This blog post is part of “All the World,” a sixth promotion originally inspired by the three I did in 2024 with Harmony Corrupted and Romantic Rose: “Brace for Impact,” “Searching for Secrets” and “Deal with the Devil” (2024), as well as “Make It Real” for Volume One and “The Total Codex” for Volume Zero. Those promotions sought to promote and provide their respective volume’s individual pieces for easy public viewing in single-post form; re: for the Poetry Module, Undead Module and Demon Module, followed by my PhD and manifesto. “All the World,” by comparison, caps off my book series with a promotion for Volume Three; re: my Praxis Volume. As usual, this promotion was written, illustrated and invigilated by me as part of my larger Sex Positivity (2023) book series.
Click here to see “All the World’s” Table of Contents and Full Disclaimer.
Permissions: Any publicly available images are exhibited for purposes of education, transformation and critique, thus fall under Fair Use; private nude material and collabs with models are specifically shared with permission from the original model(s). For more details about artist permissions, refer to the book disclaimer (linked above).
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.
“Borrowed Robes,” or Countering Nation Pastiche’s Sublimated War and Rape with Revolutionary Cryptonymy and Liminal Monster Porn in the Internet Age: Introduction
“What three things does drink especially provoke?”
“Marry, sir, nose-painting, sleep, and
urine. Lechery, sir, it provokes, and unprovokes;
it provokes the desire, but it takes
away the performance: therefore, much drink
may be said to be an equivocator with lechery:
it makes him, and it mars him; it sets
him on, and it takes him off; it persuades him,
and disheartens him; makes him stand to, and
not stand to; in conclusion, equivocates him
in a sleep, and, giving him the lie, leaves him” (source).
—Macduff and the porter, Macbeth
Picking up where “Transgressive Nudism; or, Flashing Those with Power (re: Cryptonymy’s Origins)” left off…
(artist: Oleg Bulakh)
Note: Nation pastiche essentially boils down to us-versus-them dogma through national bodies, which translate during neoliberal media (videogames) to various kinds of bread and circus. My writing in 2021 examines this process through FPS and Metroidvania (re: “Military Optimism“) but also fighting games (re: “Policing Bodies: The ’80s Action Hero in Streets of Rage 4“); i.e., which this 2023 and early-2024 manuscript continues exploring. This includes the above writing. However, much of this chapter flirts with Amazons: to camp them, as well as their enemies (re: the Medusa and her offshoots; e.g., the xenomorph, above). Even so, said writing here is more of a survey than deep dive, but the ideas introduced here are explored at length in my 2025 Metroidvania Corpus and total Amazon scholarship. —Perse, 5/9/2025
In the previous section, we discussed the risks of exposure during sex; i.e., as a voyeuristic/exhibitionistic activity in general. Now we’ll consider such cryptonymy more from the role of the persona, the costume as a robe to borrow (the next subchapter will consider the rapacious elements at length; i.e., the “incel” gradient of Capitalism in crisis). Sometimes people perform nudism, including transgressive forms, to get a reaction from fascists. Sometimes, rape prevention and “girl talk”/gossip invoke more complete disguises—not just a naked body with (or without) a mask, but a secret identity that stands for something more than what colonizers have in mind/are conditioned to expect. We’ll explore this idea of “borrowed robes” in three parts, but first, an introduction to the idea.
During oppositional praxis, monsters mean different things depending on their political context; e.g., the victim complexes of state proponents posturing as “witches” and false, straw dog revolutionaries versus the sex-positive and class warriors identifying as witches while being oppressed by class-traitors-in-disguise. This “borrowing” goes both ways. While nation pastiche is, at best, centrist (thus regressive), the TERF-y cryptonyms of zombie-vampires, witches and Amazonomachia have ironic, revolutionary variants: proletarian Amazonomachia.
The traumas of capital, then, are repressed and must be expressed through lateral depictions that needn’t give the game completely away—i.e., cryptonymy as a covert means of revolutionary code with anthropomorphic/posthuman qualities. To this, counterfeit monster “skins” and masks don’t inspired an empty sense of imposter syndrome; instead, they can be worn while opposing the state, their appreciative irony/peril and liminal, even drug-like monsters allowing for “perceptive” pastiche and parallel societies, birthing revolutionary “Trojans” (furries, witches, warriors, etc) as naughty actors up to no good (actual rebellion) during society as a living document, one whose culture can be rewritten by changing the context of the code as a kind of stolen costume.
To it, the monstrous-feminine—normally as something to despise or feel shame about—becomes correct and comfortable in defense of those we care about: ourselves and our loved ones as different from state enforcement, thus opposed to genocide. This includes the Amazon as a popular disguise for all of oppositional praxis—i.e., a frequently animalized warrior woman that, in truth, is a masculine-(thus canonically monstrous)-feminine entity that resists being made into the Virgin or the Whore, but also the bad bitch of capital slapping would-be Communists around in the name of American Liberalism and the sacred freedom of the market.
In this subchapter, I specifically want to examine how the “rewriting” process occurs through liminal iterations of monster porn in the Internet Age: Amazon “warrior moms,” proletarian Amazonomachia and breeding kink, in part one; but also moe/ahegao and incest as historically-materially bound to eco-fascist nation pastiche (and war and rape) as things to canonically sublimate in part two; and lastly rock ‘n roll as a friendlier and seminal “get together” strategy that has sought to challenge state abuse through the power of dance and music as attractive/comforting but also camouflage: animal skins, thus masks as a classic kind of guerrilla warfare with tremendous theatrical applications.
The general idea cryptonymic is to disguise ourselves with in ways that confuse/expose our attackers (through their own disgust) and hide our girthy counterattacks with at the same time. To abjure this blind pastiche and its jingoistic tradition requires proletarian subterfuge (and rock ‘n roll hero worship; e.g., Jimmi Hendrix’ penis) as transformative tools when critiquing capital in playful, fun ways that disarm feelings of panic; i.e., for the revolutionary to identify as/with these complex symbols/tools of oppression through the struggle of class war as something to enjoy mid-performance: to delight in subversive/transgressive performances that indicate said struggle in liminal ways, but don’t turn the risk of harm into a sure thing. Indeed, there’s great skill and courage required in duping fascists, who compensate for their emotional stupidity by being violent in animalized, moribund language: “I imagine they think there’s great skill in destroying things, when in fact it’s the easiest thing in the world.”
(exhibit 102a1: Artist: Hoonts. Killing is an act of cowardice, not bravery. Jokes, games and song can be a mightier weapon than raw violence in the right hands. To this, our small mouse and their stowaway frogs is both gender parody and subterfuge told within an animal recognized for its smallness [the mouse] but also its craftiness in ways not dissimilar to a goblin/gremlin or Tolkien’s hobbits; i.e., clever versus cunning [an adjective he normally reserved for dragons, wolves or wargs, etc]. The classic parable is they can use this inventiveness and fun to snatch victory from the jaws of defeat, whereas their fascist enemies do the opposite; i.e., the Roman fool fallen on his sword.)
