SCA: badly-behaving peers

[cellio]

A question has come up among some SCA folks, and I'm interested in hearing a broader perspective. Particularly because I've been a peer for a while and have become less active in recent years, it's possible I'm a bit out of touch.

Non-peers: to what extent do you look up to peers (define "look up" however you like)? Are you negatively affected (again, define how you like) if a peer does something bad?

Peers and non-peers: if a peer does something bad, is that significantly worse to you than if a non-peer did it? To what extent does the behavior of an individual peer reflect on his order or on the peerage in general? Does the answer vary based on what the peer did?

I'll post my own thoughts later; I want to hear others' first.

Clarification: "bad" = "behaves badly", not "produces substandard work". Sorry I didn't make that more clear.

Comments

[rani23.livejournal.com]

There are people who are peers and there are people that I look up to. Sometimes those groups overlap and sometimes they don't. I am not terribly good at giving someone deference due to their rank or title. Just because someone is a knight or a laurel or a pelican doesn't mean that I think more highly of them than someone else. On the other hand, sometimes, some peers are just wonderful and I go, "Oh yeah, that's knight/laurel/pelican! Good for them!"

I guess what I am saying is that I do not expect much from peers as a whole. I know that everyone who plays this game, peers or not, are human and therefore able to make mistakes and often do. Because of that, because I have seen peers make mistakes and errors of judgement, I don't think more highly of "the whole group" nor any less of them either. But, I will admit that takes some of the "shiny" off the game for me and I bet for others too.

I guess what I am saying is that when I see a peer behaving badly, I sort of shrug my shoulders, sort of a "what-can-you-do/what-do-you-expect" sort of thing. On the other hand, when I see a peer behaving in a Peer-Like-Manner (if there is such a thing,) it literally takes my breathe away. I just wish I had more of those moments.