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Persona stuff




Poster: Carol_O'Leary@ed.gov (Carol O'Leary)

     Earl Dafydd said --
     
     >I would agree completely -- the SCA is not what it used to be.  In 
     >most ways, it is BETTER.  Our best armourers make more medieval 
     >armour.  Our best artisans make better clothing.  In almost every 
     >direction you look, you find that bascinets have largely replaced 
     >spun-top helmets just as spun-top helmets replaced freon-tanks, and 
     >freon-tanks were once the pinnacle of the armourer's art.
     
     As is so often the case, His Excellency is right, but this time, he's 
     only partly correct.  Yes, we're much better now at the *visuals* than 
     we were at the dawn of time, but we're not nearly as good at the 
     interactions.  The props and the sets are better, but the dialogue 
     kinda stinks.
     
     For my part, I don't propose that we talk at events about agriculture 
     or plague or other things that barely touch our lives, and I would 
     *never* suggest that the answer is fake English accents or tortured 
     circumlocutions.  But minimal creativity can make a movie into an 
     "entertainment," or work on your car into repairs to your wagon (but 
     *not* to your dragon), or a difference of opinion with your boss into 
     one with your overlord.  It doesn't take too much work to ask after 
     someone's family in a way that doesn't pierce the delicate bubble of 
     the "medieval" environment, or to take an urgent conversation about 
     something obtrusively 20th C. out of the hearing of other people.
     
     Some of us are better at tangible artifacts than others, and the 
     visuals *are* important.  But the most authentic of outfits is just a 
     costume when worn by someone talking about Quake or Duke Nuke'Em, or 
     even Myst or Riven.
     
     Melisande de Belvoir   
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