This blog post is part of “Searching for Secrets,” a second promotion originally inspired by the one I did with Harmony Corrupted: “Brace for Impact” (2024). That promotion was meant to promote and provide Volume Two, part one’s individual pieces for easy public viewing (it has since become a full, published book module: the Poetry Module). “Searching for Secrets” shall do the same, but with Volume Two, part two’s opening/thesis section and one of its two Monster Modules, the Undead (the other module, Demons, also having a promotion: “Deal with the Devil“). As usual, this promotion was written, illustrated and invigilated by me as part of my larger Sex Positivity (2023) book series.

Click here to see “Searching for Secrets” Table of Contents and Full Disclaimer.

Volume Two, part two (the Undead Module) is out now (9/6/2024)! Go to my book’s 1-page promo to download the latest version of the PDF (which will contain additions/corrections the original blog posts will not have)!

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).

Concerning Buggy Images: Sometimes the images on my site don’t always load and you get a little white-and-green placeholder symbol, instead. Sometimes I use a plugin for loading multiple images in one spot, called Envira Gallery, and not all of the images will load (resulting in blank white squares you can still right-click on). I‘ve optimized most of the images on my site, so I think it’s a server issue? Not sure. You should still be able to access the unloaded image by clicking on the placeholder/right-clicking on the white square (sometimes you have to delete the “?ssl=1” bit at the end of the url). Barring that, completed volumes will always contain all of the images, whose PDFs you can always download on my 1-page promo.

The Undead Module Is Out! An Epilogue to Go with It

the number of ways the state oppresses, divides and conquers is without limit, affecting colonial territories like the Middle East, Africa and the Global South, from Rwanda to Vietnam to Cuba to Palestine and so many others. From snipers to bombs to death squads to eugenics programs, etc, nothing the colonizer does is fair and they fear everything around them enough to kill without question; they have to or profit cannot happen. Our guerilla-style resistance (asymmetrical warfare reclaiming the Aegis) needs to be cumulative as a means of developing something post-scarcity mid-resistance and decay. In short, we need to raise our voices—however loud and however soft—to speak out against the daily abuses of the colonized by the settler-colonial project as a fundamental element of Capitalism that will try and disguise itself. This includes lies and controlled opposition; e.g., Pride as something to recuperate by Rainbow Capitalism and something to reclaim by us.

—Persephone van der Waard, Volume Two, part two (2024)

(model and artist: Harmony Corrupted and Persephone van der Waard)

Picking up from where “Seeing Dead People; or Undead Feeding Vectors, part two: Ghosts“! left off…

First and foremost, the Undead Module is out, babes! It’s a monster (so to speak) sub-volume. Over 1,000 pages and 800 unique images, it explores the poetic history of undead, covering zombies, vampires and ghosts in exhaustive detail; e.g., apocalypses, hauntings, castles and more! The module has taken four months to write, but is actually based on an older manuscript—a Humanities primer I wrote two years ago. Having since written my PhD and two other books, I returned to the primer and expanded on it big time! I’m very proud of this one! Again, go to my website’s one-page promo and pick up a copy for free!

Second, this piece is included at the end of the Undead Module, but discusses content in the upcoming Demon Module. It’s meant to be an epilogue for the former and prologue for the latter.

Deal with the Devil: Transitioning Modules; or Between Demons and the Undead

O, what a world of profit and delight,

Of power, of honour, of omnipotence,

Is promis’d to the studious artizan!

All things that move between the quiet poles

Shall be at my command (source).

—Faustus, The Tragical History of Doctor Faustus (1604)

Now that we’ve covered zombies, vampires and ghosts, the Undead Module is complete (I’ll be uploading the full sub-volume, today)! Its conclusion shall accomplish three basic things: one, acknowledge the transition between ghosts and composites; two, outline my thought process for the Demon Module and my writing it, versus the Undead Module; and three, wrap up with some broad closing objectives about Gothic Communism to keep in mind.

First, the transition: Originally the Undead and Demon Module were part of the same document, and the opening to the Demon Module is actually a segue into composite monsters, which walk the line between undead, animal and demonic. Let’s discuss that (two pages).

From the Undead Module, the Demon Module shall transition to composites, which are different from the monsters we’ve examined so far. Zombies, ghosts and vampires are all discretely undead, denoting a curse-like presence amid a stigmatized feeding vector. Pew, pew! The Straights attack such shooting-gallery gargoyles to protect white pussy from evil black penetration, blood libel and sodomy, etc; we fags occupy the same space to speak spectrally to our own rapes and eventual liberation:

Composites, on the other hand, are questionably undead. Often made from inanimate material like clay or stone, but also the reanimated flesh of dead pariahs, criminals and slaves, composites fixate on feeding of a more homely kind: family ties, social connection and sexual enrichment. However, their origins damn them before they are even born. Their “births” are unnatural, tied to a Promethean search for forbidden knowledge by those who made them; i.e., as alienated from nature being the very thing state forces prey upon to deify themselves. As the vain, self-righteous parent ignores, neglects and abuses their child, they treat them spitefully as the failed “demonic” outcome of a noble-if-vain experiment. This leads the newborn(s) to angrily seek revenge, often by torturing their maker to death before committing suicide; but it just as often speaks to a desire to fit in, oscillating between different states of mind acted out onscreen (androids in Alien speaking to the queer/harem servant trope):

Obviously this crisis can be subverted during Gothic Communism, but doing so stems from older stories that were designed “to chill the blood.” The queer spectres of such possible worlds endure to camp canon, resisting Cartesian silence and genocide through selective reading during intersectional solidarity’s pedagogy of the oppressed—to take what is useful from all that came before and to leave the rest behind.

