Ask me about the Current Middle Ages! It's the SCA thread!

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Ask/Tell > Ask me about the Current Middle Ages! It's the SCA thread!

Camrath: Mar 19, 2004; The UKMT Fudge Baron

I have to admit, I've not had the best impression of the SCA from my limited experience- which is odd, because as a dedicated LARPer our interests should align pretty well.

I used to run a LARP fighting club in London, which started getting some SCA members coming along. Which is great, nerdy combat sports are a broad church and so on. Except that almost to a man the SCA people looked down on those LARP fighting, mocked them pretty openly and were just generally horribly smug, aloof and elitist to deal with. End result- all the LARP fighting died off and now the club is entirely people doing armoured combat drills. I gave up earlier this year as spending an evening being patronised for doing 'the wrong sort' of fake combat got seriously loving old.

# ? Sep 29, 2015 21:25

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# ? May 3, 2024 00:43

Goobers For Guts: Jul 17, 2007

I do personally know several laurel level artisans who DO go to overwhelming extents to be as authentic as possible. Fiber laurels who raise sheep in wattle fences, shear them, comb the wool, rove it, spin it on a great wheel or drop spindle, dye it with woad or natural period dyes, then weave it on a period loom. Scribes that stretch goat skin and make period pigments and experiment with period glue recipes for gold leafing. I am regularly impressed by the quality research and dedication the artisans in the SCA put into their chosen field. I've seen SCA participating laurels get published in many journals on historical arts and sciences. I know of one lady who actually changed the history books on whether cotton was utilized in Europe on the same level as linen, hemp, and wool. She researched ships records to see the quantities of fiber brought over from the New World. Another who is translating a very old German cook book in a lost dialect. It goes on an on.

The SCA is a 501 c-3 non profit. That is not something you gain status for by just dressing up like a jester and going to ren faires. It's based on the legitimate educational and historical research done on the Arts and Sciences. Not as much the fighting since it is done with rattan for insurance reasons. Therefore it cannot be historical.

# ? Sep 29, 2015 21:52

Goobers For Guts: Jul 17, 2007

Camrath posted:

I have to admit, I've not had the best impression of the SCA from my limited experience- which is odd, because as a dedicated LARPer our interests should align pretty well.

I used to run a LARP fighting club in London, which started getting some SCA members coming along. Which is great, nerdy combat sports are a broad church and so on. Except that almost to a man the SCA people looked down on those LARP fighting, mocked them pretty openly and were just generally horribly smug, aloof and elitist to deal with. End result- all the LARP fighting died off and now the club is entirely people doing armoured combat drills. I gave up earlier this year as spending an evening being patronised for doing 'the wrong sort' of fake combat got seriously loving old.

I have seen this all too often. And I do not condone that attitude. I have heard remarks from other SCA members watching LARPers at Cons, and I don't think it's really their place. I have done both. And honestly, the LARP folks are having tons of fun doing their thing and they all come over and hang out with us and we admire each others setups. To each their own. We all like to have fun in different ways.

# ? Sep 29, 2015 21:58

Mr. Wiggles: Dec 1, 2003; We are all drinking from the highball glass of ideology.

Verisimilidude posted:

Seriously, if someone is hitting someone so hard (with rattan of all things) that they're breaking limbs they're hitting WAY too hard. Historical combat didn't even involve swinging for the fences, unless you're role playing as some kind of buffel.

That's how hard we always hit in caid and the west. That's just the way it's done. It's fun.

# ? Sep 30, 2015 01:17

Siivola: Dec 23, 2012

Well it certainly forces the receiver to admit the blow. :v:

"Nay, 'tis but a scratch!"

# ? Sep 30, 2015 05:52

Mr. Wiggles: Dec 1, 2003; We are all drinking from the highball glass of ideology.

People who talk like that get hit harder.

# ? Sep 30, 2015 06:09

Liquid Communism: Mar 9, 2004; Out here, everything hurts.

Mr. Wiggles posted:

That's how hard we always hit in caid and the west. That's just the way it's done. It's fun.

It's all fun and games until someone gets crippled because they needed to prove how big their dick is by rhinohiding.

# ? Sep 30, 2015 19:32

Mr. Wiggles: Dec 1, 2003; We are all drinking from the highball glass of ideology.

Sic ludo pugnae est.

