Traverse Fantasy

Try to guess context from this bit from a conversation I had with my friend Ènziramire : when they figure out womb transplants we’ll be back to square 1 gonna be the first tbitch to be denied an abortion and they’ll be like why did you want it you stupid bitch He had shared with me a recent article called “ Reject Transgender Liberalism ” by Jules Gill-Peterson, author of Histories of the Transgender Child . We knew someone who was going to see her at a guest university lecture, so we read up on her out of curiosity and felt like that new article was in contrast to certain tendencies in the introduction to her aforementioned book. Earlier, she over-historicized cultural expressions of trans-female experience such as the hijira so as to emphasize differences between those expressions and conceptualize them as categorically distinct: Clearly there have been people in nearly every recorded human culture who have lived in the roles of women, or between specific understandings of ma...

I was at brunch with my two of my girl friends (this was on a weekday; we call it our Networking & Collaboration Lunch) and it had just been National Boyfriend Day. I was talking about how surprised I was that all my friends' boyfriends are good this year, like, actually good. Some of them traded up, others of them domesticated their existing guy, and others still (from my perspective) tripped and fell into a really nice relationship. Except for one—she knows who she is because I've read her and him to filth, but even though she doesn't read this blog I'll be kind and not elaborate. I'm not a ranker. Tier lists make me roll my eyes. But I wondered: I'm obviously judging these men I barely know and talk with, according to criteria which obviously exist but I don't process consciously. So I searched within myself to figure out why my opinion of one guy improved over the past year, or why I think one guy is a better boyfriend than another guy. This isn'...

There’s a funny chapter in Paul’s first epistle to the Corinthians, which I’m going to share at length because I don’t believe in slicing ‘verses’ out of a text: Pursue love and strive for the spiritual gifts and especially that you may prophesy. For those who speak in a tongue do not speak to other people but to God, for no one understands them, since they are speaking mysteries in the Spirit. But those who prophesy speak to other people for their upbuilding and encouragement and consolation. Those who speak in a tongue build up themselves, but those who prophesy build up the church. Now I would like all of you to speak in tongues but even more to prophesy. One who prophesies is greater than one who speaks in tongues, unless someone interprets, so that the church may be built up. Now, brothers and sisters, if I come to you speaking in tongues, how will I benefit you unless I speak to you in some revelation or knowledge or prophecy or teaching? It is the same way with lifeless instr...

"You can't just ask people why they're white!" I was with my gay friends at brunch (where else?), and they asked me a question I've been itching to answer for someone. My mom's Puerto Rican, right? So where's my accent? People are very often surprised to hear I was raised bilingual, if not primarily speaking Spanish. This was up until I started going to pre-K at a public school, where I remember not liking my teachers very much. Maybe you can help me figure out why this was, but one time they tried teaching us how to count on our fingers, something I already knew—except they were teaching us to use our thumb when counting to three, and they were frustrated that I insisted that you use your three middlemost fingers. Anyway, I refused to talk to my teachers, and the racist speech therapists at the school pathologized me about it. Mentally 'slow'? Nope. Autistic? Nope. Okay, it must be the Spanish at home. No more Spanish. Despite my mom catching me s...

When you meet a Puerto Rican, the first thing they tell you is that they're Puerto Rican. The second thing they tell you is that they're an American citizen by birth. Even amongst each other. It's not out of pride for the imperialist captor, but one gets the same impression as when the Apostle Paul is about to be flogged by a mob and says, "Wait! I'm a Roman citizen!" Then the mob is like, shit, we can't touch that guy. But, of course, the Roman state eventually beheads him. Bad Bunny got me in my feelings. I had missed the live-streamed concert a few weekends ago, and finally found a rip of the whole thing on YouTube. I loved it, my cat loved it. I had been feeling a little bitter towards Bad Bunny because (I try not to worship celebrities but...) despite his outspokenness about the colonial occupation of Puerto Rico by the United States, I felt it was somewhat neocolonial for him to make a pact with the devil Amazon to stream his concert in exchange for...

New build available on Itch ! :) I know it’s been a while, but I’d been doing shit the whole time: New resource system: Goods listed in the top-left are consumed by needs from habitats and workplaces! I’m not quite happy with the distribution logic quite yet, but at least most needs have a one-to-many relationship with goods. There’s also an underlying work-week system in the backend which I’ll expose at some point, letting you trade your peeps’ happiness for increased productivity. New culture system: Each point of influence earns a settlement a new hex, from which rural yields are collected or upon which buildings can be constructed (usually habitats or workplaces). Monuments and temples will increase your influence. Basic diplomacy: With my new expanded dialog system, I’ve added some diplomacy to change your relationship with other cultures. There’s no decision logic on the AI’s end to accept or reject requests, but this is the framework. New combat system: Meeps do a numbe...

One of my friends is also really into Euphoria , and she had sent me an audio message saying that if I missed Euphoria —don’t we all?—that I would also really like The Idol , another artistically curated show by Sam Levinson with Abel Tesfaye ( the Weeknd ) both substituting for Labrinth and casting himself as the antagonist, nightclub owner and cult freak Tedros, opposite Lily-Rose Depp as Jocelyn, a child actress turned pop star (think Britney or Miley). I hadn’t yet watched the show because I had only heard it received negatively since it first aired, but I trusted my friend’s good taste and then was almost immediately enraptured by the visuals, sound, and story. What were people complaining about? First, I have to give Levinson his flowers. His writing and direction have a certain effect on viewers to make them identify actors fully with their characters, for better or worse. Often when I talk about Euphoria , I attribute the depiction and development of characters fully to the a...

Creationism doesn't get enough credit for being an essentially (post)modern ideology. "Evidence does not speak for itself," Jason Lisle and Ken Ham and others always say. The interpretation of evidence requires one to filter it through their own particular worldview and thus—since we can never comprehend the things themselves but only mental models of them—every interpretation is situated within the symbolic cosmos of its analyst's worldview. Of course, we're over 200 years past Kant's critique of reason, and we should know by now that a worldview has overstayed its welcome if it cannot reconcile evidence with its fundamental premises without (speaking figuratively or literally...) divine intervention. In other words, interpretation is also always an opportunity for immanent critique. Lacan's discursive algorithms illustrate this point well, but I'm not going to dig into that here ( borrowed illustration below from another blog ). Just gesturing. ...