#anthropology honours
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diagnosed with philosophy student
Lol thanks 💕
Thankfully was not a philosophy student
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Isabel Crook, anthropologist and chronicler of China’s communist revolution, 1915-2023
Crook, who has died at the age of 107 in Beijing, was born in 1915 in Chengdu, the capital of the southwestern province of Sichuan. She attended Christian schools in the city, before leaving to study anthropology at the University of Toronto.
Immediately after graduation in 1939, she returned to southwestern China and carried out research in a village near Chongqing, the provisional capital where the Kuomintang government had retreated after the Japanese invasion. There, she studied 1,500 households as part of a rural reconstruction project funded by the National Christian Council of China.
“Banditry was endemic,” she wrote, describing how she and her collaborator Yu Xiji would set off for house visits armed with sticks to beat off guard-dogs. But as young women in their early twenties, they were seen as non-threatening and were eventually welcomed by the villagers.
Crook chronicled intimate moments of village life, from the responses of citizens to the state’s attempts to reform marriage and legalise divorce, to their efforts to avoid conscription. Crook later published their observations as a book: Prosperity’s Predicament: Identity, Reform, and Resistance in Rural Wartime China.
While in Chengdu, Isabel met David Crook, a British communist who had initially arrived in China as a Soviet spy but became disillusioned with Stalinism over the course of his stay. She was inspired by his politics and he by her audaciousness — a mutual male friend described Isabel as “nice, but frankly, so much character scares the hell out of me.” The pair moved to London, where they married in 1942. Soon after, Isabel joined the London School of Economics’ anthropology department.
[...] On October 1 1949, the couple witnessed the founding of the People’s Republic of China in Tiananmen Square in Beijing. They settled in the capital, and taught English at what became the country’s top languages university, the Beijing Foreign Studies University. She gave birth to her three sons in the city.
Crook stayed at BFSU until her retirement, her tenure only interrupted by the Cultural Revolution, which arrived in 1966. The duo joined a couple of the factions on campus and were, in David’s words, “carried along by the revolutionary storm”.
David was seized and jailed for five years by a group of student Red Guards, some of whom had been his friends at the university; Isabel was detained on the campus for three years. Their interrogators played their testimonies off against each other, trying to prove their dishonesty as traitors to communism. After their release, they were both rehabilitated, and went on to witness the national mourning that followed Mao Zedong’s death in 1976.
The Crooks’ life-long commitment to communism was often tested by the way the party centralised and wielded its authority. Seeing their students mobilise for the 1989 pro-democracy protests in Tiananmen Square, the Crooks wrote to the state media urging the government not to use force.
At a banquet given by senior officials in 1990, David criticised the bloodshed of the June 4th massacre, but ended his speech pledging their life-long devotion to China — a narrative that, as foreigners, placed the Crooks beyond political reproach.
Despite their criticisms of the state, the Crooks remain highly celebrated by the government. David died in 2000, but in 2019, Isabel became one of 10 people to receive the Friendship Medal, created by President Xi Jinping as China’s highest honour for foreigners.
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Hey, another spin of worldbuilding/fantasy linguistics/speculative anthropology:
What about a people whose language doesn't have a distinction between verbs, nouns or adjectives?
A language where the same sentence can be translated to both "I am tall" and "I am being tall" as an action one is currently engaged in. And also roles and duties, how does a person think when their first language makes no distinction between the statements "I am dancing" and "I am a dancer"?
Considering the way in which language shapes one's thoughts, I think such a people would view one's actions and identity in a very different light. When everything that you are is things that you do, and everything that you are doing is who you are, status and identity would simultaneously be far more fluid and constantly adapting, and also far more solidly bound to the marrow of one's bones.
When you can't say "I led them there", without saying "I became a leader [who took them there]", you cannot admit that you did something, without admitting that you are capable of taking up the task. When you can't say "I lied" without saying "I made myself a liar", you cannot separate your actions from who you truly are, or were at the moment.
What you are and who you are would be inseparable of what you do, but what you are doing right now takes predesence over whatever you have been and chosen to do before. I have a feeling this would be an honour culture, maybe nomads, where one's status isn't dictated by birth but by one's own merit and actions - to become a leader, one must lead, and once a chieftain fails or neglects their duty, their status as one is gone in a blink.
Without a difference between being something, and acting as something, one can't claim possession to either an object nor a title without taking responsibility of it. One might father a child, but can a man who consistently fails to protect his children call himself a father?
