Another warm, almost hot day here. Temperature is supposed to be over 80, under sunny skies. Welcome to January in North Carolina, kids!

So plans now have us possibly attending Tourney of Ymir in a few weeks. This will be interesting – I was in the Society for Creative Anachronism (SCA) for seven years, from 1992 through 1999. The last event I attended was up in Maryland in 2000, and the last local (NC) event I attended was…Tourney of Ymir, 1999. More on that in a bit.

So, why did I stay in the SCA for seven years, and why am I no longer active? Well, for one thing, takaza isn’t much interested in it, but I’d dropped out long before I met him. I should start by saying that while history is interesting to me, I’m not a huge history buff. Which is probably a good thing, since the SCA isn’t much about history, or rather it’s about history as it should have been. No peasants, no plague, and showers for everyone. What the SCA is, in essence, is a giant game of “Let’s Pretend”. Its member take a lot (sometime inordinate) amount of time trying to reconcile this with real history (authentic heraldry, meticulously researched needlework, and the like). This is a source of great angst within the Society, since who wants the effect of the fabulous Elizabethan gown you spent hundreds of hours researching and hand-sewing spoiled by the twit standing next to you with a can of Coke?

I got a little caught up in this at one time (as some embarrassing Usenet posts from years ago show), but for the most part I usually stayed out of the authenticity debate. Although I dabbled in various pastimes (a little needlework, brewing beer and mead, even getting into armor – once), I eventually gravitated to where I usually do: the service side of the organization. In the case of the SCA this was unfortunate because that led me to the ugliest parts of the Society. It is often said that “The smaller the stakes, the more embittered the battle.” The SCA is that adage writ large: A pseudofeudal quasidemocratic mess filled with hegemonies, fiefdoms, and petty bickering. I served as seneschal for the group at Virginia Tech for about a year before essentially being forced out of the position by the ceremonial heads of the area because they wanted to create a power base. A power base? In a big game of make-believe? Anyway, it reached the point where my pastime was no longer fun, and I had to ask myself why I was doing it. So I stepped down from the office and into the background for a bit.

After graduating from VT and spending six months out in Illinois, where I knew no one, I moved back to the Raleigh, NC, area and became active in the SCA once again. I helped out at events, brewed a little more, and made friends in the local group. Then, a huge thing happened: Tracie, a dear friend of mine, became princess of Atlantia (Atlantia is the SCA “kingdom” that covers Maryland, Virginia, DC, North Carolina, and South Carolina; in the SCA, kings are crowned every six months through a tournament. The winner of the tournament and his consort become prince and princess for six months [to “learn the ropes”], then king and queen for the next six months). I foolishly volunteered to be her “Lord in Waiting” along with two or three other friends. This led to twelve months of long drives up and down the East Coast, making sure food and drink were provided as necessary, and generally helping her look regal in spite of the dipshit she had as her prince/king. To be fair, I certainly didn’t carrying the brunt of all this, her friend and roommate Jen did. And if that was all there was to it, I’d have to say I enjoyed it and I’d do it again. We had a lot of fun, and I met a lot of really nice people I wouldn’t have met otherwise. But…

In the course of all of this, I learned a lot about kingdom politics. And though I’d seen some ugliness in my time as seneschal, it didn’t hold a candle to the stuff I saw here: personal enmities carried to extremes, petty power plays, and heated arguments over trifling matters. This was the seamy underbelly of the Society, and the more I saw of it, the less enchanted with the Society I became. Eventually, Tracie stepped down as queen and life returned somewhat to normal, but I can safely say that from that point I began slowly moving away from the SCA, realizing that I have a lot of things that are important to me, and I wasn’t finding those things in the SCA.

(And should Tracie or Jen ever read this: Good heavens, I would certainly never blame you for my disaffection with the Society. You found the good stuff and good people in the SCA, and that worked well for you – I’m very happy about that! My path led elsewhere, I suppose…)

Perhaps my “swan song” was the Tourney of Ymir, 1999. That was a memorable one, because I was the head cook for a feast that fed 160 people. It’s freakish because people still talk about that feast, and I never really thought it was anything special. Orange roasted chicken, beef stew, broccoli with a deadly cheese sauce, pear pie, and a few other things. What I tried to do different was to serve all the food at once, keep the “weird food factor” to a minimum, and make sure everyone got enough. Evidently this was different and unusual – go fig. Actually, that tells you something about the typical feasts of that time – I sincerely hope they have improved since then. I had a great time, and enjoyed the company of a terrific group of people who help me put all of that together. Anyway, that was the last event I went to before I moved to Illinois later that year.

Going to the event in Maryland in 2000 was refreshing. I got to see a lot of friends that I hadn’t seen in quite a while. It reminded me of the one great sadness I had in leaving the SCA – I have a lot of friends who are still active, who have 75% or more of their weekends taken up traveling to this event or another, and fill the rest of the time working on projects. With all that time claimed, there just isn’t a whole lot of time to see them. I’ve lost touch with several of them, and I guess I hope to see them at Ymir in a few weeks.

And then I found furry fandom. Actually, I’d found furry fandom before I left the SCA (and I have a theory that the SCA is also a fandom, albeit one of questionably accurate historical re-creations), and met my first furry friends face to face at Christmas, 1998. It was a new interest, less complicated and less wrapped up in the petty bullshit of organization and power plays than the SCA, I thought, and jumped in both feet first. So, three years later, where do I find myself? Well, once again, I’ve migrated toward the service side of the fandom. The personalities of the people I’ve met in furry aren’t that different from those in the SCA, and that’s a good thing. By and large it’s a group of talented, creative, friendly people who I enjoy spending time around. I was, of course, completely wrong about the lack of power plays and political bullshit, but the scale is smaller and it’s a lot easier to avoid the stupidity.

How long will I stay active in furry fandom? As long as it’s fun, and I’m having a good time – certainly I’m in it for the next few years. After that, who knows? But I will always remember this: what’s the use of having a hobby if it’s not fun?