Book Sample: “Deal with the Devil” Module Contents and Disclaimer

Posted on by Persephone van der Waard

“Deal with the Devil” is a blog-style book promotion, originally inspired by the first and second ones I did with Harmony Corrupted: “Brace for Impact” and “Searching for Secrets” (2024). The first 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). “Deal with the Devil” shall do the same, but with Volume Two, part two’s opening/thesis section and one of its two Monster Modules, Demons (the “Searching for Secrets” promotion covered the Undead Module, which is now live). As usual, this promotion was written, illustrated and invigilated by me as part of my larger Sex Positivity (2023) book series. This specific promo post includes the Demon Module’s table of contents (and hyperlinks to each post), followed by the book disclaimer.

Note: “Deal with the Devil” is a work-in-progress and will be routinely updated as I publish new sample posts for Volume Two, part two. I anticipate the entire process to take at least 2-3 months (“seven vagánias, maybe more“).

Volume Two, part two (the Undead Module) is out now (9/6/2024)! I wrote an epilogue for the module along with its debut announcement. Give that a look; then, 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 at the bottom of the page.

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.

(artist: Romantic Rose)

Contents (for Volume Two, part two) 

Volume Two, part two divides into two Monster Modules, which will release as separate sub-volumes (due to length issues). Both halves contain the opening thesis statement, “A Cruel Angel’s Thesis” (which discusses the overlap between trauma/feeding and transformation/power and knowledge exchange); the first half, “Searching for Secrets,” holds the Undead Module, whereas the second half, “Deal with the Devil,” contains the Demon Module and volume conclusion.

All in all, these individual posts are the primary sections/chapters of each module for Volume Two, part two. Modules are sections that concern multiple chapters, subchapters, and so on. While the Poetry Module focused on Gothic poetics as a historical-material process whose history we contribute towards, the Monster Modules shall focus on the history of Gothic poetics as something to learn from when poetically articulating our own pedagogy of the oppressed.

Playing with Dead Things (opening and thesis chapter)

Summary

The opening to Volume Two, part two, as well as the thesis chapter for the Monster Modules. Each module will have its own promo series, and each promo series will only contain its respective module/sub-volume.

Update, 8/7/2024: Originally “Playing with Dead Things” contained two additional chapters: “In Search of the Secret Spell” and “Back to the Necropolis.” However, to keep Volume Two, part two from getting too big, I’ve decided to transplant those into Volume Two, part one (as of v1.2 onwards, which you can access on my book’s 1-page promo). I’ve updated this content page and the content page for “Brace for Impact” to reflect those changes. —Perse

Posts

Demons: From Composites and the Occult to Totems and the Natural World (module)

Cover model: Romantic Rose

Summary (WIP)

This module explores the poetic history of demons; i.e., as actively cunning-yet-alien shapeshifters, presented canonically as treacherous within forbidden knowledge and power exchange: as untrustworthy beings made deceitful and torturous through the ghost of the counterfeit’s process of abjection. As such, they are manmade, presented as occult beings that are summoned, composite bodies that are built (cyborgs, golems and robots), or overtly natural totems that are hunted down within nature-as-alien in either case: something to present as demonic, then isolate, dehumanize and invade under Cartesian duress. Reclaiming them requires embodying and subversively humanizing the Satanic transformative power they provide, generally in defense of nature as made alien by state forces (the trifectas, monopolies and their proponents)—to imbue with transformative fatal power that, in some shape or form, targets us for state abuse, which we subvert mid-exchange away from Capitalism’s usual tortures and towards Gothic Communism’s unknown pleasures.

Module Posts

Editor’s Note: This is the manuscript as it presently exists (as of 9/11/2024). I’ll doubtless be expanding as I go, but this is the pearl around which any renovations shall be added. This being said, I don’t expect to expand on things to nearly the same extent as the Undead Module; but I will probably add some additional essays, illustrations and subchapters.

