Book Sample: “The Medieval: Opening and Castles in the Flesh”

Posted on by Persephone van der Waard

This promo post—the first part of “The Medieval; or, Monsters, Magic and Myth”—belongs to a larger book sample and module called “Brace for Impact” (2024), the latter a) inspired by Harmony Corrupted and b) having been designed to promote my upcoming monster volume—aka Volume Two of my Sex Positivity (2023) book series. The module divides into over thirteen posts, whose total chapters/subchapters compile a taste of the larger volume (which has three modules total, to give you an idea).

Click here to read about the entire Sex Positivity book project.

Click here to see “Brace for Impact’s” Table of Contents and Full Disclaimer.

Permissions: Any publicly available images are exhibited for purposes of education, transformation and critique, thus fall under Fair Use; private nude material and collabs with models are specifically shared with permission from the original model(s). For more details about artist permissions, refer to the book disclaimer (linked above).

(artist: H.R. Giger)

Prep, part three: the Medieval; or the Root of the Humanities: Their Mise-en-Abyme, Medieval Expression and Modules

Capitalism has always exploited us according to how it deems us useful/not useful, thus superior/inferior inside the colonial binary and its heteronormative rubric/moderately normative offshoots. / Sex Positivity illustrates this complex reality through what I’ve learned, reassembling it for you as a kind of monster compilation to play around with. As you play, experiment and learn, think about your own modes of monstrous self-expression and what you put back into the world: your poiesis and creative successes. In the end, we’re all defined by what we leave behind (source).

—Persephone van der Waard, Sex Positivity, Volume Zero (2023)

Picking up from where “Conflict and Liberation” left off…

“The Medieval,” or chapter three (of zero) for “Brace for Impact,” constitutes the last bit of prep before we dive into the second and third modules. I have divided it into seven subchapters (and multiple subdivisions, and sub-subdivisions)—“Monsters, Magic and Myth”—which cover some of the messiest (and most exquisite) aspects to what Volume Two is about and which we’ve touched upon, but here I really want to go over as thoroughly as possible: as things to sell to others not as commodities, but propositions; i.e., for them to buy as a social-sexual exchange between cuties’ interpersonal mise-en-abyme (“to [mimetically] place in abyss,” over and over…): consenting mutually to enter forbidden “castles” of delicious “danger” (calculated risk).

(artists: Cuwu and Persephone van der Waard)

