So, about that local SCA event...
Feb. 13th, 2013 10:35 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
eveglassAs I mentioned a few days ago, I completely skipped out on our local event this weekend so that I could work on my kitchen and get it ready for the renovations. I was kinda bummed out about it. I'd wanted to go, especially after missing Birka for work, but I was very stressed and overwhelmed by what needed to be done to prepare, and one of the main mottos of my SCAdian household is, "Real life comes first."
After the event, a couple of people mentioned that I really should have been there, and that I should get in touch with Tadea, our baroness. So I emailed her to ask her what was up. "Oh," she said (and I paraphrase), "someone brought up a bodice for you and there was all sorts of schtick about how we were going to give it back to you and make sure it was really yours. Baron Angus has it for the moment; let me know if you'll be at BIA so I can give it back to you."
Ah. No problem. I actually knew about that one already. I was planning on trying on Katrusha's corset and maybe buying it off her, and felt very bad when I couldn't be there to pick it up. So I put the whole matter out of my mind as something to Deal With Later (tm).
Imagine my surprise when I read in the unofficial court report that I was supposed to have gotten my Maunche! I think I spent the entire bus ride to work repeating some variation of, "Wait... what?" Apparently they'd tried to give it to me at Birka, too, where I sadly also had to be absent. I think it was supposed to be a secret, but I just kept not showing up places. :)
I've gotta say, this is highly, highly unexpected.
A bit of history. I started in the SCA right around my 17th birthday, May 1999. Got my AoA (award of arms) in October 2002. I started doing bardic in a serious way sometime in late 2003, and I was really gunning to get my Troubadour (non-armigerous award for bardic). I was happy to get it in 2007, but not super-surprised, given that I'd been almost entirely focused on bardic for several years.
And that, more or less, was where I figured matters stood. The type of bardic that I do generally involves writing filks or poems for people I know (a list of all my works can be found on The Home of the Pocket Bard), which are a lot of fun and give me great pleasure, but aren't at all historically accurate, nor are they intended to be. I try to recreate the spirit of medieval bards, but rarely the forms, tunes, or language they would have used.
I knew the stuff I was doing wasn't A&S-award worthy, and I was fine with that. I've gotten enough tokens of appreciation that I have an entire necklace full of them, and that's more than enough recognition for me. Pretty much the only "period" thing I'd ever written, back in 2007, was The Tale of Reprobus about St. Christopher. It earned me my one and only Cariadoc bracelet, which is still the feather in my proverbial bardic cap.
Then, about two years ago, something changed. I developed an "SCA rant." (Talk to anyone who's been in the SCA for any reasonable length of time; they have a rant. Maybe more than one.) Mine goes something like this, "It's great that when I go to bardic circles, I hear all these Celtic, Norse, Greek, Jewish, Arabic, Indian, and Japanese stories. They're really great! But where are the Christian stories? If the core of the SCA is supposed to be the high middle ages, there should definitely be some Christian stories going on here!"
And, in typical fashion, I realized that if I was the one complaining, I was the one who was gonna have to do something about it.
Now, I know that Christianity is a touchy subject in the SCA. It's tainted with the thoughts of proselytism, and also the specter of Corpora's section 2.F: "No one shall perform any religious or magical ceremony at a Society event (or in association with the name of the Society) in such a way as to imply that the ceremony is authorized, sponsored, or promulgated by the Society or to force anyone at a Society event, by direct or indirect pressure, to observe or join the ceremony." A lot of people told me that this "really meant" that you can't have religious rituals at SCA events, and you can't even tell religious stories.
But I figured if I could hear stories about Thor, the Morrigan, Brahma, and the Prophet Muhammad (all of which I had, in fact, heard at various bardic circles at Pennsic), then I could tell saint stories and have them accepted in the same light.
I started researching. I started off in a very haphazard way, but finally settled on reading The Golden Legend, a 13th century book of saints lives that was extremely popular in its time. The versions I found online were archaic, so I spent some money and bought a modern translation by William Granger Ryan (Volume I and Volume II from Amazon) and started going through them.
By 2011, I had one or two saint stories. But 2012 (last Pennsic) was when I really ramped up production, as it were. I vowed to myself that I'd finish Volume I by Pennsic and have a large number of stories ready to tell. By August, I had 11 stories theoretically ready, and about half of them were polished enough (thanks to the tremendous help of Toki Redbeard and Emer nic Aidan) that I was ready to present them at bardic circles. I even taught a class, "Sexy, Silly, Scheming Saints," which lasted about an hour and a half and got a shocking 40 students in the sweltering Pennsic heat. I ran out of handouts. It was amazing. I tried, as best I could, to do at least one saint story at every circle I went to all War. By the end of Pennsic, I think I was becoming known as, "The short girl who does saint stories."
The bardic community apparently noticed. I began having Serious Talks (tm) with more senior bards (and various other Laurels) about what I might do if I wanted to get my Maunche. Some of the advice was along the lines of, "Use more than one source. They like to see a range of research." Another was, "You really should have somewhere online where you're showing your work." Yet another was, "Try to do different forms. All your poetry is ballad meter or iambic tetrameter."
