This post is part of “Searching for Secrets,” a second book sample series originally inspired by the one I did with Harmony Corrupted: “Brace for Impact“ (2024). That series 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’s assorted chapters and its twin modules, the Undead and Demons. As usual, this promo series (and all its posts) are written, illustrated and invigilated by me as part of my larger Sex Positivity (2023) book series.

Volume Two, part one (the Poetry Module) is out now (5/1/2024)! I wrote a preface 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 full module (which will contain additions/corrections the original blog posts will not have)!

Click here to see “Searching for Secrets'” 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 at the bottom of the page.

Picking up from where “Into the Toy Chest, part one” left off…

Into the Toy Chest, part two: My Experiences

Eventually, she picks up a drifter and takes him to bed. It is good, “so good that sometimes she would shake her head-no, no-because it was so good she might not be able to stand it, she would burst.” When sex is finished, she demands that he leave. Calm at first, she issues her demands with increasing hysteria. The apartment is her domain, her “castle,” the most coherent image of “self” that she has preserved. She must preside over this-at least this inner space. But the drifter will not withdraw. And when Theresa berates him, he beats her to death. The “reality” of the demon lover’s literal violence triumphs, after all.

Two hundred years ago Ann Radcliffe introduced Gothic conventions into the mainstream of English fiction. For the first time the process of feminine sexual initiation found respectable, secular expression. Yet the terms of this expression were ultimately limiting. It is important to recognize and acknowledge the heritage of Ann Radcliffe’s Gothic tradition; it is even more important now to move on and invent other, less mutilating conventions for the rendering of feminine sexual desire (source).

—Cynthia Wolff, “The Radcliffean Gothic Model” (1979)

Part one covered the nuts and bolts of Gothic history as toy-like through its parasocial exchanges; part two shall observe them when reflecting on my interpersonal exchanges: my exes, but also my working relationships with friends (with benefits) and life partners.

To that, sex should be fun, should give both sides a performative means of finding catharsis while camping “rape” as canonically synonymous with sex under capital:

(artists: Persephone van der Waard and Cuwu)

We all want some form of intimacy while surviving capital as something we can transform through ourselves and what we leave behind; ludo-Gothic BDSM goes well beyond Radcliffe or Wolff and considers the sex-positive potential of rape fantasies involving people who have survived trauma differently and yet—as I describe it in Volume One—have to heal from rape as a structure they relate to differently per Gothic texts. As I wrote (of Cuwu and I) in “Healing from Rape”:

As its most basic level, rape is a violation of basic human, animal and environmental rights enacted through Cartesian power abuse; this postscript concerns the complicated process that healing from rape entails—i.e., its corrupting presence through codified trauma, wherein the surviving of police abuse becomes something to relate to others through Gothic stories that constitute radical empathy as a thing forever out-of-joint: the attempt to empathize with alien experiences to gain new perspective. Such empathy needn’t concern both parties equally and its Gothic dialogs concern intense, poetic liminalities still bearing an intense potential for disguise that is haunted by the shadow of police forces. Even so, the postscript aims to showcase such a dialog and its phenomenological complexities; i.e., one held between two or more people relating through their interpretation of various texts they are either intimately familiar with or at the very least recognize the tell-tale arrangements of power and performance through traumatic markers: heroes and monsters as a liminal proposition to find catharsis inside the oscillation of (source).

Again, that quote was written concerning Cuwu and I through a kind of DBT I eventually called ludo-Gothic BDSM. It’s the backbone of my book as it presently exists, making Cuwu one of its most important-if-silent-contributors.

Except intersectional solidarity means learning from our past as a present document forever being rewritten through new rape fantasies; i.e., in interpersonal exchanges that extend the privilege as a basic human right all peoples may exercise in defiance to the state and its victim-turned-cop sell-outs policing the larger Gothic mode’s demon BDSM. We’re putting “rape” in quotes by defying canonical Gothic iterations of the rape fantasy that have been academically recognized as problematic since the xenomorph chowed down on Veronica Cartwright. It’s a rape fantasy—one that we could hear quite clearly despite the movie’s immortal tagline: “In Space, No One Can Hear You Scream!”

Even now, I can hear Lambert’s blood-curdling death scream and think of nothing else; I get goosebumps, frisson, aka the “skin orgasm.” I think of my own loss of power—of being raped (through a denial of power) mid-Gothic poetics, by Jadis, by my father and stepfather before them—and recognize the classic cathartic role of the operatic rape castle. It isn’t to foster rape and division, but to hug Medusa by reenacting our own deaths in rapturous, martyr-like outbursts of passion. The trick is to do so in ways that unite workers through calculated risk; i.e., against capital and its TERF-grade sell-outs weaponizing the theatre of rape against workers for the elite!

Just as Scott was tormenting poor Cartwright to haunt us with, you will do well to remember that Janice Raymond—a second wave feminist—decayed the proceedings in a fascist direction; i.e., by releasing The Transsexual Empire (1979) as a TERF screed, projecting all the usual white female bigotries onto an imaginary other tied to settler colonialism going on much as it always has: abjecting the ghost of the counterfeit to keep white women/tokenized groups gatekeeping and girl bossing an infinitely diverse and rebel-ready workforce.

We’ll get to that later in the volume. For now, just remember that ludo-Gothic BDSM is a sex-positive device; i.e., fostering empathy through us playing together inside the frame as caged, but also fenced between the past-future of what has happened and what will happen that can be different while preserving the aesthetic: as a usual means of identifying and expressing trauma. Again, if you want to critique power then you must go where it is, hence face potential impostors among you and yourselves feeling imposturous:

(exhibit 34b3b2a2a2a2a: Artist: Harmony Corrupted. Harmony is a good friend of mine—one I have played with in ways that teach both of us as we currently consider unequal power exchange as a theatrical means of worker liberation; i.e., by shaping how we think about rape by expressing it as calculated risk linked to real-world abuse. This butts up against the Destroyer persona through the virgin/whore dynamic, but also the Amazon/dark mommy dom as something that lends itself well to a non-destructive, DBT-style “death” theatre/rape fantasy. Devised while cognizant of state abuse and manipulation, it was made between myself and people like Harmony as someone I count myself very lucky to be friends with: a mommy dom who won’t triangulate or dump her baggage onto you, but for whom the two of you can work out your kinks [so to speak] together! Love ya, babe!)

[artist: Harmony Corrupted]

The basic concept is hardly new—has been around for centuries: “If you prick us, do we not bleed? […] And if you wrong us, shall we not revenge?” Shylock’s soliloquy is vital in narratives of feeling alien as a raped existence, insofar as those who have been abused seek out calculated risk as a means of living with trauma as stuck inside us; i.e., something that triggers from external reminders we then internalize, creating new gargoyle-esque suggestions of trauma, on and on. The way forward (away from fascist regressions) is psychosexual healing as a theatrical proposition that challenges menticide and state-sanctioned waves of terror and force; i.e., chasing the palliative Numinous during ludo-Gothic BDSM as a psychosexual means of relating to each other through a shared past, one where we cross paths with our former selves in other such witness stories pertaining to each of us differently.

And yet, it’s a fallacy to think that modernity has been on this linear progression towards the truth (what Western dickwads call “progress”). Rather, we can learn from those in the past who weren’t subject to Capitalist Realism as it exists today (a cycle of gentrification, decay and inheritance/death anxieties, pursuant to rape, captive and murder fantasies). Radcliffe wasn’t the only female author of the Neo-Gothic period; Shelley was there, too, and Dacre amongst others. And while it’s easy to point at Radcliffe and beat her corpse with a stick (as Volume Zero does), she was a master of theatrical devices that assist our ludo-Gothic BDSM: the demon lover, of course, but also the Black Veil. In short, if you’re going to talk about “rape” through Gothic exercises of cryptonymy that help workers rebel onstage and off, Radcliffe has far more to teach you about rape theatre than Shelley might seem to.

