Robert and I day-tripped (O blessed occurrence, to sleep in your own bed on Saturday night!) with ![[profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
nz_bookwyrm to the Far Isles Midsummer event.
The Far Isles is an offshoot of the SCA, that sprang up in the UK after a falling-out with the SCA BoD of the 1980s.
( Read more... )
In a way, I feel like I've encountered the SCA again for the first time - seen it from a fresh perspective, though a more critical one than I possessed when I joined in university. It was both familiar and unfamiliar at the same time, and reminded me of how the SCA may come across to other history groups - our insistence on 'authenticity' in some areas, and our sometimes necessary obliviousness to anachronisms in others - like the modern school hall with its fixtures and furniture.
It also reminded me that you meet the standard you know and see. The Far Isles' standard for food, music and entertainment is excellent, surpassing our own, because that's what they care about, and folks make an effort to meet that standard.
Their combat suffers from lack of new blood, and is no longer pushed by member circulation, or by new scholarship and research that has filtered, however slowly, into the SCA. Without the mass of fighters and fencers pushing, pulling and stretching the forms of combat, it has retreated from full speed and contact into stage fighting.
Seeing other people's ceremonies and honours also gave me fresh eyes to look at the SCA's approach, and how they'd look to an outsider.
nz_bookwyrm to the Far Isles Midsummer event. The Far Isles is an offshoot of the SCA, that sprang up in the UK after a falling-out with the SCA BoD of the 1980s.
( Read more... )
In a way, I feel like I've encountered the SCA again for the first time - seen it from a fresh perspective, though a more critical one than I possessed when I joined in university. It was both familiar and unfamiliar at the same time, and reminded me of how the SCA may come across to other history groups - our insistence on 'authenticity' in some areas, and our sometimes necessary obliviousness to anachronisms in others - like the modern school hall with its fixtures and furniture.
It also reminded me that you meet the standard you know and see. The Far Isles' standard for food, music and entertainment is excellent, surpassing our own, because that's what they care about, and folks make an effort to meet that standard.
Their combat suffers from lack of new blood, and is no longer pushed by member circulation, or by new scholarship and research that has filtered, however slowly, into the SCA. Without the mass of fighters and fencers pushing, pulling and stretching the forms of combat, it has retreated from full speed and contact into stage fighting.
Seeing other people's ceremonies and honours also gave me fresh eyes to look at the SCA's approach, and how they'd look to an outsider.
