Herald Volume LXXXVI Issue 6

E T HE YAL

H

AL ER D T H E

Y A L

A Summer Sublet

Dear mildly-confused-but-deeply-intrigued readers,

EDITORIAL STAFF EDITORS-IN-CHIEF MANAGING EDITORS

Marina Albanese, Laurie Roark Kat Corfman, Eric Krebs

EXECUTIVE EDITORS

Chalay Chalermkraivuth, Nurit Chinn, Fiona Drenttel, Jack Kyono Rachel Calcott, Elliot Lewis Ryan Benson, Bri Wu Hamzah Jhaveri, Silver Liftin Spencer Hagaman Marc Boudreaux Matt Reiner, Harrison Smith Sarah Force, Will Wegner

FEATURES EDITORS CULTURE EDITORS VOICES EDITORS OPINION EDITOR REVIEWS EDITOR ARTS EDITORS INSERTS EDITORS

DESIGN STAFF CREATIVE DIRECTORS Paige Davis, Rebecca Goldberg DESIGNERS Ishani Singh

BUSINESS STAFF

BUSINESS MANAGERS George Hua, Michelle Tong

The Yale Herald is a not-for-profit, non-partisan, incorporated student publication registered with the Yale College Dean’s Office.

If you wish to subscribe to the Herald, please contact the Editors-in-Chief at laurie.roark@yale.edu and marina.albanese@yale.edu. Receive the Herald for one semester for 40 dollars, or for the 2020 academic year for 65 dollars.

The Yale Herald is published by Yale College students, and Yale University is not responsible for its contents.

All opinions expressed are those of the authors and do not reflect the views of The Yale Herald, Inc. or Yale

As you can probably tell, this issue of the Herald is anything but typical. Allow us to introduce the Herald Zine, a super special collection of essays on everything from the economy of RuneScape, as examined by Eric Krebs, JE ’21, to the struggles of emulsifying Alfredo sauce with a slotted spoon, as told by Marc Boudreaux, ES ’21. Think you know everything there is to know about colors? Melanie Heller, SM ’23, would beg to differ. Think you know everything there is to know about the Herald? We beg to differ. Bet you never saw this Zine coming, so hold onto your pheasants!

Beaujolais, Kat Corfman Managing Editor

3

Marc Boudreaux, ES ’21, swelters in a summer sublet and cooks for himself, suffering with a slotted spoon.

4

Ride back in time with Ryan Benson, GH ’21, to a farm in South Carolina, where she shot her first pheasant.

6 8

Alma Bitran, GH ’21, comes of age with her cat, Noam.

Run, escape with Eric Krebs, JE ’21, into a world everblurring the real and unreal: the RuneScape economy.

12

Teeter and totter on flimsy definitions of femininity as Rachel Calcott, BR ’22, examines the history of the high heel.

14

Melanie Heller, SM ’23, invites us to consider the color, specifically of marengo, beaujolais, and sable.

MARC BOUDREAUX , ES ’21 YH STAFF

I

grew a beard because there was no light in the bathroom. Well, there was a light, but it was very dim, and the mirror was far below eye level and grimy and difficult to see myself in. There was another mirror that was eye-level, but it wasn’t over the sink and if I tried to shave there I’d get hair all over the floor. So, I grew a beard instead.

For the month of June, I was subletting a room in an apartment with a guy I’d never met before, Geoff.

He was a grad student from Germany; I was an undergrad who had never fed himself before; together we lived in a spacious New Haven apartment that lacked many things.

We had no ice cube trays or measuring cups, so I bought them. They were cheap at Walgreens and were the sort of thing I could use everyday. With the cups, I spooned rice and water into a beat-up but surprisingly effective rice cooker, and the trays kept my insides cool as I suffocated through sticky afternoons on the third story of a house with no air conditioning.

We also didn’t have a whisk, but I didn’t buy one (too expensive, not useful). Presumptuously, I thought I could emulsify a homemade Alfredo sauce without it.

I used a slotted spoon instead. My forehead throbbed as I scrambled my broken emulsion, unable to melt the crumbles of parmesan into water. A viscous cheesy goop clung to my spoon and the bottom of the saucepan. Resigned, I sat and picked at clumps of congealed pasta with my fingers, hoping Geoff wouldn’t come home and see the starchy puddle that was once a kitchen.

Geoff and I weren’t friends, just roommates. For a month, we lived together, during which I coughed

up forced hellos, goodbyes, and goodnights; smiled dumbly anytime he passed; sent verbosely apologetic text messages warning him I was having friends over; stole secret squeezes of his toothpaste; met his girlfriend at breakfast after curiously half-ignoring the moaning and creaking that leaked from their bedroom the night before. We never got close.

But we had our moments: the time we watched Mid90s together, and I asked him about life in Germany as the credits rolled. The times we languished, shirtless and sweaty, united by discomfort in our stuffy summer prison. Or when he stumbled into the house, drenched after biking home in a thunderstorm and I, nestled dry and cozy on the couch, half-asked-half-declared, “Wet out there, huh?” And I grinned and he chuckled.

After a month of living in the absence of many things, I’d grown. I learned exactly how much rice to make for a party of one. I learned how to destroy a kitchen, then clean it up. I learned how to grow and maintain facial hair. And although I’ll probably never see Geoff again, I’m fond of our stint as roommates. He wasn’t a friend from my suite, not a care-taker like Mom or Dad, just someone I saw daily and sometimes avoided.

All we shared was a poorly stocked kitchen and a dimly lit bathroom. And a little bit of small-talk. I guess that was all I needed.

ALMA BITRAN, GH ’21 3

THE YALE HERALD

The Height of Fashion

Shooting

RYAN BENSON, GH ’21 BR ’22 RACHEL CALCOTT, YH STAFF YH STAFF

I

the extra jolt of confidence, but I felt that maybe there was something to that Marilyn Monroe quote “Give a girl the right shoes, and she can conquer the world.” During our high school years, my friends and I would shrug off our school uniforms and ties, slip into thrift-shop dresses, pull on our platforms and stilettos and cruise out of the door, feeling sexy, liberated, full-grown. There was a heady sense of independence that went along with the click-click of heels on a sidewalk.