All the same, Shelley can teach us things that translate neatly to postcolonial BDSM and critiques of Radcliffe. In short, they’re both full of surprises when camped as ghosts of themselves, which possess the likes of Harmony and I when we play with the imaginary past as toy-like—not to consolidate state power by policing ourselves, but by learning the lingo to act out our paradoxical means of escape. The state will hunt us down, boasting “Not even death can save you from me!” as they do. Imagine their surprise, then, when “death” sets us free, but also drains them of their power in the process! We’ll have topped them from the bottom, but also taken the Destroyer persona back; i.e., to hug and humanize Medusa with as a pro-labor agent: humanizing the harvest as a hammer and sickle, a spectre of Marx versus a TERF one interpreting the xenomorph as a fascist does: the black/monstrous-feminine rapist of white women as the universal victim policing others through their victims and ours as forever at war—a witch hunt, but also an exterminatory bug hunt. It’s goofy but intense—a broadside the likes of a certain Star Trek revival joyously crying out, “Fire everything!”

Fucking oath, son! Time and time again, class and culture war summon up our ghostly ships; i.e., waylaid by us and taken from our colonizers to haunt their current counterfeits with: commandeered by spectres of a thoroughly genderqueer and postcolonial Marxist phantasm.

In short, Harmony and I have lived what—for straight folks—is something they can only touch upon in Gothic stories and roleplays: sex, reunion, and psychosexual healing amid bodies as toy-like. For cis women, the threat of exposure and constant rapacious danger is sadly relatable as a straight woman would experience such things; for queer bodies, this can be something to play with on the same stage as camped to Hell and back, expressing ourselves mid-exploitation on the only venue we’re historically given.

For the rest of the chapter, I will continue this examination with other friends and partners—past but also present, sleeping and awake as a thoroughly liminal proposition. Sleep is the cousin of death—death’s counterfeit waiting to replace one with the other—but also “death” in quotes as a profoundly awake sensation that makes one feel sleepy (“a sleepy potion,” Lewis called it, no doubt ribbing Shakespeare’s apothecary a bit). In medieval language, it evokes hunger and greed relative to trauma as passed down like a curse, a dragon sickness; in turn, the penis becomes something to live with (as I, a trans woman, do)—saddled with it and the mind of its own it seems to have—waking up based on past memories of past abusers who didn’t always harm me: “Love and pain become one in the same in the eyes of a wounded child!”

Let’s start with an ex: Cuwu, I choose you!

(exhibit 34b3b2a2a2a2b: Artists: Cuwu and Persephone van der Waard. “You’re so good! Oh, fuck!” Cuwu told me as I stuffed their tight little puppy pussy [bottom-right]. They were my dominator and protector and I was their service top; I adored them and being praised by them, and we played many times. All of us sit next to disaster as something to summon—at night, a thing to erect and put our erections inside. Sometimes we’re alone and thinking of such dragons [“getting the horn,” as the Brits call it]; sometimes our “dragon” wakes up and we fuck the cutie with it, all while they have a dragon sleeping inside them as well; and sometimes the dragon inside them wakes up. Medusa isn’t always nice. In spatio-temporal terms, this called a chronotope, which for the Gothic concerns hereditary rites and dynastic primacy as something to move through and inside: a liminal space and its various surfaces and artifacts imbued with the presence of “antique” legendary power and death from one castle-like body and body-like castle to the next.

An aesthetic is, in British terms, a particular kind of philosophy/argumentation—the visual reifying and exploration of such emblems, their phantasmagorical somnambulism a sleepwalking act to move through; re: castle-narrative. It extends between texts during mise-en-abyme insofar as a person is an extension of a castle and vice versa. The sickness is greed as something wrought from Western Imperialism, feudalism, Cartesian thought, Capitalism, neoliberalism, et al; i.e., as a kind of black pearl, a hellish onion to peel and explore, one layer of the grave-like soil at a time—not once, but over and over!

True to form, much of it is felt on the surface as charged, dark, and tense; but you have to go digging to get to the bottom of things—to “bottom out” inside Medusa’s moribund “tomb” [to hit her cervix, which she kind of enjoys, sometimes]. Power is a quest, then, insofar as “empowerment” and “disempowerment” are placed in quotes, mid-Mandelbrot. It becomes a paradox, something to heal from while being attracted to weird, to trauma, to abuse as a dice role: the Numinous as both a Faustian bargain and Promethean Quest that needs irony to function in a sex-positive sense. That irony isn’t always present, but can be installed during future calculus having learned from older venturings into a calculated risk and its fatal nostalgia:

[artist, left: Cuwu; models and artist: Jadis and Persephone van der Waard]

For example, I was hurt bad in Jadis’ “dungeon” as both the person, the pussy and the place conflicting between conflations of all three; so, I rebounded and escaped into Cuwu as hopefully something better to experience. They caught me on the wing. And as they did, they explained how they had their own trauma, their own DBT-style psychomachy that played out on the surface of that dragon-like visage. Dragons aren’t just artifacts of power but shapeshifters; i.e., masks that are worn as a face is worn by someone abused: potentially an abuser but not always. A narcissist has many masks, the paradox being they are broken into soft or hard divisions that shift across their likeness as walking around: a folie-a-deux and chez folie internalized and plain for all to see.

Would it surprise you to know that I still love parts of Cuwu and Jadis, but also freely admit that whatever I do love is haunted by the ghost of whatever counterfeit I could fashion? All I have are photographs of fatal portraits of either dragon, but neither can come alive ever again to harm me; I am free of them, trapped inside these complicated feelings of safety as I pursue fresh loves and new adventures.

Dragons embody disordered thinking as something to display through corruption of data as the data. You’re never sure quite who you’re dealing with, because what you’re dealing with is chaos as both tangible and something that resists interrogation: the unspeakable, the unattainable. But unlike a Scooby Doo villain, you can’t just take off a villain’s mask; they have to come out to play and sometimes retreat behind the good side of themselves and vice versa. Sadly Cuwu was always performing, always in survival mode [so was Jadis]: their sexuality a kind of “mirror dance” they always wanted me to watch—to keep them safe and protect me, but also as an attack. Per the liar’s paradox, their sentence was not true.

[artists: Cuwu and Persephone van der Waard]

Per the Gothic Romance, I met a little dragon inside the slutty maiden, either side of them roiling on the same person [what plural personalities call a “system”]. There we were, having sex for the second-to-last-time, very much in a place we probably shouldn’t have been but did so anyways [long story]. Cuwu, as the good dragon at that moment, carried me on their wings to safety and laid me down gently enough.