(exhibit 102a2: Artist, left: Don Bluth. “Take what you can when you can!” Villains like Jenner and Woundwort lie, cheat and steal. They could be seen as vice characters [Jenner, anyways] but are also zombie-tyrant, fallen Caesars that manipulate through guile, cunning and suspicion—of turning people against each other and when that doesn’t work, of resorting to murder first-hand; they rule through fear and dogma, but also “prison sex” hierarchies implemented by the self-imposed strong against those purported as weak. They are the epitome of man box culture and the abusers not just of people, but animals, too; i.e., the Pavlovian promisers of rewards via diminishing returns, from positions of material advantage that allow them to punish their enemies by casting suspicion on them as one would an animal, but also the conditioner’s own subordinates as increasingly fragile:
In The Merchant of Venice, Shakespeare’s approach to animals is quite different. He has Shylock compared to an animal, either a wolf or a dog, many times: “You may as well use question with the wolf / Why he hath made the ewe bleat for the lamb” (4.1.72-3); “Thou called’est me a dog before thou had a cause / But since I am a dog, beware my fangs” (3.3.6-7 ); “O, be thou damned, inexorable dog!” (4.1.127) and “You call me misbeliever, cut-throat dog” (1.3.107). Shylock is an animal in the eyes of the Christians, is not of their kind, the Christians’ kind, because they see themselves as human, therefore exempt from greed; their acts are not greedy but merciful [to themselves]. To the Christians, Shylock is but a dumb beast that cannot be reasoned with [source: “The Problem of Greed“].
As beings to break, assigned “lessers” adopt these interrogator behaviors against those more marginalized, censored or disempowered than themselves: to sell out their own kind; re: “These rules are enforced through shaming and bullying, as well as promises of rewards, the purpose of which is to force conformity to our dominant culture of masculinity” [re: Mark Greene]. For rebellion’s sake, fight is something to harbor inside ourselves through class character as concealed from our opponents; for fascists, it’s something to stamp out of us through force, sabotage and manipulation—i.e., by returning to a “greater” time when human suffering was assigned to a small group of special people [men] and everyone else was less than them/were simply sitting around apparently not doing anything at all. The reality is a manufactured fragility that only compounds overtime, threatened by imagined enemies all around the paranoid conqueror and his captive audience.
The Gothic-Communist idea, then, is iconoclasm as a means of exposing the tyrant, demasking them by making them gag or crap their pants, soiling the perfect image of themselves they try so hard to cultivate, and by extension their Man Box/”prison sex” culture in connection to a bourgeois Superstructure; re: “An enemy has only images behind which he hides his true motives. Destroy the image and you break the enemy.”)
Everything is political, but a desire to appear apolitical is the fascist MO. Something to keep in mind, then, is that bad intent is the litmus test; i.e., something to hide unto itself, thus conceal the linguo-material conditions that lead to fascist regressions and rape culture in nerd culture at large. Conversely, subversions made in good faith are those that—while certainly liminal, monstrous, pornographic and transgressive in kink- and BDSM-themed ways—actively generate perceptive pastiche and gender trouble with which to dismantle the factors that lead to fascism and its notorious abuses: by exposing the killer through a shared interest in nerdy topics (which the Gothic, at large, is).
Unlike Bourassa’s Ancestor or Countess (exhibit 102a3, next page), we’re not playing this game of Amazonian class war because we’re bored or want to be seen as the weird nerds/groomer fags “making things gay” through camp; we’re “making things political” (re: Gavin, “They say in small talk, never discuss religion or politics… Do it immediately!” timestamp: 14:54) because we want to survive the Man Box bullshit of weird canonical nerds aggregating against us, their solidarity and unfair advantage pitted against our proposed solidarity as the end of the world as they know it (aided by centuries of propaganda touting Capitalism as the end of history). This rebellious desire includes hulking Commies (our Zaryas herbos and Zangief himbos and their implied sodomy practices), the in-betweens like my Revana and Shelly Bombshell, and the Hobbit-sized, mousy types (exhibit 102a1)! We’re all prey to either hunt or tame under Capitalism, expected to don the uniform, mask, muscles and weapon in service of capital.
That’s simply not an option (Mel Gibson, ever the broken clock: “Run and you’ll live; at least awhile.”). You certainly don’t live as a minority by keeping your head down and taking it, because eventually they’ll take everything you have (assimilation and tokenism only last so long and in the meantime force you into slavery and to betray your own people). The paradox of material change involves humans as a social species; i.e., the seeking of company you trust while also constantly being hunted from mask-wearing adversaries who try to lower your guard through perceived commonalities. These masked liars either include weird canonical nerds who feel like they’re owed sex as consumers, or out-and-out fascists and establishment politicians who transform the world in ways that force us into the closet or outright kill us (social/identity death and actual death are not far removed, in practice).
To this, cops work undercover to surveille citizens; fascists are undercover vigilantes or “crooked cops” who try to blend in as best they can, waiting to strike. Unlike their centrist cousins, they have surface level charm, a variety of masks, bad intent and a death wish: the cryptonymy of murder!
Note: Read “The World Is a Vampire” for a close-read of The Darkest Dungeon and the Countess. —Perse, 5/7/2025
(exhibit 102a3: Artist, top: Chris Bourassa. Popular in Radcliffe’s novels, the devil-in-disguise has survived well into the 21st century. Gothic impostors are generally a double who fails to entirely blend in—i.e., a “priest” or dance partner whose outfit is dark and veiled, giving off menacing but also attractive vibes: an eroticizing of the surface image within a novel-of-manners approach. Per Radcliffe, beneath this image lurks an animalistic predator—a “demon lover” who means to kill the heroine [which Red Book subverts by making the Countless a female serial killer]. In Team Cherry’s case, the hero of the game is its greatest monster, and the theme of masks bleeds into the world as a highly veiled and deceptive place: a framed narrative/mise-en-abyme that contains many terrors, medieval imagery and one spunky daughter of Hallownest.)
Before we begin part one, keep this in mind: Ethics of human rights override ethics of politeness or transparency. Rude or not, it’s vital to hide from bad-faith parties, whether this involves omitting information (lies of omission) or code-switching in order to survive, but also stealthily teaching sex-positive lessons under oppressive conditions that encourage a bit of subterfuge, anger and violence. This includes riots, but also downplaying your politics through common, Gothic language as something to reclaim from a colonizing force (the tools and language of hated made into love language and cathartic sex/power games).
Furthermore, ethical dishonesty is a means of surviving those who hide by communicating in bad faith; i.e., entitled, apathetic masters of concealing murderous intent and deceptive maneuvering meant to coerce sex through monstrous language, DARVO, disguises a cruel games played when they become bored; e.g., the vampire as a privileged, powerful (and older) seducer of (often younger) women and other vulnerable targets by weakening their boundaries/desensitizing their defense mechanisms, but also attenuating their emotional/Gothic intelligence by isolating and “hypnotizing” them with a perfect appearance: grooming as an escalating process of social-sexual predation/theft of innocence by a thoroughly guilty party playing a harmful game inside canonical norms. Their predation is power-centric from a position of total advantage and abused trust, which Man Box advertises through statuesque personas, but also benign ones that aren’t packing tons of muscle, even—just confidence/”game.”
