And my lovely scroll

[lumineaux]

Can be seen here:

http://medieval-whimsies.blogspot.com/2012/06/alys-mackyntoich-herald-extraordinaire.html


This is yet another reminder that my scrolls really need to be framed and displayed properly, rather than safely ensconced in boxes and baggies like vintage comic books.

Comments

[math5.livejournal.com]

She's a f'ing good scribe :)
And congrats again.

[aryanhwy.livejournal.com]

Beautiful!

[goldsquare.livejournal.com]

I have a dirty little secret.

I never knew how to get it done, but for YEARS I dreamed of trying to turn the "bad play that is SCA court" into something more like a real medieval court.

If I ever get to play again, that is my absolute goal: to do that, and do it well enough that it becomes "the done thing".

I am so effing jealous of your talent, skill, and determination that has elevated the quality of scroll texts.

You really deserve this.

[lumineaux.livejournal.com]

You missed my class at KWHSS on "Adapting Medieval Legal Documents for SCA Purposes." It seemed to go really well. I think I finally managed to communicate to people that writing this stuff is both fun and incredibly easy once you get the hang of it. Plus, in the past several months, I have commented on several other people's attempts to write period scroll wording. All them want to do more.

So every Saturday we inch a little closer to a world with court verbiage that feels completely medieval.

[goldsquare.livejournal.com]

I know, and this is the source of pride I feel in your actions, and why I think this award (and, eventually, a Laurel) are highly justified.

Pelican is for service. But Laurel is for doing "what they did" and for making other people "want to do what they did", and making that easier for them.

I know you are uncomfortable with the Laurel idea: I hope to wear you down quickly enough that, once you get it, you are not feeling undeserving. :-)

But my jealousy-in-your-deserved-success, is the court itself.

No medieval or Renaissance noble would do what we do, how we do it. What we do serves our purposes, and what they did served theirs: and those purposes are not the same.

But: we could serve our purposes so much better and more authentically than we do, and that was my emergent goal when life suddenly deleted SCA activity from me.

I don't regret my choices, but I regret my necessity: and I regret not having had the chance to bite at that apple, as you have done so well with yours.

You see, here's the thing, and I say this despite having been his apprentice: Arval did what you have done, but he never managed to make it "the done thing". Others have, also, made it the "fluke" thing that was once in a while done: Anton, for example.

But look at you.

[lumineaux.livejournal.com]

Some of my success is the result of the happy accident of being in the right time and the right place, at the cultural moment when the East Kingdom was ready for greater authenticity in this particular area. It's a different culture than it was 20 years ago (in so many ways), and I for one couldn't be happier about 95% of the changes.

I had opportunities that others may not have had: being friends with many scribes who hate to do wording and all of the last three Tyger Clerks allowed me to get a chance to be involved in my friends' scrolls. And then in the scrolls of people I've never met, because the scribe hated doing wording. And then involved in doing scroll for people who really wanted the period text feel. And then in the scrolls of people from outside of the Kingdom, because I happen to know heralds.

I already had a "network" when I started doing this particular activity. Not only could I bug the Tyger Clerk, but getting a copy of polling results earlier than other people when I was the Their Majesty's Herald sort of helped.

Having scribes, particularly Eva Woderose, willing to roll with anything I throw at them makes it so much easier to do crazy things like Scots or Latin or Middle English.

I somehow manage to make period verbiage seem fun and cool. I'm not quite sure how I did that other than embracing and admitting that I am Queen of the Geeks on certain things. And being willing to laugh at the people who make my texts into drinking games.

I also do have some experience making a previously fringe activity into a mainstream part of the East. ;-)

So I thank you for your kind words, but I'm not sure I deserve quite as much credit as you're giving me. I know how to use the opportunities I get handed, that's all.

[goldsquare.livejournal.com]

I know how to use the opportunities I get handed, that's all.

That's all it ever is.

Or, put another way: the Universe she is a perverse bitch, and gives us a thousand ways to screw up opportunities.

Sometimes, if we are smart, prepared and also somewhat lucky - we don't screw up.

The guy who catches the winning touchdown in the Super Bowl was lucky in 10,000 ways, and used every ounce of good luck he had to be there with his hands in the right place.

Afterwards, the sports writers write stories about his inevitability and how wonderful he is.

Usually, there is another receiver on the team, just as good and not quite as inevitable because he was a little less lucky today.

Now, it may sound as if I am saying dirty words like "lucky little shit, that could have been me".

No. It was not and could not have been anyone else, and while lots of opportunities aligned, you made most of them, and you made THE MOST of them, and then you didn't screw up, and THEN and ONLY THEN did you go ahead and do the marvelous thing.

You are marvelously deserving. When you tell me how lucky you were, we all already knew that. It's what you did with that luck, and how you made that luck, that is the real measure.

[lumineaux.livejournal.com]

Now, it may sound as if I am saying dirty words like "lucky little shit, that could have been me".

Well, I'm not reading you to be saying that.

I have logged about 24 years in the SCA as of this July. My real intensive activity started in the fall of 1989, so maybe we'll call it 23 years.

Over the course of 23 years, people have been motivated to give me a whole lot of stuff:
02/20/1999 Mistress of the Pelican
10/03/1998 Grant of Arms
12/19/1992 Companion of the Golden Rapier
10/05/1996 Companion of the Silver Crescent
07/03/2010 Companion of the Manche
10/03/1998 Court Baroness
07/06/1991 Award of Arms
09/13/2008 Queen's Order of Courtesy
04/12/2003 Queen's Cypher (Isabella II)
04/12/2008 King's Cypher (Andreas III)
09/27/2008 Queen's Cypher (Brenwen)
10/12/1991 Companion of the Perseus (Carolingia)
01/25/2003 Companion of the Bronze Tower (Settmour Swamp)
05/30/2004 Companion of the Iron Tower (Settmour Swamp)
04/---/2009 Companion of the Silver Tower (Settmour Swamp)
04/12/2003 Queen's Honor of Distinction (Isabella II)
10/03/2009 Augmentation of Arms
10/03/2009 Tyger of the East

And now the Herald Extraordinary.

Assuming the cancer or work doesn't kill me, I've got at least another 23 years in me. Leave me something to aspire to.

(Not that I'm not good at motivating myself already - goals like "I've love to hear a whole court made up of period verbiage" and "I want to train more book heralds" will still be my goals whatever else the SCA throws at me)

[goldsquare.livejournal.com]

I've got at least another 23 years in me. Leave me something to aspire to.

Knighthood for Fencing.

It'll take at least that long for the SCA to approve it.

:-) :-) :-)

[lumineaux.livejournal.com]

Application to the Exploratory Committee for the Rapier Peerage already submitted.

And really, it's not something that I feel as passionately about having NOW as some. If the Great Eastern White Scarf Debacle taught me anything, it's that it is better to do something right the first time, than to do it half-assed and have it taken away. So I'm OK with it taking 23 years to get a Peerage for non-rattan combat if after 23 years we get it done right and forever. Also, I'll consider a win to get the clause side-lining rapier as an "ancillary activity" struck from Corpora.

[dame-margarete.livejournal.com]

Congrats and very well deserved!!