Like Zeuhl, I didn’t realize this was the end of the good times, but then and there, I simply enjoyed my mommy protector one more time [the above collage was just us fooling around without me cumming in them—we had done that earlier after getting in from the road and taking a nap: my creampie of them during a quickie we did not record, simply wanting to enjoy one another… and they hypnotizing me with their eyes, telling me vocally to “cum in mommy’s pussy” which I did most obediently]. They loved me and I loved them, the look in their eyes—every turn and toss of their pretty head, every outstretched finger and curve they flaunted just for me [and something I’m allowed to share with all of you, provided I keep their name out of it]. As their upper half gasped and opened, so did their lower half. Eager to swallow me, all of them stretched and took me in. Little did I know, it was a mercy that they let me go:

Quite a ride, eh? One worthy of a song perhaps you’ve heard before in some shape or form, maybe a videogame like Guilty Gear X‘s “Icarus” [2015] or some other rock opera incumbent on big feelings, desires, shames as both secret and out in the open:

She knew it all
It’s a fleeting dream
No one can reach the horizon
She knew it all
It’s a fleeting dream
No hands can touch the sun
If you can not
stop this pathetic time
Oh bring back, bring back
All I need is proof
that I lived

[…]

[Bridge]
Dusk of night descends upon me
Oh please, don’t look
I won’t be there for you no more

[Chorus]
Take me, take me outside of these walls
It’s not mercy that I’m begging
Oh, please
Take me, take me to the end of the world
Longing for the sunshine
Even if my wings may melt away [source: Genius]

[artist: Cuwu]

Total accuracy isn’t the point, but “danger disco” abstractions that yield volatile tremendous feelings that hit upon our daily struggles dueling and looking for love as forbidden to us under capital [I’d never heard “Icarus” before today (though it sounds a lot like X or Concerto-Moon-meets-Queen) but it fits my experiences like a glove—a perfect stranger]. Cuwu, like Jadis, had a victimized side and a Destroyer side, but also a Destroyer playing the victim and vice versa. In turn, trauma is generational; buried, lost and found again, it lives within us, traveling across bodies as places to deliver calamity as a sign of pain being a healing or harmful arrangement. Medieval poetics are useful insofar as interrogating and performing such abuse is concerned. You want to interrogate power—to eventually negotiate with your own as reclaimed from state forces—you must go where it is! But never take a dragon [whatever its shape and size, claws and mouths] out of your calculations! Its beauty can be unstable, prone to madness and decay—especially its combustible, volcanic ass!

[artists: Cuwu and Persephone van der Waard]

Above is our last time together [in person]. The paradox of immortality is that nothing lasts forever but the intensity of fleeting things outshine the seemingly infinite cosmos, the celestial firmament hanging overhead, the constellation in the sky something of an odd burial ground for those legendary souls we want to enshrine in a place always overhead. The stars are arbitrary for a fixature to fix meaning to as from our own lives informed by so many others. In turn, women knit scarves during war to soothe their own souls, sending messages that fuse the two, like a quilt, an odd patchwork of so many lovely and terrible things.

[model and photographer: Cuwu and Persephone van der Waard]

To that, Cuwu, once more I lay flowers on the grave of our love/friendship. You were my dragon—a little ho with a mouth like a clown demon [Pennywise leaps to mind] and a body like a fairy reaching over from fairyland to take part of me [a bite out of me] and leave something behind [you left your panties here as a keepsake. I still have them]. Good and bad, I’ve remembered all of you here in this book series. I hope you are well, Little Dragon, and that if you look upon these images yourself that they find you happy and well, too! Thank you for the memories, my Spyro, my Smaug the Stupendous, my little heartbreaker! Shine on, you crazy diamond! Shine on!)

Jadis love-bombed me, and Cuwu played with the pieces. Per a grander love-bombing tradition, capital makes us feel both like complete shit and a million bucks, enforcing us to face that feeling in the language as lived; i.e., as a (usually) figurative room to maneuver inside and parody escape strategies with using unprecedented BDSM potential: “I’ve never seen that—never seen someone drag their garbage down to the street and then bang the hell out of it with a stick. No, I’ve never seen that.”

Except, give us weirdos what we like as, to some degree abject, and we become—pardon the expression—as happy as pigs in shit. The idea isn’t to become what capital wants us to be, but reclaim our own lost power through a Gothic maturity that isn’t above crude puns/psychosexual metaphors[1] tied to abject bodily functions (and sites where these functions take place): to feel like shit as a poetic device, but also a means of showing off our vulnerability to confront feelings of self-consciousness, of embarrassment (“Don’t stare/watch me!” versus “Go ahead, sicko!”) at being caught with one’s pants down[2] in a routine place of dismemberment for female/monstrous-feminine parties in Gothic media (the ghost of the counterfeit and process of abjection in action):

(artist: Cuwu)

As such, GNC people like Cuwu and I are drawn to “trauma” as straight people are, albeit from a different vantage point: something to recognize and find similar souls to bond with and heal together—in denuded psychosexual forms of medieval expression showcasing power and bareness towards it as something to revel in and learn from; i.e., a gallant, charging catharsis supercharged by the power of metal as something to fuck to and completely slay our would-be attackers by finding cuties who, as doms, won’t hurt us at all: “Ah-cha!’ Oh, no! I’m so exposed! I hope something doesn’t happennn…” There’s generally some decorum on both sides, but I’m generally a huge slut when faced with Numinous “rape”:

(exhibit 34b3b2a2c: Model and photographer: Persephone van der Waard and Zeuhl. Internalized bigotry is variable between type of oppressed group. Trans women are often ashamed of their penises; e.g., I was made to fear and dislike my because of my father and step father [and other cis-het men who hurt my mother and me] but also Zeuhl and Jadis, who eventually abused once I became sexually active. Cuwu had to teach me to find self-acceptance and love by playing with them as a genderqueer person who could teach me to love myself amid theatrical devices that accounted for a) my alienation under capital, and b) my new sense of identity inside that liminal position: from different perspectives, lighting and gendered outfits, etc. Exploitation and liberation exist in the same place, the same shadow zone!

[model and photographer: Cuwu and Persephone van der Waard]

In short, I graduated from my sex doll to a doll-like cutie who took the feared side of me into themselves to show me that it wasn’t dangerous; i.e., that I was human, as was my hard dick, as were things associated with it—not so scary at all, but in fact, kind of funny-looking but fun to play with during puppy play and BDSM as I liked to enact it [subbing for/topping mommy doms]! In short, we were both toy-like and playing with each other’s equipment to learn something near about ourselves under capital. They steered me and listened to the cute, noisy sounds I made in bed/wiggly motions I made when I lost control; I returned the favor when playing with them. I learned to trust gifts again, learning as much as I could. That’s what my relationship to Cuwu ultimately was and continues to be!

[artists: Cuwu and Persephone van der Waard]

This obviously took time, effort and care—not just for me as a late bloomer [as I didn’t start dating until I was 29] but anatomically as well; i.e., as the genitals and eyes are classically vulnerable areas of the body tied to human identity as policed by capital. Normally I wouldn’t show my penis or Cuwu’s eyes, above, but I needed to in order make a larger point: sight and sexuality are experienced through gendered exchanges that can uphold the status quo or reject it in a serialized lesson. For me, I went from the doll that couldn’t see me, to a pair of eyes that could; i.e., a person who smiled happily whenever I fucked them with my hard girl cock. I got over Jadis and Zeuhl’s shaming of me as a trans nympho and started to see myself differently thanks to the traditional monster language that Cuwu and I played around with in bed; i.e., that which I would transplant unto relationships when continuing to grow and develop myself as queer. It’s different, therefore interesting in ways that invite questions but also a willingness to try something new. The most common question I get from AFAB people about my doll is: “How does it feel?”; i.e., “Does it feel like a real vagina?” being a question that also applies to any synthetic device; e.g., dildoes, sheaths, dolls, suits, and so on, as things to be ]. Playing with conventions in toy-like artifacts—of trauma and fear but also are how we learn as a species, insofar as the Gothic is primarily phenomological: understood through experience.)

