From: WHITE@duvm.ocs.drexel.EDU (Avid Reader - Fledgling Writer)
Subject: Re: Basic Courtsey
Organization: The Internet
Date: Tue, 28 Jul 1992 15:16:11 GMT

>From: Terry Nutter <jtn@nutter.cs.vt.edu>
>
    First, I must appologize to the Rialto in general, and Earl Dafydd
in particular, as he and I are not the same individual.  I am so used to
signing 'Dafydd' in my correspondence, in venues where there are no
others with my name, that I forgot that there are several with that name
here.  Please, Angharad and Hossein, do not berate the good Earl for my
words, nor for any duplicity you saw in his private communication and my
public one.

   Without trying to respond point by point to your letter, Angharad, I
will try again to make my points without being as rude as I was last
time.
   Probably the first point is that we are *both* reading all sorts of
things into Stephen's single sentence.  You see it as pointing up the
van's presence, and the completely non-medieval nature of the poem as
good reasons for not allowing filk to exist, despite the fact that I
believe it was about an SCA event (I do not remember the poem - I just
remember Stephen's comment, and how it made me feel to read it:  I am
working from Yaakov's post in defense of Christian).  Where do you get
this information that is a better source than mine?  The sentence:
      "This is a good example of why filk should be outlawed"
has no more pointers to your explanation than it does to mine - in fact,
I would say that both are possibly equally fair translations of it.
Perhaps you got something different out of it because you had been paying
attention to the filk discussion before Stephen's infamous comment.  I
had not - the arguement has little significance to me since I cannot write
either period music or filk.  However, as a creator of different things
(needlework, heraldry, prose), seeing that sentence applied to
Christian's work hit me in the stomach as 'What a rude thing to say!'.

   Now, you may, at this point, say 'well, how the heck do you have the
nerve to stick your nose in when you haven't even been paying attention?'
It's a fair question.  I've tried to ignore the whole thing, hoping that
maybe the sentence would be taken differently, and maybe even appologized
for.  What I saw instead was several days worth of arguing back and forth
about things that didn't seem to have any bearing.  Finally, someone
said that they thought that filk should be actively discouraged, because
it distracts from 'proper' pursuits, and that made my blood boil.  I know
how I would feel about someone telling me not to cross-stich those celtic
birds I spent over a year on (and I'm still working on) because they're
not done in period colors.  Or the kitten sampler that I did for my
mother, which I showed around to my SCA friends because they'd understand
it, which wasn't even remotely period.  That's where my second post
script came from.  The rest came from people continually trying to
appologize for Stephen's rudeness by explaining it away, saying that
its okay to be rude if you're telling the truth, all kinds of stuff that
just kept ignoring the realities of that single sentence which was, in
fact, all I had seen of the whole argument.

    My last word on the subject (unless someone decides that the above
is flame-worthy) is that Stephen screwed up.  If he had intended that the
'van' subject of the post was the reason such things were abhorent, he
should have said so.  If he thought that the poem was so awful that it
proved his point about filk being a waste of time, he should have said
so.  His sentence was so vague that it communicated little beyond its
basic rudeness.  And, I suppose that everything said since has actually
had next to no relation to what was actually in Stephen's sentence,
except perhaps by accident.  Whether my comments were on what Stephen
actually posted, or just what I think he posted, my feelings still hold.
Firstly, filk *has* a place in the SCA, even if it is in the mundane
outskirts of same, such as the Rialto.  (Maybe Christian just wanted to
share his experiences at the event with people who would understand the
idiom?)  Secondly, anyone who thinks to redirect the creative energy of
a person by forbidding the avenue they've taken is commiting a crime.  If
Christian spends time writing filk, that's fine.  If you don't want to
hear it *at an event*, that's fine too.  But to ask him not to write filk
because you don't want to hear it at an event is not fine.  Period.

       Arglwydd Dafydd Cyhoeddwr o dyr Chwilfriwhuan.
       Former Chronicler of Bhakail, present almost-herald of
         the Baileywicke of Ivyeinrust, membe of the Order of
         the Salamander, but never of a higher rank than Lord.