In a time of chimpanzees, I was a penguin.
The religious right is motivated by the suspicion that someone, somewhere,
is having fun -- and that this must be stopped.
Role-playing game participants clad in chain mail and carrying blunted padded swords and arrows. Because, y'know, if LARP'ers weren't arrested and their evil weapons seized, then this might happen:
The horror! Oh the horror!
-- Badtux the Snarky Penguin
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Reminds me of the Society for Creative Anachronism. Except a good number of the SCA crowd (like my first wife) seemed to think their world was real and ours was make-believe. Which might explain why so many of them were highly intelligent, well educated, and completely unemployable (face it, if jousting is THE most important thing in your life, you're gonna find it hard to stay employed). My experiences are based on the East Coast SCA groups, your experience may differ.
ReplyDeleteNo, LARP'ers aren't SCA'ers, and they don't like each other. LARP'ers are D&D fanatics who play out D&D games in live action. Thus the guy shouting out "lightning bolt! lightning bolt! lightning bolt!" while throwing chalk bags, he is a wizard character in the game and one of the guys on the sidelines is the dungeonmaster tallying up damage points on the giant's D&D character and tells the giant when to die. An SCA type would be appalled -- "there is no such thing as a wizard who can throw lightning bolts!" he would say.
ReplyDeleteTo me, both are daft, but harmless. So anyhow, that's the awesome terrorist threat that the Toronto police protected their public from.... idiots throwing chalk bags while shouting "Lightning bolt!". Heh.
-Badtux the non-medieval Penguin
SCAdians (which I had been told was the proper way to refer to them) seem to be appalled at all sorts of things: electric lights, indoor plumbing, central heat (none of which stops them from seeking these very things when looking for event venues).
ReplyDeleteThey also had something called "Greek fire"... basically jellied gasoline (or napalm)... I had to tell them it was not a good idea to play with that stuff. They were playing with it at an event in bridgeport, CT, where one of the attendees was a member of the Bridgeport Arson squad... he almost pooped when he realized what it was.
It's amusing that the folks most critical of modern society are so unwilling to do without things such as indoor plumbing, hot showers, refrigeration, and personal grooming utensils. Reminds me of those preaching austerity... for other people, not for themselves, of course :).
ReplyDelete- Badtux the Snarky Penguin