But parts of it are charming

Carrying on from the other day, I have spent more time surfing the web aimlessly in the past week than ... well, ever, because the last time I had this much time on my hands it was 1995 and what passed for the web was small and rather dull and filled with PhD synopses, geek jokes and porn.

One can only read so many PhDs. Porn somehow never made it into my world, and geek jokes sail straight over my head. While there are a bunch of programs that I can drive like Fangio; I have No Idea how any of it works. It's the reverse of old-fashioned cars, where I understand the theory of a starter motor quite well and can change a tyre, but can't drive.

The web has always been a tool for me, in the same way that a good dictionary is, but never a
place to hang out casually. So I must apologise profusely to she-knows-who for being startled by her H/D piece, because not only was it well-written (in and of itself. Compared to the other fanfic I've met in the last two days, she's bloody Dylan Thomas), but she does nice things with her speculative pairings that the characters would enjoy, rather than the nasty stuff that's out there. Oh so many simmering Alan Rickman fixations in the world, who'd have thought it?

About 20 years ago (maybe a bit more) I read a short story that may well have been by Anne Maccaffrey (I seem to recall it being in a more fantasy-oriented collection than the other speculative fiction writers I delved into). It was about a girl who was at 'psychic school' and one of their assignments was to go through reams of computer tape from the systems that ran every home in their world and listen to it all before archiving.

Her fellow students were all bored solid and mocked many of the people who had committed various things to tape 40 years before. At the climax of the story, she stood before her classmates and bawled them out over their attitude. Having the tapes remind them of their loved one's birthdays was purely sensible, she argued. That woman who had her tape tell her to eat better and exercise more, well, it must have worked, because three months later she cancelled the instruction. The woman who kept her husband's voice on the tape in the years after he died, the man who had his wife tape the recipes for his favourite meals so that he could cook them when she went away ... all these things weren't foolish, they were human. What was on the tapes was about reaching out and connecting, and sometimes humans had to use a computer to do that.

Her diatribe was overheard by her professor and she was awarded full marks. And whoever the writer was, she was right. Aside from all the porn and all the international newspapers and museums, there's this huge part of the web that is people saying "I'm alive, it's important, is anyone listening?" And that's not sad, that's human. Terry Pratchett, who is probably my favourite satirist (sorry Pope and Rochester) has a piece in one of his books where he talks about how much language is "I'm alive, you're alive". People connecting so that they know they're not alone. God, I've come over all Howard's End …

The point of all this, is that it's startling and humbling to see the rawness that people reveal on the web. And hard. One lj I read this afternoon is by a friend of mine who I really like but am not hugely close to simply because we've never had the time to forge a close relationship and live too far apart for it to happen casually. She's an amazing woman; physically striking and appealling, with a big brain and a wide open view of the world. And yet she feels crushed by things at the moment, because she's lonely and there are stupid men in the world.

I posted a comment that was meant to be reassuring, and I'm working slowly on an email to her, but, of course, what she needs is to have more people there. Because if I was there, I'd take her out on a big walk through her city. We'd go rowing and try and catch ducks. We'd perve on the hot senior boys at the best school and run away feeling like Germaine Greer. We'd sit in bars and bemoan the fact that hot schoolboys turn into potatoey men. In person, I'm useful. Online, I'm not.

And yet. Reading through the posts of other friends of hers who had written back to her, you could see that they love her. Fingers crossed, she could see that they loved her. And it's a good thing to be able to turn to the world and say "I need to know I'm loved" and to have a response.

It's especially good when it's a reasonable response. One of the other blogs I looked at was an old friend from uni who is writing these days. He's not a bad writer, but he's stilted and you can see that a lot of his work is about machinating characters towards a point where he can get in his Big Dramatic Scene. While I completely accept that sometimes you just need to do this, you should never be able to see where it's done. He put some stories up and asked for criticism. Most of his friends wrote "Yeah, great!" One, who I think I probably know, wrote "Well, these bits are problematic." She was completely right, too. But his other friends turned on her for being critical and unsupportive and went back to telling him that he was a genius. He's not. And if he listened to her, he would be a better writer.

So my first friend needs to believe things about her that are true; that she's amazing and that she's someone who other people are grateful to have in their lives. My second friend (well, ex-friend, really, I haven't seen him in 12 years) needs to sort the truth from the tosh. And I'll never know if he can. Unless the next story he posts is markedly improved …

The other thing that I've noticed about blogs and ljs is that people use them to live parts of their lives that they keep quiet in the real world. So one of the knitting girls has a whole section of S&M, whereas I have met her and in the real world she is more twin-set and pearls. Now this part I completely get, because that's what we all do in the SCA. Perfectly reasonable post-modern cyberchicks like Autumnheart become twirling figures of Romantic fantasy. A world-weary cynic like Mr C becomes a character of epic proportions, with his own Mount Doom. A sweet, gentle guy like Sir Phil becomes -- actually, he stays a sweet, gentle guy. Southron Gaard's kk is an arse-kickingly focussed wordsmith in the real world, and a witty troubadour filled with glee in the SCA.

Even Miss D and the Duchess aren't the same. And not just because I try not to tell people to go fuck themselves while wearing a frock. The Duchess cares more about people. She remembers that it's important to say hello and goodbye to everyone, while D is just focussed on getting to the airport. I think she has more of the nice bits of me.

Early on in my time in the SCA, someone described it as a place where we can all be better versions of ourselves. Now I'm not wholly sure that this definition stands up to scrutiny. Some people are much worse. But it is a place where we can try out ideas about ourselves and see how they fit. For example, it's the only place in my life these days where I get to hang out with a lot of kids and be mad Aunty D. I enjoy that a lot. I have a feeling that the SCA has been for me what lj and blogs are for others.

This is what I looked like when I joined, in fact, this is me at my first Festival. I had a hoot. The King of the West pursued me (hey, he was going home in a week; guaranteed amusement with no entanglements!), various Chiv bought all my drinks, but at the same time they all explained to me their version of how things worked. There were classes on things that I realised I could actually do. People who I had been told were scary were in fact interesting and about my age (28).

I kept meeting people who I would never have talked to anywhere else, and wanting to keep talking to them. (And yes, the KoW ended up being a good and valued friend.) I didn't really sleep the whole weekend (note the Monday bags under the eyes.) But how much of that was because the SCA is a good place for people, and how much of that was because I was a fit and slight girl with long hair and round breasts?

I did have something of a chance to test that out over the next few months, because I'd been back from Festival for 10 days when I rode home from a gig in town and was wiped out by a taxi hitting me full side-on.

So this is what I looked like four weeks later. This is the comparatively nice shot after the swelling and bruising started to fade, because the other photos are just hidjous.

And the SCA was there for me again. People who had only known me for a few months brought me groceries. Mouse loaned me shirts that I could fit my cast into, and drove me about. She also engineered the Great May Coronet Face Scare incident, but the less said about that, the better. Muirghein and Elfinn fussed over me like mother ducks and a swathe of Ursies were fabulous and helped me with day-to-day things like housework. The SCA was a huge part of the network of people I cared for who helped me through those months.

And despite having concussion and forgetting most of 1994 and the first half of 1995, I remember all those kindnesses. I remember all the people who went out of their way to say "You're alive, and we're happy about that."

And what I've realised, is that you don't need a near-death accident to want to know that your friends and acquaintances are happy that you're alive. And that even if it's inept, gestures do help and do make a difference. So I'd better go and write that email now.