(artist: Crow)

Let’s continue exploring this raw, explosive trend of self-discover and self-definition not just with Cuwu, but Crow as a current partner of mine living in my complicated headspace; i.e., interviewing the same hysterical, “avatar of Medusa” not just as female, but monstrous-feminine. We already know how the Archaic Mother’s affect travels across a variety of popular media forms[3] tied to big feelings and emotional turbulence; the same goes across corporal surfaces meant to help those dimorphically sexualized under capital: to face their alienation, internalized bigotry and self-hatred. This occurs in something they can pilot and humanize upon an Aegis-like double—not just Harmony’s pale, cis-gendered body haunted by the wandering womb and cosmic male rapist; the bailiwick includes other (often pale, thanks to settler colonialism) GNC bodies rarefied into external abstractions speaking to conflict/trauma as living inside-outside the body as castle-like; e.g., me and my body as something to fear for its male qualities (with the trans woman generally feeling afraid or ashamed of their penis), but also the equally snowy marshmallow chonk of my handsome good boy, Crow, and his female qualities coached by external factors (history is predicated on socio-material conditions, which shape thought as a Gothic poetic device).

Similar to Cuwu and I, then, Crow and I are expressing the monstrous-feminine as queer in ways that have always existed in the flesh, but could not be tolerated, inhabited or breathed within society until quite recently. Our queerness is built on older ghosts who live on through us as uniquely queer in the Internet Age; i.e., something that—per female bodies under a Western Male Gaze—would be expected to disrobe for inspection by male suitors and female servants/overseers, but can be appreciated for their own relegated beauty disrobed to say with pride, “I exist, muthafuckas!”

Indeed, Crow does, and he must be seen to be believed—a real feast for the eyes, the apple of mine eye:

(exhibit 34b3b2: Artist: Crow. Per Segewick, a female body is not only constantly surveilled in Gothic fictions, but naked even when clothed; per me, nudity becomes armor to shield ourselves with confidence as a revolutionary cryptonymy—of flashing through the buffer of the camera lens/phone screen as seeing what bigots can’t own or attack, and which appreciators of the cutie’s courage can admire him from afar with pride: “that’s my good boy!”)

In other words, GNC identities (and their bodies) would have been relegated to a cultural nadir/unspeakable place the Gothic made room for in the shadow of Capitalism: an ontological inversion (thus campy endorsement) of the silly and stupid queer panic of the early 1800s; i.e., “the love that dare not speak its name!” With male agents, this would have been sodomy as criminal, insofar as men were seen as people and women couldn’t legally own property in England until 1833; but they could write novels about castles that gave them (and homosexual men) voices that, until then, couldn’t find a place. That is, queerness manifested through struggle as commodified by straight folk and lived by queer folk in theatre and orthographic sites that gentrify, decay and regenerate over time. The mistress of letters was always a virgin and a whore—doubly so if she indulged in something as fanciful and “terrorist” as Gothic fiction! It became a so-called double shame—both something to indulge in, but also sell-out to the establishment as a white woman of privilege: Ann Radcliffe blazing a trail that adhered to capital as kept parties so often do.

Or, as I write in Volume Zero:

Austen’s Isabella and Catherine [from Northanger Abbey] are written to sound kinda basic as a critique of Radcliffe’s exact readership, including how they ward off boredom as middle-class ladies do: devouring the so-called “horrid” as a viral and proliferate commodity to ravenously tear through, not as “terrorist” literature in any active revolutionary sense! If Austen could do this to Radcliffe (in an admittedly limited, novel-of-manners approach, to be clear), then so can we critique the same champions of the Gothic fictions (today’s and yesterdays’) drawing a line of compromise in the sand while profiting off it: A soft-spoken stance of genuine rebuke is better than staying silent and making money through the same Gothic poetics: “In the end, we will remember not the words of our enemies, but the silence of our friends”; or, the wacky novels of 18th century sell-outs.

To this, Radcliffe—a seasoned pro, at this point—chose to stay utterly silent for decades; then, at the time of her death, she further distanced herself from the French Revolution and Lewis while handing the next generation her recipe to terror and horror as she saw them in her own “terrorist literature”:

As Nick Groom writes (again, from the Oxford World’s Classics of The Italian):

As to risibility, a notorious letter condemning ‘Terrorist Novel Writing’ accused [Radcliffe] of provoking a fashion:

To make terror the order of the day, by confining the heroes and heroines in old gloomy castles, full of spectres, apparitions, ghosts, and dead men’s bones […] If a curtain is withdrawn, there is a bleeding body behind it; if a chest is open, it contains a skeleton; if a noise is heard, somebody is receiving a deadly blow; and if a candle goes out, its place is sure to be supplied by a flash of lightning.

Groom notes how the letter in question explicitly attacks Radcliffe’s “system of terror” for being monotonous, ignorant, and “contaminated” by “Monk” Lewis’ horror writings—to which Radcliffe herself would never write another novel, but whose 1826 posthumous appearance with “On the Supernatural in Poetry” distances herself from the French Revolution (and its terrors), radicalism and Lewis (source).

The problem with female bodies is they are often seen as homogenous in conjunction with successful” (from a fiscal standpoint) female authors preaching to the heteronormative choir by abjecting us as the ghost of the counterfeit. It would force all monstrous-feminine to be sexy cis waifus (with Harmony someone to prize and own) and queer bodies like Crow’s to put back into the closet while also fetishizing and alienating them:

(exhibit 34b3b3a: Artist: Crow. Shot by Crow as he and I played. This time, I was the dominant, and “transformed” to “dominate” [quotes for irony relative to historical harm] my play partner. Each of us conveyed the lycan aesthetic akin to John Webster’s treatment of it: a cryptonym for trauma expressed through talismans, but also bodies’ psychosexual “madness.” There is the rabies metaphor, of course, but also the humors descriptor of sanguine linked to the body’s literal size as commodified by Cartesian thought: “big = non-white” per settler-colonial dogma, regardless of skin color. Cuwu’s not the only GNC ho with a monster PAWG dumper!

In turn, social-sexual taboos regarding sexual diseases [due to lack of medicine] but also good old-fashioned dogma and stigmas regarding patrilineal descent, come into play regarding such bodies as fertile fields to till by the agrarian nature of colonialists doubling as state poachers: hounding Medusa not only force-coded as monstrous-feminine, but prized for her food-like assets; e.g., her pudding or cake [with sugar being a medieval status symbol until it eventually became factory-produced slave gruel]; i.e., the Hammer of Witches [1478] swung against non-Christian AFAB persons who refused to have sex with Christian men, and simultaneously levied against non-white/GNC persons by AFAB reactionaries/subjugates. This tracks with Foucault’s observation of sexuality prior to the 18th century largely being composed of action, not identity expressed in public discourse. Except in the Internet Age, gender studies has become something to put to practice during ludo-Gothic BDSM: how workers play together in ways that reinvent the distributions of power when confronting trauma and negotiating its theatre on shared stages.

[artist: Crow]

To this, not only would a female body like Crow’s would be expected by heteronormative forces to be collared and rut dutifully as the automatic submissive; any hint of aggression becomes, per the euthanasia effect, hints of rabies among a feral monstrous-feminine who must be put down/to heel. The glasses, then, become a mask, not unlike Clark Kent’s—hiding something far stronger than relics of Pax Americana: a trans boy who knows what he likes and wants, seeing his body as a toy to have other cuties play with and enjoy.)

Let’s further reflect on these complicated, GNC, toy-like feelings and ideas for some important takeaways surrounding rape play (another thirteen pages).

As we proceed into Volume Two’s Monster Modules, we’re going to be looking at older fictions between the 18th and 21st centuries; i.e., according to theories that have expanded and evolved since the 1970s. Except, instead of cis-centric terms like “man” and “woman,” their ironic, genderqueer implementation radically separates from biology to stir up gender trouble vis-à-vis Judith Butler, but also enjoy the roles of power exchange formally reserved for a heteronormative dimorphic, then and now (vis-à-vis me). In other words, a person of a given “normative Gothic” (hetero or otherwise) was/is/will not be separate from their body’s biology. AFAB bodies historically would have and continue to be denied the ability to top during sex, save in a subby manner submitting to cisgendered male forces (or a monstrous-feminine corruptor/rapist, as time went on); and conversely, AMAB persons would have been and continue to be expected to dominate regardless of their social-sexual position (status and the literal position of their bodies during sex). All tie to profit and harvesting of nature as something to abject, of course; and society decaying and gentrifying responds as it always does during moral panic: with a witch hunt by cops of a standard-to-tokenized caliber.