  • “Castles in the Flesh” (this post): Charts our course by picking the destination. Outlines medieval derelicts as castle-like in terms of the body-building arrangement the Gothic generally entertains, and provides a personalized, anecdotal example of “Antiquity” through derelicts: Cuwu and I.
  • “Green Eggs and Ha(r)m; or, ‘Fucking’s Fun, Try it!’“: Partway on the road. Considers the Gothic as something its critics turn their noses up at like green eggs and harm, conflating capitalist forms with our iconoclastic doubles (making them bad critics); this subchapter outlines Gothic castles and draconian occupants in their half-real, dialectical-material totality (ours vs theirs).
  • “The Eyeball Zone; or, Relating to the Gothic as Commies Do“: Still en route! A more autobiographical subchapter, one that explores interpersonal relationships in the broader context of ludo-Gothic BDSM during class and culture war—how we can relieve stress and address praxial concerns that we leave behind; i.e., to be consulted when we become overstimulated (or don’t exist anymore) relative to our own web of relationships: a buffer when our walls go up, a glorious “eyehole” to peep through and engage with while the blinders are still on.
  • “Knocking on Heaven’s Door; or, Prepare for Entry!“: Arrives and waits for the door to open. Goes over some Marxist signposts and liberatory sex work exhibits, which seek to underline how the Gothic (and Communism) transcend mediums to speak across them in everyday relationships that help put out fires while not starting new ones (a complex spectrum of social-sexual exchanges, whose material factors and aesthetic elements of unequal power and trauma hyphenate to address systemic abuse).
  • “‘Heaven in a Wild Flower’; or, Exhibiting the Monstrous-Feminine Ourselves“: Greeted in the antechamber, and given pamphlets. Supplies a gender-studies hermeneutic, regarding the monstrous-feminine in relation to everything discussed so far in the book; i.e., there is always an aspect of the Medusa (war-like, morphologically diverse, and rebellious) to any monster that isn’t—figuratively or literally, in part or all together—a white, Anglo-American, cis-het, Christian male.
  • “Medieval Expression; or, ‘Welcome to the Fun Palace!'”: Enters the palace. Explores the idea of the Gothic as a liminal, holistic dialog that transcends mediums, precluding harm through a confusion of the senses, jouissance, magic assembly of old dead things, and other medieval devices tied to magic and myth as a dark, sexual affair (often an operatic one linked to popular controlled substances—metal when reclaimed by fags camping the canon with sex, drugs and rock ‘n roll as synonymous with each other and iconoclastic learning and expression). In other words, “Medieval Expression” explores the dialectic of the alien as generally expressed through monsters, magic and myths, mainly paradoxes and oxymorons that blend all of these things; i.e., how they hook up and interact, once conjoined.
    • Due to its size, I’ve decided to divide “the Fun Palace” into three parts:
      • Opening and part one, “A Song Written in Decay”: Outlines all of these points, and gives an example of mise-en-abyme through a disintegrating Song of Infinity exemplified by Lewis and his spiritual, academic-prone descendants—namely Hannah-Freya Blake and myself as coming from a lengthier Galatean, gallows-humor tradition not entirely foreign to Gothic academia.
      • Part two, “‘Red Scare’; or Out in the World“: Seeks out further examples in between my friends and I for this project specifically—namely the relationship between past media orbiting Red Scare (from Star Wars‘ rebellious allegory to American Liberalism and subversive potential in The Abyss to Chernobyl, and more) as also including non-academic sex worker friends’ old photographs and warlike, often-red symbols that contain Communist potential whose Gothic maturity can be built upon during our day-to-day relations.
      • Part three, “‘With a Little Help from My Friends’; or, Out of this World”: Explores an-Com rebellion (the dismantling of the state) as actively expressed between current sex workers using ludo-Gothic BDSM to inspire and invigilate a more recent (and actionable) portrait of rebellion; also inspects the classics—from The Wizard of Oz to Big Trouble in Little China—as things to learn from with our current friends as sharing a similar love for the imaginary past as rebellious for monstrous-feminine rights.
  • “Monsters, Magic and Myth”: Modularity and Class (feat. Jeremy Parish and Sorcha Ní Fhlainn)“: Packs up to leave (carnival prizes underarm, balloons in tow). Considers the purpose of this volume’s pointedly medieval voicings through a signature lack of restrictions and its thoroughly iconoclastic nature, as well as its dialectical-material function, modular devices and monster classes separately and then together. Also criticizes a former academic superior and research inspiration of mine (Ní Fhlainn and Parish, respectively).

Gothic castles are things to pursue and build anew based on old likenesses we see in between people and media as hopelessly conjoined when speaking to the alien as experienced differently between a shared pedagogy of the oppressed (of rape something to heal from in all its forms, sexual or otherwise): all grasping onto something (often each other) in-frame, our step in an ongoing mise-en-abyme pursuant, per a framed narrative, to a palliative Numinous; i.e., indicative of a Communist one—Medusa baring it all (fangs and flesh) in furious lust as the prime iconoclastic educator defying Capitalist Realism.

(artists: Cuwu and Persephone van der Waard)

To that, onto our first step of the quest, “Castles in the Flesh!”

“Monsters, Magic and Myth”: Castles in the Flesh; or, a Personalized Example of Derelicts

[T]he Gothic castle is ‘alive’ with a power that perplexes its visitors. It tends to have an irregular shape, its lay-out is very complex and mysterious, whether because of an actual distortion of the whole structure or because a part of it remains unknown. In Manuel Aguirre’s words, “this basic distortion yields mystery, precludes human control and endows the building with a power beyond its strictly physical structure: the irregular mysterious house is, like the vampire, a product of the vitalistic conception of nature.” […] In Radcliffe’s novels the Gothic castle is in the first place an anti-home, a nightmare version of the heroine’s perfect past, in which many of the elements of her home are exaggerated and replayed in a Gothic form. […] The heroine’s parents are replaced by Gothic substitutes or Gothic opposites. The castle hides some family secret the revelation of which usually helps the heroine to disclose her own identity. At the same time, the Gothic castle is the place of confinement in a literal and figurative sense. Moreover, the castle may be interpreted as the image of the body and, eventually, as the heroine’s secret self (source).