It was only years later, when travelling through Paris during my gap year, that this belief in the magic ability of heels to express femininity was challenged. Wandering through the Louvre, I came across a series of 1700s portraits which offered a glimpse into the fashion world of a bygone era.

Continuing through the gallery, I was confronted by a portrait of King Louis XIV looking down from the wall in full royal regalia, sword at his side… and a pair of red heels on his feet. A few minutes spent scouring the internet revealed that King Louis was not alone in his preference for high-heeled shoes. In fact, men had been wearing high heels for centuries. The heel’s birth-place was not, as I had assumed, the sleek shelves of Prada—it was the tenthcentury Persian cavalry.

’ve been told that, as a toddler, I used to find my way into the recesses of my mother’s closet and emerge gumming one of her prized high-heeled shoes. Of course, this habit was not looked on favorably by my mother, who would remove the heel from my mouth with muffled shrieks of “Rachel, no!” This rarely stopped me from venturing into the closet again when her back was turned and the door left ajar—the glitzy, pointy objects were irresistible. This fascination with heels was carried into my adolescence, and as my thirteenth birthday approached, my mother took me to a shoe shop to buy The original high heel was not a fashion statement; it was a pair of my own. I had spent most of my life running an instrument of war. The Persian army employed the high around barefoot or in scrappy sneakers, but with high heel in order to gain more stability when shooting arrows school and formal dances looming, my mum agreed that was eight years old when I first shot a gun.from I tight and smelled overpoweringly of the teenagehorseback mid-battle—heels crucially prevent the it was time to progress to more sophisticated footwear. killed a pheasant. I shot it twice: first in its leg boyfrom cologne sells.As When I woreimported it, I felt stirrup slidingthe offstore the foot.

Europeans I chose a glossy black pair with high, tapering heels, the and then again in its chest. It was the day after old and hot,“Oriental” and I considered appropriately and appropriated aestheticsitinanthe 1700s, what kind that I’d seen adorning Rihanna and J-Lo’s feet as Thanksgiving, 2007. of the oversized beganfashionable as a Persianinterpretation technological advancement became they floated down the red carpet. As we drove home, I camouflage vest my dad was trying to get lost me to a fashion trend among upper-class men. Having all couldn’t resist opening shoe to admire dark My dad woketheme up box at 4:30 in thethemorning to wear. He I won. I was did wear his practicality (nosurrendered, upper-class and Frenchman wielding sheen and perfect curves peeking out from from our beneath drive two-and-a-half hours house in bigfrom neon orange atbaseball hat,heels though.

“You have arrows horseback this point), became a symbol the tissueCharlotte, paper. There was to something about N.C. a fancymagnetic pheasant-shooting to wear itand so that see you in the field. of masculinity class.everyone Their verycan absurdity—as footwear them, something seemed to embody annoyingly farm inthat South Carolina.

Hetheand his brother that impedes nobody shoots you by accident,” he said. that So actually movement—helped to preserve the elusive “feminine grace”hunting that, at the age of twelve, always went thetender day after Thanksgiving, lines between the working class and the elite. Elite women I desperately sought. but my Uncle Matt was with his wife’s family that I rode to the farm in a booster seat in the back quickly took up the fashion trend—appropriating aspects year, so my dad brought me instead. He called it of my dad’s Suburban. The truck was a metallic That first pair of heels provided hours of pigeon-toed of men’s clothing was always daringly à la mode. This handy a father-daughter outing. He hoped it would be forest green. He kept his screwdrivers in the happiness as I practiced strutting up and down the method of social segregation proved so effective, and the the beginning of an annual tradition. cupholders in the backseat. He kept his rifles in corridor, attempting a wobbly version of Kate Moss’s heel was so popular, that the French nobility imposed laws a pile in the trunk. My dad drives fast always and catwalk. Heels seemed to heraldamy first unsteady steps I remember I wore white and green striped to stop commoners from adopting the high heel: it became he drove fast that morning. The cops pulled us into the realm of Confident Women, thethat kindmorning. of womenIt was Abercrombie & Fitch shirt illegal for commoners to wear anything higher than an over and gave him a ticket for speeding. I was who weren’t afraid to wear red lipstick or own their inch while the nobility enjoyed two inches, and royalty was opinions or call out someone who cut them in line at allowed two and a half. Red colouring, an effect created by the grocery store Perhaps it was the added height, or an expensive dye, and reminiscent of the high heel’s warlike

I

scared. I thought they might check the trunk and see all his guns and think that he was lying about being my dad, and suspect that actually he was kidnapping me. They didn’t check the trunk for guns. We drove on, safe.

Last week, my best friend from high school, Mebane, went to a fundraiser for Ducks Unlimited in Charlottesville, Va. There was an all-you-caneat buffet and an open bar and fraternity boys in button-down shirts and silver cufflinks and plain white Vans. All the girls wore cocktail dresses.

After dessert, they auctioned off a semi-automatic rifle. The winner was a fourteen-year-old girl. She went up to the stage to accept the weapon, and people clapped. Later that night, she decided she didn’t want it. Maybe she’d been drilled enough times on the lock-down protocol to know better.

Or maybe it was too heavy for her to carry home by herself. She gave it back to the showrunners and an old man took it instead. Probably, it made another addition to an extensive collection.

When I was eight and shot the pheasant, it wasn’t flying. It was on the ground. You’re not supposed to shoot birds when they’re on the ground because it takes the challenge out of the sport. It makes it too easy. You’re supposed to shoot birds when they’re flying, when they’re so far away that they don’t even look like birds, but just black specks moving through the sky in swarms or V-shapes or sometimes, if you’re unlucky, alone. It’s hard to shoot a bird when it’s flying alone but not in a way that makes it a sport. The target is smaller, and the pay-off is smaller too. You’re supposed to shoot birds in packs, when they’re far enough away that you forget that they’re alive and can’t tell that they’re dead until your dog is at your feet holding the the limp feathered bodies between its jaws.

When my brothers and I watched Kill Bill with my mother one Sunday night last summer, she shouted every time a gun sounded.

“Shush, Mom. I can’t hear what they’re saying,” my younger brother said.

“Oh! She screamed again, and covered her mouth.

“Sorry, sorry.” When it finished, she said, “You can tell that movie was made by a man.”

