(no subject)

[learnedax]

Catching up on the olympics, thanks to TiVo, has made me realize how many strong parallels they have with Pennsic. From the athletic core which revives ancient tradition (with champions contesting points ranging from archery to fencing) to the strong cultural representations of diverse homelands, there's a big cognitive similarity. When landscape-transforming temporary construction, ingrained rivalries, and a healthy dose of pomp and circumstance are taken into account, I begin to seriously wonder whether the two events serve similar psychological purposes.

This nicely dovetails into two longstanding discussions that came up again at war: first, is there any significant difference between Pennsic and a large sci-fi convention, and second, is the role of martial activity within the SCA truly a critical element, or merely a historical quirk?

Specifically, if fighting, as the Olympic tradition seems to, serves a higher purpose than being yet another fun thing that people do, it represents a qualitative difference between the SCA and other things that the counterculture does... And if it's just a diversion for a bunch of stick-jocks, then what is Pennsic but a themed con?

Thoughts?

Comments

[siderea]

When landscape-transforming temporary construction, ingrained rivalries, and a healthy dose of pomp and circumstance are taken into account, I begin to seriously wonder whether the two events serve similar psychological purposes.

Have they started doing product placements and corporate sponsorship at the War, then? (She asked, cynically.) I've just had the vision -- and I must share -- of some poor schmuck with a Home Depot(tm) shield.

This nicely dovetails into two longstanding discussions that came up again at war: first, is there any significant difference between Pennsic and a large sci-fi convention

Besides showers? I'm only half-joking. The living condition of Pennsic are part of its, er, charm. Completely aside from period-ness of period encampments, walking everywhere, period urbanism, etc. Pennsic is, culturally, a massive display of DIYism, practical ingenuity, physical labor and material culture which is quite different in that regard from Con culture, anthropologically speaking. While there are parts of Fandom which make physical and organizational labor central (the costumers, SMOF), it is not central to the ethos of Fandom the way it is to Pennsic. One of the things which is culturally quite different about Pennsic is how everyone works like a maniac, before-during-and-after (as pointed out to me by an outside observer, the Penn Pilsner masterbrewer). Whether a stickjock, a teacher, a party host, a dancemaster, a busker, a merchant... it's astonishing just how work-centered Pennsic is. Not to say it's not fun, but rather in that culture, work is considered fun.

is role of martial activity within the SCA truly a critical element

My hunch is that it is, but damned if I'm up to explaining why I think that.

[learnedax.livejournal.com]

Have they started doing product placements and corporate sponsorship at the War, then?

No, though snide comments about Nike-swoosh helms persist. The closest we have is craftsmen with distinctive marks to their work. ("Oh, Lucan uses a Tirlock helm? Maybe I should get one...")

Besides showers? I'm only half-joking

Actually, with the profusion of quite good showers throughout the war (and particularly in hardcore fighting camps like VDK, from whom we subleased, and who had major facilities so everyone could shower fast post-battle) I joked at one point that the difference is at Pennsic you know most people shower every day.

Your point about work/craft ethic is a good one (we reward that kind of stuff with peerages, after all), but I think we need to compare with other geek events of vaguely the same scale, e.g. Burning Man and WorldCon. Both of those have strong creativist ethics, and the former shares many of Pennsic's environmental distinctions. Of course, BM may not really be classifiable as Just A Themed Con either, but there the line becomes even fainter.

[siderea]

I'm drawing a distinction between "creative" and "work", and the fact of the matter is you can attend WorldCon with essentially no work, where as Pennsic you can't.

It is possible to attend Burning Man without work, but is so prohibitively expensive to do so, that it is quite atypical.

I'm also differentiating between the SCA and Pennsic. Many people at Pennsic aren't SCA and couldn't care less about what we do or don't reward. They work, too, making their garb, setting up their encampments, breaking down their encampments, holding parties, doing their thing.

So I'm also distinguishing between ethic and practice. It's not just a matter of SCA culture; it's a matter of the affordances and exigencies of camping out for a week+ in a western-PA cornfield in August.

The primitive living environments of Burning Man and Pennsic pretty much assure that work is the norm for everyone who shows up.

Depends on what you call "work", I suppose

[umbran.livejournal.com]

I'm drawing a distinction between "creative" and "work", and the fact of the matter is you can attend WorldCon with essentially no work, where as Pennsic you can't.

I'm not really sure about that. A number of years ago, I went to Pennsic on about 36 hours notice. My brother wished to attend, and his ride punked out on him. The family car wasn't equipped for a handicapped driver, so my folks told me that if I was willing to drive, they'd pay my way.

