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!
Nude Persephone Warning: As I am a sex worker and this website is for viewers 18+, this page—specifically “Persephone’s Portfolio”—will contain nude images of me/my erect penis having sex (and a provocative-but-artistic image of me fucking my sex doll but not showing the gentials, for “Persephone’s Gender Identity”). Unless you are ready to visually receive my limp/stiff penis, kindly avoid those portions of this webpage (marked, below). You have been warned!
Table of Contents
*contains nudity of me!
- Persephone’s Book Series: Gives a brief outline of Persephone’s larger 2023 book series, Sex Positivity (which her Metroidvania, BDSM and Tolkien research occupies/operates inside).
- Persephone’s Gender Identity*
- Persephone’s Activism & Academic Contributions
- Persephone’s Academic History: Sums up Persephone’s academic history in one paragraph.
- Academic and Activist Terms: Gives a small list of vital definitions written by Persephone, which in turn needed for the rest of the document: “ludo-Gothic BDSM,” “ludic Gothic,” “Gothic Communism,” “Metroidvania,” and several others.
- Persephone’s Metroidvania Scholarship (available on its own page): Persephone is an expert researcher of the Metroidvania subgenre (and Amazons), having dedicated a sizeable portion of her PhD and subsequent book series to its understanding and execution. This extensive section explores Persephone’s total history regarding Metroidvania while formulating her research on it; i.e., as a praxial device, laying said praxis out, giving relevant definitions, and supplying further reading.
- Persephone’s BDSM Scholarship (available on its own page): Persephone is an expert researcher of BDSM, but specifically her hybrid approach to BDSM that she coined, called “ludo-Gothic BDSM.”
- Persephone’s Tolkien Scholarship (available on its own page): Though not her primary focus, Persephone has done enough scholarship on Tolkien to merit its own small section.
- Persephone’s Sex Work Portfolio*
- Performed Sex Work: Provides examples of Persephone doing sex work, herself.
- Director’s Portfolio: Provides examples of Persephone directing other sex workers.
- Multimedia and Collages: Examines Persephone’s multimedia and collage style, featured in much of Sex Positivity.
Persephone’s Book Series
Persephone’s non-profit book series Sex Positivity officially started in July 2022—publishing her first book in October 2023 (the thesis volume), her second in February 2024 (the manifesto), her third in May 2024 (the Poetry Module), her fourth in September 2024 (the Undead Module), and her fifth in February 2025. She has one final book volume planned for the series, the Praxis Volume, which is slated to release soon.
Click here to access the project’s extended glossary of specialized terms.
Click here to access the project’s most vital Gothic paratextual documents; e.g., its main Gothic keywords, but also theories and central tenets, which aren’t contained in the full glossary. Click here to access the non-Gothic paratextual key terms, as well as information about the series’ intended audience and reading order.
Click here to access a list of the project’s individual book promotions, promo posters, and model interview series. Each promotion presents a given volume/module in an online, segmented, and serialized blog-style format (versus downloading the PDF files in their entirety to read offline).
Persephone’s Gender Identity
Persephone has been queer all her life. Her academic journey started when she was 27, in 2014 when she was still in the closet. Since then, she came out as trans in 2022 and hasn’t looked back!
Born Dutch, pale and male, Persephone—in her heart-of-hearts—is a thicc redheaded French girl with lots of curves, curly hair and freckles:
Persephone’s Activism & Academic Contributions
Persephone is a sex work activist, fighting for sex worker liberation through iconoclastic/sex-positive artwork. She is an anarcho-Communist writer, illustrator, BDSM educator, sex worker, genderqueer/environmental activist and Gothic ludologist—with her (independent) PhD having been written on Metroidvania combined with the above variables; i.e., to coin and articulate “ludo-Gothic BDSM” as a sex-positive poetic device in order to achieve Gothic Communism. Her ludic specialty is Metroidvania; her praxial focus more broadly is tokenism, anti-fascism, Amazonomachia and holistic criticism (with Sex Positivity having started in response to TERFs, before expanding its gaze onto Zionism, and various other normativities [e.g., Afro/queer] under capital’s heteronormative, Cartesian, settler-colonial sphere).
