Originally part of an undivided volume—specifically Volume Two of my Sex Positivity (2023) book series—this blog post now belongs to a promotion called “Brace for Impact“ (2024); i.e., that went on to become its own completed module in Volume Two: the Poetry Module, aka Volume Two, part one. The Poetry Module was primarily inspired by Harmony Corrupted.

Click here to see “Brace for Impact’s” Table of Contents and Full Disclaimer.

Further Reading: Volume Two actually divides into three modules/sub-volumes, each with its own promotion and release. “Brace for Impact” is the first (re: Volume Two, part one), but there are also promotions for Volume Two, part two’s twin Monster Modules, The Undead and Demons: “Searching for Secrets” and “Deal with the Devil“!

Update, 5/1/2024: Volume Two, part one (the Poetry Module) is out! I wrote a preface for the module along with its debut announcement. Give that a look; then, go to my book’s 1-page promo to download the latest version of the PDF (which will contain additions/corrections these posts will not have)!

Permissions: Any publicly available images are exhibited for purposes of education, transformation and critique, thus fall under Fair Use; private nude material and collabs with models are specifically ally 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.

“Monsters, Magic and Myth”: The Eyeball Zone; or, Relating to the Gothic as Commies Do

“If only you could see the world as I’ve seen it through your eyes!”

—Roy Batty, Blade Runner (1982)

Picking up up from where “Green Eggs and Ha(r)m” left off…

This piece was written and invigilated in a handful of hours in regards to my sex work, but also a family issue (the catalyst for this piece). It’s an unplanned pregnancy or “quickie” (which both often are) whose flow state explores the usual Gothic playgrounds, except its own alarm bells focus on interpersonal relationships in the broader context of ludo-Gothic BDSM during class and culture war—how we can relieve stress and address praxial concerns that we leave behind; i.e., to be consulted when we become overstimulated (or don’t exist anymore) relative to our own web of relationships (which lends this subchapter a more autographical feel, as it requires me to speak from experience, which I’ll do when I discuss my history with Zeuhl, as well as my other exes): a buffer when our walls go up, a “glory hole” to peep through and engage with while the blinders are on. Like the damsel under attack by the banditti and saved by the gallant knight, then, we workers are survivors of trauma.

Except, living with it as in and around us, we can select any facet of the damsel (or similar) roleplays: to a) speak theatrically to larger cryptonymic issues during calculated risk, but b) nevertheless acknowledge that we are human and can still be triggered through our coping mechanisms (rape play), syndromes (mirror, virgin/whore, compartment, etc) and cliché slogans; i.e., “ignorance is bliss,” per the Gothic, illustrating macabre hypotheticals in spite of our desires’ own psychomachy wanting to resolve relative to capital’s “new normal”: the swooning damsel thoroughly ravished (opps). Our sex-positive forms can subvert that travesty through an iconoclastic theatre that preserves the mood and look, but alters the context; i.e., it protects the bound “maiden” as a powerful vampire slut who cannot be harmed provided their subby mode is understood by all parties (which is what my book and its exhibits with other sex workers are ultimately about). If someone violates that, then they are an abuser and not to be trusted with power again, but per fetish gear/aesthetics, sits on the same surface: the virgin and the whore intermingled with the tiger and the lamb, the cop and the victim, etc:

(artist: Mercedes the Muse)

Ludo-Gothic BDSM is holistic—a multimedia hermeneutic. So when power aggregates to defend capital-in-decay (which it does by design), the solution arbitrates in different forms on different scales, forms and functions per an aesthetic of power and death—in short whatever one feels like (in the spirit of the eyeball and vagina as lubricating organs, this subchapter is a little gnarlier and schlockier—hence my exhibiting of the wonderful Mercedes, a schlock queen). A given iteration, per person, isn’t always a dominant or submissive one, then, but does require mutual consent as the realm of the sub guiding the dominant away from unironic demon BDSM’s fatal nostalgia linked to capital; i.e., Radcliffe’s demon lovers and implied mutilation fantasies, vis-à-vis Cynthia Wolff. As usual, the key to catharsis and stability is paradox; i.e., the dominant surrendering power unto the sub as non-abusive in a larger system that precludes harm, mise-en-abyme. This requires productive interpretations that flexibly speculate to avoid canonical, singular enforcement of dogmatic roles through sex and force; e.g., the damsel needing “protection” from a cis-het man when such factors are tied to a systemic problem linked to profit: the male family annihilator killing his clan because he can’t “protect” (own) them or surrender his own power.

To that, I’m literally a common-law doctor of Gothic love in multimedia forms; i.e., the Metroidvania, which concerns power relations according to socio-material factors amid Gothic/medieval poetics. As such, my praxial/therapeutic desire with this impromptu session/subchapter is the same all the others: to advocate for the oppressed, developing Communism and class-cultural consciousness in Communist configurations that abjure the nuclear family model as relayed in object lessons. I apologize for yet another pit stop, then, but I really want to supply it before we go into “Medieval Expression”: as something to engage with between workers in flexible relationships; i.e., that allow for different configurations (numbers) and types (qualities; e.g., FWBs, metaphors, business partners) of relationships to overlap. Reality becomes something to invent, serving worker needs:

For example, I mentioned in our previous subchapter “doing a Communism with Harmony.” But per “Medieval Expression,” this will come up in relation to the imaginary past as something to engage with and cultivate for workers based on older forms while we roll along. As such, the praxial idea is creative successes (something we’ll focus on in Volume Three): to gather and collect the usual factors as points of view to perform, process and synthesize, then release back into the world; i.e., like Blue Öyster Cult’s “Harvester of Eyes” (1974) minus the, you know, unironic harm and death:

Harvester of eyes, that’s me
And I see all there is to see
When I look inside your head
Right up front to the back of your skull
Well, that’s my sign that you are dead
My list for you checks off as null
I’m the harvester of eyes! (source: Genius[1])

In turn, Gothic roleplay scenarios that are partly hypothetical, partly not (half-real) work through disillusionment, grudges, shame, guilt, frustration, and discouraging factors, etc; and require a series of opinionated interlocutors during a dialogic, an argument, conversing together instead of one side being a sock puppet/sound board. It’s a back-and-forth, a negotiation meeting each other halfway, an honest discussion concerned with investing energy to achieve the desired effect: equality and deprivatization, a mutual agreement to meet the needs of both sides without an obligation to the state’s heteronormative nuclear model; i.e., paying rent under a wage-based arrangement that favors the man, relegating the woman/monstrous-feminine to the ignominious position of sex object compelled to surrender their labor without pay as defined by capital. Meeting your basic needs (food, shelter, enrichment) is not a wage under capital, and money within capital grants whoever has it an unfair advantage that classically favors the man. Women’s work is historically unpaid; Communism precures payment per negotiations that allow for a variety of exchanges that ultimately express creative and morphological freedom as pointing towards a post-scarcity world.

Capitalism requires cruelty to function. Hence, the cultivation of the Man Box teaching boys to be cruel from a young age: be cruel, get a prize. Except this is not a natural behavior because it goes directly against our older evolved behaviors of cooperation and teamwork to survive. So, it must be stoked, fueled and incentivized by us versus them during crisis and decay as cyclical in a centrist refrain; i.e., one that grants good and evil an elemental coding function under capital; i.e., the creation of an enemy alien (a stranger) to fetishize and kill in a dimorphically sexualized, settler-colonial scheme. As such, humans aren’t cruel by nature; they’re taught to be cruel to serve profit during settler colonialism at home and abroad. Accustomed to the Man Box, boys grow into young men, then adults who maintain a cruel streak fueled by us versus them; they fall prey to guilty pleasure, wishful thinking and the pleasure principle as Pavlovian. They’re always chasing that fix and cannot conceive of anything outside of it: a murderous flow state whose headspace is conducive to violence against the enemy as alien. In turn, the enemy is “out there,” so that is where men go—to war and for marriage (military exogamy and war brides); i.e., war booty to drag back to the ancestral home as restored from a mysterious decay through far-off bloodshed.

The problem with chudwads is they don’t know how to love anything except through force, and as a result feel utterly alienated from the world unless it matches up perfectly with what is sold to them. Except this is always unsettling to them, unsatisfying by virtue of them a) constantly feeling surrounded by enemies they must rape and kill, and b) somehow owed the right to treat the world as something to rape, destroy and rescue from “dark forces.” So long as they kill state enemies, it will “get better”—except it never does because it’s all a lie meant to disguise how capital decays on its own (“the cake is a lie”). The promise is largely the adrenaline of fight or flight as a drug to fuel their killing efforts. They become a hammer surrounded by nails. As such, their masculinity becomes toxic (watch out for so-called “parodies,” as they are often endorsements in disguise; e.g., Saxon Hale from TF2, 2007) and they lose the ability to fairly negotiate or humanize others, beating them down while feeling self-centered, dogma infantilizing them by appealing to their vanity and self-importance as centralized in heroic stories; i.e., the monomyth; e.g., Arthur pulling Excalibur from the stone. But for every “noble” king (all knights are cops from castles and all [canonical] castles/cops are bad) there exists a “lesser” man sitting in his shadow—an envious “Boromir” longing for what Capitalism routinely promises but cannot deliver on by design; it can design simulations of reward, however. Men unable to relate to their wives retreat into these places (e.g., Everquest, 1999), seeking “the ring” as something to win through treachery and by the sword, the manly men spilling buckets upon buckets of unhappy “orc” blood.

The Ring of the Enemy. “Tis a trinket that Sauron fancies.” Per Cartesian edicts within Capitalist Realism, the neoliberal franchising of cartographic refrains like Tolkien’s portray the classic monomyth as a built world; i.e., one to escape into by white cis-het men and conquer for fantasies of power that mirror settler colonialism’s day-to-day operations as displaced (the videogame as a war simulator since the 1980s). As such, these same men adhere to the nuclear model in their interpersonal accords; i.e., they fancy “the ring” through marriage as a compelled gift assigned through dogmatic institutions distributing socio-material factors: to serve the status quo per smaller eyes seeing as the panoptic and myopic Cartesian eye does—to dominate, own, conquer and rape through power (wage and labor) theft as entitled by the usual culprits of indoctrinated state enforcement. It becomes a map to cover in blood, the ring a suitably vaginal metaphor penetrated by an enterprising male digit. To free the slave from a ring that cannot be removed, we have to sever the contract and “castrate” the slave: snip-snip goes the wee-wee.

Again, the system is entirely unnatural and compelled, and only able to teach men (and tokenized groups) to “win” love through violence—to become protectors that ultimately trap those forced to identify as women in prison-like homes. Castles. But men cannot appreciate what they have because they are always looking for enemies; their wives become Madonnas to put on the shelf, the man chasing the whore as any monstrous-feminine person (which is why you see so many conservatives secretly paying to sleep with twinks, catboys and other [often] effeminate men; i.e., there must always be a “woman” to dominate). But even the 1:1 ratio is untenable, insofar as it’s far less fair to the female/monstrous-feminine side, who quickly must adapt to survive against the marital decree as martial: “what is owed.” Capital can’t deliver on that because not everyone will agree to it; but the elite can condition as many men as they need to maintain their ranks for a given generation. Thanks to Cartesian thought, colonizers tend to think of themselves as rational “thinking beings” that hold dominion over “extended beings”; but humans are animals and absolutely can be conditioned (“broken,” as Meerloo puts it). Far better to face this problem as early as possible, calling out Tolkien’s fantasies for what they (and similar stories) are: “Goldilocks Imperialism” that conditions boys to be cruel into adulthood.

In response, liberation from the state and its proponents is our natural right, the thing to ask for when those with power cry towards us, “It is not yours save by sorry chance! The ring is mine, it should be mine! Give it to me!” Except we’re the ring, the sex object, the promise. Resisting such forces includes other workers having conceded to state force, but also echoes of capitalistic regressions towards fascism; i.e., as a post-capitalist apocalypse that leads to further scarcity in a world devastated by Capitalism (the “desert of the real” not an illusion at all, but a barren wasteland felt inside the counterfeit, the rotting map of empire). Breaking the spell of Capitalist Realism, then, ultimately takes discipline, restraint, accountability and patience; i.e., as something counterintuitive to build on intuitively according to sex-positive values as second-nature: through native speaker intuition cultivated by community projects on different registers.

For creative endeavors but also any relationship, expectations must be tempered and negotiated fairly between both sides for things to work; i.e., by those who understand the value of negotiation (my exes did not—were, as Bay puts it, “totally cooked”) and open communication prior to entering talks to achieve new agreements (that compromise between workers, not workers to the state); i.e., not treating one side as powerless and voiceless (talking over them). You have to find people not in denial or prone to blame others, but those who take responsibility for their part in things, thus are ready enough to face things as clearly “not okay.” We start there and build/expand off that to widen one’s social network/support group; i.e., as part of a larger potential community and its negotiations and communication. A Song of Infinity to bolster our ranks and our hearts against the disastrous charms of capital.

In turn, healing must be approached with a willingness to participate, not to agree automatically a priori or expect the other side to. It goes both ways, of course, but still must consider the present dysfunctional factors (commonly expressed as a lack of sexual desire towards one or the other, but also a willingness to spend time together) and inequalities that make negotiation untenable. A wife is not a cat (or some other pet), and a husband isn’t a doormat, but however browbeaten the side with money (a wage or inheritance) and means (a residence, which classically would be a castle; and transportation) seems, they have more material control thus are the dominant in BDSM terms.

(exhibit 34a1a1: Model and artist, top-left collage: Lil Miss Puff and Persephone van der Waard; artist, bottom-left: Lil Miss Puff; everything else: Mercedes the Muse. Pastiche is remediated praxis, which expands during dialectical-material conflict amid liminal expression—a “poster pastiche” whose mise-en-abyme involves people, monsters, and monsters-as-people through oscillating degrees of irony and its lack. For the umpteenth time [from Volume Zero]:

Returning and reflecting upon old points after assembling them is a powerful way to understand larger structures and patterns (especially if they’re designed to conceal themselves through subterfuge, valor and force). It’s what holistic study (the foundation of this book) is all about [source].

Here, that’s shown in the collage above: as a smaller historical-material pattern I’ve assembled to speak to larger patterns harnessed by workers who partook in my project; i.e., to speak to our collective rights as stunted by Imperialism, but also reclaimed through the Gothic hyphenation of pleasure and harm, of ludo-Gothic BDSM expressed in classic forms. Said forms endlessly update using a war-like hauntology workers wage with theatrical props: Mercedes’ pistol or gasmask, but also her fetish gear at large communicating the larger connection; and Lilmisspuff’s enjoyment of Tolkien and goblins within a mommy-type position as submissive to her husband, but for me, topped a client from below.)

Except, this goes beyond “just roleplay” and into reality as invoking scenarios of roleplay informed or otherwise involving everyday life caught up in war narratives: the toy box as alive in Gothically poetic forms; e.g., the goblin dance, the torture dungeon, a playground of intramarital strife to work things out inside relative to larger issues and smaller symptoms as comorbid: to face and debate our shortcomings, stupidity and other externalized challenges expressed in human-to-building form. The side with power needs to respect the side with less in order to achieve mutual consent. Otherwise, it’s merely compelled labor. It needs to be mutually consensual, lest the theft of power becomes abusive, harmful (rape). These proceedings can drag out, and invest such as time (sunken cost) as can spoil the goodwill between both parties. A man who admits he was wrong, can apologize, can listen and adjust will adjust; i.e., the less you fight or act in bad faith (sissy subs trying to haggle with the dominatrix to steal through false tribute), the easier it is to adapt. But it’s human to make mistakes built around love fenced by trauma; e.g., it took me ten years and multiple exes before I reached the right point in my life to write Sex Positivity. I learned how to be the woman I always was, thus saw the world through a woman’s eyes.

As such, I learned different things about men, about my closed-off/closeted former self—i.e., there’s nothing men hate more than being told there’s a route to relationships and sex than the one they’ve convinced themselves is correct and have spent their whole lives biting the bullet to. Alternatives challenge their narrow, heteronormative worldview. Again, full transparency up front and a frankness in terms of what both sides have to offer is best (not triangulation, when the side with power feels frustrated). This is not taught in schools or canonical media because it fosters equal relationships, which aren’t useful to capital; i.e., it liberates labor (which again, under capital, is dimorphically sexualized to serve profit) from an unpaid/uncompensated arrangement: the nuclear family model.

So such proposals (and the media that supply them) are banned, restricted or otherwise censored, making them an entirely extracurricular ordeal, a de facto education challenging state dogma and Capitalist Realism. This is not hypothetical, but based on real dysfunctional relationships that fall back on said model dogmatically instead of engaging with it in a critical, active manner conducive to mutual understanding and liberation. We forsake sex coercion by virtue of sex-positive action, including the former’s bad-faith acting, play and education: the abject illusion of saying what someone else (the mark) wants to hear. Saying “will do” instead of doing what is required is an action, specifically an enabling mechanism. You have to meet it with a demand or there’s no incentive to change. And if the abuser refuses to change, there is no shame in walking away to expose the abuser as a false protector—i.e., while protecting oneself, and to make amends and sustain an actionable praxis that prevents harm: the protecting of workers by abandoning the nuclear bloodline (and its chronotopes) routinely crashing down (up in smoke); i.e., swapping them for parallel societies challenging narcissistic state forces/proponents. Indeed, my galleries are full of such protects tied to a larger epic that exhibits all of them in different ways; i.e., each in term, solo, or all together to make a different argument about the same issues plaguing workers sexualized, fetishized and alienated under capital:

(exhibit 34a1a2: Artist, all: Persephone van der Waard [top-right, top-left, bottom-left, bottom-right]; model, top-left: Jadis; bottom collage: Blxxd Bunny; and bottom-right: Itzel. Each monster is a cryptomimetic, BDSM gradient of expression and unequal power roles amid a shared, dualistic aesthetic of power and death; each emblematizes mutual consent as a pact, a performance, a playful agreement that turns the flesh into art of a particular kind: the memento mori as a sexpot, a destroyer, a horny slut, an Amazon or Medusa [or some combination of these things]. What matters is that all of these “ghosts” [of the performer, of the counterfeit] are sex-positive.)

