Traverse Fantasy

A friend forwarded me an email from a prominent left-Catholic journalist asking Texans, or perhaps by implication left-leaning Christian Texans, to contact her to chat about the recent ascension of James Talarico as senatorial candidate. I really thought about it—but then I was like, well, I’m shy, and I’m kind of a non-representational freak, and I don’t want to waste this journalist’s time. But I did want to reflect on it! So I’ll waste your time instead. The Republican Party is the only one of two national parties with a vision of governance; only, that vision sucks shit. A veteran comrade advised against referring to MAGA as a fascist movement because, unlike historical fascist movements which saw the national financial bourgeoisie revolt against the globalized financial bourgeoisies of Britain and the United States, MAGA is more like a revolt of our national industrial bourgeoisie against our globalized financial bourgeoisie. Still, I think there are deeper confluences between MA...

Feats are a big hit, turns out! I’m bringing back level 0 ancestry feats because I can tell my friends just wanted more to play with. “I don’t like complexity” mfs when they get to build their little guy. Some of these I had basically written years ago! Changling: Once per day, change the appearance of your face. Dwarf: You are immune to alcohol and poison, and can detect both. Elf: You are fully aware while you sleep; nothing surprises you. Hellchild: You have advantage at intimidating and seducing others. Hoblin: You can hide in bush or shadow, and behind bigger folk. Orc: Once daily at 0 hearts, restore 1 and attack with advantage. Nymph:  Spend 1 inspiration to call forth local nymphs of your type. Scalespawn: Spend 1 action to breathe fire for 1 dmg. Treat as arcana. Terran: Never suffer disadvantage from linguistic differences. Watcher: When you rest and heal, you also see visions of elsewhere. I’m also reworking “experience feats” (the ones you get at ...

My name is Anh. I’m a state-employed service worker. The conversation usually stops there. It’s not that I’m embarrassed of my line of work, but most don’t assume I’m anything other than a low-level bureaucrat: the kind of job that exists so people feel like they’ve earned their keep. Who likes a freeloader? But I know I earn my keep, and my clients tend to agree. One was inside me right then. He knew me as Hannah. I knew him as John. His hands gripped my waist, and his hips slammed rhythmically against my behind. His dick slid in and out, in and out, in and out of me. I moaned and arched my back for him. You like that, baby? Fuck, yeah. Give it to me. He pulled me by my hair and held me up with one hand on my breast and the other between my legs, his fingers circling my clit. He kissed me from my neck to my ear and then pushed me back down onto the bed. Grunting. You might be wondering: why is the state playing pimp? Spread open your history textbook. Prostitution is the world’s old...

Okay. They slapped me on the wrist at work for saying in an email thread which CC’d my boss’ boss’ boss that I hadn’t (past tense!) used AI on a project. They apparently spent all of $10 for me to have a license. I was told I came across as “political”, which I couldn’t tell if they meant in the sense of me commenting on the political dimension of AI (I wasn’t; I can be much worse ) or just that I seemed insubordinate in not using it (though, again, past tense). Anyway, aren’t I supposed to be flexible and open to new approaches or whatever? Fuck it. I had my $10. Why not see how well it could perform? I installed Claude and started it off with a dumbass math problem. It got it. I figured I was being a little harsh so, after safely committing my repository so it wouldn’t totally wreck my shit, I started asking it honest questions about implementation that I would’ve otherwise researched on Google and Stack Overflow. Very computationally expensive, I know—with the single benefit that i...

“What distinguishes man from beast?” “I know this one.” Matteu gestured towards the bird, plucked clean of its bones, on the table. “Behold!” he glanced at me, and smiled at himself. “A man!” I smiled at him. “Of course.” Francu humored him. “But I mean, we are not communists. Yes? We are not naïve animals driven by material need or carnal pleasure. We live not to suckle on the bolshevik nanny state. We are men. We strive for existence beyond our bodies, for significance beyond eating, sleeping, fucking. What good is a life that exists solely to reproduce itself? What good is survival if not to live for something greater?” “And, I suppose, a life cut short in pursuit of the Good is better spent than one fully lived in the shallow, material prison of our bodies.” “Precisely, Matteu. Carmelu bequeathed unto you this this fertile land, on which he entrusted you to feed the army of Rumë, to start a family with his lovely granddaughter”—he tipped his wine my way—“and to ponder thus what...

Dear Reddit: am I the asshole? I jumped into a conversation on the OSR discord about how people often write TTRPG adventures (or texts more broadly, I think) with such a utilitarian mindset geared towards play that they often neglect to write anything actually interesting or pleasurable to read—you know how often the pendulum swings one way or the other. This inspired something in me, so I was like “Yeah!!! And isn’t that the fun part anyway?” Some people agreed, but for the most part it was like that reaction picture of girls staring at you because you said something weird at a party, but instead of girls it’s a bunch of sweaty guys because I forgor what server I was in (no offense— the OSR will be the OSR ). I thought it was a bit and then I kept posting Lacan’s sexuation table as if to point fingers and be like “MALE!” (boom) “PHALLIC!” (boom) “CASTRATED!” (boom) Oh God. I am the asshole. Shit. Fuck. Damnit. But I thought it was interesting when I DM’d someone about it and was lik...

The story continues—sort of! More-or-less new characters across the board, but we’re moving on with the thing because I had already prepped this shit and didn’t want to do another fucking thing. Unfortunate as it was to recount events up until then to provide some semblance of context, it also felt like a good exercise that solidified my approach to this campaign: fuck time records. Redo sessions. Retcon whoever was there up until the one about to start. Individual characters may follow their own arcs, but the basic unit of the campaign is the crew and whoever’s in the crew can change as needed. I think that’ll keep me from going insane more than imposing bullshit like “You have to go home at the end of an adventure” or “You need to schedule for everyone last time to come back” or “Someone needs to substitue for so-and-so to play their character.” Anyway. Characters! My stuff is put away so I don’t have their names on me, but a rose smells sweet even if you don’t know what it’s called....