If you wish to believe I am wise with my old age, this is my wisdom condensed. Enjoy it; the rest of me is basically rude songs and flatulence.
Fruitbat’s Organisational Constant
There is no cause so virtuous that none of its adherents are dickheads.
Even groups that appear to be entirely full of idealists and saints — ecological organisations, churches, teams of dedicated hard workers hand-picked by a wunderkind to save the world — will eventually attract one or more members who are also horrifically broken in other ways.
Fruitbat’s Final Law
Always give the arsehole the last word.
Sometimes you just need to walk away from a discussion. Sure, the arsehole will think they’ve won, but you will have escaped, and that’s more important; besides which, why do you care what an arsehole thinks?
Fruitbat’s Law of Perfect Emulation
If you’re pretending to be an arsehole so convincingly that nobody knows you’re pretending, you’re not pretending.
Let that be an end to the devil’s advocate on the internet, please!
Fruitbat’s Law of Selective Credulity
When an arsehole tells you they’re an arsehole, believe them.
A noteable fact about arseholes of all types is that they will lie with words, but their actions frequently reveal their essential nature. Give yourself permission to switch off your scepticism and take them at their word when that happens; it will save time later.
Fruitbat’s Law of Carpet Protection
Even if you have a medical certificate for your gastric condition, you still need to clean up after yourself when you puke on my carpet.
Many people with an assortment of neurological conditions insist that basic rules of civilisation shouldn’t apply to them because their condition makes it too difficult. Bugger that. If you’re rude, insensitive, sleazy or in any other way unpleasant, you need to own it and make reparations. That’s not unfair; it’s just adulthood.
Fruitbat’s Topical Revision to Clarke’s Third Law
Any sufficiently exaggerated satire is indistinguishable from current affairs.
I’m sure it’s possible that there will one day be a year so awful that it makes us look back fondly to 2020, but if that’s true I’d like to drop dead of a brain tumour now, please.
Fruitbat’s Guidance On Asymmetry
Tone policing ceases to be a sin when one applies it to oneself.
Demanding that another person be decorously silent, rather than raucously righteous, is appallingly bad behaviour, from which trauma and oppression grows like hemlock in muddy ground. But “demanding” kindness and moderation of yourself is not a bad thing — even when you know you’re right. This is the self-care portion of the general principle “Choose Your Battles”. Everyone has to sleep sometime.
SCA-specific laws
Fruitbat’s Law of Geek Relativity
No matter how important the SCA is to you personally, to the rest of the geek world you’re just cosplaying a live-action version of Magic: The Gathering.
This is basically the Chinese Relativity Maxim (“No matter what you do, three billion Chinese probably won’t notice”) but applied specifically to the SCA, where what seems to have earth-shattering importance to us really does look like funny clothes and bonkers rules to everyone else.
Zeroth Law of the SCA
Life trumps Game.
It’s an important game, but it is just a game. Deal with your life first. Promises made inside the game always come with the rider: “only if I can”.
Amica’s Codicil to the Zeroth Law of the SCA
If you die in the dream realm, you die in real life.
With the exception of “death” on the tourney field and other such consensual play-acting, injuries sustained in the Game are injuries in real life. If you hurt someone within the Game, physically or emotionally, you are hurting them for real. As a general rule, don’t trust someone who habitually excuses bad behaviour with “it’s only a game”.
Three Laws of Minstrelsy
1. Never let the facts get in the way of the story.
2. Never let the details get in the way of the rhythm.
3. Art is reason enough.