When my mom was thirty, her younger cousin used a gun to shoot himself by the pond in his mother’s backyard. Since then she hasn’t gone to a shooting range with my dad. When he asks her to go with her, she tells him that she has sensitive ears, and the kick-back leaves an ugly bruise between her breast and armpit.

I’m not a good shot anymore. Maybe I would be if the father-daughter hunting outing had become a tradition, but my uncle started spending Thanksgivings in Charlotte and Christmases with his wife’s family, and my little brothers got old enough to shoot soon after I did. Together, we used to prop old soup cans and empty milk jugs on tree stumps in our backyard and shoot them with our BB guns. It was fun until the BB guns lost their novelty and my brothers moved on to real guns, the ones my dad keeps locked in a metal safe next to his bookshelf. Shooting became a boys’ thing again.

My dad still talks about the day I shot that pheasant at dinner parties and on my birthday and during most Thanksgivings. Like my mother, I’ve learned to hate the bruise a gun leaves between my armpit and breast. A gun is too heavy and too loud for me to hold anymore. I can’t see killing as a sport. But when my dad tells the story, I still smile.

5

THE YALE HERALD

W

e brought Noam home in the middle of a blizzard. Ours was the only car on the street save for the snowplows, their headlights foggy beacons in the wet whiteness. My dad drove slowly, coaxing the brake pedal at every turn. When the car stopped too suddenly, the zipped-up bag resting on my lap bulged and rattled with animacy, whimpering as if of its own accord. I poked my pinky through the mesh of the carrier and felt a ghost of fur, a tickle of whiskers.

I was seventeen years old; he was one year old. He was getting ready to move into our household; I was getting ready to leave it. It seemed like maybe we could help each other out.

When we got home, my mom and I brought him into the downstairs bathroom, the warmest room of the house. Sitting cross-legged on the tile floor, we slowly unzipped the top of the carrier. A grey head poked out, triangular ears folded flat against it as Noam wriggled his way through the narrow opening. I reached out to pet him, but before I could, he sprung off the floor and straight to the highest shelf in the room. I was struck by how beautiful he was: the smokey lines of grey running symmetrical down his back, feline shoulder muscles rippling as he weaved around bottles of soap and toothbrush holders.

The people at the shelter said we should keep him in a small room for the first few days, so that he could settle in. But he had other ideas, and it seemed pointless to try to rein him in.

This would soon become a pattern with Noam.

We argued about the name for days. I, at first, pushed for calling him Sigmund. My dad insisted on Pushkin. We liked the name Kokoschka (Koschka for short), but it didn’t stick. My friend Xueyan suggested we call him Phillip. For long, nameless days, we watched him dash about the house uncontrollably.

He wiggled open drawers by himself and figured out how to find and tear open packets of food. When we came home in the evening, the trash drawer would be open and scraps of yesterday’s dinner would litter the floor, bones licked clean.

After a few more days of trying and failing to reprimand him without a name, we finally settled on calling him Noam. We weren’t sure why, but it stuck.

His behavior at home was so different from the way he’d acted

Wildcat

at the shelter that we worried we’d accidentally taken home the wrong cat. When we first met him, he was sleeping so soundly that he didn’t even open his eyes when we pet him. When I picked him up, he collapsed limply in my arms and hung there like a sack of flour. The people who worked at the shelter described him as “mellow,” saying he would make a great lap cat. But we later discovered, as he broke household items and pounced on our heads when we were least expecting it, that the cat had manipulated us into adopting him. At first, my dad threatened to take him back to the shelter. I protested with tears stinging in my eyes. He was just settling in, I assured my parents. He would change.

I couldn’t explain to anyone, much less to myself, my peculiar attachment to this demon-cat. I would stroke his silky fur as he clawed at my ankles, staring intently into his questioning emerald-green eyes. In those days, I was confused about my place in the world. Having already been accepted to college but not quite done with high school, I was suddenly faced head-on with the pointlessness of my hours of unengaging homework.

As I chipped away at my endless physics problem sets, Noam would bite the back of my pencil and refuse to let go. When I spent hours staring at an unwritten essay on my laptop, Noam spread himself across the keyboard. He rolled onto his back, hitting all of the keys at once and sending my computer into a fit. Lying still, he looked up at me searchingly; I tickled his belly, spotted and feathery like the plumage of a baby bird.

He pawed at my fingers, leaving red scratch-marks between my knuckles. When he caught my hand in his jaw, I let him, meeting his eyes the whole time. He never bit too hard—he just nibbled, teething on the flesh of my palm the way an infant would. I knew he would never hurt me. His breathing became a deep and steady purr as his eyelids began to drift shut, but he didn’t release his jaw from my hand. We stayed that way for a while, together.

Sometimes, Noam would spend thirty minutes at a time on the living room couch, biting and kneading at our black woolen blanket. When he did this he entered a trance, oblivious to everything around him. We researched this strange behavior online and found that it was a sign that he missed his mama

A

t the beginning of the quest “Merlin’s Crystal,” in cat, from the whom he’d been separated online at a very young age. game When massively multiplayer role-playing he (MMORPG) pawed and suckled at the the blanket, was talk imagining that RuneScape, playerhemust to a nonit was his character, mother’s belly.

It was through these discoveries that player or NPC, named “King Arthur.”

Though Noam began totakes makeplace sensein to the us. fantasy realm of Gielinor, RuneScape

“Back inonEngland, [Merlin] got and himself As Arthur the hardnotes greythat snowbanks the sidewalk thawed then trapped in some sort of magical Crystal,” and the player disappeared, Noam settled in. He would never sit on our laps, help break Much to fans’ amusement, butmust sometimes he sathim nextout. to us on the couch.

Every timethis one section of dialogue implies that England—and thus, our of us came into the house, he first came to meet us at the door, world—exists within the universe of Then, RuneScape.

Jagex, purring and rubbing up against our legs. he would run RuneScape’s developers, are no strangers to in-game to a very particular spot in the kitchen and collapse onto his “Easter eggs.”

Most are occasional back, awaiting his vigorous belly rub. And fourth-wall once the sun breaks, became meta jokes, or references to real-life material, like the a fixture in the warm May skies, he became increasingly mythological Arthur and Knights preoccupied withKing the outdoors.