I kind of feel like these people would find problems whenever visiting cities of people who see identity and property differently. Not only is the idea of someone owning a house, horse or a property that they aren't currently using and personally tending to, but also the idea that other peoples' mistreated or neglected children aren't orphans free for grabs.
Adoption - from within the group or of an outsider child - wouldn't be any deal to them, personally, and they are free to leave if they choose to. There is no separate distinction between "I live among the tribe and respect their ways and traditions" and "I am a member of the tribe."
Who you are is how you act, and how you act is who you are.
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Good day to you! :)
I’m very new here and I wanted to share how much I love your work, I’ve just recently followed you and I’m just done stalking you on most of your socials haha! I love your writing and your artwork is gorgeous; I’m still trying to find my own style (with both my hands and mind), and you’ll definitely be one of my inspirations :) (if you don’t mind, of course)
I was curious of the process of making your comics ? Do you usually start with the poem and then get to the illustration, or is it kinda the opposite?
I plan on saving a bit before grabbing copies of your two comics, but I also saw you mention another anthropology that I can’t seem to find ^^’, if it’s a Patreon exclusive I would be more than happy to join! Anyway, thank you for your time, I hope you have a good one! :)
hello! good day to you too! there's a couple of points here you mentioned, and I'll try to get to them all.
i definitely don't mind being used as an inspiration! it's genuinely an honour, and I hope the style that you end up settling on serves you well.
my comic process always starts with the poem itself. most of the time I write my poems after getting out of the shower and just chilling in bed. The hardest step of the process is almost always just fiddling with the poem/concept itself - i hold myself to a high standard for what I make so if the visual isn't strong enough or I don't like the poem enough I just don't do anything with it (the notes app on my phone is a graveyard of abandoned ideas). after that, I'll thumbnail the entire comic either in my notebook or in clip studio paint (my art program). then it's a matter of lineart, colours, shading and any extra touches i think is necessary.
the anthropology i think you're talking about at the end is the one i'm working on at the moment called hearteaters. it's not done yet since i want to make it my longest comic anthology so far (i've planned 15 comics, so i'm about a third of the way done). after it's all finished, I'll post about it on all my socials and put it up for sale on my store. thank you for expressing interest in it!
i believe that's all, but feel free to ask more questions if you have any!
#askbox#hearteaters is taking a while but im trying not to rush myself#have to balance a few things at the same time as making it unfortunately
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The Assinnu
I'd like to tell you about an ancient Mesopotamian trans person, the assinnu, but as soon as I even type that phrase, I'm in trouble.
Firstly, do we really know how the ancient Mesopotamians thought about gender, how they categorised people, or are we just projecting our own categories onto them? This isn't an abstract, theoretical question, it's mucked up all sorts of anthropology. I mean, Sumerian doesn't even use gender.
Secondly, if we can't be sure we can use our own categories for a civilisation thousands of kilometres and thousands of years away , how do we know whether "trans" is the right word? We can't even agree amongst ourselves on who is supposed to call themselves which term.
And thirdly, our information is limited and often unclear.
Having got those caveats out of the way, let's talk about the assinnu. This term is applied to a class of people who engaged in ritual activity, like chanting, singing, dancing, prophecy, and making food sacrifices.
There's evidence that the assinnu had a special gender or sexuality, and was associated with other groups who were similarly special. The word itself means something like "man-woman". In an epic, there's a line about the assinnu which says: "those who in order to bring about awe/religious awe in people, Ishtar turned their maleness into femaleness". This could mean cross-dressing during ritual, or it could mean a change of gender, whether including physical changes to the body or not.
I'm being very cautious here. Plenty of scholars have strong opinions on the assinnu and similar groups. They had an established, recognised role in society, but were they outcast sex workers? Bawdy drag queens? Honoured priests? Ancient cousins of the people sometimes called hijras? What we are sure about is that the earliest mentions of the assinnu date back four thousand years. Gender diverse people weren't invented last week.
More on sex and gender in various times and places over at my Dreamwidth, including two postings on the assinnu.
Edit: Here's a 2021 thesis, Assumptions About the Assinnu, which calls for a "new analysis of assinnu as performing a non-normative or non-binary gender". Looking forward to reading it. ("Representation of the ancient world is not just a matter of insular scholarly dialectic but is a direct reflection of modern modes of thought that impact living people.")