—Audronė Raškauskienė, Gothic Fiction: The Beginnings

Gothic castles have many different academic interpretations; e.g., Bakhtin, Summers, and Aguirre (all who Raškauskienė mentions). Per Hogle, though, Gothic castles are essentially “antique” (counterfeit) left-behinds that uphold an “ancient” lie of sovereignty that maintains the state through the process of abjection; for myself, Gothic castles have personable qualities that generally resemble people and vice versa—e.g., Metroidvania being the level, the heroine and the enemy as all monstrous, meaning “rapacious, bellicose and castle-like”; i.e., ludo-Gothic BDSM as a highly subversive, even transgressive means of reversing abjection to develop Gothic Communism through iconoclastic sex work: those who are “built,” “stacked” or some such medieval architectural metaphor for their sexual prowess and overall sex appeal/gender invention, but also trauma (which combine the concentrically medieval language of war [mise-en-abyme] with sexual activities; i.e., Walpole’s satirical, undead chivalry prototype, the “rape” castle Otranto; e.g., “castle = demon lover/dominator vs vanilla basic bitch”). Capitalism treats it as something to expect with teenagers, then paywall for adults: a ghost of the counterfeit to abject vis-à-vis state shift; Gothic Communists seek to reclaim such things within capital (I’m not showing off my hard dick, per my rule; it’s inside Cuwu):

(artists: Cuwu and Persephone van der Waard)

We’ll discuss “ancient” derelicts throughout the volume; here, I want a give personal anecdote illustrating them: my troubled relationship with Cuwu leading towards a pedagogy of the oppressed (relating to the alien side of each other using Gothic media) that I tried to raise in their memory long after our friendship officially expired.

(artist, paintings: H.R. Giger)

Another way to view Gothic derelicts, then, is a castle or an extension of a castle as an unheimlich storage facility—as something that seems to move or have human qualities when it doesn’t, or that actually gets up and moves around like a person despite ostensibly lacking a pilot; i.e., like a giant suit of armor inside an atmospheric, maze-like space that threatens to animate (thus return) in much the same fashion: a fearful imaginary past. Such events are generally meant to unsettle the audience, and carry along cryptomimetically (Giger and Scott, left): castles come from other castles, as does their hostile affect. As we proceed, then, synonyms to “great doom” or “apocalypse” should pop up, regarding a group effort to face and subvert them in demonstrable ways that survive us; i.e., in more permanent, castled fixtures rooted in the ashes of our non-existent bodies reminding someone of where we once were having been survived by material suggestions of us as made up of older things globally improvised with (our “junk”). This stark reflection often plays out in small, relayed not just in Hamlet’s graveyard fight with Laertes or his holding of poor Yorick’s skull; nor the Metroidvania’s infernal concentric pattern exemplified by Slave Knight Gael’s battle with the player (the doomed hero) at the end of the world/the end of time inside the hourglass inside the egg inside the painting (the narrative of the crypt); but also our own lives in small: our own derelicts having a personified quality that resembles old lovers as shadows of their former selves (what the Ancient Greeks called “shades”).

To that, Gothic derelicts (castles or castle-like bodies; i.e., suits of armor) are cumulative—easy to build[1] when you get the hang of it—but also express in more literal human forms, on or offstage: those we relate to using Gothic media as a means of “thinking with” (what the Brits would call an “aesthetic”). In turn, our friends are generally informed by what we were saddled with; e.g., my and Cuwu’s song being “In the Aeroplane Over the Sea” (1998) by Neutral Milk Hotel (a song supposedly about Anne Frank, but one which I heard unbeknownst to that while Cuwu was sucking my dick: in their car outside of a pet shop while we were both in love):

And one day we will die

And our ashes will fly from the aeroplane over the sea

But for now we are young

Let us lay in the sun

And count every beautiful thing we can see (source: Genius).

Faced with loss (or its memories), it’s easy to slip into a state of mourning anew, describing one’s current emotional state as a concentric funeral—of all our past selves speaking to us presently (their echoes reaching from Radcliffe forward to Scott to Jadis showing me The Witch’s House and Mad Father [2016] to me taking that to Cuwu’s, to my friend Seren’s fascination with such things, to my mother upstairs constantly watching horror movies so that it sounds like my house is haunted by copies of female “trauma” [with an actual ghost of the counterfeit] to Gerard Way’s “Baby, You’re a Haunted House” [2019] and so on). But the Gothic thrives amid disintegration as profoundly alive, not just fearful as Chris Baldrick describes (inheritance anxiety). It’s closer to Black Absinthe’s “Nobody Knows” (2024):

Making fake friends trying to get by.

