[MR] The SCA as a "joke"

[gormofberra at direcway.com]

and you, Your grace, apparently did not read what I wrote.

I do not have problems with the concept of making things better, periodwise.  I have problems with the specific solution that was chosen by fiat.

In my initial e-mail on this subject, I listed at least 4 other ways that the same goal could have been reached, and possibly better, but that were apparently discarded by those In Power in favor of their preferred solution.

The SCA isn't about complete historical accuracy, never has been, never will be, never can be (not with a 1000+ year time period).  It is about picking and choosing the aspects of medival life that interest you, studying them to the best of your ability, and recreating those that you wish to.

Everyone makes a choice.  You, Duke Logan, chose to pursue the path of Heavy Fighting.  You have acheived excellence in it.  Congratulations.  However, not everyone in the SCA chooses the same activities to study.

Noone can acheieve excellence in everything (well, maybe Duke Gyrth, but he's had a lot longer to tackle this than I), all anyone can strive for is to acheieve excellence in the area they study.  And even then, not everyone can acheive it.

Some efforts will fall far short.  Some efforts will look quite ridiculous.  

In order to make the attempt in one area, another area will, by necessity, be lessened in importance.  For me, it is my chair.  For someone else, it may be the quality of their fight.  For a third person, it may be the food they eat for lunch.

Up until December 1st, the attitude of Atlantia has been to accept the shortcomings of those who do not acheive as well in a given area, but allow them to compete, and perhaps grow.  Starting December 1st, the rule is "If you do not meet the Marshal's defintion of good enough, you can't even play".

As a general rule, when changing the status quo, an analysis should be done to show several things:

1.  Is there a problem that needs fixing?
2.  Will the suggested approach fix that problem?
3.  Is there another approach that would fix it better?
4.  What are the costs of the approach?

Few would argue that "We should strive to acheive a higher degree of authenticity" is a good goal, meeting #1.

However, I do not beleive the approach chosen works under item #2.  It will not fix the problem.  Folks with plastic armor can obey the letter of the law with a simple tabard.  It does nothing to improve the authenticity of the armor, it merely covers it, something like shoving all your junk into the closet before the in-laws arrive.

There are many other approaches that *might* fix the problem better.  Yet none of these appears to have even been considered, much less implemented.  

*THAT* is my beef, and it will continue to be my beef all along.  I will not go quietly into the night conceeding "You're right, Logan, I'm an anti-authenticity dweeb."  I believe in the right of the individual to choose to try whatever activities they think may spark an interest, to whatever level they can acheive with their initial skills, and then, if they wish to improve later, they may do so.

Further, who is to say that plastic armor isn't an attempt?  Perhaps they are trying to cover those areas which are required to be covered, although their persona wouldn't wear any armor, or minimal armor, and they are attempting to mitigate the NON-PERIOD penalty being imposed by the safety regulations of the Marshallate rules.  Corpora doesn't require a "Good Attempt", merely an "attempt".  And I would contend that the fighter trying to fight in a Chivalrous and polite fashion, in sneakers and football pads, is attempting to recreate the Spirit of Noble Combat far better than the Gothic Plate clad Knight in a sparkling tunic who constantly shrugs off shots as "Light", or is rude to the MoLs.

I realize this attitude is political suicide in an organization which chooses it's leaders the way we do, and such is life.  Sometimes the Revolutionary changes the world, sometimes his head gets chopped off...sometimes both happens.  I *believe* in the spirit of the Society, and I do NOT believe this rule furthers it one bit.

In Service to the Dream of Atlantia,

Gorm

----- Original Message -----
From: logan <dukelogan at bellsouth.net>
Date: Tuesday, October 28, 2003 11:44 am
Subject: RE: [MR] The SCA as a "joke"

