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Aneirin -> RE: Renaissance Faires, SCA... (8/2/2010 6:06:58 AM)
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In Britain, it is called the battle re enactment scene, and that scene had a positive influence on my life, for I got to know about people, all the different types of people and that whatever they were in civies, they were just people in the scene and people being how they want to be, possessing a freedom they perhaps cannot feel in the day to day mundanes of life.
I met professors ,academics and bin men, city suited types and hard ass bikers, all coming together for a common purpose, a place where status outside means nothing inside. I had some very good experiences, and some bad exeriences, for the people this kind of activity attracts, well basically I would say they to a greater or lesser extent fit into my grouping, that of the fringe loony, but the biggest danger I found within the scene is Ego and with that people who started taking it all a little too seriously, then it ceased to be fun and was becoming more like the shite we for a time escaped from, making that time more attractive and the re enactment scene less so.
The scene is an escape for many and with some a means of living, it takes all sorts, but I do see the attraction still after fourteen years away from it and again maybe I will get involved, but when I do, it will be as a trader/ demonstrator, not a participant in the ego stroking flashes and clangs of steel.
In the scene, I learned leather work, bone work and horn work, I taught myself bronze casting, and chain mail making, the result I made all my own kit and with an authenticity even the nazis could not fault as my research went deep. If I return to the scene, then as a metalsmith I will be, iron forging to accompany the investment bronze casting I learned at a reconstructed iron age round house in Glastonbury, which incidently was built on the site of an existing ancient round house which at the time was a crannog in a lake.
A link with BDSM, well yes, for I first saw it there and later came to know some who I felt at the time took it a little bit too seriously, Goreans they called themselves, a name to me at the time that meant nothing, but I understand now.
Perhaps it is, BDSM is not such a fringe activity as many think, perhaps it is in reality just as normal as everything else, but what people say they do and what they do are often quite different, but perhaps the negative impact of sensationalising media has a role to play in the negativity that is perceived.
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