Nobody knows the feelings are the low and you’re trying to stay high!

Sweet Serenity, I can’t fight when the night

Comes calling me!

[…] All day you’re runnin’ but you can’t escape the grave;

No one knows when it’s time to die!

When I heard that, I was like, “OMG, that was my relationship to Cuwu!” (never a good sign, haha): a former dancer and thong-wearing sexpot smiting this goth nerd with their portentous assets. Their heavenly-hellish body and unquenchable desire to be seen mirrored my aching desire to view and express such things; i.e., the artist and the muse’s asexual nudism and erotic voyeurism/exhibitionism something I want remembered precisely because it was special, good, pure and true (it ached to build, but feels better post-release—a bit like blue balls/clit). A humanist appeal to the slut in all of us, yearning to be free and loved for it.

(artists: Cuwu and Persephone van der Waard)

So, like The Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind (2004), I find myself slipping little clues of Cuwu to remind me of them—not my abuser as someone to love, but loving and remembering what I saw in them that was good, which I will look for in someone/somewhere else: the provocative likeness of Cuwu, who inspired me to write this book. If Jadis was the neoliberal who didn’t believe in my work, Cuwu was the Marxist-Leninist who did, and whose killer-queen persona (“sophisticated and precise”) and hungry-eyed stare, maternal commands, and tight little mommy pussy I have happily quested for in new an-Com mommies, post-separation. In the interim, I’ve decorated my hallways with echoes of our past pleasure, of likenesses to their best side while discussing them as they were in totality: monstrous-feminine—both a hot, fuckable, little mommy dragon consuming everything in sight and a killer doll whose portable house (and yawning train of Atlas-grade baggage) met me with irresistible bedroom eyes, a Klonopin dependency and the abusive tendencies of a twisted past. It takes me back to some wild, campy times: big feelings crammed inside a tiny cutie (who admittedly had a fat ass—a PAWG).

(model and photographer: Cuwu and Persephone van der Waard)

What we have here are all the usual BDSM antics with a deliberately Gothic aesthetic: sex-positive (thus harmless) hair-pulling, spankings and rough sex whose ludo-Gothic simulations intimate actual torture/trauma during fetishized kink, roleplay and straight-up sex sessions (skin-to-skin contact and fluid exchange, which often overlap with the above things, but don’t always). The praxial idea is mutual consent between those who can consent, not children dressed up against their will like show ponies groomed to emulate a parental enforcement of white America; i.e., so-called “beauty pageants”:

Well it’s true just take a look
The cover sometimes makes the book
And the judges, do they ever ask
To read between your lines
And in your cage at the human zoo,
They all stop to look at you
Next year, what will you do
When you have been forgotten (Styx’ “Miss America,” 1978).

(artist: MHSABA)

As Gothic Communists, we want to illustrate and foster mutual content, helping the better parts of those who wound us to be remembered, along with their humanity and ours inside-outside the same “superfreak” exhibits going on and on (“the kind you don’t take home to mother!”). Socio-sexual stimulation during ludo-Gothic BDSM provides healthy reality checks that activate vital ways of speculative thinking. These, in turn, are conducive to mutual consent and Gothic-Communist development, which help workers (each other) understand why people (often those who give birth) have breaks with reality (e.g., Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown, 1988) and otherwise do what they do as not always rational, but nevertheless having a reason tied to the real world; i.e., where they happen and what causes them: through our bodies, relationships and socio-material conditions. It starts with feeling sorry for them and ends with us helping them and each other as part of the same world to heal together. Empathy isn’t a weakness; diversity is strength; those who say otherwise are moderates and/or fascists (the former a disguised version of the latter) and not to be trusted. Those pro-state defenders saying something is “uncalled for” call for rebellion in spite of their sanctimonious tone-policing “going there.” No gods or masters; just Satanic[2] sluts from outer space, lovingly making Hell on Earth a sex-positive place for all workers, animals and the environment. Fuck the bourgeoisie (as in, “show them a sign of class resistance,” not actually have sex with them—gross), punch a Nazi (worker solidarity against capitalistic vigilantes) and make hot sweet love to Commies; i.e., “make love, not war” except class and culture war to break Capitalist Realism and develop Gothic Communism.

