Tag: white supremacy

About that whole Crown Variance Request by Lochac:

~ Angela ~ 17 Comments


Edit: I keep adding more stuff to the bottom as discussion points cross my feed as well as made some clarifications in my original post (it was late last night when I was getting ranted to by a dear Lochacian friend so things got muddy on my end as well.)

I am nearly permabanned from Facebook at this point thanks to the ridiculous reporting attack that went down right after my elevation that followed me onto my new account, but you can’t ban me from speaking my mind on my blog. So sit the hell down and listen:

It is not period to choose sovereigns by right of arms.

I know, I know, “But that’s not what the game was founded on!”

We’ve changed a lot since the 60s. The women aren’t wearing Gunne Sax and calling it “garb” for one, and two, the SCA has developed into a much larger more inclusive society EXCEPT FOR THIS.

I have no issue with heavy combat crown tournaments, but I do think that we’re way overdue to look at mixing it up. This post is about the labels we attach to our tradition, and why they are problematic, though.

No, you are not permitted to get in my face about this. I see you (nondescript you) and the way you’re treating people on Social Media right now and it is not a good look. “You’re not a fighter!” No, I do not fight in the SCA anymore because I do not have the time or physical capacity to do so. I have been authorized in both heavy combat and rapier combat, in addition to being a black belt in TaeKwonDo and having been practicing martial arts in some respect for nearly 30 years at this point. Do not cast aside my “Well you aren’t wearing spurs so your opinion doesn’t matter, you snarky little Laurel”. I see you. If you’re so big and bad, drop the sword and board and join me in the TKD ring. It’s been a hot minute since I fought in a national championship but I can still hold my own. I’ve kicked heads in camp at Pennsic.

Oh, you won’t. Why? “It’s not my element and it’s not fair.” You’re right, it isn’t. Much like heavy combat in the SCA is not the element for most participants, and it’s, indeed, not fair. But it’s also not fair to say that folks should not have thoughts on something when they aren’t combatants.

The Chivalry has the privilege of being the “most equal” of the peerages. I have no qualms saying that out loud because it’s true and I’ve had multiple knights and MoAs tell me the same. When you threaten their elevated pillar over the other bestowed peerages, they back into a corner and lash out like terrified house cats, and this is the reason why. We cannot in good faith offer an egalitarian experience if we do not have ways to make participation equal. Period. That’s it, that’s the tea.

No wait, no, that’s not -actually- the tea. I’m still boiling that water, so buckle up.

“The SCA is really a Victorian King Game and we should continue that tradition!”

Sure, let me, with my 2.5 history degrees, unpack this nonsense.

The Victorians -ruined- the Middle Ages and subsequent modern perception thus. The Victorians gave us the myths of damsels in distress, knights in shining armor, Pre-Raphaelite over romanticism and faux history designed for the purpose of the subjection of women, children, LGBTQ+, and POC. There. There it fucking is, isn’t it? The Anglo-American Victorian Period was rooted in white supremacy, and these “king games” were part of them. We modern classical and medieval historians are still working to unravel myths of medieval individuals not bathing thanks to the absolute abhorrent mess the Victorian “historians” created.

“Tradition” is a nice word that means you’re letting dead people tell you what to do. In this case, the “dead people” in question were using colonialism, white supremacy based on horrifically bad early anthropology theory, and sweeping dead children riddled with tuberculosis out of the gutter after they worked 18 hour shifts for quarter wage to justify the Smithian and Malthusian virtues of classical liberalism’s “invisible hand of the free market.” So maybe, just fucking maybe, we shouldn’t be putting this asinine period, during which the United States still permitted slavery for most of, on its own pedestal. The Middle Ages had their own issues, but we cannot recreate “the Middle Ages as they should have been” while touting that our organization is literally an echo of one of the most oppressive centuries in world history. If any of you supporting this theory have spent more than breathing on a Wikipedia page’s worth of reading on the Victorian period and its treatment of medievalism, you wouldn’t want to be waving this flag. Period. For a group of people who purport themselves to be belonging to an educational group, you’re really bad at educating yourselves.

This brings me to the boiling point before I pour that tea.

What did we do to disabled individuals during the Victorian period? The same thing the SCA is doing now: ignoring them. While care was not exactly great in the Middle Ages, disabled individuals usually found support in the family unit or community. The Victorians would throw them away and lock them up if they could afford it. Otherwise, they were unalived in a variety of ways such as drowning, falling, or just…”He went for a walk and didn’t come home. Pass the tea, old horse.”

