[MH] Caribbean by Night

[Polydamas]

Originally Posted by Icelander

Alice is a graduate student of anthropology, with a Bachelor's degree from Berkeley. She's in a PhD program at Rice, doing fieldwork among Jamaican immigrants, researching the influences on folklore in an immigrant society.

As a PhD in Anthropology from Berkeley with Pitiable and compulsive reading, she has almost certainly ran into the aggresively activistey kind of PhD student, the kind who wants to unionize, aggresively cut admissions, maybe eliminate tuition fees, talks a lot about the traditional role of anthropologists and museum staffers as robbers of pagan graves and spies for empire, has a twitter account, and throws around words like "exploitation" and "slavery." Anthropology in the USA attracts leftey activistey people, and it is one of the most corrupt disciplines in the country: they train five PhDs for every tenure track job, not 2-4 like in most disciplines, and who gets those jobs is very much about uttering the right shibboleths, attending the right program, and cultivating the right patrons. Karen Kelsky is an older equivalent http://theprofessorisin.com/2018/11/...o-conferences/

See if you can summon up Robert J. Speakman et al., “CHOOSING A PATH TO THE ANCIENT WORLD IN A MODERN MARKET: THE REALITY OF FACULTY JOBS IN ARCHAEOLOGY,” American Antiquity 83.1 (January 2018) pp. 1-12

Someone like that could be good for comic relief in a Lovecraftian game: "Exploitation? I know, I thought my undergraduate research supervisor was interested in my work, but all he wanted was to use my blood to summon an Elder Thing. And yeah, this neoliberal market ideology is crazy, the Cold Ones will devour us whatever system of exchange we use."

[Icelander]

Originally Posted by Polydamas

As a PhD in Anthropology from Berkeley with Pitiable and compulsive reading, she has almost certainly ran into the aggresively activistey kind of PhD student, the kind who wants to unionize, aggresively cut admissions, maybe eliminate tuition fees, talks a lot about the traditional role of anthropologists and museum staffers as robbers of pagan graves and spies for empire, has a twitter account, and throws around words like "exploitation" and "slavery." Anthropology in the USA attracts leftey activistey people, and it is one of the most corrupt disciplines in the country: they train five PhDs for every tenure track job, not 2-4 like in most disciplines, and who gets those jobs is very much about uttering the right shibboleths, attending the right program, and cultivating the right patrons. Karen Kelsky is an older equivalent http://theprofessorisin.com/2018/11/...o-conferences/

See if you can summon up Robert J. Speakman et al., “CHOOSING A PATH TO THE ANCIENT WORLD IN A MODERN MARKET: THE REALITY OF FACULTY JOBS IN ARCHAEOLOGY,” American Antiquity 83.1 (January 2018) pp. 1-12

Someone like that could be good for comic relief in a Lovecraftian game: "Exploitation? I know, I thought my undergraduate research supervisor was interested in my work, but all he wanted was to use my blood to summon an Elder Thing. And yeah, this neoliberal market ideology is crazy, the Cold Ones will devour us whatever system of exchange we use."

Well, at Berkeley, Alice did have an as-yet-unnamed beret-wearing, goatee-sporting, smug and aggressively hip boyfriend who was a few years older than her. He and his friends were into transcending bourgeoise morality and proving their evolved and unique nature by taking drugs, arguing provocative philosophical positions they didn't believe in and worshipping various beings from a wide variety of religious traditions they decided represented self-determination, non-conformity and freedom from whatever oppression was fashionable.

At some point, this unnamed Romeo decided he and his friends were a grotto of Satanists, though the Church of Satan would later declaim any connection with him and his friends. In truth, any religion they may or may not have held was syncreticised from dozens of real occult traditions, pop mythology, bad anthropology and even gaming supplements. It's unclear to what degree various ceremonies were performed for any real religious purpose and to what degree they were drug- and alcohol-fueled play-acting or even actual LARP-ing, as the same people who were associated with the 'cult' also apparently gamed together, among other games playing a LARP based on Mage: The Ascension.

Finally, on New Year's Eve 2016-2017, some kind of ritual was performed. With characteristic gentlemanly delicacy, Alice's unnamed older boyfriend sacrificed her to some demonic entity. Fortunately, or unfortunately, at least for him, a team of contractors working for J.R. Kessler were present. Officially, three students at UC Berkeley murdered four of their friends and schoolmates before committing suicide.