The source of the disease isn’t anomalous or idiopathic, it’s Capitalism. This means the cure relative to that anatomy is equally idiosyncratic. Single or together, married or common law, monogamous or extramarital—divide and conquer goes the other way around, with workers taking capital to task. Moguls, czars, billionaires, et al, dogmatically conflate as gurus when they’re really nepotistic charlatans acting like the golf ball (or the “hero”) from Happy Gilmore (1996), too good for its home[3]; we’ll melt them with our beautiful wickedness: spotting their markers (of the state’s critical illness), combating a worsening condition with partial/full transplants (as low-risk as we can manage, as high-risk as we need to: “from each according to their ability, to each according to their work” and eventually “need”), donations, and other forms of medicinal and palliative care (aimed at the self and the community as part of the same organism).

Homeostasis is not centrism; it’s anarcho-Communism, and the key to praxial synthesis and catharsis lies in the maid-and-butler dialogs we generate with Gothic poetics—i.e., our castles in all their funhouse forms and functions: our cute nicknames and interpersonal slogans[4], brash tattoos, stylish makeup, daring piercings, and other “loud” qualities (our tits, asses, dicks and pussies and other attractive qualities[5] relayed to us, our personalities and bodies—our money-makers of any shape, color or size—front and center) giving the pulse we also check for in others (what the Irish call a chuisle mo chroí: “the pulse of my heart”). With them, we rope bunnies, mommy doms, and paypigs collectively shake hands, kiss babies, rub elbows, moisturize (facials and creampies—with willing and consenting adults), and fund rebellion (and yes, sometimes kiss ass) in fiscal and social forms conjoined: “Use my body to keep you alive!” “Lactate ironically!” If not during fascism, genocide and climate change, then when exactly shall we pronounce these vows? We’re cutting it close as is (urgent care); i.e., it’s now or never, so time to commit and hop to it! Forget Bon Jovi’s neoliberal anthem; it’s a frank bleed, as crimson as Lena’s “99 Redluft Ballons” (1983):

Ninety-nine knights of the air
Ride super high-tech jet fighters
Everyone’s a Super Hero
Everyone’s a Captain Kirk (source: AZ Lyrics)

So pardon the irony, but it’s time to go nuclear—and not just for the current generation, but all life on Earth (solidarity with workers and nature)! The planet’s already on fire, so good luck “simmering down” to put down roots when the icecaps fully melt! With that being said, what are you afraid of (a rhetorical question; obviously banks, public shaming and the routine policing of media and bodies are real, ever-present concerns)? Let it (those giant “Luftballons”) all hang out; even if it’s all in vain[6], we’ll have turned a buck, enjoyed ourselves and treated others like humans/acted humanely in our final moments!

(artist: Keighla Night)

And yet, while nothing lasts forever, we can induce change that builds a better tomorrow by moving in a better direction—diligently and one step at a time, but whose earnest and nightly erecting of “chapels” (optional quotes) and their “nocturnal emissions” (ditto) guide the Superstructure directly away from profit and towards a post-scarcity world: our own echoing palimpsests leading to new reinvention (what’s commonly referred to as “remakes” in the movie business; i.e., Neo-Gothic) and social-sexual learning incentives (sex, companionship, food, etc). Just as state shift is brought about by the state, the state’s leveling is a seminal catastrophe we can embark on to build a Communist castle that puts us more in touch with all those forms and functions we’re alienated from save as commodified fetishes under capital; i.e., the medieval, whose funerary likenesses of those we love—its fine arches and buttresses (Cuwu, the page before last)—make for a bittersweet, but ultimately beneficial Sphinx: “a,” as Bay put it, “gravestone of something that never was, but could be in the future with someone else”; i.e., a naughty act to celebrate in: saying “Oh my god, babe! We’re totally doing a ‘Communism’ right now! I love ‘Communism’ so, so much!” / “Yes, baby! Now don’t stop!” while spreading the peach, splitting in half our muse-like FWBs and life partners (defined not hierarchically but through difference), forever and ever. Like the Joker, we’re always smiling (minus the harming of others). Let each encounter be your finest hour—one worthy of a castle all unto its own, buried gloriously alive in concentric undeath (made from stolen parts inventively reassembled; e.g., as Tolkien did with Scandinavian myth, minus his gentrifying cartographic refrains)!

