Tag: east kingdom

Okay but why NOT a saint?

~ Angela ~ 2 Comments

There’s many jokes to be made about marriage here, so I’m going to ask y’all to sit down about that.

But, in short, in the last year, I’ve started the process of making my late husband “Larger than Life” in the SCA (I mean, aside from dragging him for filth with his hoarding, I guess), and wanted to start a sort of ongoing A&S project on Folk Saints.

After being poked and prodded by local friends to go ahead and make this so, especially since I creeped nobody out on social media by pouring him a pint of Guinness or Dr. Pepper, there is now a website devoted entirely to the Cult of St. Jeff the Moneyer. We already have some traction, even with folks that did not know him, and so far I’m very pleased at how this is being received.

Feel free to take a look here at its dedicated website: www.saintjeff.annasrome.com

I’m sure there is going to be a corner of the population that is very not-okay with this, and that is your choice. The veneration of folk saints is incredibly period, and honestly this is a practice I think that the SCA could have a lot of fun with. Obviously I’m still working out details, this is a living project, not a one-and-done deal. So anticipate changes and updates overtime as more people become involved with this “cult”.

Is it “Hobbies” or “Hoarding”: A cautionary tale.

~ Angela ~ 6 Comments

Welcome to another unfun grief-addled post here at Anna’s New Rome!

Setting: I just returned from Jeff’s storage unit in Virginia.
Warning: Strong language, marital issues.

Okay folks in the SCA, 501st, cosplay, military, and everything in between: We need to have a Very Serious Chat.

I am putting on no airs here: I own a lot of stuff, but I’ve also made a conscious effort to cull this stuff significantly in the last few years when I realized it was not sustainable anymore. Us who craft, especially in any form of reenactment or living history, have to juggle owning things for multiple people when it’s really just us. I have a whole room just for my SCA life, this includes a sewing table, cutting table, painting table, and all the accoutrements needed to do all of these things. And while that sounds reasonable, it gets out of hand very, very fast if you aren’t paying attention. It’s so easy to go on insane shopping sprees for fabric, trim, pigments, tools, etc when we do this, and that’s okay, but we need to remember to USE these things and to part with those that no longer serve their purpose. The problem, as many of us addressed when faced with our imminent mortality since 2020, is the “sunk cost fallacy,” which is what I struggle with the most. But every time I throw out bags of junk, I feel more free. Right now I’m staring at my entertainment center and wondering if I can take this on this coming weekend and really get rid of a lot of extraneous bric-a-brac. I’m that over it.

When lived in Providence, I still had this whole room, but I had a hard time managing it, often having to call in friends to help me figure shit out because the executive dysfunction of ADHD would win every damn time. This just got worse in Portsmouth, which is when I decided NO MORE, and started to manage my belongings better when it came to a cross-country move to San Diego, despite Jeff glittering the ceiling with pewter and lead when he got a bit too torch-happy indoors. Unfortunately, San Diego is when Jeff really took over.

We didn’t have a garage in Portsmouth or Providence, we did in San Diego. And despite leaving items in storage in New Hampshire, he insisted on getting more out west, starting with the Bug and all of the tools needed to work on her. This seems benign, and it felt that way, because it was contained in the garage and I managed to keep a pretty tidy home there, but Jeff was also not home a lot, it being sea duty, so I didn’t get the full brunt of what hoarding really looked like until Jacksonville, and especially, COVID.

I need to remind folks that the Jacksonville move was not good. He had orders back to Groton that were stripped and replaced with a Kings Bay hot fill. This was enough to make me actually have a nervous breakdown because I had a home and a job lined up in Connecticut, developed mood disorders, and have to begin therapy after a fun stay on the grippy socks floor at Balboa. (People forget that the military life generally sucks, and it’s not the aristocratic nostalgia for wartime glam that some assume it is.) I also assume this is about when Jeff started to become sick, only we had no idea. Between the two of us struggling, cleaning was not always easy, but I managed to always pull it off, no matter how shitty I felt, because being a Florida native I know what can happen if things get nasty. *shudder*

But, Jeff didn’t just get out of control with the Bug, he got out of control with the bar, brewing, moneying, and 3D printing at the same time I was trying to make a living with silk painting and sewing thanks to being unable to find decent work in Jacksonville, and later Norfolk. Remember: milspouses are discriminated in the workplace because we’re seen as temps, so trying to find work, even with my resume from CA, was impossible on the East Coast. So every room in the house had a project. Every. One. The dining room was where I painted silk. The library became the 3D printing lab alongside my jewelry bench, the garage became an epicenter of pure madness and the bar appeared in the middle of this in the dining room and then lanai. It was too much. When Covid hit and we were both home, at first it sounded like a great way to catch up, but it just got worse. I ended up not sewing the nifty fabrics I bought to make cute dresses, he didn’t use the piles of lumber he bought to make furniture. He also wasn’t out there working on the Bug, citing Florida heat in the garage, but still buying parts for it. I brought this up to my therapist and she warned me that it was going to balloon if I didn’t nip it in the bud. Hoarding behavior, even when started as benign, is a form of addiction, addiction to consumerism, and the _idea_ of project completion, and if projects are not coming to fruition, then the supplies are now a hoard, and need to be dealt with. This was the time when I should have gone to Oxford for my paper on the Marian Relics, but because of Covid, I opted to go to visit Bestie for a week and help him untangle his father’s estate and the last of his grandmother’s belongings.