  • 2. “Demons: From Composites and the Occult to Totems and the Natural World” (module opening): Outlines the historical, poetic, praxial focus on the Demons Modules, and outlines its chapters on transformation and knowledge/power exchange. Opening Length: ~30 pages.
  • 3. “Forbidden Sight and the Promethean Quest: Knowledge and Power Exchange” (chapter opening): Considers how the Promethean Quest is something that, faced with old mysteries, ventures inside to uncover forbidden knowledge and fatal (for Cartesian men) power. As such, knowledge and power often become something to gaze upon, blasting the viewer to bits; but just as often, they exist as things to play with! Opening Length: ~4 pages.
    • 3a. ” part zero: “Idle Hands, Weapons in Clay; or, Prostitution, Vampire Revenge, Goblins and Demonic Sex (feat. Takena’s ‘Midnight Nature,’ Tolkien’s Goblin Town, Berserk, and more)” [included with chapter opening]: “Hell had no fury like a woman scorned!” Briefly explores claymation as the violent domain of sex demons—a psychosexual camp with traumatic baggage unpacked by Takena in their short but gnarly claymation skit, “Midnight Vampire” (2024)! Expands this to goblins and demon lovers at large! Length: ~40 pages.
    • 3b. ” part one: “Making Demons—Composite Bodies, Golems and Mad Science; or the Roots of Enlightenment Persecution”: Explores the act of making demons from Mary Shelley’s 1818 novel onwards! Opening Length: ~31 pages.
    • 3c. ” part two: “Summoning Occult Demons—Imposters and Death Curses; the Demonic BDSM of Canonical Torture vs Exquisite ‘Torture'”: Per Alien, Evil Dead and other stories, lays out the idea of summoning occult demons, including acts of interrogating them through the classic Neo-Gothic model: damsels, detectives and demons per canonical torture vs exquisite “torture.” ~42 pages.
    • 3d. “Exploring the Derelict Past: The Demonic Trifecta of Detectives, Damsels and Sex Demons; or Enjoying Yesterday’s Exquisite Torture on the Edge of the Civilized World” (subchapter chapter opening): Considers the left-behind, derelict quality of demons, and unpacks various qualities of derelicts, damsels, detectives and demons separately and together! Opening Length: ~6 pages.
      • 3d1. “‘Damsels, Detectives and Sex Demons,’ part zero: Derelicts, Medusa and Giger’s Xenomorph; i.e., the Puzzle of ‘Antiquity'”: Outlines the idea of “derelicts”—be they damsels, detectives or sex demons—through Medusa/Giger’s xenomorph as involving all three. Length: ~18 pages.
      • 3d2. ” part one: “Damsels and Detectives”: Further explores damsels and detectives as classic Neo-Gothic devices, the oppositional praxis of which has survived well into the present. Length: ~39 pages.
      • 3d3. ” part two: “Demons and Dealing with Them”: Further explores demons in a similar fashion, but touches on additional ways these complicated beings needn’t be feared (through the process of abjection) but celebrated as Satanic liberators freeing our minds from heteronormativity and the status quo.
      • Length: ~23 pages.

(model and artist: Mikki Storm and Persephone van der Waard)

  • 4. “Call of the Wild; or ‘Sex Education,’ Trans-forming the World through the Trans, Intersex and Non-binary Mode of Being” (chapter opening): Examines the transformative side of demons, predominantly into the natural world as preyed upon by the state. Opening Length: ~3 pages.
    • 4a. “‘Call of the Wild,’ part zero: Hunter and Hunted; or, Nature vs the State”: Will outline the different animal types (separate from undead and demonic) and revisit their broader settler-colonial relationship to the state; then, it provides some examples of sexualized expression and labor that, while fun, we won’t have time to explore beyond exhibiting them (nature is simply too diverse*). Length: ~37 pages.
    • 4b. ” part one: “‘Monster-Fucking’ and Furry Panic, feat. Lycans, Chimeras, and Sentient Animals”: Will delve into further undead qualities of natural monsters, expressing “monster-fucking” as a pornographic form of sex-positive education featuring lycans, chimeras, and sentient animals to cope with trauma that is often something to live with; i.e., furry panic. Length: ~29 pages.
    • 4c. ” part two: “‘Follow the White Rabbit’; or Magic, Drugs and Acid Communism, feat. the Monstrous-Feminine of Magic Girls, Unicorns and Xenomorphs”: Applies the same logic to explore sex(-positive) education (from children to adults) through acid Communism; i.e., spells and drugs, featuring the monstrous-feminine of magic girls, unicorns and xenomorphs. Length: ~60 pages.

*I.e., diversity is strength, beating singular perceptions of strength that, through Cartesian domination, try to hold on to power to everyone’s detriment. 

