academie: Re: Academie Heraldry

[Edvard Gayer]

I know this is starting to sound like a "Vard vs. Bryan" debate, and if 
that's what this really turns out to be, I'm willing to Indian Leg Wrestle 
for it at University to determine whether we will behead Spike or not.  ;)  
Whaddya think, B-man, best two-out-of-three?

That said, I went out and looked at the heraldry that has been registered to 
Atlantia using Spike.  There are a whole bunch of items that the Kingdom has 
registered which use Spike in one form or another, so many that I'll not try 
to list them here.  If one is interested, here's a link which *should* 
generate the entire list:

http://www.farreaches.org/cgi-bin/oanda_bp.cgi?p=unicornate+natural+seahorse&c=case-insensitive&l=25&s=name+only&d=modern&g=enabled&a=disabled

By my count, Atlantia has seventeen charges using Spike, but that includes a 
couple of items which are no longer in use (Order of Probus and King's 
Missiliers).  In defense of Bryan's suggested charge, Spike *has* been used 
with his body erased in the badge for the Order of the Yew Bow.  Here's a 
link to an image of that badge:

http://scribe.atlantia.sca.org/clip-art/images/yew-bow.gif

Just because it's only been used once out of fifteen badges does NOT mean 
that it's a bad charge.  I have vultures on my arms, and though they're 
extremely rare in SCA heraldry, I happen to think they're quite pretty.

Regarding the how-on-earth-do-I-turn-THAT-into-something-I-can-wear issue, I 
was thinking that perhaps there might be templates or other such stuff 
available to the Kingdom that we might be able to borrow.  After all, 
there's a whole BUNCH of stuff that the Kingdom owns that has Spike on it, 
not to mention all the blue Spikes that we see painted or stuck onto many of 
our fighters' helmets.  If they figured out how to do it, we might be able 
to leverage off of that for our own use.  This might be easier if we use a 
full Spike rather than just his head, since all of the Crown's paraphanalia 
uses that version of Spike, but either way the problem of turning him into 
something wearable might have already been solved for us.

Finally, I want to whole-heartedly AGREE with Bryan's comment about systems 
engineering.  The important thing is not to try to pick a particular blazon 
and defend it against all comers, but instead to try to determine what our 
NEEDS are, and pick the blazon that best fits those needs.  We want 
something that says "Atlantia" and "Dance", that much is certain.  The 
letter from Anton and Emer specifically gives us permission to use Spike.  
That's not am absolute requirement, but we should probably view it as such.  
Nevertheless, HOW we use Spike is up to us.

We really don't have any procedures in place to allow for voting or polling, 
and I would hate to us to decide this by debating the issue back and forth 
until someone gives up.  I think its probably fair to say that the majority 
of the Academie is probably uninterested in the specifics of the heraldry -- 
the fact that we're going to GET heraldry is likely good enough.  Clearly, 
Bryan and I are both VERY interested in the specifics, and both of us have 
different opinions, so let's see if we can't talk privately and see if we 
can come up with a way to sort this out.  We're pals, I'm confident he'll 
see it my way.  ;)

-Vard
_________________________________________________________________
Get your FREE download of MSN Explorer at http://explorer.msn.com


-------------------------------------------------------------------------
To unsubscribe from this list, send email to majordomo at pbm.com containing
the words "unsubscribe academie". If you are subscribed to the digest version,
say "unsubscribe academie-digest". To contact a human about problems, send
mail to owner-academie at pbm.com