Also, not to beat a dead horse, here, but try to keep our talks in mind regarding the medical side of things. Capital overwhelms and confuses, essentializing a want for answers. Beyond white (Cartesian) truth seekers, dysfunctional medics, or combat-trained, spandex-wearing enforcers, our payment is friendship, love and yes, sex often enough… or physical exercise of different kinds, often set to naughty music to “keep time”; e.g., dances, such as waltzes or tangos, often given a Gothic flavor commercialized by white cis-het men; i.e., the target audience of Pax Americana who desire a “midnight” or tone-poem/danse macabre quality to the proceedings: kinky sex with a goth flavor something routinely quested after by these same cis-het weirdos seeking a “Big Titty Goth GF” (waifu/war bride) to “dance” with. Unused to rejection, their brittle, infantile egos and bitter, cynical outlook learn to love the copy instead of the person; i.e., Pygmalion courting the statue as raw material for him to dominate, to own and do with as he pleases, but somehow always left wanting and alone. Their dolls become sacred and worthless, an entire generation becoming tantrum-prone, attacking and blaming real women for the boys’ inability to humanize anything around them or treat it with genuine love and respect. It becomes yet another war to wage against the harvested side.

Contrary to their perpetual angst and self-imposed schadenfreude, the joys of sex-positive bonding are what we find (out) and where the answers come from when we fuck around, experimenting to varying degrees of calculated risk[7]; i.e., our relationships to other workers and the world as interconnected, oceanic: to treat our gut instinct as something to trust more, not be skeptical of regarding workers-as-unicorns—what Bay calls mana. It’s not our addiction, it’s our microscope to cultivate in opposition to the state Superstructure, something to hold against our patronizers abjecting us. And if enjoying laughter, friendship, cosmetic gender expression (makeup, hair-care products and clothes) and sex is an “addiction,” so be it; bear in mind, though, if approached to non-harmful degrees, achieving harm regarding hedonistic factors as “drug-seeking” is literally impossible.

To that, you’re pitching in for those in need, not taking hemlock! Short of drowning in them, then, you generally can’t choke to death on a liquid (semen or otherwise); short of freak accidents, you can’t wear too much clothes or laugh too often, suck too much dick, etc[8] (so-called “gateway drug” arguments being the stuff of fearmongers—easier to fall on that sword than admit that you could have been fucking this whole time). There’s always something new to try on, seeing not just “what fits,” but what looks good (sometimes as little as possible—nudism being a common choice among partners and FWBs). It’s also not a race or a competition; i.e., cuties are not prizes to win or mountains to climb, but people to share company with and treat like humans. You’re there to relate to them, not shave seconds off how quickly you can lull them into a false sense of security that lasts “long enough” for your latest sexual conquest: to peel their panties off and battering-ram their coochie (sex is definitely a technique you can master, but there’s no “one-size-fits-all” approach, no “open-sesame” to help a given “cave” surrender its delightful treasures; each body is unique, meaning you want to listen to your partner and learn what they like and how they respond to your efforts to please both[9] of you).

(model and photographer: Cuwu and Persephone van der Waard)

In other words, this isn’t drugs or food; there’s no such thing as too much sex-positive love, friendship, clothes and sex (within reason, taking medical conditions into account, age and personal stamina). And if you ever think you’ve had “too much”—one, good for you; two, trust me, you’ll live. I fucked Cuwu, Jadis and Zeuhl multiple times a day, every day for months apiece (well, about a month for Cuwu, in-person, and less frequently than the others; but it didn’t matter cause they were a straight-up freak). And if you’re worried about broken hearts, they absolutely suck, but focus on landing on your feet; i.e develop better habits/outlets and learn to pick better partners and venues (the gayer, the better in my opinion). I’ve had my heart broken multiple times, and in lieu of self-improvement through conscious hard work, it only gets easier, babes. Embrace it; girls/fags don’t bite or have cooties (make sure to get tested for STIs with new partners, though). Got a sickness? Dare to find the cure; try something new “on for size,” panties or pussy (as castle-like, surrounded by/fortified with various towering battlements, above: “the raven himself is hoarse…”). Just don’t lose sight of your humanity (and that of those around you) as you experiment together—lost inside your own palaces, their fleshy labyrinths of “fatal” conjecture offering up forbidden knowledge, power and lust as chaotic, farcical, screw-loose; i.e., in ways that unhitch Marx’s nightmarish portents (“on the brains of the living”) to achieve praxial irony as mobile towards Gothic Communism.