#Mesopotamia#gender#assinnu#trans#I haven't read or blogged about this subject for a long time#I have a lot of catching up to do#but my goal here is only to say that gender diverse people have always been everywhere
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intro + the perks of being a wallflower :)
Hi! Welcome to my blog, here I'll be discussing some of my favourite books, what I'm currently reading, and other media related to the books. I don’t know about you guys, but one of my favourite pastimes is getting lost in a good book. Whether it be educational or just for fun, I can always take away something from a greatly written book. Now I must admit that I don’t really have an organized library in the sense that I don’t think I’ve found my favourite genre of books yet, but bear with me as I talk about books ranging from classical literature to romance, to thrillers, to anthropology, and even to nature books!
In honour of this being the first blog post, I want to share one of my favourite books I think that everyone should read during their adolescence. This book is none other than “The Perks of Being a Wallflower”, written by Stephen Chbosky. In my opinion, coming-of-age books are so special because we get to see how messy it really is through the eyes of someone else. Reading stuff like this always makes me feel small, and makes me feel better about being a teenager and navigating through that awkward period during childhood and adulthood.
This book is written by the main character Charlie through letters as he navigates through his first year in high school. We have the opportunity to relive and relate to his high school experiences as he goes through waves of good and bad times, writing to us, his friend.
Here is an excerpt of the first page!
“ Dear friend, … I think you of all people would understand that because I think you of all people are alive and appreciate what that means. At least I hope you do because other people look to you for strength and friendship and it’s that simple. At least that’s what I’ve heard. So, this is my life. And I want you to know I am both happy and sad and I am still trying to understand how that could be. ”
This book is only 200 pages and is so incredibly well written that it would be hard to not identify with the main characters. I read this book the summer of 9th grade, and it was nice to know that everyone is unanimous in the feeling that they are still finding out who they really are as a person, and that change is inevitable. Anyways, I think this is a fantastic book that can appeal to everyone, and if reading isn’t really your thing there’s a great movie adaptation! :)
side note: I alwayyyyys think of this book when I listen to “The Smiths” now! If you ever plan on reading it, I definitely recommend listening to some of their music to get you in the headspace.
Happy reading!
Gabby
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Umbrella Pharmaceuticals - Chapter 22
I
Dr Ward repositioned the metal frames of his glasses. The two of them had gathered in an office lavishly decorated with heavy volumes of various disciplines such as psychology, sociology and anthropology. The boy was pleased when he spotted the name of his great-grandfather, Arthur Ashford, on one of them. Dr Ward held out the thick book, entitled On the Control of the Social Mass, an equally groundbreaking and controversial essay on the mechanisms that enable the perpetuation of the statu quo. Dr Ward revered Arthur Ashford as his main academic point of reference. In his honour, and as the greatest milestone of his career, he ran for and was elected rector of the preparatory school that the noble scholar founded for his offspring. A school to which his six-year-old great-grandson, whom he interviewed to assess his aptitude and character, and then some. The Stewarts referred to it by the euphemism "distinguishing". To "distinguish" a Stewart was to educate them in a certain way of being and a certain way of thinking. This time, the Stewart to be distinguished was Earl Ashford's heir apparent, Alfred, a slim-bodied boy with androgynous features, generally quiet, though anxious and impatient; gifted, but not to the level of genius of his twin sister; very suspicious and naïve.
If Alexia had been born an ordinary person, she would have shared a chair with her older brother. If Alfred had been born an extraordinary person, Lord Ashford would not have turned to Dr Ward to educate his son. On the contrary, he would have shared a chair with his younger sister to be personally educated by Lord Ashford. On this fact, Alfred lamented that Alexia was not with him. Dr Ward asked him why and he said that he felt good to have her with him. He had read about the supposed psychic connections between twin siblings, but Alfred and Alexia were not identical twins and his yearn for his sister seemed to stem from an ordinary childish desire for play. In any case, he reviewed his notes and went on with the interview. It was time to evaluate the child's conception of human society.
“Alfred, why don't we talk a little about our society?” He lit his pipe without bothering to keep a safe distance from the interviewee.
The boy began to tickle the tweed on the sleeves of his jacket, not knowing what to say.
“In our society there are rich people and poor people; people with a lot of money and people with little. Why do you think poor people exist?”
“Poor people are stupid," Alfred said bluntly.
“And why are they stupid?” continued Dr Ward with a laugh.
