SCP-5494 / Discussion

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The Copper Cats

HarryBlank 06 Sep 2020 20:47

I gratefully acknowledge the land upon which I live. Since time immemorial it has been home to the Anishnaabe, Haudenosaunee, and Wendat peoples.

This was a delicate dance. I am not Anishnaabeg, and the underwater panther is primarily a creature of their cultural traditions. I intend this piece as an extremely snide argument against carelessly appropriating the traditions and art of oppressed peoples worldwide. To that end I have presented the Mishipeshu as it appears in the legends of the Anishnaabe, taking no liberties of which I am aware. The story and all its presentation, including all wording, is mine. The entity is mine not the least bit.

The Foundation's "informants" belong to the nations from whose stories the details they are conveying originate. Where the histories describing these beings vary, I have attempted to account for that variance.

It's my belief that using a mythological figure to make a point about the misuse of mythological figures does not constitute… misuse of a mythological figure. If I have erred in any fashion, I apologize. If on the other hand my point was made too forcefully, too obviously, and too blatantly: excellent! That's what I was going for. If anyone, anyone reads this and thinks it's "about" underwater panthers eating people, I screwed up.

Special thanks as always to Grigori Karpin for his excellent assistance.

Oh, hey, in the event that anyone from the reservations surrounding Lake Huron sees this, and your reservation isn't included in the Nexus map, and you'd like it to be, give me a shout.

PLEASE read below for an outline of several issues of concern for the First Nations in Canada, relating to this SCP article, and also the textual sources from which I learned about the underwater panthers.

+ SOURCES AND FURTHER READING

I have drawn on online resources compiled by both native and non-native sources to glean details about the underwater panthers. Specifically… these… sources… right… here. Note: some of the sub-pages in these links may require use of the Wayback Machine to access. Indigenous knowledge is fleeting on the internet, but thankfully there are ways and means.

Many of Canada's First Nations lack access to clean drinking water, in contravention of United Nations definitions of universal human rights. This is the fault of successive federal governments and their inaction.

Oral history is a legitimate means of transferring knowledge. It's not "broken telephone," as societies without the written word learn how to pass down important information orally with extreme accuracy.

There are many resources for learning Anishinaabemowin, the language of the Ojibwe. It survives in use to this day, against the best efforts of Canadian federal governments since the nineteenth century. The Potawatomi have not been so lucky.

Ethnographies of indigenous peoples have been extraordinarily harmful, particularly "salvage ethnography" conducted to separate the First Nations from their belongings and cultural patrimony under the misguided belief that they were nearing extinction.

Native artefacts were poached from their owners for a variety of reasons, coming into the hands of government agents and the owners/operators of museums. It has taken decades for some of these artefacts, many of them sacred, many of them never meant to be seen by outsiders, to be returned to their people. Many of them never have been. Unfortunately, so far as I can tell no salvage ethnographer was ever actually eaten by underwater panthers. But we can dream.

Much of this looting was done under legislation making all indigenous cultural practices illegal. People caught celebrating their traditions were arrested, and their belongings confiscated.

The Canadian federal government knowingly perpetrated an illegal "pass system" to imprison the First Nations on their reserves. Indian agents were directed not to make too big a fuss with it, because the government knew the system would be struck down if it came to public attention. Oral history suggests that this was happening as late as the 1940s.

Stealing indigenous knowledge and twisting it for colonial purposes, or selling it, is a time-honoured tradition around here.

Ignoring native claims that later turn out to be precisely true is a similarly long-standing cultural practice in Canada.

While we're on the subject of sources, Panther.jpg and Huron.jpg are the author's own work freely released under the CC3.0 license.

Last edited on 09 Dec 2020 04:57 by HarryBlank Show more

Re: The Copper Cats

HarryBlank 17 Oct 2020 05:27

Some terrific friendart from PlaguePJP!

PlaguePJP 06 Sep 2020 21:29

I’m prefacing this by stating that I haven't heard of the Anishnaabe peoples and their cultural traditions and legends.

The hook of your containment procedures and image are very nice, and the inclusion of a nexus zone is always something I enjoy reading. As I stated already, I didn’t know about these myths and was ready for this to be a standard horror setup where this tribe is setting up the Foundation to die to please these creatures. I can’t tell you how happy I was not to have that be the outcome.

Somehow this had an odd hit of realism to it, more than I find with most SCPs, I’m not sure if it’s your writing style (which, may I say, is great) or the subject matter but this was an enthralling read all the way through.