(artist: Alex Ross)

For instance, earlier we briefly mentioned the posthuman predicament of the Major from Ghost in the Shell. Proceeding into the Demon Module, we’ll explore the origins of the posthuman condition—not according to ghosts, zombies or vampires, but through a different kind of abstraction: demons as byproducts of our material world as having evolved into its current self. Whether composite, summoned (occult), and/or natural, demons serve as fearful reminders of past pursuits towards presently forbidden knowledge, sealed off by the Cartesian Revolution and its enforcers. This isn’t so different from feeding on human tissue and enduring/policing Cartesian war and rape in practice, but the aesthetic is visually unique and highly ritualized through its own stories critiquing or enforcing state paradigms.

To this, we’ll explore how demonic expression can subvert Cartesian trauma through playful, exquisite forms of “torture” scattered across space and time; i.e., not undead feeding but demonic shapeshifting and Faustian knowledge and Promethean power exchange. To understand our own trauma (and to shove the paradigm shift away from Enlightenment dogma), we’ll need to see where it all started: with the Promethean Quest as re-envisioned by Mary Shelley after the Enlightenment was well underway.

Second, with the Undead Module completed, and its release eminent, I’ve written a short little blurb (two pages) concerning my thought process for the Demon Module. The Undead Module, even with several of the initial chapters transplanted to the back end of the Poetry Module, is still a full-size text; i.e., it is a sub-volume, that unit of measurement being used to indicate the Undead Module as part of a larger organizational unit, the volume, regardless of actual length. Thus, the Undead and Demon Modules are both sub-volumes, even though the Undead Module is finished, whereas the Demon Module is still very much under construction (as of writing this; you can follow its writing process at the “Deal with the Devil” promo page, on my website).

About that. The incomplete status of the second Monster Module reflects where things presently stand with me; i.e., as a trans woman, I am currently under construction, my past self already having been brought out and made into various object lessons while likewise taking my previous book volumes (my PhD, manifesto and Poetry Module) into account. In short, the Undead Module was about healing from my past trauma while thinking about it poetically in relation to the undead and how they operate; i.e., through trauma and feeding mechanisms fixated on undead poetics—doing so in order to yield history lessons concerning imaginary/objective forms of reality as part of the same living document, including its aesthetic reclaimed during ludo-Gothic BDSM/revolutionary cryptonymy. Not all sight is done with the eyes!

(artists: Lucid-01 and Persephone van der Waard)

Keeping with that cumulative, holistic trend, my past is currently alive in an undead sense that faces my uncertain future as transforming more and more into a demonic, witchy and goblin-esque self (left); i.e., one that yields fresh perspective, speculation and—true to the demonic approach to Gothic poetics—forbidden knowledge and power exchange synthesizing good praxis and catharsis; re: “Eating a meal, a succulent Chinese meal?” Sanguine or ectoplasm, darkness visible or night soil, things will come back around, already synthesized only to be synthesized again. Repeatedly playing with such devils is to play with what we can become, entering a new stage of existence; i.e., an exciting new, demonic chapter in our lives! It hurts so good, but speaks to our half-real, unclothed armor! Truth cannot be covered up, because our confused, blurred realities speak to an ongoing and shapeshifting survival. We become marked, thus must learn to fend off new predatory overtures while getting our kicks; i.e., as devils in disguise that advertise for those who know!

To it, my book chapters are as much an expression of my mastery and transformation as they are my trauma and odd appetites that I might interrogate through holistic expression. There’s no logical conclusion or “final number/verdict” to mark where I’ll wind up, in that respect; i.e., I’m already a master magician who’s written her PhD and three other books, at this point. This fourth book is just the next step in a never-ending journey for which the contents are laid out (the skeleton), but for which I can add additional essays and close-reads, should I wish to.

(artist: Persephone van der Waard)

So, despite my consolidation and reifying of wisdom, I still don’t know exactly what will happen next or what I’ll turn into as I make my deal with the devil. Showing the world what we fags always are—something to reclaim from our colonizers in the endless task of complete liberation—is kind of fun, isn’t it? And invested in having such fun as that is, I shall keep on making things I know the elite would rather I didn’t (as much as they care to concern themselves with anything but profit). Expect some new fun surprises as I continue hammering the Demon Module into its so-called “final form”—not the end-all, be-all of Persephone van der Waard, but something of a crystallization that can be used in future endeavors by other workers referencing all of my works as needed. I am your angel and your devil, offering up fatal knowledge to help you transform and achieve Gothic Communism yourselves! With music, monsters and theatrical mayhem—with ludo-Gothic BDSM (“Hurt, not harm,” my sweets)—we clownish fags strut our stuff. Historically, this would end with us promptly fucking off. Not anymore! We’re here and we’re queer, bitches!

