I can't help but feel that the current system is out of place for us. It's, at best, backwards from period practice. From an SCA point of view it's also backwards. By this I mean, we tend to be very permissive in allowing people to things the way they want. It's the whole "big tent" philosophy. Lots of people may not like dark ages or eastern persona, but we let them do these things as part of our permissive approach to such things.

With SCA heraldic submissions, there's all the hoops (and cash payments) that a submitter has to jump through just to get started. Then the heraldic review process starts. The colleges are groups of talented individuals, spending huge amounts of time and effort, in an effort to find ways to say "No" to submitters. The whole thing is just contrary to our culture as well as common sense. But, it's so in keeping with the way things work in our modern lives, that we don't object.

I should qualify my opinions. I feel that I have been the victim of heraldic rejections that I feel were based on asinine reasoning. I don't think that a heraldic dolphin looks like a heraldic rainbow. I don't think a name should be rejected because it's the name of a nephew of a famous person.