Anonymous asked:
Catholic and posting Pride?
- Yes 1a. Some of y'all are very hung up on my faith since you learned it
- The two are not mutually exclusive, and I will defend this stance
- I have another blog for non-sca related subjects (worth-the-reblog), hit me there if you want to discuss/understand anything
- Happy Pride Month, y'all. Your SCA Mom loves you.
it’s the year 2023 and there’s still no knight emoji, how do you expect king arthur to rise again in these conditions
Historians going places like Blorbo From My Career Was Here 🥺
Archaeologists will get all excited because "my Blorbo was in this field!"
no one wears codpieces anymore
this is the next step for the gay community
Ruby Joust
My Squire Brother, Marcus de Rath, was Knighted! Which was the whole reason I went. Ruby Joust is not usually on my calendar because it’s always ridiculously hot and miserable, and usually longer than a day trip drive that I’m comfortable with. I was not about to miss this event. So, under the guise of celebrating Sir William’s 5th anniversary of Knighthood, I grabbed the niece (who is also in the Household), the little old pupper ladies, booked a hotel room, drove 6 hours and proceeded to help hide EVERYTHING going on from Marcus until he could be put on Vigil on Saturday afternoon.
Traditionally, Ruby Joust tends to have god-awful weather; it’s usually swelteringly hot. 5 years ago, at Sir William’s Knighting, it was so oppressively hot my niece got heat stroke, and my phone died in the middle of recording the ceremony because it over heated. So when we were told, “You don’t want to miss Ruby this year” (which is code for get your ass to this event/Court, something is happening in our Household) I knew I was gonna book a hotel room. I wasn’t going to mess around this year.
My biggest concern was the dogs. Because of extenuating circumstances, I wasn’t able to leave them behind and so at 15½ and 14, they went to their first SCA event. I knew Tipitiwitchit would thrive, because she is social, curious and everyone is friend-shaped. Daisy is the one I was concerned about. Daisy is skittish and shy around people, even if she knows them, and will sometimes try to intimidate other dogs (she was attacked once and had 12 stitches), and so she sometimes barks and charges other dogs when she first meets them. When we meet new dogs, we always take precautions with her for that reason. She’s never hurt anyone, but we aren’t willing to risk that ONE TIME she does.
At home, Daisy is so noisy and bossy and has such a BIG personality; we joke that she is secretly a Mafia Boss. Around people or in new places she gets shy, reserved, hesitant, sometimes quiet, and will usually just hide in my lap or want to be carried everywhere. Going into this, I knew she would need extra care. I had prepared her own space so she could be comfortable, I warned folks I would be going to the hotel if things got too hot or too much for the dogs, and everyone who knows Daisy knew that she would be a little bit overwhelmed.
I don’t know what dog I brought to Ruby Joust, because it was not Daisy.
This. Bitch. We had literally JUST arrived on site and she walked straight up to people she didn’t know. She let complete strangers pet her without shying away or me having to stand with her. She FOLLOWED people like she was going with them. “Bye mom, gonna hang out with my new friends,” kind of followed. She let people HOLD HER. And she didn’t try to get away, wiggle to be let down, or try to stretch to me to take her from them. I have never seen a guy hold her, and she let TWO of them do it while being perfectly content. She didn’t bark once. Not once. She is a yorkie/jack russell mix. She ALWAYS barks. I don’t think I heard her bark once from Friday morning to Monday morning.
She THRIVED. And in the process made me into a LIAR. “She’s skittish she won’t let you pet her,” LIE. “She won’t come to you if you call her,” LIE. “She doesn’t let other people hold her,” LIE. “She might bark at your dog,” LIE. If I had known she was a born Scadian, I would have brought her to events sooner!
She and Tipi also got to be part of the procession into Court when Marcus was summoned, which was a lot of fun. Now I wish that I had made them SOME sort of Household garb or a bandana at the very least. Next time, I guess, because they had a lot of fun and so I will definitely take them to another event soon (when the weather is more comfortable for them).