So, I tossed my garb in a bag, tossed my tent in the trunk, and we went. No prep work whatsoever. I didn't do anything particularly worklike while there either. It was just a spur-of-the-moment vacation for me.

Pennsic cannot happen without work, no doubt about it. And there certainly is a tradition of work. But given that they've already got equipment on hand, individual attendees can go without labor, and still have a reasonably good time.

Re: Depends on what you call "work", I suppose

[siderea]

my garb

QED

Re: Depends on what you call "work", I suppose

[alexx-kay.livejournal.com]

You can show up at Pennsic in mundanes, and buy garb on site.

I think that, like Burning Man, you can do Pennsic without work, if you're willing to throw gobs of money at the problem.

Re: Depends on what you call "work", I suppose

[siderea]

1) No, technically you can't. We don't have a lot of rules, but that is in fact against one of them.

2) No, Burning Man is not something you can do without work. Yes, Burning Man is like Pennsic in that regard. You have lost track of what was being contrasted. I never suggested that Burning Man was without work. I said WorldCon could be participated in without work.

In summary: BM & Pennsic - Requires work; WorldCon - Work optional.

Re: Depends on what you call "work", I suppose

[alexx-kay.livejournal.com]

1) No, technically you can't. We don't have a lot of rules, but that is in fact against one of them.

Technically, you can't do this. Do you think there would be any difficulty whatsoever in practice?

As far as doing Burning Man without work, I was merely basing that comment on your statement, upthread, "It is possible to attend Burning Man without work, but is so prohibitively expensive to do so, that it is quite atypical." I think Pennsic is similarly possible (probably even cheaper), though also atypical.

Re: Depends on what you call "work", I suppose

[umbran.livejournal.com]

I didn't go to Pennsic with any new garb. Heck, I hadn't had any new garb for about six months before, and it certainly hadn't been made with Pennsic in mind. So, unless you want to classify any effort in the year done for the SCA to qualify as work for Pennsic, specifically, I don't really think it counts.

Re: Depends on what you call "work", I suppose

[siderea]

I don't care when you did it. The fact that it wasn't specifically for Pennsic is immaterial. You still had to do it; you still had to have it done.

You could have bought it. That still reflects an additional effort which one has to invest time/effort in before showing up, without which one can't go. You could have hired a professional Scadian shopper to deal with the problem for you; you could have convinced someone madly in love with you to do all the sewing for you and not bother you with it. Still counts; it still is a level of effort, modest though it be, required by the enterprise.

For a clear measure of the labor it takes, start with someone who has never done anything SCA or related before, and who has never gone camping. Now: what do they need to do to go to Pennsic?

The fact that you have managed to save labor by building up infrastructure merely means you banked labor up front.

Re: Depends on what you call "work", I suppose

[umbran.livejournal.com]

I don't care when you did it. The fact that it wasn't specifically for Pennsic is immaterial. You still had to do it; you still had to have it done.

Hm. By that logic, the summer job I had years before that paid the fees for getting my driver's license was "work for Pennsic", as it established infrastructure that I needed to get there. I don't find that a terribly useful definition of "work for Pennsic". For me, "work for Pennsic" is work that you need to do that isn't required for anything else. YMMV.

For a clear measure of the labor it takes, start with someone who has never done anything SCA or related before, and who has never gone camping. Now: what do they need to do to go to Pennsic?


Never done anything SCA or related before? That person will probably not know that they are expected to be in garb 24/7 while they are there - that rule seems to be unwritten. And while some folks will give them the Hairy Eyeball, I've never heard of anyone who has paid the gate fee getting tossed out for not having garb. They'll need camping gear (modern will do) and getting it only requires cash ands a trip to Sears.

If they have SCA friends to know the unwritten requirements, they'll have access to loaner garb, tents/crash space, and rides. All they'd really need is some cash for the gate fee and food.

[siderea]

Of course, BM may not really be classifiable as Just A Themed Con either, but there the line becomes even fainter.

Actually, I very much disagree with this. BM is not part of the Geek Nation. It's not an offshoot of Fandom in any way shape or form.

And if it were Just a Themed Con -- whatever that means -- what would you say that theme is?

In any event, what is your question, really? There's an implicit.... something.... underneath it. What is "just" -- in Pirsig's words, that perjorative "just" -- about a Themed Con? What distinction are you looking to find or disprove?

I generally hold all things are both like and unlike all other things ("How is a writing desk like a raven?"), and these similarities and differences are more and less enlightening. To say something Either is Or is not like something else makes no sense. It's not a falsifiable proposition on it's own; it's not a matter of fact, it's a matter of perspective.

So what is it you're looking to find?