For the hours, he sat of onCamelot. the living These connections are mostly innocuous, and room piano looking out the window, tracing with histhey eyes fit the within a well-established history of cross-referencing erratic flight patterns of sparrows and cooing almost inaudibly within the fantasy connection between land at the squirrels.

A fewgenre. times,One he dashed out the door the when we of Gielinor and our own, however, is not so innocuous: least expected it. He always came back, though. He was a smart cat,money. and knew his way around the neighborhood. is the process exchanging in-game WeReal-world decided thattrading if we were going to letofhim outside, he needed currency for real-world currency andtime vicewe versa.

Though a collar.

The only problem was that each strapped one strictly rules RuneScape, is aremove widespread around hisagainst neck, itthe took himofless than a dayit to it and phenomenon and its potentialHeforwent real-world hide it somewherein-game, in the house or outside. through profit has giventhis rise to entire industriesmy of gold farmers and countless collars way.

Eventually, parents resigned traders. Currently, illicit butin themselves to writingthehiswebsite name “RSgoldfast”—an and our phone number popular marker real-world trading the exchange permanent on an elasticwebsite—marks waistband and tying it around 1 million gold per .79toUSD. to Mod his rate neck.atHe still hasn’t managed get ridAccording of it.

Mat K, a product manager at Jagex, “at any given time, 50 So Noam and I both began to spend more and more time percent of all players are engaging with real-world trading.” outside. He would venture to the other side of the street; I Even if real-world trading is not a planned feature of the would venture to the other side of town to be with my friends.

RuneScape economy, it is a feature nonetheless. Beyond the My friends and I suddenly became achingly aware of time game itself, real--world trading has legal implications. As closing in on us, and vowed to be together as much as we could the RuneScape code of conduct explains, “Nobody has our for our remaining months. Noam, on the other hand, had permission to sell RuneScape accounts or any RuneScape nothing but time ahead of him. He spent longer and longer related virtual in-game items. All RuneScape accounts roaming the outdoors unsupervised. One morning, when I and virtual items are the property of Jagex Ltd and players was away with my friends in Cape Cod for the weekend, my are only granted a limited, revocable permission to use parents called me. accounts and virtual items.” The world of RuneScape and alldon’t exchanges are the property of Jagex; anywanted real“We want towithin worryityou,” my dad said, “but we just world from theNoam game didn’t belongs to Jagex, these to let yougain know that come homeand lastthus, night.

We activities are akin to theft. Moreover, real-world trading don’t know where he is.” often occurs via hacking, phishing, or other illicit ways of I was absent-minded for the rest of that day, deciding to read by obtaining access to players’ accounts. It also can involve real myself in some corner rather than spend time with my friends. credit card fraud, as gold farmers use others’ credit cards to I wanted to go home. The thought of going off to college and

pay for RuneScape membership. leaving my parents seemed bearable, as long as they had Noam.

But without before we the would RuneScape economy, But him,analyze I felt they be utterly alone. let me bring you up to speed. Money—referred to in-game Later that night, they called me to tell me that he had come as “gold,” “gold points,” or “gp”—is central to a player’s home. Apparently, he had spent the day at our Russian progression, allowing them to buy items that make neighbors’ house. He had been gentle and affectionate, to our progression either more efficient or possible at all. The vast utmost disbelief, and the neighbors’ five-year-old daughter had majority of economic activity in-game happens via the fallen in love with him. Noam began to spend more time at Grand Exchange, a commodity-exchange infrastructure their house, and we let him. through which players can anonymously place offers to buy orIsell items in exchange It isopinion both an When moved away to college,for mygold. family’s of inNoam game location, located northwest theeach city time of Varrock, reversed.

My parents gushed aboutofhim we videoand a global infrastructure.

Beforetrained its release, players hadthan chatted, and they kept the camera on him longer to physically congregate in-game to trade, and trades were they did on their own faces.

Apparently, he now responded completed the the Grand Exchange to his name,player-to-player. and when my Now, dad said Spanish word for allowshenear selling between “eat,” cameinstantaneous running. Theybuying told meand about all kinds of new players, permitting trade across servers, time zones, and strategies they had for dealing with him, including swaddling languages. him in a black blanket, rubbing his nose, and hugging him tightly against their body until he calmed down. “He’s just The magnitude of trade that occurs via the Grand Exchange misunderstood,” my mom said. “He loves us, but he doesn’t is astounding. In the last six months, the top 10 mostknow how to show it.” traded items accounted for 167 billion coins in-game, equivalent to $132,000.

TheNoam most expensive to occur When I’m home for breaks, and I findtrade ourselves in a bit onathe Grand Exchange wasme a single “Scythe vitur,”when a rare I’m of rough patch.

He stalks through the of kitchen drop from one of the game’s and hardest bosses, for he making myself a sandwich, when I sit which on thesold couch, two billion coins, equivalent $1,500.

The Grand pounces on my head and tearstoataround my hair.

He doesn’t do this to Exchange alsofamily. allowsWhen for economic between the rest of my he lookscoordination at me, eyes wide and ears players in formme of “merching” much perked, he’sthe asking a question Iclans. don’t“Merching,” know how to answer.

I think back to the first days he was with us, close to a year ago, back when I was the only one who would give him a chance. I hope he remembers that, and I like to think he’s just angry at me for having left him.

On this brisk and sunny post-Thanksgiving morning, my dad and I stand drinking coffee on the back porch in our bathrobes and pajamas. There’s a construction site behind our house, where a new three-story condo is being built. We catch sight of a shadow of grey, dashing around parked tractors and rolling around in patches of sun on the uprooted dirt. “Noam!” my dad calls out. “A comer!”

The cat freezes for a moment, meets my eyes in the distance, and then comes running back. He always does.

ALMA BITRAN, GH ’21 7

THE YALE HERALD

ERIC KREBS, JE ’21 YH STAFF

Workers’ Play, Players’ Work A

t the beginning of the quest “Merlin’s Crystal,” in the massively multiplayer online role-playing game (MMORPG) RuneScape, the player must talk to a nonplayer character, or NPC, named “King Arthur.” Though RuneScape takes place in the fantasy realm of Gielinor, Arthur notes that “Back in England, [Merlin] got himself trapped in some sort of magical Crystal,” and the player must help break him out. Much to fans’ amusement, this section of dialogue implies that England—and thus, our world—exists within the universe of RuneScape. Jagex, RuneScape’s developers, are no strangers to in-game “Easter eggs.” Most are occasional fourth-wall breaks, meta jokes, or references to real-life material, like the mythological King Arthur and the Knights of Camelot.

