Satine Phoenix is an American comic-book illustrator, cosplayer, model, and former pornographic film actress. With writer R.K. Syrus she co-created the graphic novel New Praetorians, and she founded CelebrityChariD20 (formerly CelebrityCharityDnD). For kink-aware audiences she matters as a public figure who mixed adult performance, bondage aesthetics, and geek-media career-building—later complicated by industry allegations and professional fallout.
Adult Entertainment and Bondage Visibility
Phoenix stripped in San Francisco before entering pornographic film in 2006. She was openly interested in sadomasochism and bondage and placed fourth for Best Comic Artist at the Bondage Awards in 2010. In a 2006 AlterNet report, journalist Annalee Newitz described her as “the sort of person who has the education and resources to choose from many careers and has chosen this one because she likes it”—a framing that treated adult work as deliberate vocation rather than pure economic desperation. That combination of SM visibility and comic art foreshadowed her later hybrid identity across porn, illustration, and tabletop gaming.
Mainstream Media, Fetish Fashion, and Early Geek Projects
She took projects in gaming and fetish fashion, cosplaying D&D characters and modeling in latex and leather. Notable early work includes Pen, Paper & Laser Guns and co-development of the gaming web series I Hit It With My Axe, distributed through online magazine The Escapist. In 2008 she appeared on WE tv’s Secret Lives of Women and as a guest on Fox’s The Morning Show with Mike and Juliet. Artists who portrayed her include Swedish punk painter Karl Backman and American photographer Chad Michael Ward. In 2013 she appeared in Javier Grillo-Marxuach’s short film Minotaur.
In 2010 she revived art and gaming work at Meltdown Comics in Hollywood with DrawMelt (life drawing with cosplay models) and DnDMelt (a Dungeons & Dragons community). She organised and hosted Celebrity Charity Dungeons & Dragons for Reach Out and Read, performed with San Francisco’s Zen Bullies, did body painting and bondage burlesque, and hosted a weekly show on KSEXradio. The pattern is consistent: kink-adjacent performance and nerd media infrastructure running in parallel.
Geek & Sundry, HyperRPG, and Wizards of the Coast
Phoenix appeared in and hosted multiple Geek & Sundry and HyperRPG episodes. She was on seasons three and four of Wil Wheaton’s TableTop web series. In 2017 she hosted season two of Game Master Tips, a YouTube series for Dungeon Masters and other tabletop gamemasters; that season expanded the format by interviewing influential TTRPG figures and closed with an interview of season-one host Matthew Mercer in December 2017. From 2018 to 2019 she served as community manager for Wizards of the Coast’s Dungeons & Dragons arm—one of the more visible corporate-community roles in official D&D streaming culture.
Maze Arcana, Gilding Light, and Sirens
With Ruty Rutenberg she co-founded the streaming network Maze Arcana, which produced official actual-play D&D series including Maze Arcana: Fury’s Reach (2017), Maze Arcana: Fury’s Fate (2017–18), Sirens of the Realms (2017–19), and Maze Arcana: Inkwell Society (2018–19). Phoenix served as Dungeon Master or player on those shows. The 2018 Diana Jones Award went to the “actual play” movement and named Maze Arcana an “exceptional example”; Phoenix, Rutenberg, and Ivan Van Norman accepted at Gen Con. The network then went dark in 2018. In 2022 ComicBook.com reported that Rutenberg and Phoenix were suing each other over Maze Arcana funds and fiduciary duty. In 2019 Phoenix founded livestream production company Gilding Light. In 2021 Apotheosis Studios—founded by Jamison Stone—ran a successfully funded Kickstarter for her campaign setting book Sirens: Battle of the Bards.
2022 Allegations, Apology, and Personal Life
In June 2022, more than a dozen former collaborators alleged bullying and mistreatment by Phoenix and her husband Stone. Satine issued an apology stating she was sorry for “being the cause” of her accusers’ pain and for enabling Stone’s “terrible behavior.” Several organisations formally cut ties, including Level Up Dice, D&D In a Castle, Jasper’s Game Day, and the McElroy Brothers. Phoenix has said she began playing D&D in 1988 at age eight. In 2022 she married Jamison Stone at Gary Con; Luke Gygax officiated at a convention event. Her publication list includes Burning Quill: A Collection of Illustrations and Other Art Work of Satine Phoenix (CreateSpace, 2010).
For BDSM-site readers, Phoenix’s story is not only “adult star becomes geek celebrity.” It is a case study in how bondage modeling, SM-open porn work, latex fashion, and TTRPG actual-play fame can share one career—and how community allegations can later redraw that map. The Bondage Awards nomination, KSEX and burlesque years, and later Wizards community role remain part of the public record alongside the 2022 rupture. Treat the kink credits as real history; treat the later conflict as real history too.