[learnedax.livejournal.com]

BM is not part of the Geek Nation. It's not an offshoot of Fandom in any way shape or form.

My knowledge of BM is purely second-hand, so I must bow to your experience.

what would you say that theme is?

DIY interactive art projects.

What is "just" about a Themed Con?

It's not that I consider Geek events in general a lesser class, it is that I wonder what Pennsic's value-add is that makes us endure its hardships.

So what is it you're looking to find?

Meaning. Why we (and in large part I mean I) do what we do. What's special about Pennsic? Could we get the same thing out of an event at a hotel? (Sure, it'd be different, but even keeping the level of authenticity (which I doubt is vital to the majority of Pennsic attendees anyway) there is plenty you can authentically do indoors with the same level of creative effort we currently supply. We ignore modern tents, hot showers, and trips to Walmart, why not ignore hotel rooms?)

I believe the answer is no, and I believe most of us would agree, but I don't know where the magic is. Fresh air? Pride of overcoming the environment? Perverse enjoyment of the heat? None of these seems remotely sufficient, though they all exist in some measure.

Maybe Pennsic is atomic, possessed of a gestalt we can't dissect, but I want to understand its magic, and I don't think that should be impossible.

[siderea]

*Ah*. OK.

Well, that doesn't seem like a mystery to me. The activities of Pennsic and WorldCon are quite different, and their societies are not so overlapping any more. For the first: As interested as I am in SF/F (and not at all in Horror -- when did they get let in?) I'm having trouble marshalling enough interest in WorldCon to go; at least Pennsic has lots of things which I like to do, better and more merchants, my kind of dancing and music, etc. As to the second: When I go to Pennsic, I wi ll see scads of friends from around the Knowne World, because that's the society I'm in. When I go to WorldCon, I'll see... some Scadians I know from around the world. :)

Pennsic is the Jerusalem of Scadians. If you're not going there to immerse yourse lf in your culture, then you're there for some more specific fun. WorldCon is the Jerusalem of Fen. I could go, but would only for specific activities or interests since it's not my social set. I wouldn't be going for the social scene. And I think the opposite is true for Fen who drop in on Pennsic.

Burning Man is very similar in that regard. It's more like Mecca, in that, you have to go, in that society. You can be a Scadian without going to Pennsic, but you can't be a Black Rock Citizen without g oing to Burning Man.

Each of these three events has other differences; deeper differences in the ways their societies organize, their norms and values, and so forth. It would take an army of Anthropology PhDs lifetimes to explicate them all. None of th ese differences is itself a make-or-break sort of thing, but in each case they add up into a gestalt of a society which is quite different from the others, such that Burning Man is not a Pennsic substitute, which is not a WorldCon substitute, etc.

When I said work is central, I'm saying something more than, and more profound than, "fresh air, pride of overcoming the environment, or perverse enjoyment of the heat".

Above all things, Pennsic draws people who want to be in a crowd of 12,000 other people who think being at Pennsic and doing the sorts of things one does at Pennsic is cool. That may sound trivial or tautological, but it's neither.

Pennsic is a gathering, perforce and by choice, of people who think spending their vacation workin g on things, particularly groovy-neato-things (for each person's own personal definition of groovy-neato-things), is cool. So people don't just show up to work, but to see and participate in what other people are working on. We do work as a performa nce art -- terracing hillsides and turning the Barn in to Chartres Cathedral; throwing together a choral performance in a week, or staging a 2000-person battle; turning pots or turning out archers for the war points; erecting gates and fountains, and thro wing parties and dances. We show off the armor we made, the garb we made, the mead we made, the oven we made. We recite the lines we memorized, we demonstrate the flashy dance steps we mastered, we throw the shots we worked on all winter. It's not just that we do cool things, or that there are cool things to see, but that it's a whole society of people doing cool things, for that definition of cool which is particularly Scadian.

At WorldCon, people are also getting together to be with people who share the same notion of what is cool, but it's a different notion of what is cool. It's, if I can extrapolate from the single WorldCon I attended 15 years ago, a notion of cool which is focused around wit and conversation and creative ideas and intelligent d iscourse. One goes, I gather, to a WorldCon to talk and to listen to talk.
[more]C

[juldea.livejournal.com]

In this thread, you have used two words - well, one word and one acronym - that I do not know the definitions of. SMOF = Secret Masters of Fandom, but I have no clue who they are (and perhaps I will remain ignorant, if it's truly secret!) Fen is a word I'm unfamiliar with. Will you please enlighten me? :)

[siderea]

SMOF are the people who run Cons. Think "Service Folks" in SCA parlance.

Fen is the (Midwest?) plural of Fan. One fan, two fen.