In Closing (final chapters and conclusion)

Summary

The closing chapter and conclusion to Volume Two, part two.

Chapters Posts

  • 5. “The Future is a Dead Mall” (chapter): Monsters are classically devalued outside of canonical forms utilized by state forces, which leads to Capitalist Realism under the current order of things. To critique Capitalism, then, we must critique people’s devaluing of the Gothic or otherwise misusing/scapegoating it for Capitalism’s woes: Radcliffe, but also Coleridge and Jameson. Through a cultivated Wisdom of the Ancients (a cultural understanding of the imaginary past), we can confront Capitalist Realism through the monsters normally pitted against us instead of speaking for us and nature as exploited by the elite. It becomes something to synthesize through our creative successes—a concept we’ll explore entirely in Volume Three while reflecting on Volume Two’s monstrous histories. Length: ~22 pages.
  • 6. “‘The Caterpillar’; or, What’s to Come” (module and volume conclusion): A conclusion to the volume based on its contents, but highlighted through medieval expression and a coda (the caterpillar) to encapsulate everything the volume has discussed moving into Volume Three. Length: ~10 pages.

(disclaimer exhibit: Artist: Harmony Corrupted, who provided me with various materials from her Fansly account to use [with her permission] in my book, including cum photos. For those of legal age who enjoy Harmony’s work and want to see more than this website provides, consider subscribing to her Fansly account and then ordering a custom/tipping through her Ko-Fi. You won’t be disappointed!)

Disclaimer

“If it was not good, it was true; if it was not artistic, it was sincere; if it was in bad taste, it was on the side of life.”

—Henry Miller, on criticism and the Supreme-Court-level lawsuit he received for writing The Tropic of Cancer (1934)

Regarding This Book’s Artistic/Pornographic Nudity and Sexual Content: Sex Positivity thoroughly discusses sexuality in popular media, including fetishes, kinks, BDSM, Gothic material, and general sex work; the illustrations it contains have been carefully curated and designed to demonstrate my arguments. It also considers pornography to be art, examining the ways that sex-positive art makes iconoclastic statements against the state. As such, Sex Positivity contains visual examples of sex-positive/sex-coercive artistic nudity borrowed from publicly available sources to make its educational/critical arguments. Said nudity has been left entirely uncensored for those purposes. While explicitly criminal sexual acts, taboos and obscenities are discussed herein, no explicit illustrations thereof are shown, nor anything criminal; i.e., no snuff porn, child porn or revenge porn. It does examine things generally thought of as porn that are unironically violent. Examples of uncensored, erotic artwork and sex work are present, albeit inside exhibits that critique the obscene potential (from a legal standpoint) of their sexual content: “ultimate sexual acts, normal or perverted, actual or simulated, masturbation, excretory functions, lewd exhibition of the genitals, or sado-masochistic sexual abuse” (source: Justice.gov). For instance, there is an illustrated example of uncensored semen—a “breeding kink” exhibit with zombie unicorns and werewolves (exhibit 87a)—that I’ve included to illustrate a particular point, but its purposes are ultimately educational in nature.

The point of this book isn’t to be obscene for its own sake, but to educate the broader public (including teenagers*) about sex-positive artwork and labor historically treated as obscene by the state. For the material herein to be legally considered obscene it would have to simultaneously qualify in three distinct ways (aka the “Miller” test):

  • appeal to prurient interests (i.e., an erotic, lascivious, abnormal, unhealthy, degrading, shameful, or morbid interest in nudity, sex, or excretion)
  • attempt to depict or describe sexual conduct in a patently offensive way (i.e., ultimate sexual acts, normal or perverted, actual or simulated, masturbation, excretory functions, lewd exhibition of the genitals, or sado-masochistic sexual abuse)
  • lack serious literary, artistic, political, or scientific value

Taken as a whole, this book discusses debatably prurient material in an academic manner, depicting and describing sexual conduct in a non-offensive way for the express purpose of education vis-à-vis literary-artistic-political enrichment.

