An interesting discussion on remaining in persona

[guenievre]

http://new-man.livejournal.com/158518.html?nc=58 - I know I am awful about this, and many people don't find the "persona" thing important. Still, I'm fascinated by it, and wonder how I would go about working on it...

Comments

[zihuatanejo.livejournal.com]

Caveat: This is from a guy who likes his pajama pants under his tunics.

It sounds like the author wants the SCA to be a LARP without the dice (do LARPs have dice?). That is really separate from what you, G, advocate (being the best re-creation of a 14th century Burgundian lady that you can).

The SCA is historical re-enactment. "All the best parts of the middle ages" really does not say "roleplaying" to me. It says "learning about history through doing". Whether or not we're talking about LJ while I'm learning about period swordplay, cooking, textiles, whatever, doesn't affect the learning, really.

I could spend the next two hours coming up with a list of things anachronistic to my persona. Discussions about LJ and people wearing polar fleece that I can't recognize as polar fleece are just drops in a bucket.
But I don't roleplay my persona. I don't fear for my mortal soul if I let a blackamoor go un-punished for his heathen Moslem ways. I take Aleve, not bleeding, when my helmet gives me a headache. I just go about re-creating (in my own special way) a 12th century dirty filthy English lord.

[lady-guenievre.livejournal.com]

Well, no. Part of the reason I've been thinking about this in the past few days (though it is something I consider, if not do anything about, fairly often) is because as I mentioned yesterday I was privileged to spend a few hours conversing with His Grace Cariadoc while in Calontir. And he does it almost effortlessly, or so it seems from the outside.

I know - go read this - http://www.daviddfriedman.com/Medieval/miscellany_pdf/Articles_about_Persona.pdf - and then we'll talk. It's not LARPing, so much as forgetting the modern...

[florentinescot.livejournal.com]

Oh, my! What an experience!

[new-man.livejournal.com]

It sounds like the author wants the SCA to be a LARP without the dice (do LARPs have dice?)

Some LARPs do, and some LARPs don't.

And, no, that's not really what the author wants.

The SCA is historical re-enactment...[which to me means] learning about history through doing

That's not historical re-enactment. That's studying history. That's part of what the SCA does -- and it's an important part -- but it's not the "re-enactment" or "re-creation" part.

I'm not suggesting that the SCA would be a better place if people were racially intolerant, or if they were treated with period medicines. I'm saying the SCA would be a better place if people avoiding talking about blatantly modern things. YMMV.