ANST - Re: the First Principality Meeting

[Lenny Zimmermann]

On Wed, 08 Apr 1998 19:47:01 EST, Lorraine DeerSlayer  wrote:

>/Gunnora Hallakarva said:
[snip]
>/(3D) The last reason I have heard for not specifically wanting to include
>/the Stargate Area in a Southern Principality is the fact that the
>/southeastern portion of Ansteorra has its own very distinct SCA sociology
>/(as, for that matter, does the North, South, etc.) and in many ways this
>/differs from the way people play elsewhere, specifically in the Southern
>/Region.  None of this is an absolute bar from combining the groups, but if
>/you compare you will find that different regions have different beliefs
>/about the awards structure (who should get an award, what is required for
>/that award to be given, what the prerequisites for that award should be),
>
>Not really, the prereqs for an award vary from person to person...from
>I like that person so they deserve an AoA (even though they have only
>been in 4 months and don't wear SCA clothes to events) to this person
>has held x offices and worked at all functions for 4 years and so finally
>they deserve the title...and that is within the Southern Region...

[snip of further discussion of how SCA socialogical beliefs vary from
person to person, not region to region]

I would like to present here that I while I fully agree that
individuals do have their own belief structures about what the SCA,
Ansteorra, etc. should/would/could be, yet I would say that
geographically I believe there IS a difference in the majority
viewpoint of those ideals. I can easily say that such and such a
person from such and such an area calls prefers to fight in tounament
with a tournament paradigm rather than a dueling/war/killing paradigm.
Or that so and so from somewhere prefers to view a tournament as a
sport more than medieval recreation.

Yet I can also say that in my experience the general area where that
person is from may have a different belief structure, in general, than
that person. I think most of us not only see that our areas have some
fairly definitive "culture" about them, I think most of us also revel
in the fact that our "cultures" are different from the others. We take
pride in our differences. As such I would say that there IS a
different "culture" to Stargate and, as Mistress Gunnora called it,
"The Greater Stargate Area" than in Bjorsborg, or Bryn Gwlad, or most
of the Southern Region, for that matter. I don't think that's a "Bad
Thing" just a statement about our uniqueness. In fact I would hazard
to say that it is a "Good Thing". 

So at least include my two cents that I do believe, regionally, we are
culturally different from "The Greater Stargate Area". In my personal
opinion I think it is enough to warrant consideration for not
including that area into a southern principality since, it seems to
me, part of the object of a principality is to celebrate an area's
cultural unity and difference from the cultures surrounding it. To
distill that culture out with greater differences would only weaken
that objective. (Not that any of that stops me from playing at
Stargate events, mind you. Cultural difference is what makes such
travel more interesting!)


 

Honos Servio,
Lionardo Acquistapace, Bjornsborg
(mka Lenny Zimmermann, San Antonio)
zarlor at acm.org
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