Speaking of the weather, we had GORGEOUS weather. There was a cold front pushing through, so it was in the low 70’s with no humidity, some cloud cover, and a nice breeze the whole time. We broke down early on Sunday morning so none of the canvas got wet in the anticipated rain, and then I left after the Knighting. If I stood still for longer than a minute, both dogs were asleep on the grass – so I knew they were done. We were probably about 20 minutes on the road when the rain hit, so it was a good call to break down when we did.
The Knighting was beautiful. Marcus and his Lady looked incredible. The speech for the chain, the spurs, and the belt (the sword presenter left ahead of the anticipated rain), were beautiful. He received a belt that had belonged to our Knight’s Knight – Sir Kane. It was an emotional time; the culmination of years of hard work and growth, and I am so honored to have been able to witness it and to be a part of it. I am so proud of him and deeply grateful to be able to call him my Brother.
Vivat, Sir Marcus de Rath.
OH. Nearly forgot one of my favorite parts: THEY PUT A BATTLE YORKIE ON HIS SCROLL. I have to get a picture of it, because I died a little when I saw it.
Elizabethan red costume (based on the portrait of a young lady, possibly Helena Snakenborg, Later Marchioness of Northampton, 1569)
Source: facebook.com
Recap of Ruby Joust to come. I give you this placeholder of my Knight holding my traitor dog who made a liar out of me.
Our household lost a Squire, but Atlantia gained one incredible Knight. Vivat Sir Marcus de Rath. I am so proud to call him my Brother.
After months of research and development and market testing and perfecting the first item I feel confident selling online, I have realized... that it is an incredibly niche item that only a specific subset of absolute nerds would want to buy, and I will have to do a ton of explaining the basic idea over and over again before people generally get what it is I'm even selling. RIP me
Long story short: I'm selling embroidery patterns. You stick them on fabric, embroider them, and wash the pattern away to leave your embroidery shining in solitary splendour.
Long story long... here goes.
I know codpieces on plate armour are meant to be intimidating, but all that goes through my head whenever I see one is I bet if you whacked this guy in the ding with a warhammer it would ring like a bell.
Like:
Would you not be incredibly tempted to hit it as hard as you can specifically to find out what sound it makes?
If you have multiple blogs, report only your most-used blog. You can count the other blogs, but please only put the notes for those in the tags or comments.
In archery, as in life, it's rarely as clear cut as 'this is the best', but we all have our preferences!
(Btw, if you want more details on the specific quivers that I use, I'll be chatting about them on Patreon this week)
Why ViVat and Not Huzzah?
By Thomas Richardson
I wrote this for the Dec 2018 Cascadian (The news letter for the Shire of Glenn Linn) If you visit the North Country Medavielists facebook group and check the file section you can check out past editions of the Cascadian.
If you are in the SCA and live in the East Kingdom you have likely encountered the cheer of ‘ViVat!” (or “ViVant”) when an individual is celebrated for some form of achievement. On the other hand, if you have had the opportunity to visit several kingdoms during your tenure in the SCA, or ever simply visited a Renaissance fair, or seen an old medieval movie, you may also be more familiar with the oft used cheer of “Huzzah!” The cry of vivat (singular) or vivant for several people means “Long Life” (from the Latin) and is attested as early as the De Brevitate Vitae of 1287 (“Vivat academia!” ,“Vivant professores!” etc.). Huzza'ing was an established custom by Elizabethan times and may have originated as a sailor's shout of exaltation, encouragement, or applause. It appears in In Shakespeare's Henry IV (1591): “Huzza! Huzza! Huzza! Long live the King!”
The first time you heard vivat you may have thought, as I did, “Huh...strange” and just went along with the crowd not giving it much thought. I was well acquainted with the occasional hardy huzzah, and when exposed to the, in my opinion, less exuberant and more equivocal vivat, I began to wonder why. As all who have ever asked the question “why?” about any SCA subject knows, the answer always starts with a history lesson...
Once upon a time there was the West, and the West was what there was because there was nothing else. That was the SCA. But in 1968, the lands east of The Great Muddy was declared The East. So, now we had West and East. But the West also had the BOD (Board of Directors) and the East... well, the East did not, and was just a kingdom.
