understand how this ties in thematically, but maybe it would be better to not have a latin quote here. Instead, perhaps do a danish, or norse quote. Due to the fact that they explicitly have a norse focus, being the Sons of Yggdrasil. This is ultimately a minor point, but was still notable enough for me to write this.

devoid of iconography, mainly dedicated to text

This is redundant. If the pamphlet is devoid of iconography, it would then follow that it is dedicated exclusively to text. Avoid telling the reader information they already know, even in the same sentence. Otherwise you add padding that doesn’t need to be there and bores/distracts the reader.

White text is replaced with grey; it can be assumed this is in effort to better offset the text's color from the natural lilac shade without need of a contrasting background, as in the case of the exterior side.

This is a lot of words to say “The text inside the pamphlet is gray.” Why reiterate that it’s in a natural lilac shade? This reads like an interior design magazine. Even then, the text inside the pamphlet being gray is an almost completely unnecessary detail that doesn’t add anything other than maybe confirming that every page is a lilac shade. I get it, the paper isn’t normal paper, it’s mega biodegradable super-paper, in a nonstandard blend, in a lilac shade. These details aren’t important enough to reiterate. They never get brought up outside of these specific contexts, and aren’t mentioned at all in the overview.

wisdom plenty.

I think you may have meant “aplenty”, if you didn’t, it would flow better as “aplenty” anyway.

of old ways

It would flow better as “of the old ways”. Perhaps even capitalizing Old Ways to give it a more grandiose vibe. Especially considering this is a recruitment pamphlet, and they would want themselves to seem important enough to commit to.

and hunt for the Tree

Should be “and the hunt for the Tree”. Also, why is Tree capitalized, but not Old Ways?

As an aside, Attachment 3 as a whole needs more quotation marks to mark where the quotes begin and end.

akin to spores carried on the wind many other groups of a similarly mercurial disposition. Of particular note is the bulleted list on the inside of the front cover

This is worded strangely both in the pun and in the ‘fixed version’. Uncensoring the “to” would help greatly, although I don’t think I would describe this group as having a “mercurial disposition”.

Academy of True Art

Why does GEAR get a link to their hub, but Academy doesn’t? We do have a hub page for them, either link them both, or link neither.

instances of RPC-335

335 is a radio. There is only one known instance of it. It also has nothing to do with plant life or animal life. It is also an Amazing! Co. product that was purchased by Demonyless. Either you are referencing the wrong number, or the Sons of Yggdrasil has some bizarre ‘in’ with Amazing! Co. Please clarify immediately, or change the designation.

inexplicable competencies with plants, most likely caused by a mixture of excessively narrow research focus, esoteric knowledge, and anomalous effects.

“Inexplicable competencies”. Proceeds to give me 3 explanations of their competencies. Please reword.

They're more successful from a clandestine perspective than one might expect from a unit or scientists and gardeners, have a relatively powerful private defense force, and deep roots enduring connections in many rural locales

This sentence is weird and I don’t like it. Also, this is the second time the defense has been mentioned without providing any more information on it, making one of the instances redundant. In fact, the only new information provided in this sentence is in the very beginning of it when it’s mentioned that they are skilled in clandestine operations. Every other given bit of info, gardners and scientists, powerful defenses, and establishments in rural locations, have already been given elsewhere in the article.

To top it off, you wrote “Unit or scientists and gardeners”. This needs to be reworked.

Where they tread, new anomalies pop out of thin air

This is not clinical, and only exists to facilitate the floral pun.

Were it not for the fact that the overwhelming majority of those anomalies are harmless or useful for study, and their oddly pacifistic mindset, the Sons would likely be a tier █ priority.

This sentence is poorly worded, and either needs to be axed or reworked. I am also unfamiliar with any Authority terminology that tiers GoI priorities. Presuming that it did, why is it censored? This information is harmless, it would change nothing if it were uncensored, and so it is a black bar for the sake of having one.

