Persephone van der Waard is the author of Sex Positivity—its art director, sole invigilator, and primary editor (the other co-writer/co-editor being Bay Ryan). She is a MtF trans woman, atheist/Satanist, poly/pan kinkster with two partners. Including her multiple playmates/friends and collaborators, Persephone and her thirteen muses work/play together on Sex Positivity and on her artwork at large as a sex-positive force. First and foremost, she is a sex work activist, fighting for sex worker liberation through iconoclastic/sex-positive artwork. To that, 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:
ludo-Gothic BDSM
My 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 in any kind of Gothic poetics—i.e., to playfully attain what I call “the palliative Numinous,” or the Gothic quest for self-destructive power as something to camp.
ludic-Gothic
Gothic videogames. “The ludic-gothic is created when the Gothic is transformed by the video game medium, and is a kindred genre to survival horror” (source: Laurie Taylor’s “Gothic Bloodlines in Survival Horror Gaming,” 2009).
She sometimes writes reviews, Gothic analyses, and interviews for fun on her old blog; or does continual independent research on Metroidvania and speedrunning every now and again. If you’re interested in her work or curious about illustrated or written commissions, please refer to her commissions page for more information.
Click here to read about the entire Sex Positivity book project.
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).
Sex Work Portfolio:
Persephone has directed numerous photoshoots and sex tapes, long-distance, as well as having performed them in-person and done solo work.
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.
Gender Identity:
Persephone’s 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!
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.
Further Reading by Persephone (on Metroidvania):
Persephone van der Waard completed her BA in English: Language, Literature and Writing at Eastern Michigan University in 2016. She completed her master’s in Manchester, England at Manchester Metropolitian University in 2018. She wrote her master’s thesis back at home, in America, and independently researched her PhD (the thesis volume/Volume Zero) on Metroidvania, which she completed in 2023 with the publication of her thesis volume to Sex Positivity. To that, here is some further reading about Metroidvania taken from her body of work that you might find fun (lifted from two definitions from the Sex Positivity glossary—hence the switch to first person):
Metroidvania as closed space
In the past, my academic/postgraduate work has thoroughly examined the Metroidvania ludonarrative (including speedruns) as a closed/parallel ergodic space; while my critical voice has changed considerably since 2018, I want to show the evolution of my work/gender identity leading into Sex Positivity‘s genesis by listing my entire Metroidvania corpus:
- my master’s thesis, which studies the ways in which speedrunners create castle-narrative through recursive motion inside the Metroidvania as a Gothic chronotope: “Lost in Necropolis: The Continuation of Castle-Narrative beyond the Novel or Cinema, and into Metroidvania” (2018)
- a BDSM reflection on ludo-Gothic themes in Metroid: “Revisiting My Masters’ Thesis on Metroidvania—Our Ludic Masters: The Dominating Game Space” (2021)
- a deeper follow-up to “Our Ludic Masters”: “Why I Submit: A Subby Gothicist’s Attitudes on Metroidvania, Mommy Doms, and Sexual Persecution” (2021)
- a study of abjection and traditional gender theory vis-à-vis Barbara Creed in Metroidvania: “War Vaginas: Phallic Women, Vaginal Spaces and Archaic Mothers in Metroid” (2021)
- a Q&A interview series that interviews Metroid speedrunners about Metroidvania for my postgrad work: the abstract for “Mazes and Labyrinths: Disempowerment in Metroidvania and Survival Horror” (2021)
- a chapter I wrote about Metroid for an unfinished book: “The Promethean Quest and James Cameron’s Military Optimism in Metroid [exhibit 5e]” (2021)
Though imperfect, these older pieces try to show how the poststructuralist method—when taken beyond its somewhat limited 1960s/70s praxial scope (the ’70s being the emergence of academic Gothic thought)—can be critically empowered in dialectical-material ways; i.e., to actually critique capital through iconoclastic monsters, BDSM/power exchange and spaces in Metroidvania, but also immensely creative interpretations/responses to those variables as already existing for me to rediscover in my own work: speedrunning as a communal effect for solving complex puzzles and telling Gothic ludonarratives in highly inventive ways. As we’ll see moving forward, this strategy isn’t just limited to videogames, but applies to any poetic endeavor during oppositional praxis. —Perse
Metroidvania
A type of Gothic videogame, one involving the exploration of castles and other closed spaces in an ergodic framework; i.e., the struggle of investigating past trauma as expressed through the Gothic castle and its monstrous caverns (which is the author poetically hinting at systemic abuses in real life). Scott Sharkey insists he coined the term (source tweet: evilsharkey, 2023) —ostensibly in the early 2000s while working with Jeremy Parish for 1-Ups.com. However, the term was probably being used before that in the late ’90s to casually describe the 1997 PSOne game, Castlevania: Symphony of the Night; records of it being used can be found as early as 2001 (this Circle of the Moon Amazon review is from 2003). By 2006, though, Jeremy Parish had a personalized definition on his own blog, “GameSpite | Compendium of Old and Useless Information” (2012):
“Metroidvania” is a stupid word for a wonderful thing. It’s basically a really terrible neologism that describes a videogame genre which combines 2D side-scrolling action with free-roaming exploration and progressive skill and item collection to enable further, uh, progress. As in Metroid and Koji Igarashi-developed Castlevania games. Thus the name (source).
My own postgrad research (“Mazes and Labyrinths”) has expanded/narrowed the definition quite a bit:
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 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).
Also from “Mazes and Labyrinths”:
Mazes and Labyrinths: I treat space as essential when defining Metroidvania. Mazes and labyrinths are closed space; their contents exist within a closed structure, either a maze or a labyrinth. A classical labyrinth is a linear system with one set, unicursal path towards an end point; a maze is a non-linear system with multiple paths to an end point [classical texts often treated the words as interchangeable].
Metroidvania, etymology: As its most basic interpretation, Metroidvania is a portmanteau of Metroid and Castlevania, specifically “Metroid” + “-vania.” However, the term has no singular, universally-agreed-upon definition. Because I focus on space, my definitions—of the individual portmanteau components—are as follows:
“Metroid” =/= the franchise, Metroid; “Metroid” = that franchise’s unique treatment of closed space—the maze.
“-vania” =/= the franchise, Castlevania; “castlevania” equals that franchise’s unique treatment of closed space—the labyrinth.
At the same time, “Metroid,” or “metro” + “-oid” means “android city.” “Castlevania” or “castle” + “-vania” means “other castle,” “demon castle,” or “castle Dracula.” The portmanteau, “Metroidvania” ≈ “android city” + “demon castle” + “maze” + “labyrinth.”
In terms of appearance, a Metroidvania’s audiovisual presentation can range from retro-future sci-fi to Neo-Gothic fantasy. Nevertheless, their spaces typically function as Gothic castles; replete with hauntological monsters, demons, and ghosts, they guide whatever action the hero must perform when navigating the world and dealing with its threats (ibid.)