*While this book was written for adults—provided to them through my age-gated website—I don’t think it should be denied from curious teenagers through a supervising adult. The primary reason I say this (apart from the trauma-writing sections, which are suitably intense and grave) is that the academic material can only be simplified so far and teenagers probably won’t understand it entirely (which is fine; plenty of books are like that—take years to understand more completely). As for sexually-developing readers younger than 16 (ages 10-15), I honestly think there are far more accessible books that tackle the same basic subject matter more quickly at their reading level. All in all, this book examines erotic art and sex positivity as an alternative to the sex education currently taught (or deliberately not taught) in curricular/extracurricular spheres. It does so in the hopes of improving upon canonical tutelage through artistic, dialectical-material analysis. 

Fair Use: This book is non-profit, and its artwork is meant for education, transformation and critique. For those reasons, the borrowed materials contained herein fall under Fair Use. All sources come from popular media: movies, fantasy artist portfolios, cosplayer shoots, candid photographs, and sex worker catalogs intended for public viewing. Private material has only been used with a collaborating artist’s permission (for this book—e.g., Blxxd Bunny‘s OF material or custom shoots; or as featured in a review of their sex work on my website with their consent already given from having done past work together—e.g., Miss Misery).

Concerning the Exhibit Numbers and Parenthetical Dates: I originally wrote this book as one text, not four volumes. Normally I provide a publication year per primary text once per text—e.g., “Alien (1979)”—but this would mean having to redate various texts in Volumes One, Two and Three after Volume Zero. I have opted out of doing this. Likewise, the exhibit numbers are sequential for the entire book, not per volume; references to a given exhibit code [exhibit 11b2 or 87a] will often refer to exhibits not present in the current volume. I have not addressed this in the first edition of my book, but might assemble a future annotated list in a second edition down the road.

Concerning Hyperlinks: Those that make the source obvious or are preceded by the source author/title will simply be supplied “as is.” This includes artist or book names being links to themselves, but also mere statements of fact, basic events, or word definitions where the hyperlink is the word being defined. Links to sources where the title is not supplied in advance or whose content is otherwise not spelled out will be supplied next to the link in parentheses (excluding Wikipedia, save when directly quoting from the site). One, this will be especially common with YouTube essayists I cite to credit them for their work (though sometimes I will supply just the author’s name; or their name, the title of the essay and its creation year). Two, concerning YouTube links and the odds of videos being taken down, these are ultimately provided for supplementary purposes and do not actually need to be viewed to understand my basic arguments; I generally summarize their own content into a single sentence, but recommend you give any of the videos themselves a watch if you’re curious about the creators’ unique styles and perspectives about a given topic.

Concerning (the PDF) Exhibit Image Quality: This book contains over 1,000 different images, which—combined with the fact that Microsoft Word appears to compress images twice (first, in-document images and second, when converting to PDFs) along with the additional hassle that is WordPress’ limitations on accepting uploaded PDFs (which requires me to compress the PDF again—has resulted in sub-par image quality for the exhibit images themselves. To compensate, all of the hyperlinks link to the original sources where the source images can be found. Sometimes, it links to the individual images, other times to the entire collage, and I try to offer current working links; however, the ephemeral, aliased nature of sex work means that branded images do not always stay online, so some links (especially those to Twitter/X accounts) won’t always lead to a source if the original post is removed.

Concerning Aliases: Sex workers survive through the use of online aliases and the discussion of their trauma requires a degree of anonymity to protect victims from their actual/potential abusers. This book also contains trauma/sexual anecdotes from my own life; it discusses my friends, including sex workers and the alter egos/secret identities they adopt to survive “in the wild.” Keeping with that, all of the names in this book are code names (except for mine, my late Uncle Dave’s and his ex-wife Erica’s—who are only mentioned briefly by their first names). Models/artists desiring a further degree of anonymity (having since quit the business, for example) have been given a codename other than their former branded identity sans hyperlinks (e.g., Jericho).

Extended, Book-Wide Trigger Warning: This entire book thoroughly discusses xenophobia, harmful xenophilia (necrophilia, pedophilia, zoophilia, etc), homophobia, transphobia, enbyphobia, sexism, racism, race-/LGBTQ-related hate crimes/murder and domestic abuse; child abuse, spousal abuse, animal abuse, misogyny and sexual abuse towards all of these groups; power abuse, rape (date, marital, prison, etc), discrimination, war crimes, genocide, religious/secular indoctrination and persecution, conversion therapy, manmade ecological disasters, and fascism.

(artist: Romantic Rose)