> apparently you did not read what i wrote.  i will attempt to 
> summarize.
> "a reasonable attempt" is the battle cry of people, such as 
> yourself, that
> disagree with what i have said.  first, i have never suggested 
> that the sca
> become a strictly authentic organization.  never.  i have 
> suggested that we
> make, uh oh, a "reasonable attempt".  now tell me what attempt at 
> pre 1600
> items are exposed plastic barrels, gorms nylon coleman chair, blue 
> jeans,tennis shoes, or anything else that i specifically have 
> mentioned?  there is
> no attempt at all.
> 
> and no, ive never had a freon can (i only played for 12 years) and 
> none of
> my armor was modern until i was in for a few years.  then it was all
> covered.  and yes i had a few short sleeved tunics.  i have since 
> thrownthem away of had long sleeves put in them and gave them 
> away.  but again,
> that has never been my point.
> 
> and, i never said that the sca was a joke.  what i said was the 
> statementthat the sca is a living history group is a joke.  the 
> sca claims, in its
> charter, that it is a living history group, an educational group 
> and it
> requires its participants to make a "reasonable attempt".  yet it 
> fails at
> all of these things and there is, for some bizarre reason, an 
> effort to
> ignore those simple requirements.
> 
> sorry to hear that you had some problems with hospitality in your 
> area.  not
> sure that has anything to do with this topic though.
> 
> 
> 
> look, it boils down to a few simple facts.  one of those is that 
> so many
> people in the sca like to react emotionally to things they do not, 
> on the
> surface, agree with.  they attack the author and not the message. 
> to date a
> few people have disagreed with what i have said on this topic and 
> every one
> of them has made claims about me wanting to have everyone live up 
> to my
> level of authenticity, or that i expect exact period techniques and
> materials.  obviously none of them have actually read what i have 
> written.not a surprise, its fairly common.  the big thing that is 
> lacking in all of
> these retorts is an argument against what i have suggested.  i 
> have only
> suggested that the rules that are in place in the charter of the 
> sca be
> followed.  why there are people that take the option to join an 
> organizationand then refuse to follow its rules is beyond me.  do 
> you guys smoke in non
> smoking sections?  of course not.  just because there is no fear 
> of being
> thrown out of an event for drinking out of a mello yello bottle 
> doesnt mean
> we should spit on or ignore the rules.  that is the point.  not 
> what i want
> to see.  frankly it doesnt really matter to me and its not my 
> problem any
> longer.  i am only addressing it because i signed a check a few 
> months ago
> and i support what we did.
> 
> 
> 
> so please, if anyone else wishes to step up and trumpet the 
> greatness of
> coleman chairs or the impossibility of taking the field in 
> anything but
> exposed plastic and tennis shoes also include why you think its ok 
> to refuse
> to follow the rules.  perhaps the rules should be changed.  until 
> they are
> why should you (general statement) be above them?  few other 
> organizationswould cater to such active disregard.
> 
> 
> 
> regards
> logan
> 
> -----Original Message-----
> From: atlantia-bounces at atlantia.sca.org
> [atlantia-bounces at atlantia.sca.org] On Behalf Of egeorges
> Sent: Tuesday, October 28, 2003 10:17 AM
> To: atlantia at atlantia.sca.org
> Subject: [MR] The SCA as a "joke"
> 
> 
> Your Grace Logan, I think your comments are somewhat off the mark.
> 
> First off, if a person wants relentless authenticity right down to 
> thierunderpants, there are any number of medieval living history 
> groups to
> accommodate them.  And yes, some of the people who are in those 
> groups like
> to sneer at scadians because we tolerate and emphasize a "reasonable
> attempt" at pre-1600 clothing, as opposed to hand sewing every bit 
> of a very
> specific 14th century kit from a very specific military regiment 
> in France.
> Many of the folks in my barony play both with living history 
> groups and with
> the SCA.  And they understand and appreciate the difference 
> between those
> groups and the SCA.
> 
> What is the difference?  The SCA has a long and noble tradition of 
> makingitself accessible to as many people as it can while still 
> living up to its
> educational purpose.  The SCA has long held the idea that it 
> shouldn't be so
> difficult to have this kind of fun.  That's why we emphasize a 
> "reasonableattempt" at pre-1600 clothing.  That's why people 
> squawk when the membership
> fees go up.  Yes we are (and have always been) more of the mind 
> that this
> should be fun.  And there is absolutely nothing wrong with that.  
> As a local
> Chatelaine, I can tell you one of the principal obstacles that we 
> face with
> a newcomer is not that we are "not authentic enough," but that the 
> struggleto know what's authentic and what isn't is overwhelming to 
> someone who up
> until now knew nothing more about the period than the dubious 
> "fact" that
> Henry VIII liked to carry around a turkey leg.  The fact that we 
> have a
> rather complicated social structure and awards system on top of 
> all that
> just makes it more difficult.  My personal belief is that it is 
> hard enough
> to retain newcomers without creating more and more "barriers to 
> entry" for
> them.
> 
> The truth of the matter is, that the #1 and #2 reason that people stop
> playing in the SCA are "too much time" and "too much politics" 
> (this based
> on a survey taken by the Kingdom Chatelaine last year).  In other 
> words, the
> time and effort to be fairly authentic actually works against our 
> thrivingas a group.  You want to have 2,000 men in armor at 
> Pennsic at the fort
> battle?  Be prepared to make some concessions.
> 
> Kiri is right.  If you look at the difference between now and even 
> ten years
> ago, our overall authenticity level has gone up.  But everyone starts
> somewhere.  Most of the Knights in Atlantia (including you, I am 
> sure) have
> a freon can and a T-tunic in their past.  It takes time to develop the
> capability to produce truly authentic period clothing, or even 
> clothing that
> looks really period.  Many of our newcomers have never threaded a 
> sewingmachine, or worked metal in their lives.  I certainly hadn't 
> when I joined
> the SCA.
> 
> I will agree, that some people do push the bleeding edge of what 
> could be
> considered a "reasonable attempt" at period clothing.  I also 
> agree that a
> player who has committed 10+ years to the game and can't be 
> bothered to don
> something other than blue jeans is demonstrating a remarkable 
> disdain for
> the goals of the group.  However, the answer to this problem is 
> NOT to make
> lots and lots of detailed rules that wind up confusing and 
> intimidatingpeople, and making publicly disdainful remaks about 
> the SCA being a "joke."
> The answer is to do better at providing resources (both in 
> knowledge and
> access to materials), and for more senior members of the group to 
> set an
> example in this effort.  (I am glad to hear that you make an 
> effort to do so
> with folks in your local group.)   It should be a matter of honor for
> long-time players to try and set an example for others in the 
> authenticityof their game, not a matter of making rules. That's 
> never been our way.
> Making more rules and then sitting back and complaining that no 
> one is
> following them is a cop out, because you are making it someone 
> else's job to
> live up to your standards.  You are also placing an unfair burden 
> on the
> newcomer and denying him the opportunity you had to grow into your 
> currentlevel of authenticity. (please note I am using a general, 
> not a personal
> "you" here).
> 
> The living history folks in my barony are all fairly new, having 
> gottenstarted in the SCA about a year or so ago.  Many had tried 
> to play in the
> SCA before, and had given up on it.  Ironically, it was NOT 
> because of the
> lack of authenticity, but the lack of hospitality.  That alone 
> should tell
> you something.
> 
> Luce Antony Venus
> Chatelaine, Ponte Alto
> 
> 
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