urn:lj:livejournal.com:atom1:bardelder The Long Well Traveled Road bardelder bardelder 2007-09-21T04:39:33Z urn:lj:livejournal.com:atom1:bardelder:562 Personas 2007-09-21T04:39:33Z 2007-09-21T04:39:33Z So Beathog is about 10 steps ahead of me in practice, if not in inspiration (hence my reputation as a great thinker).&nbsp; I have been talking persona&nbsp;development for some years, but not acted on it too much.&nbsp; This is a great opportunity to change all that.<br /><br />I believe you get out what you&nbsp;you put in, and the attraction of the SCA is just that.&nbsp;&nbsp;The premise is so expansive that&nbsp;you can get lost in it, if you&nbsp;choose.&nbsp; Of course, you&nbsp;certainly don't have to, and we need to make room for players at all levels, but for me,&nbsp;deeper persona development is, at&nbsp;this point, necessary to sustain (SCA)life.&nbsp;<br /><br />My personal take is this:&nbsp; We are all born and bred in the time and place we choose.&nbsp; Our personas are based on that experience, just as our mundane lives are.&nbsp; We have come together in Caid because we are all great travelers, unlike those we left behind in our homelands.&nbsp; In the journey here, we have managed to bridge time, in some way, which has to be accounted for by basically ignoring it.&nbsp; The "Anachronism" affords us the needed excuse for all things mind boggling, such as personas 300 years apart.&nbsp; The only time that really shound be a problem is in conversations centering around persona-specific events, such as rulings by the King, or effects of the Plague, etc.&nbsp; The majority of our conversation, however, should rightfully be centered around the events of the day, which are occurring in Caid, not in the lands we left behind.&nbsp; We need to speak of the past as the past, and the present as the present, though we should speak in terms and manner consistent with our personas and upbringing (the "old country"), not with people who text message and email while driving down the 405.<br /><br />Our personas were born and raised in whatever time and place we have chosen.&nbsp; We know the customs, food, religion, politics and skills necessary for living in that time. Our presence in Caid does not change that; we bring those things with us.&nbsp; Therefore, it behooves us to learn about and master those things we should necessarily know.&nbsp; That includes a wealth of arts and crafts, music, food, clothes and customs.&nbsp; It also includes religion and politics, and those should not be ignored, as they define our opinions and attitudes and must be reckoned with.<br /><br />We are all intelligent people, capable of dealing with the "contradictions" that our relative personas present, while enjoying each to the maximum and stimulating our brains and imaginations all along the way.&nbsp; It's all about the journey.