Persephone’s Academic History
Persephone completed her BA in “English: Language, Literature and Writing” at Eastern Michigan University in 2016. She attended Manchester Metropolitan University from 2017 to 2018, for her master’s in “English Studies: the Gothic,” then completed her master’s thesis on Metroidvania, back in America: “Lost in Necropolis” (2018). She independently researched her PhD (the thesis volume/Volume Zero from Sex Positivity) from December 2018 to July 2023, publishing it in October 2023. Apart from Gothic Communism, Persephone’s PhD focuses a great deal on Metroidvania; i.e., as a therapeutic healing space vis-à-vis ludo-Gothic BDSM, as well as expanding on Barbara Creed’s 1993 notion of the monstrous-feminine.
Note: Refer to “Revisiting My Masters’ Thesis” (2021) for more information about Persephone’s MA (and initial postgrad work). If you want to read the original peer review notes, they’re on Google Drive (source: Persephone van der Waard’s “Markers’ Comments for Persephone’s Master’s Thesis (10/27/2018).”
Academic and Activist Terms
Apart from “ludic-Gothic,” which Persephone only expanded on, here are some specialized academic definitions* from her book series, Sex Positivity, that Persephone personally coined and developed over time (quoted from her books, hence changing to the first person):
*Refer to “Paratextual (Gothic) Documents” for the full definitions, as well as all of the core Gothic theories I use. The entire series glossary is available on this webpage. The PDF version of the 2025 Metroidvania Corpus will also contain their full definitions.
Gothic (gay-anarcho) Communism (abridged)
Coined by me, Gothic (gay-anarcho) Communism is the deliberate, pointed critique of capital/Capitalism and the state using a unique marriage of Gothic/queer/game theory and semi-Marxist (an-Com) ideas synthesized campily by sex-positive workers during proletarian praxis: developing systemic catharsis, mid-liminal expression during praxial opposition, using ludo-Gothic BDSM and palliative-Numinous dialogs (e.g., Metroidvania).
the Shadow/effect of Pygmalion/Galatea (abridged)
Another of my neologisms (from the thesis volume), the Shadow of Pygmalion or “Pygmalion effect” is the patriarchal vision and subsequent shadow of any knowing-better “kings” of empire, thus capital; i.e., of male- and token-dominated industries inside the Man Box, wherein “Pygmalion” means “from a male king’s mind,” but frankly extends to all traitors (male or not): upholding profit/the status quo raping nature for profit (and those treated by the state as “of nature” for those reasons).
the Cycle of Kings (abridged)
Another term of mine, the Cycle of Kings is the centrist monomyth, or cycling out of good and bad kings (and the occasional queen), which extends to all the kings’ white cis-het Christian men or those acting like these men, thus warrior-minded good cops and bad cops (weird canonical nerds) apologizing for state genocide through Man Box and “prison sex” mentality arguments; i.e., within hauntological copaganda dressed up in medieval language.
“prison sex” mentality (abridged)
Coined in my own work, “prison sex” mentality speaks broadly to rape culture as a practice; i.e., as a systemically taught and enacted approach leading towards the routine harming of others while maintaining the status quo. It is similar to the Man Box argument by Mark Greene, who—in his 2023 podcast, Remaking Manhood: The Healthy Masculinity Podcast—refers to “Man Box culture” as:
the brutal enforcement of a narrowly defined set of traditional rules for being a man. 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 (source: Mark Greene’s “How the Man Box Poisons Our Sons,” 2019).
weird canonical nerds (versus weird iconoclastic nerds—abridged)
A term I coined while borrowing from and expanding on Cheyenne Lin’s “weird nerds” phrase from “Why Nerds Joined the Alt-Right” (2023) […] To it, weird canonical nerds work within a toxic subset of nerd culture. Whereas nerd culture more broadly is for those who present an increased intellectual interest in a given topic—often in literature, but also popular media more broadly as something to consume, critique, or create (with iconoclastic varieties extending such matters into a spectrum of modular activism and counterculture)—weird canonical nerds are those who undermine genuine, active intellectualism; i.e., by exchanging it for dumb, hostile and even bad-faith consumerism and negative freedom for the elite.
