Why all the fuss?

[gurdymonkey]

Saturday night I had a dream about standing in the Wyckoff Deli (a place in New Jersey I have not been to since the 1990s) on a cold, rainy day, waiting in line to place a lunch order. Paul Bettany ("Master and Commander," "The Da Vinci Code,") walked in, came over to me and gave me a huge, somewhat soggy hug. I remember the smell of wet wool pea coat and his bony chin digging into the top of my head. I made fun of the very British way he pronounced pasta fagiola as we waited to be served and tried to decide what to have. "We're in Jersey. It's pasta fazOOL!" Which all goes to prove - what?

As of this evening, it has been confirmed that the person who wants to dance with a sword at an SCA event as a shirabyoshi believes in reincarnation. She claims to have had dreams she believes in, including one in which "I was dancing with a very large curved blade slender and the dance was irregular in beat
but very beautiful." 

I don't know from past lives. This old earth doggie has not personally experienced anything to lead me to believe I've been here before. I've known people who have. If I had all the answers they'd have to pay me more.

Whatever one believes, this woman had a dream that inspired her. There's just one problem. She hasn't done the homework to confirm or refute whether her dream perception is based in historical fact. It's not research. Not yet.

Why does this matter so much? After all, isn't the SCA an assortment of like-minded crackpots to begin with? 

In some ways, yes. However, there are some people who believe that those of us who occupy certain non-Western minority niches should go away and like to finger point and naysay. Those of us in that niche often work very hard to do what we do because it inspires us and we love it just as much as our European brethren. We are so few and yet so visible for our different choice, some of us DO worry about being made to look bad.

This woman has already been made to look bad by a Mistress of the Laurel who helped teach her to make a Genuwine Keemonah that wouldn't pass muster at a Halloween party.

What she does next is up to her. I can only hope....

(On the other hand, the Barbie kumihimo lady over on the Tousando seems like she's very willing to learn - I have thrown her the link to Tangwystl's awesome historical dolls. )

Comments

[takadai-no-tora.livejournal.com]

The reincarnation sword dance lady seems to want to stand out, whatever she's doing, there's an element of "Look at me!" about it. She doesn't want to have a plaid kosode because that's what was done in period in Japan, she wants one because her backstory is that she has a Scottish father, so of course she has to wear plaid...

[gurdymonkey.livejournal.com]

If she wants to stand out, all she has to do is put curtains on an upside down fruit basket and wear it as a hat. ;-D Worked for me!

[aureellia.livejournal.com]

Tangwystl makes my brain hurt sometimes.

I am losing patience with people who want to wear fairy wings.

[mamapduck.livejournal.com]

And see, I'm less bothered by fairy wings than by things pretending to be period when they aren't. We all know fairy wings are OOP. If people want to do them anyway, I can shrug that off.

What bothers me are the revisionists. I had one of the "Yellow Veilers" tell me once that courteseans were "not prostitutes." No, seriously. She wanted to pretend that the hookers were not actually having sex for money. That offends me much more than people being silly and obvious. Lying about history is not okay.

[aureellia.livejournal.com]

Yes, or a plaid kimono because your daddy is Scottish rather than the fact that plaid kimonos are bitchen cool and period. Or anything from the Scottish movie that shall not be named. Or from the Japanese movies that shall not be named for later period stuff.

[mamapduck.livejournal.com]

"Im wearing a kimono! I'm a geisha! I'm period!"

[aureellia.livejournal.com]

Don't even get me started on the Geisha thing.

[erink.livejournal.com]

I'm a Ninja. Oh, wait, I wasn't supposed to tell anyone - drat!

[gurdymonkey.livejournal.com]

Can we please put them on a boat with the Irish persona people who refuse to acknowledge that Ireland was not just Christian but radically Christian (compared to Rome) post Patricius?

[cayswann.livejournal.com]

heh heh, I can't believe I've never seen the page with Tangwystl's dollies. I'm with you, aureellia, she hurts my brain, but in such a wonderful way!