My only real criticism is that I feel like this could be cut down very slightly, as the pretty consistent pacing faltered for me around the last two or so test logs. This wasn’t enough to sway my vote, and I love a good folklore/legend based SCP. Easy +1.

HarryBlank 06 Sep 2020 21:35

Hopefully a lot of people who haven't heard of them see this, and follow through by looking up the Anishnaabeg on their own terms!

That first line is my favourite thing I've written on the site. It just HAS to be a "What?" moment for most readers.

From the start I wanted the point to not be "scary indigenous legend-monsters kill people" but instead "stupid people don't realize they can't slot themselves into someone else's myth structure." I'm glad it worked out that way.

Thank you for the feedback and kind words! I'll take a look at my panther pacing :P

Placeholder McD 06 Sep 2020 23:20

As an Ontarian, I join in your grateful acknowledgement of the land upon which I live.

Hey, really glad to see this is up! I loved this as a draft, and I apologize for not getting back to you about crit.

This seems like it was a really, really tough line to walk, and something I certainly couldn't have done as well as you did here. My only real criticism is that, the way I perceive the Foundation, they'd justify non-interference as 'preserving normalcy' for the Anishnaabe, since they're they're typically just fine with using extensive measures to take things that "aren't [theirs]". However, such a criticism is about as minor as minor can be, and I can understand why you'd forego such a justification in order to drive the point home. A +1 could seldom be better earned.

Last edited on 06 Sep 2020 23:21 by Placeholder McD Show more

HarryBlank 06 Sep 2020 23:30

Thanks a bunch, and don't worry about the crit - I assumed you were busy with the contest, and thought I might as well strike while the iron was hot.

I'm glad you liked it, it was indeed a heck of a tightrope.

Last edited on 06 Sep 2020 23:35 by HarryBlank Show more

rektilian 06 Sep 2020 23:25

I understand that the tone of the article was deliberate, but I still found it extremely grating, and not in a good way. The piece reads more like a lecture on the subject matter and not an exploration of it.

HarryBlank 06 Sep 2020 23:29

Thanks for the feedback!

InvictusRaged 07 Sep 2020 20:19

Was I supposed to laugh out loud, sincerely and literally, several times? I dig it all the way.

HarryBlank 07 Sep 2020 20:20

Yes. Yes, you were. Thank you!

An Irregularity 13 Sep 2020 04:50

I've got to say I really love this, especially the commentary on appropriation in the first few containment attempts.

The one "criticism" I do have is that I feel like most versions of the Foundation would not accept these conprocs, control freaks that they are. Nexuses/Sloth's Pit Canon mitigates this a bit, but the gut feeling stands.

Overall though, definite +1

HarryBlank 13 Sep 2020 05:41

Thanks! I'm glad it came out the way I intended, that's exactly what those containment attempts were meant to be about. I was honestly giggling about doing five "we tried to appropriate" -> "we were consumed" tests in a row.

I totally get the Foundation not necessarily being that magnanimous in people's headcanons! In fact, my next SCP - a sequel to this one - has them behaving much less kindly. And yeah, S&C Plastics almost certainly influenced my direction here. It is the best thing.

In the end, I bent the rules a bit to make my point. Glad you got it, and appreciated it!

Last edited on 13 Sep 2020 09:51 by HarryBlank Show more

peppermint_legos 29 Sep 2020 17:45

As a fellow resident of the Great Lakes region, I appreciate the care and respect that you took with this article. I'll always support a greater involvement and understanding of the culture and history of indigenous Americans — and a recognition that the land we live on has a human history much older than a few centuries.

That said, I wanted more from this. It never surprised me or introduced any wrinkles into the story, and I kept waiting for something truly interesting to happen. As is, it's just a series of Foundation agents continuing to poke the "monster" and failing laughably every time. If they're failing so badly, why do they keep trying the same way?

I understand that's your point, but it kind of reads like you made the Foundation purposely incompetent just so you could get that point across. Couple that with a few

stylistic choices,

• I love the first line of conprocs, but it really should include a few more lines about 1. The Foundation monitoring the area or 2. The Foundation preventing other groups from interfering. I love that The Foundation accepts they're not in charge of this thing, but c'mon. They're a shadowy governmental paranormal containment organization. They're not gonna completely ignore it.
• Also, "everything is solved instantly" was unsatisfying as an ending. I would've maybe liked a bit harder-won of a conclusion, where The Foundation has to really grapple with their shortcomings rather than just say "oh, you're right, thanks we'll fix that."
• Finally, from your commentary it sounds like you aren't First Nations, so I respect that you wrote what you knew in terms of only taking the Foundation perspective. However, I think this piece suffered because the indigenous people depicted in it weren't really given characterizations: they were just presented as a monolithic group who dispensed info for The Foundation to misinterpret. Giving them names, dialogue, or more agency in the story could help that.

and this one ultimately didn't work for me. I deeply, deeply respect your point, but I think the article's weaknesses ultimately push it into Noble Savage territory as a work of fiction.