Should this charming young man have been a graduate student in anthropology? Or perhaps even better, a post-graduate student working as a teacher's assistant or whatever else would be a natural progression for someone who has a PhD in anthropology?

[Polydamas]

Originally Posted by Icelander

Well, at Berkeley, Alice did have an as-yet-unnamed beret-wearing, goatee-sporting, smug and aggressively hip boyfriend who was a few years older than her. He and his friends were into transcending bourgeoise morality and proving their evolved and unique nature by taking drugs, arguing provocative philosophical positions they didn't believe in and worshipping various beings from a wide variety of religious traditions they decided represented self-determination, non-conformity and freedom from whatever oppression was fashionable.

At some point, this unnamed Romeo decided he and his friends were a grotto of Satanists, though the Church of Satan would later declaim any connection with him and his friends. In truth, any religion they may or may not have held was syncreticised from dozens of real occult traditions, pop mythology, bad anthropology and even gaming supplements. It's unclear to what degree various ceremonies were performed for any real religious purpose and to what degree they were drug- and alcohol-fueled play-acting or even actual LARP-ing, as the same people who were associated with the 'cult' also apparently gamed together, among other games playing a LARP based on Mage: The Ascension.

Finally, on New Year's Eve 2016-2017, some kind of ritual was performed. With characteristic gentlemanly delicacy, Alice's unnamed older boyfriend sacrificed her to some demonic entity. Fortunately, or unfortunately, at least for him, a team of contractors working for J.R. Kessler were present. Officially, three students at UC Berkeley murdered four of their friends and schoolmates before committing suicide.

Should this charming young man have been a graduate student in anthropology? Or perhaps even better, a post-graduate student working as a teacher's assistant or whatever else would be a natural progression for someone who has a PhD in anthropology?

They could be ... maybe even the teaching assistant from the discussion section of one of her first-year courses, for extra skeeve? There are departments in the USA when any kind of sexual or romantic relationship between an instructor and anyone who was, is, or might become a student is verbotten with fearsome curses, and departments where some faculty have a cloud of twitchy ganymedes and pretty young things with sad eyes and nobody says anything on the record.

Anthropologists are weird, and Berkeley is weirder, so I would not want to say what is plausible at a specific department, but the way academe is structured gives opportunities for people who want to do small amounts of evil and are good at finding a patron. And teaching assistants, postdocs, and sessional instructors don't get a lot of supervision except from their supervisor or the instructor of record.

I still like the idea of giving Alice Talbot a well-meaning, activisty acquaintance who has no idea how bad the situation really is, sort of like having a character's spouse involved in the '64 or '68 election in a Delta Green campaign.

[Icelander]

Originally Posted by Polydamas

They could be ... maybe even the teaching assistant from the discussion section of one of her first-year courses, for extra skeeve? There are departments in the USA when any kind of sexual or romantic relationship between an instructor and anyone who was, is, or might become a student is verbotten with fearsome curses, and departments where some faculty have a cloud of twitchy ganymedes and pretty young things with sad eyes and nobody says anything on the record.

Anthropologists are weird, and Berkeley is weirder, so I would not want to say what is plausible at a specific department, but the way academe is structured gives opportunities for people who want to do small amounts of evil and are good at finding a patron. And teaching assistants, postdocs, and sessional instructors don't get a lot of supervision except from their supervisor or the instructor of record.

Alice most likely met the guy as she started graduate studies, which based on my own experiences* tend to be differently structured than undergraduate programs, with more personal contact between students and instructors.

The player hasn't established exactly if Alice started college younger than 18, but it's probable, given that IQ 15 and Eidetic Memory represent a bona fide genius and really a transcendent, generational one. In any case, at age 22, Alice had finished a four-year undergraduate degree and done a significant amount of work in graduate studies, enough to have skill levels higher than most professors. So either she started early or she was going through her curriculum at a significantly faster pace than her peers.

The boyfriend-cum-cult leader has to have been studying something which would give him a fair background in demonology, given that he managed to incorporate a wide range of influences in his syncretic religion. Of course, he probably wasn't as smart as he wanted to seem and his understanding of demonology was perhaps wide-ranging, but superficial. As far as that goes, he might as well have been a philosophy major as an anthropology one.