The entire premise of the Lochac proposal was to create an avenue to be more inclusive of those that cannot physically fight for whatever reason (update: It was even less rigid, they just asked to be able to choose their own crown formats). Two sovereign nations, Australia and Aotearoa New Zealand, came to an agreement for the betterment of their own kingdom literally on the other side of the planet from North America, that this was what they wanted to do. They proposed it using disability as the example, and suggested that Lochac, being distant and away from the “core” kingdoms of the US and Canada, be a great testing grounds for this new idea, and the North American BoD couldn’t be arsed to give them a better answer than “Not right now.”

Okay but why? Where is the rest of the answer? Is the rest of the answer, “We are going to start developing this so standby”, or is it actually what I think it is, a shrieking harmony of toxic masculinity and ableism disguised as “tradition”? This is not a good look for the United States, but it’s also expected. We’ve managed to really show our asses in the last few years.

If you want the Victorian Interpretation of the Middle Ages As they Should Have Been, then I definitely recommend cooling down the ableism, racism, sexism, and all the other -isms that make it all 100% still Very Victorian Middle Ages As They Were, only with Less Consumption and More Covid. They also wouldn’t stand for any personae from Ireland, Italy, or Eastern Europe. In fact, Jewish personae need not apply either. Orthodox, Catholics and Jews go home, totally. The problematic term “Anglo-Saxon” is also 100% Victorian, and was used then, as it is now, as an avenue to promote white supremacy to support colonialism.

Or, you know, stop using the Victorian excuse. I’m sick of it, just tell us you don’t want to be inclusive of disabled individuals and would rather have the whispers of racist dead white men in your ears telling you what to do than make a fresh attempt at being inclusive.

There’s a good chance most people pining for the romanticized Victorian Middle Ages have no idea what they’re espousing, but they need to knock it off.

That, my friends, is the hot tea.

The SCA is in trouble as it is on the recruitment and retention front, a great deal of this has to do with the le Ancien Scadien Regime touting their sad devotion to their ancient traditions, but also because of inaccessibility, racism, and just you know, wow, there’s a lot of Nazis. White supremacists are not as dumb as we want them to be. They see and hear this “Victorian King Game” and connect the dots of all the points I made above, and we all know how they feel about the disabled, queer, and POC folks that already struggle to be seen in our game. We should stop inviting them to play. I had hoped they would have all left to go to the SMA, but alas, we have so many missing stairs newcomers are falling to their demise before reaching their AoA.

Either we’re an inclusive society that wants to recreate the Global Middle Ages, or, we’re a pseudo-Victorian society upholding dangerous ideals disguised as a historical education society.


Choose wisely, SCA.

Addendums based on what I’m seeing on Social Media, since I can’t post. I’m updating as I see more talking points.

I think that Milpitas should let Lochac give it a shot. If it doesn’t work, then we go back to heavy combat crowns. No harm, no foul. But the Palatine Barony of the Far West and Western Seas has a rotation scheme for choosing their baronage. I fail to see why this can’t be implemented as a crown format either. Nobody says it will never be fighting again ever, all folks want to do is make the experience more inclusive, which I see a lot of push back on in the form of “The SCA doesn’t have to be everything to everyone.” Um, that’s literally what inclusivity is. That’s a fancy sentence for, “I don’t want somebody disabled in charge for 4-6 months.”

I should note that the Palatine Barony is starting to fall apart with lots of inactive pockets due to a lack of support for the military community from the SCA as a whole but *sips tea* I know jack about that, I suppose.

I also see a lot of very odd mental gymnastics in regard to, “This is what we were founded as, therefore…” by the same people who will argue tooth and nail about interpreting the US Constitution and what the Founding Fathers would have wanted. This is only coming from the Americans, not the Australians, Kiwis, Canadians, or Europeans. In my opinion, it’s the same thing. If you can argue that the interpretation of the US Constitution should change with time, then SCA Corpora should be given the same respect. Don’t say, “This is how we did it in the 1960s” for the SCA, turn around, and argue about making the amendment for term limits for Congress in the same breath. You look dumb. Also, so are term limits, but this is an SCA blog, not a political one. Anybody who follows me on FB has gotten that well-documented screed enough.

The whole thing is a power grab, period. Not by the Chivalry, but by older members who refuse to let go. It’s like watching a professor who should have retired 20 years ago continue to hold onto a chaired seat just to refuse it to a younger generation who challenged their scholarship.