So there I was, going through boxes and boxes of someone else’s things, getting a firsthand account of what happens when you die and your possessions become “somebody else’s problem”, and it was also when the Cymbalta they gave me for fibromyalgia caused tardive dyskinesia and amplified my depression. I got back to Jacksonville off an emotional rollercoaster into a house that I left Jeff in unsupervised for a week, and threatened to walk into the Atlantic Ocean. Instead, I got carted back to therapy twice a week and told to stop taking the pills and I would feel better. At this point we already knew we were moving to Norfolk, they just weren’t settled on the timeline yet. I was angry that we had to deal with another move, surrounded by junk, and wanting none of this. So, one day, I called him at work, which I rarely did because calling base is one of those, “This needs to be urgent” calls, yeah well, direct line to his desk, and I just unloaded on him:

“You get the fuck home right now and clean this place up, or I am taking my things and the cat home to Tampa for good.”

He did come straight home. He did straighten up, but what I wasn’t seeing is that his “cleaning” was shoving random things into bins. These are the doom boxes I had to look at in Norfolk this weekend. This didn’t stop. He didn’t stop. He insisted he wasn’t a hoarder, but a packrat (really?) and there were regular fights about how he managed his belongings. So, we started couple’s therapy that summer with my therapist who needed to attempt to hammer it into his head what was going on. This was also about when he started having visible symptoms of cancer and getting ignored by the Navy, so in hindsight my behavior feels awful, or, maybe, I wasn’t hard enough. Jeff had me leave when the movers came for our things because of the “anxiety” I would have watching them touch my things, and to get Harald out of the way so he didn’t flip out either, but that didn’t stop me from seeing the bins and bins that went into the now 2-car garage we had in Norfolk, which just gave him more space to collect more tools.

We never really fully settled in up there. I hated it immediately, I was unable to find work because of the pandemic and obvious Navy base resume, so that’s when I started applying for PhD programs after a lengthy discussion with him on what I needed to do with my life to be happy. The answer was to get out of there, away from him, in my own space while he finished up the last 2 years in the Navy as it would be mostly deployment anyway, and we could both downsize and work on our issues. It wasn’t separation, it was geo-baching, but my unhappiness with his hoarding was becoming a major issue, and he promised me that he would go through all of his junk and such and get rid of what he could. I have no doubt it started like this, there is a rhyme and reason to the rear of the storage unit, but the bins and bins and bins say otherwise. I don’t want to say I was lied to, but neither of us knew what was coming, so I assume that he planned to just address it during his time in port.

What my brother and I opened the door to.

This all makes me feel terrible, but also angry. When we rolled that door up on Friday afternoon I could have spat. The first thing on my mind was “gas can”, but that’s irrational, no matter how fun it sounds. I knew I would have help. I knew this needed to be tackled. But I also know I shouldn’t have had to do this. He had warning that his hoarding made me loathe his existence, that it was the catalyst that was well on the way to destroy our marriage, and now it’s entirely on my shoulders. All of his years of accumulated junk tools from Harbor Freight, a completely disassembled 1976 VW Sun Bug, and whatever else he had on top of four 3D printers, a shelf of filament, all of our collective brewing materials and camping equipment. Hell, there’s a full oak barrel in there used to age stout.

This is not just a vent, this is a cautionary tale: It is not sustainable or healthy to live like this. While you may not think that your precious “collections” harm anybody, they are. We couldn’t have friends over in Jacksonville because I never knew what the house would look like.

I’ve also made it perfectly clear, many times, that books are a Problem. I have almost all the books, I found ONE box up there (thank god). Everything else is here, and I cut my stacks by half last year. You need to keep a working collection, not piles. I cannot stress this enough as a former librarian and archivist: Books can actually kill you, and the answer is not “more shelves.” They attract major pests and mold, in addition to being heavy and unstable if not shelved correctly. If you haven’t read a book in over 10 years: get rid of it. If it’s a scholarly publication that has had updated research in the last 20 years: Get rid of it. This is not a joke. I am serious, and I make these posts regularly to remind people to weed your collection. Libraries do this for a reason, and if you want a working library in your home, you need to act like it.

Fabric can also kill you. It attracts pests and mold, much like books. Even when stored appropriately the natural decay of cellulose and protein creates dust, and that causes microscopic issues around your home including making you ill. If you’ve been saving a special linen for a decade or so, there’s a good chance it may not survive the sewing process if you don’t live in a home with central AC, or worse, you store it in storage or a garage. Get rid of it.

PLA is biodegradable. My guess is that most of those tubs of 3D printing material in there are full of goo, not filament, but I won’t know until I can open every single one of them.

What an average box or bin looked like.
After the path was discovered.
Piles and piles of tool bins in the back.