“Uhm... They have no education.”
“School education or family education?”
“Both. My family says they don't know how to behave.”
“All right.” Smoked. “What place does your family have in our society?”
“We're the best.” Alfred smiled proudly.
“Why are you the best?”
“We are special. We are smart. We work hard.”
“Has your father or any other member of your family ever told you about the origin of your fortune?”
“My great-great-grandmother Veronica had a lot of business.”
“What kind of business?”
“Factories. Land in Asia.”
“Aha. Have they told you about those businesses?”
“A little bit.”
“Like what?”
“That she employed a lot of poor people. Many families from the North[1].”
“Did you know that children used to work in factories back then?”
“Yes. I read about it in the history books.”
“What do you think about it?”
Alfred turned his attention to the statuette of a horse. He had stopped scratching the tweed and Dr Ward couldn't tell whether the boy was uncomfortable with the question or thinking about the answer.
“They are children like me, but they are poor. They work for us.”
Dr Ward noted the comment. Lord Ashford had asked for an earl to match, and he would produce what had been agreed.
II
Obedience brings discipline.
Discipline brings unity.
Unity brings power.
And power brings life.
The audience applauded. Having done his job, James Marcus retired to his office. Miller turned to the congregation of students waiting in the centre of the main hall.
“Dr Marcus' first lecture has been scheduled for tomorrow morning at 8:00 a.m.”
The crowd dispersed. Miller looked around for the pair of minors.
“You guys. Come over here.”
The two minors approached him at the same time. He could not identify either of them.
“Can you remind me of your names? So I can put you on the list of residents," he lied.
“William Birkin.” A blond-haired, acne-ridden teenager appeared, neatly combed and apparently well-dressed. This was supposed to be the fifteen-year-old they had hired at Harvard.
“Albert Wesker.” Another blond teenager with smooth skin and a stoic attitude. He wore jeans and a red bomber jacket like James Dean in Rebel Without a Cause. He had been hired at Columbia [2] after leaving West Point[3] without graduate.
“You were seventeen, weren't you?” Miller turned to Albert Wesker.
“Yes.”
“When do you turn eighteen?”
“August ninth.”
Miller mentally recorded the date.
“Do you like your bedroom?” Miller had put them in the same room so as not to mix them with the older ones.
“Yes. Not bad," said Birkin, with his hands behind his back.
“Yes," Wesker replied dryly.
“Good. In that case, I'll leave you to it.”
Miller hurried off to his office. William Birkin and Albert Wesker were left alone in the lobby.
III
The bedroom lacked any decoration and the furnishings were restricted to the basics. A curtained double window ensured privacy. The wooden slats under her feet did not creak and her mattresses rested on a solid wooden frame that looked decent. A couple of simple wardrobes for storing clothes and a couple of desks with chairs. Nothing else. To the left, by the door, Wesker slept. On the right, on the long back wall facing the entrance, Birkin.
They agreed to nothing. As soon as they entered, Wesker threw his backpack on the bed, marking his territory. Birkin was more careful, leaving the suitcase next to the headboard of his own. Wesker made him nervous. From the looks of him, he looked like a tough guy, and he didn't like that at all. Wesker looked like the bullies who fucked him up until he was twelve, when his college entrance got him off the hook. He had learned to distance himself as much as possible from those cretins and to retreat into himself to minimise the damage. For this reason, he focused on getting his desk and cupboard in order, ignoring the other boy's presence. But the other boy was not ignoring him. He felt its sibylline blue eyes on the back of his head, watching him.
Birkin nervously swallowed. Out of the corner of his eye he saw Wesker pull a small metal object out of his backpack and tuck it under the mattress, probably thinking Birkin hadn't noticed, and lay down on the bed. Birkin finished and sat down in his desk chair to do whatever it was.
“Where are you from?” Wesker spoke suddenly behind him.
“Baltimore.” He turned around. “I'm from Baltimore. And you?”
“New York.”
Birkin swallowed again. His reclining posture lessened the sense of menace, but did not encourage him to let his guard down.
“Where in New York? State or city?”
“City. Brooklyn.”
“Ah. I've never been there.”
Quiet. Birkin began to rock the stiff metal chair, and Wesker lay back, staring at the ceiling.
“And what are you doing here?” Birkin ventured to satisfy his curiosity about his roommate's profile.
“Same as you," he replied.