To all of this, I nodded, smiled, and mostly ignored, in favor of doing whatever the heck I had been planning on doing anyway. I did set up a website with fun saint stories from The Golden Legend, because I thought they deserved to be shared, and I don't have time to work all of them into performable pieces. I did not branch out in terms of sources or poetic forms, and I didn't care. I wasn't planning on getting a Maunche, so it really didn't matter to me.
Moreover, I'm not active in the SCA. Oh, I'm very active at Pennsic, but I get to maybe two or three other events a year, and I don't think I've been to a local practice since 2008. I've been missing local events and playing more in Concordia of the Snows (Albany) than I do with my own group. I know you need to be active to get the Order of High Merit awards, and my active days have long passed. If I didn't get awards back then, I certainly wasn't gonna get them now.
Except, apparently, I did.
I'm still a little shell-shocked by the announcement, really. Everyone who knew, you did an excellent job at keeping quiet. I had absolutely no idea I was even under consideration, due to all the reasons above.
Now I've just gotta figure out what having a Maunche means. And I think what it means is, "Nothing."
Obviously, there's more to it than that. I enjoy the knowledge that I can wear a new piece of bling. I suspect some people may see the award as a sign that I'm credible or legitimate, somehow. But in terms of what it's going to do for my bardic, my teaching, and my style in the SCA, nothing's gonna change. I don't do bardic for the cookie, and I'm going to continue not to do bardic for the cookie. (Unless someone's willing to give me an actual cookie, in which case I will definitely perform for baked goods. I prefer chocolate chip, chewy if possible.)
So that's where I'm at. Excuse me now while I contact my peers, Ernst Nuss von Kitzingen and Marian of Heatherdale (i.e. Heather Dale, one of my heroes), and let them know. *grin*
After the event, a couple of people mentioned that I really should have been there, and that I should get in touch with Tadea, our baroness. So I emailed her to ask her what was up. "Oh," she said (and I paraphrase), "someone brought up a bodice for you and there was all sorts of schtick about how we were going to give it back to you and make sure it was really yours. Baron Angus has it for the moment; let me know if you'll be at BIA so I can give it back to you."
Ah. No problem. I actually knew about that one already. I was planning on trying on Katrusha's corset and maybe buying it off her, and felt very bad when I couldn't be there to pick it up. So I put the whole matter out of my mind as something to Deal With Later (tm).
Imagine my surprise when I read in the unofficial court report that I was supposed to have gotten my Maunche! I think I spent the entire bus ride to work repeating some variation of, "Wait... what?" Apparently they'd tried to give it to me at Birka, too, where I sadly also had to be absent. I think it was supposed to be a secret, but I just kept not showing up places. :)
I've gotta say, this is highly, highly unexpected.
A bit of history. I started in the SCA right around my 17th birthday, May 1999. Got my AoA (award of arms) in October 2002. I started doing bardic in a serious way sometime in late 2003, and I was really gunning to get my Troubadour (non-armigerous award for bardic). I was happy to get it in 2007, but not super-surprised, given that I'd been almost entirely focused on bardic for several years.
And that, more or less, was where I figured matters stood. The type of bardic that I do generally involves writing filks or poems for people I know (a list of all my works can be found on The Home of the Pocket Bard), which are a lot of fun and give me great pleasure, but aren't at all historically accurate, nor are they intended to be. I try to recreate the spirit of medieval bards, but rarely the forms, tunes, or language they would have used.
I knew the stuff I was doing wasn't A&S-award worthy, and I was fine with that. I've gotten enough tokens of appreciation that I have an entire necklace full of them, and that's more than enough recognition for me. Pretty much the only "period" thing I'd ever written, back in 2007, was The Tale of Reprobus about St. Christopher. It earned me my one and only Cariadoc bracelet, which is still the feather in my proverbial bardic cap.
Then, about two years ago, something changed. I developed an "SCA rant." (Talk to anyone who's been in the SCA for any reasonable length of time; they have a rant. Maybe more than one.) Mine goes something like this, "It's great that when I go to bardic circles, I hear all these Celtic, Norse, Greek, Jewish, Arabic, Indian, and Japanese stories. They're really great! But where are the Christian stories? If the core of the SCA is supposed to be the high middle ages, there should definitely be some Christian stories going on here!"
And, in typical fashion, I realized that if I was the one complaining, I was the one who was gonna have to do something about it.
Now, I know that Christianity is a touchy subject in the SCA. It's tainted with the thoughts of proselytism, and also the specter of Corpora's section 2.F: "No one shall perform any religious or magical ceremony at a Society event (or in association with the name of the Society) in such a way as to imply that the ceremony is authorized, sponsored, or promulgated by the Society or to force anyone at a Society event, by direct or indirect pressure, to observe or join the ceremony." A lot of people told me that this "really meant" that you can't have religious rituals at SCA events, and you can't even tell religious stories.
But I figured if I could hear stories about Thor, the Morrigan, Brahma, and the Prophet Muhammad (all of which I had, in fact, heard at various bardic circles at Pennsic), then I could tell saint stories and have them accepted in the same light.
