Traverse Fantasy

This is not a long post; just a reflection. There’s a passage in Romans that always struck me as strange: Let every person be subject to the governing authorities, for there is no authority except from God, and those authorities that exist have been instituted by God. Therefore whoever resists authority resists what God has appointed, and those who resist will incur judgment. For rulers are not a terror to good conduct but to bad. Do you wish to have no fear of the authority? Then do what is good, and you will receive its approval, for it is God’s agent for your good. But if you do what is wrong, you should be afraid, for the authority does not bear the sword in vain! It is the agent of God to execute wrath on the wrongdoer. Therefore one must be subject, not only because of wrath but also because of conscience. For the same reason you also pay taxes, for the authorities are God’s agents, busy with this very thing. Pay to all what is due them: taxes to whom taxes are due, revenue to ...

I found this folded up and thought it was a paper I presented at a gender studies conference. Unfortunately, it turned out to be the presentation I gave at the end of my undergraduate thesis program, but I was already part-way through re-typing it. Oops. Myth is not static. The stories which have been passed down across generations do not arrive at their next location untouched by social and historical circumstances, nor do those who receive them accept them readily and uncritically. My thesis examines three authors now considered to be Classical, in that they produced their respective works in the Mediterranean region from as early as 700 BCE to as late as the dawn of the common era, around 10 CE. It examines each author's work in how it receives existing myth, and then transforms or criticizes it to its own end. The archaic Greek author called Hesiod received the myth of the earth goddess Pandora and the myth of the first woman, created as the cost for man acquiring fire. My thes...

Before I broach this topic, I must perform a little social ritual. Hail Charlie Kirk! I ask this saint of free speech, wherever he is, to intercede on my behalf while speaking my mind. This isn’t about him, but about his alleged assassin: the 22 year-old Tyler Robinson whose alleged motives have eluded political identification and thus disturbed partisan media (liberal and conservative), to the extent that both sides are starting to reach for the new “nihilistic violent extremist” label despite this alleged act being anything but apolitical. So, how do we understand it? Robinson’s alleged crime is the third in a series over the past year which have challenged the liberal–conservative dichotomy (which we know is bunk, but they don’t). First, Luigi Mangione : the alleged assassin of health insurance firm CEO Brian Thompson, a software engineer and philosophy bro who didn’t like Biden or Trump but seemed to be interested in AOC, RFK, and Ted Kaczynski. The “far-left”, anti-corporate dime...

I feel like I glossed over Romans 1:18–25 (NSRVUE) in my previous post : For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and injustice of those who by their injustice suppress the truth. For what can be known about God is plain to them, because God has made it plain to them. Ever since the creation of the world God’s eternal power and divine nature, invisible though they are, have been seen and understood through the things God has made. So they are without excuse, or though they knew God, they did not honor him as God or give thanks to him, but they became futile in their thinking, and their senseless hearts were darkened. Claiming to be wise, they became fools, and they exchanged the glory of the immortal God for images resembling a mortal human or birds or four-footed animals or reptiles. Therefore God gave them over in the desires of their hearts to impurity, to the dishonoring of their bodies among themselves. They exchanged the truth about God for a lie an...

I’ve been interested in Pauline theology for a while: first, for his emphasis on community organization against the norms of 1 st century Greco-Roman politeia ; second, his relatively egalitarian and universal outlook on gender/sex and nationality (in as much as nationality could be said to exist at the time whether on the basis of ancestry, geography, or politeia ); third, his self-understanding as a Pharisee and apostle of Jesus to the Gentiles, which was contrary—or at least orthogonal—to the aims of James’ isolationist assembly in Jerusalem. I also think that Paul’s authentic epistles encode the particular viewpoints of himself and of the first Christians more accurately than either the synoptic Gospels (including Acts) or the inauthentic epistles, which Eisenbaum characterizes as an effort to both discredit the Jerusalem assembly and frame Paul as a convert from Judaism to Christianity. So there’s a lot to glean from Paul and, whether or not we disagree with his conclusions, ...

Part twooooo from part oneeeee . I think this is maybe the more interesting half? 11. The Metamorphoses Uhh I fucked up and somehow forgot to include this, so now this list is out of order. Oops. Anyway, Ovid’s Metamorphoses changed me. I wrote my undergraduate thesis about how popular reception takes for granted the corpus of Greco-Roman myth as a consistent and cohesive canon and, more importantly, that Ovid invented or remixed “myths” wholesale which we consider canonical but were actually written specifically to satirize and criticize patriarchal relations and imperial power (also, therefore, supposing a structural homology between erotics and politics: that these are the same forces operating on different levels of social existence). My favorite examples are of Phoebus pursuing Daphne to rape her and, upon realizing she has escaped sexual violence, transforms her into a power symbol to adorn his temples as well as the heads of emperors (although that one is more a remix than an...

This is Part 1 because I didn't want to be late to my own party but I also don't like blogging for a topic in advance even if it's my idea. Feels like homework. And I like homework! Anyway, I wanted to think about what works have influenced the fiction I write (whether or not it's related to elf-game bullshit, which it both is and isn't since most of it isn't typical D&D  shit but neither is most of the D&D  I run). Bon appetit! I'm very excited to see what others write for themselves. Although I encountered lots of confusion on the basis that most fictional works are topically specific, so there's not necessarily cases where the content of one work influences the content of someone's entire corpus, I think it's fruitful to think about what works have profound influenced us as individuals with respect to how we see and interact with the world. Or, you know, works which are just your favorite. Part twooooo .  1. Euphoria I’ve talked befo...