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Marcia B.

@traversefantasy.itch.io

1K followers 340 following 1.4K posts

notorious girlblogger 💁‍♀️ freudomarxist 🚩
ongoing projects: #cinco 🏴‍☠️ #resourciv 🏛️
blog: https://traversefantasy.blogspot.com/
itch: https://traversefantasy.itch.io/

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Marcia B.

@traversefantasy.itch.io

the new spec's commercials have split seconds of AI vintage photos for some reason

January 14, 2026 at 11:59 PM

Marcia B.

@traversefantasy.itch.io

wanted to re-share an article i wrote in 2022 about the phallic and colonial underpinnings of what we might call the dungeon game---in fact, it's the third edition of a paper i wrote and rewrote many times, but only this instance i feels 'complete'

traversefantasy.blogspot.com/2022/09/d-ob...

Is D&D a metaphor for phallic desire, or is phallic desire something which operates on the same logic as D&D? Obviously, if phallic desire in the strictest sense (i.e. of erotics) were considered a basis of D&D, it would have to be alongside other social systems such as capitalism and racism whose symbolic structures permeate all aspects of social and personal fantasy. Yet at the same time, sexism or patriarchy do not exist on a lower level than these other factors, not only in existing beside them but also informing the language we use to discuss them, as we have seen in how colonial language evokes patriarchal symbolism in order to justify some aspects of colonial conquest. These systems all interact with and often reinforce each other if deemed beneficial, so better understanding one helps understand the language and logic of another.

The political is erotic just as the erotic is political, and D&D is not exempt from the social implications of phallic discourse even if it is not unique or as explicit in encoding them (though, with characters being lords and patriarchs, and with dungeons inhabited by “scantily clad” medusae, how could it not be explicit?). Rather, if Gygax’s comments are to be taken seriously, or if the literary or social conventions behind D&D are to be explored, D&D is as much a male sexist fantasy as it is a racist or a capitalist one. Yet these fantasies, being so prevalent in society, are difficult to escape even for the people they target. They cannot be bypassed by just calling for more female adventurers, for example. They are features of the dungeon game insofar as the latter is an expression of all those real-life symbolic systems.

January 5, 2026 at 11:21 PM

Marcia B.

@traversefantasy.itch.io

academic drama at my partner’s school made me realize not everyone understands how anti-plagiarism software works—not even people who use it!

what are the limits of content similarity detectors? can algorithms be arbiters of honesty or truth?

traversefantasy.blogspot.com/2025/12/faq-...

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.

December 21, 2025 at 1:43 PM

Marcia B.

@traversefantasy.itch.io

December 19, 2025 at 7:49 PM

Marcia B.

@traversefantasy.itch.io

#cinco changelog!

- slightly revised daily healing with rations
- simplified inventory so you can hold all your cards in one hand
- print version (for my personal use rn) is now A5

traversefantasy.blogspot.com/2025/12/cinc...

December 17, 2025 at 2:18 PM

Marcia B.

@traversefantasy.itch.io

friend told me she was scared to recommend the idol to anyone else except me bc she trusted that i can see the vision (and i did)

December 10, 2025 at 2:25 PM

Marcia B.

@traversefantasy.itch.io

partner would like the world to know that jordan peele’s “nope” is just the old tweet about feeding shelter cats to coyotes

tweet: my neighbor told me coyotes keep eating his outdoor cats so i asked how many cats he has and he says he just goes to the shelter and gets a new cat afterwards so i said it sounds like he’s just feeding shelter cats to coyotes and then his daughter started to cry

November 15, 2025 at 1:57 AM

Marcia B.

@traversefantasy.itch.io

why are liberals going to bat for the parasitic insurance industry

November 10, 2025 at 5:12 PM

Marcia B.

@traversefantasy.itch.io

November 10, 2025 at 3:59 AM

Marcia B.

@traversefantasy.itch.io

i have improved the Diagram which i realize looks not unlike the ancient ANE model of the cosmos. yay!

November 10, 2025 at 2:29 AM

Marcia B.

@traversefantasy.itch.io

elaborating upon and extending my reading of paul’s anti-idol theology, into exegesis and speculation in the realms of ontology and ethics

also a (non-expert) argument about the early jesus movement having a relatively consistent ethos

traversefantasy.blogspot.com/2025/11/anti...

November 8, 2025 at 2:27 PM

Marcia B.

@traversefantasy.itch.io

i want to highlight some submissions to the #icon0clasm ball for fantastic medieval campaigns!

thank you to everyone who has submitted so far, especially for developing such thoughtful and effortful works 😊

blog: traversefantasy.blogspot.com/2025/11/gene...
itch: itch.io/jam/icon0cla...

November 4, 2025 at 6:19 PM

Marcia B.

@traversefantasy.itch.io

oh…

October 26, 2025 at 10:15 PM

Marcia B.

@traversefantasy.itch.io

man this is such a strange skeet like historicity aside, i.e. the systematic murder of tens of thousands of communists by the nazis, and the over-representation of communists in partisan resistance groups...

why is this a reskinned judgment day? why is the red army god?