These connections are mostly innocuous, and they fit within a well-established history of cross-referencing within the fantasy genre. One connection between the land of Gielinor and our own, however, is not so innocuous: money.

Real-world trading is the process of exchanging in-game currency for real-world currency and vice versa. Though strictly against the rules of RuneScape, it is a widespread phenomenon in-game, and its potential for real-world profit has given rise to entire industries of gold farmers and traders. Currently, the website “RSgoldfast”—an illicit but popular real-world trading website—marks

the exchange rate at 1 million gold per .79 USD. According to Mod Mat K, a product manager at Jagex, “at any given time, 50 percent of all players are engaging with real-world trading.” Even if real-world trading is not a planned feature of the RuneScape economy, it is a feature nonetheless. Beyond the game itself, real-world trading has legal implications. As the RuneScape code of conduct explains, “Nobody has our permission to sell RuneScape accounts or any RuneScape related virtual in-game items. All RuneScape accounts and virtual items are the property of Jagex Ltd and players are only granted a limited, revocable permission to use accounts and virtual items.” The world of RuneScape and all exchanges within it are the property of Jagex; any real-world gain from the game belongs to Jagex, and thus, these activities are akin to theft. Moreover, real-world trading often occurs via hacking, phishing, or other illicit ways of obtaining access to players’ accounts. It also can involve real credit card fraud, as gold farmers use others’ credit cards to pay for RuneScape membership.

But before we analyze the RuneScape economy, let me bring you up to speed. Money—referred to in-game as “gold,” “gold points,” or “gp”—is central to a player’s progression, allowing them to buy items that make progression either more efficient or possible at all. The vast majority of economic activity in-game happens via the Grand Exchange, a commodity-exchange infrastructure through which players can anonymously place offers to buy or sell items in exchange for gold. It is both an in-game location, located northwest of the city of Varrock, and a global infrastructure. Before its release, players had to physically congregate in-game to trade, and trades were completed player-to-player. Now, the Grand Exchange allows near instantaneous buying and selling between players, permitting trade across servers, time zones, and languages.

The magnitude of trade that occurs via the Grand Exchange is astounding. In the last six months, the top 10 most-traded items accounted for 167 billion coins in-game, equivalent to $132,000. The most expensive trade to occur on the Grand Exchange was a single “Scythe of vitur,” a rare drop from one of the game’s hardest bosses, which sold for two billion coins, equivalent to around $1,500. The Grand Exchange also allows for economic coordination between players in the form of “merching” clans. “Merching,” much like reallife arbitrage, is the process of manipulating prices in-game

through buyouts of certain items, thus inducing a shortage in supply and raising the price. Given that items are subjected to “buy limits,” which limit the amount that a single player can purchase in a given amount of time, coordination among players is necessary to induce a change in price. Any given player’s ability to change an item’s price is also limited by access to capital. The Grand Exchange is a relatively free market, subject to the same forces and logics as the realworld economy. Critical to understanding the “realness” of the RuneScape economy is understanding the language that surrounds it. On the RuneScape wiki, the page “economy” features supply and demand infographics detailed enough to use for an ECON 115 study guide.

T

he rationale for the illegality of real-world trading is two-fold. Both Jagex and players argue that real-world trading devalues players’ legitimately earned progression.

For context, a “maxed account”—an account that has level 99, the highest achievable, in every skill—takes between three and seven thousand hours to achieve. Given an infinite cash stack, a player could speed up their progression exponentially, as many skills in RuneScape are considered “buyable.” RuneScape is a game centered around “grinding,” the repetition of tasks ad infinitum as the primary means of progression. Even as players lament the monotony of tasks in RuneScape, a semi-ironic commitment to them is a badge of honor. The language of labor and economic metaphors permeates discussion of in-game achievement, even among those not participating in real-world trading. Most skills in RuneScape are most efficiently trained through intense repetition of a single task, and players often discuss these skills with half-hearted disdain. And yet, they still play.

Much of RuneScape’s playerbase started when they were kids, enraptured by the magic of goblins, quests, and chat room abuse.

Many players find this current obsession with efficiency at odds with why they began playing in the first place. “There is a culture of efficiency, ‘no xp waste’… Why are you even doing this again?” one disgruntled player wrote in a Reddit post from 2018. The question remains: why do these efficiency-obsessed, jaded players still play the game? Are they “playing” at all?

Psychologist Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi attributes this form of play to the psychological phenomena of “flow,” when “a person is able to concentrate on a limited stimulus field, in

which he or she can use his or her skills to meet clear demands, thereby forgetting his or her own problems… at the same time obtaining a feeling of control over the environment.” Thus, the clear-input output relationship made possible by RuneScape’s mechanics are a form of play in and of themselves. The ability for a player to calculate exactly how many logs they need to cut or runes they need to craft to obtain a certain level allows a sense of perfect control over their environment. It is a world in which the rules are clear and the outcomes certain; thus, the only variable is the “grind” that a player is willing to commit.

The pervasiveness of this “grind” culture is evident throughout the RuneScape community but perhaps best exemplified in an exchange I witnessed in a chatroom: PLAYER A: these quest requirements aren’t that high at all PLAYER B: nope not at all / questing is a joke A: I’m about it because it feels like every other quest gives me something new / Whether it is useful is irrelevant B: im [sic] proud of you son / you are what we call / weaponized autism

While players can oscillate between “efficient” and “fun” modes of play, and while both modes of play can appear contradictory, the consistency of their internal logics is important to note. The grind is fun because the grind is fun, and aimless exploration is fun simply because aimless exploration is fun. How a player arrives at either mode of play depends on their knowledge of the game’s intricate mechanics, their age, and their participation in the game’s surrounding communities. These self-affirming logics of leisure and “play” are both socially enforced in-game and through forums like Reddit and Discord.