These predators can be schoolteachers; e.g., like Stephen Herron expertly lying to their wives while abusing women/children (Ashley Lytton’s Spotify podcast, “Betrayal,” 2022) but similar “experts” exist within civilian, male-dominated professions that claim to protect women, children and the communities to which they belong: priests, coaches, father figures or actual parents, police officers, rockstars or videogame streamers. As cheaters, the abuser’s game is universal: to avoid consequences through partially concealed power abuse, wherein they furtively control, dominate, and lie to other workers by convincing these would-be accusers that they cannot lie, let alone cheat, steal or do anything wrong—i.e., making the accuser not just feel crazy for suggesting it, but guilty of thought crimes against a community idol. His disguise was that effective because his audience was primed to accept it at face value.
Apparently everyone who knew Stephen Herron thought he was Mr. Perfect, “a really good guy” whose sanctimonious, affable façade[1] helped maintain the status quo in public discussions; as Gothic Communists, our game is to outmaneuver the advances of people like him while flanking their attempts to badly educate other potential victims—i.e., to beat our would-be victimizers to the punch by changing material conditions that weaken sex pests’ power over workers at large. This starts on a societal level through game, ergodic subterfuge and speaking in code, but also spilling tea through monstrous personas that are dictated partially by actual abusers.
According to them, we’re the groomers when we navigate the ontological perils of a liminal dating scene (a DARVO tactic meant to draw attention away from themselves as they continue to abuse with impunity) and women and children should report us when we try to survive or otherwise be ourselves (with those who don’t play along labeled as collaborators). Caught out, the rapist will blame the victim; e.g., Matthew Lewis’ Ambrosio blaming Antonia for his behaviors, for “seducing” him (within a culture that sex-starved him, but also trained him to hate women)! Not only are many abusers historically abused themselves. In general, these are taught behaviors that must be untaught and discouraged—i.e., with sex-positive, liminal expression to foster rape prevention in the future.
(source: EJ Dickson’s “The Red-Pilling of Rob Schneider: A Complete Timeline,” 2023)
Beyond the civilian, there’s eco-fascist proponents that develop an increasingly warlike, rapacious self-colonizing role during societal collapse as brought about by Capitalism; but we’ll get to that after we discuss warrior moms, moe/ahegao, and incest—Japanese canon being our go-to in the latter three categories: Kubo and the Two Strings (2016) and Netflix’ Japan Down (2020) commenting on these behaviors through a closeness with death begot from material conditions in larger geopolitics, which are then exported to and fro. The panic and fervor might seem isolated, but speaks to larger synchronistic problems elsewhere.
With the intro to “Borrowing Robes” concluded, let’s proceed onto part one:
“Borrowed Robes,” part one: Proletarian Warrior Moms and Breeding Kinks (feat. Nyx)
“your ass is fat n your aura threatening” (source)
—the banner image on Nyx‘ Twitter profile
Note: Nyx is one of my muses—someone who has appeared in much of my writing about Amazons and reclaiming them through rape play (re: “Rape Reprise” and “Reclaiming Anal Rape“). As such, they are one of the most important figures in Sex Positivity as a whole. Here, I was beginning to flirt with using more of them in my work; i.e., while writing about mommy dommes seriously for the first time in this series. —Perse, 5/7/2025
(artist: Nyx)
In terms of the cryptonymy process’ revolutionary potential, let’s start with Amazons; i.e., as a kind of mommy dom/monster-fucker archetype that can resist capital and its disastrous effects, mid-exposure. In my collab with Nyx, for instance, I pointedly drew two “warrior mommies” (exhibit 102a4, next page)—not as a call to canonical war and defense of the state, but to spearhead an iconoclastic, xenophilic movement counteractive of Capitalism and fascism, reclaiming its colonized, xenophobic visual language for a nurturing quality. Such things exist in the same spaces that unironic exploitation does.
As classic monsters, their mission is to protect you with reclaimed means and materials: hunters, protectors, and parental cuties with “big mommy energy” (minus the obligatory parenting scheme, and with strict/gentle flavors) keeping you safe from the ultimate Great Destroyer, Capitalism, and its accreted traumas/threats: material reminders of workers being “hunted” by the larger system’s impending cataclysm and rape culture. Over time, applying and interpreting these concepts can shift in one’s own corpus in duality (the Amazon vs the dragon meaning different things at once):
(exhibit 102a4: Model and artist: Nyx and Persephone van der Waard. Girl warriors and iconoclastic girl-talk allows for counterculture mascots that largely look and perform the same on the surface, but under dialectical-material scrutiny actually are in opposition with their canonical counterparts. In the immortal words of Elizabeth Shue, “Don’t fuck with the babysitter!” Not to be trifled with, these tomboys and queers refuse to be class traitors, nor made into monsters the way canon defines monsters as. This makes their violence and its perpetration ironic in more ways than one.
In other words, they are subversive Amazons of a special hind: war-bride collaborators within propaganda that resist and refuse to be victims or raped, but also don’t kill people like cops do [who rape and murder the world]; they’re class warriors-in-disguise—becoming the very things that grieve the Patriarchy the most by subverting one of their most popular assimilations: the Amazon as famous Americanized code for girl boss [thus a TERF dogwhistle, similar to the colors purple, green and white]. While the fascist/neoliberal variants we’ve examined so far probably fuck to metal [Jadis did]—are metal, to roll with the Terminator pun [though it applies equally to Taarna from Heavy Metal, 1981]—proletarian variants challenge the state through a xenophilic “warrior mom” persona that invites the xenomorph, succubus and other Medusa-class Amazons into the fold. Their function is no different, the Amazon as a proletarian witch is condemned to death, rocking their mighty bods during displays of subversive Amazonomachia that delegitimize anthropomorphic stigmas and decolonize body language and gender roles—i.e., through a kind of ontological, xenophilic guerrilla war/trick-up-their-sleeve. Said conflict sits on the surface of the image within thresholds, but also invokes the performance of running and hiding.
The guerrilla historically attacks when required but is always on the move, changing shape to survive. In the modern age, this idea has expanded to subvert heteronormative propaganda like the Amazon not once, but multiple times. It also goes back and forth within sex-coercive and sex-positive forms—all for the next generation of children to take and process yet again. The moral, here, is “perceptive” pastiche that breaks the habit of state menticide, whitewashing and theatricals deceptions during kayfabe: the canonical dragon of the West, itself, as the thing for a subversive Amazon to punch up against. During liminal expression, proletarian warrior moms/Amazons aren’t being violent against persons, but ideas, gossiping with the best of ’em [on their feet and on their toes] while directing their anger towards sex-positive, constructive efforts; i.e., labors that develop worker rights as something to synthesize and appreciate through ironic BDSM’s bladed implements of torture and conquest: the matador and the bull as reversed.)