That being said, if someone’s being hostile, treat them as such! Love conditionally, meaning always, always protect yourself; someone might look outwardly cute and adorable, but can still harm you. You deserve better—can do better than someone who harms you no matter how they look (Cuwu) or how much money they have (Jadis)! Treat them as human by saying “Enough is enough!” in so many words; i.e., cutting them off or leaving when they get abusive (aka, toxic love). It’s the DBT way. You don’t have to scrub them from your life if you don’t want to (i.e., a love-hate relationship; e.g., Cuwu); simply take away their ability to harm you and pass that along as a sex-positive lesson. Quit the rapey chamber/exit the harmful haunted house and make your own “rapey” one, instead!

Gird your loins! We’re off to “Medieval Expression” (the fun palace), but are only partway there! Next up, “Green Eggs and Ha(r)m!”

Footnotes

[1] It just takes enthusiasm, inspiration, and time to build a cathedral. Gothic cathedrals stem from big, exaggerated emotions, downplaying calmer forces in favor of intensely dramatic vibes, sadness, eroticism, and doom (the liminal hauntology of war), etc. They’re all at once maudlin, somber and furious—a boxed entropy, a myopia, an umbra, the eye of an angry god, an event horizon, Castlevania/Demon Castle Dracula, Satan’s asshole, etc—as something both spatio-temporally and physically alien to plunge repeatedly into: an altered state, a different plane or order of existence, an alternate dimension, etc, as accessed by forbidden artifacts or pathways (e.g., Clive Barker’s infamous Cenobites and Lament Configuration).

[2] Meaning “devil-worshipping atheists, Pagans, or something akin to that; e.g., Persephone van der Waard’s “I, Satanist; Atheist: A Gothicist’s Thoughts on Atheism, Religion, and Sex” (2021). But also something to legitimately fuck; i.e., the green women from the original Star Trek (1966) but less sexist and maybe a little goofy and weird; e.g., Clerks 2 (2006): “Like, be the first motherfucker to see a new galaxy, or find a new alien lifeform… and fuck it. And people’d be like, ‘There he goes. Homeboy fucked a Martian once.'”

[3] Which isn’t really fair to the ball; it’s a golf ball. Happy Gilmore, though, should know better. If he can get mad at a lifeless object, imagine what he could do to a woman who doesn’t want to sleep with him (actually don’t; watch how he handles rejection, right here).

[4] E.g., Cuwu and I calling each other “cummy Commies” and “cumrag comrades” to help Communism cutely cum—to arrive in the future through our efforts now as adorable.

[5] E.g., our body aromas, green thumbs, comedic windups, dramatic swan/frog songs (our swanning but also “little green boys,” our pets), and ironic addictive jests (not Edward Cullen’s codependent/terrible heroine metaphor for his old man’s predatory infatuation with a 16-year-old girl named Bella fucking Swan).

[6] And for those of you pearl-clutchers worried about your slice of the pie at hearing our fighting words: we’re not your enemy, the state is. Good girls and bad (“virgins” and “whores”), enbies and twinks, healthcare and sex workers, good friends (sexual and platonic) and perfect strangers—we’re all Queen Shit of Fuck Mountain, loves; all our stories (our loss, internalized guilt, divisions, attracting opposites, impostor syndrome, shared trauma, bonds, etc) are valid, mid-struggle, extending to our satirical deceptions and lies both white (“I’m just a dumb Dutch girl not up to anything!”) and splendid (e.g., Gulliver’s Travels, 1726), our idiosyncratic social-sexual configurations/qualities/distance (mono-to-plural/flings-to-FWBs-to-SOs/live-in-to-long-distance), our miracles, powerhouse Hail-Marys, and skeletons-in-the-closet. All water under a bridge if we try to change for the better! We reserve our judgements for actual cunts who only care about themselves.