It is nocoincidence that “flow,” as discussed by Csikszentmihalyi, manifests in both work and play. In fact, according to Csikszentmihalyi, “flow” is present more so in work than anywhere. However, just as “play” is a socially constructed term, “work” is a construction as well. Games like RuneScape, which seem to blur the lines between work and play, are apt sites to investigate these constructions and test accepted definitions of either. While Max Weber argued that capitalism emerged as a product of Protestant asceticism, restraint, and prudence, he also saw a universality in the desire for gain: “Capitalism may even be identical with the restraint, or at least a rational tempering, of this irrational impulse. But capitalism identical with the pursuit of profit, and forever renewed profit, by 9

THE YALE HERALD

there is a serious IRL crisis in Venezuela for example the blast mine is overloaded with these cunts who crash the spot to sell money they have gathered.” One controversial post on Reddit, titled “Killing Venezuelans at East Drags [sic] Guide,” though since removed, stirred controversy for laying out a step-by-step guide for identifying and targeting Venezuelan gold farmers. In the divided, vitriolic comment section, the border between the RuneScape world and our own appears nonexistent.

means of continuous, rational, capitalistic enterprise.” The fantasy world of RuneScape, thus, is fertile ground for the capitalist spirit to grow. It is a world where all resources are replenished in an instant, where all slain monsters are revived, and where death is little more than a calculated setback. The blurred lines between work and play that bring about flow, that occur as a result of some “Protestant ethic” of simultaneous restraint and unending ambition, make possible the form of play known as “grinding.”

Moreover, the blurred lines between work and play bring closer the fantasy economy of RuneScape and our own—an extreme example: the case of Venezuelan gold farmers.

I

n recent years, Venezuela has undergone an immense economic crisis. Inflation rates have topped over one million percent, with prices of common goods doubling nearly every three weeks. As a result, thousands of young Venezuelans have taken to gold farming in RuneScape as a means of survival. These players use the game’s most profitable money-making methods to generate gold, which they then sell in exchange for real money. Doing so has the potential to earn many times the average wage in Venezuela via traditional sources of income.

The language that surrounds “grinding” as performed by dedicated players is different from that which is used to discuss gold farmers. Despite the fact that gold farmers often undertake the same processes as regular players, many players view them as a problem. As one Reddit post, titled “JAGEX DO SOMETHING ABOUT THOSE VENEZUELAN [Real-world traders]” reads, “Since

Commenters are not discussing avatars, they are discussing the real people behind them. One comment reads, “I never thought I’d see a guide on how to efficiently kill poor people,” with another joining in, “This is kinda [sic] fucked that you are going out of your way to literally help people make already poor people who can barely afford clothes/ food etc. struggle even more than they already are.” Some players seek to absolve responsibility through either ingame means, saying “RS isn’t a charity, it’s a game and property of Jagex, kill them all,” while others blame realworld structures, claiming that “Socialism killed them, this is just burying the carcass.” Along real-life fault lines of racism and classism, others take pride in targeting gold farmers, writing “I kill these guys when warming up my switches on my pure. They are pure offensive practice and some of the best people to kill... Also, you could just say ‘Trump’ while you attack them and that will easily get their jajajajaja’s going.” The real-world consequences of a Venezuelan gold farmer being banned or killed go far beyond a simple setback. Both by circumstance and intention, Venezuelan gold farmers do not enjoy the same insulation from the consequences faced in the world of Gielinor as normal players do. Death in-game can literally equate to death in real life, and the game suddenly seems less fun.

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ut what happens when the real economy starts to resemble a game?

The streamlining and abstraction of wealth and exchange in the RuneScape economy is corollary to that of the Post-Fordist economy. The geographer David Harvey, in his article “Between Space and Time,” argues that the advancement of capitalism in the modern world is predicated on a collapsing of space and time, an incessant drive towards the instant. This is on full display in both RuneScape and the financial sector. The Grand Exchange is

a dialectical in that, while it is a physical space, the exchange it permits has no grounding in said location. While the “Financial District” is a neighborhood, the business that flows through the stock exchange—and computers across the globe—is not bound to any one place. Whereas the market was once a location, it is now an idea. It operates not via bartering, but via logics of supply and demand, mysterious algorithms, and global exchange. And just as the financial sector’s ever-expanding consolidation of power combined with the digital revolution of finance has permitted its hegemony over the world’s economy, the Grand Exchange has permitted unprecedented abstraction in the RuneScape economy: the mystery of in-game algorithms, the instantaneous nature of trade, and the ability for real-world traders, merchanting clans, and other actors to manipulate prices and quantities with little regard for those on the other end.

What is critical to note here is that abstraction is born of concrete phenomena. Abstraction occurs in inconceivable amounts of money, whether that be item prices or trilliondollar bonuses. Abstraction is found in the alienation of the worker from their labor, whether manifesting in the devaluation of a hard-earned, maxed RuneScape account or the increasing share of economic growth that goes to the financial sector rather than to workers.

a banned account is the worst penalty one could face.

They can simply make another. A death, loss of gold, or destruction of special equipment simply does not matter that much, as it is all part of the game. Even for individual financial workers, as anthropologist Karen Ho argues, being “liquidated” is a part of the job on Wall Street and constant instability is part and parcel of simply riding the market. On the contrary, the dire consequences of death or punishment faced by Venezuelan gold farmers or the utter destruction of being fired from a blue-collar job reinforces the distinction between play and work. This limited liability, this insulation from consequences, as Ho uncovers in Liquidated, is how the language and mindsets of games manifest in financial sectors. As one analyst in Ho’s book explains, “from a shareholder investor perspective, it’s all about playing the game.” This sentiment is echoed by businessman-author Andy Kessler: “[Investment firms] literally exist to pay out half their revenue as compensation.

And that’s what gets them into trouble every so often— it’s just a game of generating revenue, because the players know they will get half of it back.”

There is nothing consequential about an in-game murder when you can simply shut the game off, and there is nothing scary about death when you know you can respawn, whether in Gielinor or on Wall Street.

Abstraction grows in the gap between cause and effect, action and responsibility. Just as responsibility helps shape the distinction between a game and real life or play and work, responsibility (or a lack thereof ) has been a critical component of the creation of the modern financial system.