I can *so* sympathize with the "but I dreamt it so it must be true" ... I can no longer count how many times some said, "So I dreamt about my heraldry, and what I saw in my dream was...."

I must say, I'm quite inspired by the discussion of the NEED to do research correctly! You're making me think about my own garb and accessories.

[reynardine.livejournal.com]

I was telling my husband about the Sword Dance Lady and he immediately said "Troll. It's a troll." I replied that she sounded sincerely clueless to me, but she certainly seems to want attention, doesn't she?

Both you and Ii-dono have been extremely kind in your replies to her. Well-done! It keeps the whole business from descending into a wank-fest.

[bovil.livejournal.com]

I prefer to take trolls (and everybody else) at face value and respond reasonably without anger. If the poster is not a troll, I might help make things better. If the poster is a troll, I'm not making things worse (and I'm irritating the troll by responding incorrectly).

[takadai-no-tora.livejournal.com]

I don't think she's a troll; they have better spelling. I think she just has some big "this is fantasy and this is reality" issues.

[xrian.livejournal.com]

"Barbie kumihimo lady"?? Do we want to know about this one?

I get the Barbie (she wants to do historical dolls). But where does the kumihimo come in?

[gurdymonkey.livejournal.com]

She does historical dolls and kumihimo and she thought it would be fun to make a miniature marudai and pose the Barbie with it.

[takadai-no-tora.livejournal.com]

I think it's a cool idea, although I'm not sure if Barbie's legs bend enough to have her kneeling at her marudai. The idea of a Barbie-scale marudai, complete with braid in progress just makes me smile!

[masahide.livejournal.com]

It seems, around here anyway, that research is very low on most people's SCA agenda.

I understand your desire to put the best foot forward for our "niche" and that people who do a crap job can make us all look bad, but honestly, measure yourself and no one else. I don't think anyone would say you don't do your research, and that you don't do beautiful period work. One crackpot will not make or break the perception of Asian personas in the SCA, any more than one more t-shirt & jean wearing duke in court will change the SCA's stance on "minimum standards."

Do what you enjoy, give advice and help where you can, and lead by example. You are the only one who you need to impress. If you act with honor in what you do, what she does will not rub off on you in anyones opinion that you would care about.

[gurdymonkey.livejournal.com]

Giri, kohai.
Giri, giri, giri, giri, giri.

There's a reason I answer the same questions over and over and over and over and over every day I'm in range of a computer. There's a reason I got on a plane and went to YOUR Twelfth Night instead of the one in my own kingdom. There's a reason I was willing to go out on a limb and camp with half a dozen people I barely knew for several days. (Turned out to be sheer delight, even with bad weather.) There's a reason I've had a steady stream of visitors from throughout the Known World clamoring for the privilege of sleeping on a futon and banging their elbows in my dinky stall shower this year.

The SCA Japanese community that I interact with on a regular basis is small, far flung, challenged by availability of resources, research information, language skills, and so forth. We network. We share information. We teach each other. We learn from each other. We are Clan.

When someone in my clan does something that makes us look bad, I mind.

[masahide.livejournal.com]

Hai! Wakarimasu!

I'm just saying, help, inspire, instruct, but don't be hard on yourself because someone else is baka.

[gurdymonkey.livejournal.com]

Wha????

How is this translating to being hard on myself????

[masahide.livejournal.com]

Well... perhaps I was reading things into your post. You seemed very upset and showed a frustration at what these people were doing. You also were sort of displaying a need to try to correct their behavior because you felt it reflected poorly on you, regardless of if they were asking for that type of direction. All I was trying to say is to not let these people get to you. Be the stone on the shore that calmly watches the waves of the storm pound, and offers considered advice. That's all.

[sarcasm-hime.livejournal.com]

Funny how nobody ever has memories of their previous life as a peasant who shoveled manure for a living and died at 25...

[gurdymonkey.livejournal.com]

I do!

(Well, I did shovel manure for about 20 years worth of weekends, but I didn't die. Though I did fall in the manure truck once.....)