Jeff left a mess of tools. Some are very expensive and carry value, but that’s just some, and I have most of them here already. Those bins and bins and bins of Harbor Freight doodads? Junk. Pot metal. I may not even be able to recycle them, so I have to figure out how to safely dispose of all of this when I’m not a resident of Norfolk and have no access to their dump facilities. There’s also bins of flammable and caustic chemicals still in there because we have no idea what to do with them until I can do more research and determine the cost of disposal. The two shelves in the middle were full of spray paint that was exploding. We removed them and were able to dispose of the paint.

Storage after the first “recon” mission. The trailer was given away, the center shelves were removed. We did 5 loads of large trash, and have empty bins and a ton of Damp Rid in there to help us when we return.

The reason for this post is that I know I’m not alone. I know that there are many of my friends and associates out there that have piles and piles in their garages, a timebomb of “that’s somebody else’s problem after we die.” Don’t do this, please. Consider the future and the impact you’re leaving on others and the planet. Consider the burden your loved ones will inherit when you do, eventually, shove off this mortal coil. While it’s not easy, or cheap, to juggle the living history life, we need to do better for ourselves, our mental health, and our loved ones. Don’t leave them with a sketchy storage unit 5 states away and the monetary burden it will be to disperse and dispose of it.

If, after reading this, you’re still on team, “They who die with the most books/fabric/tools/insert junk here, wins!” I beg you to reconsider.

No, Jeff didn’t know he was going to die, but there’s a chance neither will you. Please don’t leave your partner in the same predicament I am in. I miss him terribly and this weekend was a horrifically emotional journey, but if necromancy was real, I’d kill him again for this.



“You haven’t updated in a while, are you okay?”

~ Angela ~ 4 Comments

The short answer is “YES!” I am okay!

I never really settled into living in Atlantia. In fact, I generally hated the region of Hampton Roads. Nothing against the people of the Barony of Marinus, who were awesome for the short time I was there, but after getting turned out for a ton of jobs, I decided that it was time to do something for myself.

I am back in Trimaris.

I am in the Barony of Wyvernwoode, my ancient and venerable stomping grounds, and have embarked on my PhD at the University of South Florida in Tampa.

THLord Gieffrei is remaining in Norfolk to finish his naval career, and I will remain supporting him from 800mi south. He wasn’t really around at all for my MA in the East, or even when I lived in Caid, so this is nothing new for us. In fact, we do better when apart. My immediate family is still in the Tampa Bay area, and out of the schools I applied to, USF offered the most funding and the best track for what I want to go into in order to further my work with museums and public history. If anything, the Pandemic has taught me that it’s important to be near those you care about, and I did not have that in Virginia. Jeff was out a lot, I barely knew anybody, and frankly, I’m very burned out of this whole “Navy wife life” BS. It was time for the Byzantine Girl Summer, so to speak. (You know, my almost-40 year old “girl” self.)

Needless to say, I am BUSY. I am in 3 classes in addition to working as a grad assistant. I do still plan on making it to a few events here and there, but with COVID being so badly managed here in Florida, and the SCA’s adoption of an “honor system” versus mandating vaccines, I don’t see myself out much until things change. I am fully vaccinated (House Moderna!), and I am masked and exposed to germs daily on campus. Not to mention, the SCA’s continued bad acting in the face of issues including white supremacy, sexual assault, and even D&I issues (though I applaud the D&I staff and office), I just can’t grok with the game right now. Things need to turn around.

I know there’s a lot to be said about a new peer sort of backing off after elevation, but it’s more common than people think. The system is designed to wear us down, and I am not tolerating it, nor am I allowing my associates to tolerate it. I haven’t even posted about my elevation ceremony itself yet, because I was so damn burned out from it all I ran completely out of steam and didn’t want to blog about anything at all.

So this is what I have done instead:

-Lost 30lbs by watching my food intake and working out. Kettlebells, yoga, and Body Groove have changed my life. I’m working on my next 20lbs.
-Returned to Taekwondo after a 15 year hiatus, and will be pursuing my next black belt degree.
-Applied to, and was accepted to, 3 PhD programs. USF being funded enough for me to live on my own.
-Bought a new car! Nothing that special, but hey, new cars are always nice, right?
-Took a total break from sewing aside from masks, and SCA related art, and sold half of my fabric stash.
-Enjoyed reading fiction again.
-Reconnected with my best friend of 30+ years (no he’s not SCA, and never will be.)

This doesn’t suck.

Do I miss my SCA friends and family? Of course I do. Every day. I miss camping. I miss events. I miss the old normal as much as everybody else, but the New Normal is what we have, and we need to accept it and adapt to changes, be it Pandemic-related, or cultural. The SCA is stuck in the 1970s when other similar organizations are moving into the 2020s. When those who dislike change to the point they become a viable threat to the game bounces, they start a new SCA clone with blackjack and hookers, and none of this looks okay for somebody like me who is entering the dreaded enemy of the SCA: Academia. They don’t care what game I play. They just see the press releases, social media posts, and take the next step.

I will be back. I want to come back, but I want to see changes first:

I want a vaccine mandate. If the Boy Scouts can do it, so can we. If you’re going to be an ass and bring up “freedoms”, allow me to remind you of the preamble of the US Constitution: “Promote the general welfare.” Full stop. Get over it.