Much is unclear about this group, and much is to be learned from pursuing the understanding of it

This is a weird sentence to come out of the Authority. It feels a bit too familiar, as if they are talking about acquaintances, rather than sculptors that actively threaten the veil; the thing the Authority was founded to maintain and protect at almost all costs. That, and it just doesn't flow very well.

However, for now, it appears as though the most profitable course of action is simply to watch and wait.

“Profitable” is a weird word choice here because money isn’t the issue. Furthermore, the Authority has at least one agent already inducted as a full member of the Sons. Why not continue to infiltrate the group? Why is the Authority acting so passive? This is an organization that is willing to mindwipe people on the regular, and kill those who are immune. Instead of taking active action against a group that is making anomalies, they decide to just wait. Why?

ODR HR MANAGER ██████████

Why is this censored?

+Final Thoughts

I was much more positive about this article when I first read it. On the second readthrough I kept finding more issues that dragged it down. By the end of it, I went from being vaguely in this group and wondering what their operations were like, to actively disliking how they and the Authority conducted themselves. The entire article seems almost unnecessary. The things it seems to focus on are arbitrary and boring.

There are confirmed names written in the pamphlet for all to see, there are hierarchies, and internal reviews of documents in this GoI. That’s interesting, those are things to latch onto and want to learn more about. Instead, I get two explanations that the pages are a natural lilac shade. I like the concept of this article far more than I like this article.

An Authority agent infiltrates a group, going deep undercover, being fully inducted as a member of an enemy faction. Taking the risks and time to relay this info back to the Authority, knowing that these people are capable of making things that break the very laws of nature and reality itself. And I was bored at the end of this.

There are so many interesting directions this could have gone, and it went to none of them, and instead told me tree puns. There is a version of this document and story that I would love, and it would inspire me to read more into this group, how the Authority reacts to it, and how their operations are structured. This is not that version. The positive things I have to say about this article lie more in the potential and what it could have been rather than what it actually is.

I would be willing to reread another iteration of this draft should the time come to it. As-is, I don’t look upon this document favorably, either in-universe, or in a meta context.

Can’t forget the natural lilac tone

Re: THE DESCENDANTS OF YGGDRASIL ARE BACK AND AMFC IS COMING BACK WITH A BANG: THE DRAFT COLLECTION

DrXOUBLE D 05 Jul 2025 07:36

Charlie's Critique

Grammer

The Sons of Yggdrasil are a discreet group of ecologically-minded individuals with connections to an array of anomalous plants.

Change to:

The Sons of Yggdrasil are a covert collective of ecologically-driven individuals with known affiliations to various anomalous botanical entities.

Much of their organization's structure is unclear due to the secretive nature of many of their gatherings and activities.

Change to:

The internal structure of the organization remains largely obscure, attributed to the clandestine nature of their assemblies and operations.

Their activities have been characterized as relatively benign, and infiltration has proved feasible, but remains a slow and patient process.

Change to:

While their activities are generally regarded as non-hostile, infiltration efforts have been viable yet require extended periods of observation and gradual integration.

As such, the Authority's diplomatic tact has assumed a pattern of observation and barter while information trickles in about their activities.

Change to:

Accordingly, Authority diplomatic protocol has defaulted to passive surveillance and negotiated exchange, pending the continued trickle of intelligence on their internal operations.

The attached documents include a digital scan of a pamphlet distributed by the Sons during the ceremony to induct new members, transcription of the surviving contents of the pamphlet, as well as commentary on the pamphlet's contents.

Change to:

The following attachments include a digitized scan of a pamphlet distributed during a Sons of Yggdrasil initiation ceremony, a transcription of its remaining legible contents, and supplementary commentary.

Content Critique

I'm going to be frank with you. I want to love this, but I can't. I'm gonna have to agree with antdem0n and his Critique. For what it is, it feels boring. You need to dive deeper into what this GoI is and what it does. Show us what makes this group interesting enough to pay attention to.

I think more must be added to the draft. Write about the unique culture of the GoI and how they operate.