Highway 6 runs both ways

[R.Michael Litchfield]

>I confess that I, too, have wondered about this.  People who seem happy
>in the SCA sometimes discuss what attracts them to it.  Why do people
>who seem so unhappy with the SCA stay in it?

I suspect each answer is of course as personal to them as the reason
someone else likes the SCA. Since you asked, let me talk about mine.

I first started playing with the SCA when I was in Highschool. I couldn't
fight because I was under 16 but i started hanging out at fighter and dance
practice.

I was like a lot of people a socially inept dreamer, in general unsuited for
the mundane world as I percieved it. (Some would say I haven't changed)
In the SCA I found, for the first time, people like myself. Bright,
unrealistic, socially inept in general congress, and believers in a
different social
contract. I ran into people who read the same books I did, who had many of the
same values, and who were quite a bit more open minded & intelligent than
any other social group I had access to.

I fell in love with all of it. Then got seperated by forces beyond my control
when I got back into collage and found it again it was almost better than the
first time. I could actually play for real and not that limited range of
activites available to the underage. However as I played I also started to
discover the problems of the society. The jealousies and petty political
squables reared thier heads. I saw people who broke the back for the
society
no recognition and other people who could barely be bothered to put a T-tunic
over thier jeans for events get awards & other recognition because of who
they were sleeping with. I saw people use the little power they had in the
sca to sop thier shriveled egos by lording it over people who might be more
successful mundaely. I met all the shit in the SCA nd it broke my heart.

So what do you do? The SCA is like a former love that you can barely stand
the sight of sometimes but who you find it nearly impossible to cut
yourself off from. You try to only play with the parts you like but they
are all conneted.

>- Viscount Galen of Bristol
>  "noblesse oblige"

-Michael