There is a historical-material cycle to this whose coiling double helix can be viewed in past relationships and familial dramas swooping in and out of real life; e.g., from Shakespeare’s Hamlet, to Hawthorne’s The House of Seven Gables (1851) and Tolstoy’s Anna Karenina, to my great grandmother saying, “do your hunting where the money is,” my grandmother going to college to find a husband and education, my mother going to college to escape her husbands and find intellectual (ace) stimulation and enrichment, and me going to college to find (whether I meant to or not) a Communist education and queer love. As such, learning occurs between individuals part of a larger collective enslaved by capital; i.e., John Donne’s infamous question, “for whom the bell tolls” being incumbent as much on our interactions with people (dead or alive) as media about people (also dead or alive).

Lessons of past successes and mistakes within capital (and hauntologies of capital) can yield fresh achievements under capital; i.e., as something to develop into a better system, one relationship (thus negotiation) at a time: the combination of sex and art, business and pleasure, security and freedom of expression through the respecting of those normally without power and rights, thus a voice that branches out in all directions. The unspoken must be heard through a pedagogy of the oppressed that acknowledges and upholds their lived reality as generally alien to the side accustomed to power under capital (e.g., me versus Cuwu—both of us abused, but they as the person who lives with the trauma of sexual rape, compared to my emotional rape). This requires humility and maturity from the dom, which again, is sadly not taught by capital for reasons of profit; i.e., bad BDSM, which instead of rape prevention, precludes agency amid unironic power theft and abuse:

Support to one’s spouse, partner or friend should not be the surrender of one’s rights. Cuwu taught me that by first seeing in me qualities that spoke to a good student, but also victim. If this cannot be supplied, then a given relationship is untenable; i.e., by a stubborn partner with power refusing to listen to the side without power and instead taking out their own frustrations out on: attacking others by venting to the point of triangulation, of unironic harm. Recognizing that both sides are at an impasse is important, though, as it gives them the chance to consider separation as a healthy and vital next step. It took me ten years and many relations (working and/or romantic) to hash out this methodology. But ultimately it was beneficial because I cultivated a system, Gothic Communism and ludo-Gothic BDSM, which I developed in motion; i.e., while calibrating my search parameters and expectations to mete out said system, mid-development.

Introspection is vital to changing the draft for the better. In evolutionary theory, this is called adapting. Failure to do that leads to system (relationship) death. The host dies, the parasite/enforcer dies, the body dies, the environment, and so on. It’s about balance. And staying the same is an issue if problems exist, meaning they will survive if things continue to go on, unaddressed. Those with mechanical, actionable power (doms) must be held accountable when consent and consensus disappear—for the sub only has power when mutual consent exists. This doesn’t preclude the ability for the sub to negotiate poorly with the dom (or other subs), but their lack of material power during unequal power exchange must be acknowledged and respected for new exchanges to take place, thus have the relationship not only continue but progress in a healthier direction. If things are sick, then no amount of comfort food (actual or in media form) will resolve things; i.e., band aids for bullet holes.

(source: AH96’s “Kinney Survives ED 209,” 2018)

Except, the person with power must be the one to make concessions (“with great power comes great responsibility”), and it is entirely possible to be a bad partner and still materially and/or sexually provide. This canonical, heteronormative (or homo, queer, etc) expectation of obedience under a material provider is not a discussion and the oppressed must be heeded to make it one. If a wife/sub is depressed or otherwise “hysterical” or down in a hole, the notion of choice becomes further moot by virtue of that being the byproduct of multiple trespasses between them; i.e., chronic neglect of their concerns, which to be fair can stem from their inability to communicate as likewise induced by capital. Women are taught not to “talk back.” Thus, the killer remains at large, Medusa’s anguish ongoing (the ghost of the counterfeit).

But beyond theatrical doublings of socio-material arrangements, these and the large factors of Capitalism (its tree twins) exist in dialectical-material conflict: the workers vs the state, spectres of Capitalism and Marx, as endless. It’s a mercy to openly face that and deal with it, but also empowering and delightful to acknowledge human failings as a species amid the individual mistaking of this (the dungeon) for that (the home); i.e., as something to lessen the odds of actual, unironic harm. “Death,” then, is only the beginning—of the fall of the venerable imperial house (e.g., “The Fall of the House of Usher,” 1839) to raise a new, more inclusive and less elitist cathedral within/upon the old one; i.e., one with all the ornaments and might of Hell divorced dualistically from state copies: the ghost of the counterfeit given a home to breathe, speak out, expand and absorb capital (to assimilate it instead of capital assimilating workers).

On a local level, if a partner pulls away and/or becomes hostile, it is a sign that something is wrong. To solve the problem, you have to compromise within your abilities and power as part of the problem to solve. Even in my case, when I was being abused, I still had the power to plan my escape, but this took a willingness on my part, a courage that had to develop, then execute. But in times of crisis between parties, things will invariably get messy. This is what’s called “not being ready” for a relationship. And it can come about from lack of experience, but also the experience of tragedy or otherwise life-threatening, -changing, or -altering factors that cause people to fall in and out of love. Ideally, relationships are stronger (last longer) if they’re founded not on infatuation and lust by themselves, but first and foremost rest on shared core values and open communication (which doesn’t preclude lust and infatuation, of course; e.g., I adore Bay and Crow as my partners, and likewise relish my friendships with Mercedes, Bunny and Harmony, etc). Lacking those, a relationship will die not prematurely but in a predictable fashion that could, if these values were present, last longer. Luckily they can be improved upon and rewritten to achieve stability but you have to put in the work and go from there afterwards. Otherwise, it’s “too little, too late”—not just for two people once in love, but for the workers of the world during state shift; i.e., when the world as we know it ends “first slowly and then all at once”: the portal to Hell opens up and the forces of the furious dead envelope the living space as overrun with generational trauma—a demonic possession yielding to gnarly shlock rigged and shot in hostile chronotopes.

(exhibit 34a1a3a1: Source, right: Ron Magid’s “Unearthly Terrors: Event Horizon,” 2020. The Gothic is the quest for the Numinous, or destructive power in different forms and functions. Per Capitalism, these forces are like a black hole that cannot be seen past, but whose awesome gravity is felt at all times; per Communism, those of us in the Imperial Core must look past the myopia [and Faustian bargain] of Capitalist Realism to face settler-colonial horrors before they overwhelm the Earth during state shift. The threat is real but felt in fictional palimpsests hauntologically invoked, making the grim-and-graphic allusions to Dante’s Inferno during Event Horizon [the original Hell sizzle reel, which is fucking gross: don’t say I didn’t warm you] become a latter-day image of damnation—a cult-classic to timelessly reinvoke for purposes of seeing through state illusions during rituals of extreme torture, death, rape and decay as martyr-esque; i.e., the glass-eyed stare of the crucified’s paradoxical jouissance, but also the forbidden sight of the blind prophet as looking with different eyes that the ones in our skulls. It’s a nexus of the crisis; i.e., the nucleus of state power made unstable, alien, fearsome—an Id, graveyard place to walk around inside and through calculated risk, bump into the Great Destroyer as a walking castle/torture dungeon. Linked to hypermassive objects like Capitalism, these encounters routinely annihilate anything they come into contact with: a psychosexual, faux-medieval [Neo-Gothic] visual refrain not unlike Jeff Water’s “Second to None” [1994]: “Welcome to my world / I hope you see there’s no way out / I’ll take you higher / So just scream it—scream it out” [source: Genius]. Gothic Communism takes the same cosmic matelotage and applies it to a “queenly” [genderqueer] Medusa to scare the Straights with.)

This might all sound unfair and hopeless; but the one thing counterterror/asymmetrical warfare has going for it (apart from the hubris of colonial forces, “high on their own supply”) is the power of invention through necessity as the mother thereof—to call through need, but also eventual mastery of magic to pull our asses out of the fire; i.e., “The power will come to me whenever I need it; one day it will come to me when I call!”; e.g., Schmendrick summoning “Robin Hood” to save him from the reality that bandits, living under kingly abuses, are far less noble and more opportunistic than Captain Tully would like to advertise. The way to hoodwink them is through likeness of themselves they’ll want to court, threatened but curious by this odd appearance (a bit like Hamlet, staring at his “father’s” ghost):

State forces default to brute force—a bullish goon-like slugger cracking skulls for state fat cats. Yes, professions exist in any field, but the state values sheer results—i.e., lethal force and raw cruelty—ruthlessly administered versus surgical precision. Capital doesn’t require precision because profit is historically “efficient,” meaning it generally occurs (under neoliberalism) through the usual bourgeois trifectas: manufacture, subterfuge and coercion. Compared to our creations, state doubles of Gothic poetics will always be fearful and dogmatic, hence stupid and unable to contend with our cryptonymy through anything other than brute force (including disguises). But per my arguments, you can’t kill “Medusa” through military optimism; you have to address it theatrically at an interpersonal level as something to humanize and befriend (or reap the whirlwind during state shift).

In turn, this requires engaging with creative forces that even a little lightning rod like me, buzzing with creative forces amid a similar flow state to my thesis, can’t easily control despite the easiness of the writing and invigilation at this point (and I should hope so after doing this for as long as I have); if anything, I’m just a conduit for them running through me, riding out the storm inside of and around my little princess body.

Overall, creativity is the ability to materialize and express through merging disciplines that speak holistically to complex problems and elements of the human condition among colleagues/comrades-in-arms (my partners, muses and cover models, invigilated in my books but also on my website through mutual action giving them something normally alien to sex work under Capitalism); i.e., bricks in a wall, gargoyles on a shared grim cathedral made by cuties united in a higher cause (Gothic Communism, which includes human sex-positive expression through Gothic poetics). For instance, Mercedes blends sex work, BDSM, performance art and filmmaking into a unique combination that shifts shape depending on the current delivery method, but remains focused on the same topics (namely expressing human rights in familiar schlock and desecrating American institutions and zeitgeists):

(artist: Mercedes the Muse)

By comparison, I paint in a cinematographic way over photogenic models (with light and shadows as makeup) who tend to be queer leaning, politically radical and gyno/androdiverse. I combine this with my writing and music/film expertise, holistic approach to Gothic studies, love of exhibitionism/voyeurism and sex; but also can team up with people like Mercedes to make compound statements. It’s expressive and fun, but also flexible, organized, demonstrating teamwork on a social level vital to good praxis (versus petulant cis-het men, who get mad at their wives or their pets, useful for barking orders but not at creating things. Killing is easy. Creativity takes effort and humanity to achieve):

(exhibit 34a1a3a1a: Artist, top left: Blxxd Bunny; bottom-middle: Marlon Trelie; everything else: Persephone van der Waard. A creative process is always a chain, transformatively borrowing from different contribution factors. The completed picture, bottom-right, took many steps to achieve: Bunny took a shoot for me to paint them with [not gratis but in exchange for my labor to be featured in this book] and to which my original painting used a different series of poses from the same shoot. However, having lots of extra photos to use, I hired Marlon to paint Bunny based on a commission sheet—i.e., one I deliberately threw together to build on Bunny’s original pose; Marlon sketched out the piece per my instructions, to which I gave feedback; they supplied the final painted figures; I completed the background and lighting for the final render before invigilating it inside my book and on Bunny’s special page on my website. Yes, money changed hands during the operation, but likewise boundaries were negotiated and established; i.e., to be involved with, and displayed in, this project. Faced with insurmountable problems, there’s nothing that workers united under intersectional solidarity can’t do.)

In regards to the above exhibit, what Gothic Communists do is ultimately propaganda expressed through poetic intuition, mutually consensual tit-for-tat (something in return for something else as optional, voluntary and negotiated by both parties; i.e., despite the inevitable imbalances that will routinely come up during trade, especially the giving of Gothic ideas of subversion and disguise) and cryptonymic double operations (that show through concealment, or vice versa). It allows for the expression of monstrous synonyms, insofar as the function is maintained through a legion of simulacra; or, as Volume One puts it:

Conscious rebellion also includes the Gothic mastering of madness and monsters present in the evolution of the female detective/damsel-in-distress into holistic, inclusive forms, merging into increasingly liminal/queer iterations (the imperiled twink) that transform themselves, and the material world around them, as things to “quote” imperfectly on purpose; i.e., to invoke gender trouble (whose progression and praxial friction we’ll examine throughout this roadmap, but also in Volumes Two and Three; e.g., the “Conan with a pussy [except not bigoted]” concept seen in exhibits 84a and 112). As something to expound upon ad infinitum, our Gothic-Communist making of gender trouble is two-fold, then: to one, synthesize old terms with our individual/collective artistic output and exhibits; and two, invent new terms and codes (this book is full of such things) that likewise “do the trick.” Development towards Gothic Communism will constantly put us in uncharted territory that requires updating the lexicon as needed—i.e., by pulling out old classics, but also making new ones to adjust to the social-sexual, linguo-material “growing pains.” All of the synthetic terminology outlined thus far should be a clue. All the same, it generally comes from older language that was (and is) used to maintain the status quo (source).

In short, whatever works insofar as it cultivates a conscious and empathetic intuition confronting and interrogating state trauma.

To that, if the body is sick, you must find the cure; but if the abuse that led to the sickness also makes it presently impossible to implement solutions, then again, the impasse appears. This includes transgenerational problems; e.g., mommy and daddy issues, inherited settler-colonial trauma, community mistrust of state forces (as they rightfully should) and so on. When these repressed factors come to a head, Medusa can read her ugly head (the bad side); if the Medusa becomes blind to suggestion by virtue of said abuse (triggers), negotiations become impossible and the impasse again appears. It becomes a question of crossing the Rubicon, then—of open, honest communication by facing the music of something a long time coming: a failure of tolerances, of those dead-set against confrontation with hard truths. Capitalism sucks donkey dick.

The confrontation, for the puller of the Black Veil, animates the thing behind the veil—the rotting statue—as restored to a mobile and speaking condition; restoration of the foundation is done to achieve systemic catharsis and forgiveness, not assign blame (which isn’t required, given the elite’s clear-and-obvious role amid the cryptonymic back-and-forth’s clear-and-present danger); i.e., when one side, the other or both lose interest/aren’t attracted anymore (always a bad sign, the proverbial “beginning of the end” when falling out of love). And this can be terrifying to codependent couples and those who know them and want them to be happy. It requires an impartial mediator[2], but can result in unwanted side effects that, however unpleasant, constitute progression through motion: going through Hell as a liminal space (to move through) wrought with conflict on the surface of and in thresholds, but also the potential to learn from past mistakes (ours or other’s) in simulacratic, object lessons: xenomorphs and dragons, echoes of mad Saturn devouring his son (the Pale Man, below), black angels furious and delicious. Dance with the devil and they’ll “gift” you with “fatal,” delicious wisdom—threatening imprisonment and liberation both at the same time, all at once.

Like Alice tumbling down the rabbit hole, like Samus plumbing the Zebethean depths—love becomes something to fall in and out of. It can feel like a private hell, one without windows while you grapple and scrap with a dark figure in a dark room. It completely sucks when the thing you loved dies, surviving in a monstrous form that stares back at you from the abyss, suddenly alien and devouring you; but you can stare back, undaunted while defiantly meeting new aliens who love and respect you as equals, and making your own abysses to harbor useful truths. It becomes something to learn from and bravely dive into—to learn things you’d never learn if you didn’t, to experience joys and hardships, sorrows and delights normally relegated to the halls of Gothic fiction; i.e., its dream-like nightmares.

As for me, I learned with Constance (and later with Zeuhl) that I love hard, but also fall in love quickly and out of love with great effort. But this isn’t a weakness, merely something different that I eventually learned how to apply with compatible comrades; e.g., Bay, Mercedes, Harmony and Crow. They joined me on this quest, the lot of us grappling with a Greater Destroyer in a dark room threatening all of us—a Numinous defiler I liken to Capitalism while citing C.S. Lewis’s The Problem of Pain (1940):

Now suppose that you were told simply “There is a mighty spirit in the room,” and believed it. Your feelings would then be even less like the mere fear of danger [the tiger]: but the disturbance would be profound. You would feel wonder and a certain shrinking—a sense of inadequacy to cope with such a visitant and of prostration before it—an emotion which might be expressed in Shakespeare’s words “Under it my genius is rebuked.” This feeling may be described as awe, and the object which excites it as the Numinous (source).

In human fashion, there is a historical-material counterpart to this numen, a Communist double yearning to be free. Love, then, is something that survives Capitalist Realism to challenge bourgeois illusions, before, during and after death (the same goes for hate, in capitalist forms). Bay will love me forever and I don’t doubt it for one moment; they loved my work and support it (when Zeuhl asked me to stop talking about Gothic things, I knew they were pulling away from me).

As such, what we build together lives on in ways I’ll call “true love.” Zeuhl was ultimately false, but even with them, they led me down a dark road that brought me to brighter places/greener pastures (re, Milton: “Long is the way and hard, that out of Hell leads up to light”); i.e., camping canon to develop Gothic Communism as a school of thought to rival Lewis or Radcliffe’s, one that I learned from a younger, more innocent age, into “a sad and wiser” one:

(model and photographer: Persephone van der Waard and Zeuhl, 2017)

The music they showed me (e.g., “Blue Monday,” 1983) and the authors they shared (re: Cooper and Jarman) have helped contribute to something better that I am raising with braver souls. I’m doing great work, having left Zeuhl in the rearview mirror while moving forwards (I could expose them—to name and shame them—and will always have that power should I choose to; but I have better things to do, and want them to live privately with the knowledge that they fucked up and I won, in the end—i.e., that I survived them).