I want white supremacists GONE. Not coddled, not “well they just have a difference of opinion”, no, Get them. The fuck. Out of. My Game. And no, not “Conservatives”. Most of my household is _conservative_. They also are pro-vax and anti-Nazi. Get with it, “conservatives”.

I want sexual assault investigated swiftly, safely, and any assailant removed from the Society IMMEDIATELY. No beating around the goddamn bush. “Oh but the BOD…”, the BOD can also change procedure.

I want a better environment for BIPOC and LGBTQ+ members. I want to see more inclusive events and development opportunities for non-Western European personae. This is already going well, but we can do better. I also want people to understand that “inclusion” does not mean just BIPOC and LGBTQ+ individuals. Seeing the social media reaction to the D&I office sponsoring a session on active duty military made my blood boil, and almost made Jeff quit entirely.

Likewise, I want SCAdians to realize that my husband’s job takes precedence over events and commissions. Asking for a commission from Jeff a month or so before we PCS or he deploys and then pitching a fit when he says no is not a good look and bluntly, we’re sick of it.

I want our bullying policy to be revisited and less able to be weaponized. Yes, I’ve been bullied, but I didn’t say anything because the person at the helm held more power than me, and we all know how that works in the end. All it takes is for me to snap back at somebody on social media, and then, snap! I’m the bully. If I defend myself against sexual assault, I can be kicked out as a bully. Think about that. Since the day I was elevated, I’ve had frequent attacks on Facebook wherein my posts are repeatedly reported for bullying and hate speech if I speak out against certain individuals and their behavior. (Getting banned from Facebook is now my Stupid Peer Trick.)

The SCA needs to not lean on Facebook so much. It is a flawed platform that allows for abuse of reporting and algorithms to control speech from all angles. It makes it harder to determine who are actually missing stairs, and who is just getting piled on for dropping an F-bomb. Unfortunately, it’s also the best platform as far as discussion groups go that isn’t Discord. That is a problem in itself.


When the SCA does better, a lot of us will come back. Until then, don’t be surprised if you don’t see me much until Jeff retires, or I’m done with school. I certainly don’t plan on attending Pennsic for a while.

Does that mean you shouldn’t contact me? Absolutely not. Please email me. Please message me. I know I owe a couple of folks silk banners (military movers did not play nice this last go around and things…yeah things. I need to replace lots of things.) I still want to share my wealth of knowledge with everybody, but my brain is elsewhere right now. I still care, maybe I still care too much, and that’s the point of this rant.

I just think we can do better, and I’ll be around.

The Earthquake You Felt Was Real

~ Angela ~ Leave a comment

On Saturday, September 26th during the Ethereal Court of their Majesties Trimaris at Village Plague, I was sent forward to contemplate my elevation to the esteemed Order of the Laurel.

My vigil will take place on the evening of the 16th of October, and my elevation the following day, on the 17th, which also marks the Hellenic Festival of the Khalkeia, which celebrates craftsmen under the patronage of Athena and Hephaestus. (The 18th is the anniversary of the Battle of Dyrrhachium, but we aren’t going to talk about that.)

This will be a virtual event, with only a small team present here in Castlemere to make this safe and socially distant. More information will be posted as I receive it.

Break over, let’s make a Byzanbeanie.

~ Angela ~ 1 Comment

“Welcome back! ….a what?”

A Byzanbeanie. Or rather, a kamelaukion, a small round hat that in period, could be coated with bling.

A modern hat of the same name is part of Orthodox Christian clergy attire, and looks like this:

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But the look I was going for, was in part, based off of this, the Crown of Constance of Aragon. German (Not Holy. Not Roman.) Empress in the early 13th Century.

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This hat is a proper Byzantine era kamelaukion from the period I prefer to represent (900-1204).

I figured it was doable in an afternoon, at least the sewing portion of it. After that, embellishment would take what it would.

The original crown is covered in filagree gold, which is well beyond my skill, and also, well, “Crown”. While I’m a baroness of the court and entitled to wear a coronet, a crown is still above my station. This means that the arches over the seams have to go, too. While they would have hid some sins, arches are symbols of imperial rulership. Constance was an empress, I am not.

I also wanted a hat that I could dress up and down, so the praipendoulia would need to be removable. Cloth was my best bet.

I decided to use some Sartor I used on a tunic of Gieffrei’s a few years back.

 

While I tried to preserve as much of the roundels as I could, the reality is that in period, they would have cut to conserve fabric as a whole, not necessarily the design, so I had to keep that in mind, as well. Sartor silks are EXPENSIVE, and I want to eliminate waste as much as possible. The patterns would not have matched in the 12th Century, and I needed to move beyond the modern aesthetic and remind myself of this.

The only machine stitching was on the curved structural seams. The rest is done completely by hand.

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Beanie!

I lined it in bright yellow silk, and applied the same color as a bias strip around the edge to seal up the raw hem.

I found an embroidered sari trim that gave the right amount of pizazz, without looking obtrusively modern. This would be the decorative band around the brim.

But that’s not blingy enough. Time to add bezants. Yay for fitting coronet!

