Boscobel, WI, or Warriors and Warlords...

Xavier wrote this post months ago, titled something like, "How I learned to let go and start loving the SCA". He was explaining about the expansion of his geekery to include the SCA. Xavier writes extensively about geek theory and the geek experience and mass media over at www.geektheory.wordpress.com -- now it is my turn.

Although I have nerd/geek/dork predilections and tastes in media, I've been quite careful. Mainstream folks consider that I am part of the subculture; true members realize I just dabble. I've never been to GenCon, and I haven't rolled my dice in attempts to resurrect dead team-members since I was in high school. I had a dorky reading habit, but that was easy to conceal. I've been even more thrilled with the Xavier-supplied "spec fic" because now when I'm talking about elves, I can sound official and academic. I had a geeky boyfriend habit, because they were so bright and adorable and chivalrous and I just couldn't help myself.

Most of my geekery (okay, so the Xena for President bumper stick isn't enough of a tell?) has been of the readily concealed, leave me appearing mostly-vanilla variety. My family and best friends know better, and nothing pleases me more these days than to hear someone stub a toe and shout, "Frak!" -- because then I can tell them that I am in love with my favorite tormented blond pilot...

As the daughter of a system with as many moves as an army brat, I knew that who I was always needed to be shelved to make new friends; friends who couldn't be trusted to understand. I've never expected my friends to appreciate or enjoy my bad habits. I would pass around great books from my shelves and drop obscure references that only I understood.

Xavier in my social circle led me a lot closer to feeling comfortable defining "geek" as a part of my decriptor set. He's made geekery more fun, more hip, and much more accessible. He's also right in that society is shifting. Geeks have become too important and their culture has been monetized.

Still, he's instilled in me a desire to drop top-secret phrases and search out reactions in faces around me. I love nothing more when struggling with a difficult bit of cookery or food out to say, "This food is problematic," and wait to see a face light up. I still get old-school thrills out of variants upon, "These are not the droids you're looking for," such as "These are not the beers you are not paying me for."

In his love for life and his dirty geek habit Xavier has made it easier for me to look people in the eye and say (I hope this never gets old), "I'm doing x so that I'm ready to go to war," or "I've been doing a lot of sewing for the War Victory effort," or "I'll be camping in Pennsylvania to go to war."

In the SCA (Society for Creative Anachronism) I've found something curiously resonant: there is a concentration of bright, passionate people who love their vices (be they laurel, fighting, or other)and who love to tell you all about what they do. I spent the entire event at WW connecting with people and talking to them about what it is that they do. Be it archery or baking/cooking or pottery or just old school SCA basics I didn't need to waste away, watching and dreaming at being amazing on the rapier field as I had done at so many other events.

The intensity of people who are filled with a desire to share what makes them tick, to teach you their vices of choice -- this past weekend was what I needed to make me feel solid and real in a world that spins under me faster than I can manage. I left a lot of the mundane world at the door and felt Lina Kirkwood slip away like water down a drain. Pasqualina de la Cotes de Rhones is a lot snippier, a lot bitchier, a better heathen-hippie-hedge witch and she is a bit of a trouble maker. I've been asking a lot of questions of long-term and short-term SCAdians about personality fracturing and how they change when they cease being "naked" and wearing "mundanes" and convert into this shiny new person.

I love that going from mundanes to garb changes a human so quickly that one cannot recognize them in the slightest. Seeing that conversion, watching them assume a more comfortable skin? The schtick, the fun, the riotous pleasure in a world they have created. Now I understand Sybil Sevenoke's post-war-hangovers wherein reality weighs heavy and every minute of every day is spent plotting an escape.

Hello, my name is Lina Kirkwood, and I have a wonderful bad habit that I love and that I think you'd love too. Let's talk about swords and food and garb and also -- being a "grown-up" that twelve-year-old Lina would be thrilled to meet. I can dress like a princess and coquettishly request that men carry heavy things for me, and it's o-kay. It doesn't make me less of a feminist or less of a woman -- it just means that I'm not always able to do everything I wish I could do, and that's o-kay.

Herein lies a place where I'm not judged; there's so little shame and guilt that I almost couldn't begin to comprehend the culture. There's a lot of knowledge and a lot of passion and a lot of love -- a love for something greater than self, or family, or mundane-world-job.

Yours in service to the dream,

Pasqualina de la Cotes de Rhones

P.S. Je vous vois a Pennsic. Je serai chez Terrafini. J'espere que vous venez me voir.