For example, my current feelings about gender parody and Gothic BDSM aesthetics have changed considerably. In “What an Amazon Is, Standing in Athena’s Shadow,” I specifically highlighted the Amazon as something to inspect in Gothic narratives through a post-Freudian psychoanalytical lens—i.e., Barbara Creed’s argument of Athena’s Aegis having intersex, androgynous qualities; e.g., Medusa’s severed head as something to strike fear into the hearts of men. The approach was very cis-gendered and second wave and it shows in my work:
MM [masculine mothers] are female-exclusive because their Amazonomachia are not gender performances that can be convincingly portrayed by either sex. Yes, they utilize masculine qualities or props that cannot be attributed exclusively to women. However, biological motherhood cannot be claimed by men, period (source).
To be fair to myself, my introduction to these ideas was incredibly recent, at the time and unguided. Not only I was grappling with complex, non-heteronormative notions of gender studies that, for me, remained equally unexplored; they were provided by people in academia who approached them as Gothic academics would out of the 1990s and early 2000s. I would go onto interrogate the likes of Creed, Kristeva, Carter and Freud myself through my work on Amazons; e.g., in “Reclaiming Anal Rape” or “Symposium: Aftercare“; i.e., as part of a larger body of work on Amazons that didn’t happen, overnight. My idea of the whore’s revenge (re: “Rape Reprise” was written in late 2024—going on eight years after “What an Amazon Is,” but I had been consuming and creating mommy dommes for years (e.g., Ileana, Queen of the Night, left): a holistic regenesis, during cryptonymy’s cryptomimesis.
(artist: Persephone van der Waard)
At the time, then, my critical voice (and understanding of the Gothic through chonky dark mommies, above) was subsequently limited and outmoded in terms of genderqueer identity and performance; i.e., as not being divorced from biological sex (at the time, I had only just learned about Judith Butler and couldn’t do it, myself—nor was I as familiar with Twitter and queer online spaces at the time). Since then, my exhibits have become increasingly genderqueer regarding classical myths repurposed for queer discourse in the Internet Age; e.g., Medusa (exhibit 100c10), the Amazon (Odessa Stone, 100c4; or Zarya, exhibit 111b); or the Wicked Witch of the West (exhibit 112c) not just as a female monstrous-feminine but a genderqueer one of different genders and sexes whose counterculture nature weds the “waifu” to the cause.
Even so, clues of my ongoing transition were adumbrated by what I was grappling with. I also describe the mother archetype as not simply a Gothic heroine (which is historically passive) but an active, traditionally masculine force subverted by the presence of playfully inventive feminism during the ritual—i.e., a Gothic Amazon/masculine mother subtype that has the power to shape our views in a matriarchal direction from moment to moment:
While we like to think that emblems have no power to shape us, the fact remains that we are as much defined by them, as they us. Nothing, I think, illustrates this more effectively than mothers. If made available to us in our formative years, MM can, even as symbols, become our surrogate parents. […] MM are not merely active in how they narratively evade monstrous consumption, on-screen; they shape our viewing of them, as active heroic women, by being exposed to us, when [our] views of the world are forming. In other words, whatever constitutes female heroism is bred into us (ibid.).
So while my views on monstrous women have only continued to shift over the years, they have resulted in a Gothic-Communist hybrid with a genderqueer attack that more or less preserves the basic idea—albeit through a twist. Rather than stress mother archetypes as masculine in any traditional, “purist” sense, I have altered my former usage of “MM” through a slight alteration of the acronym: “monster moms,” which yields a broader genderqueer potential of another gender trouble mechanism: the “breeding” kink as being filled up with a familial energy that, at times, promotes a fearsome bondage to servitude and submission more so than pregnancy.
It also conveys a deeply “primal” idea of two animals rutting more so than civilized people, transgressing against civilization and Foucault’s lamenting of bourgeois discourse surrounding sexuality by regressing (to some degree) towards the medieval bucolic pleasures of village life as something to perform in various roleplay maneuvers (minus the actual rape). Simply put, it can help people heal from sexual trauma and emotional abuse by confronting recreations of past examples (re: exhibit 43d, 47b2, 51b1 from “Seeing Dead People,” “Non-Magical Detectives,” and “Dissecting Radcliffe“).
(exhibit 102b: While the Other Mother from Coraline is presented as a straight-ahead threat in the film, she remains a curious opportunity for BDSM proponents to perform in a “strict” monster-fucker category of the mommy dom with “gentle”-if-uncanny characteristics: the menacing housewife/matriarch offsetting the Gothic fear of inheritance and incest. During rituals of unequal power exchange, her persona can be used by the dom to excite intimations of “breeding” trauma within the sub, thus embody catharsis as tied to childhood traumas that live within the body and whatever spaces the sub finds themselves in. Just remember to handle with care: Respect each other’s right to consent and negotiate boundaries; use safe words during the deed and provide adequate aftercare when it’s done!
To this, the idea of mommy/daddy doms might seem puzzling to the uninitiated. But “initiation” is, itself, engendered by exposures to trauma that are ultimately variable in nature. Not everyone “gets” them because not everyone had to live with them. The same goes for kink, BDSM and fetishes, overall. In those terms, the religious experience might be a safer bet than breeding kinks” when communicating a more widely disseminated initiation. Starting at childhood, fear of God as a kind of parental figure is something that translates neatly into the home as an uncanny space, which segues into unequal power exchange during relationships with BDSM elements. To that, few things are as awesomely profound [or salubrious] as a Numinous experience when placed in the right hands. “Ravish me, mommy!” becomes not an invitation to self-harm, but a means of assistance by a willing dom to help the sub recover from trauma during cathartic BDSM rituals.)
This change in terminology—the monster mom—reflects a broader delineation away from raw psychoanalysis when moving towards Gothic Communism’s Oedipal subversion; i.e., a genderfluid, BDSM approach with a dialectical-material focus that allows persons to play with motherly roles that, once upon a time, would’ve been fixed to positions of power and status like the queen or warlord.
To that, the Amazon as a strict/gentle mommy dom or monster mom can—like the trans femboy (re: exhibit 52g/91c)—be convincingly performed by any gender or sex the performer wants, provided its “warrior” status highlights unequal power exchange as something to perform in Gothic-Communist ways, thereby altering socio-material conditions with instructional Gothic language utilized in good faith.
By extension, and in relation to this chapter section’s primary focus, sex-positive Amazons cannot be fascist—are not incestuous/rapacious or “phallic” (with actual knife violence) at all; they denote positions of unequal power exchange that are negotiated, sex-positive and good-faith. No harmful stabbing. Even so, the xenophilic context remains liminal, hence is performatively complex/forever subject-to-change. It can be more “gentle” or “strict” depending on the individual parties’ negotiated catharsis:
(exhibit 102c1: Artist, top-left: Art of Azrael; top-mid: Rankgo; top-right: Snezhik; middle-right: Roberto Ferri; middle: Reiq; middle-left: Bokuman; bottom-left: Dabble Doodles; bottom-right: Robert Crumb.