In 1969, both the Kingdom of the East and the Kingdom of the West (in the guise of the BOD), chartered groups in the middle, as it were. There was some confusion about exactly who was empowered to charter new groups. And while the East struck first in the region, the BOD struck last. Luckily, the two newly formed groups chose to ignore the politics of their parents and joined together to become the Kingdom of the Middle. Keep in mind that there were not exactly a lot of feet on the ground back then, so having a cluster of folk brave enough to dress up, run around acting silly, and hit each other with sticks, was reason enough to become a kingdom. In this case, a kingdom made up of lands granted from both the East and West, proud parents of their new offspring.
Two years later, in 1971, the West (or BOD, if you prefer) decided to both thumb its nose at the East and git rid of some potential trouble makers from Arizona and created the Kingdom of Atenveldt, which stretched from Arizona straight across the country to the Atlantic coast, absorbing large chunks of both the West and East kingdom (proving that the BOD could do what they want, even taking land back away from a kingdom).
At this point the SCA had created its four great incubator kingdoms- West, East, Middle, and Atenvelt. Every other kingdom from this point on would originate from one of these four kingdoms or from one of their offspring Kingdoms. Let us keep that in mind.
So in the West, when everything was new, ‘Hip hip hooray’ was the cheer of the day. The East, born of the West followed its traditions, also crying ‘Hip hip hooray’ for a while until the reign of King Gyrth and Queen Melisande (04/01/1978 - AS XII). Upon concerns that the term was significantly post-period, and that there was some speculation (now considered spurious) that its origin is anti-Semitic with the word word "hip" stemming from a medieval Latin acronym, "Hierosolyma Est Perdita" ("Jerusalem is lost"), Gyrth asked the people to switch to “Vivat/Vivant,” (as told to me by Melisande). Incidentally, it was never their intention to have it chanted three times – that being a carryover from the older cheer. It would appear that around this time, perhaps under the same concern over anti-Semitism, the West switched to ‘Huzzah’.
Now this is where the linage of each kingdom comes into play. In 1978, the Kingdom of Meridies was formed out of Atenveldt lands and invested by the Atenveldt court. As Atenveldt was a huzzah kingdom, so also became Meridies. Also in 1978, the Kingdom of Caid was born from the West, inheriting the use of huzzah. In 1979, Atenveldt created another huzzah kingdom with the birth of Ansteorra. 1981 brings us the Kingdom of Atlantia, which separated from the East and therefore cry's “ViVat!” Another huzzah kingdom is created in 1982 by the West in the form of An Tir and then comes an odd ball.
The Middle Kingdom, the love child of bickering parents, repudiated both and uses either huzzah or vivat. Instead, they yell "hoobah" as an expression of acclamation and joy. Why? Well, legend has it that an early king of the Middle, upon being presented with a troupe of belly-dancers, exclaimed "Hubba hubba!" In 1984, the Kingdom of Calontir, born from the Middle, became the second "hoobah" using kingdom. In 1985, we return to the normal order with the creation of the Kingdom of Trimaris out of the huzzah using Meridies. The huzzah using Kingdom of Outlands separated from Atenveldt in 1986 and Drachenwald, being born of the East in 1993, carried on the vivat tradition.
In 1997, we encounter another odd bird. The Kingdom of Artemisia is formed out of Atenveldt, with bits of the kingdom of Outlands and the Middle thrown in. Among all the confusion, they become a vivat kingdom. Why? Go ask them. Also in 1997, Æthelmearc is spawned as a vivat using child of the East. Ealdormere separates from the Middle in 1998 and, being completely against the grain, immediately begins using “ Wassail”. The year 2002 sees the creation of Lochac out of the West and Ciad, both passing along the use of huzzah. Northshield, created from the middle in 2004, is a vivat user because the first Prince by right of arms was nurtured in Atlantia, a vivat kingdom. Gleann Abhann, which sprang from Meridies in 2005 is on the huzzah standard, while the final kingdom, Avacal adopted huzzah from its parent An Tir, when created in 2015.
For those who were keeping count, that is ten for huzzah, six for vivat, two hoobahs, and a single wassil, most of whom were predictable based upon their linage. So, now you know.
Note: There is at least one anecdotal reference to the Barony of Carolingia using vivat prior to the request of King Gyrth, however no evidence has been presented to substantiate the claim.