Three, some broad closing objectives to keep in mind as we go between modules; i.e., regarding Gothic Communism, regardless of monster type!

Capitalism Realism would advocate for death and resurrection to keep people stuck in an endless loop of ignorance and pacification—of jumping simply to the end of the world. Except, our jouissance in fucking with them—through spectres of Marx per the Four Gs, including hauntology and the cryptonymy process camping canon/making it and its ghosts gay—provides its own delightful paradoxes inside shared spaces that state forces cannot fully control or dominate; i.e., regarding monstrous occupants threatening to return and overthrow the heteronormative nuclear order with dark, super-gay doubles: a danger-disco event horizon that, through all the usual performative combat, castles, noir-style romances, and good-times-had-by-all penetrative thresholds (and party music disguised as “combat”; e.g., Duke’s theme from Battle Arena Toshinden, 1995), brings darkness visible to the state’s Capitalist-Realist myopia!

The stairs (and murder), then, aren’t the wrong way, Jonathan La’Fey, but a direct line to what yearns to be free and run wild in ways labor never has before:

I am alive inside your wife
Miriam’s dead, I am her head, soon I’ll be free! (King Diamond, “Abigail,” 1987).

So do we pretty-spunky soldiers of class war gleefully and joyously liberate culture (and race) from the usual territorial dialogs/monopolies! That’s all she wrote, as we wear our cryptonymic hearts on our sleeves. Bare and exposed, but unbothered and unburdened by state baggage, we prey and pray/duel in duality mid-liminal and holistic expression! We get comfy but stay ready to scrap in the buff! Doing so highlights where bigotry lurks, and what areas need work!

(artist: Ickpot)

As such, we make sure to include others, tie ourselves up in knots, undo state bonds and police cuffs, put on BDSM fetish uniforms, whip with crops, jiggle and shake, play games, put “rape” in quotes, swoon, thunder/starstrike, mutate (“It’s morphin’ time!“), matchmake, love you and leave you just as fast—indeed, leave ourselves magically behind like a lover’s pair of used panties, a genie’s lamp for you to smell and/or wear to better come up with new ideas/inspiration: labors of love, while making love, rubbing clits with elbow grease! Trauma marks us, and during calculated risk, we free ourselves but—like Persephone—remain endemic to Hell, skirting the borderline between itself and heavenly spheres! We become the mistress of our fate, ruling in Hell versus serving in Heaven: stepped on by Mother Nature in mil spec.

In turn, the complexities of play let us host feelings and performances concerning betrayal and catharsis; i.e., on the same stages. There, we can be maiden or whore, having some sense of control over how we are seen, thus humanized. We can recontextualize our abuse, codifying it in ways that speak to what happened to us and what we want as likewise liminal. We expose and entertain, embarrass and embellish where and what is needed.

To it, women (or those treated as women/monstrous-feminine) are not sex machines to force coins into until sex comes out, but capital’s us-versus-them will frame us that way to antagonize labor and pimp nature out. In this sense, not only is sex a game vis-à-vis new instruction as dialectical-material, but multiple games are happening all at once. Rules can be explained, but just as often negotiate and install invisible, half-real boundaries that play out through trust between individuals and groups alike; re: bondage and blindfolds, erogenous pleasure and non-harmful pain. Subs and doms have needs/can be pushy or noncommittal/predatory to varying degrees.

To prevent “harm,” then, is to put it in quotes and learn to tell the difference by synthesizing it in our daily lives; re: our gossip, monsters and camp! “Harder, faster! Stop! No; no means yes [with safewords]!” There’s so much fun to be had/empathy to cultivate provided we learn to play smart/subversively! Learn from the past and make the Wisdom of the Ancients perceptive through revolutionary cryptonymy—to create situations of calculated risk that instruct how to hurt, not harm; i.e., how to fuck and have fun without compelled abuse raping nature as the elite always do. The state isn’t just incompatible with life, but mutual consent, its hierarchies designed to rape and destroy for the biggest illusions of all: money and power. Gothic Communism illustrates said lessons/struggles in opposition to state forces/class traitors and capital’s usual qualities—heteronormativity, Cartesian dualism and setter-colonialism—alienating and sexualizing everything in service to profit, and cultivating strange appetites. ACAB and ASAB! Socialism fucks; we fuck for Communism! Hail, Satan!

So put your backs into it and rise to the challenge, my pretties! Put the carnal in carnival! Take it to the edge! Fuck to metal (or Bach—whatever works)! Summon the slut and “lose yourselves to dance!” (as Daft Punk puts it); make Gothic Communism your own! From undead to demon to animal, this is where our lost humanity is found; have the courage to go and find it!

Your Commie Mommy,

—Persephone van der Waard

(model and artist: Persephone van der Waard)