So as the bombs fall around us and the planet heats up, I’m not sad at all. I feel united across space and time by people I’ll share my final moments with—to make our lives memorable and the envy of milder folks as the bullets fly and the bombs fall, fusing us orgasmically together through trauma as something to face, kicking the state in the balls while we go out with a bang/on our own terms: “We’re Romeo and Juliet, we’re Bonnie and Clyde! We’re the lovers of Teruel[3]!” We’re born to die, but how we meet that end and what we leave behind is what ultimately matters/makes for good praxis. “People die, buildings burn, but true love lasts forever[4].” We don’t just wrestle in the dark with unknown forces and pleasures, then; we duel with them, fighting back in glorious, scenic exchanges:

(exhibit 34a1a3b: It might beg the question, “Why a rooftop duel during a rainstorm?” The answer isn’t just because it’s exciting to watch [which it is], but because that’s how things feel for those who see the world that way—i.e., while being drawn, through their own trauma and deep-dark desire for love, towards things that speak to what has become a part of us, and which shapes our view of the world through a broken mirror and mask [the dual operation of cryptonymy]. Life imitates art and vice versa through cryptomimesis as a historical-material operation with dialectical-material polarity. I felt that pain as a little girl and found safe harbor in the mise-en-abyme of the Neo-Gothic sanctuaries I came across; i.e., a larger pattern I felt across media at large—the music and footage of The Crow combined with Metroidvania and other Gothic fictions. It became a concentric, half-real graveyard dug ghoulishly up and made love to with other necromantic weirdos drawn moth-like to the same hellish flames [there are numerous interpretations to any word, but especially “necrophilia”; we stick to the sex-positive ones]. I wouldn’t change a thing.)

As such, pleasure amid struggle becomes something to dive headlong into with reckless abandon; i.e., like my cat does, anticipating my thrown pillow but cutely still wanting to be involved, to be by my side.

Capital hurts us, and people as extensions of capital hurt us, causing us to hunch and anticipate future pain. Only in “death”—through lived and theatrical struggle and pain (calculated risk)—does our life rise to its greatest potential. Zeuhl taught me that; I’m simply returning the favor—one given from the former apprentice outdoing the master in a way that subverts their harmful lesson: ludo-Gothic BDSM was learned from their cruelty and care (the former which they proudly declared were lessons to begin with. Whatever helps you sleep at night, my dude). They tried to erase our relationship from the face of the Earth—to bury it, thus deny me closure while riding off into the sunset with their future husband (who, as it turns out, was something of a spineless bimbo); so I have documented it here to have my delicious, beautiful revenge—one had with cuties sexier (and kookier, sometimes) than they were, but still cautious; i.e., Cuwu granting me permission to use photos of us on OnlyFans and elsewhere, provided I left their real name out of it (hence the alias). So I did, curating a gallery of mementos of Medusa (while never showing Cuwu’s eyes, much in the style of that monster) that I, like an old lover, can pull out of my aging billfold and show off with pride to a younger generation (and which Bay watched me insert into this manuscript with glee). To Zeuhl, though, I can only say to them, “Suck it, ‘Trebek’! Suck it long and suck it hard!” (don’t fuck with a multimedia expert and Gothic nerd, biznatch).

(artists: Cuwu and Persephone van der Waard)

Per Shakespeare, everything that has been said already has, life “but a walking shadow” caught in a framed narrative’s mise-en-abyme/cryptomimesis. As such, life in death is an endless graveyard that often expresses in popular media—from novels, movies and videogames, but also performance art—in orthographic/audiovisual terms. We, the so-called “poor players,” huff and puff as we “strut and fret” our hour “upon the stage and then [are] heard no more.” Classically this is to make the Straights (sword-happy Scotsman, Macbeth) lose heart dressed in borrowed robes; but for us fags, the endless yawn becomes a place to play and express ourselves mid-trauma, inside the necropolis—i.e., “letting things breathe” while meeting friends and lovers to confide in, versus one’s aging family members in the middle of the night after we’ve ostensibly grown up. In the process, we leave behind these markers of ourselves abjuring Keats’ 1819 “Ode on a Grecian Urn[5]” for something a little more hands-on: “We totally boned” with bones (and boners) through fields of “grass” to play “ball” on (for those of you telling me to “touch grass,” I’ve touched plenty, you jackanapes).

(artists: Cuwu and Persephone van der Waard)

“Misery loves company” and it takes time to build trust for those previously harmed; earning Cuwu’s (and they mine), I blasted their vociferous snizz to a mutual clamor that literally speaks volumes. As such, the more we plough, dig up and fuck around with trauma in safe, psychosexual forms, the more comfortable we become showing others our scars, our vulnerable strength. In turn, there becomes so much more to say and fun to be had (e.g., me, three volumes and hundreds of exhibits/multiple relationships later); i.e., which Zeuhl—pushing their head into the sand—refused to do (as did Jadis and Cuwu). As such, my holistic rumination and constant revisiting of Gothic sites of trauma (whose manufactured reunions include my volumes testifying to former and ongoing relationships with seemingly “dead” things—my exes, but also those I relate to now living with trauma) eventually reached maturity (albeit after ten years of academic hardships, and my introduction to relationships running along that same fabled track). In the interim, all of the above helped me explore campy “rape” and “murder” fantasies while dying slowly (as people normally do) and learning as I do[6]; in turn, these gave me a chance to stick it to Zeuhl, pounding Bay’s pussy and thinking to myself, “Yeah, take that, Zeuhl, you bitch!”

We might, on some dark, unconscious level, always feel angry with those who harm us and want to harm them back; Gothic playgrounds give us a theatrical means of letting off steam without damaging anyone and finding ways to move forward, building a better tomorrow through good praxis; i.e., a pedagogy of the oppressed that serves as our devil’s workshop made from old parts, the bricks and bone(r)s building a new “torture” dungeon to escape unironic torture with. This includes people who volunteer to be the punching bag—letting you “beat up” their pussy (and other holes) in ways that you and they might not be fully aware of, but which isn’t so surprising in hindsight. Who doesn’t want to say “fuck you” to a shitty ex? Try it, babes; it feels so goddamn good.

Furthermore, if you ask them to consciously help you work through some shit, some people might say yes (we’re all freaks, one way or another); i.e., because that kind of catharsis feels good for you, but also because it might help them as the healer or the “victim” needing their own calculated risk. It all comes together in that respect. So long as that stays in the bedroom and you treat each other like people at all times (respecting mutual consent), then getting a leg up from an eager and willing cutie de facto playing the ex/Great Destroyer getting their ignominious comeuppance, not dancing but straight up fucking on your worst enemy’s “grave” ipso facto (evoking the Gothic master-trope, live burial, in a classically erotic manner[7]), it’s all fine and good. Go down, down to Goblin Town, my dudes! Make “Tolkien” gay to spite your exes breaking your heart!

Everybody does this to some extent. In my experience, Zeuhl would grumble about exes and tell me about their deck of “spank bank” images they’d rifle through, as I dicked them; Jadis and I would, me rage-fucking their tank-like snatch when I felt mad at them, thinking about likenesses of past exes to get through their abuse; and Cuwu would talk about their ex and trauma and I would talk about my exes and trauma while we hooked up to process our feelings, mid-fantasy and during conversations about trauma as something to perform, consume, and address with the Gothic, with BDSM, with sex, drugs and rock ‘n roll:

(artists: Cuwu and Persephone van der Waard)

Everybody living with trauma who can find a way to love again generally measures and metes out grief as something to grieve through psychosexual combat and catharsis. Just remember your safe words, boundaries and aftercare before, while and after you “link up. “Hurt, not harm,” babes.

On and on, until we’re old and grey, shit happens/people do shitty things and act like it’s all good. And these are informed by copies-of-copies inside a hall of mirrors inside a palace of mirrors on a planet of mirrors (and so on). Time is a circle, with people stepping into the archetypal roles exemplified onscreen (e.g., Kyle Reese’s various resurrections in the Terminator films—from twunk, to twink, to hunk). Such interconnected, cross-medial/transgenerational dramas affect all of us, requiring healthy boundaries and values that, when cultivated and upheld, we implement to self-protect and care for the group, acknowledging pain while prioritizing our own health and well-being to help others with. In other words, there is triage involved, and preference; i.e. the queer persons found-family vs the nuclear model I very much caution against in any and all relationships. Capital is unstable by design—aging horribly during a given generation’s rise and fall, turning workers into unthinking and inflexible machines per a heteronormative (dimorphic, Cartesian) dialogic: the fall of a generation as sacrificial by design, one king eating his own children as efficient profit. I intensely dislike this by virtue of experience, but also because we need to devise our own structures and machines—horizontal systems that we and our actions embody and uphold, taught through our object lessons; i.e., as possessed and intuitively understood during life as a chaotic series of multiple interactions happening on multiple fronts and dimensions all at once in a loop.

As such, the desire for things “to be good” becomes realistic only when the conditions are there for it, which we must supply while moving workers and the world away from manufactured scarcity (and the other trifectas and monopolies) towards a better world: one ultimately rarefied by a Gothic-Communist aesthetic as a means to think, exist and create. I see a problem, and write, write, write (and invigilate) to solve it. This takes a willingness to partake of sample biopsies to render not just tough love (as required, not as dogma) but object lessons, which both requires energy and effort to materialize. I live for it, solving complex problems through my creations made alongside my friends; i.e., to show you glimpses of a better world that exist right here on Earth, this very moment: through our delicious squishiness, but also friendships and relationships at large. Return to nature as something to bond not just with workers, but animals—aka, Mr. Squirrel: not Tolkien’s sorry “burrahobbit” demonizing Cockney folk, which Peter Jackson paraphrased as an “over-sized squirrel”; nor the female/monstrous-feminine Numinous or Gothic Communism, really. Just a motherfucking squirrel captured on camera (consider this a palette cleanser/aftercare after having Medusa’s fat cock down your puny human throat hole).

(exhibit 34a1a4: Artist: Lydia, who explains as Britishly as possible: “He so chonk; he’s standing on one of those things you put grave flowers in. He was using it to hoard food: li’l grave fridge.” To which I was reminded of T.S. Eliot’s funerary “The Waste Land” [1922]: 

April is the cruellest month, breeding

Lilacs out of the dead land, mixing

Memory and desire, stirring

Dull roots with spring rain [source]. 

Never mind that Eliot dedicated the “I. The Burial of the Dead” section to Ezra Pound, a fascist sympathizer [thus fascist]. The poem still speaks to healing from the trauma of war as a modernist ordeal—the chaos of city life merging with the transplanted flowers plucked up from the likes of Flanders or some other mass grave linked to the nation-state; i.e., as a war machine designed to grind workers up for profit. That’s all it does.)

This Humanistic medicine/education issues from ludo-Gothic BDSM as founded by me: on a system of thought as intuitive and developed; i.e., as everything connects to everything else according to whatever connections we (and our cultivated social-sexual habits) choose to make; e.g., like my books as galleries but also their ideas, ipso facto, per a priori value statements: the universal valuing of worker rights. I will always advocate for the oppressed, but especially the monstrous-feminine. It is my preferred client, but also my desired mode of existence. The best job in the world my job, then: one of counselor, lover, mother, protector, educator, slut, artist, and writer—a Renaissance girl whose galleries and cathedral-esque codexes extensively explore the world as Gothic through the Gothic; i.e., pulling things apart, seeing the world through each other’s eyes, at home in the home-as-Gothic-castle: the screaming chateau-as-gâteau-homunculus (the cake-like person as fortress-like, “torturous” and delicious) howling in pain and pleasure per psychosexual “harm” haunted by harm during confused fight-or-flight responses: “Hurt, not harm!”

Like Ripley stuck in the Nostromo, I continuously volunteer to be topped because, as a little girl, I felt the healing transformative power of calculated risk; like Mandy‘s demon bikers, the Black Skulls, I fucking love it when playing with fresh consenting cuties as adults!

(source)

Love you, babes. Now, finally, without further ado, onto the fun palace!

Actually, a slight delay. Onwards to “Knocking on Heaven’s Door,” which let’s reiterates the previous subchapters in relation to some Marxist signposts and liberatory sex work exhibits. —Perse

Your Commie Mommy,

—Persephone

---

Footnotes

[1] From Genius:

According to Buck Dharma, “Harvester of Eyes” is about former U.S. Supreme Court justice Abe Fortas. The following is from CompuServe’s American Academic Encyclopedia:

Abe Fortas, b. Memphis, Tenn., June 19, 1910, d. Apr. 5, 1982, was a prominent Washington, D. C., attorney and presidential advisor when President Lyndon B. Johnson appointed him to the U.S. Supreme Court in 1965. Johnson’s subsequent nomination of Fortas as chief justice was blocked by Senate foes of his activist stand on civil liberties, and the nomination was caught up in a clash between the executive and legislative branches. In 1969, following charges of questionable ethics and conflict of interest, Fortas resigned from the Court. His arguments in GIDEON V. WAINWRIGHT (1962) established the right of the poor to legal counsel.

What’s all that got to do with “Harvester of Eyes”? Not much, the song is mostly nonsensical satire that appears to be about some eye-collecting madman. However, it was Fortas’ Senate nomination hearings which inspired Richard Meltzer to write the song’s lyrics. When Fortas’ avoidance of service in World War II was questioned, he responded that he had ocular tuberculosis–which inspired the lyrics, “I’m the eye-man of TV, with my ocular TB” (ibid.).

Except I would argue, it’s not nonsense at all, but satire performing to powerful and abusive men in BÖC’s usual poetic weirdness: judges, however stupid they sound, kill people thanks to a systemic power imbalance. It’s perceptive eyeballs, not blind ones (re; Jameson’s Postmodernism, 1991).

[2] I am hardly exempted from this. E.g., Zeuhl and I, and me not wanting to break things off, trying to be polite and a good ex, but also hoping we’d get back together (on account that Zeuhl literally said we might when they broke up with me). As a result, I floundered; I needed a mediator (Ginger and Lydia) not “to make things work,” but to survive the terrible conflict that ensued.

So I get it. People want satisfaction, the frustration of that raising its own temples of discontent. But there are no guarantees in life. It can get incredibly messy when you’re attached to people who fuck you over. Things “seemed good” with me and Zeuhl (partly because I foolishly ignored warning signs); then they weren’t because Zeuhl pulled the rug out from under me. It led me to question the whole of our relationship, its veracity and worth. Except it wasn’t pointless, but it can feel that way when someone isn’t being honest with themselves or others, or trying to make their actions seem unplanned, but also feel ashamed for what they did to an unsuspecting victim. Zeuhl was all of those things towards me as the victim, and as a result of their actions I will never talk to them again; but I had to reach that stage, too. Instantaneous death might seem preferable to dragging things out, but sometimes we aren’t ready for that, even if in hindsight it makes sense or if we want them to in the heat of the moment.

Having history complicates things, in that regard. I had lived with Zeuhl in England and we’d been through a lot together (trauma bonds make for strong glue). All the same, it was fun while it lasted and I have no regrets. Plus, I walked away with my dignity intact and wrote these books detailing how they loved and hurt me. I’d say I came out on top, then. Relationships die, but the messy love we shared will haunt these pages. Zeuhl wouldn’t let me share them with the world in picture form, but I can say with confidence that, however bittersweet I feel about them as a whole, the good moments I detail next were good. I loved them with all my heart, and went all in; they pulled away in the end for selfish reasons. They killed it; I fought like hell. That’s nothing to be ashamed of. That was just the point of my life I was at. When I look back on it, it almost seems quaint: they didn’t want to be with me, were taking advantage, and had the desire but not the words or the grace to separate peacefully.

In short, Zeuhl continued to help me and use me after the break—twisting the knife whether they meant to or not, but also helping me learn (e.g., my website, online dating advice and helping me set up my Fetlife profile, etc). It sent me careening into Jadis, but Jadis was also a learning opportunity despite the harm they caused (which to Zeuhl’s credit, they were partly present for as a means of solace). Two things can be true at the same time; a cutie can help and harm you. This isn’t a defense of Zeuhl, but merely a fact: I suffered at their hands and benefitted from their actions because I slowly learned how to stand on my own two feet; i.e., to take what they (and my other exes) did to me and transform it into a message of Gothic healing and hope, of calculated risk doomsaying about state shift to promote Gothic Communism. I couldn’t have done that, on some level, without capital abusing me, but also my exes (that’s nothing to be proud of, on their ends, however).

The basic mechanics seem simple enough; the complications are often emotional, thus invisible or alien to those not under the same spell. Each case is unique, in that respect—a sex bubble/cuddle puddle that you both share until one of you leaves the other alone inside; i.e., The Golden Egg being the 1984 novel that The Vanishing (1988) was based on, and which I eventually wrote about*. While you feel that sheltered connection, the world is your oyster. When it stops, it’s like walking into a brick wall. To that, it well-and-truly sucks to finally realize you were the take-out cheeseburger in a college town primped for international exchange students; but then again, I got more than my fair share of “full helpings” (of sex) from Zeuhl (so many creampies, and in the world’s fuzziest, tightest pussy imaginable), plus enough funny stories to fill a book. When you feel it together inside the bubble, you cherish it; when one of you leaves the bubble, you feel scared and alone but also afraid of going outside for new partners; then finally you burst the bubble to sally forth (“saddle forth,” to use a Zeuhl malapropism) onto new adventures. When you do, the events you experienced and the scary feelings you once felt will appear to you again in new joy and understanding.

*Persephone van der Waard’s “Gothic themes in The Vanishing / Spoorloos” (2020).

I’d like to express that next, if I may. It’s a protracted footnote in a very long volume in a very long book. But I will place it here all the same for someone to find. Again, no identifying photos of Zeuhl (e.g., only a hand or a shoulder). For all the smack I’ve talked, it’d cause nothing but harm to them, which I don’t want; but I also don’t think they’re a good comrade and don’t want to include them as an example of sex positivity (which I don’t think they are). So I’ve chosen to detail it in purely written forms (or exhibits of things other than them). I couldn’t have managed that until now, so let’s do it!

A quick sidebar before we proceed: First, there’s only so many ways you can say “fuck you” to/about an ex before it gets old, or at least not cathartic. I chose to avoid writing an entire book dedicated to Zeuhl for these reasons. Still, dragging their cartoonishly silly effigy out to the curb every so often before teeing off on its big balloon-like head is satisfying. Even so, that won’t be the point, here. Instead, I want to evoke some nicer memories about Zeuhl to illustrate my own skin in the game.