The ludo-Gothic point here is how the playful, toy-like elements extend from gender roles to gender swaps/fluidity insofar as topping is literally whose putting in the majority of the work during sex/asexual play versus “dom” and “sub”; i.e., as a theatre of power that can brush up against harmful historical forms behind the counterfeit, but also dated mechanisms of Gothic play that become woefully antiquated as counterfeit: out of an imaginary history stemming from the earliest days of commodified Gothic fiction into liberatory forms that move past what Wolff touched on in 1979; re:

Like Carter, Moers, or even Creed, though, Wolff’s adumbrations barely hint at a queer potential the likes of which myself and Crow personify in our day-to-day playing—as something to enjoy among ourselves, but also help us survive as a hunted party that is both unwelcome in the Gothic and that which has made the Gothic our home far more precociously than these (white) second wave feminists did/do. But, per the double operation of cryptonymy—i.e., as something to reverse in either direction anisotropically (for the state or for workers)—things as ordinary as a naked cutie’s beautiful body become something to hide in plain sight: to flash during naughty sessions where we can be ourselves, seeking catharsis as something to synthesize with our own praxis camping canon. We do it because we must, but also because it’s exciting and fun; it feels good relative to queer experience as a painful one normally forced to hide itself.

Simply put, systemic change cannot happen without sex-positive experiences that humanize things normally viewed and treated as dogmatic; i.e., internally and externally regarding queer existence at large. The Gothic is vital to that revelation, but we’re always left with the feeling that we’re somehow up to no good—except, the paradox is, we learn to love it, discovering how much fun it can be to step into a new identity that describes us far better than heteronormative assignment ever did! With it, we can flash our “badge” to like-minded cuties who look normal on the outside but know the passcodes expressed as much in literal body language as Gothic conventions doubling as such. Generally they elide, but the basic show-and-tell remains a lightning-quick recognition of those we trust as “like us”; i.e., weird attracts weird, nerd likes nerd, especially when marked by trauma. Prey recognizes prey to bond with new “trauma” (e.g., the werewolf, or the knife-like cock of such a monster as cosmetic-only, thus safe to insert): as a healing force that supplies catharsis by avoiding predators that—like toys—come in all shapes, sizes, and colors.

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

Of course, the attraction is liminal, meaning you have to learn to recognize, subject and vet the toy-like people coming to play with you as equally toy-like. Jadis, we shall continue to see, broke me because they had already been broken and became a dominant-class abuser themselves; Cuwu, a submissive-class; and both cases attracted to me as prey they could get something out of. And while the play sessions were harmful, I still learned from them: to seek out people who won’t prey on you despite recognizing you as prey. In sex-positive scenarios, the draw to trauma during the playing with bodies like toys becomes restorative and educational for both sides: relieving stress and reinforcing good habits as things to master and pass along in the flesh; i.e., during liminal expression and ludo-Gothic BDSM’s collars, gifts, and toys as things to treat with respect—to play rough if both sides want, but ultimately to play nice as a cathartic, educational device.

The more friends you make, the more trust you accrue, the more you learn, the better everything becomes—the sex, the friendship, all of it. You become family as something to find, and the friends of your friends become your friends and yours theirs, on and on. As far as sex goes, a single night of hot, sticky passion becomes “Can you put it back in?” Not under threat of force (“You’re gonna be Hauser’s babe!”), but a cultural, sex-positive empathy that becomes second-nature through good praxis, hence ludo-Gothic BDSM. There’s plenty of “pizza” (food or sex, shelter, etc) to go around provided praxial synthesis is attained: a continual balancing act—of give and take—with a sex-positive, liberatory character generally characterized as “theft” by the bourgeoisie (and their proponents, accidental or otherwise). We don’t want to shoot the individual thief, but “eat the rich” in ways that avoid total bedlam (e.g., Les Miserables, 1862) while still pushing for radical change at a socio-material level using Gothic poetics. Acquiring such nuance helps avoid the “shoot first, ask questions later” approach to aptly-titled family annihilators: the End of History as the end of scarcity (thus rape and war) as we know it.

(artist: Jim Davis)

To that, you have to stick with it, and correctly. It’s not a gun to restore to prime working order (e.g., Awesome Restorations’ “COLT Python .357 MAGNUM Gun Lighter Restoration,” 2023), but a hammering of such “swords” (a nod to Romeo + Juliet, there) into ploughshares to achieve a utopian state of post-scarcity existence through Gothic poetics, aka Gothic Communism; i.e., a subversion of the usual “wrath of God” scenarios during Revelations to remind people that Medusa is the ultimate force of the planet, and one who will absolutely choke a bitch if capital keeps fucking around. Fuck around, find out: Capitalism doesn’t rule the planet, Mother Nature does, and will have the last laugh as she crushes Zeus’ puny head between her chonky thighs (skull-crusher and brain-squishing ASMR, Bob-Ross-style: “Beat the devil out of him!”).

To avoid that (and the usual predation of “wolves” on “lambs”), you gotta put the pussy on the chainwax—not unironically like oiling the Tinman (though lube is important during sex, purely because cuties are not sex machines you maintain like property), but with historical-material irony per dialectical-material arguments/cryptonymic disguises; i.e., changing skin/shape to fight back by presenting as we are; e.g., wolves in sheeps’ clothing and vice versa:

(artist: Bay)

This therian-grade dialog is meant to speak conditionally to the state and its proponents abusing all life, including humans as animals; i.e., conditional love versus a Pavlovian love forced upon people through dogma as bad BDSM. In animalistic terms, this requires scouting a territory for toys to play with; i.e., in ways that humans do to protect themselves and nature from the state!

To that, we’re digging up bones to play with the ghost of the counterfeit and reverse the process of abjection; i.e., by changing how the middle class (capital’s gatekeepers, gaslighters and girl bosses) feels about state shift as something we can bring in a non-fascist/non-cataclysmic direction, mid-apocalypse/-revelation. People learn through sex, drugs and rock ‘n roll; but if the state cannibalizes during moral panic as historically linked to its cyclical crises and decay as built-in, we must “give a dog a bone” through humor, wit, and irony as part of the counterterror repertoire: using what we got to show those at home as acclimated to the Imperial Core’s legal defining and enforcement of crime (with genocide being pushed to the margins but haunting the resident, the suburb).

