Period Heraldric Styles...

James Crouchet crouchet at infinity.ccsi.com
Thu Aug 17 09:27:54 PDT 1995



On Thu, 17 Aug 1995, Pug wrote:

> > > 1) Period Style
> > > 2) All others
> > I don't really see why we would bother protecting oop stuff. Did I miss
> > the part where the SCA's timeframe was expanded to infinity?
> 
> No, you missed the point that it we aren't *required* to wear period
> clothes, so why bother? It's the same thing. This is just a matter of
> you are telling people who only use Period Styles that they are cool,
> and everyone else isn't. Just another place to encourage instead of
> *require*.

Costuming knowledge is much more widespread than heraldry knowledge. I 
have seen a lot more good first costuming attempts than first heraldry 
attempts.

There is also a fairly significant socal pressure to wear clothing that 
is at least not distractingly non-period. On heraldry, fewer people seem 
to even have a clue.

> 
> > I had assumed
> > that the tollerance the SCA had for oop was based on the idea that, "yes
> > these things don't really belong in our game, but we aren't gonna make a
> > stink 'cause we're nice guys". This looks more like, "Sure, we do
> > Victorian and Elvish and Toon and Vulcan and 20th C. too! Anything ya
> > like!" If this is our attitude let's just give up on this history thing 
> > and admit we're just the world's longest running SF con.
> 
> You mean all those people who got heraldry in the early days are now
> discouraged from playing because they don't have period heraldry?

Huh? I don't think I see your point, and I don't think you answered mine.

> 
> > Also, anything in the 'All others' category would still have to be in 
> > heraldic style, or we could not use the heraldic language to describe it. 
> > If we can't describe it we can't check for conflicts. And if you don't 
> > care about conflicts, why register it?
> 
> That's fine with me! Heraldry doesn't have to be undescribable, and I
> never said it didn't have to to be. Just that it doesn't have to be
> "period" style.

I'm not sure how much heraldry you know, so I'll point out that modern 
heraldry is not THAT much different from period heraldry. A few concepts 
that the mideaval man would find disturbing have been added, and a couple 
colors, but where most folks have problems is with HERALDIC style, not 
period style. So you can use orange and 3-d perspective, so what? Still 
no Mickey Mouse(tm), landscape art, non-herladic divisions or gross 
complexity.

> 
> > This area of the game is the only one where periodness is actually
> > enforced, and you don't have to register arms or your name unless you want
> > to!
> 
> Why have one area and not others? Implies that it's elitest to me.

Your sentence implies elitism is a bad thing... :-)

> 
> > You can display anything you want, so long as it is not already
> > registered, and you never have to say boo to a herald. So, what's the
> > deal? I really don't see why folks get so bent about the heralds enforcing
> > a little periodness in this OPTIONAL service. 
> 
> It's optional whether to go to events or not. Do we force periodness
> there? No! The entire SCA is optional, why have *one* part of it enforce
> periodness?

And why not?

> 
> Ciao,
> -- 
> Phelim Uhtred Gervas  | "I want to be called. COTTONTIPS. There is something 


Savian



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