Clearly, the answer is more bezants, and pearls. And Amethyst for a little contrast, of course.

Time for the praipendoulia, which my husband helped me put together with amazing findings I was able to get from Etsy, brass bar we punched and filed ourselves, and chain.

Time for test fittings!

Original.
Extra Crispy.
Veil over the top for a more modest look.

And the obligatory Anna make a new hat, so time for a screamo face:

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I think it really sets off my gray hoodie.

And then Birka happened, as it always does. And we flew up from Trimaris for the occasion. Here’s me in my persomanikion, with the kamelaukion and diadema (coronet), with Gieffrei and our adopted kiddo, Aethelflied, who rocks that teal sari Byzantine. Jeff and I are technically more in Siculo-Norman, as my personmanikion is based on the collar and overall shape of the Palermo Tunicella of Roger II of Sicily. Add the beanie and I may as well be a Sicilian noble, rather than a true Constantinopolitan one. I guess you can say I Normaned. Again. It makes the Norman Husband happy, at least. Plus, Siculo-Norman is just Byzantine without class, right? #notevenonce

 

I learned there is such a thing as “too much bling”, which is unfortunate. It’s either the praipendoulia, my hair, or my cruciform necklace. I cannot wear all three at once. I removed the necklace relatively early in the day because it was THAT bad, and then it became more manageable for me to pull my hair away from the dangly bits. But since this was worn by a Norman queen, it wouldn’t surprise me if it was worn with a thin silk veil and wimple to protect the hair from tangles. I’ll be exploring this look at a later date.

Speaking of look, nothing says “epitome of grace and nobelese oblige” like me with a can of beer in the back of court.

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Icon of St. Michael, for meeeeeeee

~ Angela ~ Leave a comment

Sorry about not posting this sooner, I needed a brain decompression period post-Pennsic.

I was honored to serve as a champion of the East Kingdom’s Arts and Sciences War Point team this summer, and decided that it was the perfect time to complete an icon of Michael the Archangel that I had planned on for some time. Since I’ve posted previously about my process, this is mostly just a picture (and video) dump.

The best part? This belongs to me. It’s not a gift or a scroll for somebody else, he gets to stay in my personal collection, and I’m happy about this. I’m also insanely happy with how it came out.

The original icon is dated to the 15th Century at the Church of Panagia Angeloktisti, Kition, Cyprus.

michael_15thcen

And here is my finished piece, on a 11×14″ poplar panel from Pandora Icon Supplies:

michael_finished2

Slew of progress shots:

 

 

And a comparison between this one, and my first Michael icon from September 2013:

michaels

While working on this, I decided I was going to video myself, and then roll it into a timelapse, here is the result! Yeah, the musical choices aren’t really, uh, Byzantine, but some of them could work. Maybe. 😉

Day 1: https://youtu.be/OfBiAdaYZ6I
Day 2: https://youtu.be/FNgDTw9NBE8
Day 3: https://youtu.be/-fblmmceEjw
Day 4: https://youtu.be/lCN_gHKOvvA
Day 5: https://youtu.be/tLLrVU7Tgfs
Day 6: https://youtu.be/-fNdg_zoeUg
Day 7: https://youtu.be/sPMhnnbO-8E

And the full blown 10 minute timelapse of the whole shebang for your enjoyment:

Exhausted and homesick, but not giving up.

~ Angela ~ 2 Comments

I left the East Kingdom on Memorial Day weekend in 2016 for Caid.
I left Caid for Trimaris in January of 2018.
Three kingdoms in three years, and not without scandal.

I normally don’t post dirt or personal feelings much on this blog. I prefer to have it reserved exclusively for my research and helping others. But sometimes, helping others and performing a service isn’t just steering them down the path of Byzantine goodness, it’s also helping them navigate this crazy life that is the SCA, because as Yoda said: Once you start down the dark path, forever will it dominate your destiny.

A hobby is not much of a hobby if it starts controlling your life.

Here’s the rub: This isn’t going to be a pleasant post for me to write, but I’m at the point where I need to play SCAdian Kool-Aid Man and bust through a wall. Much like it wasn’t easy last year for me to come forward about my battles with mental illness and the SCA, I need to come forward and discuss how the last year has taken a toll on myself, my marriage, and my want to participate in the SCA.

We had front-row seats to Caid’s “Trimgate” when we were leaving for Trimaris. Our last event was the coronation with the ill-woven trim. I didn’t see the blatant swastikas until after pictures were posted, because the day was rather joyous. The newly-crowned royals were well loved and it seemed like we were going to miss something fun. And, here I was, driving across the country when the hivemind went into overdrive, and those I knew from other Kingdoms were pinging me directly for the dirt. I admit, at first I got sucked right in. I was driving to a place I didn’t want to live. I was miserable and tired. I had no furniture and replied to Facebook posts via phone. I posted things, and then I backed up. I got reminded by others that I needed to focus, and I did. I stopped answering DMs, I started dispelling false accusations that were flying across my feed so fast I couldn’t stay on top of the fact-checking, and I slipped away from conversations that were getting heated and allowed the kingdom I was leaving to take matters into their own hands, which they did with grace, and without me getting in the way or being some weird third wheel to satisfy the hunger of a pack of wolves half the world away chomping at the bit for juicy drama. When all was said and done, that debacle was all and all a result of bad theater. Yes, go ahead, get mad at me: Bad. Theater. Bad choices were made, bad answers were given, bad accusations were being made. None of which, by the way, deserved death threats in response. I hate that knee-jerk reaction. I’ve been at the receiving end of them before in my mundane line of work and it’s usually the ultimate show of immaturity and lack of class. And, also a great way to get the FBI on your ass.