Birkin wiped the sweat from his hands on his trousers. He recognised his stupidity.
“Where did you study?” he rephrased.
“Columbia.”
“Oh. On a scholarship?”
“Yes.”
“I came from Harvard. A bachelor's degree in microbiology.”
“How old are you?” Wesker cut him off.
“Fifteen.”
Wesker turned around, and now he was the one with his back to her. He didn't understand the move. Was that supposed to be a good sign or a bad sign? He hadn't hit him yet, though.
Yet.
Notes:
[1] North of England. In this case, from Yorkshire to Northumberland.
[2] Columbia University, New York.
[3] United States Military Academy (USMA) (West Point).
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The Urge to Purge
While I’ve only recently emerged in this particular fandom, I have extensive experience in several others. I have found it interesting to observe how the different subgroups coexist.
I can tell you with all honesty that I have seen myself dipping in and out of almost all of them. Anthropologically, this is a truly diverse society.
However, there’s a group of people in this realm who pose as fence sitters and use their exposure for the sole purpose of tearing Sam down. The level of overt toxicity is tragic, when you think of all the time they’re wasting on someone they supposedly dislike. They call it a “public service.” Delusions of grandeur. I pity you.
For my purposes today, I’m going to refer to them as SLAMs. They are lost and have founds themselves and their kin by slamming Sam relentlessly. They exist under a cloak of double anonymity that is neither honourable, nor courageous. Despite how well you conceal yourselves, the following is blatantly obvious about you:
- You fancy yourselves experts on public relations, yet you refute proof (sent to you in private, as a courtesy) when it is 100% concrete, because it doesn’t serve your disingenuous narrative. You come from a place of NO. I pity you.
- You question the business ethics of not only Sam but his partners, employees, accountants, lawyers, benefactors, family and friends. Do you think Sam has publicly set up this legacy to deliberately scam his fans, not to mention all of the above? This is an international company, who (while based in the US) reports income to several countries. Yet, you think a phone call to the IRS is going to be the thing that finally sh1tcans his career? (As you rub your hands together in hopeful glee). This is not your Uncle Pete’s lawn mowing business. Pick up a book. Learn about charities and partnerships before you comment again and reveal how little you understand. I pity you.
- You claim to be somewhat worldly and yet you do not have even a half-decent command of geography, time zones and privacy laws. I pity you.
- Your grasping, reaching, clawing to find *anything* negative from the tree planting event only served to reveal that: a) You know nothing about trees b) You assume the world plants trees the way you plant trees, c) You’re so resentful that you would begrudge an endeavour like this with no consideration of any good they achieve. I pity you.
- Your comments around the Gala tell us: a) You’ve never been at an event with French Service before, b) You’ve never been to a large conference of any size or kind real acumen and c) Your top (only?) skill is snark. I pity you.
- You demonstrate a new level of guile and hypocrisy by simultaneous accusing Sam of doing too much but also wanting him to do more. Stop calling it charity and using it for publicity Sam, but OH, how come you don’t auction off all your leather jackets, Sam? Which is it, Rainman? I pity you.
You don’t even have the conviction to own your narrative. You reblog every negative claim you see about Sam under the guise of “I just share what I get” as though you have no skin in this game. In reality, this is the only game you’ve got. I pity you.
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The Scottish poet and author Andrew Lang died on July 20th 1912.
Lang was born in Selkirk in 1844, and educated at the universities of St Andrews and Oxford. He studied the classics, writing versions of the Odyssey and the Iliad. He lived and worked in London for most of his life, as a journalist -being the literary editor of Longman’s Magazine for many years- and as a respected literary critic. He was a folklorist, a scholar of myths and religion, and contributed to the study of anthropology, but his first publication was verse: Ballads and Lyrics of Old France in 1872, and was followed by a half dozen other collections of rhymes and ballads.
He remains best known today for his 12-volumes of fairy stories, collected from across the globe and often eschewing the popular floral idylls of the day, with folktales of violence and brutality.
Looking through his poems he wrote a lot about our history, many of the names and events I post about day in and day out appear in them, Johnnie Fa, Johnnie Armstrong and Rob Roy are just some, The Battles Include Harlaw, Killiecrankie, and of course Culloden......
Culloden
Dark, dark was the day when we looked on Culloden
And chill was the mist drop that clung to the tree,
The oats of the harvest hung heavy and sodden,
No light on the land and no wind on the sea.