ludo-gothic BDSM
My 2023 combining of an older academic term, “ludic-Gothic” (Gothic videogames), with sex-positive BDSM theatrics as a potent means of camp. The emphasis is less about “how can videogames be Gothic” and more how the playfulness in videogames is commonly used to allow players to camp canon in and out of videogames as a form of negotiated power exchange established in playful, game-like forms (theatre and rules). Commonly gleaned through Metroidvania as I envision it, but frankly performed with any kind of Gothic poetics, ludo-Gothic BDSM playfully attains what I call “the palliative Numinous,” or the Gothic quest for self-destructive power as something to camp (the Numinous, per Rudolph Otto, being a divine force or numen tied less to the natural world [the Sublime] and more to civilization as derelict, dead and alien; re: the mysterium tremendum): a Communist Numinous/the Medusa per Barbara Creed, but not tokenized (re: the Amazon) while dancing with Hogle’s ghost of the counterfeit to reverse abjection (thus profit) and shrink the state!
For further information specifically on ludo-Gothic BDSM, refer to my new webpage cataloging the subject and its history as coined and synthesized by me. —Perse
the liminal hauntology of war (danger disco)
Another term of mine, one describing a half-real poetic space to heroically move through, onstage and off, and one that concerns the hauntological presence and function of a Gothic chronotope (the castle or some other war-like alien double of the nuclear home); i.e., of the Imperial Boomerang bringing monsters (and their masters) home to roost, during fascism; e.g., Tolkien and Cameron’s refrain (further academic coinage on my part, specifically that of the High Fantasy treasure map and Metroidvania/shooter), per the monomyth and Promethean Quest (for power) chasing the Numinous: for different reasons during the dialectic of the alien. In turn, these translate in and out of neoliberal stories (especially videogames) into real life; i.e., during the abjection process as something to reify and further for profit raping nature as monstrous-feminine (re: “A Note About Canonical Essentialism“). Also something I call the “danger disco,” or source of Numinous thrills; i.e., where the hero chases the Numinous during calculated risk: to articulate and interpret generational trauma under state confusion and duress.
military optimism
A term I wrote for a discontinued book series, Neoliberalism in Yesterday’s Heroes, military optimism speaks to the half-real “gun-happy optimism of Pax Americana—i.e., that one can always shoot away the state’s enemies and problems” (source: “The Promethean Quest and James Cameron’s Military Optimism in Metroid,” 2021). This includes any scapegoats that exist in and out of media/the Superstructure and society’s public imagination; i.e., between fiction and non-fiction, onstage and off; re: during Capitalist Realism antagonizing nature as monstrous-feminine, pimping it through abject (us-vs-them) revenge before repeatedly summoning and banishing it, Radcliffe-style.
the dialectic of the alien (abridged)
A term I coined to articulate the dialectic of the abjection process and venerate the Gothic—vis-à-vis Julia Kristeva, but also Frederic Jameson’s “dialectic of shelter” and subsequent class nightmare (re: Postmodernism), as well as Summoning Salt’s “The History of Mega Man 2 World Records” (2024; timestamp: 8:25); i.e., as a dialectic useful towards universal liberation, one concerning the alien as something to parse and arbitrate for or against abjection (as something to reverse): to hug or hate, police or liberate, the assignment of “alien” status using the same language/aesthetic of the alien, mid-play.
the palliative Numinous
A term I designed to describe the pain-/stress-relieving effect achieved from, and relayed through, intense Gothic poetics and theatrics of various kinds (my preference being Metroidvania castle-narrative vis-à-vis Bakhtin’s chronotope applied to videogames out from novels and cinema and into Metroidvania).
Metroidvania (my definition, abridged)
Metroidvania are a location-based videogame genre that combines 2D, 2.5D, or 3D platforming [e.g., Dark Souls, 2009] and ranged/melee combat—usually in the 3rd person—inside a giant, closed space. This space communicates Gothic themes of various kinds; encourages exploration* depending on how non-linear the space is; includes progressive skill and item collection, mandatory boss keys, backtracking and variable gating mechanics (bosses, items, doors); and requires movement powerups in some shape or form, though these can be supplied through RPG elements as an optional alternative.