So, that’s how my 2018 started. I shook that off, and tried to make the most of being in Trimaris. I still should have made my husband make a hard turn back at Albuquerque.

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I’m not going to go into the entire saga that was last year’s summer reign in Trimaris. I’m not even going to post names so that search engines pick it up, but, like the Caid Coronation, I had front row seats, again, to the very religious Trimaris Coronation, which used the same ceremony structure as I did for the Eastern Coronation that same month. The words for how I felt watching that train wreck don’t exist. I wanted to chalk it up to Inter-Kingdom Anthropology, but when you get warnings on people the first week you live in-kingdom, the Spideysense tingles a bit hard, and I should have seen all this coming.

Anybody who is friends with me on Facebook, knows I’m actually some sort of fire elemental with a temper like Mt. Etna and enough heartburn for everybody. I also have zero tolerance for BS.

It was -my- Facebook page that his former majesty of Trimaris decided to use as his proving ground for baseless Nazi “jokes” a year ago. And I woke up to a barrage of DMs that made me wonder if somebody I knew died. Seriously. I was asleep the entire damn time, and it was my non-SCA friends who were in the fight.

Sure, blame it on them for instigating all you like, which I got, from a lot of people. Hell, I was victim-blamed enough myself, even from people I thought were my friends. And while I have a lot of friends that run the gamut of political opinion, I’m not a fan of the current hard right. When you start “joking” about treating liberals like Holocaust victims, I don’t care what kingdom you’re from, what your job is, or even if you’re Her Majesty Elizabeth II of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, you’re toast. I am going to nuke you from orbit, and rightly so.

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And sure, you may come in here with your whataboutism and go “But Anna, what about the Alt-Left, they’re all ANTIFA and COMMUNISTS, AND SOCIALISTS AND-” And I will knock you down with every book on my shelf in the form of Chicago Manual of Style 17th Edition citations.

…So now’s a good time to talk about what I do. I’m a historian. A real one. Not just a hobbyist. Some of my projects from my previous employer have involved working directly on the cause and effect of fascism and anti-fascism movements in 1920s-1930s Italy and Germany. So when somebody plays the wingnutty crap on my social media, I tend to get a wee uppity. I can also go into a lengthy discussion on the differences between Marxism-Leninism, Stalinism, Maoism, and other examples of Communist regimes because that comes part and parcel with this whole focus on mid-20th Century history that I was doing for a while. (Hilarious for a Byzantinist, I know, but research and historical method don’t change. I also had excellent courses on this period as an undergrad that allowed me to have a springboard.) This is something I know A LOT about, and I also know that it hasn’t been communists sending me death threats.

What this king said was bad. What he was posting on his own account was bad. I didn’t even remember friending him, or why he decided to target one of my threads that specific day. It’s over now. And then Pennsic happened, and then the BOD did their thing, which is still a contended issue.

And then I was nominated to the Board of Directors, and am currently sitting on the list of other nominees wondering if my time is going to come around. It’s a thankless job, and people will hate me for it. I know I can’t go in there with an agenda, and nor do I plan to, but if my voice can be the slightest hint of change, then so be it.

Gieffrei and I refused to attend a single Trimaris event from then on out. We spent our entire last spring prepping for Pennsic as our only SCA involvement, which worked out, because I’m also a member of other clubs and it was nice to see something else for a change. I was reached out to by many Trimarian peers, and while they are all wonderful people with the truest intentions in mind, our hearts were broken. We wanted to be done. We wanted to get our citizenship back in the East, and go forth with that.

Our minds were actually changed at Pennsic by the then-heirs to Trimaris, who heard about my issue, and took the time to hear us out. We’d go to Fall Coronation, and see how it went. Honestly, I really enjoyed the break we had. I was gung-ho active in Caid for 2 years, and I needed a nap.

Jeff, on the other hand, being fresh off of a sea duty, wanted to hit everything he could before he got back to a boat and I didn’t see him again for another 3 years. I obliged him. I decided that we could start reentry by checking out the baronial chancery. I could get back into scribal, and he could meet others. This ended up getting him into scribal extremely hardcore, and he went from painting blanks with my gouache to taking off with my dry pigments and making his own paints for use on pergament in the span of about 2 weeks. My head spun.

We treated ourselves to a trip back up to the East Kingdom for Birka this last January, and it was a nice, fun, change of scenery. But I also found it made me dreadfully homesick upon coming back down to Trimaris after a scant 2 nights away in the frozen north. Jeff fulfilled his dream of chartering the Royal East Kingdom Moneyers Guild while living 1500 miles away, and I enjoyed catching up with friends.

