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

[Eileen Young]

Thank you, Thora.

Carolyn Priest-Dorman <capriest@cs.vassar.edu> wrote:

>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unpublished.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
>
>
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