Some people need bigger “bones[4]“/wakeup calls than others do; i.e., size queens, but also status-quo dummies who never “bone” losing their minds when faced with state collapse and state shift as something our Aegis must nevertheless speak to them: “This is Walter!” Better to see what frightens you and lose your shit in a controlled environment than to lose total control out in the wilderness where people can get hurt (the line between the two not being discrete of course; i.e., the exiter of Plato’s cave becoming an outsider insiders will kill to defend the state’s shadow plays):

The paradox of taming Medusa is not to disempower, but quell her revenge to suit ours as agents thereof. Furthermore, there are many kinds of mommies, and it’s not only possible but vital to be multiple at the same time! So Collete Tatou, the purple-haired “strict” cutie[5] from Ratatouille (2007)—the “pirate,” she styled herself—was only half wrong/right. We must be mommy when cooking in the kitchen; i.e., as something to take back as a collective of pirates making privatization and middle-class expectations (e.g., Parisian food snobs paying for high-skilled labor they can literally eat) as thing of the past. Bribe the “grow-air,” babes; she’ll keep you fed (and not just with food, you feel me?):

(exhibit 34b3b3a2: Source, top: Rule 34; bottom: Degenerate Art Gallery. As Volume Two, part one argues, “BDSM or otherwise, people work through preference and experimentation to issue public statements that are, to some degree, coded” [source]. Monsters are code; we deal in/fuck with monsters as thing to cook up like food-as-code, thus encryption, revolutionary cryptonymy something to eat. Having control over them [versus AI art, left], we gain control over our bodies, art and labor as things to take back from capital’s usual thievery—in what we produce as ours, not something to steal. For example, Ratatouille‘s full of shit like that: “Cook’s don’t steal,” “anyone can cook,” piracy in the kitchen relative to “stupid old men,” nepotism [“some garbage boy who got lucky”] and BDSM through workplace attractions that, in the end, change even the most old die-hard critics’ minds through so-call “peasant dishes”; i.e., progression away from gentrification as a matter of public opinion, the latter swayed through the usual venues/gradients of exchange blending food/sex and power/resistance, mid-poiesis. “Bon sang! Elle donne une belle coupe!“; translation: “She’s a good fuck!” In literal terms, though: “She gives a beautiful strike!” Big dumpers and tight little pussies generally do, opening our eyes to a better world if used correctly [for workers].

In turn, “food” [and other such pun-like pareidolia] always comes to those who love to cook—delicious people and tasty ideas that, for those constantly cooking up new schemes, find themselves surrounded by unicorn pussy [Gusteau, our chubby mentor, slayed some pussy to sire his estranged kid, giving him the keys to the proverbial castle]. As always, remember we camp because we must; when “making it gay,” yourselves, always ask, “what’s the context?” then act accordingly.)

Whatever monstrous-feminine we’re dealing with, all should fall on the side of nature and labor as exemplified by workers working together to achieve universal human recognition (what Lacan would call the mirror test, and where sex workers generally find themselves when culturing rebellion to suit their needs, demands, arguments, etc). Like Arthur’s coconuts from Holy Grail (1975), we find them in strange places—not to sell them, but make goofy artistic statements (aping “hoofbeats”) per neo-medieval theatre as something to perform; i.e., by good-faith actors in front of a casting mirror. People come and go, in that respect, but can still contribute towards something better through reflections that last: we are people with rights, regardless of whatever rationalizing the state (and its unironically scientific, Cartesian essentializing of thinking vs emergent beings might try to put forward. It becomes a circuitous and recursive rememory of things that sees beyond the oral or written tradition from singular perspectives, and speaks to the state’s collective memory death—its own abuse and decay—as something to endure and surpass: ideas that come to us, but also undead, demonic and animalistic egregores that arrive into our world based on what we build together (our aforementioned “having pull” applying to monstrous cuties in all shapes and sizes, from all walks of life: a Gothic push-pull we learn to manipulate in order to help keep us alive).

(artists: Persephone van der Waard and Cuwu)

By extension, there’s plenty of everything to go around if we all learn to trust and love each other in opposition to the state and its myopic illusions sexualizing labor through war-and-rape-as-a-business. So lay it all on the table, control for risk, be honest, and see what happens when you put your best monster self forward. Doing so works by virtue of people liking what they see, thinking you might be fun to play with; i.e., not because you fooled them (so-called “pickup artistry” is for cons and creeps), but because you worked hard to change what you didn’t like and still own your flaws and scars. And even if it doesn’t “work out,” an adventure is still an adventure to a life having one more thing worth telling: “Your path is clear. Make it a journey!” The best parts of those you love will live on according to how you remember them. With Cuwu, Zeuhl and Jadis, I am nothing but consistent in that regard. The same goes for Crow and Bay—Harmony and my other muses, comrades, FWBs—as people who are always with me in some shape or form. We freaks look out for each other!

To that, toys are useful for articulating trauma, but also healing from it and getting one’s frustrations out on an invulnerable subject-object drawn to pain as pleasurable; i.e., from “Show me on the doll where they touched you” to “put your cock in this doll” to “fuck me like you mean it!” History is trauma as something to play with according to misfit toys. Jadis was a bully who broke theirs; Cuwu, a dragon who captivated theirs; Zeuhl, who used and discarded theirs, burning them akin to a Picasso’s past—of the woman (or monstrous-feminine) involved.

True to form, none were ever in full control (as power can cause people to fracture along hard to soft lines), but surrendered their power in different ways. The common thread was play insofar as we played with each other to alleviate symptoms and exert or alleviate control over ourselves. Jadis was the military-style thug “relinquishing” control in the bedroom (classic fetish gear being one step removed from mil spec); Zeuhl was the neurotic control freak treating me like a unicorn, blanket, and sex machine; and Cuwu was the former dancer with an action-figure’s figure, their paper-doll approach to clothes, accessories, makeup and hairstyles a gender-fluid aesthetic merged with their doll-like tendency to disassociate (apart from the drugs).

(artist: Cuwu)

In short, each was how my abusers related to others through things that were normally strictly regulated for them by capital as patriarchal, settler-colonial and criminogenic; i.e., gentrified to serve profit, and it showed in their affect as cosmetic: Zeuhl as hopelessly discrete, Jadis as commanding and blunt, and Cuwu’s eyes turned glassy when each of them were facing their own trauma in “quotes”; i.e., a flashback in material form, a pretty toy-like effigy to play with that they could control when surrendering power for a moment: me. They couldn’t be in control at all times and neither could I in a man’s world, but I was something that each could control differently.

For Jadis, she was abused by her narcissistic mother and incorporated narcissistic tendencies, herself; for Zeuhl, they were the regressing enby who abandoned their expertise the moment things got hot; and Cuwu suffered as people forced to identify as women so often do: as a sex object without agency. The power for each came in ways they could control through me to get what they wanted, except something was always passed between us as aliens. This includes knowledge through the hermeneutic of experiencing ludo-Gothic BDSM, first-hand—of socio-material things that yield fresh revelations: Cuwu’s kindness, and their copy of A History of the World in Seven Cheap Things (2017), Zeuhl’s recommendation of A History of Sexuality, Volume One (1980) and Gender Trouble (1993), and Jadis showing me Tool and NIN music videos. Similar to my Galatean lineage’s actual bloodline (re: my great-grandmother, grandmother and mother’s infernal influence on my little trans brain), adult me found uses for all of these non-familial palimpsests in my Song of Infinity riffing on older garbage; while my exes were using me without my consent (the beautiful thing with Fair Use is it not requiring permission, except in the case of private nude images, which I always get prior to use), I pulled a “Monk” Lewis to weaponize their bullshit against the state! Get fucked, nerds!

Attracting trouble isn’t a curse if you can camp it. Indeed, my newfound pull (after turning 29, which was eight years older than Lewis when he wrote The Monk) wasn’t as bad as I thought it was—constantly meeting devils-in-disguise who lured me in with sex and harmed me, making me feel like a glutton for punishment (“my type,” you could call it). Indeed, all changed my life and my work for the better inside the Gothic as an endless framed narrative/mise-en-abyme; i.e., as something I gradually parsed out.

It might seem mechanical and rawly conditioned, doomed, and/or hand-me-down, but there was always an organic element, a chance for a fresh start with friends we play with to create and learn new sex-positive things. For me, that meant a chance to learn what each liked, but also little lessons that came from playing under different conditions; e.g., sex on the floor as hard or carpeted, thus bruising skin close to the bone or chafing the skin raw. All went into this book as beyond the sum of its parts, but nevertheless reliant on such educational experiences to reify the instruction for others to partake of, themselves: find your own coconuts to play with, as I repeatedly do. As long as it’s sex-positive, and provided we as a culture can recognize the difference through camp as widespread (camping the twin trees: the Base and Superstructure), then that’s all that matters!

