What is The Cloister Club?
Short Answer:
The Cloister Club is small casual forum dedicated to the playful and creative discussion of medieval monasticism. This includes but is not limited to: Real and fictional monks, nuns, manuscripts, marginalia, medieval music, historical reenactment, literature, OCs, RPs, RPGs, DVDs, PDFs... you get the point.
Long answer:
There is a wealth of incredibly creative and talented people out there making art inspired by the art and culture of medieval monasticism. From big name games like Pentiment (https://store.steampowered.com/app/1205520/Pentiment/), to popular youtubers like Hildegard Von Blingin' (https://www.youtube.com/@Hildegardvonblingin), to small indie creators like Saint Blamensir (https://blamensir.neocities.org/). While these projects are disparate, they all stem from the same love of a particular window into history. For ease of communication, I am going to water this broad artistic genre down to "monkcore."
But how do you talk about this with people? There's no "Marginalia" fandom. There's no #RuleOfSaintBenedict. Well look no further. The Cloister Cub is a place to talk about all things monkcore. Its a place for historians, artists, writers, musicians, gamers, and anyone else who finds themselves drawn to the strange and beautiful world of medieval monasticism.
Why the Forum Format?
As St John Starling put it in his very good essay Regreening The Digital Wasteland (https://open.substack.com/pub/stjohnstarling/p/regreening-the-digital-wasteland), the internet has been split into two. Either you post in a glass fishbowl (social media), where you have no control over your audience, or you talk in a walled garden (private chat servers), where the audience is limited to people already in your community. There is a call to bring back "digital third spaces," small communities that anyone can find, but not everyone will see.
A forum is this kind of space. It does not require an account to view, so anyone may come by and see what people are sharing. It is geared towards one topic, so you don't have to load your work with tags and hope that the right audience will find it. Monkcore is a niche enough genre as it is, we shouldn't have to fight to be found.
Also. In a more meta sense. Isn't this the monkly thing to do? Monasticism was founded on the premise of weird guys with niche interests fucking off to their own corner of the world. We can follow their wise exempla and build a thriving insular community. Amen.
I hope Cloister Club will become a fun place to share creative projects, talk about history, gush about art, and connect!