Inter-Kingdom Anthropology between the East and Trimaris is pretty substantial, way more than I experienced in Caid. Every event down here is pretty much the same: you go to one of the three most commonly used sites, and there will be cabins/tents, fighting, fencing, something A&S, and a feast, so the scenery doesn’t really change. This is what works best for Trimaris, and I’m simply making my observation as an outsider. Coronation and Crown are 4 hours from where I live in the kingdom, and are at the same site, so you’re guaranteed to make that haul 4 times a year. My parents live 2 hours from site, so we’ve been able to work from there for a day trip until this weekend when we actually camped it. It’s a nice summer camp site, but provides little opportunity for the populace to bust out their good garb for coronation. If the climate won’t make you want to die in it, the dust will destroy it. It’s a minor detail for those that have lived down here their whole SCA career, but for someone like me with a closet full of fine silks and wools just waiting to be moth bait, it’s depressing. This isn’t anybody’s fault but my own, of course. It’s my wardrobe, and my variety of experience. It’s the price I pay to be a Navy spouse, you could say, but it doesn’t make me any less homesick if anything for the ability to wear something other than linen I can throw in the wash from my Pennsic wardrobe. Hell, even using the term “homesickness” is somewhat ironic in this sense, considering I grew up in Florida.

We were very much welcomed this weekend at Coronation, and apologized to frequently for last year’s explosion. But I still feel distant, and foreign. I’m not sure if the pilgrimage to Birka did this, or not. I think it was the concurrent ongoing of East Kingdom Coronation and getting those notifications popping up across social media at the same time I was elsewhere that may have done it. It’s hard to watch my friends assume the thrones of the East when we’re not in striking distance enough to help. When we can’t go to the events we were so accustomed to, and were looking forward to attended again before the Navy invested me as Baroness of the Alligators. It’s not that we’re not having fun, we are, and simultaneously can’t wait to leave in order to form the strangest collective of feelings one can feel at once. The folks we’ve fallen in with here in Castlemere are our kind of tribe, so at the very least, if we don’t make it down to the Crown site again, we can still have a good time up here.

I’m sure a lot of this is exacerbated by my inability to find work, my daily struggle with depression and anxiety, and my new friend fibromyalgia, who moved in several years ago, but didn’t get a name until recently. It’s making camping suck, which for me is horrid, beause I love camping events, I love our tents, and now I’m dreading being a physical burden on my husband and household at Pennsic should I have a kicker of a flare. I felt like hot garbage for a fair chunk of coronation, but did my best to not let it show. Nothing some Tylenol and a few cups of magic grape juice couldn’t at least distract me from.
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I also feel that the political climate being what it is, the upheavals across the society being what they are, are also a driving factor in my exhaustion. It did me little good to have last year drudged up again at Coronation, though I wholeheartedly accepted each and every apology given to me, because it is right to do so.

As a historian, I am beyond aggravated at these internet memes and “alternative facts” that support and drive white supremacy and Nazism into Medievalism. I want them out of my game and my life. Period. We’re always told that we should let peers do the work of dealing with such affronts, but I say, in this regard, that we’re all peers when it comes to striking down hate and dragging it out of our lives and our game. When we see something, we DO something. Period. We stop bad theater before it starts so nobody gets hurt making a bad choice, we catch bad behavior in action and deal with it accordingly before they ascend to the throne. No more casting the job off on somebody else based on a hierarchy that will get us a latte at Starbuck’s for $5. It is not “social justice” to want a club that has diversity and inclusion, especially when the periods we are representing WERE diverse. (HELLO The Byzantine Empire had an “Office of Ritual Brotherhood”, which may have been same-sex marriage, AND allowed and accepted transgender individuals to join their calling in the orthodox clergy and FFS there were African blacks in Europe that were NOT SLAVES.) There is enough counter-offensive on the internet now with sufficient documentation from us pros in the history biz to stop this cassarole of Nazi nonsense. I have a hard enough time taking them seriously when they show up dressed like Homer Simpson with tiki torches, but I’d be damned as hell if I let my grandparents’ bones turn in their graves further or the legacy of my husband’s career be diminished by allowing them to walk all over my hobby. We are an educational group, are we not? We do what we need to do in order to blare our ZERO TOLERANCE neon sign from on high and nip this junk in the bud before it blooms.

Despite my own exhaustion, I’m not leaving. I’m not going to quit and let the SCA turn into Uncle Hitler’s Charm School for Wayward Jaded White Men. I may be in pain, but I still have a lot of fight left, and if I gotta go, I’m going colorfully, and with lots of company. I’m sick of reading posts by other members who have had their hearts broken.

If my nomination to the BOD goes through, great. I will do what I can to make the SCA a better place. If I’m ever elevated to peerage, great, I will do what I can to make the SCA a better place, but my work should not be limited to if I achieve those positions.

This is going to take a village, a populace, and a knowne world.

Never Again. And not in my SCA.

Okay, what was THAT at Birka? My “Romanov Romanova” makes her one and only SCA appearance.

~ Angela ~ Leave a comment

Probably the crappiest attempt at 17th C. Imperial Russian you’ll ever see, but it was coated in bling so it doesn’t matter.