There was wind, there was rain, there was fire on their faces,
When the clans broke the bayonets and died on the guns,
And 'tis Honour that watches the desolate places
Where they sleep through the change of the snows and the suns.
Unfed and unmarshalled, outworn and outnumbered,
All hopeless and fearless, as fiercely they fought,
As when Falkirk with heaps of the fallen was cumbered,
As when Gledsmuir was red with the havoc they wrought.
Ah, woe worth you, Sleat, and the faith that you vowed,
Ah, woe worth you, Lovat, Traquair, and Mackay;
And woe on the false fairy flag of Macleod,
And the fat squires who drank, but who dared not to die!
Where the graves of Clan Chattan are clustered together,
Where Macgillavray died by the Well of the Dead,
We stooped to the moorland and plucked the pale heather
That blooms where the hope of the Stuart was sped.
And a whisper awoke on the wilderness, sighing,
Like the voice of the heroes who battled in vain,
"Not for Tearlach alone the red claymore was plying,
But to bring back the old life that comes not again."
There;s a lot more on Andrew Lang here https://mypoeticside.com/poets/andrew-lang-poems
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Thess vs the Desert
Well, I seem to have aimed a bit for POSEIDON without really meaning to, but it's been quite the ride thus far.
LAST NIGHT
Hmmkay, what've we got this way? Ooh, a settlement.
...Well, fuck you too.
"Hair like blood", huh? That's ... a descriptor. I guess.
You ... pen the machines and slaughter them that way, huh? HAEPHESTUS probably doesn't like that very much... Yeah, see? You guys are such efficient hunters you get Thunderjaws thrown at you. Yes, I will help.
So ... yeah, I heard something about this from the flood people - you have to trade machine parts for water that's not polluted? This is some Immortan Joe bullshit, right here.
Right. None of this right here is too onerous. No Thunderjaw yet. This here is just a Tuesday, frankly.
(I mean, literally. It is Tuesday.)
So ... "bagged and tagged" means to bury with honours here? That's actually kind of fascinating. Because what it means in the real is just "put in body bag and tie a tag to the toe to identify them", but because they all wear dog tags... Huh. I do love how the Cradle people worked out things based on a combination of religion and really basic anthropology.
Wait. The Tenakth -- the TENakth -- call on the Ten. I checked, and it's not branches of military, unless they added more in this world's future / past / whatever. Hmm. How many subordinate functions does GAIA have? ...Nine. And GAIA makes ten. Clever.
Right. Onward to get your fellow hunters their honourable burial-- Oh, hey, you got a survivor! Great!
Yes. That is a Thunderjaw. Now stop yelling at me I am hiding in this bush for a reason.
Gun gone, gun gone ... Thunderjaw gone without firing off a shot.
Oh, you want me to go on ahead with the hearts? You're trusting me big time. But I guess since I just two-shotted a Thunderjaw for you, that's fair.
I'mma hunt those Frost Bellowbacks first. Sorry not sorry.
And see? I barely just beat you here with your injured comrade.
Oh. You think something bad is going on in your capital whatever. And having to pay that kind of premium for potable water wasn't enough? Yes, fine, I will meet you there later but I kinda need some Tallnecks first.
Also ... hi, Tuvok.
Right. Gonna edge my way south a bit for a few more campfires and... Ooh. Question mark. What is--? Oh. Oseram camp.
Ah. You were waiting on those folks on the other side of the mountains. Yeaaaaaaah that didn't go well. I'll help you deal with that tomorrow.
THIS MORNING
Right. Going to go track what happened to the rest of that dude's crew.
Rumble rumble-- This is going to end with a Rockbreaker, isn't it.
Alas, poor Lunda. Also ... yep. Rockbreaker.
There is some shiny down here. Hope Porguf doesn't mind my having hit this place first. Well, if he does, that's his problem. I've got Burrowers and a probably-Rockbreaker to deal with.
Aha! Way out! ...Wait, did I just get trapped in-- No, there's enough room to sneak through the gap that's left.
Yeeeeeeeeeeeeep. Rockbreaker. Sneak. In. Quietly.
Okay. I am concealed in a high place. SHOW YOURSELF, YOU SUBTERRANEAN ANNOYANCE-ENGINE!
Theeeeeeeeeeeere you are. Okay. This might get spicy. POONK.
...
......
.........I. Just. One-shotted it.
