Ok, I've rewritten this post 5 times in an effort to keep it from becoming a freeform rant.
(snip)
Good heavens! I don't know where you're from but I'm certainly glad I'm not there. I know you don't know me from Adam's housecat, but I hope that you can believe me when I totally SWEAR that I'm nothing like the jerks you described!
On behalf of the sane vast majority of the SCA, please accept my most profuse apologies for your awful experience. When an organization gets as large as the SCA it will invariably have pockets of rot. Clearly your experience consists exclusively of that rot. It breaks my heart.
If the SCA around here was like that here I never would have joined...never met many of my friends...never really learned about chivalry and honor...never found my beautiful wife...never had my great kids...YIKES! I can't claim there aren't SCA members who fit your description to varying degrees, some to a "T", but folks in these parts are almost exclusively friendly, kind and polite. On the whole we enjoy a good balance between authenticity and creativity-- encouraging new members who are just learning, accepting folks for who and what they are...and actively discouraging the type of mean-spirited criticism and tunnel vision you described.
Rather than try to make this a long-winded defense of the SCA in a doomed attempt to eradicate the bad taste in your mouth, I think I'll just stop now in hopes that yours will serve as a cautionary tale for both my fellow *sane* SCA'ers and for the steampunk community as well. The effort to strike a delicate balance between creativity and history is shared by both groups. The potential pitfalls are also shared. Whether we can avoid them is up to each of us.