Power and resistance take many forms, as do subversions of them as something to express through ritualized mastery during BDSM as a battle for supremacy—for the mind via a “psychomachy” with Amazon flavors [re: Ripley versus the Alien Queen]. “Power” can be expressed through, or stored within, a body part as exemplary of a particular kind of gendered power scheme—e.g., the ass as an extension of feminine/female power under a male/token predatory gaze.
Said ass represents something especially “potent” for more than just the men inspecting it, but the topos of power as a nudist, genderqueer mode of expression: the motherly provider as a nurturing force expressed through nudist displays of the ass by a trans person, for instance; i.e., degrees of skill meant to comfort the viewer without disempowering the performer as a “skilled” queer laborer [whose motherly persona and booty can bear out various motherly clichés with morphological/gendered variation, such as the dark queen or the fairy princess as a trans, intersex or non-binary entity]. As something to express, power can likewise denote sentiments tied to the human body canonized more broadly as sites of power. For example, Milton’s Eve represents a power in her body that chagrins the devil: “Abashed the Devil stood, And felt how awful goodness is, and saw Virtue in her shape how lovely—saw, and pined His loss” [re: Paradise Lost].
Beyond the body and its parts and roused sensations, there remains the actions committed by those seen as motherly protectors who, in truth, are historically-materially androgynous beings: angels; e.g., Constantine‘s Gabriel, played by Tilda Swinton, stepping on Reeve’s hero with her all-powerful feet. The phrase, “Step on me, mommy” leaps to mind as an expression of the speaker relating to power in ways not far removed from traditional modes of power expression in medieval artwork, except the expected genders of these heavenly-hellish roles can change wildly. In sex-positive scenarios, the difference lies in gender as something to behold as “powerful” happening in ways that aren’t intrinsically Patriarchal the way that C.S. Lewis might pine for when desiring a particular regression/preservation; i.e., towards the Biblical might of a prescriptively awesome sort:
In the plastic arts these symbols [of power] have steadily degenerated. Fra Angelico’s angels carry in their face and gesture the peace and authority of Heaven. Later come the chubby infantile nudes of Raphael; finally the soft, slim, girlish, and consolatory angels of nineteenth century art, shapes so feminine that they avoid being voluptuous only by their total insipidity—the frigid houris of a teatable paradise. They are a pernicious symbol. In Scripture the visitation of an angel is always alarming; it has to begin by saying “Fear not.” The Victorian angel looks as if it were going to say, “There, there.” / The literary symbols are more dangerous because they are not so easily recognized as symbolical. Those of Dante are the best. Before his angels we sink in awe. His devils, as Ruskin rightly remarked, in their rage, spite, and obscenity, are far more like what the reality must be than anything in Milton [source: C.S. Lewis’ 1961 preface to The Screwtape Letters featured in Jordan Poss’ “C.S. on Angels in Art,” 2020].
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Not only do Lewis’ laments pine for domination of a thoroughly sexist school; phrases like “what the reality must be” highlight a terrible bias from a man whose disdain for Milton can scare breathe what he might say about xenophilic angels, but also monster-fucking Amazons, dark mommy doms and their Amazonomachia in the 21st century.)
(exhibit 102c2: Artist, left: Ching Yeh; right: Danuskocampos. While gendered expressions of power with trans, enby or intersex potential intersect with traditional forms, C.S. Lewis’ own views on religious power are not only cis-gendered, but patriarchal: “A most important element in his convictions has to do with his believing that the ‘masculine’ as revealed in Christian doctrine is superior to the ‘feminine,'” writes Ann Loades [“C.S. Lewis on Gender,” 2023]. For Lewis, she continues, women could not be priestesses in the Christian faith and that female humility was “an erotic necessity.” It stands to reason that this would extend to the Numinous as a secular experience of “religious” power for Lewis. But as I write myself in “I, Satanist; Atheist” (2021), the Numinous isn’t gendered at all, merely a desired response to any who summon it:
In short, Otto sees ghost stories as an offshoot of the Numinous, aka the Mysterium Tremendum or divine wrath. There needn’t be a god for this sensation to work. For me, enjoyment of this “presence” amounts to Satanic apostacy. My cultivation of “exquisite torture” is wholly cultivated, prepared by me with the expectation of a desired response. Similar to the uncanny as being predictable, this doesn’t denote the presence of a Christian [male] god (or any other); it simply means that certain thoughts excite me, but not at other peoples’ expense [source].
Gothic poetics, then, serve queer people to allow for monstrous expression beyond what Lewis [or people like him] would punish or otherwise fuss about as “fallen, degraded” forms of what is superior when presented as cis-gendered inside heteronormative, Biblical canon; i.e., something to prescribe and dominate. For him, things were fine as is: when straight, orderly and dimorphic. For Ridley Scott, as we have discussed, this became something to destroy with pleasure, thus taking the Romantics’ transformative opinions about Milton’s work and applying them to “fallen angels” and their mad gods in the 20th and 21st centuries.)
(exhibit 102c3: Artist: Danuskocampos. Marsden’s Amazon was a symbol of feminist resistance to status-quo forces, but she’s still dressed up in American Liberalism regalia and demonstrating her resisting through sport-like/war-like language; i.e., by playing the language of men and the state [re: “Cruisin’ for a Bruisin’” and “Always a Victim“]. While violence as a revolutionary tool that can be symbolized during Amazonian, there’s so much more to expressing subversive dialogs than punching a Nazi [though the sentiment is a fine one, it also applies to centrists, I think]. From a praxial standpoint, doing so barely cuts it, doing the bare minimum with centrist kayfabe. Dialogs about Amazons rioting for the proletarian are but, but those “spoilsport” sort that sit outside of overt war or sports narratives are more subversive because they don’t encourage blind consumption but “bratty” notions of changing the rules; i.e., moving players away from violence as inherently romanticized within a centrist rubric.
For every war boss, even ironic ones, there should be as many if not more clever subversives making warmongers nervous in their domestic, paramilitary and military forms in fiction and reality—e.g., Chappell Roan’s “Red Wine Supernova (Magician’s Cut)” singing of the magical, redheaded sapphic dancing arm-in-arm with a kind of body language and gender parody divorced from the language of war, but no less an Amazonomachia. Not all Amazons are meat-headed herbos aping Wonder Woman [though that’s entirely valid if they get their point across; it just shouldn’t be the exclusive or even prioritized method during oppositional praxis].)
