Avacal Summer Coronation 2018 GBU

Regarding this, I ended up going. Had a mostly good time.

Good

• Many drive-by huggings and brief catch-ups with people I never see. No one thought I was a noob.
• Decent camp mates, in a fairly good location (on a hill, near the tree line, flat enough). Only down-side was nowhere near a biffy.
• Roya's archery championship was solid and had a lot of good contenders. Lots of non-Montengarde archers who I'd love to get to know better.
• I performed well enough in the populous shoot that I think I had an honest shot of winning. I know I had a lot of arrows that were an inch or two away from doubling my score. I was pretty sure I came in second, until someone else won, which means I did at best third. At worst, I was in the top third. I didn't compete for Champion, because why repeat myself?
• Quite happy with the new King and Queen. Their love of the game shines through. I think this will be a good reign.
• Hjalti and Gunther as the new champions of Arrow and Sword.
• Kiera's elevation to the Chivalry.
• Introverted socializing with Catcetera.

Bad

• Still don't feel like I really belong. Oh, there's people who're happy to see me, but nothing like some of the relationships I see. SCA-inclusivity again. It wasn't triggering, but it did remind me of one of the reasons I stopped coming.
• Even with the abbreviated camping gear I had, the setting up/tearing down was tedious. Was seriously considering buying one of the cabins and simply renting it out for events I don't go to.
• The drive. I had to stop and snooze three times, lest I die quietly in my sleep like Grandpa.
• My leftover pizza for every meal idea worked, but got old fast. At least it wasn't Puritan Irish Stew.

Ugly - nothing really.

In the end, while I had a good time, I did find it physically and emotionally exhausting.

So will I be back? Probably. I'm kicking around the idea of going to Quad War, though if I do, I might only camp one night (when I'm drinking) and motel it the rest of the time. And I'll likely day-trip to Dragonslayer. But my heyday in the SCA is over. I'm there to be with my friends, but participation beyond this simply isn't worth it to me.

One sad note, this is no longer a thing.

The Problem Children

So there's two guys I know in the SCA. I don't like them. One is a self-aggrandizing libertarian social climber. The other is just a loud, callous jerk.

Fine. Not everyone needs to get along. I can just avoid them. Neither has really done anything to me personally, but they're not the sort of people I enjoy hanging around with; nor am I the sort to turn a blind eye when people are mistreated, even if I'm not the target of that mistreatment.

I've heard through the rumour mill that a lot of people have complained about them. And since nothing about their behaviour has changed, the assumption is that leadership won't do anything about them. This got me to thinking as to why. I think it boils down to there being no rule against people being jerks. If they're not breaking rules, and they're not bullying anyone, there's nothing that the leadership can do. Oh, I'm sure they've been spoken to, but both are firmly in the if-it-ain't-illegal-it's-OK camp. They're also both firmly in the fuck-your-feelings camp, so appealing to their empathy is a non-starter.

Aside, when discussing this topic with folks, I did mention that "I haven't seen him actually do anything wrong, just borish", which got two responses:

"You mean aside from blatant misogyny?"*
"There is a type of person who will deliberately push negative behaviour to just short of being called on it. I think it's pretty clear he's one of them."

I do know that it's basically stripped the fun out of archery for me. Oh, I still like shooting, but I've more-or-less decided that a 45 Km round trip to the range is not worth it if I'm going to also be hanging out with toxic people. And from what I've heard, most of the people I liked at practice have come to the same conclusion. That really sucks since Montengarde's archery community used to be the envy of the Kingdom.

People have quit archery. They've also flat-out quit the Society. And I'm talking people who were involved enough to become officers and champions. I've also heard rumours of their behaviour (again, no specific thing, just general, sustained boorishness) risking our relationship with local businesses.

I'm not sure there's a solution. As the victim of ostracization, I'm reluctant to suggest it, lest it get used on me. It probably wouldn't happen anyway, as they're both very good at being friends with those who have power and social capital. In general, they're only jerks to people who can't really hit back. And that makes it somehow worse - a person who's an asshole indiscriminately is just an asshole, possibly one who doesn't know any better. A person who can pick and choose their targets that consistently suggests that they know what they're doing is wrong, but only view right-and-wrong as a hinderance.

Anyway, they're not the only reason I left, but they were a factor.

*I haven't observed this personally, but a lot of misogynists hide that aspect of themselves from men that they know wouldn't approve. And it's been a long time since I've spent time with either of them.