Don't get me wrong, I'm agnostic, my viewpoint on the universe isn't very "religious" and I don't quite vibe with paganism or a defined spiritual belief system, but I still don't think religion and spirituality is regressive and silly
i took an astrobiology class in school where we read stuff by medieval and early modern scholars debating about whether extraterrestrial life existed and what stuck with me the most about it is how their framework of the universe was expanded by their religious viewpoints.
I mean, I think I was also mind-blown by the fact that people have been talking and writing about aliens for all of recorded history, even before there was any scientific precedent to guess that they could exist.
But that very thing (asking questions without a scientific precedent) was instrumental to proto-scientific thought ever becoming a formalized scientific method. These guys had a baseline for asking questions. So there are these scholars in the 1600's seriously articulating ideas like "So if God created the universe, doesn't that mean it's likely that every planet is inhabited, since it would be created for a purpose?" And "No, no, that doesn't make sense, Jesus would have to come to every planet and die, and that would be messed up." And then "Okay, but what if the people on other planets never sinned?"
And they speculate in great detail about the composition and environment of the other celestial bodies, and it was a real paradigm shift for my mind because of just how little they were working with. They had to debate questions that never occurred to me because I took the foundational knowledge for granted, like "Could the Sun be inhabited?" They thought that maybe if you viewed the Earth from outside, the outer atmosphere would appear bright like the Sun from a distance, so the Sun might be the same "kind" of celestial body as Earth.
I think we often misrepresent the misconceptions of the past too—the geocentric universe wasn't accepted just because of the Bible, it was also because we hadn't cracked chemistry yet and we didn't know how gravity worked, and our models had to explain why everything seemed to be attracted to the center of the Earth.
And yet, the Earth's circumference was calculated pretty accurately all the way back in Ancient Greece. Pliny the Elder knew that the Earth was a rotating sphere.
I feel like it's easy to take modern knowledge for granted and not appreciate how tirelessly inquisitive and clever the people of the past had to be to figure shit out let alone pass the knowledge along
like, chemistry and biology are fundamentally built from things that aren't directly observable without certain technology that is very difficult to make. We can't directly observe microorganisms using any of our senses. We can't directly observe how chemical elements are different. The guys who first cracked important parts of chemistry did so through stuff like evaporating the solids out of gallons and gallons of human piss.
There's a theory that alien civilizations that can't observe the stars will never develop science because astronomy is thought to have been important on earth for building the fundamentals of scientific thought. Celestial bodies can be observed and understood using math. Humans had to figure out that there WERE consistencies in how the universe works!
The people of the past were just as smart as us. We just have the benefit of compounded knowledge that they did not have.
This is why John of Salisbury said that we were "[little people] standing on the shoulders of giants." They did the work so that we can see farther.
this is the type of things guys talked about in the tavern in the 1200s
first day as a second century warlord i have my men tie branches to their horses’ tails to stir up dust and make it look like there’s a lot of us but i forget it just rained so there isn’t any dust and the enemy can clearly see there’s like twenty of us all spread out in a line
second day as a second century warlord i bribe a bunch of kids to start singing a nursery rhyme i carefully crafted to spread misinformation and further my strategic ends but they change the lyrics to be about poop and the enemy isn’t misdirected at all
third day as a second century warlord i lure my enemy into a narrow valley and send a team of archers to shoot them from the high ground but there was a feral hog napping on the trail up to the overlook and they couldn’t decide whether to try and shoot it or just go around and by the time the hog woke up and left on its own the enemy had already passed safely below
fourth day as a second century warlord we attempt to join a battle on the side of the guy we want to ally with but he and the guy he’s fighting have really similar names and it’s finally dusty and i misread the standards and attack the wrong guy. so now we’re stuck with this total loser of a liege lord, because how the fuck do you explain that after a battle?