[juldea.livejournal.com]

Heh. "Service Folks" isn't a part of my vocabulary yet, either. I assume, then, I can reasonably interchange SMOF and Con Staff?

[dglenn.livejournal.com]

"Fen" is simply the plural of "[SF] fan".

As for SMOFs, not really so secret, more "behind the scenes"; folks who you'll keep running into over and over organizing things or helping the folks who are organizing things. I'm sure there's a nuance or three that I'm missing there, but that's a start.

[jducoeur]

One goes, I gather, to a WorldCon to talk and to listen to talk.

Disclaimer upfront: I agree with the core of your point.

That said, this is an oversimplification of Worldcon -- it's not very different from saying that people go to Pennsic to fight and to watch people fight.

The talking and listening to talking is probably the single biggest element, and informs a lot of the tone, but many (perhaps most) people are actually there for other reasons. Indeed, much like Pennsic, Worldcon is a major nexus of a number of different activities. The filkers are mainly there for the filking; the gamers are mainly there for the gaming; lots of people are there mainly for the shopping and socializing. The fact that 1-2 thousand people or so are mainly there for the panels and lectures and such sounds impressive until you consider that that's out of 3-5 thousand attendees.

So in that respect, it's rather like Pennsic: a large event that cuts across a number of related activities that hang together under a big tent. Like Pennsic, the tone and style are very strongly informed by the nature of the single most central activity, but the activity itself is actually practiced by a minority of the attendees...

[siderea]

The talking and listening to talking is probably the single biggest element, and informs a lot of the tone, but many (perhaps most) people are actually there for other reasons. Indeed, much like Pennsic, Worldcon is a major nexus of a number of different activities. The filkers are mainly there for the filking; the gamers are mainly there for the gaming; lots of people are there mainly for the shopping and socializing.

But, of the alternatives you list, only shoping is not "talking and listening". Gaming is talking and listening (unless you're talking boffers or disk guns, or things like chess?) and socializing is talking and listening. Filking is listening and, oh, alright, singing.

When I wrote "talking and listening", I was trying to find an expression which encompasses the major themes which are as you stated them, particularly: the panels/lectures, the socializing (which, I gather from repute, is more conversational than, say, a dance party), and the awards stuff.

[siderea]

WorldCon is not, I think, focused around being transformative, the way Scadians relate to Pennsic. Scadians talk about Magic Moments, which I think is analogous to the driving thirst of SF Fen for that "Sensowonda". I think it's the same sort of appetite (exoticism), but it takes two very different forms in those two societies (and a third form in BM). Pennsic-goers long to be transported by their experience. Not all of the m are history-oriented, but all of them want the real world to fall away and for them to feel, briefly, like they're someone or somewhere else; a crossing into liminal space. But WorldCon attendees aren't looking for that transport from their WorldCon experience. They're looking, perhaps, for their minds to be blown by fascinating and delightful ideas. I think they're looking for intellectual raport, a camraderie of intellect and fancy. Perhaps some of them would like to chime in?

The equivalent at BM is, I think, the loss of self. Much of BM pursues the ecstatic as opposed to the exotic. This is the commonality between the poets and the partiers, the dancers and the druggies.
o

[matildalucet.livejournal.com]

"transported by their experience." THAT'S what I was trying to bring my mind to. It's hard to get a periodoid atmosphere in a hotel. Too much polish, too much modern-looking staff. The Coopers make an attempt (or so I tell myself, regardless of what they think they're doing) to blend in and I can smile at them and not get distracted. No matter how nice hotel staff is, they don't look like us, don't sound like us, and I feel like an alien in a sideless surcoat in their space (at least at Birka).

[alexx-kay.livejournal.com]

I found fandom long before the SCA, and cons (in general) were certainly "liminal space" for me at the time. I think that a huge part of what made it so impressive for me (and, I suspect, many others of my cohort) was the sense of having found My People, when I hadn't previously known that they even existed. Nowadays, I am with My People almost constantly, so cons are no longer so exciting to me as they once were.

[siderea]

Just to confirm we're on the wavelength: Are you sure you're using "liminal" correctly? Substitute "ritual" and tell me if that sentence still says what you meant for it to say. It does not mean merely "special", and it certainly doesn't mean "impressive", "convivial", "homelike", or "having found My People". Is your second sentence suppose to demonstrate the first, or is it more "in addition to" the first?

See metahacker's comment below about "bringing self along" -- do you agree?

[metahacker.livejournal.com]

showers

It took me four read-throughs to realize that you probably meant that World-Con had showers and Pennsic didn't. See, I've met far more smelly, unwashed masses at cons than at Pennsic...maybe it's just that the outdoors doesn't hold scent in.