The same flexibility exhibited above in religious-themed secularities plays out in monstrous myths as forever flexible, but rooted in human bodies as morphological sites for discussions on power as subversively gendered; e.g., Marsden’s Wonder Woman as a proletarian agent. For example, when I originally drew Nyx as a warrior mommy dom in exhibit 102a4, I stated: “I wanted to make the dragon seem sympathetic, even cute, crushed under their weighty and fearsome bodies. Who’s the real monster?” However, for all you would-be colonizers out there, I hate and have always hated the movie 300 (2006) because of its fascist imagery (Big Joel’s “300, Fascism, and The Angry Men of Twitter,” 2022; the defenders of fascism are almost always weird, “glass jaw” angry men in love with the hypermasculine male body image[2] as something to venerate; or their equally fragile, battered spouses, like Matt Walsh’s wife).
To that, my “Spartan” doubles of Nyx were intentionally drawn with decolonized fascist imagery—a critique of Capitalism’s masculinity in crisis, that post-conception I offer up a different way to view these ladies who refuse to worship, thus submit to formal power using their own formidable assets: Their cloaks are Commie-Red and their “saiyan[3]” bodies are sex-positive and illustrating mutual consent in Gothically subversive ways; the dragon is Tolkien’s rarefied greed, the death of Capitalism and a new dawn on a brave new world. If this sounds like I changed my mind and came up with a new way to interpret my own art, it’s because I did! I did the original illustration four days before I started writing Sex Positivity! Roughly six months later on January 23rd, 2023, I decided to change how I felt about my drawing of Nyx in relation to the book itself as a work-in-progress. That’s the fun thing about art; you can interpret your own works in fairly different ways that still uphold the core values of your proverbial zodiac. Death by Snu-Snu can be many different things.
This being said, if weird reactionaries want to treat iconoclastic Amazons like their personal JO crystals (source: Reddit; the OG “JO crystal” guy) that’s fine; but they’re jacking it to Communists-in-disguise! Then again, reactionaries are already more than likely “jackin’ it with a bro” in private; i.e., fascist “chasers” who xenophobically fetishize/covert catboys, virgins, and other forms of boy-on-boy “prison sex” like Nick Fuentes; fascist dogma tends to control the sex lives of its soldiers and leads to some very sad and pathetic, gender-envious behaviors (all in service of appearing strong and glorious in the present; you can always wank it openly after Ragnarok, right boys?).
(exhibit 103: Artist, left/right: Persephone van der Waard. My fan art of the Amazon and vampire boss from Dragon’s Crown [2013, a college favorite] and a drawing by me of Tyris flare from Golden Axe [1989, a childhood favorite].)
The same revolutionary cryptonymy applies to other work I’ve done in the genre (exhibit 103, above). Specifically for this book, I’ve revisited two older drawings of Amazons from their original forms to tweak them in playful ways that illustrate my arguments: For Dragon’s Crown, I went with a Gothic role-reversal, making the vampire a thicc, good vampire with li’l ghost moths and the Amazon an evil, spooky killer whose revenge is sanctioned by a perfidious and duplicitous kingdom. For Goldenaxe, I made Tyris thicc (thick thighs save lives) and gave her a Commie-core aesthetic. I’d like to think she’s summoning the power of the dragon to roast some fascists and disarm some TERFs using the awesome power of Communism and liminal monsters during oppositional praxis: “Here, girl! Fetch!” Chonky dragon go floof!
Not all that glooms is iconoclastically Gothic when its big corporations doing this kind of thing (re: Rainbow Capitalism). However, the context behind my changes remains the same: Fascism and witch hunts aren’t something we should condone. If you want to slay vampire babes with a big-booty Amazon for funsies, that’s fine, but keep in mind what’s motivating the hand behind the drawing and what my images amount to when I explain their deeper context.
Fascists will see what they want to regardless, but that’s not really the point; the point is these works can serve as “flexible” code to carry different messages despite what fascists think—like Star Wars or Blade Runner do if you know what to look for. That’s literally how code and allegory function (and the Gothic—re: Segewick’s “imagery of the surface in the Gothic novel” argument: the Gothic writes sexuality onto the surface of contested images). Both my dragons and their Amazon slayers are liminal in flexible ways; they evoke their own awesome power for me to exhibit and enshrine in this book. This kind of proletarian praxis is pointedly liminal and warrior-themed, but actively iconoclastic in resistance to “false copies” all too common with videogames as a Japanese export.
Japanese media and themes explore fascism as something to resist and endorse through power exchange commodities. Consider Marisa from Street Fighter 6, Capcom’s neoliberal cash-grab framing a conspicuously fascist warrior mom in a centrist light (exhibit 104). Sorry but I gotta yuck that yum; fascism is intrinsically tied to rape and war, which neoliberal nation pastiche in digitized combat sports like Street Fighter conceals by default—i.e., a trivialized, basic cartoon reduced to personified war theatrics with trademark special movies to cheer when performed. Is it fun to watch? Abso-fucking-lutely! But from a neoliberal standpoint, it’s pure bread-and-circus illusion pedaled to the global middle class.
(exhibit 104a1: Top-left: the thumbnail to my YouTube video where I responded to the fascist themes in Capcom’s product [“Fascism in SF6: Marisa,” 2023]. FGC fans lost their shit, they and random Gamergate types or crypto-Gamergate types coming out of the woodwork to collectively tell me there’s no connection to anything and I’m seeing stuff that “isn’t there”—classic gaslighting but also just them telling me not to even think?
Top-right: Capcom shills, laughing like maniacs and selling the shit out of the game [Varsona Vyzelta’s “NEW! Marisa VS JP Gameplay” 2023]; bottom-left and -right: Marisa herself, in-game; far-bottom-right: Italy’s fascist prime minister, Georgia Meloni. From fans, corporations, videogame communities and artists, this kind of canonical praxis must be challenged with good monster mommies like Nyx [exhibit 69/102a3].)
(exhibit 104a2: Artist, lines: Dcoda, based off a sketch by Persephone van der Waard; colors and final rendering by Persephone van der Waard: Marisa and Zangief doing something other than beating each other up but still subverting the wrestler’s kayfabe with a queer non-and-a-wink; i.e., Zangief is a gay man and gay men can have sex with women, and Marisa is probably ace due to their idea of having fun is pounding other people into the dirt. Within this subversive
Nominally or not, the Nazi and Communist remain popular wrestler heels in neoliberal canon [re: “Vince McMahon“]. As usual, sexuality and BDSM language remains an effective method for subverting state narratives and subterfuge; indeed, proponents of Marisa as their favorite muscle mommy led many to violently gaslight my mentioning of Marisa as being fascist at all—not that she was a heel, but that she had anything to do fascism or the real world in any shape or form. In other words, they had bought into the staged nature of professional wrestling in order to ignore the political, gender-troubled ramifications altogether—”kayfabe,” in other words. If not in bad-faith, attacks against my subverting of canonical kayfabe arguably stem from ignorance on the fans’ part. Even so, they fail to understand the popularity of Nazi heels in centrist war-sports narratives sport since their rise to prominence in the 1930s; e.g., Joe Louis vs Max Schmeling in 1936. The champion of either nation is there to defend local masculinity and manhood from an assigned menace.