(artists: Persephone van der Waard and Cuwu)

For once, my inability to turn my brain off came in handy, as did my attraction to the monstrous-feminine. Zeuhl was my androgyne, Jadis my bruiser herbo, and Cuwu my little transmasc mommy dom. And each had a trademark physical trait, fictional counterpart and emotional signature to account for that: a steel-trap pussy, tits for days, and an ass that never, ever quit—each respectively belonging to a debatably autistic alien with a flat affect (I only mention autism because they insisted they weren’t neurodivergent—keep telling yourself that, hon), a surly orc queen, and a hungry and vain dragoness seeking to control a scene to avoid getting hurt in the future.

In short, they’d each been hurt before and would never stop controlling others by playing the Amazon, the femme fatale, the monstrous-feminine: something to dress up and control through abject theatre that subverts the lack of agency (re: Laura Ng[6]) each experienced at some point (or felt like they did, in Zeuhl’s case); i.e., through cosmetics as a weapon unto itself, mid-theatre. It becomes a coerced position of enforced negotiation, that under the right conditions, is sex-positive, but nevertheless works within a dialog of incessant scrutiny under sex work—of the female body as endlessly policed, owned, controlled by patriarchal forces playing Pygmalion. “A free woman in an unfree society will always be a monster.” Even with queer people, this applies insofar as they’re forced into a Pavlovian box. They become robotic, cold, automatic—a sum of different parts valued by men, thus capital, including its token agents. I’m a woman, too, but AMAB, and no less coerced by state dogma through my GNC exes (all female).

Except, in the case of my exes, it was bad play because sooner or later the game needs to stop, or at least pause to reflect, or it becomes an unironic way of life, always reacting to abusive factors that make it hard to get close enough to trust anyone, even if there was some degree of proximity or ostensible intimacy between sleepers, spies, and conflicting agents. Love decays, as does activism when used in service to the profit motive. It did for Cuwu, Zeuhl and Jadis, insofar as their different bad habits all led to the harming of me by virtue of each selling out.

This betrayal was unique to each as having different flaws. Cuwu had borderline personality disorder and embraced a chaotic lifestyle (with the help of several bad actors) that forsook all they had preached. Unlike them, Zeuhl got a cushy job and used me until their first, best option (the one they’d been chasing for ten years) came into their life (obscure hint: initially cock-blocked by a volcano). So did Jadis, oddly enough (no volcano, in their case). In short, both waited were they secure enough to toss me aside, and then did so (and while Zeuhl was more ashamed of it, they still did it in a ruthless, premeditated and placating manner before trying to pin everything on me when I got sick of their bullshit, years later).

The point, here, is that none of my exes used their trauma to think with in sex-positive ways, but glide from point A to point B on autopilot: toying with their food as something to abuse, mid-play. Sex is one of those things that works well on instinct, but it’s better when it’s actively engaged with because trust is incumbent on good communication, not blind cruising. They were all sex experts, insofar as Zeuhl had sexual health training (and an extensive GNC education, especially with twinks), Jadis was an active masochist with years of acquired know-how (and a sadistic mean streak), and Cuwu likewise knew the ins and outs of such things as relayed between a younger generation’s acclimation to internet culture, but also the machinery of the state as something to impersonate, like chameleons.

(artist: Jan-H Sculpts)

Within that culture’s mise-en-abyme/framed narrative, the Amazon (and similar monstrous-feminine) survive as tools used by different people pinned between the state and its usual disparate, harmful conditions. They become something that, like all toys, you can recognize in people, and play with; i.e., mid-historical-materialism, while capital constantly corrupts, rewrites, and transforms over time—in short when it decays and regenerates. This travels from Ancient Athens, to Marston’s Wonder Woman putting “Athens” in quotes, to whatever it becomes when we manifest these articles ourselves; i.e., working to find social-sexual freedom amid oscillating threatres of opposition, deception, games-in-games rendering us or others the dupe, but also having the power to liberate us amid low-to-high stakes.

Within those stakes, monstrous-feminine players are more skilled by virtue of necessity—overcoming systemic adversity through treachery and cunning but also nuance and grace; i.e., a system of exchange on par with giving rings, in The Merchant of Venice, which extends to other kinds of games that serve a similar purpose; e.g., Luc Besson’s 2019 excellent rehash of La Femme Nikita, the svelte sexpot beating the boys at their own game in ways they aren’t accustomed to playing themselves, by virtue of them being men: blunt instruments to her scalpel’s acting and play as a means of surviving men, first and foremost.

Classically this is always a Pygmalion fantasy that plays out in a half-real sense; i.e., male directors creating Amazonian fantasies that always seem to cater to their sexual fantasies under an abuse of power between them as director and the actresses they marry (and divorce); e.g., James Cameron, but also Luc Besson having dated Maïwenn Le Besco when she was 15 and he 32 (they met when she was 12). In short, Hollywood and European cinema is haunted by pedophilia, but still allows for monstrous-feminine liberation in a space occupied by exploitation, first and foremost. Per Gothic Communism, we can unshackle Galatea from Pygmalion.

In other words, we simply don’t need to serve these weirdos to tell these kinds of stories (even if said stories are well-made, as The Terminator and La Femme Nikita undeniably are)! This is work saying because women abused by their male (and much older) rapists go on to develop rape-apologetic tendencies; e.g., Le Besco

Maïwenn confirmed earlier this year that she did in fact pull Plenel’s hair and spit in his face at a Paris restaurant; Plenel filed a police report March 7 alleging the incident took place in late February. The writer/director/actress, née Maïwenn Le Besco, told French newspaper Le Journal du Dimanche (via Screen Daily) that the encounter with Plenel stemmed from her feeling “morally violated” that Mediapart published rape allegations against her ex-husband, director Luc Besson, without notifying her. […]

Mediapart editor-in-chief Plenel called out Maïwenn’s presumed lack of support for the #MeToo movement in May 2023.

“She’s outspokenly anti-#MeToo and she made a gesture to please her world, and that’s why she bragged about it on TV,” Plenel told Variety. “We could see a sort of pride that echoed that world.”

Plenel said at the time, “We published what [Maïwenn] told police as part of the investigation into Besson. When she talked to the police, she discussed complicated aspects of her relationship with Luc Besson, notably during their separation. But once we published our piece, we never received any protest of any kind. That was about five years [ago] — that would mean that for all this time, Maiwenn wanted to take her revenge” (source: Samantha Bergeson’s “Maïwenn Assaulted Journalist after Feeling ‘Morally Violated’ by Allegations Against Ex-Husband Luc Besson,” 2023).

but also Roman Polanski’s victim, Samantha Geimer, apologizing 45 years after the rape took place:

“Let me be very clear: What happened with Polanski was never a big problem for me,” Geimer told Seigner in a translated version of the interview obtained Monday by The Times. “I didn’t even know it was illegal, that someone could be arrested for it. I was fine, I’m still fine. The fact that we’ve made this [a big deal] weighs on me terribly. To have to constantly repeat that it wasn’t a big deal, it’s a terrible burden” (source: Nardine Saad’s “Roman Polanski and the Woman He Pleaded Guilty to Raping Pose together 45 Years Later,” 2023).

Like, dude, you were 13! It’s rape regardless of what you think! You were a child and he drugged and sodomized you! You can speak for yourself if you absolutely want to, but you don’t get to speak for other people!