This ballad’s plaintiff nature aside, then, it serves as a remembrance to bury the old fucker once and for all (or at least until I need to summon them again to make a larger point tied to my work). As such, it really isn’t meant as a “hatchet job” (though it does feel good to dismember and dissect the painful memories of them a bit, and give voice to the good ones); but if for some reason my fair-and-balanced recollection seems unfair or somehow “jilted and unhinged” to anyone, know that Zeuhl did everything they could to earn these exact words.

This time, I’m going to say a few nice things to their figurative “corpse” before setting it on fire and blowing it up again (which is symbolic of me—secure in my new life and goals—feeling comfortable enough to let go a little, not indicative of any violence being done towards Zeuhl. I do not condone that. In the theatrical spirit of Prince Vegeta towards his frenemy, Goku: “No one kills Kakarot but me!” In the words of Cara Cunningham, “Leave Brittany alone!”

Got all that? Good! At long last, on March 14th, 2024, I shall tell my and Zeuhl’s tragic love story to the world… —Perse

Zeuhl and I met in Manchester, England while attending MMU for different programs. We’d been introduced briefly after flying in, our housing program officer having everyone say hello in our hallway flat. I liked what I saw but didn’t have enough time to really take them in or plan a rendezvous. Instead, Zeuhl made the first move.

(exhibit 34a1a3a1b: Various photos of my initial arrival at Manchester in September 2017.)

Bear in mind, I—the proverbial Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court—was incredibly homesick and—in true adult fashion—crying on the phone to my mother about my room; upon arrival, I discovered it was unfurnished and I only had my leather jacket to sleep on. Bogus. Ma told me to ask one of my roomies for some blankets: “Now go ask the cute French girl to hook you up!” (Zeuhl’s future nemesis, I should add—they hated the French girl with a passion, though to this day I haven’t the slightest clue as to why. They never spoke, and when I tried to get them to, Zeuhl promptly flipped me the bird and shouted, “Fuck that bitch!” Okay, then).

So I asked the French girl down the hall for a pillow, to which she anxiously lent me one. Turns out, Zeuhl had overheard, and the next morning at the Student Hall, it all came to pass…

After a lonely night’s sleep, there I was, standing in a crowd of peers the next morning. All of us were enduring a forced inauguration; i.e., being overseen by MMU’s then-dean, a well-dressed middle-aged man giving a trite, cliché speech to welcome us internationals to his school (and for giving him all our money in tuition, travel and living fees). Eager to get my induction ceremony over with (glorified paperwork), I suddenly heard a small voice speak next to me:

“I have blankets.”

Somewhat surprised, I turned to see the owner of the husky voice and behold, a pale horse! Not the awesome picture of death incarnate, but a stout, bespectacled and shapely androgyne/princex eager to make my acquaintance (and not wearing a bra). Zeuhl introduced themselves to me, and invited me to their room. It was directly across from mine (and literally selected at random: “All the gin joints in all the world, they gotta walk into mine…”). So we agreed to meet up after the assembly and passport exchange. Cool. I did errands at the city center for the next several hours, then stopped by later in the afternoon and knocked; they answered, smiled and let me inside.

Over the next few hours, Zeuhl and I hung out—them sitting on the edge of their tiny bed (not really big enough for two) and me in a single chair in front of them (the rooms were small and cramped, like jail cells). We talked about ourselves for a bit, when I noticed some magazines on the countertop behind me; I noticed they mentioned polyamory and turned to Zeuhl to remark that I was poly (I’d met someone genderfluid at undergrad who exposed me to the practice); Zeuhl said they were too, so I suggested if they needed someone to “do stuff with,” that I’d be happy to help. May as well try! I figured. Much to my surprise, Zeuhl smirked, laughed* and replied, “Well, I’m not for closing any doors!”

*Zeuhl had a quick, full smile and easy laugh—something I discovered I could extract from them with ease, and to which sounded like music to me. Also, once we started fucking on a regular basis, I relied on this ability to make their pussy squeeze my dick during sex (the way to a cutie’s enby heart is through their laughter). I don’t want to chalk it solely up to my charms, though; I think on some level, Zeuhl had me pretty well-figured—had already sized me up and made it easier than it could have been otherwise. But also, we had a lot in common, and they made me feel good in ways other than just sex. It was a perfect storm, really—one that led to some wild-and-crazy times, but also my education. I’m not kidding when I say that Zeuhl mentored me about genderqueer politics.

After that surprisingly easy exchange, Zeuhl told me they were worried because they’d left their laptop in the Student Commons, having walked away from it after their mother told them some bad news: that she’d just been diagnosed with cancer and was starting chemo treatments. Luckily I had an old laptop (with Windows XP on it) that I’d taken with me on the plane, and had brought some ripped DVDs on the hard drive. One was Forbidden Planet (1956) and I offered to watch it with Zeuhl to help them relax; they agreed, and offered me some snacks in exchange (caramel corn). Set up for a nice night, we set about watching one of my favorite movies as a kid growing up. This bitch loves her some Robby the Robot!

Zeuhl and I sat on the edge of the bed, then the middle of it, which was so small that our sides touched for lack of room. Zeuhl had on some dark tights. Partway through the movie, though, they suddenly said without any hit of ceremony or guile, “My legs are hot. Can I take off my pants?” To which I, surprised but not bothered, responded in the affirmative. After that, I spent the next little while glancing down next to me, looking at the dark spot between Zeuhl’s legs because I thought they had panties on but couldn’t tell; i.e., they looked see-thru, except I couldn’t say if that’s what I was seeing or if it was their bush (the room was dark, with only the laptop screen surrendering just enough light for me to make them out, next to me).

I wanted to be a gentleman, though (still in the closet, remember), and kept my thoughts to myself… until I swiveled my head slightly and looked sidelong next to me, shoulder level, to see Zeuhl glancing at me with an expression I couldn’t quite read (the motive, not the appearance). Our heads turned and our eyes met. Both sides shyly surveying the other but not announcing it out loud, I felt a profound and sudden sense of déjà vu (the same thing basically happened with my first partner, Constance, except we were watching Rosemary’s Baby at my folks’ place; we only got halfway through that movie, too, before we switched to sex).

Reading the room and sensing an invitation to make the first move, I looked for “an in” and noticed Zeuhl’s septum piercing. I had an epiphany and suddenly remembered having talked to a girl on the bus, back in Michigan as an undergrad; i.e., breaking the ice by mentioning how I liked her tattoos and getting an effusive, eager response. So I said to Zeuhl, “Nice piercing! Do you have any others?” (I did like the piercing but also wanted to break the ice). Zeuhl beamed like the Sphinx and replied, “I have two pierced nipples!” I asked them if I could see them; they nodded and removed their shirt to show me. Sure enough, they weren’t kidding. Two pierced nipples, puffy from the procedure. I asked (without hesitation, this time) if I could suck on them; Zeuhl broke into a happy smile and cried, “If you want!” To which I did, most enthusiastically.

After that, we fucked (I don’t remember if we finished, but we used a condom) and lay naked in bed together listening to one of Zeuhl’s favorite bands, Natural Snow Buildings, while they told me about the esoteric tattoo on their body. Then they teased me as we spooned, remarking how I was being “so cute” glancing repeatedly down at their crotch during the movie (turns out, they had a big full bush, so thick you have to push through it like a thicket to get to the goods). I didn’t realize it at the time, but they’d been counting on it; and I—holding their warm wiggling body with my dick pressed between their buns—couldn’t complain (I had gotten lost the day before, exploring the city as the sky rained on me, merging with my uncontrolled tears). But I didn’t realize that I was the blanket Zeuhl had quickly acquired to make their stay in Manchester more comfortable. Like Odysseus and the sirens, I got taken for a ride, but at least it was a comfortable one!

(exhibit 34a1a3a1c: Many of the books I borrowed from the MMU library and which Zeuhl shared with me as well. Fun fact: It was basically impossible to find three-ring binders in the UK; they only had these fucking stupid two-ring binders with no pockets!)

After that, we fell into something of a routine. I got some American money exchanged at the city center (thirty minutes from our housing block) and purchased my own blankets (and a “brelly”) that I had to carry home in my arms (exhibit 34a1a3a1b). Zeuhl and I slept in my larger twin bed that night (or thereabouts), trying sex with condoms for a bit even though my sexual history was limited and they’d had a hysterectomy. After we discussed all of these things—and the fact that I’d had Hep C but had gotten cured in 2016 (though the antibodies stay in your bloodstream forever)—we had sex again. And I, without asking for Zeuhl’s permission, did something I’m not proud of: I took off the condom while under the sheets and fucked them bareback. But I told them afterward.

Initially they seemed shocked, and said, “Why would you do that?” in a small, quiet voice.  But we both quickly decided afterward that it had been done with both of us knowing that contracting an STI or them getting pregnant was impossible. So ultimately their response (in the same conversation) was, “Well, you were naughty!” To which we proceeded to have much more sex in the days and months ahead (so many times, I lost count, but into the triple digits). Turns out, the event brought us closer together (not that I would recommend anyone do what I did—it violated Zeuhl’s agency and ultimately was wrong of me): I became less anxious and found that my dick—which had been a little shy around Zeuhl—suddenly stood at full attention whenever playtime was nigh. As quickly as it had happened, my gaff was water under a very forgiving bridge.

After that, we experimented, trying new things; i.e., sexting with Zeuhl right down the hall, and both of us getting so worked up that they asked me if they could come to my room to fuck. I said yes, to which they soon entered; i.e., poking their head through the door wearing a silly cartoon smile (what we would later call “parade float”). They had on a pretty black dress, and spun to show it to me. Then they sat down on the front of my bed, hiked up their skirt, lay back and spread their legs and hairy pussy for me. We chatted happily about how exciting and new it all was, talking conversationally as I took out my hard dick and shoved it lovingly into their wet hole and started to fuck them (for reasons previously explained, it went in more easily that time). I learned they loved creampies, but really loved to suck dick and swallow cum. So one time when I was close, they had me pull out, which I quickly did, the “metal” still hot; just as fast, they quickly swiveled on their butt, scrambled to their knees, and took my whole dick into their mouth—closing their pretty eyes and breathing slowly through their nose as I moaned loudly and came down their throat. As I did, I could hear Zeuhl gulping noisily as they swallowed every last bit of my cum; I watched them do it and remarked to myself how happy Zeuhl looked.

It’s not something I want to speculate on—save that it’s a precious moment to me (one among many others) that I acquired spending time with someone special who eventually hurt me; i.e., needing a big loan from me (which, to be fair, they paid back) that we had to negotiate with another eventual ex of theirs living in Britain (a twinkish, anxious musician—let’s call him Todd—Zeuhl met through their photography work and frequent flights to England to stay with him), and to which money was often something that came between us—to the point that, when the other partner failed to acquire a living situation until our lease was nearly up, I was just about ready to hop on a plane back to America to finish my thesis at home (re: “I feel used!” I told Dale Townshend, in his office; to which the other replied, “Nicholas, this sounds like bullshit!” He took no prisoners, that one. Bless him). But Zeuhl, when hearing my confession, cried “No!” and pulled me close to them. Eventually Thing 2 got a place in Wellington (a 20-minute train ride from MMU) and Zeuhl and I carried all our shit (that Todd’s friend’s truck couldn’t take the week before) with us to a train station. As we did, we stopped periodically to rest, convening briefly at the local Spar convenience store on Oxford Road to get drinks; we drank them greedily with the sun on our faces before pressing on—onto our new home… which had no furnishings or internet.

Fuck.

We gradually got things set up. A week or so later, we walked several miles together to a used furniture store (the only place they sold tables and chairs not in pre-packed sets) and bought Zeuhl a worktable/shelf and wicker chair for 14 quid*. Then, we carried them back home through Wellington (a train port in between places, mostly for tourists), getting raspberry ice creams from a nearby truck and leaning against our hard-won table and chair in the town square, eating happily together. It was one of my favorite moments of us together, and one that I’ll never forget.

*Until that point, we slept and fucked on the floor. Workwise, I’d been sitting with my back to the wall every night, prepping for the upcoming IGA 2018 conference, for which I wrote “All that We’re Told in the Eternal Shadow (within Shadows) of the Hypernormal, Worldwide,” while typing on Thing 2’s spare laptop (for Zeuhl had accidently destroyed mine by spilling Uncle Ben’s rice sauce on it, requiring me to use the school’s computer labs for the rest of the semester, which I no longer had access to) and using a heavy-ass plywood model of a theatre diorama Zeuhl inexplicably had me help them carry from the Photography Wing apropos of nothing… but which did make for a good improvised table, I’ll admit (and which they never let me forget).

(exhibit 34a1a3a1d: Various fun photos and remembrances: some of my favorite [or available] foods; a photo when Zeuhl and I ate out after first becoming an item; the aforementioned table and chair from Wellington; and of course, Sisyphus the slug making his nightly journey across Todd’s floor.)

After that, we got home and Zeuhl set up their workstation. Over the following days, I helped them figure out how to light the gas stove; I encountered a slug crawling on the tile floor night after night (who I dubbed “Sisyphus” for his courage); Zeuhl and I hung out with Todd; Zeuhl and I fucked repeatedly on the floor (to which afterwards they looked up to the ceiling and thought it was leaking but then looked embarrassed, realizing my cum had leaked out of their pussy and dripped onto their foot). We had so many adventures, and I remember them all like they were yesterday (with Zeuhl, and all my cuties).

I remember them and feel at peace knowing Zeuhl gave me these despite paradoxically hurting me more than anyone else. If Jadis was my most antagonistic ex, Zeuhl was my “Scarecrow,” the one I’ll miss the most. But I don’t miss them anymore because the best parts of them live inside me and now in this book. They didn’t want me to include photos of them, so I won’t; but I have included these stories/exhibits in this footnote—less to spite them (though sadly they’ll see it that way) and more to celebrate the love that we shared. We met on September 16th, 2017, and started fucking about 48 hours after that; I shyly said “I love you” to them, while fucking them doggystyle several weeks later (wherein we became an item); we cried in each other’s arms in a dark, lonely hotel room (fucking in front of a mirror) before I flew home, August 2018; Zeuhl left me for their husband on early September (the 9th, I think) 2019; our friendship hobbled along until March 11th, 2023. We haven’t spoken since, and I’ve spent a lot of time since, writing this book to heal from their abuse. Let its culmination be my best revenge.

I suppose I could have done this or that differently, but I was just the unicorn in Zeuhl’s pocket. Furthermore, in the end, the exact path I took led me to my partners, muses and friends, as well as this book becoming something I have worked hard to build. And while the real Zeuhl didn’t have the guts to take part, their friendly “ghost” (simulacrum) is the little shadow of a rabbit, happily munching the greens and flopping in peace, their fur sleek and their little nose wiggling. Is that forgiveness? I guess it is. You were a bastard, Zeuhl, but I loved you, and the best parts of you will live on in this book. I only hope since then you’d learned not to lie to others or stab them in the back/take advantage of them (weeping as I read this; but not with shame: my heart is not of stone and I remember you, bunny, warts and all).

To Zeuhl: Be well, comrade, and may you live the rest of your days in peace.

(exhibit 34a1a3a1e: Persephone van der Waard and Zeuhl [mostly off-screen] at Persephone’s brother’s 2019 wedding. Frozen in time, several months before the breakup, I had no idea what adventures lay ahead—who I’d become after Zeuhl. They were my world, and surviving its destruction made me stronger than ever. I suspect they knew but didn’t have the guts to break up with me on my birthday after my twin brother’s wedding. Whether that’s a kindness or not, I do not know [but will say that the last time we had sex—on my birthday the day before they left for home—was a night to remember]. All the more fitting given I’m someone accustomed to tumult and rancor, but also love eternal:

The remaining years of Raymond and Agnes, of Lorenzo and Virginia, were happy as can be those allotted to Mortals, born to be the prey of grief, and sport of disappointment. The exquisite sorrows with which they had been afflicted, made them think lightly of every succeeding woe. They had felt the sharpest darts in misfortune’s quiver; Those which remained appeared blunt in comparison. Having weathered Fate’s heaviest Storms, they looked calmly upon its terrors: or if ever they felt Affliction’s casual gales, they seemed to them gentle as Zephyrs which breathe over summer-seas [source].

Fucking A.)

[3] As Berlin says (mockingly) to Ariadne, in Money Heist, season two (2017).

[4] As Sarah says (fondly) of Eric Draven and Shelley Webster in The Crow (1994). Their love mirrored Brandon Lee and Eliza Hutton’s, she widowed by his untimely death, on set in 1993, but their love—and the love of the story as a class-war effort (more on this in the Undead monster module)—carries on as an essential part of children, adults and children again. Lee said as much, paraphrasing one of his favorite authors shortly before Lee was killed on set:

Because we do not know when we will die, we get to think of life as an inexhaustible well, and yet everything only happens a certain number of times. Only a very small number, really. How many more times will you remember a certain afternoon of your childhood? An afternoon that is so deeply a part of your being you can’t even conceive of life without it. Perhaps four or five times more. Perhaps not even that. How many more times will you watch the full moon rise? Perhaps twenty. And yet, it all seems limitless (source: Analog Jones and the Temple of Film’s “The Crow (1994) Brandon Lee’s Last Interview,” 2020).

In this sense, a person’s spirit “lives on” in the music, the miniatures, the mayhem of the performance expressing larger turmoils—of workers liberating themselves using Gothic poetics to speak to the human condition as one trapped between capital and commune.

[5] Specifically the lines about the male lover (the hunter) chasing the female lover (the quarry):

Bold Lover, never, never canst thou kiss,

Though winning near the goal yet, do not grieve;

She cannot fade, though thou hast not thy bliss,

For ever wilt thou love, and she be fair! (source).

[6] As Seneca said on his deathbed, “I’m still learning.” So am I.

[7] Despite its “inherited confusions (re: Baldrick), the Gothic tradition indisputably mergers trauma, pleasure and centuries of human history and theatrical practices into the same messy chronotope (me): the castle a living residence and an aesthetic that speaks to past, present and future crimes, legends and romances tied to sex and force. This isn’t just Bakhtin speaking to the Brits, but a historical precedence that, per the Western tradition, goes back to Rome—specifically Roman cemetery prostitutes. As my friend Mira explains,

Mira: Prostitution was legal but they were seen as so filthy by the town guards that the only place they could operate was graveyards.

