Saturday, September 22, 2007

Medievalism: ALWAYS in Season

A colleague sent me a link to an article about an SCA event in Atlantia, with a rather sympathetic perspective. One line in particular caught my eye:
Medievalism is now in season in mainstream society...

Oh, no, my friends. Medievalism is always in season.

In a related note, I was invited to Shire Eagle's Pillage on the Plain IV, which I'm going to try to attend. This will be my first SCA event that isn't a business-meeting sort of thing, so any advice folks have for a newbie like me would be entirely welcome.

3 comments:

  1. Anonymous1:18 PM

    Is it a camping event or a tourney?

    In either case, the advice I was given was to make sure my belt was black or brown (white, red, and to a lesser extent blue and yellow are attached to different knightly/service groups). Beyond that, it was basically just a case of being polite to others.

    One thing I do have to work at sometimes is to not correct people's misconceptions (the level of scholarship in the SCA varies, and camping events tend to get a lot of people who just turn out for the events -- who generally don't know as much about their period or interest in period as the folks that you were at the business meeting with, for example), because nobody likes a pedant and some people will hold onto their mistaken beliefs with both hands, tightly.

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  2. I am sure you will cope in your inimitable style. (Oh, NO!)

    One may have the impression that medievalism is always in style in our post-Tolkien, post-Andre Norton, post-Marion Zimmer Bradley age, but my teenage memories tell me that before the mid-60s it was pretty out of fashion.

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  3. I know "in season" is a fashion term, but I keep thinking, "If medievalism is 'in season,' the SCA folks better wear bullet proof vests!" Can you tell I live in a state that likes its hunting?

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