*Exploration pertains to the deliberate navigation of space beyond that of obvious, linear routes—to search for objects, objectives or secrets off the beaten path (source: “Mazes and Labyrinths,” 2019; refer to the Metroidvania page on my website for everything that I’ve written on Metroidvania).
praxial inertia
A term I coined when dealing with weird canonical nerds, praxial the resistance to/mistreatment of state-sponsored scapegoats in monomythic stories.
Tolkien and Cameron’s refrains (abridged)
Originally conceived of during my PhD, a refrain is a repeatable exercise that upholds Capitalist Realism, in some shape or form (though generally in videogames, per neoliberal media onwards). As I write in “A Note on Canonical Essentialism” (2024):
Tolkien’s refrain gentrifies war in a fantasy-themed cartography (the map of conquest in novels, movies and games, video or otherwise), which neatly and consistently divide land and occupant between good and bad, human and orc (or spider, demon, ghost, etc). Cameron’s refrain, the shooter and the Metroidvania, was first inspired by Robert Heinlein before likewise being injected into popular media as conducting military optimism abroad: insectoid places to go and bomb/shoot into oblivion […] (source).
the euthanasia effect (rabid token Amazons—abridged)
A term, coined by me, to describe the canonical, assimilative qualities of the Amazonian myth (and one whose Amazonomachia has canonized, post-Wonder-Woman, in Metroidvania through Cameron’s refrain and—to a lesser extent—Tolkien’s). It is one where magical, mythical warrior women—as simultaneously virgin/whore animal people (the female* berserk)—are canonically employed to keep men (and the victims of men/token enforcers during “prison sex” police violence) paradoxically in line, mid-panopticon; i.e., a female-coded (usually white, or token non-white) centurion or stentor girlboss who, in between yawping at the men to aurally castrate them (the banshee or siren), “tops” them in hauntological, dominatrix-style fashion, elsewhere outside the bedroom (re: Foucault).
mirror syndrome
Another term of mine, one that occurs through the euthanasia effect; i.e., the euthanizing of token agents, ignominiously attacking their own black reflections’ troubling comparison (which doubles are for). Such complicit cryptonymy happens during the abjection process/state of exception and, in effect, betraying their own interests (and those of their fellow workers and nature) for profit: Roman fools killed mid-apocalypse, during blind parody’s remediated praxis (re: boom and bust).
Amazonomachia (Amazon pastiche, subjugated/subversive—abridged)
Not a term I coined, but one I certainly expanded on (to speak on subjugated, reactionary, TERF-style forms and subversive variants, mid-duality). “Amazon battle” is an ancient form of classical, monstrous-feminine art whose pastiche was historically used to enforce the status quo; i.e., Theseus subjugating Hippolyta the Amazon Queen to police other women (making regressive/canonical Amazonomachia a form of monstrous-feminine copaganda). […] regressive/subjugated Amazons become assimilated token cops […] To that, their symbolism colonizes revolutionary variations of the Amazon, Medusa, etc, during subversive Amazonomachia within genderqueer discourse.
Persephone’s Metroidvania Scholarship
[redacted to keep things from getting too crowded; Persephone’s work on Metroidvania is available either on this website’s solo Metroidvania page, identically on her old blog, or in the PDF file for Persephone’s 2025 Metroidvania Corpus available on her book series’ one-page promo]
Persephone’s BDSM Scholarship
[redacted to keep things from getting too crowded; moved to its own page]
Persephone’s Tolkien Scholarship
[redacted to keep things from getting too crowded; moved to its own page]
Persephone’s Broader Sex Work Portfolio:
In terms of broader sex work, Persephone has directed numerous photoshoots and sex tapes, long-distance, as well as having performed them in-person and done solo work tied to her book series.
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 owner(s). For more details about artist permissions, refer to the book disclaimer on its own webpage.
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.
Performed Sex Work
While Persephone has an OnlyFans, she currently doesn’t advertise it. However, above are some samples of the sex work she’s done solo, or posed for others/performed with them in person (on either side of the camera).
Director’s Portfolio
Various shots from shoots/tapes that Persephone has directed long-distance; i.e., made with other sex workers to specifically be included in the book.
Multimedia and Collages
Apart from directing (and fucking) models in-person and long-distance, Persephone specializes in multimedia: doing photobashing (combining and painting over images) and making collages of various kinds. Her favorite artist is Bob Ross.