# ? Sep 30, 2015 22:40

Pixelante: Mar 16, 2006; You people will by God act like a team, or at least like people who know each other, or I'll incinerate the bunch of you here and now.

curious lump posted:

this describes the SCA perfectly. anyone who uses it for anything but fighting should be put to death

Sorry for shining the worst light on it, but I've tried to engage with the SCA community in three different cities--I was a History major with a focus in wars for my first degree--and always wanted it to be better than I found it. I think it suffers from the same problem the Burning Man monster has; regional groups take on the flavour of their most active and involved members. One city might be rhino-hiding machoism, another might be waaaaay into authenticity ("her dress would have been so pretty if she hadn't used polyester thread! Ew!"), and I'm hopeful there are some who are just chill, inclusive, and having a lot of fun playing. The stuff that the SCA does and makes and studies are great. The people who remember that it's a game are fantastic. It's the people who forget that it's about doing and just start being it who go right up their own asses until they can't hear the world outside. So... largely the upper echelons of court.

But I just described almost every time-consuming, social, and expensive hobby ever so welp.

(Horses are also expensive and time-consuming so if you pile that on the SCA I seriously don't know when you'd sleep. My family kept horses and even modern tack is a pain to keep in shape.)

Pixelante fucked around with this message at 23:02 on Sep 30, 2015

# ? Sep 30, 2015 22:57

curious lump: Sep 13, 2014; by zen death robot

Pixelante posted:

~

I guess I'm just bitter over my local SCA. For the most part, they're wierd neckbeards and people who think they're better than others because they've been working on their beer belly with the same 10 people for the past decade. The fighters are mostly pretty nice though, although a lot of them tend to think they're better than they are.

# ? Oct 1, 2015 16:00

Goobers For Guts: Jul 17, 2007

Pixelante posted:

Sorry for shining the worst light on it, but I've tried to engage with the SCA community in three different cities--I was a History major with a focus in wars for my first degree--and always wanted it to be better than I found it. I think it suffers from the same problem the Burning Man monster has; regional groups take on the flavour of their most active and involved members. One city might be rhino-hiding machoism, another might be waaaaay into authenticity ("her dress would have been so pretty if she hadn't used polyester thread! Ew!"), and I'm hopeful there are some who are just chill, inclusive, and having a lot of fun playing. The stuff that the SCA does and makes and studies are great. The people who remember that it's a game are fantastic. It's the people who forget that it's about doing and just start being it who go right up their own asses until they can't hear the world outside. So... largely the upper echelons of court.

But I just described almost every time-consuming, social, and expensive hobby ever so welp.

(Horses are also expensive and time-consuming so if you pile that on the SCA I seriously don't know when you'd sleep. My family kept horses and even modern tack is a pain to keep in shape.)

This is a huge problem. And I have seen it society wide. I consider myself fortunate I live in a great barony of people who work hard, but play hard too and know that it's really a game and we are out there to have fun. And yes, sometimes we are looked down on because "We don't take the SCA seriously enough." But hey, we have some of the most talented artisans, musical talents, fighters and cooks in the kingdom. So take that for what you will.

As far as the horses, we use modern tack. Though I would love to construct a legit period saddle. The expense is hauling the animals to primitive sites and setting up temporary enclosures for the duration of the event. We haul water, feed animals, and muck paddocks when we aren't in a tourney. So we do miss out on some of the fun stuff. I love non equestrian inclusive events sometimes because I don't have to babysit my horses.

# ? Oct 2, 2015 00:21

Pixelante: Mar 16, 2006; You people will by God act like a team, or at least like people who know each other, or I'll incinerate the bunch of you here and now.

Most of the toxic stuff I saw at Pennsic only crossed my line of sight because I'd been dropped in the midst of one of the oldest, most established groups that was full of former kings/queens, laurels, and knights--they had eyes and ears in everything. They really enjoyed gossiping, and all the dirt was mercilessly combed through every time you got two or more of them sitting at the same table or camp fire. I always walked away feeling a bit disappointed, or with a strong sense of, "no, that's wrong--this is just a game." (ie. the former queen bowing to her ex-husband's new wife, while their daughter preferred being with dad because she was about 8 and liked being ~a real princess~.) Someone had moved to a different part of the province to put themselves in a different kingdom than an ex in the royal court. One of the kings was having a breakdown over loving up the alliances, which is why the armies were ridiculously unbalanced. I only heard that stuff because I was hanging out with high court folks who'd been attending Pennsic their whole lives. Gossip is what you do when there's no TV.

Other things were just weird. A girl got assaulted while walking alone one night, and in response, fighters started walking patrols in groups... which would be sweet if you didn't catch the white-knight glint in their eyes, how much they liked talking about it, and how that torch really looks like a club with fire on the end.

