The Handsome Boys

When I first decided to take the leap from "Random Pennsic Goer" to "Actual Member of the SCA" it was fencing that was the catalyst. 

Malocchio, Dionisio and I decided on a whim that fencing looked fun. We went and got ourselves starter sets from Zen, talked to Osprey in Darkwood for a little bit, and suddenly we found ourselves on the field getting taught by strangers. 

We peer pressured a bunch of our friends into joining us and decided that we needed a completely ridiculous name that did not take itself seriously at all. Thus the Handsome Boys Modeling Academy was born.

That was back in 2010. Five years seems like such a short time for how far we've come.

The Handsome Boys now have about 21 active members (very few of them overlap with the first group we pressured), a registered name, and a badge all our own. We also fielded around 25 people for Pennsic this year, making us one of the largest single units out there.

We've also grown from a bunch of punk kids out to make fun of the sca (and stab people) to a collection of active, helpful, titled sca-ers (who also like to stab people).

It's all a little strange.

Our existence spurred Master Donovan to do a ton of research on English gangs, which eventually allowed us to register The Handsome Boys as a real household. It was based on such stylish 16th century gangs as Damned Crew, Roaring Boys, and Gallant Crew. It is my hope that the SCA has more gangs in its future thanks to his research.

(It is also my hope that he finishes the research paper he's going to write on this so I can link to it here.)

While we might pretend to be fine upstanding citizens, we haven't completely lost our roots. From the beginning we have had the tradition of "beating in" new members - they must win 5x for each present Handsome Boy. This has been maxed out at 25 once we realized that there were so many of us that we would never get to do anything else. 

The most ridiculous thing we do is our house tournament, though. Every year at Pennsic we get together with our non-fencing friends and have them judge us on..whatever they want, really. We fight for their amusement and they vote on us for ours. This tournament has involved wizards, puppets, and occasional tackling.