Some of the other students in the impromptu cult were philosophy students. On the other hand, given Alice's Shyness and the fact that no one would pick her out of a crowd, it's most probable that anyone who noticed her had to have shared classes with her. What drew the guy to her was probably her Occultism talent, which he realized could be used for the real ritual he was attempting.

*Granted, in a different country and different academic disciplines, but from what I understand, there are at least some similarities.

Originally Posted by Polydamas

I still like the idea of giving Alice Talbot a well-meaning, activisty acquaintance who has no idea how bad the situation really is, sort of like having a character's spouse involved in the '64 or '68 election in a Delta Green campaign.

Well, Alice completely cut all ties with anyone she was at Berkeley with. Her name was kept out of the papers after the sacrifice, but she didn't want to make it easy for anyone remotely connected to the impromptu cult to find her. So she really doesn't keep in contact with anyone from Berkeley. Hell, she doesn't even see her parents any more.

Basically, her life in Houston is an entirely new life. She's not in witness protection or anything as formal, but she did everything she could to avoid anyone from her old life being able to track her down.

[Polydamas]

Originally Posted by Icelander

Alice most likely met the guy as she started graduate studies, which based on my own experiences* tend to be differently structured than undergraduate programs, with more personal contact between students and instructors.

Rereading page 19, I see: she has a BA from Berkeley, enrolled in their graduate program (maybe one of those American combined MA/PhD programs), then transferred to Rice University in Houston, completed a MA there and started a PhD there (keep in mind that an American MA is one year, or two years with a thesis, so that gives up to 4 or up to 16 months between meet-cute and "ia shrub niggurath! ia Nergal! ia Lucifer!")

Then another skeevy possibility is that she got assigned as a teaching assistant or marker-of-essays for a section of 20-30 students in a big first-year course with a couple of hundred students, and boyfriend-with-the-goatee was the senior PhD student who took the fresh meat under his night black cloak. (Or, it could be that she went to a guest lecture at the philosophy or linguistics department, and he was the guy asking pompous questions in hopes of impressing someone else in the audience).

Originally Posted by Icelander

Well, Alice completely cut all ties with anyone she was at Berkeley with. Her name was kept out of the papers after the sacrifice, but she didn't want to make it easy for anyone remotely connected to the impromptu cult to find her. So she really doesn't keep in contact with anyone from Berkeley. Hell, she doesn't even see her parents any more.

Basically, her life in Houston is an entirely new life. She's not in witness protection or anything as formal, but she did everything she could to avoid anyone from her old life being able to track her down.

Well, the reason I thought Berkeley was relevant is that it has a lot of lefty, activisty, social-experimentey people, sort of like some universities are full of people who want to run for office, or launch a software startup, or spread a particular religion. But, that does not mean that it had to be someone at Berkeley who got worried that she did not understand power relations in the graduate school pseudo-economy: it could easily be someone in her graduate program at Rice, or a postdoc or Visiting Assistant professor who arrived at Rice this year.

[Icelander]

Originally Posted by Polydamas

Rereading page 19, I see: she has a BA from Berkeley, enrolled in their graduate program (maybe one of those American combined MA/PhD programs), then transferred to Rice University in Houston, completed a MA there and started a PhD there (keep in mind that an American MA is one year, or two years with a thesis, so that gives up to 4 or up to 16 months between meet-cute and "ia shrub niggurath! ia Nergal! ia Lucifer!")

Then another skeevy possibility is that she got assigned as a teaching assistant or marker-of-essays for a section of 20-30 students in a big first-year course with a couple of hundred students, and boyfriend-with-the-goatee was the senior PhD student who took the fresh meat under his night black cloak. (Or, it could be that she went to a guest lecture at the philosophy or linguistics department, and he was the guy asking pompous questions in hopes of impressing someone else in the audience).

Well, I got the feeling that the player imagined a typical college romance in terms of length, i.e. more like a year than something which lasted five years, ever since she started UC Berkeley. But I'll ask to be sure. Edit: The player says the relationship lasted about a year, which implies that it begun at about the time Alice started her graduate studies.

Edit2: The player has decided that Alice started her Berkeley education when she was sixteen, which would have been in the year 2010. She went through a normal four year anthropology degree, graduating in 2014. Then she enrolled in a PhD program in Anthropology combined with a multidisciplinary MA program in Folklore, which she finished in the spring of 2016. New Year's 2016-2017 is when she was sacrificed.

