[MR] Advice to newcomers

[Elaine Koogler]

To add to this advice, I can tell you that, regarding ninja in Japan, one
would not adopt such a persona unless they wanted to be dead very quickly.
In fact, if their "calling" was discovered, they were supposed to take their
own lives!!  Some years back, when I used to autocrat a Japanese event, I
always put in the event announcement a statement indicating that ninja were
not welcome:  "A known ninja is a dead ninja!"

Please encourage your friend NOT to do this!

Kiri



> Message: 4
> Date: Tue, 28 Apr 2009 17:20:15 -0700 (PDT)
> From: melissa haney <brenna14_02 at yahoo.com>
> Subject: [MR] Advice to newcomers
> To: "Atlantia at atlantia.sca.org" <Atlantia at atlantia.sca.org>
> Message-ID: <296502.47363.qm at web33803.mail.mud.yahoo.com>
> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii
>
>
> Can  someone give me some advice to pass on to a newcomer. He wants to be
> an assassin as his persona. Any help would be greatly appreciated. Brenna
>
>
>
>
>
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> Message: 10
> Date: Wed, 29 Apr 2009 00:03:28 -0400
> From: "McKenna" <mckennawerks at earthlink.net>
> Subject: Re: [MR] Advice to newcomers
> To: "Merry Rose" <atlantia at atlantia.sca.org>
> Message-ID: <BAC625252BA24A8499DC4D27B6216C89 at GIBLETS>
> Content-Type: text/plain; format=flowed; charset="iso-8859-1";
>        reply-type=original
>
>
> > Can  someone give me some advice to pass on to a newcomer. He wants to be
> > an assassin as his persona.
>
> [Hot button pushed hard. Sorry.]
>
> Nigh on two decades ago I finally convinced my wife that the SCA was not
> full of immature morons, and convinced her to attend an event.  She labored
> long and hard in research and handwork on a beaded Elizabethan dress in
> satin.  After the feast we were conversing with the King outside the feast
> hall when two wanna be "assassins" ran up, pelted him with shaving cream
> pies, and roared off in their getaway car.  By and large they missed HRM,
> but not my wife, and succeeded in ruining the satin dress--shaving cream
> can
> strip paint, try it--and for a long period left me barred from doing SCA by
> a wife who could not understand why I would want to hang around assholes
> like that.
>
> As far as I am concerned there is not, or at the very least, should not, be
> a role in the SCA for these idiots who want to play assassins.  I had hoped
> that annoying fad had passed into a well deserved oblivion.
>
> In a period context an assassin is vile murdering scum.  In period (or
> persona) someone who made a practice of murder would scarcely advertise the
> fact.  Hashasin in period were regarded by their co-religionists by and
> large as unpleasant extremists, and by Western Europeans (whom we are
> theoretically emulating) as heathen criminals of the lowest sort.  Even the
> Medicis and Borgias and their ilk who by many accounts employed hired
> murderers, did their best to distance themselves from the sociopaths they
> employed.  FitzUrse won only scorn by his deed.  The belief that ninja
> enjoyed any respect in their historical social milieu is a modern myth with
> no grounds in documented historical reality.
>
> What's next, Vampires?  Trekkies with "tri-corders" who have time-warped
> and
> beamed down?
>
> Some kingdoms specifically outlaw such personas, and while Atlantia may not
> do so officially, do we really want to encourage such things in a Kingdom
> widely admired for it's courtesy and support of historicity?
>
> The best advice to give this newcomer: DON'T.
>
> McKenna
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>