[Regia-NA] SCA-style vs. Regia-style discourse

[Carolyn Priest-Dorman]

If someone is looking for solid factual documentation, and is frustrated 
because she isn't finding it, it isn't helpful for her to be hearing 
something like this.

>But then, there isn't any solid
>documentation for the existence of children, either. We know this, we have
>three on site, and trying to explain them away is just the pits...:-))

Nonsense!  There's plenty of solid carbon-dated evidence for the existence 
of children of all ages throughout history, in the form of skeletons.  (No, 
as a mother I don't like to contemplate the existence of dead children 
either, but the truth is important and sometimes needs to be said.)

It is more helpful to the questioner if the people who respond either 
answer "yes, here's the documentation," or "X has the documentation, go ask 
her," or "no, I don't have documentation."  Rhetorically phrased factually 
incorrect responses don't do anything to either help or calm down the 
frustrated questioner; they just inflame the situation.

I have noticed this particular culture-clash problem repeatedly on this 
particular list.  It simply is not easy to orient oneself to Regia's world 
view and values from the remote location of the New World.  Kim has gone a 
long way toward providing insight into the problem when he points out in 
his most recent Regia-NA post the basic penury of Regia as an organization, 
and how Regia can't often underwrite publication of members' 
research.  This accounts for the paucity of membership and/or 
organizational handbooks, etc.  (I think I have a copy of every official 
Regia document--handbook, bylaws, and fighting rules.  Is that it?)

However, most of the results of research in the SCA are similarly 
unpublished.  And however easy it is to take pot-shots at the SCA for its 
base level of inauthenticity, the simple fact that serious high-level 
researchers live, research, play, and produce documentation there simply 
cannot be laughed off by anyone.  The SCA solves this problem by vigorously 
promoting (and rewarding) discourse among the membership about factual 
historic information they've found, in the interest of ensuring a more 
authentic game.

In the SCA, when someone asks for documentation it's because he wants to 
make or do a more period thing.  It's not a challenge to the communal 
knowledge of the entire SCA--it's a praiseworthy impulse seeking an 
outlet.  When North American SCA people come to Regia, as I did, they seek 
to be oriented to the knowledge base of Regia in just the same way and for 
just the same reason.  They express this need by talking to the only 
populace they can lasso:  the e-groups.  But I've noticed that many times 
what they find is a baffling silence, a bewildering language barrier (it 
*seems* like English, much of the time), or assertions about what is and 
isn't historically authentic by people who get hostile when their 
statements are probed for the underlying sources.

SCA people need to understand that the rank and file Regia member does not 
always know what the documentation is, because that's the express job of 
the local Authenticity Officer.  (This is not a criticism!  I'm willing to 
bet that the rank and file don't know much about what the local group's 
ledgers look like either, for the same reason.)  But in the SCA, there is 
no "Authenticity Officer" post.  Regia people need to understand that the 
insistence of SCA people on sources of fact is not a challenge, but the 
result of the deliberate "authenticity vacuum" in the SCA hierarchy.  And 
both sets of people need to understand that if Regia-NA is to flourish we 
will need to work toward creating some middle path that satisfies both Old 
World operating methods and New World acculturation.

Remember, the ultimate goal here is to have fun being authentic; that's why 
we're all here, isn't it?


Carolyn Priest-Dorman              Þóra Sharptooth
  http://www.cs.vassar.edu/~capriest/thora.html