Alice had finished all her required courses in the Anthropology PhD when she transferred to Rice University in the summer or autumn of 2017 (whenever a new school year would have started). She had started on a final thesis at Berkeley, but changed her focus at Rice and her current fieldwork with Jamaican immigrants is part of her new PhD thesis. She's also been taking various courses at Rice, including Library Science*, History, Anthropology, Linguistics and others and will get another MA in something to do with Library Science in a few months.

Regarding how she met the budding dark lord, it would have to be somewhere her Occultism Talent was evident to him. In a lecture hall with a lot of people, Alice would never stand out to anyone and her Shyness makes it very unlikely that she spoke out. He almost has to be someone who read an essay by her or graded her exam, as that would be the most plausible way to notice her Talent.

*Except that somehow, it seems that Rice University offers no such courses and no MLIS program. UC Berkeley has lost its ALA certification and does not offer it either. As Alice has every skill that would be possessed by a highly skilled professional librarian, it would be logical if she had studied this during her university education, but if so, she would have had to do so in other universities than what she attended.

Granted, the practical skills may be learned from Dr. Lapointe, the librarian aboard Penemue, but the character ought to have the possibility of professional certification to match her skills and that requires an ALA-certified program.

Maybe she could have done an online program on the side? With IQ 15, Speed-Reading -15 and Eidetic Memory, Alice probably only needs to spend a tiny fraction of the time that an IQ 11-12 person needs to get good grades, so it's not implausible that she'd have the time.

Originally Posted by Polydamas

Well, the reason I thought Berkeley was relevant is that it has a lot of lefty, activisty, social-experimentey people, sort of like some universities are full of people who want to run for office, or launch a software startup, or spread a particular religion. But, that does not mean that it had to be someone at Berkeley who got worried that she did not understand power relations in the graduate school pseudo-economy: it could easily be someone in her graduate program at Rice, or a postdoc or Visiting Assistant professor who arrived at Rice this year.

This, of course, brings up the question; what is Rice like?

From Internet searches, I get the impression that students at Rice are perceived as smart, nerdy to the point of being anti-social, quirky, rich and... well, Asian. This is not entirely accurate, in that about 50% of Rice students are actually white.* Actually, financial aid packages mean that there are some people there who are not rich, as well.

I've tried tracking down confirmation whether there is anyone at Rice University who is not devoted to their studies to the point of obsession, but evidence is elusive. While Rice University students claim, a bit too loudly, they are too fun and outgoing, they also admit that the university does have a very strong tradition of hard work and academic excellence, to the point where most students are pretty apathetic about politics, college sports or a lot of other things that are huge deals in other universities.

It actually looks like Alice Talbot is pretty much a stereotypical Rice University student, except for the fact that while she is a brunette, she happens not to be Asian. She does have a helicopter mom and a dad that doesn't know how to show affection, so I guess that aspect of the stereotype is there. She also speaks some Japanese, because, of course, she's an omni-geek.

*Asians are massively over-represented by percentage of the general population, even above and beyond what tends to be the norm in higher education. Other people of colour are somewhat underrepresented compared to Houston demographics, but the campus is still fairly diverse.

[Apollonian]

Originally Posted by Icelander

Except that somehow, it seems that Rice University offers no such courses and no MLIS program. UC Berkeley has lost its ALA certification and does not offer it either. As Alice has every skill that would be possessed by a highly skilled professional librarian, it would be logical if she had studied this during her university education, but if so, she would have had to do so in other universities than what she attended.

Granted, the practical skills may be learned from Dr. Lapointe, the librarian aboard Penemue, but the character ought to have the possibility of professional certification to match her skills and that requires an ALA-certified program.

Maybe she could have done an online program on the side? With IQ 15, Speed-Reading -15 and Eidetic Memory, Alice probably only needs to spend a tiny fraction of the time that an IQ 11-12 person needs to get good grades, so it's not implausible that she'd have the time.

Online is totally feasible. I got my MLIS online in about two years part-time, and I'm not a super genius. (University of Houston - Clear Lake offers an online MLIS program.)

[Icelander]

Originally Posted by Apollonian

Online is totally feasible. I got my MLIS online in about two years part-time, and I'm not a super genius. (University of Houston - Clear Lake offers an online MLIS program.)

