Friday Night Musings

Have I mentioned Madrigirls is loads of fun? Well it is. It is so very wonderful to be singing lots again, and in beautiful harmony. The only thing that would make it better would having Meg and Manda there too (and then I would practice more too for we would surely wander around singing in parts!).

The Chivalric Dream Society starting up here is a bit odd (hopefully this won't get back to anyone that will invoke a lynching; the geek community is so small after all). It is sort of a cross between SCA and LARPing. Kinda. The SCA has historical personas who run around in a made-up set of kingdoms which, when you break it down that way, is already a bit weird. But the Chivalric Dream people have added a fictitious extra British Isle about the size of Ireland to the south west and locate their game-thing there. So you have people with suedo- Anglo-Saxon, Viking, Pictish, Spanish, etc. background as well as "native" people who need even less ties to the reality of European history. And everyone, yes everyone, is separated into one of ten ruling families. And everyone is noble and going for knighthood.

Now that I've heard more of their fighting rules, I don't think I'll be playing with them after all. The fencing teaching contradicted many basic things I'd been taught (in two kingdoms and for a few things even in foil fencing!) and the heavy weapons armor does not at all sound safe (Chainmail and helm and sturdy shoes. That's it. Did I mention this is for use with metal weapons? Yes, running away now.) Anyway, the first craft projects are supposed to be leatherworking and chainmail making so I might stick around for those days and then abandon them. They got a fun bunch of recruits. It makes me wish I had made a go at starting a branch of the SCA when I was here as a student. They got a good 25 people at the first meeting and about 16 or so came back for the second. We'd've killed for numbers like that at St. David's! I suppose it would be evil to seduce people away from them to the SCA now? Anyway, I am nominally signed up for the "Pictish" family, so perhaps I can inject a note of historical accuracy there at least before I abandon them all forever.