fifth day as a second century warlord and some sort of wizard wanders into camp, my loser liege lord wants to execute him for being a wizard but i convince him to let the wizard stay, because i want to do more weather-based strategies and i’m pretty sure having a camp wizard can help with that. after the welcome to the team banquet the wizard steals half the treasury and my liege lord’s wife and leaves
sixth day as a second century warlord my loser liege lord sends me to reinforce a city he’s taken, but in the confusion of leaving i forgot to take the token that would have gotten us into the city, so my men have to wait outside the city walls for like eight hours while i ride back to get it
seventh day as a second century warlord and my loser liege lord finally joins me in the city, it turns out he’s actually a pretty cool guy, and he isn’t even that mad at me for letting the wizard steal his wife. i decide to shoot my shot but i’m really nervous and keep on stalling because what if i mess up our relationship and by extension jeopardize the security of my men, and eventually he just says goodnight and goes back to his room, where an assassin is in the process of setting up to kill him
eighth day as a second century warlord and my loser liege lord tells me to fake defect to his rival warlord, the one i originally wanted to ally with, to find out if he was the one who sent the assassin and why. but my whole way over to the rival warlord i’m worried that this has something to do with the wizard thing or how awkward i made it last night
ninth day as a second century warlord i try to tactfully ask my fake liege lord if he sent the assassin to kill my loser liege lord and it turns out the idea of using assassins never occurred to him, but now that i’ve suggested it he’s really into it. in order to save my loser liege lord i volunteer to be the one to kill him
tenth day as a second century warlord on my way back to my loser liege lord’s city i realize i won’t be able to collect my men from my fake liege lord until i bring back my loser liege lord’s head. this would have been a great thing to think of before i got myself in this situation. i go back to my loser liege lord and ask him to rescue my men, and he tells me that if he could sack my fake liege lord’s camp he already would have. that doesn’t change the fact that my men are still trapped. they’re prisoners, even. i go back to my room to sulk
eleventh day as a second century warlord i find a little caged pigeon in the rafters of my loser liege lord’s room and deduce it belonged to the assassin. without asking permission or telling my loser liege lord goodbye i let the pigeon loose and follow it north. don’t ask what i was doing in my loser liege lord’s room. it’s not important
twelfth day as a second century warlord i disguise myself as a wizard and enter the camp of the coalition leader the pigeon led me to. in the middle of my little sleight of hand performance i make eye contact with the coalition leader’s second-in-command. IT’S THE WIZARD THAT STOLE MY LOSER LIEGE LORD’S WIFE. after the banquet i corner the fake wizard and ask him what the fuck is going on and he just says “wouldn’t you like to know” and leaves. i don’t know what to say to that so i just let him go
thirteenth day as a second century warlord i’m honestly so sick of not knowing what’s going on, so i adjust my wizard costume to passably disguise myself as a woman and break into the women’s area of the camp, where sure enough my loser liege lord’s wife is. i ask her what she’s doing here and she tells me the fake wizard overheard her singing a poem she overheard on the street, not knowing it contains the coalition leader’s formation’s weaknesses. the fake wizard kidnapped her and assigned an assassin to kill her husband before they figured out the poem’s significance. she shares the first couplet with me but i’m discovered and thrown out before she can share any more. she doesn’t need to. through a bizarre coincidence of homophones, it’s the poop version of my misinformation nursery rhyme
fourteenth day as a second century warlord i go back to my loser liege lord and tell him everything, urging him to join with my fake liege lord to attack the coalition leader according to the weaknesses in the nursery rhyme. he tells me frankly that he doesn’t trust me anymore. i ask him to execute me if that’s really true, because i can’t bear to live if i can’t protect him and i can’t protect my men. he agrees to attack the coalition leader
fifteenth day as a second century warlord. due to the information in the nursery rhyme, and thanks to my loser liege lord reminding me of the weather conditions multiple times while planning our battle strategy, our alliance carries the day. my loser liege lord gets his wife back. my men tell me that our fake liege lord actually treated them really well and they’d like to stay with him if i don’t mind. i do mind, now that neither the men i love nor the man i love have any use for me, but i don’t tell them that
sixteenth day as a second century warlord i’m preparing to leave to i don’t know where, maybe to try to become a wizard for real, when my loser liege lord stops me and asks me where i’m going. he says he had hoped i would continue to work as his advisor. i was unaware i was his advisor in the first place. i agree, and he tells me he’s truly honored to have me in his service at last. he has known i am a rare and talented man with a strategic intelligence far above his ever since the day he witnessed me tying branches to my horses’ tails in six inches of mud, and could not for the life of him figure out why