Me: Talk about abjecting sex.

Mira: During the day they’d make money by being rent-able mourners for funerals, and at night they’d deliberately wear makeup to make them look like corpses or ghosts and hook up with guys in mausoleums. The rent-able mourner thing is just smart. You’re only allowed there anyway so make money where you’re needed. Show up, cry, get paid. Shit, I’d do that.

Mira went on to provide this fun source:

The Bustuarie used chalk on the backs of headstones to advertise their prices, and engaged in sexual acts within tomb passages and secluded plots. Graveyard prostitutes could be found throughout the Roman Empire, and even in the outskirts of Londinium (modern-day London). Their clientele was made up of grave diggers, eager pseudo-necrophiliacs and vulnerable mourning widowers. They were exquisite navigators in finding the emptiest of mausoleums, the softest of burial plots, and even the cold slabs of tombstone that presented an opportunity for intimate discretion.

There were even stories of fair-skinned women resting on ancient tombs with gold coins upon their eyes, not as a payment to the ferryman to cross into the underworld, but payment by the God Orcus for her lustrous services. With a reputation for sexually satisfying the God of the underworld, the Bustuarie were able to provoke the interest of any young Roman wishing for an experience bordering the boundaries of death and love. However, what of precaution and disease when in the presence of a prostitute surrounded by death? (source: B.B. Wagner’s “The Graveyard Prostitutes of Rome and Beyond,” 2020).

Prostitution is the world’s oldest profession, but also a psychosexual means of making ends meet (so to speak) while addressing one’s social-sexual-monetary needs on a complicated spectrum; the Gothic is a playground to play with dead things as historical-ahistorical, social-sexual material markers of paradoxical trauma and pleasure hyphenated. It existed with the Gothic cathedrals of the Middle Ages, the Graveyard Poets who capped off the Renaissance, and survived anew with Walpole’s “rape” castle onto ever new-and-evolving simulacra adopted and adapted for an increasingly capitalist world; i.e., as something to escape in some shape or form. Gothic Communism isn’t the ghost of the counterfeit furthering the process of abjection, but a reversal of said process to weaponize said ghost against the state during class and culture warfare—to cryptonymically seize the means of undead, xenophilic production in no uncertain terms (despite the masks and theatre), hence reunite with a possible post-scarcity world that never quite was but could be in one possible future: Gothic Communism!

Originally part of an undivided volume—specifically Volume Two of my Sex Positivity (2023) book series—this blog post now belongs to a promotion called “Brace for Impact“ (2024); i.e., that went on to become its own completed module in Volume Two: the Poetry Module, aka Volume Two, part one. The Poetry Module was primarily inspired by Harmony Corrupted.

Click here to see “Brace for Impact’s” Table of Contents and Full Disclaimer.

Further Reading: Volume Two actually divides into three modules/sub-volumes, each with its own promotion and release. “Brace for Impact” is the first (re: Volume Two, part one), but there are also promotions for Volume Two, part two’s twin Monster Modules, The Undead and Demons: “Searching for Secrets” and “Deal with the Devil“!

Update, 5/1/2024: Volume Two, part one (the Poetry Module) is out! I wrote a preface for the module along with its debut announcement. Give that a look; then, go to my book’s 1-page promo to download the latest version of the PDF (which will contain additions/corrections these posts will not have)!

Permissions: Any publicly available images are exhibited for purposes of education, transformation and critique, thus fall under Fair Use; private nude material and collabs with models are specifically ally 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.

“Monsters, Magic and Myth”: Green Eggs and Ha(r)m; or, “Fucking’s Fun, Try it!”

“Say… Would you like a chocolate covered pretzel? They’re a bit melty but boy are they exquisite!”

 —Brodie, Mallrats (1995)

(artist: Dr. Seuss[1])

Picking up up from where “Castles in the Flesh” left off…

I’m a medievalist, a Renaissance girl. So I want to go over some things that, per Gothic poetics, have a pointedly medieval flavor. They won’t come up pointedly throughout the volume, but conversationally will be all over the place (“all over the shop,” as Dale Townshend used to gripe, regarding my graduate work); i.e., stitched together like Frankenstein’s monster and sculpted loosely but lovingly like Horace Walpole’s Strawberry Hill, both assembled eclectically but also in contemplating thematically the kinds of nerdy gay things that Shelley and Walpole had in mind. I won’t signpost them, though, after mentioning them here. They’ll be hidden like Easter eggs, albeit in plain sight (you’ll know it when you see it).

Partly it’s a flavor thing. I want this volume to taste different, hit different, but say basically the same arguments. And now that you have access to my pure and simplified theories (Volumes One and Zero), I can stretch my wings, let my hair down, and really have a bit of fun! Seriously, I love monsters, and who ever said scholarship has to be dull? Yes, this module/chapter is the kind of indulgent, flowery writing that scholars absolutely hate (e.g., gratuitous food, sex and food-as-sex metaphors), but I’ll be using it to spice my arguments, not lead them going forward (except maybe this chapter). To that, we want to be picky insofar as we’re mindful about what we eat, but not to the point that we refuse something that can change how we see the world; i.e., the Gothic as our proverbial green eggs and ham (“you can lead a horse to water, but you can’t make it drink”). Keeping the last page in mind, this isn’t actual food; it’s a metaphor for trying new things like sex, the Gothic, ludo-Gothic BDSM, etc.

Before we get to the fun palace, though, I want to give a ten-page note about our “green eggs and ham,” Gothic castles and draconian occupants in their half-real, dialectical-material totality.

This “note” concerns our aforementioned “castles” (and all their morphological variations). Except, because it’s not baseline, but extreme, intense, operatic, and over-the-top, the Gothic castle is a perfect place to manifest one’s fears, guilt, biases, self-consciousness, and confusion, etc, and then face them with more power or less. It’s a stage-like place of performative torment to confront one’s shortcomings, weakness and doom; i.e., an intervention through a popular paradox central to calculated risk: empowerment through “disempowerment” against one’s self as threatened, often by invaders-in-disguise, evil concentric/cryptomimetic reflections (mise-en-abyme) of an imaginary past, and yes, sexy aliens and armored killers hellbent on “violating” us in ironic and unironic forms (doubles).

We’ll explore that more in “Medieval Expression.” For now, merely remember that this also means the Gothic castle is an excellent place to experience and try new things—a safe space despite all its perceived menace, thus perfect for confronting trauma during liminal expression (Athena’s Aegis and hugging Medusa) and interrogating power through paradox involving big battles; i.e., as Volume Zero explored, the Gothic ostensibly swapping sophistication for crude (vulgar) power but in truth loving complicated cat-and-mouse battles of the mind, praxis, and monsters as sexualized—of psychomachy and psychopraxis, Amazonomachia all working through psychosexual partition, the divisions at odds in a liminal space. The hunt and hunting grounds are brutal but elegant (“…the Gothic art is sublime,” Coleridge says; re: General Character of the Gothic Literature and Art [1818]. For once I don’t totally disagree with him); the ticket forward—developing Gothic Communism via systemic catharsis—is by reclaiming the imaginary past (and its Wisdom of the Ancients) for ourselves: to camp the twin trees of Capitalism, replacing them with our own Base and Superstructure using dark, Gothic [Satanic, etc] poetics; i.e., as a de facto educational device.

(artist: Patrick O’Brien)

There’s a history to this, but a largely imaginary one. Per the Gothic, the romancing of flagship battles isn’t just a Western marquee, but one whose “big splash” yields a ghostly Numinous signature; i.e., the spectre of such counterfeits abjecting the settler-colonial horrors of raped Medusa  (the alien, fetish harvest) through regular spectacle: wartime theatre as glorious, something for the target audience (which historically would have been young white cis-het boys to men of fighting age) to recognize by sight; i.e., like wartime banners and battle standards, whose streaming colors serve as code: for who’s fighting who, who’s on whose side, etc; e.g., Flash Gordon (1934) or Star Wars (1977). Per Lucas’ matelotage upending the 20th century neoconservatism of American science fiction, his antiwar narrative is maritime-themed, albeit in disguise; i.e., it includes playing at war in “space” (whose cold vacuum again acts as a metaphor for the vast crushing depths of the unforgiving ocean): with a pair of dueling warships locked in a fatal chase/sea battle, Star–Trek-style (except where one ship is generally smaller to make things fun and comment on American Imperialism), meaning complete with broadsides, boarding, princesses and duels and other pirate-y clichés borrowed from older, land-based medieval spectacles (e.g., Radcliffe’s banditti and other such artifacts of the Historical Gothic genre she transformed into her signature School of Terror for a white, cis-het female readership).

Unlike Lucas, Ridley Scott ditches a lot of the overtly fantastical and warlike tropes, keeping the maritime themes but merging them with a Neo-Gothic retro-future: a ghost ship and castle-like echo haunting a failed, decaying whitewash exposing all the usual corporate decay anticipating neoliberal dominance in an astronoetic refrain (with sets that are both self-contained, but somehow too big to film in single static shots; they must be captured in tracking shots and assembled later in collages, above). The castle is there, the forbidden power is there, mad Medusa is there. But first, the fresher maze has to superimpose over the older ghost of the counterfeit inside of itself. It has to “wake up.” It’s a very dreamlike film, inviting the audience to vicariously explore a somnambulist BDSM scenario, which is as different from Lucas as Lucas was from Heinlein (the infernal concentric pattern’s closed space vs the Marxist monomyth’s open world/space Western vs the neocon monomyth of competent men conquering “space”): something big “out there” as fighting with something else that’s making us feel out of control. Those hypermassive things are Imperialism and liberation, which manifest currently as Capitalism and Communism by other names, further expressed by Scott as the black castle and the white; i.e., as ancient things to reify and investigate as spectres of “Rome” and of Marx.

In turn, Scott’s skillful and continual employment of the Humanities amounts to an expanded vocation (an occupation or employment) to non-vocational elements of trade in hyperreal forms: murals, hieroglyphs, pyramids, monoliths melded expertly by a troupe of art nerds saving the lives of people currently and soon to be in the line of fire—workers, postponing their own investigation of the regular bourgeois snakes (excuse the term) due to a misplaced investment in capital as “their” home; i.e., a “nice place,” at a glance, but beauty is only skin deep. The praxial idea is to be scarier and more well-connected as a means of survival from the usual deleterious effects, learning from our mistakes in “fatal” forms of Gothic theatre: a place to fuck up royally and live to tell the tale, thus become better class warriors against the elite as well-equipped, shrewd and violent by default. There’s a lot riding on these depositions, the game rigged against workers by the most unscrupulous, unfeeling cutthroats on Earth: capitalists.

Medusa is angry for a reason, no love lost between her and the men who took her head; they’re not a “bad batch,” but rotten to the core (empire decays by design, doesn’t discriminate), treating life as cheaper than dirt, squeezing blood from a stone to chase, chase, chase dollars. To humanize them would be dubious; to settle would be a fatal underestimation: of those who would cradle-rob your grandchild’s crib for a nickel (except “taking candy from baby” applies to how they view all workers) then light it on fire. They prey on vulnerability and expose our flaws to diminish our fortitude. Their prescription? Fear and dogma as something whose waves of terror lead not just to fight or flight, but addict behaviors that pit workers against each other—to ensnare and trap potential rebels with what historical drives us: fear, anger and threats of force, but also liberation, pleasure, and knowledge—curiosity. We’re already “on the edge,” with them enabling our destruction akin to Zofloya handing Victoria de Loredani a vial of her own poison, or Mathilda the portrait that sends Ambrosio spiraling to his doom (and his dreams up in smoke). Make no mistake, these are agents of incredible alienation, thus cruelty.

In short, capitalists are dragons without irony, caring for one thing and one thing only—profit, which requires unequal socio-material conditions, requires unchecked rape, theft and murder without irony towards nature: Tolkien’s Smaug minus the theatre, verbosity or cool factor (the banality of evil). To that, the gloating is unsaid but ubiquitous—an aura of invincibility Tolkien put best in his finest[2] work, The Hobbit (1937): “My armour is like tenfold shields, my teeth are swords, my claws spears, the shock of my tail a thunderbolt, my wings a hurricane, and my breath death!” (source). It’s not accurate for Smaug and that’s the point, but equally accurate is his possessive and vindictive nature as greed rarefied to speak to capital: “His rage passes description – the sort of rage that is only seen when rich folk that have more than they can enjoy suddenly lose something that they have long had but have never before used or wanted” (ibid.). To catch my drift, apply this to Sex Positivity at large: capital couldn’t care less, and workers and nature pay the price!

In dualistic terms, we ignite the flames of the dragon for our aims, but enrage theirs to send an arrow into their bare-and-exposed heart. Summoning the dragon just to kill him isn’t the point (Radcliffe’s predatory[3] and fiscal-minded summoning and banishing of the haunted house); understanding “dragon sickness” affecting all parties in a brutal ugly fashion is—e.g., summing up WW1 in the Battle of the Five Armies (which sadly Tolkien tries to rescue the good name of war from in 1954 with the Lord of the Rings novels. Class war isn’t the romance of big battles, Tolkien). To that, I applaud the old fart. Nice job, Tolkien. Have a cookie from beyond the grave.

The moral here is intellectual savagery. Don’t be afraid to kill your darlings, lovelies—to critique your heroes, then chop them up and stitch them back together as new zombies to dance with (which might seem unintuitive, but I assure you, there’s a method to the madness); re: our campy ghosts of Marx. Doing so is vital if we are to unfasten ourselves from the capitalist myopia’s vast, shapeless quagmire—to break “our” icons (given to us by Capitalism), not restore them (thus maintain Capitalist Realism)!

As such, sucking Tolkien off or going down on Radcliffe “as is” does not good praxis make! It’s idolatry for those who want to keep things the same, watching the world burn for profit (which is effectively wanting to just watch the world burn, fiddling whilst “Rome” burns and with it, poor Medusa until she fucks us to death; e.g., the Hollow Knight psychomachy harboring the Pale King and queenly Radiance in the same shell’s bloodthirsty eyes); better to melt that down and learn from it, our minds agile and dexterous through our bodies, sexualities and genders’ combined riches (a small fortune) as our own. Consider the paradox of the conquered, of the archer, and of the tortoise and the hare:

• slow and steady wins the race
• in non-linear routes (to the pussy [or other holes]. Generally the in-and-out thrusting is more straightforward, but even then you can come at it from different angles, speeds, depths, and amounts of impact, etc)
• to win not from crossing the finish line (“cumming” like Eric Liddle from Chariots of Fire, 1981) but also from the struggle of reaching it and enjoying the feelings that emerge throughout!

Keeping all these in mind, one’s devilish “dance” partner isn’t someone to use and cast aside like a piece of meat (unless they actually want that and you’ve negotiated it ahead of time); they’re someone to—for me, anyways—give tribute to with thanks, not recite Richter Belmont’s half of the Dracula speech (“Tribute?! You steal men’s souls and make them your slaves!”). For the high of weird canonical nerds to work, they have to kill, dominate or otherwise harm others through lack of consent. “Paradise” is a unironic boneyard to them; we weird iconoclastic nerds subvert that harm in campy venues of social and monetary exchange (what Volume One calls “humanizing the harvest”; i.e., Medusa as a Big [insert body part here] Goth GF we must rescue from harmful Cartesian bondage).

(artist: Harmony Corrupted)

To that, Harmony’s massive, tasty buns (not shown, here); dark, church-like pussy and spread-open thighs made me cum so hard I felt like I couldn’t walk—that, in boxing terms (the usual sports-like metaphors that work so well for topping someone, but also getting topped from the bottom, “rope-a-dope”-style), I’d had “my bell rung” and was “down for the count”—i.e., as if my enlarged soul had swelled to stupendous extremes before exiting my body through my dick (the “little death,” through the Eye of the Needle); and all while sweating profusely and panting like a slut, having given Harmony the biggest cum tribute I’ve ever produced and they’d ever received (and all while Slayer’s “Angel of Death” [1986] played on their end—terribly fitting)! “Taking my head” in that way is a sign of respect to and from Harmony—of sharing and “doing a Communism[4]” with a good friend while paying them for their time as we play together in sexual-to-asexual forms of artist-to-muse forms of Gothic artistic exchange (nudism and erotic psychosexual delight a tightrope to walk). To that, my girl cock is obedient and good; it gets soft until I know my partner is ready and willing. That’s how it should be (versus being able to fuck someone no matter what, which is literally not a virtue)!

On one level, we can hardly blame those who harm others; it’s often all they know and are taught (we are alien to them, fetish). On the other hand, they are our sworn enemies and cannot become our friends until they try to change their core beliefs (a very difficult thing to do). Rags-to-riches isn’t belt with many notches, but a vaulted character full of emotional wealth (I’ve always been materially poor [for a white American male] but the cuties I’ve fuck never seem to mind). Each failure isn’t a failure at all, then, but a special chance to learn and change, to do things differently in the future that can still be funny in hindsight (sex generally is): to release pent-up fatal stress (laughter and orgasms mimicking the symptoms of the orgasm as intense physical labor under duress[5]) before the fat lady (Medusa) sings orgasmically to our curtain call. She’s literally a planet and will be absolutely fine; our head, crushed ignominiously between her strong thighs, will not outlive/outlast her orgasmic “death throes.”

I could exhibit that. Except we don’t even have to see her abstractions to understand the larger thing at stake—the world; one look at the weirdness of war-bred child soldiers says it all: baby-brain numbskulls thirsty after “waifus” and howling at the vengeful moon (witnessed inside odd localizations of Japanese media; e.g., “Invitation of a Crazed Moon” from Portrait of Ruin [2006] cryptomimetically touching on total catastrophe as a Western invention embraced by eco-fascist Japanese fandoms [the return of the Shogunate] and tackled by infamous auteurs writing “A Cruel Angel’s Thesis[6]” [1995] tied to a bigger production. From Castlevania to Neo-Genesis Evangelion, then, the Japanese consensus is kick-ass emulations of American rock ‘n roll as thoroughly campy [less so with Megan Man, but I digress]: “Neo-Gothic Bible rock.” Yes, they’re straight-up bops, but the liminality remains indefinitely fascinating inside a capitalist world order).

