Newsgroups: rec.org.sca

Tim@f4229.n124.z1.fidonet.org (Tim) writes:

[...]
> My personal experience suggests that neither is being serious, in this area.
> Despite the fact that playing persona games demonstrably has never worked,
> demonstrably does not work, and demonstrably will never work, there persist a
> depressingly large number of people who continue to elevate it to the status
> of a holy ikon. When reasoned argument doesn't make an impression (and I've
> been trying, in various fora, for ... let's see, it'll be 18 years come
> September), snide is sometimes all one has left.

  You haven't demonstrated anything, you've just flamed it.  I too am not a
great fan of outrageous personna games - I play myself as a 14th century
Scottish Islander.  I don't use things that I wouldn't have, I don't fight
with weapons' forms that I wouldn't have used and I don't teach those weapons'
forms to my squires.  Are you going to flame me for keeping them out of the
fun of using a madu?  Perhaps the lady in "question" didn't know that form
because she studied different things, and feels that she wouldn't have known
it because of her status (similar to my not knowing madu), she doesn't say 
that the student cannot go and learn it on their own - only that she does
not teach it.  That hardly rates twenty lashes.
 
> 
>  JD> In fact, persona can be a *very* useful tool for education.
> 
> Never said it wasn't. However, to withhold knowledge that one has from a
> student who desires it merely because one's "persona wouldn't know that" is an
> instantiation of a class that I call "stupid persona tricks", all of which
> share the general characteristic of not only being "not useful" but also
> "alienating", especially to new people.

  Hardly.  This just points out that they can have something to go and study
themselves.  I sense a hidden agenda or an old pet peeve coming to surface ;^)
My definition of "stupid personna tricks" is the boringly over-elaborate 
personna histories with all sorts of wierdoid relatives (SCA) and contrived
mysteries.  Why not just say that "I was born thus-and-such here and when."

>  JD> In a previous message, I mentioned a
>  JD> class that Baron Patri taught last year, about "Why Things Fall".
>  JD> In a typical party-in-garb SCA context, this probably would come
>  JD> out fairly dull, and would have an inevitable context of "this is
>  JD> what they thought, but we know better now". Instead, we got a 
>  JD> *fascinating* lecture, that left one at the end hard-pressed to
>  JD> not agree with the reasoning. There is a qualitative difference
>  JD> between "this is what they thought", and "this is how it works".
> 
> Depends on the quality of the teacher. A bad teacher can be just as bad in 
> persona as otherwise (and, in fact, more "authentic"). Similarly, a good
> teacher can be good no matter what approach he or she decides to adopt. A
> method is only as useful as the person who applies it.
> 
>  JD> In short, a well-taught in-persona class can help you not only
>  JD> know *what* they knew, but make you understand what it was like
>  JD> to believe in that. Damned useful for understanding the period
>  JD> mindset...
> 
> The key being "well-taught". A "well-taught" class can do so whether it's "in 
> persona" or not.

  So what's your point?  The point of the class WAS period thought, not modern
theory.
 
[...]

>  * Origin: Herald's Point * Steppes/Ansteorra * 214-699-0057 (1:124/4229)

Kevin
Newsgroups: rec.org.sca