Speaking of which, the state’s fascists, neoliberals, billionaires, class traitors (cops) and unironic rapists/sadists don’t change by design. So fuck the lot of them! Fuck their moral panic, “tough love/austerity politics,” personal responsibility rhetoric; their War on Drugs, on Crime, on sex work, on Christmas; their Capitalist Realism; their bribes and blackmail; their self-serving optics (“perception is reality”), vindictive smear campaigns (“witch hunts”) and mendacious charm offensives (“Trojan horses”); their insurance scams and micro transactions, charity tourism, compelled monogamy and love triangles (amatonormativity, heterosexual or not); their conspiracy theories, either kernel-of-truth (their rich political enemies attended Epstein’s pedophile island, person-of-color antivaxxers having felt the effects of genocide and medical abuse) or shit nuts—e.g., flat-earthers; i.e., neoliberal illusions blinding and harmful, like staring into the sun to cause eye and brain damage: stupidity by proximity, creed, and imaginary misuse leading to walking hyperbole as unironic farce—less “total brain rot” and more akin to multi-organ failure of one’s critical-thinking faculties; source tweet: AntiVaxxer (2024). It’s comedy gold to some extent, but also profoundly worrying given how dead-set these persons are against something so well-established (not any different than climate change in that respect, or vaccines; the colonizer group thinks they are beyond reproach, always right, and invincible, etc).

While chimerism is sadly a reality of class war and liminal expression, it’s self-defeating if it doesn’t ultimately abandon the Faustian bargains the state provides. So we must expose and cast out false parties until they lose all the masks (concentric veneers—more on these in Volume Three); i.e., until they change in ways actually beneficial to the Cause. Don’t be their kept Judas, their fascist patsy—their tokenized, TERF-to-SWERF-grade dupe or centrist chameleon turning coat!

[7] E.g., to fuck Cuwu not just like an animal or a mommy dom who topped me from below, but like a doll who vampirically could control me without blinking or moving an inch. Obviously with Cuwu it became harmful, but to some extent until that point it was a lot of fun (as Gothic/war scenarios offer plenty of theatrical potential for unequal power exchange and roleplay variation; e.g., the Western rape fantasy’s age-old tropes materializing inside a given period piece or hauntological mish-mash: to be chased down, overtaken, stripped and “violated” most indecently by unspeakable forces); i.e., bondage of a variety of forms that, whether most people realize it or not, have some element of consent-non-consent (aka informed consent) to them: sheathing and unsheathing my sword in their scabbard while they were awake,  but tied up or otherwise immobile; but also on drugs to literally fall asleep during “somno”/sleep sex (consenting beforehand to a mutual agreement built on trust). The rituals supplied a calculated risk meant to give them, as the sub, more power. Eventually it became lopsided—not a problem while in person, but certainly during physical separation, where they could control me from a distance to get what they wanted; i.e., like a queen in their castle, issuing gambit-like orders to someone held at arm’s length, past the raised drawbridge’s moist entrance, stuck on the other side of the moat.

(model and photographer: Cuwu and Persephone van der Waard)

All relationships involve some risk, of course, and I’ve talked about Cuwu’s abuse of me in Volumes One and Zero; suffice to say that they primed me—a vulnerable person just out of an abusive relationship—to care for them, long-distance, and then took me for every bit of emotional surplus they could muster. Though their “ballistics” were persuasive (the ass that launched a thousand ships), eventually I just couldn’t do it anymore. But to be completely honest, it wasn’t easy signaling the end to that relationship, either, and they drove me absolutely nuts in the meantime; indeed, I had to start Sex Positivity just to get over rebounding with them. Call it a blessing in disguise, though, and one with many fond memories (e.g., of a goofy vampy fae wearing my cloak, above) despite all the manipulative bullshit. I hope I’ve successfully conveyed that, here–that I wish them nothing but happiness and hope that our experiences together can help people like yourselves learn from our mistakes and achievements. Call it a fair and balanced criticism, a Gothic Romance based on my time in Transylvania: with the transgender crossdresser one generation removed from Dr. Frankenfurter.

[8] It’s far easier to injure yourself working out—or taking drugs (steroid abuse) to work out—than it is to fuck too much. Just with cis-het men, gym rats are a dime-a-dozen; there’s not exactly an overabundance/”epidemic” of sex-positive Casanovas in the cis-het male population.

[9] The exact ratio varies; e.g., I’m a service top and get turned on by helping my playmates feel good. Some people are sadists, masochists, tops, bottoms, switches, etc. All’s well that’s sex-positive!