Kayfabe clearly played a large role in the relationship between the two men. True to form, their respective labels as a Nazi representative and a hero of the American people did not reflect the socio-political realties for Louis and Schmeling behind the scenes, which many fans remained oblivious to when buying their tickets:
The rematch assumed greater social, national, and international political significance as both the print media characterized both fighters as representatives of two opposing political systems, soon to face off in a bigger battle for world domination as the bout foreshadowed the larger conflict of World War II. Such propaganda differed from the truth. Schmeling was not a Nazi, and he even rescued two Jewish boys during Kristallnacht, the Nazi rampage in November of 1938 that violently destroyed Jewish businesses, killed and arrested Jewish men, and raped Jewish women. Joe Louis, hailed as an American hero, hardly enjoyed the benefits of citizenship. Boxing was the only activity in which a black man could hit a white man and avoid jail or lynching. Louis was idolized by the black masses as a messianic figure whose victories lifted the spirits of the entire race. His victory over Braddock fostered massive celebrations, which only invited violent white retaliations. Many whites supported Schmeling in the first bout but, by 1938, fans and the media were swept up in a nationalist crusade, and Schmeling’s welcome was less than enthusiastic for the rematch in Yankee Stadium. Still, an estimated one-third of southerners backed the white German against the African American [source: Gerald R. Gems’ “Joe Louis-Max Schmeling Fight,” 2005].
In truth, the two men remained life-long friends outside of the kayfabe, with Schmeling paying for Louis’ funeral nearly fifty years after their final match inside the ring. Even so, the kind of cognitive dissonance, estrangement and parasocial myopia remains an important tool for fascists/neoliberals, who—along with their hyperbolic personas—must be critically challenged, not endorsed: Ignorance is not a virtue and rote consumerism of strongperson bodies isn’t activist political engagement unto itself; fascists ringleaders and neoliberal agents explicitly extort and exploit their audiences’ masculine insecurities though blind belief in the wrestler or competition as the product. Everything is designed to be entertaining purely because it is scripted and fake, but also meant to obscure systemic oppression through statuesque theatrical placeholders: “All is well because our heroes look strong”; i.e., they represent us” [they do not].)
The idea of retro-future palingenesis was nothing new by the time videogames game along. Just watch Star Trek, read LOTR or any fantasy/sci-fi novels or their adaptations before the mid-1980s. There’s always a national palimpsest or European blueprint to some degree. Of course, the pro-European slant varies per adaptation (with Deep Space Nine decolonizing the anti-Semitic tropes of the Ferengi, somewhat). However, I still think having a giant fascist Italy “muscle mom” utter pound her queer-coded French nemesis (with Manon explicitly coded as queer by Capcom) into the dirt is a tone-deaf moment by Capcom in its own nation pastiche, mid-kayfabe.
One, it equalizes the wish fulfillment, turning things into a game of “punch the Nazi with the queer” or vice versa. Two, this is standard-issue neoliberal bullshit, Capcom off-shooting from an already wacky US ally with slews of social-sexual dilemmas tied cultural shut-ins, debatable incest/rape culture. This includes moe and ahegao, whose ghosts of the counterfeit utterly bleed into American consumerism as operating in bad faith.
Furthermore, speaking out about them through one’s words or art as “girl talk” activism requires emotional intelligence, but also bravery in the face of canonical defenders; i.e., people unafraid to go to war to defend canon as threatened by sex workers reclaiming their own bodies from these pimps. This includes open war and bad-faith “lip service/virtue-signaling” (the trope of the false knight) that defend notoriously problematic tropes like moe and ahegao, but also incest and eco-fascism (often in concert) in occult-heavy stories like Kubo and the Two Strings and apocalyptic media like Japan Down. The extent to which these can be redeemed, mid-cryptonymy (and what they comment on as perceptive pastiche) varies.
(artist: Harmony Corrupted)
I want to explore these concepts next, opening up ways to recognize their unironic forms, then prevent eco-fascist violence in our own subversive art; re: on our Aegis!
Onto “Moe/Ahegao, Incest, and Eco-Fascism in Japanese Exports“!
About the Author
Persephone van der Waard is the author of the multi-volume, non-profit book series, Sex Positivity—its art director, sole invigilator, illustrator and primary editor (the other co-writer/co-editor being Bay Ryan). Persephone has her independent PhD in Gothic poetics and ludo-Gothic BDSM (focusing on partially on Metroidvania), and is a MtF trans woman, anti-fascist, atheist/Satanist, poly/pan kinkster, erotic artist/pornographer and anarcho-Communist with two partners. Including multiple playmates/friends and collaborators, Persephone and her many muses work/play together on Sex Positivity and on her artwork at large as a sex-positive force. That being said, she still occasionally writes reviews, Gothic analyses, and interviews for fun on her old blog (and makes YouTube videos talking about politics). Any money Persephone earns through commissions or donations goes towards helping sex workers through the Sex Positivity project; i.e., by paying costs and funding shoots, therefore raising awareness. She takes payment on PayPal, Patreon, and CashApp, etc; all links are available on her Linktr.ee. Every bit helps!
Footnote
[1] A criticism that can be applied to so-called “nice guys” like ’90s SNL stars Adam Sandler or Rob Schneider or crazy Hollywood grifters like Gwyneth Paltrow, Russel Brand or Jonah Hill (The Kavernacle’s “Jonah Hill, Weaponizing Mental Health and Fragile Masculinity” or “How Russell Brand became the WORST Right-Wing GRIFTER,” both 2023). While Schneider is perfectly within his rights to ridicule Steven Seagal for being a total asshole on Howard Stern (a shock jockey grifter in his own right), Schneider himself is still a hardcore anti-vaxxer (above) who can say or do whatever he wants and fail up as a Sancho Panza within the white man’s Quixotic industry (except for Surf Ninjas* [1993] his movies absolutely suck). In this sense, he’s arguably more insufferable than the white savior/token Hollywood hero characters because he’s a small, annoying and delusional white boy who still gets the hero headband: “What if I could change the outcome of this fight?”
As for Sandler, despite his own reputation for being a really nice guy who “everyone” likes (Dodford’s “The Adam Sandler Paradox,” 2023; timestamp: 17:31) he still makes godawful films like Jack and Jill and Click (Big Joel’s “Click: The Worst Movie,” 2020)—films that are “bad” not because they fail to be entertaining (which can be fun; i.e., camp) but because their whole premise on entertaining others is founded on incredibly baseless and mean-spirited stereotypes that are perpetuated by Sandler and his mostly-white-male collaborators (and token actors) because it simply doesn’t affect them. Simply put, it’s bad drag queer phobic married to an assortment of other bigotries “for laughs.” Class consciousness is vital to understanding the class character between their wardrobe changes as an “activist” rebranding of their image to try and keep making money in bad-faith.