In other words, love is a battlefield, but also a stage in between reality and fiction; as should hopefully be obvious at this stage, combining sex, nudism and the language of war per ludo-Gothic BDSM (sex as art) is an endlessly productive-and-liminal operation, especially when funneled through the fetishes and clichés of the Gothic—its “Ancient” Romances (stories of high imagination) and real life (the novel: “truth is stranger than fiction”) yielding something special and new (“imitation is the sincerest form of flattery” but “familiarity breeds contempt”) when used in a consciously satirical, campy way.

The Gothic, as we think of its earliest origins, was always campy and about queer sex in a partially ace way (re: Walpole and Lewis)—something whose dialectical-material push-pull survives well into Rocky Horror, Forgetting Sarah Marshall (2009) and beyond (the hero’s treatment of Dracula in the latter film being much more self-loathing in a straight way—a fact hilariously exemplified by the great [non-Dracula] song, “Peter, You Suck,” still managing to sneak in a shameless vampire pun as “hidden in plain sight,” minus the stage makeup). Like our own lives seemingly divorced from it, the Gothic, sex and gender expression are not simply a vicious cycle or comedy/tragedy of errors, then; e.g., something to sing satirically about (Obscurest Vinyl’s “I Glued My Balls to My Butthole Again” [2024] being the “hot new single” to dominate the American airwaves); i.e., that makes us cover our mouths to keep quiet (from shocked, orgasmic laughter), bemoaning to ourselves (and the audience, our partners or whoever’s watching us) in a half-real sphere: “Not again!” (and which the audience double-takes, staring widely as they sputter back, “Again?”). But you gotta learn not to shoot yourself in the foot, and some people really can’t help themselves. No bullshit, it’s literally all they’ve been taught, thus all they know.

For example, my roomie, Beavis, from Volume One, had both a) a father who raised him to be a gun nut, and b) a mother who wanted him to—no bullshit—use a Catholic dating app to meet “good girls” (translation: “hopelessly ignorant and dependent”). In other words, Beavis wanted to have his “cake” and “eat” it, too: an angel in the streets, freak in the sheets who would sire his children after the first date. But he wasn’t smart enough to listen to a certified “pussy slayer” (that’s not how I see what I do, but in jest, the expression more or less translates to “someone who fucks”) and instead decided to keep doing the Romeo thing: loving from afar. Like, dude, I’m all for the “love-by-letter” approach, but nobody chooses to do that—not unless they’re desperate or unable to meet up, in person!

Dating advice through half-real things like Gothic poetics might seem like a like a paradox unto itself, a fool’s errand—”don’t be afraid of fucking up” versus “fortune flavors the bold,” etc—but it’s simpler than you think (and still prone to hilarity and risk): a) keep an open mind, b) find out what you like (and what people who share your interests like), c) communicate your needs while treating people like humans, d) see where it goes. The more open you are without being a creep, the better your odds provided you don’t get preyed on by abusive people (which happened to me multiple times until I learned how to avoid them). So look for opportunity and “go for the gold” yourselves. To the victor go the spoils, except you need to know when to be stubborn and when back off, to… [reads “Polonius’ advice to Laertes”; source: Stage Milk, 2022]. And so on. In a nutshell, don’t act like Andrew Tate (a smaller version of an unironic dragon’s cheap imitation) and you should be golden.

(artists: the Brothers Hildebrandt)

To that, Tolkien’s Smaug the Stupendous (the OG daddy dom, not as “big” as he thinks he is) is both a dated abstraction and precise localization of the spirit of capital (the Protestant work ethic) channeled through the bourgeoisie. Like him, they’re full of themselves—completely vicious, arrogant, and utterly without mercy but able to understand power and force, which workers have: labor and propaganda, tools to camp canon and recultivate and reclaim what’s ours and always was. It’s a team effort, though—each of us encapsulating Communism’s castles, armies, leaders and laborers—one of horizontal configurations issuing demands, commands and ultimatums on human, animal and environmental rights. We can be sweet and fierce as needed, this hell-of-a-fight calling for all our stratagems, elaborate strategies of misdirection, and sexual energy and gender parody that we can summon—in short, all the powers of Hell at our disposal sent capital’s way to level them in broad strokes (and backsides); all our disguises and cryptonyms, spy networks, webs of intrigue, brothel espionage, angles and flair exposed all at once, Aegis-style. It’s literally “how people talk,” meaning some degree of selfishness, pain, lust, fear, lies and superstition are necessary to keep us alive inside capital’s concentric façade.

Like Tolkien’s Barrel-rider and thirteen dwarves, then, we are the proverbial Thief in the Shadows (except, we’re good goblins, wargs, and creatures of darkness that don’t moralize geography or nature into good/bad factions):

(artist: Harmony Corrupted)

To that, “eating” so-called “green eggs” is a diagnostic process that welcomes risk if it means a fun opportunity to learn and try new things—to play and have fun with in the process. Why are the eggs and ham green? Clearly if something’s new, we’ll want investigate it. That’s what heroes, detectives, teachers and mothers all to: do make sure something’s safe, then relax and go for it! “Where there’s a whip, there’s a way!” (not the LotR song from the ’70s cartoon, but Vulture’s updated version—a blast-from-the-“past” on their Sentinels album, 2024). Be your own sex(-positive) goblin and see who answers back; the response might just surprise you! Big Booty Goth GFs are real, but you must be prepared to play together in a ludo-Gothic BDSM (thus Communist) sphere. Trust me, I’m a professional slut and career weirdo with a bevy of yummy comrades I call “friend” (“speak ‘friend’ and enter!”) collectively raising Cain, going “dungeon-crawling” together. There’s no friendzone, and a cutie wanting to be your friend is always a good sign (castration fears being the byproduct of antiquated revenge fantasies that Angela Carter[7] and Barbara Creed borrowed from Freud and his ilk).

Like Frankenstein’s mad science, it’s less a science at all and more a social-sexual act of catching lighting in a bottle (sometimes “riding” it, Strangelove-style). Social activities and sexual activities generally don’t work well if you’re too relaxed, tense, or aloof. It’s about balance and awareness (vibe checks) towards yourself and your surroundings’ historical-material mise-en-abyme as things to question and play with in a dialectical-material critique doubling as a fun time; i.e., a clever way of making friends that abjure the nuclear model, Cartesian edicts, settler colonialism, Capitalism, et al. So do that yourselves as a matter of taught habit! Before you know it, you’ll be like me: the next Energizer bunny fucking and building others off their feet, the envy of natural philosophers everywhere while you “ride the lightning”; i.e., seeking not to conquer death (which, apart from being impossible, capitalists don’t try to do; they just horde all the material conditions for themselves and weaponize social conditions that maintain the imbalance) but whose sorcerous “stones” increase qualities of life: by challenging state structures, illusions and procedures. It doesn’t always take much to achieve a new outlook, or put one on a path towards something that changes oneself: a bookshelf, a gallery or person-like device (or vice versa). So tuck in! You wanna live forever, Conan? Eat those green eggs and ham; eat the Gothic!

Removing the Herculean imagery from the question, consider it less as a terrible task that takes a lot of effort and more of a silver bullet: small, but effective (though anything would be if fired through someone’s heart). All that change requires is patience, a willingness to experiment—to frequent queer joints and entertain queer propositions, to hit it off accidentally and see where things go, to wield a cautious optimism where you live to see that day where you find that thing that works like a charm, just what the doctor ordered, etc; i.e., instant relief amounts to a bouquet of medicine, bleeding effigies (“miracles”), wall dildos (a strange quiver), those blue health orbs from Doom (1993) or the wall meat from Castlevania (strange foods), where you heart (or genitals) belong: inside someone else or them inside you, John-Donne-style.

(artist: Mercedes the Muse and a playmate)

Also before we start, here’s a quick (two-page) tangent about Dr. Seuss, just because I can’t allude to Green Eggs and Ham and not talk about the man, himself! I mentioned those emerald eggs and celadon pork flesh because, while I think a great many people (Americans, anyways) hate diets, a change in nutrition (standing in as a poetic device for pro-Communist reeducation at large) is far from impossible. Point in fact, Dr. Seuss himself did it, having once been more racist as a matter of production and consumption, only to change quite radically over time in a more inclusive and accepting direction:

While the vast majority of the works he produced are positive and inspiring, Ted Geisel [aka Dr. Seuss] also drew a handful of early images, which are disturbing. These racially stereotypical drawings were hurtful then and are still hurtful today. […] Mulberry Street was written in 1937. By contrast, the much-beloved The Sneetches was written in 1961 just as the Civil Rights Movement was well underway. Ted wrote The Sneetches as a parable about equality. By drawing bird-beings, he transcended the boundaries and pitfalls of using humans as characters, and allowed all readers to relate to the characters as best they could. On March 2, 2016, President Obama agreed with Dr. Seuss telling a group of interns: “Pretty much all the stuff you need to know is in Dr. Seuss. It’s like the Star-Belly Sneetches, you know? We’re all the same, so why would we treat somebody differently just because they don’t have a star on their belly?” (source: “Dr. Seuss Use of Racist Images,” 2024).

Sure, it’s a bit Aesopian, but that’s not a negative in my book. Less endearing is the dubious, false-smile endorsement from a token neoliberal like Obama (saying “we’re all the same” is valid insofar as we all have human rights, but we still need to acknowledge that we’re not all treated the same thanks to fuckwads just like Obama; i.e., he’s a war criminal [war drones[8], anyone?] and gargles non-consenting balls). Still, Seuss learning to eat crow demonstrates that people can change with the times, meaning they stay “writeable” into adulthood; i.e., their work can change, hence the culture attached to it (Gothic or otherwise).

In other words, it doesn’t matter where the process starts (though ideally it should happen all over the place), provided the Base and the Superstructure are reclaimed and recultivated (which, per Kapital, shape and support each other as, per my arguments, a socio-material event married to Gothic poetics): reimagined in a serialized poetic trend; i.e., looking backwards and proceeding forwards through a malleable, writeable Wisdom of the Ancients: “in the blood” less in actuality (hereditary intuition) and more as a second-nature emotional/Gothic intelligence and class/cultural awareness we cultivate through language acquisition during ludo-Gothic BDSM (native-speaker intuition and Chomsky’s LAD) from moment-to-moment, over time, forever onwards. This takes conscious effort over space and time between an organized, intersectionally solidarized collective (what Capitalism wants to stay unintuitive, like “herding cats,” unable to group together thanks to dogmatic pacification and controlled opposition).

Cautionary arguments about “chameleons” aside, this would seem to apply to Dr. Seuss, whose “later works show an evolution of values and beliefs. Those who knew him believe that if he were alive today he would have jumped at the chance to be a part of the country’s evolving dialogue about diversity and inclusion” (ibid.). Except while I’m generally a tough sell and frankly think that many American cartoonists compose the nadir of morality (are far as such litmus tests go); e.g.,

• Walt Disney being a racist anti-Semite (source: Lisa Gutierrez’ “Walt Disney Grandniece: Meryl Streep Was Right, He Was Racist,” 2014)
• Scott Adam’s decades-long racism and all-around horrible weirdness towards anyone different from himself(Behind the Bastards’ “How The Dilbert Guy Lost His Mind,” 2023)
• Earth Worm Jim creator Doug TenNapel’s own conservative praxis when interacting with awful chaser/soon-to-be-divorced dudes like Steven Crowder (“Surviving the Leftist Mob,” 2021)
• Matt Groening’s proud, middle-of-the-road, smug-as-fuck centrism (source: David Scheff’s “Matt Groening,” 2007)
• and John Kricfalusi’s pedophilic tendencies reflecting in his art, but also his abusive relationship with underage female artists that he worked with to draw in his problematic, nostalgic style (blameitonjorge’s “John Kricfalusi: An Open Secret,” 2019)

I’m still fair and open-minded, taking artists and their creations like Jim Davis’ Garfield and Bill Watterson’s Calvin and Hobbes into account. Dr. Seuss might have sucked initially but eventually became remembered for his anti-war actions (on par with Bob Ross and Howard Zinn). That’s what really matters; i.e., what we leave behind that makes an impression and is then carried forward. So many of the dickwads mentioned above canonized their work to deify themselves and become multi-millionaires; but Dr. Seuss saw the error of his ways and tried to change. That’s important.

As we’ll see, if it worked for Dr. Seuss, then it can work—indeed, has worked—with famous texts that, through their less-divided relationship with nature under a pre-to-early-capitalist world, are able to pass something “that sticks” forward towards a potentially post-capitalist world. One can hope, but there’s some vital things to keep in mind insofar as reinvented medieval poetics (the Gothic) are concerned before we jump into monsters (and their modules) specifically.

So enough about Dr. Seuss and his silly green eggs and harm; let’s defend poetry and the medieval as monstrous, thus useful to Gothic Communism! Onto medieval expression in earnest! Onwards to the fun palace!

Actually, a slight detour. Onwards to “The Eyeball Zone,” which explores the idea of synthesizing Communism through healthy psychosexual relationships and ocular expression.  —Perse

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Footnotes

[1] “Like Norman Rockwell, Dr. Seuss created every rough sketch, preliminary drawing, final line drawing, and finished work for each page of every project he illustrated” (source: The Art of Dr. Seuss, 2024).

[2] He gentrified war in a cartographic refrain that apologizes for capital, post-WW2 (which I discuss extensively in my thesis volume); and his incorporeal, ring-based use of vampirism is interesting as well, which I explore in Volume One; but The Hobbit is an excellent medieval critique of capital, and to which I wrote my best early essay on—re: “‘Dragon Sickness’: The Problem of Greed,” (2014).

[3] There’s no love lost between me and Radcliffe at this point. To see deep that rabbit hole goes, check out my thesis volume.

[4] This isn’t as in-jest as you might think: Communism is where labor value is infinite, regardless of the task, and barter (for us) is done in exchange for labor value, not money or privatization (which impose limits on labor by giving it a set, numerical money value called a “wage,” which it can then steal, trapping labor within a system of theft made to serve the elite); i.e., seizing the means of production, but also recultivating the Superstructure during all of this. Whereas women/the monstrous-feminine are normally reduced to a singular use and low price for themselves—one that capital reaps to maximize profit for the literal/de facto pimp (or other forms of free labor)—class/cultural war aims to return sexual labor (and Gothic poetics) to an exchange incumbent on labor instead of money (deprivatization).

In these cases, exchange-equals-barter for labor value (which again, is infinite; i.e., the exchange value for pussy being highly variable/non-fungible, thus retaining its idiosyncratic, uneven value regardless of its material factors: workers can negotiate unequally to make both parties [of a given exchange] equally happy). This isn’t “giving it away from free,” but for whatever is being bartered for/of interest; e.g., attention, time, touch, and emotional contact with someone you like, and money and material goods maybe involved or vice versa (Adam and Eve were as naked as jaybirds). This barter occurs within capital—not to submit to one’s surrounding capitalists and compelled ownership by pimps (the world’s oldest profession) trying to squeeze profit out of the pussy (or any other monstrous-feminine part). Rather, the pussy is owned by the worker and fairly exchanged, “giving it up” without relinquishing their basic human rights (re: protections from the state), and doing so in attempts to adumbrate a horizontally arranged system beyond the current vertical one.

In turn, teaching and learning go both ways, as do pleasing and being pleased, giving and receiving. There is neither harm, genocide nor profit under Communism (Socialism is a different beast, transitioning away from genocide but still capable of enacting it when kettled by state forces during reactive abuse). Harmony is a “dragon” in quotes, then—never taking too much (re: Cuwu) and me not giving too much by virtue of our informed and negotiated boundaries. Capitalist Realism would frame this as “impossible,” requiring invented disaster to “restore balance” during genocide. Moderacy and centrism, then, are merely settler colonialism with more steps; e.g., Tolkien and Cameron’s refrains: “Goldilocks Imperialism.”

[5] I’ve already touched on this in “Medicine,” but Cameron from House says it best (the devil-in-the-sheets fucking with Ozzie twink, Chase):

Sex could kill you. Do you know what the human body goes through when you have sex? Pupils dilate, arteries constrict, core temperature rises, heart races, blood pressure skyrockets, respiration becomes rapid and shallow, the brain fires bursts of electrical impulses from nowhere to nowhere, and secretions spit out of every gland, and the muscles tense and spasm like you’re lifting three times your body weight. It’s violent. It’s ugly. And it’s messy. And if God hadn’t made it unbelievably fun, the human race would have died out eons ago. Men are lucky they can only have one orgasm. You know that women can have an hour-long orgasm? (source: “Occam’s Razor,” 2004).

The discussion is a thoroughly cis-het, amatonormative one—reducing Cameron to the tease in a workplace environment where men are afraid of women much as maritime sailors would have been centuries ago. “Some things never change” because Patriarchal Capitalism likes it that way!

[6] Cover by Ama Lee, 2017.

[7] Again, “kill your darlings”; i.e., even if everyone in Gothic academic quotes Angela Carter, she’s still a second wave feminist, thus has major problems we must critique. As I write in Volume Zero:

Second-wave feminism was (and still is) infamously cis-supremacist and white, and we can’t just rely on a bunch of fancy (and highly problematic) white, cis-het female academics to accomplish the sum of all activism for all workers. Even if Carter wouldn’t have been caught dead in Rowling’s company today, she still died in 1992—one year after Michael Warner introduced “heteronormativity” to academic circuits, two years after Judith Butler wrote Gender Trouble and one year before Derrida wrote Spectres of Marx.

To be blunt, Carter’s most famous works feel oddly dated in terms of what they either completely leave out or fail to define, and thereby supply clues to the vengeance of proto-TERFs like Dacre’s Victoria de Loredani that Carter doesn’t strictly condemn. As Brittany Sauvé-Bonin writes in “How Angela Carter Challenges Myths of Sexuality and Power in ‘The Bloody Chamber’ & ‘The Company of Wolves'” (2020):

The men in de Sade’s stories exercise sexual perversions which enforce annihilation. However, it is the women in de Sade’s stories that are seen as even more cruel as once they get the rare opportunity to exercise power, they begin to use this power to seek retaliation over the submissiveness they were forced to endure in society (The Sadeian Woman 27). Carter bluntly concludes that “a free woman in an unfree society will be a monster” (27). Due to women being oppressed for so long, when they get the opportunity, they can retaliate in the most extreme ways (27).