This story begins, as so many do, with the quintessential opening of, “So no sh*t, there I was…” It was February of 2016. I was at a tiny pop culture convention at UConn with some friends who I’ve known in the comic artist circuit for no less than googlety years.

…Yes, I draw, by the way. My first degree is in art, and I’ve been working on and off in the pop culture industry now since 2002. The latest thing I churned out was this Master Chief for my brother-in law. This is not relevant to my post. I just wanted to show it off because I slayed that bristol board.

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Image is watermarked. Please don’t steal art, it’s not nice.

Long story short, I had secured badges for San Diego Comic-Con International, yes, the big one, and I was chatting it up with a friend in our hotel room on a freezing cold night in Storrs, CT. She randomly suggested something along the lines of, “You should totally do a historically accurate Black Widow.” And I only half heard it. So while she was talking about art, I heard “costume for Comic-Con”, and the rest was history.

The kicker was getting in a position to make it before the con. Our move from New Hampshire to California had already been scheduled, and I was in the middle of writing and sewing my thesis. So what it came down to was waiting until I actually lived in San Diego to get started. This would not have been so bad, if we didn’t wait a month for our household goods to come in. When all was said and done, I had 3 weeks to pull it together. I began ordering supplies before I had a sewing machine in my house, and basically launched this project on a Hail Mary.

Since I made this for convention cosplay, versus SCA wear, I decided to focus on the look of the costumes from the 1903 Ball at the Winter Palace, in which the theme was to wear 17th Century court dress. So it was already going to be anachronistic in addition to costumey. I chose the look of the coat of Grand Duchess Xenia Alexandrovna, sister of Czar Nicholas II, and the kokoshnik from another noblewoman.

 


I shorted the hem of the layers to make sure I wouldn’t trip and fall in a convention center. I used every machine trick I had to save time, and collected plastic beads, rhinestones, vintage beaded trims, buttons with black widow spiders on them, and embroidered patches churned out on a friend’s embroidery machine. In the end, most of the handwork involved was just on the kokoshnik. I threw lace on the forehead instead of beads, because I don’t know how to do that type of beading and there was like zero time to try to learn. The patterns are overly simplified to facilitate speed. I’m pretty sure Russian coats were not made like t-tunics.

I was sewing up to the night I wore it, but it paid off in the end: I was awarded a hall costume blue ribbon from the Hollywood Costumer’s Guild, and got to meet Terry Dresbach, the former costume designer from “Outlander”, who immediately recognized my attempt at a historical version of Black Widow. I didn’t get my picture with her, but I did with others from their group.

Here is a full gallery of the construction and wearing of the costume at SDCC. Note the crazy nuances like my makeup, and nose ring. This was never intended for SCA wear, it’s more like a Las Vegas Imperial Russian.

 

And then the costume got put away in my closet, and came out again for Costume College in 2017, but I didn’t wear it.

And then the 2019 Birka Garb Challenge was announced as “Marvel and DC Superheroes and Villains”, and I was like, “Well, okay. I’m skipping this one. Unfair.” And then I got talked back into it. Originally, I was going to enter as Thanos in full crazy 12th Century Byzantine complete with chased and repoussed “armor” as a loros, and then decided I didn’t want to do that much work. So, I backed out again, in prep of doing the medieval persona hike here in Trimaris in February at Corsair’s Heart, which I figured would give me a better avenue for re-wearable garb.

…And then I got asked to trot this haute mess back out. Since nobody back in the East Kingdom actually saw it in person, I had a few people who really wanted me to bring it. I had even more people who didn’t remember, or know, that I did this, so when I posted a few pics to social media that one was coming out of the vaults, I think it really intimidated a lot of other participants. For their benefit, and my own, I decided I wouldn’t enter the fashion show, and opted in to judging it instead, which, honestly, was so much fun, I would totally do it again. I loved sitting on the panel and admiring all of the entries with the other judges, TRM East, Her Highness East, and Her Highness Atlantia. We had an absolute blast.

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So yeah, if you saw this, and wondered what the frack it was, this is what it was. The ribbon hangs in my studio, underneath a ribbon I won at Arisia 2009 for my first ever Byzantine ensemble. They’re a nice reminder to stay humble. 😉

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Achieve!, or the Diary of making an Achievement of Arms

~ Angela ~ Leave a comment

I commissioned a conjugal achievement of arms from Konstantia, and I couldn’t be more excited about it. Check out her blog on the process!!

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Achievement of Arms are a period way to show off one’s accomplishments in the SCA, as combined with one’s heraldic device.  I had the great fortune to create a conjugal coat of arms for my Byzanbestie Anna and her husband Gieffrei, and ended up also blogging the process, too.

Let’s start off with the details and definition of what a heraldic achievement of arms actually is.  An ‘achievement’ is a full formal display of a coat of arms. This form of display is normally used in very formal situations, and can be used for decorative elements, banners, and of course, on scrolls. An achievement is one’s heraldic device surrounded by all the extra elements accorded to an individual by their rank in the SCA according to their kingdom’s sumptuary laws. Most of the elements, however, are optional and do not have to be displayed.  Further bits of interkingdom anthropology: Ansteorra registers…

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