Is there a benefit to being located close to the campus where your online program is or could Alice have essentially chosen any university in the US that offers an online MLIS degree?

Also, what GURPS skills do you think you learned as part of your MLIS?

Alice has 4 character points in specifically librarian/archivist skills, i.e. 1 each in Connoisseur (Books and Manuscripts), Machine Operation (Media)*, Professional Skill (Bookbinder) and Professional Skill (Librarian). She also has 8 points in Research, which she has learned over eight years of college, and some basic Computer Operation. Is she missing anything?

*For the microfilm readers on the Penemue and the massive occult reference library they have on microfilm, with her co-responsible for curating additions.

[Apollonian]

Originally Posted by Icelander

Is there a benefit to being located close to the campus where your online program is or could Alice have essentially chosen any university in the US that offers an online MLIS degree?

Also, what GURPS skills do you think you learned as part of your MLIS?

Alice has 4 character points in specifically librarian/archivist skills, i.e. 1 each in Connoisseur (Books and Manuscripts), Machine Operation (Media)*, Professional Skill (Bookbinder) and Professional Skill (Librarian). She also has 8 points in Research, which she has learned over eight years of college, and some basic Computer Operation. Is she missing anything?

*For the microfilm readers on the Penemue and the massive occult reference library they have on microfilm, with her co-responsible for curating additions.

We discussed this at the end of January in the Skill: Research thread.

As regards physical presence for an online course... no, not really. I just prefer in-person classes. (I doubt very much that she could learn Bookbinding effectively online, though.)

As regards missing skills: All I can think of is Savoir-Faire (Academia) and/or Diplomacy. Professional Skill: Librarian is as much learned on the job as it is in a degree program, so I'd not give it to her unless she's actually done some time in the stacks or behind a service desk, not necessarily as a librarian. Depending on her focus in MLIS, she might have picked up a point of Computer Programming - if her focus was heavy on stuff like information architecture and whatnot. I don't think that fits the character all that much, though.

[Icelander]

Originally Posted by Apollonian

We discussed this at the end of January in the Skill: Research thread.

As regards physical presence for an online course... no, not really. I just prefer in-person classes. (I doubt very much that she could learn Bookbinding effectively online, though.)

We did discuss it, albeit with a subtle distinction, i.e. what skills a librarian needs vs. what skills you gain from an online MLIS degree.

I imagine that while Alice no doubt studied various methods of Bookbinding through her reading, she also applied the skill with Dr. Lapointe in preserving and repairing the various thaumaturgical grimoires the Penemue library contains.

Originally Posted by Apollonian

As regards missing skills: All I can think of is Savoir-Faire (Academia) and/or Diplomacy. Professional Skill: Librarian is as much learned on the job as it is in a degree program, so I'd not give it to her unless she's actually done some time in the stacks or behind a service desk, not necessarily as a librarian. Depending on her focus in MLIS, she might have picked up a point of Computer Programming - if her focus was heavy on stuff like information architecture and whatnot. I don't think that fits the character all that much, though.

Well, alongside her education, Alice has spent some 18 months as the assistant librarian of a very small, but lavishly funded private occult library.

Space is very much at premium, but she and Dr. Lapointe are trying to ensure that everything written that might be useful to field anthropologists, thaumatologists and occult researchers is available both electronically and on microfilm. Most of the physical books they stock are RPM grimoires and the notebooks or manuscripts of historical occultists.

Alice has Diplomacy at 1 point, but no Savoir-Faire (Academia). She does have a CF in Western - US University Culture, because I use CFs as 3 level Advantages that each buy off -1 of penalty, which allows for a lot of subcultures or regional cultures that interdefault at -1 or -2.

As Alice started her MLIS studies during her convalescence after being sacrificed over New Year's 2016-2017, she did not focus on late TL8 Information Technology. While she grew up with an interest in technology and still stubbornly tries to use it as much as any other college age kid, the fact is that since the beginning of 2017, computers actively hate her and she has a very hard time using them.

Magical abilities and modern technology interact in some Dresden Files esque way and Alice goes through a new laptop every month or so. That's also the reason for the microfilm readers on the Penemue, in that no serious supernatural talent wants to rely on computers that might malfunction just when he needs to look up the vital ritual.