In defence of the event, our camp welcomed my boyfriend and I with loaned gear, advice, directions, and company. Their camp was as comfortable as you can get while still sleeping outside in dramatic weather (hot, rain, lightning, hot, freezing, hot...) I had some fantastic conversations, and we always felt welcome among them. Aside from the "A kingdom" wankery ("your king did porn!") it was a far cry from smaller regional groups that were more clique-y. Sure, a lot of people wanted to brag, but it was better than the aloof wariness of smaller groups who felt they had more to prove.

Our Pennsic friends joked about how everyone was bowing at folks dressed in high quality gear, because there were so many kingdoms represented that you couldn't just know the face of all the royals; our camp discussed dressing up the boyfriend and myself in the swaggest poo poo they could pull out of their trunks and behaving as our court for a stroll around the event to see how many people bowed. Sad we never did that.

tl:dr Pennsic has ruined me for every other SCA event ever. I started at the top, and it's all downhill from there.

Pixelante fucked around with this message at 23:48 on Oct 3, 2015

# ? Oct 3, 2015 23:45

PaleIrishGuy: Feb 5, 2004; Pale as paper

Goobers For Guts posted:

I do personally know several laurel level artisans who DO go to overwhelming extents to be as authentic as possible. Fiber laurels who raise sheep in wattle fences, shear them, comb the wool, rove it, spin it on a great wheel or drop spindle, dye it with woad or natural period dyes, then weave it on a period loom. Scribes that stretch goat skin and make period pigments and experiment with period glue recipes for gold leafing. I am regularly impressed by the quality research and dedication the artisans in the SCA put into their chosen field. I've seen SCA participating laurels get published in many journals on historical arts and sciences. I know of one lady who actually changed the history books on whether cotton was utilized in Europe on the same level as linen, hemp, and wool. She researched ships records to see the quantities of fiber brought over from the New World. Another who is translating a very old German cook book in a lost dialect. It goes on an on.

The SCA is a 501 c-3 non profit. That is not something you gain status for by just dressing up like a jester and going to ren faires. It's based on the legitimate educational and historical research done on the Arts and Sciences. Not as much the fighting since it is done with rattan for insurance reasons. Therefore it cannot be historical.

Along these lines, myself and some others from my barony are prepping to make accurate as possible replicas of drinking vessels from the Mary Rose. To that end, I'm working on acquiring as many woodworking tools that are true to the early-mid 1500's as possible. Doing all that research and replication work to basically make museum quality pieces is fuckin great.

also: Draco Invictus.

# ? Oct 4, 2015 09:21

Otto Von Jizzmark: Dec 27, 2004

Sounds like a larp

# ? Oct 4, 2015 13:16

Pixelante: Mar 16, 2006; You people will by God act like a team, or at least like people who know each other, or I'll incinerate the bunch of you here and now.

PaleIrishGuy posted:

Along these lines, myself and some others from my barony are prepping to make accurate as possible replicas of drinking vessels from the Mary Rose. To that end, I'm working on acquiring as many woodworking tools that are true to the early-mid 1500's as possible. Doing all that research and replication work to basically make museum quality pieces is fuckin great.

I'm a crafty type of person (god help me I will resurrect my city's lantern festival if I have to do it out of my front yard) and the Arts and Sciences stuff was the carrot that kept bringing me back. I spent most of my Pennsic time in the workshop area, going from carving to wirecraft to silver working to whatever. That was a lot of fun and kept me pretty busy at what was technically a "war." The wars were all out in open fields in the blazing sun; Arts and Science were in shady tents. Also, there were at least two lectures on the history of mustard--by totally different historians. It was awesome. I'd rather slam my head in a car door a few dozen times than re-engage with my local group, but I've got a lot of respect for the folk who are studying their own projects, not what the guy next to them is wearing or loving. The dancing was a lot of fun to watch, but I learned not to trust the guy who's like, "it's two steps forward, three steps back, you'll figure out the rest up there." He's lying. (My boyfriends's autistic nephew was a goddamn master of dance, though. Everything is so structured that he thrived in the SCA, but had zero interest in fighting.)

It's larp-y in the sense that people pick an age and name that reflects the era they like, and there are always going to be cringe-worthy "m'lady" moments, but the fighting is pretty real. A lot of my problems with the SCA were that it was socially too real. People weren't worried about the persona of the king being suicidal--they were worried about the guy. Being a king or queen has a lot of real power because people want it to. Anyone who walks around saying poo poo like "forsooth!" is going to get sidelined pretty fast. Your persona mostly seems to just be the thing you hang your era and aesthetic on. Court might be different, but I dozed off for that crap.