Some grifters are more transparent than others, but at the end of the day Sandler and Brand belong to the same class and this can be criticized to explain their mutual inconstancies/allegiances and lack of overall hard stances while constantly perpetuating division for profit (this can be seen in older generations of white Hollywood, such as Clint Eastwood belittling Sacheen Littlefeather with the joke “I don’t know if I should present this award, on behalf of all the cowboys shot in all the John Ford westerns over the years” [source: Bruno Cooke’s “What Did Clint Eastwood Say after Sacheen Littlefeather’s 1973 Oscars Speech?” 2022] but also Richard Dreyfuss’ furiously whining to the Oscars that he won’t be able to wear blackface [Savanah Walsh’s ” Richard Dreyfuss Laments He Will “Never Have a Chance to Play a Black Man,'” 2023]).
*Exhibit 33b2c1b, “Angry Mothers.” Refer to “Summoning the Whore” to read my critique of Roger Ebert.
[2] This weird, Mr. Olympia circle jerk and its colonizer mentality and hierarchical language go on and on—with bodybuilding YouTube channels like Nick’s Strength and Power and The Tomn8er referring to their heroes in regal, elite, and sycophantic language. However, this isn’t just a case of star-struck fans worshipping their chosen kings; it belies a rape culture tied to patriarchal values. Don’t believe me? Troll through their older videos like this one about Shawn Roden’s rape allegations (Nick’s Strength and Power’s “Shawn Rhoden Court Documents and Details of the Case,” 2019) come and see how they say “innocent until proven guilty” in the video, in the comments section with thousands of replies and likes, and in other videos, then cry like little girls when Roden kicks the bucket. It’s classic close-the-ranks and-blame-the-victim bullshit—the same gross “great men don’t rape women” nonsense enjoyed by powerful industry men like Kevin Spacey, Bill Cosby, Justin Roiland, or Prince fucking Andrew (re: Dreading); but also Harvey Weinstein (Behind the Bastard’s “Part One: It Takes A Village of Bastards to Make a Weinstein,” 2022). It’s almost always powerful men protected by the system and its fans; i.e., something is rotten in Denmark. This problem bothered me enough when Roden was accused that I wrote about it:
In Roden’s case, he denies being innocent of the accusations—rape, first and foremost, but also insertion of a foreign object. Buendia has admitted he has an anger problem, but denies ever hitting women. Wheels says he has always been faithful, but also has never struck his ex or cheated on her. He, Buendia and Roden have all stressed to their many fans that “you know me, I would never do anything like this.” This highlights an issue for me. As much as I enjoy the sport, its practitioners are putting their best side forward when accused. It’s a persona, a public image—a fact many people forget when dealing with stars. Stressing transparency in light of evidence that speaks to the contrary only highlights how false this image is. Odd, then, that the accused would act so sanitized.
In Roden’s case, he has since claimed to be innocent. The problem isn’t just his word, but his fans’ faith in it. The evidence placed against him—namely the rape kit—is viewed by some as circumstantial. Semen in a woman’s vagina is viewed as “her word against his,” while a corpse or a bullet hole is less easy to dismiss. No one’s going to question a red-handed murderer. They will question a woman who recently had sex, consensual or otherwise. There is skepticism leveled against women that men simply don’t have to experience: Statistically speaking, men are far less likely to be raped; they are often in positions of power where people do not question them, be those persons fans, co-workers, or everyday individuals.
Sympathetic detractors see Roden’s alleged victim as a homewrecker. Comments about her marital status are raised (which, to me, are about as relevant as asking “what clothes did she have on, during the rape?”). She is a professional bodybuilder, but viewed as breaking the rules simply by entering Roden’s hotel. She’s treated as kept, barred from doing what any man do could with impunity. The amount of risk she endures simply by speaking out remains high; so is the amount of effort she must put forth when providing evidence under public scrutiny. Not only is her case questioned, so is her very nature as a woman. She is viewed as having less to lose than Roden. Thus, she is blamed for the fall she wreaks upon him, despite him being the alleged rapist (source: “Body Building Scandal: Problems with the Accused, and Bias against Women,” 2019).
Eat your heart out, Tommy Wiseau.
[3] The Gothic exists within thresholds through conflict on the surface of the image as contested, but also wrestling with notions of medievalized brutality reaching into the present; i.e., just as Nyx with a saiyan tail can be Gothic, so can Dragon Ball flirt with these concepts. As I once argue in “Dragon Ball Super: Broly – Is it Gothic?”:
Gothic stories concern themselves with a barbaric past, including feudal enterprises, but also ancient warriors: i.e., the Goths. While the Gothic and Neo-Gothic revivals occurred in England and Europe, the Goths never set foot on English soil. Instead, the term ‘gothic’ was used during the Renaissance to describe the period after the fall of Rome, more commonly referred to as the Dark Ages or Medieval Period. Over time, the word developed a nefarious connotation: a fearsome projection of the barbaric past. Many Gothic stories localize this fear—of the past coming forward to invade, destroy or haunt the present. It can involve distance, but usually abstractions thereof: terrestrial space, time travel, or outer space. Early Gothic novels typically occurred in other countries, like Italy or Germany. The Terminator (1984) made clever use of the fourth dimension that it might have L.A. invade itself from a “past” version, full of monsters. Extraterrestrial visitors emerge from another kind of void; by traveling across space, they are technically older than humankind (the Old Ones from Lovecraft’s At the Mountains of Madness (1936) literally assume a special, “forgotten” state to travel faster than light).
So are the saiyans Gothic? There are certainly components. They are powerful destroyers that travel across space. However, while the Gothic concerns Imperialism, its monster usually emerge in a kind of liminal state. This status will confuse the audience, though especially how they perceive their homeworld, either by reminding them of home (the haunted house) or of someone inside (the double). For the saiyans to be Gothic, they would need to return from the past: to be mythical and long-dead, but also from or of the Earth. Yet, in the show, this is not the case. Their race technically survives. After a recent genocide attempt, those who remain foster a “super saiyan” myth. This is not a ghost story of their race rising from the ashes to plague Earth by mirroring earthly tyrants. Instead, the legend speaks of a golden avenger for the recently-fallen. There’s a distinct lack of undead, ghosts or otherwise. Nor are the saiyan roots buried in Earth’s past. Apart from Goku (which this movie treats more like Superman than anything else), no saiyans had ever visited Earth before Raditz. Nor is the saiyan planet a graveyard to examine: Freiza blows it to pieces. There are no ruins to explore, here or elsewhere. No haunted houses. No doubles (source).
I have since changed my mind (re: exhibit 39c2, “Escaping Jadis“) regarding the idea of “Gothic”; i.e., as a thoroughly liminal affair that not simply allows for fascist and Communism/queer coding in shonen iterations of the Western Patriarchal sort (Olympus and Valhalla) but also within a franchise who artist studied and disseminated neoliberal offshoots of Mary Shelley’s “Modern Prometheus” (also exhibit 39c2).
Note: Refer to “Summoning Demons” for more on Dragon Ball and its kayfabe hero-villains, the saiyans.