I started researching. I started off in a very haphazard way, but finally settled on reading The Golden Legend, a 13th century book of saints lives that was extremely popular in its time. The versions I found online were archaic, so I spent some money and bought a modern translation by William Granger Ryan (Volume I and Volume II from Amazon) and started going through them.
By 2011, I had one or two saint stories. But 2012 (last Pennsic) was when I really ramped up production, as it were. I vowed to myself that I'd finish Volume I by Pennsic and have a large number of stories ready to tell. By August, I had 11 stories theoretically ready, and about half of them were polished enough (thanks to the tremendous help of Toki Redbeard and Emer nic Aidan) that I was ready to present them at bardic circles. I even taught a class, "Sexy, Silly, Scheming Saints," which lasted about an hour and a half and got a shocking 40 students in the sweltering Pennsic heat. I ran out of handouts. It was amazing. I tried, as best I could, to do at least one saint story at every circle I went to all War. By the end of Pennsic, I think I was becoming known as, "The short girl who does saint stories."
The bardic community apparently noticed. I began having Serious Talks (tm) with more senior bards (and various other Laurels) about what I might do if I wanted to get my Maunche. Some of the advice was along the lines of, "Use more than one source. They like to see a range of research." Another was, "You really should have somewhere online where you're showing your work." Yet another was, "Try to do different forms. All your poetry is ballad meter or iambic tetrameter."
To all of this, I nodded, smiled, and mostly ignored, in favor of doing whatever the heck I had been planning on doing anyway. I did set up a website with fun saint stories from The Golden Legend, because I thought they deserved to be shared, and I don't have time to work all of them into performable pieces. I did not branch out in terms of sources or poetic forms, and I didn't care. I wasn't planning on getting a Maunche, so it really didn't matter to me.
Moreover, I'm not active in the SCA. Oh, I'm very active at Pennsic, but I get to maybe two or three other events a year, and I don't think I've been to a local practice since 2008. I've been missing local events and playing more in Concordia of the Snows (Albany) than I do with my own group. I know you need to be active to get the Order of High Merit awards, and my active days have long passed. If I didn't get awards back then, I certainly wasn't gonna get them now.
Except, apparently, I did.
I'm still a little shell-shocked by the announcement, really. Everyone who knew, you did an excellent job at keeping quiet. I had absolutely no idea I was even under consideration, due to all the reasons above.
Now I've just gotta figure out what having a Maunche means. And I think what it means is, "Nothing."
Obviously, there's more to it than that. I enjoy the knowledge that I can wear a new piece of bling. I suspect some people may see the award as a sign that I'm credible or legitimate, somehow. But in terms of what it's going to do for my bardic, my teaching, and my style in the SCA, nothing's gonna change. I don't do bardic for the cookie, and I'm going to continue not to do bardic for the cookie. (Unless someone's willing to give me an actual cookie, in which case I will definitely perform for baked goods. I prefer chocolate chip, chewy if possible.)
So that's where I'm at. Excuse me now while I contact my peers, Ernst Nuss von Kitzingen and Marian of Heatherdale (i.e. Heather Dale, one of my heroes), and let them know. *grin*
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2013-02-13 03:57 pm (UTC)And I love your saint stories and I am delighted that you have travelled down this road.
no subject
Date: 2013-02-13 03:57 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2013-02-13 04:15 pm (UTC)I will say that there is some value to this, beyond recreating actual period pieces.
no subject
Date: 2013-02-13 04:21 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2013-02-13 09:47 pm (UTC)I was kind of bummed when you couldn't make it to Birka, I was very much looking forward to seeing you get the award.
So are you going to go to a local event and pretend to be surprised, or do you think that the cat is sufficiently out of the bag that you won't be able to do so? If you can get away with it, I'd go for being surprised. >grin<
Finally, I think the last thing you said is a good attitude to take. Keep doing what you're doing.
no subject
Date: 2013-02-13 09:51 pm (UTC)I'll have to figure out when the next local event IS, mind you, because even though my baroness has asked if I'm going to the event in a month, there's nothing actually up on the EK site. I'll have to double-check with her about the dates and things. And I'll probably try to get out to at least one or two events before Pennsic, so hopefully I'll see you before I go into hyper-bard mode. *grin*
no subject
Date: 2013-02-13 11:31 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2013-02-13 11:34 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2013-02-13 05:05 pm (UTC)Quite well-deserved, from this enthusiastic audience member.
Your outlook strikes me as a good and healthy one: Just keep on doing what you are doing, for your own reasons. It's a nice reminder that you *are* noticed and people like what you've done - in a way, the Kingdom's "Cariadoc Bracelet" if you will.
(...as well as another example of why I have a dim view of having awards be a surprise.)
(side note #2: This is also one of the least-painful & drama-filled paths to the Maunche I have heard about in the past year or so. I am happy to see it can be that way too)
no subject
Date: 2013-02-13 05:10 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2013-02-14 12:30 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2013-02-14 02:20 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2013-02-14 04:20 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2013-02-14 12:43 pm (UTC)