I did ask if a woman could ever be King or a man could be Queen--and this was in about 2006--and got laughed at by the women in my camp. For one, you have to win tournaments to become King, which is mostly going to be men based on weight and strength. The queen is just whoever they're attached to. I persisted with, "okay, let's say there's some totally ripped chick who just rolls your guys and wins?" They shrugged like it could never happen, then explained to me that it was important that the queen be a woman because she was there to represent and support the women in the kingdom--if it was a man, women wouldn't be as comfortable talking to him. I was of the opinion that if you need the cable installer's wife to make you feel safe in that community, you should probably find another community. It was clearly a hard line, though, so I just shut up and added another tick to the "nope" list. Too real = too bullshit.

Sorry. I feel like I jacked this thread. I'd really like to hear more about the equestrian stuff because I never got to see any of that close up, and I used to be a hunter-jumper. I'd worry a lot about the safety of everything involved when it comes to jousting. I mean, getting knocked off the saddle is pretty dangerous, and that's sort of the goal of most mounted sparring, right?

# ? Oct 4, 2015 20:56

Liquid Communism: Mar 9, 2004; Out here, everything hurts.

There's actually been a shitload of infighting over the issue of women in crown tourneys, specifically involving same-gender couples in leadership positions.

Interestingly, the Board of the organization indicated that they were hesitant to allow it because of the possibility of two skilled male fighters arranging to pass the crown back and forth.

If I remember correctly (it's been a few years since I was active), there's only been a single woman who's won a crown tourney by right of arms in 40+ years. Duchess Rowan Beatrice von Kampfer, who won Ansteorra's Crown tourney in 1990.

# ? Oct 4, 2015 22:55

Pixelante: Mar 16, 2006; You people will by God act like a team, or at least like people who know each other, or I'll incinerate the bunch of you here and now.

Liquid Communism posted:

There's actually been a shitload of infighting over the issue of women in crown tourneys, specifically involving same-gender couples in leadership positions.

Interestingly, the Board of the organization indicated that they were hesitant to allow it because of the possibility of two skilled male fighters arranging to pass the crown back and forth.

If I remember correctly (it's been a few years since I was active), there's only been a single woman who's won a crown tourney by right of arms in 40+ years. Duchess Rowan Beatrice von Kampfer, who won Ansteorra's Crown tourney in 1990.

A Kingdoms! :circlefap:

# ? Oct 4, 2015 23:02

Goobers For Guts: Jul 17, 2007

Pixelante posted:

Sorry. I feel like I jacked this thread. I'd really like to hear more about the equestrian stuff because I never got to see any of that close up, and I used to be a hunter-jumper. I'd worry a lot about the safety of everything involved when it comes to jousting. I mean, getting knocked off the saddle is pretty dangerous, and that's sort of the goal of most mounted sparring, right?

Actually we don't promote unsaddling anyone. It's a points based system really. Three points for the shield, two for the chest, one for anywhere else. We really try to be safe. Especially with the animals involved. As much as we try to be period in our dress, barding, and general jousting or coursing style, we are really careful with our animals and with the safety of the riders. It's not nearly as barbaric as the actual sport was. Which some people scoff at.

Besides jousting, we also do the mounted combat which is more about taking hits. Or knocking off a crest on a helm which was an actual tourney event in period. We also do challenge courses which involve spearing rings and 'pigs', knocking dummy heads off posts, chopping reeds, quintain hitting and javelin throwing. It's super fun.

Then there is Buzkashi which is like football on horses. Buzkashi means 'goat dragging' and was a Persian sport using a stuffed goat as the 'football'. That can get pretty brutal. But the horses actually seem to get into it and it can be super fun to watch.

# ? Oct 5, 2015 03:04

Liquid Communism: Mar 9, 2004; Out here, everything hurts.

People who scoff at not doing the 'hurling opponents from their saddles' sort of jousting should foot the vet bills.

# ? Oct 5, 2015 03:37

Siivola: Dec 23, 2012

Didin't the actual sport of jousting develop more and more safety features as time went on? I remember reading ~sonewhere~ that the saddles eventually became such that getting thrown off was practically impossible.

# ? Oct 5, 2015 09:31

Dzurlord: Nov 5, 2011