According to Henstra, this has resulted in critique by other feminists including Andrea Dworkin, who have concluded that The Sadeian Woman displays a “complete disregard for the actual suffering endured by Sade’s – and pornography’s – victims” (113). Carter chooses to focus more on how women had an outlet to retaliate that de Sade had openly introduced. While some of his women suffered, some of his women indeed inflicted the pain. Hence, Carter rationalizes de Sade’s work by saying “pornography [is] in the service of women, or, perhaps, allowed it to be invaded by an ideology not inimical [harmful] to women” (The Sadeian Woman 37) [source].

Again, what is a woman, Carter? And what did they do with this outlet? The vast majority turned it against other minorities more disadvantaged than themselves—i.e., from 1979 into the present (source).

[8] He endorsed the things, pushing for their manufacture, sale and use, then lying about the death toll (which demonstrates intent). As Jessica Purkiss and Jack Serle write in “Obama’s Drone War” (2017):

Obama embraced the US drone programme, overseeing more strikes in his first year than Bush carried out during his entire presidency. A total of 563 strikes, largely by drones, targeted Pakistan, Somalia and Yemen during Obama’s two terms, compared to 57 strikes under Bush. Between 384 and 807 civilians were killed in those countries, according to reports logged by the Bureau. The use of drones aligned with Obama’s ambition to keep up the war against al Qaeda while extricating the US military from intractable, costly ground wars in the Middle East and Asia. But the targeted killing programme has drawn much criticism.

The Obama administration has insisted that drone strikes are so “exceptionally surgical and precise“ that they pluck off terror suspects while not putting “innocent men, women and children in danger.” This claim has been contested by numerous human rights groups, however, and the Bureau’s figures on civilian casualties also demonstrate that this is often not the case (source).

All presidents lie for the state because the state lies to function. No god, states or masters, my dudes.

Originally part of an undivided volume—specifically Volume Two of my Sex Positivity (2023) book series—this blog post now belongs to a promotion called “Brace for Impact“ (2024); i.e., that went on to become its own completed module in Volume Two: the Poetry Module, aka Volume Two, part one. The Poetry Module was primarily inspired by Harmony Corrupted.

Click here to see “Brace for Impact’s” Table of Contents and Full Disclaimer.

Further Reading: Volume Two actually divides into three modules/sub-volumes, each with its own promotion and release. “Brace for Impact” is the first (re: Volume Two, part one), but there are also promotions for Volume Two, part two’s twin Monster Modules, The Undead and Demons: “Searching for Secrets” and “Deal with the Devil“!

Update, 5/1/2024: Volume Two, part one (the Poetry Module) is out! I wrote a preface for the module along with its debut announcement. Give that a look; then, go to my book’s 1-page promo to download the latest version of the PDF (which will contain additions/corrections these posts will not have)!

Permissions: Any publicly available images are exhibited for purposes of education, transformation and critique, thus fall under Fair Use; private nude material and collabs with models are specifically ally 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.

(artist: H.R. Giger)

Prep, part three: the Medieval; or the Root of the Humanities: Their Mise-en-Abyme, Medieval Expression and Modules

Capitalism has always exploited us according to how it deems us useful/not useful, thus superior/inferior inside the colonial binary and its heteronormative rubric/moderately normative offshoots. / Sex Positivity illustrates this complex reality through what I’ve learned, reassembling it for you as a kind of monster compilation to play around with. As you play, experiment and learn, think about your own modes of monstrous self-expression and what you put back into the world: your poiesis and creative successes. In the end, we’re all defined by what we leave behind (source).

—Persephone van der Waard, Sex Positivity, Volume Zero (2023)

Picking up from where “Conflict and Liberation” left off…

“The Medieval,” or chapter three (of zero) for “Brace for Impact,” constitutes the last bit of prep before we dive into the second and third modules. I have divided it into seven subchapters (and multiple subdivisions, and sub-subdivisions)—“Monsters, Magic and Myth”—which cover some of the messiest (and most exquisite) aspects to what Volume Two is about and which we’ve touched upon, but here I really want to go over as thoroughly as possible: as things to sell to others not as commodities, but propositions; i.e., for them to buy as a social-sexual exchange between cuties’ interpersonal mise-en-abyme (“to [mimetically] place in abyss,” over and over…): consenting mutually to enter forbidden “castles” of delicious “danger” (calculated risk).

(artists: Cuwu and Persephone van der Waard)

• “Castles in the Flesh” (this post): Charts our course by picking the destination. Outlines medieval derelicts as castle-like in terms of the body-building arrangement the Gothic generally entertains, and provides a personalized, anecdotal example of “Antiquity” through derelicts: Cuwu and I.
• “Green Eggs and Ha(r)m; or, ‘Fucking’s Fun, Try it!’“: Partway on the road. Considers the Gothic as something its critics turn their noses up at like green eggs and harm, conflating capitalist forms with our iconoclastic doubles (making them bad critics); this subchapter outlines Gothic castles and draconian occupants in their half-real, dialectical-material totality (ours vs theirs).
• “The Eyeball Zone; or, Relating to the Gothic as Commies Do“: Still en route! A more autobiographical subchapter, one that explores interpersonal relationships in the broader context of ludo-Gothic BDSM during class and culture war—how we can relieve stress and address praxial concerns that we leave behind; i.e., to be consulted when we become overstimulated (or don’t exist anymore) relative to our own web of relationships: a buffer when our walls go up, a glorious “eyehole” to peep through and engage with while the blinders are still on.
• “Knocking on Heaven’s Door; or, Prepare for Entry!“: Arrives and waits for the door to open. Goes over some Marxist signposts and liberatory sex work exhibits, which seek to underline how the Gothic (and Communism) transcend mediums to speak across them in everyday relationships that help put out fires while not starting new ones (a complex spectrum of social-sexual exchanges, whose material factors and aesthetic elements of unequal power and trauma hyphenate to address systemic abuse).
• “‘Heaven in a Wild Flower’; or, Exhibiting the Monstrous-Feminine Ourselves“: Greeted in the antechamber, and given pamphlets. Supplies a gender-studies hermeneutic, regarding the monstrous-feminine in relation to everything discussed so far in the book; i.e., there is always an aspect of the Medusa (war-like, morphologically diverse, and rebellious) to any monster that isn’t—figuratively or literally, in part or all together—a white, Anglo-American, cis-het, Christian male.
• “Medieval Expression; or, ‘Welcome to the Fun Palace!'”: Enters the palace. Explores the idea of the Gothic as a liminal, holistic dialog that transcends mediums, precluding harm through a confusion of the senses, jouissance, magic assembly of old dead things, and other medieval devices tied to magic and myth as a dark, sexual affair (often an operatic one linked to popular controlled substances—metal when reclaimed by fags camping the canon with sex, drugs and rock ‘n roll as synonymous with each other and iconoclastic learning and expression). In other words, “Medieval Expression” explores the dialectic of the alien as generally expressed through monsters, magic and myths, mainly paradoxes and oxymorons that blend all of these things; i.e., how they hook up and interact, once conjoined.
  • Due to its size, I’ve decided to divide “the Fun Palace” into three parts:
    • Opening and part one, “A Song Written in Decay”: Outlines all of these points, and gives an example of mise-en-abyme through a disintegrating Song of Infinity exemplified by Lewis and his spiritual, academic-prone descendants—namely Hannah-Freya Blake and myself as coming from a lengthier Galatean, gallows-humor tradition not entirely foreign to Gothic academia.
    • Part two, “‘Red Scare’; or Out in the World“: Seeks out further examples in between my friends and I for this project specifically—namely the relationship between past media orbiting Red Scare (from Star Wars‘ rebellious allegory to American Liberalism and subversive potential in The Abyss to Chernobyl, and more) as also including non-academic sex worker friends’ old photographs and warlike, often-red symbols that contain Communist potential whose Gothic maturity can be built upon during our day-to-day relations.
    • Part three, “‘With a Little Help from My Friends’; or, Out of this World”: Explores an-Com rebellion (the dismantling of the state) as actively expressed between current sex workers using ludo-Gothic BDSM to inspire and invigilate a more recent (and actionable) portrait of rebellion; also inspects the classics—from The Wizard of Oz to Big Trouble in Little China—as things to learn from with our current friends as sharing a similar love for the imaginary past as rebellious for monstrous-feminine rights.
      • As a subchapter to “Medieval Expression,” “The Fun Palace’s” last subdivision, “Out of this World,” is actually too big. So I have subdivided it again (a sub-sub-subchapter):
        • Opening and part one, “What Are Rebellion, Rebels, and Why (feat. Amazons and Witches)?”: Articulates what rebellion is, followed by what a rebel is and why they do what they do—then takes a break to discuss modules and criminality (with several performative examples: Samus Aran, but also the Wicked Witch of the West)
        • Part two, “Meeting Rebels; i.e., What Inspires Us to Meet and All of It Carrying On and On (feat. Harmony Corrupted, Jack Burton, and Blxxd Bunny)“: Explores how to meet rebels, followed by what inspired us to meet them (hint: them, but also their sexy costumes), and what carries on as all of this repeats, repeats, repeats.
• “Monsters, Magic and Myth”: Modularity and Class (feat. Jeremy Parish and Sorcha Ní Fhlainn)“: Packs up to leave (carnival prizes underarm, balloons in tow). Considers the purpose of this volume’s pointedly medieval voicings through a signature lack of restrictions and its thoroughly iconoclastic nature, as well as its dialectical-material function, modular devices and monster classes separately and then together. Also criticizes a former academic superior and research inspiration of mine (Ní Fhlainn and Parish, respectively).

Gothic castles are things to pursue and build anew based on old likenesses we see in between people and media as hopelessly conjoined when speaking to the alien as experienced differently between a shared pedagogy of the oppressed (of rape something to heal from in all its forms, sexual or otherwise): all grasping onto something (often each other) in-frame, our step in an ongoing mise-en-abyme pursuant, per a framed narrative, to a palliative Numinous; i.e., indicative of a Communist one—Medusa baring it all (fangs and flesh) in furious lust as the prime iconoclastic educator defying Capitalist Realism.

(artists: Cuwu and Persephone van der Waard)

To that, onto our first step of the quest, “Castles in the Flesh!”

“Monsters, Magic and Myth”: Castles in the Flesh; or, a Personalized Example of Derelicts

[T]he Gothic castle is ‘alive’ with a power that perplexes its visitors. It tends to have an irregular shape, its lay-out is very complex and mysterious, whether because of an actual distortion of the whole structure or because a part of it remains unknown. In Manuel Aguirre’s words, “this basic distortion yields mystery, precludes human control and endows the building with a power beyond its strictly physical structure: the irregular mysterious house is, like the vampire, a product of the vitalistic conception of nature.” […] In Radcliffe’s novels the Gothic castle is in the first place an anti-home, a nightmare version of the heroine’s perfect past, in which many of the elements of her home are exaggerated and replayed in a Gothic form. […] The heroine’s parents are replaced by Gothic substitutes or Gothic opposites. The castle hides some family secret the revelation of which usually helps the heroine to disclose her own identity. At the same time, the Gothic castle is the place of confinement in a literal and figurative sense. Moreover, the castle may be interpreted as the image of the body and, eventually, as the heroine’s secret self (source).

—Audronė Raškauskienė, Gothic Fiction: The Beginnings

Gothic castles have many different academic interpretations; e.g., Bakhtin, Summers, and Aguirre (all who Raškauskienė mentions). Per Hogle, though, Gothic castles are essentially “antique” (counterfeit) left-behinds that uphold an “ancient” lie of sovereignty that maintains the state through the process of abjection; for myself, Gothic castles have personable qualities that generally resemble people and vice versa—e.g., Metroidvania being the level, the heroine and the enemy as all monstrous, meaning “rapacious, bellicose and castle-like”; i.e., ludo-Gothic BDSM as a highly subversive, even transgressive means of reversing abjection to develop Gothic Communism through iconoclastic sex work: those who are “built,” “stacked” or some such medieval architectural metaphor for their sexual prowess and overall sex appeal/gender invention, but also trauma (which combine the concentrically medieval language of war [mise-en-abyme] with sexual activities; i.e., Walpole’s satirical, undead chivalry prototype, the “rape” castle Otranto; e.g., “castle = demon lover/dominator vs vanilla basic bitch”). Capitalism treats it as something to expect with teenagers, then paywall for adults: a ghost of the counterfeit to abject vis-à-vis state shift; Gothic Communists seek to reclaim such things within capital (I’m not showing off my hard dick, per my rule; it’s inside Cuwu):

(artists: Cuwu and Persephone van der Waard)

We’ll discuss “ancient” derelicts throughout the volume; here, I want a give personal anecdote illustrating them: my troubled relationship with Cuwu leading towards a pedagogy of the oppressed (relating to the alien side of each other using Gothic media) that I tried to raise in their memory long after our friendship officially expired.

(artist, paintings: H.R. Giger)

Another way to view Gothic derelicts, then, is a castle or an extension of a castle as an unheimlich storage facility—as something that seems to move or have human qualities when it doesn’t, or that actually gets up and moves around like a person despite ostensibly lacking a pilot; i.e., like a giant suit of armor inside an atmospheric, maze-like space that threatens to animate (thus return) in much the same fashion: a fearful imaginary past. Such events are generally meant to unsettle the audience, and carry along cryptomimetically (Giger and Scott, left): castles come from other castles, as does their hostile affect. As we proceed, then, synonyms to “great doom” or “apocalypse” should pop up, regarding a group effort to face and subvert them in demonstrable ways that survive us; i.e., in more permanent, castled fixtures rooted in the ashes of our non-existent bodies reminding someone of where we once were having been survived by material suggestions of us as made up of older things globally improvised with (our “junk”). This stark reflection often plays out in small, relayed not just in Hamlet’s graveyard fight with Laertes or his holding of poor Yorick’s skull; nor the Metroidvania’s infernal concentric pattern exemplified by Slave Knight Gael’s battle with the player (the doomed hero) at the end of the world/the end of time inside the hourglass inside the egg inside the painting (the narrative of the crypt); but also our own lives in small: our own derelicts having a personified quality that resembles old lovers as shadows of their former selves (what the Ancient Greeks called “shades”).

To that, Gothic derelicts (castles or castle-like bodies; i.e., suits of armor) are cumulative—easy to build[1] when you get the hang of it—but also express in more literal human forms, on or offstage: those we relate to using Gothic media as a means of “thinking with” (what the Brits would call an “aesthetic”). In turn, our friends are generally informed by what we were saddled with; e.g., my and Cuwu’s song being “In the Aeroplane Over the Sea” (1998) by Neutral Milk Hotel (a song supposedly about Anne Frank, but one which I heard unbeknownst to that while Cuwu was sucking my dick: in their car outside of a pet shop while we were both in love):

And one day we will die

And our ashes will fly from the aeroplane over the sea

But for now we are young

Let us lay in the sun

And count every beautiful thing we can see (source: Genius).

Faced with loss (or its memories), it’s easy to slip into a state of mourning anew, describing one’s current emotional state as a concentric funeral—of all our past selves speaking to us presently (their echoes reaching from Radcliffe forward to Scott to Jadis showing me The Witch’s House and Mad Father [2016] to me taking that to Cuwu’s, to my friend Seren’s fascination with such things, to my mother upstairs constantly watching horror movies so that it sounds like my house is haunted by copies of female “trauma” [with an actual ghost of the counterfeit] to Gerard Way’s “Baby, You’re a Haunted House” [2019] and so on). But the Gothic thrives amid disintegration as profoundly alive, not just fearful as Chris Baldrick describes (inheritance anxiety). It’s closer to Black Absinthe’s “Nobody Knows” (2024):

Making fake friends trying to get by.

Nobody knows the feelings are the low and you’re trying to stay high!

Sweet Serenity, I can’t fight when the night

Comes calling me!

[…] All day you’re runnin’ but you can’t escape the grave;

No one knows when it’s time to die!

When I heard that, I was like, “OMG, that was my relationship to Cuwu!” (never a good sign, haha): a former dancer and thong-wearing sexpot smiting this goth nerd with their portentous assets. Their heavenly-hellish body and unquenchable desire to be seen mirrored my aching desire to view and express such things; i.e., the artist and the muse’s asexual nudism and erotic voyeurism/exhibitionism something I want remembered precisely because it was special, good, pure and true (it ached to build, but feels better post-release—a bit like blue balls/clit). A humanist appeal to the slut in all of us, yearning to be free and loved for it.

(artists: Cuwu and Persephone van der Waard)

So, like The Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind (2004), I find myself slipping little clues of Cuwu to remind me of them—not my abuser as someone to love, but loving and remembering what I saw in them that was good, which I will look for in someone/somewhere else: the provocative likeness of Cuwu, who inspired me to write this book. If Jadis was the neoliberal who didn’t believe in my work, Cuwu was the Marxist-Leninist who did, and whose killer-queen persona (“sophisticated and precise”) and hungry-eyed stare, maternal commands, and tight little mommy pussy I have happily quested for in new an-Com mommies, post-separation. In the interim, I’ve decorated my hallways with echoes of our past pleasure, of likenesses to their best side while discussing them as they were in totality: monstrous-feminine—both a hot, fuckable, little mommy dragon consuming everything in sight and a killer doll whose portable house (and yawning train of Atlas-grade baggage) met me with irresistible bedroom eyes, a Klonopin dependency and the abusive tendencies of a twisted past. It takes me back to some wild, campy times: big feelings crammed inside a tiny cutie (who admittedly had a fat ass—a PAWG).

