Traverse Fantasy

I’d like to be so bold as to suggest that we have a problem. Trans-females are obviously having a moment in political discourse, and their characterization has shifted in emphasis over the years: from stealthy homosexuals trying to deceive heterosexual men, to perverse straight men masquerading as lesbians to infiltrate women's private spaces. Both of these notions have existed for a while. As Julia Serano notes in her seminal manifesto Whipping Girl , these stereotypes in fact mutually construct each other, and were also reified in Blanchard’s transsexualism typography as the heterosexual transsexual versus the autogynephile. However, the latter has become a convenient angle for fascists, whose self-avowed motive is often to protect women from various masses of predators in the forms of black men, Muslims, and (in this case) trans women. 1 Each case yields baseless accusations and demands proactive retribution. But what happens when the benefit of the doubt serves as a cover for...

Sorry, I just need to exorcise a thought real quick to convince myself why it’s a bad idea. The impulse is I realized that Cinco! doesn’t have swords +1 and I was like, oh, how sad—even though by all means it’s a good thing that it’s not a fucking number-go-up game. It’s intentionally all very discrete and non-granular, reducing as much as I possibly can to pure structure (not necessarily in terms of procedure but, in general, of dynamics). But let me just give this a try. Come onnnn. It's like my 2023 post but easier. Split Bonuses Your aspect bonuses can only go up to +4 now (start by allocating 2 points), but now you can add a bonus from an item you use, also from +1 to +4. Bonus Item Quality Rarity (D20) — — 1–10 +1 Junk 11–4 +2 Common 15–17 +3 Rare 18–19 +4 Legendary 20 Your starting items are common (+2). You can get rare and legendary items on adventures. The above rarity roll might come in handy (results 1 to 10 are nothing). Dura...

Swear to Gxd I was working on this before the previous post. I just waited to post until it seemed less topically timely because it was a genuine effort and something I had wanted to write as a reflection on where I’ve been and gone over the years. Happy New Year and, if you celebrate, Happy Logos Incarnation Anniversary! Or solstice or whatever. Fuck. This is also nice to post on the blog because I can actually include links to things here. Cinco! is mostly inspired not necessarily by Dungeons & Dragons, Fifth Edition (2014) as much as by the McElroy Brothers’ podcast The Adventure Zone and my experience playing D&D as modeled on that media. This book is a tribute to that subculture which despite being centered on D&D also elevated it through play to something more than a tactical skirmish game. It’s inspired by tumblrinas, gamer girls, and theater kids who strove to redeem creative sparks from boring prisons. Ben Milton’s Knave (2018) inspired me to seek simpler r...

There’s a professor at my partner’s graduate school who’s very eager to catch students in the act of academic dishonesty. The class is split up into small groups to write and present a review article of publications in the field. Like clockwork, every year, the students who write the actual data summary for their respective groups’ projects get called to his office to beg for academic probation (as opposed to expulsion). Why? Because their portions of the project have undeniable similarities to published works as detected by the professor’s anti-plagiarism software. You might notice the problem here. Those students wrote the data summary section of their review articles—the section where you cite, quote, and summarize existing literature to contextualize the more analytical sections of the review. Every year, a handful of poor students get slapped on the wrist by the professor but then are quietly freed by the dean who has seen this happen every year and has a smarter head on her shou...

I’ve been making changes to my homebrew heartbreaker Cinco! based on my most recent play-sessions. These aren’t published yet because I have some new empty space I’d like to fill with handy tools for myself. The document is now A4 so that it can be resized to A5 for print. The main character sheet is now digest/A5 sized, and cards for items and exhaustion will be moved from your sheet to your hand. Replaced supply with rations. Rations are only spent when resting for a whole night, specifically to treat any place in the wilderness like a haven. Health potions however can be consumed at any point, including during an encounter; this makes them very valuable as treasure! Removed distinction between equipped and packed cards. You can now use any of your 7-ish items during combat, except that: large items cost 1 extra action to use; and you can’t use duplicates of the same armor type. Levels are now from 1 to 10. When you play with feats, you start with one at level 1 and gain...

There’s an idiom by which evangelicals refer to the Bible, namely the “Word of Gxd”, and they will read bits of the Bible referring to the Logos as being self-referential towards the Bible (never mind that the form in which we receive it is different from what the authors, who probably had not realized they were contributing to canon, would have had in mind). Then it occurred to me: wait a second, the Logos ? Are there any references to the Logos in the New Testament which are not either referring to the Logos qua ontological function or to logos qua reason (if not  logos  in its most basic, literal sense)? Keep in mind that the New Testament is addressed to the Hellenistic world which was well acquainted not only with the language in which the various authors were writing, but also probably (whether by being literate or via cultural osmosis) with the concepts of Greek philosophy which Christians were both competing with and borrowing from linguistically as Hellenized Me...

With help from James Bishop’s blog , I’ve compiled quotations from Paul which elaborate upon his understanding of Jesus’ life (a sort of mini-gospel): But when the fullness of time had come, Gxd sent his Son, born of a woman, born under the law, in order to redeem those who were under the law, so that we might receive adoption as children. Galatians 4:4 (NRSVue) Paul, a servant of Christ Jesus, called to be an apostle, set apart for the gospel of Gxd, which he promised beforehand through his prophets in the holy scriptures, the gospel concerning his Son, who was descended from David according to the flesh and was declared to be Son of Gxd with power according to the spirit of holiness by resurrection from the dead, Jesus Christ our Lord, through whom we have received grace and apostleship to bring about the obedience of faith among all the gentiles for the sake of his name, including you who are called to belong to Jesus Christ, to all Gxd’s beloved in Rome, who are called to be ...