I JUST ONE-SHOTTED A ROCKBREAKER AND THEREFORE WIN AT EVERYTHING!
Right. More shinies and ... yes, Porguf, you can have your lockbox back.
Aloy, only you would consider "vertically up a mountain" to be a 'shortcut'.
And now that I've mastered gliding, I can-- SUNWINGS SHIT INTO A BUSH.
Okay, there's you dealt with. I'll turn in this quest and see what I have to climb for the Tallneck--
What do you mean, "it looks damaged"?!?
Right. Porguf, here. I'll be back after I look at that apparently damaged Tallneck and maybe take out a rebel outpost or something.
Oseram have been trying to take down a Tallneck?!? Ambitious little buggers, I'll give you Oseram weirdoes that, but HAEPHESTUS clearly is not a fan of their plans. But I need to do the same idiocy that got you dipshits killed so I can fix your dipshittery.
Okay ... one anchor, and we get Burrowers. Bye, Burrowers.
Two anchors, aaaaaaand ... Sunwings.
YES I KNOW I COULD USE THE BALLISTA ON THE SMALLER MACHINES, BUT I DON'T WANT TO! THESE THINGS HAVE NO PRECISION!
Huh. Bellowback. ...Acid Bellowback, in point of fact. New scan, huzzah. Now, lemme pop you like a pimple-- Theeeeeeeeere we go.
Okay, those are impressive when they go down.
Aaaaaand reboot! Huzzah! BEGONE, FOG OF WAR!
Right. I probably do have time to hit a rebel outpost but I do not have the energy to do so. I need to save spoons for work. So lemme clear these Burrowers out of my way, set up at this shelter, and I can deal with other stuff later or tomorrow or whatever.
I do not know what's been waking me so damn early lately. Maybe I need thicker curtains. Eh, at least it gives me "wake up to the Forbidden West" time...
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my professor was LITERALLY just like “oh are you going to the anthropology banquet on such and such?” when he saw me struggling with the pottery and i was like “no i’m not part of the honours society and i wasn’t notified of any awards otherwise…” and he was like oh maybe next time :( but i just got an email two minutes ago from the co-chair of the department saying “you got an award! rvsp for the banquet now!” so yay. lol.
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how could i ever unfollow my favourite murder ballad mutual... no one else gives me anthropological breakdowns on my favourite songs from the roud index!! also banjo and the most BEAUTIFUL hair needs mentioning
CLEOOOOOO ilysm... forever honoured to be the murder ballad mutual it's all i've ever aspired to
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is social anthropology different from just anthropology because im thinking about doing a joint honours that has social anthropology in it but im super confused😭😭
as far as im aware social anthropology typically refers to cultural anthropology, which is one of the four main branches of anthro. so yes kinda?
the 4 areas are cultural, biological, linguistic and archaeology so ‘just anthropology’ encompasses all of those whereas social anth would be more specifically about cultures & societies
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Gdcn't #2 — Incomplete Authorship
This week, from the 18th to the 22nd of March, it’s the Game Developer’s Conference. This is an event in which Game Developers from across the industry give talks and presentations on what they do and how they do it to their peer group. In honour of this, I’m presenting articles this week that seek to summarise and explain some academic concepts from my own readings to a general audience. In deference to my supervisor, I am also trying to avoid writing with italics in these articles outside of titles and cites.
Have you ever heard of this Foucault guy?
Michel Foucault is one of those academic characters who has successfully escaped from the landscape of purely academic consideration into the spaces where people just also talk about things like videogames and shopping lists and yoghurt flavours. Foucault is the guy people are talking about when they make jokes about something being like a prison. Foucault was a French philosopher, born in 1926 and died in 1984, so very much a person whose work as much as it could, shaped the world into which I was born.
Foucault’s area of interest is a bit hard to describe because doing so tends to make it sound like ten things, when it’s much more that he looked at a lot of things with a common perspective. If you want the simplest version of what Foucault’s work tends to be about, when I look at it, it’s about how knowledge is power. This isn’t just a GI Joe slogan though – it digs into questions of what we consider knowledge to be, and who we consider to be allowed to have knowledge. What separates information from knowledge, and what this distinction serves.
If you listen to Foucault on it, you’ll find that very often, it’s that systems of power exist to serve the system of power. It is control for control’s sake, permissions for permission’s sake.
