Traverse Fantasy

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...

The Lord of the Rings is strange. This is not going to be particularly insightful or thoughtful. I hadn’t seen the movies since over a decade ago, and I think my mom was telling me that the anniversary of their release was coming up, so I had the brainworm that—you know—they feel like winter movies. I just ran out of Sex and the City . While I’m frozen inside, why not put on nine hours of fantasy epic turned hack-and-slash blockbuster? Not my cuppa, as they say over there, but it’d probably still be fun. Tolkien liked his pizza with extra sausage, and his books too. The Hobbit has basically no named female characters except for Bilbo’s mother who’s just mentioned at the beginning and not really a full-fledged character. If The Lord of the Rings is a threefold improvement over The Hobbit , some quantifiable evidence might be that it has three female characters: Arwen, my stunning half-elf queen and DL girlfriend of exiled human heir Aragorn whom she loves to the point of forsaking h...

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'...

"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...

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...

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...

Wrote a minizine about A.I. because people outside of tech often ask me what the deal is and why I’m so anti-passionate about it. Printable version on Itch ! 1. A.I. Revolution The rise of artificial intelligence or A.I. has been compared to the invention of the calculator as well as the start of the industrial revolution. These social and technological shifts, A.I. supporters say, had their doubters at the beginning, but have since made our lives easier by letting us spend our time at tasks more worth our while. That’s the selling point of A.I. which all the major finance and tech companies have been peddling. But... is it true? Over $350 billion has been invested in building new A.I. data centers in 2025, driving 20% global (or 50% in the U.S.) increasing demand for electric power. The world economy put all its financial eggs in the A.I. basket. Why? 2. LLMs Before asking why A.I. is being pushed by the world economy, we need to ask what A.I. does and how it works. Many technol...

Put this together! My partner's grandfather, since we reconnected, keeps sending me crackpot stuff about climate change being fake and the ice caps reformulating (if you're curious: the ice caps grow and melt seasonally, but a lesser rate than which they're melting due to increased global temperature). Although I had an idea of why climate change occurs, I didn't know specifics or how I would answer if someone asked me to explain how it works from top-to-bottom (or perhaps, as a good dialectician, from bottom-to-top; i.e., from fundamental principles to emergent dynamics). So I did my due diligence and wanted to share what I learned in case others also found it useful! Of course, it turns out my GIL owns stock in oil and gas, so there's no convincing him (and, to be clear, this was more for me than anything). Print version on Itch ! 1. Clearing the Air Beijing, China hosted the Olympics in 2013 and 2022. During that first year, the city’s air was infamously smoggy...

This isn't that interesting! Just noticed that I have a sort of schedule throughout the year: January & June:  Reading February to April:  Programming July to December:  Writing  I don't know why. I guess that's how my burnout is. Anyway! I'm both looking at  The Brimstone Gospel  again and write-doodling something else. We'll see if I feel like it's good enough to share.

Digital version of my eight-fold zine on Itch which itself is an abridged version of my webpage Talking Trans ! 1. The Trans Question Over the past few years, trans people went from being relatively obscure to being a political boogey. Republicans spent $215 million in the 2024 election attacking trans people, with the intent to dismantle their rights and eliminate them from society. Democrat politicians in turn distanced themselves from trans issues, advised by consultancy firms like the HRC who purport to represent LGBT people and yet regularly throw trans people under the bus when expedient. Trans people are at risk of losing both their healthcare and legal recognition. Platitudes and pronoun circles are not enough to protect us from this threat. Trans issues need trans voices. 2. The Basics Trans people are those whose gender/sex differs from that which they were assigned at birth. Trans females went from male to female, and trans males went from female to male. One sh...

With respect to my last blog , I want to clarify: I am not a medical student. I know many medical students, but I'm not one. I'm just nosy and vengeful. Either you know me, or you don't. Don't worry about it. Let me think of a way to 'prove that'. Hmm. I don't think doctors, or anyone, should make more than $100,000 in salary. Patients, besides being sucked dry by parasitical insurance firms, suffer from healthcare being privatized and thus driven by shareholders and doctor-capitalists. The way certain doctors treat nurses disgusts me, due to the employer-employee and/or superior-subordinate relationship they have. I appreciate people who enter the medical field to serve others, while I don't respect people who enter the medical field as a business venture—which is a lot of people, since the schools are also business ventures which concentrate access in the hands of nepo babies and other in-groups. I think these dynamics are responsible for the gunner c...

Before I say anything else, I want everyone to know that Joshua E. Lewis is a terrible human being who (allegedly): Got dropped from his med school for cheating on his exams with a burner phone he left in the restroom and whose ringer he forgot to turn off because he's (allegedly) really stupid. Misused travel funds meant for medical conferences to travel to vacation hotspots like New York City, Las Vegas, and others. Recruited gullible first-year students, who wanted in on his prolific reputation, to mass-publish slop articles with help from generative AI. Told his girlfriend that he was checking himself into a mental hospital while just exercising at the gym, and also cheated on his girlfriend with a Grindr account. Edited screenshots of conversations over text with another student whom he reported for harassment. Lied about both of his parents being plastic surgeons to garner influence on Instagram and real life. But this isn't about Joshua E. Lewis. This is about every au...

Happy Holidays! It's funny writing this after having de-emphasized my presence here over the past year as I had intended. The thing is, having a blog is nice to vomit one's thoughts under the pretense that you are writing for an audience, even if you're not writing for an audience at all. Why not start a diary? Because diaries are lonely. Where's the Other? Hobbies I've committed myself to three projects, in addition to whatever time I spend reading books or baking or whatever else. My brain seems to work in bursts, so having these activities helps me easily find something to do after burning myself out on what I had been doing. The Brimstone Gospel: Biblical epic about women whose passion and loathing drives them toward apocalypse and self-annihilation, guided by desires and destinies beyond their own reckoning. Inspired by Ovid's Metamorphoses , it attempts to retell, reframe, and reinterpret the Christian canon by casting politics through erotics and vice ve...

I've been working in a pride org at work to advocate for a better understanding of health benefits for trans people and more representative, humane language for trans people in general. I've been blessed to not have had to deal with much bullshit in my life, but nowhere have I dealt with as much bullshit than from: consultancy firms who ask for millions of dollars to misrepresent trans people's experiences and throw them under the bus for political convenience; HR demons who invoke those consultancy firms to speak over actual trans voices; and gay people who already got their bag and want to retire to drag brunch for ever and ever, amen. I'm tired of this shit. I'm irritated that conservatives, liberals, and leftists alike willfully misunderstand our experiences. I'm angry that this 'misunderstanding' is the ideological foundation of how society mistreats trans people . Correcting the misunderstanding will not correct the mistreatment; rather, the misund...

Prereq.: Why Am I Here? The booklet versions of Fantastic Medieval Campaigns are out now (at-cost as per usual)! Links below: Volume 0: Chain of Command (U$3.37) Volume 1: Mortals & Magic (U$3.94) Volume 2: Monsters & Treasures (U$4.22) Volume 3: Fantasy Adventures (U$3.65) So... not been super into TTRPG talk lately, especially in the context of the OSR from which I have been distancing myself (as a community, on blogs and on social media) for a long couple of months. This is partly because of a development in my life where I’m no longer socially isolated due to the pandemic or moving to a new place or my own social hangups—having less time to spend online or even an interest in doing so. However, I have also wanted to distance myself from the OSR community specifically for longer than that. I think that has been obvious, from me being more vocal about my own play preferences as well as my misgivings towards the OSR play style (which, if you have read my blog, you would...