This diminishing liability is at the root of the corporate form. As theorist Joshua Barkan argues in The Sovereign Gift, “corporate power has always been articulated within the context of responsibility.” As Barkan proposes, the modern corporate form is designed to shield actors from liability. The “Limited Liability Corporation” is one in which no single person takes the fault for the actions of the whole. It is why CEOs can walk away from financial crises with no jail time. It is why multi-billion dollar fines for misconduct and other limited forms of punishment can be shrugged off as costs of doing business.

The consequences, as filtered through the corporate form, simply aren’t that severe. The same logic applies to risktaking in RuneScape. For the vast majority of infractions,

11

THE YALE HERALD

The Height of Fashion RACHEL CALCOTT, BR ’22 YH STAFF

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’ ve been told that, as a toddler, I used to find my way into the recesses of my mother’s closet and emerge gumming one of her prized high-heeled shoes. Of course, this habit was not looked on favorably by my mother, who would remove the heel from my mouth with muffled shrieks of “Rachel, no!” This rarely stopped me from venturing into the closet again when her back was turned and the door left ajar—the glitzy, pointy objects were irresistible. This fascination with heels was carried into my adolescence, and as my thirteenth birthday approached, my mother took me to a shoe shop to buy a pair of my own. I had spent most of my life running around barefoot or in scrappy sneakers, but with high school and formal dances looming, my mum agreed that it was time to progress to more sophisticated footwear.

I chose a glossy black pair with high, tapering heels, the kind that I’d seen adorning Rihanna and J-Lo’s feet as they floated down the red carpet. As we drove home, I couldn’t resist opening the shoe box to admire the dark sheen and perfect curves peeking out from beneath the tissue paper. There was something magnetic about them, something that seemed to embody the annoyingly elusive “feminine grace” that, at the tender age of twelve, I desperately sought.

That first pair of heels provided hours of pigeon-toed happiness as I practiced strutting up and down the corridor, attempting a wobbly version of Kate Moss’s catwalk. Heels seemed to herald my first unsteady steps into the realm of Confident Women, the kind of women who weren’t afraid to wear red lipstick or own their opinions or call out someone who cut them in line at the grocery store Perhaps it was the added height, or

the extra jolt of confidence, but I felt that maybe there was something to that Marilyn Monroe quote “Give a girl the right shoes, and she can conquer the world.” During our high school years, my friends and I would shrug off our school uniforms and ties, slip into thrift-shop dresses, pull on our platforms and stilettos and cruise out of the door, feeling sexy, liberated, full-grown. There was a heady sense of independence that went along with the click-click of heels on a sidewalk.

It was only years later, when travelling through Paris during my gap year, that this belief in the magic ability of heels to express femininity was challenged. Wandering through the Louvre, I came across a series of 1700s portraits which offered a glimpse into the fashion world of a bygone era.

Continuing through the gallery, I was confronted by a portrait of King Louis XIV looking down from the wall in full royal regalia, sword at his side… and a pair of red heels on his feet. A few minutes spent scouring the internet revealed that King Louis was not alone in his preference for high-heeled shoes. In fact, men had been wearing high heels for centuries. The heel’s birth-place was not, as I had assumed, the sleek shelves of Prada—it was the tenthcentury Persian cavalry.

The original high heel was not a fashion statement; it was an instrument of war. The Persian army employed the high heel in order to gain more stability when shooting arrows from horseback mid-battle—heels crucially prevent the stirrup from sliding off the foot. As Europeans imported and appropriated “Oriental” aesthetics in the 1700s, what began as a Persian technological advancement became a fashion trend among upper-class men. Having lost all practicality (no upper-class Frenchman was wielding arrows from horseback at this point), heels became a symbol of masculinity and class. Their very absurdity—as footwear that actually impedes movement—helped to preserve the lines between the working class and the elite. Elite women quickly took up the fashion trend—appropriating aspects of men’s clothing was always daringly à la mode. This handy method of social segregation proved so effective, and the heel was so popular, that the French nobility imposed laws to stop commoners from adopting the high heel: it became illegal for commoners to wear anything higher than an inch while the nobility enjoyed two inches, and royalty was allowed two and a half. Red coloring, an effect created by an expensive dye, and reminiscent of the high heel’s warlike

origins, was reserved for those of the highest social rank.

But around the time of the Enlightenment, as Watt was tinkering away at the steam engine and Descartes was laying the foundation of rationalist philosophy, the high heel slowly lost its androgynous status. Philosophers were ushering in a new emphasis on rationality and utility— but as distinctly masculine traits. And as women were increasingly viewed as frivolous and irrational, the heel became narrower and less practical. As the Rights of Man emerged, high heels ceased to divide classes and began instead to divide genders. Men were flat-shoed and capable, while heels and corsets conspired to make women frivolously ornamental, prone to trip or faint at the slightest provocation.

Today, very few women know the origin of their spiked footwear. There’s a general consensus that heels add something to a woman’s figure. Whether the effect is due to a lengthier leg, accentuated curves or good old social construction, we’ve come to see high heels as a feminine essential, from the dance floor to the corporate office.

The glamorous image of the high heel has managed to distract from the impracticality of walking around on romanticized stilts.

Watching the Oscars of 2013 is a reminder that heels’ original purpose didn’t involve contact with the ground.

While Persian horse-riders found heels provided stability, Jennifer Lawrence’s shoes let her down on the sketchy terrain of the red carpet. As she casually laughed off the fall and got back up to mount the stairs, I couldn’t help but wonder whether anyone would have noticed her wearing a sturdy pair of sneakers under the concealing folds of her Dior Haute Couture gown.

My mother used to watch from the living-room armchair as my friends and I dolled ourselves up, giving us a smile and a nod as we filed out of the house. Mum stands at an impressive six feet tall when barefoot, and drags her glamorous heels out of the closet only in Exceptional Circumstances. Weddings, birthday parties and funerals make the cut, and I would follow in her elongated shadow as she made her way around a room, bending to hug relatives and friends. The next day often involved foot rubbings and back massages. My father, who is also about six feet, generally arrives at family gatherings in a pair of sturdy black oxfords, and joins the game of

volleyball in the backyard while my mother watches from a comfortable chair.