Last edited on 29 Sep 2020 17:46 by peppermint_legos Show more

HarryBlank 29 Sep 2020 21:54

Some interesting points. As this story is set almost eighty years ago, far from the centre of Foundation activities, where there's no established Site and they're just muddling around in an emergency situation, I consider their ineptitude acceptable. Their cultural chauvinism, well, I made them less idiotic about that than their contemporaries would have been, because they are the Foundation. To the charge of subordinating a strict reading of the setting to the point the story was trying to make, I cheerfully plead intentional guilt. I'll do that every time.

+ Long and not entirely calm response follows!

I think the noble savage comparison is entirely off-base. The indigenous peoples are not presented as inherently nature-attuned primitives, or the morally pure, uncivilized best-in-all-of-us, but people who know their own cultural content and have ownership of it. That's all. They're a constellation of cultures who own and know their stories, and are confronted with people who don't. The fact that these stories are actually true in the context of the tale removes any romanticization of their religious beliefs, in my opinion. You're not a picaresque, quaint society if you're in consultation with big corporations and describing actual events in scientifically-correct terms.

There's no reference to their living conditions or "civilization" save for the lack of clean drinking water, which has nothing to do with them directly. They act with agency to mobilize culture to acquire modern conveniences, as they are not savages but members of a modern society. They know what they do want, and what they don't want, from their neighbours. Where there are references to their cultural beliefs in relation to nature or myth, those are gleaned directly from indigenous sources - and those beliefs are being relayed by people whose job in society is to relay them, in real life, even today. I'm not applying tropes to the First Peoples, or presenting them as signifiers rather than human beings, I'm repeating their words and cultural understandings in their own terms. I was in fact very careful to never describe their belief systems in terms that are my own. There is none of me in that depiction. Not an ounce. I have taken liberties only with the non-indigenous characters.

Not every story about natives who aren't wrong is the noble savage trope, which I am very well aware of. I tend towards death of the author in most cases, but I firmly believe that's a misreading - and I resent it, as it's a misreading with considerable moral freight. It seems like a reflexive mislabeling to me, one with a chilling effect. That's not a term I'd throw around without making sure it applied.

peppermint_legos 12 Oct 2020 15:40

Thanks for your response.

+ collapsed reply

I accept your point about the Foundation's competency compared to others of the time, and while I still didn't like its execution, the reasoning still helps me to justify it more now.

I wasn't saying the story actually paints the Anishnaabe as "noble savages," and you're right that simply having native people be correct doesn't automatically put the story in that camp. My comparison to the trope was more because, at least to me, the story didn't have any native voices.

Because the article's structure is so straightforward (Foundation Gets Advice, They Misapply It, Things Go Wrong, repeat), we don't get a chance to encounter the Anishnaabe or any of their members as characters. They're just presented as a source of information about the entity, not active participants in the narrative. I'm not saying they don't exercise agency in their cultural/economic situation — I'm saying they don't exercise agency in the story.

Incorporating an active native voice into this article would have been difficult though, and would have significantly changed its structure, so I understand why you didn't do it. I still think it would've been nice to have a character from one of the native peoples become actively involved in the storyline — because without that, it's a fairly cut-and-dry morality play with no twists or complications. The Foundation was in the wrong, they fix it, end of story.

I wasn't trying to accuse you of any ill intent or judgment on the cultures that feature in your story. It's abundantly clear that you have deep respect for them, and that you put time and effort into treating their involvement with that same respect and accuracy. I just wanted to share why it didn't work for me personally, and make a reference to what it reminded me of. I apologize for any perceived slight, as that was never my intention.

HarryBlank 13 Oct 2020 05:02

I appreciate the response, and I don't disagree. Ideally, I would have co-authored this with an indi… no, actually, ideally, an indigenous author would've written this themselves. I had my point I wanted to make, though, and I tried to make it as respectfully as I could. That did result in a certain flatness in the character arcs, as I was unwilling to put words in their mouths or depict them taking action, which would have felt too much like puppeteering. This wouldn't have been a problem if someone from the respective cultures had been involved… or if someone less worried about misrepresentation had been writing.

