This is my home for several weekends, and some weeks, every year. It happens to be located in this picture in Woodland, California. But it has been seen near Bakersfield, near Gilroy, near Quincy, near San Francisco; in Arizona and in Oregon. This home comes with a village of similar pavilions, mundane pop-up tents, RVs, horse trailers and vans inhabited by people very much like me. For coherence and ambiance, only the period-style pavilions can be placed in the front along the tournament field, but the people in the pop-up tents are no less a part of the community than the peers in the multi-partitioned, dagged, banner-flying pavilions.
The Village embodies a set of behaviors and ceremonies with which we mark the turning of the year, changes in leadership, births, deaths, accolades and banishments. As night follows day, the Heralds will shout out important tidings and calls of "Thank you, Herald!" will echo from all quarters of the Village. "Long live the King" is followed by "Long live the Queen", and we always give 3 cheers (usually "Huzzah!" but "Hurrah!" is occasionally heard). When people are called in to Court for an award, we can tell what award they are getting by the introductory verbiage that the Court Herald recites. We sing "To The West" and "The Black Swan Rises" with conviction. Sometimes, often, we cry as we sing. The Village contains elders and callow youth, sages, fools, saints, sinners, craftspeople, merchants, artists, scholars, teachers and students.
As in many other communities, 10% of the group does 90% of the work. That's just the way human society functions. At any given time, certain groups of inhabitants are going to be pissed off at other groups. There is gossip and back-biting, scheming and subterfuge. And there is also deep friendship, responsible stewardship, support, and love. Again, that's just the way human society functions.
By any definition of "community", SCAdians are a community.
Is mundane community any different? I am totally convinced that if mundane society broke down, the SCA "villages" scattered across the Earth would survive much more intact and functioning than many mundane communities. Yet, we believe that our mundane lives are somehow "Real". It is only our belief that grants legitimacy to ANY societal construct. The Catholic Church is no more "Real" than the Church of the Flying Spaghetti Monster spiritually, but hundreds of years of mankind granting legitimacy to the Catholic Church has invested it with a patina of Authority. We obviously must agree on certain things, or chaos will rule. We make laws, we grant power to enforce them, we decide on borders and choose a governing philosophy. But none of it is "Real". It is all a human construct, that we have agreed to. Much of our maturation as individuals is based on how well we understand and adopt this construct. If we fail completely to adopt it, we might be labeled "insane", so most of us go along with it. But along what might be considered a "sane" gradient, there are still many options from petty crime to CEO to Dictator. And the SCA is no different. You could be King. You could be a Fringee (someone who camps and parties alongside the more involved SCAdians, on the "fringe" of the Village).
Periodically, people try to salve their egos by announcing that "it's just a game". I always find this unsettling. Of COURSE it's a game, just like politics is a game and business is a game and honestly - religion is a game. You learn the rules and you play the game to your best ability, that pretty much sums up ANY human endeavor. We are a gaming species. But the implication is that since it is "just a game" it isn't real, people aren't important, and emotions and relationships aren't involved. The implication is that there isn't community and interdependence, when evidence clearly shows that there are. It trivializes all of us.