Though once the norm, today a man strolling down the street in heels will attract a few odd looks—a fact that has been put to good use by the “Walk a Mile in Her Shoes” events, held in protest of gender violence, which see hundreds of men take to the streets in red stilettos.

The connection is clear. Red for violence, heels for women.

But there’s something comical about the scene. The image of men in Nike socks and shorts tottering around in red heels, stumbling and laughing at one another as they make their way along the sidewalk, is pressed into my mind. The large, hairy feet stuffed into red stilettos, the winces that go along with every step, the men clinging onto each other’s shoulders for support. Observers in roadside cafes and shops snap pictures of the group as they strut past, cheering their audacity, laughing at the spectacle. I wonder how many of them consider what their ancient predecessors would have thought of a group of crimson-heeled men marching the streets. King Louis, I’m sure, could imagine nothing more profoundly masculine. But the modern stiletto, birthed in the sexism of enlightenment philosophy, is a far cry from the Persian military shoe. It seems that when the heel narrowed to the width of a finger, it lost its masculinity along with its usefulness.

These days, my fashion choices aren’t as simple as those of my twelve-year-old self. The physical allure of the sleek, shiny curves is undimmed—but holding them in my hands now conjures other images to mind. Gaggles of girls drifting home from various parties across New Haven, stumbling in their stilettos under the hazy light of the streetlamps.

My mother, pulling on her heels with a grimace before a birthday party. The laughter of the bystanders as a group of high-heeled men totters by. There are still nights when I just want to hear the click of my heels on the pavement.

But more often than not, I choose to pull on a pair of sneakers, my footfalls muffled as I run down the street.

13

THE YALE HERALD

BEAUJOLAIS

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HEX: #80304C

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hat’s your favorite color? What a question. That’s like asking a cat lady which of her “children” is her favorite. When I’m asked this, I smile at my victim and say “beaujolais.” I know it’s just small talk and the options were “blue” or “yellow” (actually not yellow—no one’s favorite color is yellow), but why not opt for specificity? I’ll be honest, I don’t really have a singular favorite color, but saying “beaujolais” is fun and it makes me feel like a fancy francophile art snob. I first learned about the shade while reading my now-favorite book, Stendhal’s The Red and the Black. At one point, the main character looks off to the horizon and sees the “fertile plains of Burgundy and Beaujolais.” Like most French-sounding shades of dark red, Beaujolais is a kind of wine produced in its namesake region. Beaujolais the region is in Eastern France, just south of Burgundy, near the Swiss border. Beaujolais the wine is a light-bodied red with fruity notes. I’ve actually never had Beaujolais wine, but travelling to France to visit the location of my favorite nineteenthcentury French novels is totally on my bucket list. And while I’m sipping on my super French-sounding wine, hand me some cheese and pastries that I can’t pronounce—why not have have the full experience?

But aside from food, what is France known for? Love. That’s right: love. When I say love, I obviously mean sex. A red rose implies romance, but a dark red rose is more intense. The deeper shade means a deeper love and, oftentimes, seduction or sexual energy. What a BDE move to say your favorite color is classy, sexy, French wine.

More than ROYGBIV: On Underrated Colors MELANIE HELLER, SM ’23 YH STAFF

MARENGO

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HEX: #4C5866

orry, Quentin Tarantino fans, I said marengo, not Django. Marengo is a shade of grey with just a hint of blue. It takes its name from Spinetta Marengo, a small town in Northern Italy, best known for the Battle of Marengo (1800) in which Napoleon crushed the Austrian forces.

Weavers in the town of Marengo produced a grey-black fabric with flecks of white—the resulting shade is what we know as marengo today. Marengo existed in the 18th century, but it was only after the Battle of Marengo that the fabric gained popularity. Napoleon himself wore a marengo overcoat, catapulting the shade into its 15 minutes of fame.

I guess Napoleon was extra proud of his conquest—or he just liked the name of the town—because he gave the name “Marengo” to his horse, a grey Arabian who compensated for his small size with courageousness (much like his rider). Sadly, Marengo the horse wasn’t marengo the color; however, the technique of blending shades of black, grey, and white in marengo fabric is very similar to the blending of hairs in the coats of roan horses. Roan coats on horses are the result of the blending of several colors of hairs to create an average hue. No one hair may resemble the overall coat.

Who knew one shade of gray could be so interesting? No need for 49 more.

SABLE — HEX: #000000

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rab your croissants, folks, because it’s time for the third installment of French Stuff in Colors. Let’s talk about sable. In French, “sable” means “sand,” which long led me to believe that the shade sable was tan-hued. I was late-night binge-reading Wikipedia (as one does) when I learned that sable means black. However, sable isn’t just any kind of black—sable is the shade of black used in heraldry, the aesthetics of arms and armor. Who knows why the old white men of the Middle Ages couldn’t just say “black” when they commissioned their shields? Coats of arms are actually described in words, or blazons, with each color, pattern, and symbol having its own place and term. While the blazons for shields are uniform, it is the image that’s somewhat variable. For example, Wikipedia tells us that the insignia for Jonathan Edwards College’s coat of arms includes a “lion rampant vert armed and langued gules” (a green, rearing lion with red claws and tongue). The artist can decide the size, hairiness, and expression of the lion.

All that matters is its pose and color. The etymology of sable comes from Eastern Europe, where an animal called the sable is indigenous. Sables are a species of marten, a critter in the weasel family, whose dark fur was prized in Medieval Europe. The French word for “sable” (the weasel) is also “sable,” which is extremely confusing. This means that “sable” can mean: sand, the color of sand, the Russian weasel, or heraldic black. I see a red door, and I want to paint it sable.

BEAUJOLAIS

MARENGO

SABLE

15 THE YALE HERALD

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Temperature swings.

My bed-sweat froze overnight.

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Tire swings.

I thought tires rolled.

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A C L K B

Low-blood sugar.

Help, someone get me an ambulance.

Low blood, sugar. ;—) Sir, this is an ambulance.

Spilling LaCroix on your laptop.

L’horreur.

Exclamation marks.

Calm down!!!

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WE

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Parents Weekend.

Stop touching me!!

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K E E

TH I

Spilling laptop on your LaCroix.

L’aptop.

HATE T H I S