Welcome new friends :)

[countessdeweird]

I've been on a bit of a friending spree in the last week. Hello new people! I thought that putting together a post about me would help give a bit of context to my journal for people who I've only just met. People who know me in real life and long time readers, you can probably skip this one, unless you want to read it in which case go ahead

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[countessdeweird]

SCA can be a big commitment- it'll swallow your whole life if you want it to- but it doesn't have to be that way. I used to eat breathe and sleep SCA, going out to training, music group, singing, dancing and scribes night most weeks as well as actual events. I burned out and also wanted to see non-SCA friends more, and these days I only go to a handful of events every year and attend training and scribes night maybe once a month. I still love it, but I really did overcommit before! As for clothing, if you can sew then you can make your own, but there's no shame in buying something or bartering your skills with somebody who's good at dressmaking. There's a good culture of helping others and sharing skills and knowledge in most SCA groups, and more experienced members often help newbies make some basic garb. I love making my medieval dresses, but not everybody in the SCA enjoys sewing as much as I do.

Conclusions? Hmmm. Well, most of the work was in arguing that it was fair to read fantasy races set in fictional universes as rough analogues of racial groups in modern Australia, and demonstrating that the histories of racial conflict in these universes shared similarities to the unique way in which Australia was colonised, (eg declaring the land terra nullius), so basically my conclusions were "it's totally fair to read it this way!". Both series' plot and themes are hugely dependent on a central quest to unify the land, and the conflicts and solutions encountered by both heroic and villainous characters very closely resemble the type of conflict in Australia in the 90s about multiculturalism, assimilation, the best way to view a colonial history and what it means to be "one nation", all of which were extremely hotly contested topics at the time. It's fairly complicated to try and explain when I'm not sure how much knowledge you have of Australian politics?

If you enjoy short stories as well as fat fantasy series, there's a couple of anthologies you might like. Tales From the Tower is a gorgeous two book collection of fairytale retellings. Damnation and Dames is a collection of paranormal noir stories that I adore (full disclosure, I'm friends with the editor and did the proof reading for this one), with a lot of Australian authors but a few from elsewhere too. And from the same editor/publisher, there are several volumes of The Year's Best Australian Horror and Fantasy (vol 1 and 2 vol 3; another is coming out soon).

Also, I can't believe that I left Juliet Marillier off my list of good Aussie fantasy authors above! But there are so many authors I love that it would be impossible to name them all :)