Except, just as Geimer and Le Besco do this in real life, their infinitely faster and deadlier idealized forms like Nikita whitewash Hollywood, male directors/actors and capital through the profit motive and all its problematic aspects. It becomes yet-another-patriarch to defend by daddy’s good girl: “Give me a child until she is seven, and I will show you the woman.” It’s a gender swap on Aristotle’s already-creepy maxim towards young boys; i.e., brainwashing. Not exactly the bedrock we want to base Gothic Communism on, eh?

Of course, we can rescue Amazons from their history of subjugation, but this happens onstage, mid-exploitation, as a performance that ties them to some sense of ourselves belonging to the monstrous-feminine as a complicated polity of freak bitches. Amazons and Amazonomachia are always—to some degree—sex objects struggling like Galatea does: to find their own agency in the world; i.e., through what they make and leave behind as haunted by their trauma as potentially going to decay in favor their abusers and the system tied to them.

Such baggage is impossible to completely untangle ourselves from. My escape was my own case of brothel espionage, between three cuties I knew extremely well and not at all, but which I was drawn towards due to my own half-and-half psychosexual responses[7] and tastes: the Amazon mommy dom serving me as the sub (which is how being a sub works) under good conditions, and burying me alive under bad (the graveyard symbolism a, at times, literal skull-and-crossbones warning for those with unchecked libidos inside a given abusive structure closing into trap them—me chasing the dragon, so to speak, as humans generally do: as creatures of impulse, driven by stim-like tendencies that aren’t always conscious but need to be in order to prevent harm).

It’s a common mistake to humanize one’s abuser(s) through theatrical tropes bleeding into real life. Except that’s not what I’m doing. My exes treated me poorly as individuals, but I don’t ultimately blame them in place of systemic harm (not even Zeuhl, who tried to spin their shitty behavior as teaching me a valuable lesson. Valuable or not, you’re still backstabbing a cunt, my dude); I blame capital’s monopolies and trifectas driving people to such extremes at all, looking for protection—namely shelter and power—under criminogenic conditions while at times abusing others through social-sexual dysfunction. And in my own way, I eventually bested them all by becoming the woman I am today as having mastered my craft, mid-survival: a mistress of my own destiny able to spot what I dislike (assholes) and what I like (female warriors, androgynes, princexes, etc) as a potential lesson, but also a fresh chance at something fun once more—slightly different but familiar and capable.

(artist: Blissful Art)

Take it from me, babes: there’s so many Amazons in the world, so many monstrous-feminine to enjoy! So I’ve gradually learned to look for the monstrous-feminine in ways that won’t harm me, that make me feel welcome in a world of light that feels more and more alien to me; to me, Hell feels like home the more time I spend with the people of Hell, all of us uniting against the state and its subjugated Hippolytas. It’s a tricky balance, one you can only learn not just by swimming with sharks, but playing with them constantly. Always playing, always building, always learning all at once! If you can get through a heartbreak emotionally intact, you’ll get the hang of being vulnerable and actively guarding yourself at the same time. It’s an art, not a science—one guided at times by instinct, raw emotion, and psychosexual energies, but also good habits that must become second-nature to best challenge state forces on a systemic level: history as toy-like in ways that yield emergent forms of Gothic poetics, thus actual liberation.

(artist: Crow)

This includes theory as something to revisit through our friends showing themselves off, the classics being the proverbial tip of the iceberg in terms of the scope and extent of Gothic-Communist development. Just as past Gothicists’ imperfect, semi-blind observations were based on older things brought forward and reinvented, we need to bring all of them forward as campy versions of themselves; i.e., to rival Shelley’s already skillful rivaling of Prometheus and Matthew Lewis’ own doctrine of palimpsests. Our bad echo is the ancient female monster of the ancient world described by Creed, except we’ve updated it with a monstrous-feminine, non-white, genderqueer dialog that has only recently emerged within Western spheres. But this always starts with history as something derelict; i.e., an “ancient” thing reassembled and pulled forwards from backwards, over and over across the mandala sands, to shift the cultural understanding of the imaginary past during class and culture warfare in a sex-positive, liberatory scheme. The ostensible quaintness of Radcliffe, Walpole or Lewis’ old-fashioned toys belies a chaotic and organic function to what we’re trying to reclaim and cultivate during our own camp: Medusa as an awesome poetic device whose “ancient” forms can evolve and change into fresh toy-like futures (of new emancipatory hauntologies), step-by-step, in present spheres mid-penetration.

Keep that in mind about Medusa as we proceed into the Monster Modules. It will apply to the monstrous-feminine as undead, demonic, and/or anthropomorphic; i.e., as something to phenomenologically rarefy in toy-like ways and relate to ontologically on an emotional level: through play and, at times, literal toys as sexualized, alien, fetish. Trauma under capital results from workers and nature exploited sexually by the state for profit; monsters aren’t just critical lenses, then, but sex toys that speak to psychosexual trauma as something to process and learn from through ludo-Gothic BDSM—i.e., its psychosexual gender expression that mirrors our dialectical-material reality as socio-sexual: a demon or piece thereof offering up fatal knowledge, mid-crisis, but also as we shall see next, decaying like a literal and figurative corpse (things known to fall apart under scrutiny and—pardon the crude joke—during sex). During liberation, there’s not much aesthetic difference. Form follows function insofar as function is determined by play guiding power in different directions during oppositional praxis’ interminable, ouroborotic castle-narrative for or against the state.

To that, this chapter ends, and we’ll be diving into the Necropolis once again! Onto “Back to the Necropolis“!

Footnotes

[1] Not my brothers’ butt sex jokes, then, but something that externalizes abject things to converse adventuresomely with the ghost of the counterfeit; i.e., pirates e.g., The Pirates of Dark Water (1991).

[2] This idea of disempowerment doesn’t just haunt bathrooms, nor the home as the place of women’s work, but the office space as a man’s woman where secretaries are both in demand and treated as unwelcome outsiders (a fantasy Harmony’s bondage shoot, a few pages back, helps articulate, face and critique through play).

[3] Not just literal sex toys, but the Gothic mode of expression’s sexually charged and trauma-laden metal and rock ‘n roll, violent videogames, Gothic novels, horror movies, etc.

[4] “Look at the size of this thing. You think this came out of a chicken or something?”

[5] “Let me make this simple: Do what I say… OR I WILL KILL YOU!” Ostensibly a strict mommy dom, Tatou was something of a big softie when push came to kiss (to that, the movie has a somewhat dubious understanding of what consent is: through old French noirs).

[6] Re: “‘The Most Powerful Weapon You Have’: Warriors and Gender in La Femme Nikita“:

As Edward Said astutely notes in Culture and Imperialism, most societies project their fears on the unknown or the exotic other. This barren land, where the viewers are kept disorientated, is threatening. It is a place between the familiar and the foreign, like part of a dream or vision that one cannot remember clearly. There is always a sense of a lurking danger from which the viewers need protection. Nikita provides that sense of protection (source).

[7] In a way, my exes knew me better than myself, because I wasn’t always actively thinking about my own psychosexual drives. I had to learn by getting “mated” in “chess.” Defeat is a powerful teacher. But I don’t want to hand it to them, though: I learned from their mistakes; re (from Volume Two, part one:

I suffered at their hands and benefitted from their actions because I slowly learned how to stand on my own two feet; i.e., to take what they (and my other exes) did to me and transform it into a message of Gothic healing and hope, of calculated risk doomsaying about state shift to promote Gothic Communism. I couldn’t have done that, on some level, without capital abusing me, but also my exes (that’s nothing to be proud of, on their ends, however) [source].

In other words, games under capital are driven by a desire to win and survive, but also commodify these devices in an unfair system furthered by the product as instruction. Under capital, life isn’t fair, but life could be if we developed a better system by changing the rules; i.e., through emergent gameplay during our magic circles, ludic contracts, Gothic BDSM, et al.