DEI is not just about BIPOC and LGBTQ+ members, I can’t believe I have to keep repeating this because it makes me sound whataboutist, but that’s just the Diversity portion. The I means Inclusion, and Inclusion means EVERYBODY. The E means Equity, and that means allowing everybody the chance to be given accommodations to sample all that the SCA has to offer. When the DEI office got slammed for having a roundtable talking about the military experience in the SCA because the panel was not visibly queer or POC, I got angry for obvious reasons, even as a member of the queer community, coming off of the massive struggle we had moving between 3 kingdoms in 2 years. But why is disability always on the back burner? Why is it always skirted when it comes to site accessibility and event options? When I mentioned having accessibility porters at events, folks who need assistance loved the idea, and then I got able-bodied folks telling me they didn’t want to “waste” their time at the event carrying other people’s things for them. Oh, okay. I am not disabled, but I do have chronic illnesses that can make my event experience less-than-fun, so usually I just don’t bother going. With Jeff being as sick as he is right now, we aren’t going to events anytime soon anyway, because I can’t trust people to help him if he needs it if I’m busy, or mask up near him while his immune system recovers from chemotherapy. This argument just cements further that the SCA is not a club for those that need an extra hand once in a while, and that is upsetting.

“You’re attacking the chivalry!” No, no I’m not. I’m attacking inequity and exclusion based on bad “traditions”. I didn’t badmouth the Chiv at all other than repeating words they have already told me: They are the most equal of the peerages and that they carry the most clout. This was by design in the game. Toxic masculinity does not define the Chivalry, it defines the systemic issue. If you hear the phrase “toxic masculinity” and assume “Chivalry”, then that’s indicative of a whole other problem entirely, isn’t it? Toxic FIGHTERS that bad mouth the other paths are another issue entirely, and they rarely wear chains.

“We need martial leadership for wars!” Okay, I agree. Then make non-war reigns non-martial crowns? Why can’t the Sovereigns be on the field at Pennsic for the champions battles while the Heirs visit the A&S Display to support their populace? Hell, I’ve had sovereigns express dismay at missing so much other stuff at wars because of, well, war. That tells me that we need to stagger things better.

“I don’t want my non-rattan community to become toxic like rattan has become, and the toxic people from rattan will just go into rapier, etc.” – Actually, this one makes a lot more sense to me and I’m glad someone brought it up. Again, I need to reiterate that not all fighters and especially not all chiv are toxic. The system is what breeds toxicity, but all competitions do this. Training on the national level in TKD wasn’t exactly free of drama, toxicity, or the like, I think it’s just human nature. Which is grossly unfortunate. I’ve been in and apart of enough A&S competitions that have gotten so cutthroat I could only imagine what adding crown to it could do. Still, I think that non-martial crowns should still be experimented with.

No, this has nothing to do with me planning to expatriate to Aotearoa New Zealand. I’m doing that because I want distance from the US and the inevitable trauma of losing my husband sooner than later.

“If you don’t like it, leave.” What, and miss _THIS_?

I just heard from a Lochacian that one of the reasons why they pitched this is that they have less fighters than they used to, but an active and large populace as a whole who are doing amazing things. So it’s issues of burnout with the current fighter pool as well as the desire to try something new to be more inclusive. Likewise, I’ve had ‘Strayans offering me beer all day and I’ve already lost that drinking game before.

“We should just abolish crown tourneys.” – Now we’re talking. Or, we can do something crazy, and medieval: A REPUBLIC.

On CTE and TBI: We are not talking about this enough. I’ve seen what happens to athletes in multiple sports with CTE. Please, PLEASE take this into account. It’s one of the reasons why Jeff decided he didn’t want to fight as much anymore. But we also need to approach this in a way that we don’t make the fighting community think it’s an insult or that they’re all just going out there and getting their bell rung. I’ve gotten popped in melee as well as singles, it happens and normally we just shake it off without thinking of the consequences. The same in TKD. “Well I just saw Tweety birds, better shake it off and get back out there.” AYEEEEEEEEEEE what are we doing to ourselves? Can this be solved with calibration? Maybe. Can it be solved by eliminating head contact and more active marshalling? Yes, but that requires having everybody on board, and head shots are sort of part of the game since it’s a fast kill. There may also be padding solutions, but as we’ve learned with the NFL, no amount of padding will make this perfect. Reduced contact is the only answer.

Members of Lochac have clarified that they did not ask for a specific crown format or with disability in mind (which is what another Aussie told me, which might still be a catalyst of course), they simply asked for the variance that says they can choose the crown format they wish, and the US BOD just struck them down without any clarifying questions or the like. I think the insta-denial is the issue here more than anything. The BOD could have gone, “What do you have in mind?” or “Can you provide us with more info?” And instead chose not to.

I made a separate post about my Accessibility Porter idea here: https://annasrome.com/2022/12/16/my-accessibility-porter-idea/

I just want to point out that the bulk of this post is about white supremacy echoed in terminology and practice and so far, not a single message or comment I have received about this has been about that. If you are one of the offended that read that and get upset, you may be telling on yourself.

I really really hate insults like, “Stick jock”, “wire weenie”, “garb nazi”, and “service junkie”. Stop that.

“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.

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.

med_1467670785_image

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.

Woody-Guitar-Close-Up-THis-Machine-cropped

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.
IMG_3125

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.