Foucault is influential! Really influential, to the point where you can basically be considered ‘a Foucaultian thinker’ in fields that reach from communication studies, anthropology and – you know what I’m just quoting the list from wikipedia here. Foucault is influential on a level where some of the things he established in the sixties are entire fields of study on their own. I brought him up when I talked about the idea of a ‘heterotopia,‘ in my video about Deus Ex: Mankind Divided, which is a vision of places that were meant to be lived in but not for long. This breadth of material means that you can often find in any given discipline, if you dig just a little, there’s probably someone who has written about the way that the work you’re talking about relates to the work of Michel Foucault.
To this end, in my study, Foucault hovers at the very edges with the idea of what Foucault calls the ‘author-function.’ Foucault describes this idea to consider the question of what an author is, and where an author came from. And you might think ‘surely anyone who writes something is an author,’ but are they? You write messages to your friends on discord, does that make you an author? An author is something else, an author is a socially designated role that has degrees of legitimacy and public responsibility.
Foucault forwards in this idea of the author-function that the author is not defined by writing something, but by another party reading something you wrote. It is the audience’s reaction to the written work that transforms the person who wrote those words into an author.
Now I am no expert in Foucault, but this seems to bear out for my understanding of Foucaultian ideas: people interact with people, and objects are just intermediaries for that. I may catch a bus at a particular time, but I am only able to do so because people made the bus and made the timetable. The bus has no awareness of its timetable. The whole arrangement is a way to structure things so that the bus driver can take me someplace we’ve agreed upon.
How this applies to my work is the question of whether games have authors. Currently, there’s a push to ensure games are credited to their designers in the same way that movies are credited to their directors, which is not in my mind a bad thing. It is a step before that where his idea of the author-function catches my attention, though. Foucault’s idea of the author-function, the idea that it is not the writer but the reader who creates an Author, looks to me like it lives alongside my own conception that the game is an inert thing until it is played by a player.
I posit that examining a game without play experience is to examine a text that is in a way inert. An individual can tell their story of how they played the game, but to do so in a way as if it is objective is to try and conceal their participation in the experience. This means that almost all game writing, all writing of game experiences, either needs to aggregate the experiences of a wide variety of people to elide any individual experience, or, to be more authentic, to recognise that it is the experience of one person, creating part of the text within the confines of the game.
You might have heard me talk about this in the past. I describe the idea that ‘play is paratextual,’ where the game gives you boundaries to create in, and then you create a text of your own experience of it. I like this way to consider games because it centers players and doesn’t try to present the idea that mistakes in play, or ‘bad’ play is not itself, a form of play. If a game is something you struggle with and cannot defeat, that does not mean the game is bad, or that you cannot comment on the experience of playing that game. You are a player, and in playing, you are animating the game. Without you, regardless of what the outcome of the game, the game is an inert, incomplete thing.
Now, this is not to say that all of these experiences are equal! After all, a player who cannot finish a game may struggle to put the story of that game’s complete narrative into a meaningful context! But it also means that one is not beholden to perfectly complete a game to be able to have an opinion on it. How many great games praised for their excellence are only ever being spoken about by the invested, by the successful, by champions who are driven to promote it? Whose opinions are being gatekept by an insistence on the necessity of supremacy?
What I’m saying here is that game commentary is like a prison.
Check it out on PRESS.exe to see it with images and links!
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I'm sorry TWO MASTERS DEGREES
Technically the undergraduate was two joint honours so it counts as a Masters degree (Archaeology and Anthropology). I did also take Arabic for two years of that course and Visual Culture which just helped with my artistic manic powers.
The other Masters was just Archaeology.
So technically I am both a Master of Art and a Master of Science, and now I intend to be a Doctor of Science (but not the science you hope for).
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Hi friends, I hope your weekend is off to a nice start! Just a little reminder that as I am going back to Asia to see my family til January and am out of a job, so I am once again offering academic coaching and proofreading services! You're in good hands, as I graduated my BA and MA in social anthropology with first class honours and a distinction respectively. If you're looking to enhance your writing and study game, especially now it's close to the end of term, hit me up for some academic coaching.
However, I really really need donations. Rent just went out and I checked my account to discover that I have nothing for my phone bill for two months (£47x2). Anything you can spare would be so very much appreciated while I try to find a new job! ~Tal
PS. I will (hopefully) be offering some Ko-Fi subscription only goodies in the coming month or so! There may be cooking videos, there may be merch, there may even be an exclusive ESO guild...all the more reason to support!
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