I don't know that they lack agency in comparison to the Foundation characters, as it's their desires that end up becoming the status quo, but that's a matter of perspective and I agree that there's room for them to have taken a more active role in the story. If I'd had the balls to find an Anishnaabe coauthor, that might have happened; something to consider down the line.

Thanks for engaging in this conversation with me.

Spoonr 04 Feb 2021 01:12

IMO, this is not noble savage, the closest it gets is the “returning copper ore to the earth”. It is appropriate that the Anishnaabe aren’t active in the narrative, because this narrative is about the Foundation. If someone could pull it off, I would love to see a Tale from the Anishnaabe perspective.
+1

peppermint_legos 05 Feb 2021 15:58

Agreed. Would be very interesting to see that interaction.

T Rutherford 01 Oct 2020 14:07

Well done. Easy +1, but like most people I have my gripes.

PROS

• As an Ontario resident, it was great seeing some representation for the Great Lakes and the mythology surrounding them. You clearly put the time in on this, both in terms of research, extrapolation, and respect for the source material.
• There's a lot of strong, technical writing here without burdening the reader with too much terminology. This also might be the first time in recent history I've seen an article using CSR style endnotes, rather than footnotes directly after a clause (i.e. the Chimera description). It felt very professional, clinical, and even bureaucratic. That's not an easy tone to keep while describing the anomalous, let alone as engagingly as you do.
• The story itself has a good, well paced arc that shows a gradual decline in the Foundations hubris. The real-life references to both Great Lakes mythology and modern issues in Canada (pipeline blockades, destructive mining practices, etc.) help ground the article extremely well.

CONS

• While the technical writing is strong, the formatting feels a bit flat. The experiment logs are functional, but lack punch, and tend to linger a bit too long with the "theory" portions. I feel you could have folded theory and procedure together without too much trimming; you tend to repeat information in 'what we should do' and then 'what we did' to the articles detriment.
• The interstitial story-beats between the experiment logs also feel a bit ill-paced. They're either too short, too long, or provide critical information that should have been introduced in the description before the experiments. Your way reads far better in terms of pacing, but not in terms of clinical formatting. Trust me, I'm super guilty of this too.
• You tend to go a bit overboard on the footnotes - which sucks - because I'd say half the footnotes with necessary information / story building are just great. We don't need to hear so much about what's illegal, and information that's unfounded can be noted in the text proper.
• In retrospect, while I love how grounded this story is, it also feels like you didn't break much ground, so to speak. It's all very rooted in mythology without proposing any new or interesting twists on the source material. Yes, they exist. Yes, we shouldn't be destroying their environment. Yes, let's just leave them alone. It's well written, but a tad dry without more of a twist.
• The ending is great, in theory. You sum up the main point of the article well with the "it's not our lake", but it feels odd coming from a journal entry. Like, what Foundation Archivist would put that quote at the end of the article? An official statement from the Site or Research director, carrying the same sentiment, might land better. This feels a bit too, I don't know, sassy for the closing of such a clinical document.

Overall, fantastic work. I look forward to your future articles!

Last edited on 01 Oct 2020 14:25 by T Rutherford Show more

HarryBlank 02 Oct 2020 06:44

Thanks for the detailed notes, and I'm glad you liked it! I might go back some day and work on some of the organizational issues you identified; my articles are never dead to me, and I check back on them constantly. Appreciate the feedback a bunch!

coachskau 04 Oct 2020 17:44

This is great. Everything was going fine until the Foundation showed up trying to throw their weight around. +1

HarryBlank 04 Oct 2020 20:29

Thanks! It's all fun and games until someone gets consumed.

AnEndlessUsername 14 Oct 2020 23:31

I love the portrayal of the foundation here. Feels real. Also the article has a mix of funnies, death, mystery, all good stuff and it never felt too overstated for me. I feel like this could have easily been way more obviously written, but it holds back, and that's a good thing. The ending might be just a tad heavy-handed, given how much of the rest of the article trusts the reader to "get it", but I enjoyed the rest enough to +1.

HarryBlank 16 Oct 2020 07:35

Thanks, glad it worked for you! I usually write longer stuff so this was an exercise in trying to get to the points as efficiently as possible - the points you outlined. I agree that the ending is heavy-handed, but once I had that phrase in my head, I couldn't not use it, y'know?

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