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

What we have here are all the usual BDSM antics with a deliberately Gothic aesthetic: sex-positive (thus harmless) hair-pulling, spankings and rough sex whose ludo-Gothic simulations intimate actual torture/trauma during fetishized kink, roleplay and straight-up sex sessions (skin-to-skin contact and fluid exchange, which often overlap with the above things, but don’t always). The praxial idea is mutual consent between those who can consent, not children dressed up against their will like show ponies groomed to emulate a parental enforcement of white America; i.e., so-called “beauty pageants”:

Well it’s true just take a look
The cover sometimes makes the book
And the judges, do they ever ask
To read between your lines
And in your cage at the human zoo,
They all stop to look at you
Next year, what will you do
When you have been forgotten (Styx’ “Miss America,” 1978).

(artist: MHSABA)

As Gothic Communists, we want to illustrate and foster mutual content, helping the better parts of those who wound us to be remembered, along with their humanity and ours inside-outside the same “superfreak” exhibits going on and on (“the kind you don’t take home to mother!”). Socio-sexual stimulation during ludo-Gothic BDSM provides healthy reality checks that activate vital ways of speculative thinking. These, in turn, are conducive to mutual consent and Gothic-Communist development, which help workers (each other) understand why people (often those who give birth) have breaks with reality (e.g., Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown, 1988) and otherwise do what they do as not always rational, but nevertheless having a reason tied to the real world; i.e., where they happen and what causes them: through our bodies, relationships and socio-material conditions. It starts with feeling sorry for them and ends with us helping them and each other as part of the same world to heal together. Empathy isn’t a weakness; diversity is strength; those who say otherwise are moderates and/or fascists (the former a disguised version of the latter) and not to be trusted. Those pro-state defenders saying something is “uncalled for” call for rebellion in spite of their sanctimonious tone-policing “going there.” No gods or masters; just Satanic[2] sluts from outer space, lovingly making Hell on Earth a sex-positive place for all workers, animals and the environment. Fuck the bourgeoisie (as in, “show them a sign of class resistance,” not actually have sex with them—gross), punch a Nazi (worker solidarity against capitalistic vigilantes) and make hot sweet love to Commies; i.e., “make love, not war” except class and culture war to break Capitalist Realism and develop Gothic Communism.

The source of the disease isn’t anomalous or idiopathic, it’s Capitalism. This means the cure relative to that anatomy is equally idiosyncratic. Single or together, married or common law, monogamous or extramarital—divide and conquer goes the other way around, with workers taking capital to task. Moguls, czars, billionaires, et al, dogmatically conflate as gurus when they’re really nepotistic charlatans acting like the golf ball (or the “hero”) from Happy Gilmore (1996), too good for its home[3]; we’ll melt them with our beautiful wickedness: spotting their markers (of the state’s critical illness), combating a worsening condition with partial/full transplants (as low-risk as we can manage, as high-risk as we need to: “from each according to their ability, to each according to their work” and eventually “need”), donations, and other forms of medicinal and palliative care (aimed at the self and the community as part of the same organism).

Homeostasis is not centrism; it’s anarcho-Communism, and the key to praxial synthesis and catharsis lies in the maid-and-butler dialogs we generate with Gothic poetics—i.e., our castles in all their funhouse forms and functions: our cute nicknames and interpersonal slogans[4], brash tattoos, stylish makeup, daring piercings, and other “loud” qualities (our tits, asses, dicks and pussies and other attractive qualities[5] relayed to us, our personalities and bodies—our money-makers of any shape, color or size—front and center) giving the pulse we also check for in others (what the Irish call a chuisle mo chroí: “the pulse of my heart”). With them, we rope bunnies, mommy doms, and paypigs collectively shake hands, kiss babies, rub elbows, moisturize (facials and creampies—with willing and consenting adults), and fund rebellion (and yes, sometimes kiss ass) in fiscal and social forms conjoined: “Use my body to keep you alive!” “Lactate ironically!” If not during fascism, genocide and climate change, then when exactly shall we pronounce these vows? We’re cutting it close as is (urgent care); i.e., it’s now or never, so time to commit and hop to it! Forget Bon Jovi’s neoliberal anthem; it’s a frank bleed, as crimson as Lena’s “99 Redluft Ballons” (1983):

Ninety-nine knights of the air
Ride super high-tech jet fighters
Everyone’s a Super Hero
Everyone’s a Captain Kirk (source: AZ Lyrics)

So pardon the irony, but it’s time to go nuclear—and not just for the current generation, but all life on Earth (solidarity with workers and nature)! The planet’s already on fire, so good luck “simmering down” to put down roots when the icecaps fully melt! With that being said, what are you afraid of (a rhetorical question; obviously banks, public shaming and the routine policing of media and bodies are real, ever-present concerns)? Let it (those giant “Luftballons”) all hang out; even if it’s all in vain[6], we’ll have turned a buck, enjoyed ourselves and treated others like humans/acted humanely in our final moments!

(artist: Keighla Night)

And yet, while nothing lasts forever, we can induce change that builds a better tomorrow by moving in a better direction—diligently and one step at a time, but whose earnest and nightly erecting of “chapels” (optional quotes) and their “nocturnal emissions” (ditto) guide the Superstructure directly away from profit and towards a post-scarcity world: our own echoing palimpsests leading to new reinvention (what’s commonly referred to as “remakes” in the movie business; i.e., Neo-Gothic) and social-sexual learning incentives (sex, companionship, food, etc). Just as state shift is brought about by the state, the state’s leveling is a seminal catastrophe we can embark on to build a Communist castle that puts us more in touch with all those forms and functions we’re alienated from save as commodified fetishes under capital; i.e., the medieval, whose funerary likenesses of those we love—its fine arches and buttresses (Cuwu, the page before last)—make for a bittersweet, but ultimately beneficial Sphinx: “a,” as Bay put it, “gravestone of something that never was, but could be in the future with someone else”; i.e., a naughty act to celebrate in: saying “Oh my god, babe! We’re totally doing a ‘Communism’ right now! I love ‘Communism’ so, so much!” / “Yes, baby! Now don’t stop!” while spreading the peach, splitting in half our muse-like FWBs and life partners (defined not hierarchically but through difference), forever and ever. Like the Joker, we’re always smiling (minus the harming of others). Let each encounter be your finest hour—one worthy of a castle all unto its own, buried gloriously alive in concentric undeath (made from stolen parts inventively reassembled; e.g., as Tolkien did with Scandinavian myth, minus his gentrifying cartographic refrains)!

Also, not to beat a dead horse, here, but try to keep our talks in mind regarding the medical side of things. Capital overwhelms and confuses, essentializing a want for answers. Beyond white (Cartesian) truth seekers, dysfunctional medics, or combat-trained, spandex-wearing enforcers, our payment is friendship, love and yes, sex often enough… or physical exercise of different kinds, often set to naughty music to “keep time”; e.g., dances, such as waltzes or tangos, often given a Gothic flavor commercialized by white cis-het men; i.e., the target audience of Pax Americana who desire a “midnight” or tone-poem/danse macabre quality to the proceedings: kinky sex with a goth flavor something routinely quested after by these same cis-het weirdos seeking a “Big Titty Goth GF” (waifu/war bride) to “dance” with. Unused to rejection, their brittle, infantile egos and bitter, cynical outlook learn to love the copy instead of the person; i.e., Pygmalion courting the statue as raw material for him to dominate, to own and do with as he pleases, but somehow always left wanting and alone. Their dolls become sacred and worthless, an entire generation becoming tantrum-prone, attacking and blaming real women for the boys’ inability to humanize anything around them or treat it with genuine love and respect. It becomes yet another war to wage against the harvested side.

Contrary to their perpetual angst and self-imposed schadenfreude, the joys of sex-positive bonding are what we find (out) and where the answers come from when we fuck around, experimenting to varying degrees of calculated risk[7]; i.e., our relationships to other workers and the world as interconnected, oceanic: to treat our gut instinct as something to trust more, not be skeptical of regarding workers-as-unicorns—what Bay calls mana. It’s not our addiction, it’s our microscope to cultivate in opposition to the state Superstructure, something to hold against our patronizers abjecting us. And if enjoying laughter, friendship, cosmetic gender expression (makeup, hair-care products and clothes) and sex is an “addiction,” so be it; bear in mind, though, if approached to non-harmful degrees, achieving harm regarding hedonistic factors as “drug-seeking” is literally impossible.

To that, you’re pitching in for those in need, not taking hemlock! Short of drowning in them, then, you generally can’t choke to death on a liquid (semen or otherwise); short of freak accidents, you can’t wear too much clothes or laugh too often, suck too much dick, etc[8] (so-called “gateway drug” arguments being the stuff of fearmongers—easier to fall on that sword than admit that you could have been fucking this whole time). There’s always something new to try on, seeing not just “what fits,” but what looks good (sometimes as little as possible—nudism being a common choice among partners and FWBs). It’s also not a race or a competition; i.e., cuties are not prizes to win or mountains to climb, but people to share company with and treat like humans. You’re there to relate to them, not shave seconds off how quickly you can lull them into a false sense of security that lasts “long enough” for your latest sexual conquest: to peel their panties off and battering-ram their coochie (sex is definitely a technique you can master, but there’s no “one-size-fits-all” approach, no “open-sesame” to help a given “cave” surrender its delightful treasures; each body is unique, meaning you want to listen to your partner and learn what they like and how they respond to your efforts to please both[9] of you).

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

In other words, this isn’t drugs or food; there’s no such thing as too much sex-positive love, friendship, clothes and sex (within reason, taking medical conditions into account, age and personal stamina). And if you ever think you’ve had “too much”—one, good for you; two, trust me, you’ll live. I fucked Cuwu, Jadis and Zeuhl multiple times a day, every day for months apiece (well, about a month for Cuwu, in-person, and less frequently than the others; but it didn’t matter cause they were a straight-up freak). And if you’re worried about broken hearts, they absolutely suck, but focus on landing on your feet; i.e develop better habits/outlets and learn to pick better partners and venues (the gayer, the better in my opinion). I’ve had my heart broken multiple times, and in lieu of self-improvement through conscious hard work, it only gets easier, babes. Embrace it; girls/fags don’t bite or have cooties (make sure to get tested for STIs with new partners, though). Got a sickness? Dare to find the cure; try something new “on for size,” panties or pussy (as castle-like, surrounded by/fortified with various towering battlements, above: “the raven himself is hoarse…”). Just don’t lose sight of your humanity (and that of those around you) as you experiment together—lost inside your own palaces, their fleshy labyrinths of “fatal” conjecture offering up forbidden knowledge, power and lust as chaotic, farcical, screw-loose; i.e., in ways that unhitch Marx’s nightmarish portents (“on the brains of the living”) to achieve praxial irony as mobile towards Gothic Communism.

That being said, if someone’s being hostile, treat them as such! Love conditionally, meaning always, always protect yourself; someone might look outwardly cute and adorable, but can still harm you. You deserve better—can do better than someone who harms you no matter how they look (Cuwu) or how much money they have (Jadis)! Treat them as human by saying “Enough is enough!” in so many words; i.e., cutting them off or leaving when they get abusive (aka, toxic love). It’s the DBT way. You don’t have to scrub them from your life if you don’t want to (i.e., a love-hate relationship; e.g., Cuwu); simply take away their ability to harm you and pass that along as a sex-positive lesson. Quit the rapey chamber/exit the harmful haunted house and make your own “rapey” one, instead!

Gird your loins! We’re off to “Medieval Expression” (the fun palace), but are only partway there! Next up, “Green Eggs and Ha(r)m!”

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Footnotes

[1] It just takes enthusiasm, inspiration, and time to build a cathedral. Gothic cathedrals stem from big, exaggerated emotions, downplaying calmer forces in favor of intensely dramatic vibes, sadness, eroticism, and doom (the liminal hauntology of war), etc. They’re all at once maudlin, somber and furious—a boxed entropy, a myopia, an umbra, the eye of an angry god, an event horizon, Castlevania/Demon Castle Dracula, Satan’s asshole, etc—as something both spatio-temporally and physically alien to plunge repeatedly into: an altered state, a different plane or order of existence, an alternate dimension, etc, as accessed by forbidden artifacts or pathways (e.g., Clive Barker’s infamous Cenobites and Lament Configuration).

[2] Meaning “devil-worshipping atheists, Pagans, or something akin to that; e.g., Persephone van der Waard’s “I, Satanist; Atheist: A Gothicist’s Thoughts on Atheism, Religion, and Sex” (2021). But also something to legitimately fuck; i.e., the green women from the original Star Trek (1966) but less sexist and maybe a little goofy and weird; e.g., Clerks 2 (2006): “Like, be the first motherfucker to see a new galaxy, or find a new alien lifeform… and fuck it. And people’d be like, ‘There he goes. Homeboy fucked a Martian once.'”

[3] Which isn’t really fair to the ball; it’s a golf ball. Happy Gilmore, though, should know better. If he can get mad at a lifeless object, imagine what he could do to a woman who doesn’t want to sleep with him (actually don’t; watch how he handles rejection, right here).

[4] E.g., Cuwu and I calling each other “cummy Commies” and “cumrag comrades” to help Communism cutely cum—to arrive in the future through our efforts now as adorable.

[5] E.g., our body aromas, green thumbs, comedic windups, dramatic swan/frog songs (our swanning but also “little green boys,” our pets), and ironic addictive jests (not Edward Cullen’s codependent/terrible heroine metaphor for his old man’s predatory infatuation with a 16-year-old girl named Bella fucking Swan).

[6] And for those of you pearl-clutchers worried about your slice of the pie at hearing our fighting words: we’re not your enemy, the state is. Good girls and bad (“virgins” and “whores”), enbies and twinks, healthcare and sex workers, good friends (sexual and platonic) and perfect strangers—we’re all Queen Shit of Fuck Mountain, loves; all our stories (our loss, internalized guilt, divisions, attracting opposites, impostor syndrome, shared trauma, bonds, etc) are valid, mid-struggle, extending to our satirical deceptions and lies both white (“I’m just a dumb Dutch girl not up to anything!”) and splendid (e.g., Gulliver’s Travels, 1726), our idiosyncratic social-sexual configurations/qualities/distance (mono-to-plural/flings-to-FWBs-to-SOs/live-in-to-long-distance), our miracles, powerhouse Hail-Marys, and skeletons-in-the-closet. All water under a bridge if we try to change for the better! We reserve our judgements for actual cunts who only care about themselves.

Speaking of which, the state’s fascists, neoliberals, billionaires, class traitors (cops) and unironic rapists/sadists don’t change by design. So fuck the lot of them! Fuck their moral panic, “tough love/austerity politics,” personal responsibility rhetoric; their War on Drugs, on Crime, on sex work, on Christmas; their Capitalist Realism; their bribes and blackmail; their self-serving optics (“perception is reality”), vindictive smear campaigns (“witch hunts”) and mendacious charm offensives (“Trojan horses”); their insurance scams and micro transactions, charity tourism, compelled monogamy and love triangles (amatonormativity, heterosexual or not); their conspiracy theories, either kernel-of-truth (their rich political enemies attended Epstein’s pedophile island, person-of-color antivaxxers having felt the effects of genocide and medical abuse) or shit nuts—e.g., flat-earthers; i.e., neoliberal illusions blinding and harmful, like staring into the sun to cause eye and brain damage: stupidity by proximity, creed, and imaginary misuse leading to walking hyperbole as unironic farce—less “total brain rot” and more akin to multi-organ failure of one’s critical-thinking faculties; source tweet: AntiVaxxer (2024). It’s comedy gold to some extent, but also profoundly worrying given how dead-set these persons are against something so well-established (not any different than climate change in that respect, or vaccines; the colonizer group thinks they are beyond reproach, always right, and invincible, etc).

While chimerism is sadly a reality of class war and liminal expression, it’s self-defeating if it doesn’t ultimately abandon the Faustian bargains the state provides. So we must expose and cast out false parties until they lose all the masks (concentric veneers—more on these in Volume Three); i.e., until they change in ways actually beneficial to the Cause. Don’t be their kept Judas, their fascist patsy—their tokenized, TERF-to-SWERF-grade dupe or centrist chameleon turning coat!

[7] E.g., to fuck Cuwu not just like an animal or a mommy dom who topped me from below, but like a doll who vampirically could control me without blinking or moving an inch. Obviously with Cuwu it became harmful, but to some extent until that point it was a lot of fun (as Gothic/war scenarios offer plenty of theatrical potential for unequal power exchange and roleplay variation; e.g., the Western rape fantasy’s age-old tropes materializing inside a given period piece or hauntological mish-mash: to be chased down, overtaken, stripped and “violated” most indecently by unspeakable forces); i.e., bondage of a variety of forms that, whether most people realize it or not, have some element of consent-non-consent (aka informed consent) to them: sheathing and unsheathing my sword in their scabbard while they were awake,  but tied up or otherwise immobile; but also on drugs to literally fall asleep during “somno”/sleep sex (consenting beforehand to a mutual agreement built on trust). The rituals supplied a calculated risk meant to give them, as the sub, more power. Eventually it became lopsided—not a problem while in person, but certainly during physical separation, where they could control me from a distance to get what they wanted; i.e., like a queen in their castle, issuing gambit-like orders to someone held at arm’s length, past the raised drawbridge’s moist entrance, stuck on the other side of the moat.

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

All relationships involve some risk, of course, and I’ve talked about Cuwu’s abuse of me in Volumes One and Zero; suffice to say that they primed me—a vulnerable person just out of an abusive relationship—to care for them, long-distance, and then took me for every bit of emotional surplus they could muster. Though their “ballistics” were persuasive (the ass that launched a thousand ships), eventually I just couldn’t do it anymore. But to be completely honest, it wasn’t easy signaling the end to that relationship, either, and they drove me absolutely nuts in the meantime; indeed, I had to start Sex Positivity just to get over rebounding with them. Call it a blessing in disguise, though, and one with many fond memories (e.g., of a goofy vampy fae wearing my cloak, above) despite all the manipulative bullshit. I hope I’ve successfully conveyed that, here–that I wish them nothing but happiness and hope that our experiences together can help people like yourselves learn from our mistakes and achievements. Call it a fair and balanced criticism, a Gothic Romance based on my time in Transylvania: with the transgender crossdresser one generation removed from Dr. Frankenfurter.

[8] It’s far easier to injure yourself working out—or taking drugs (steroid abuse) to work out—than it is to fuck too much. Just with cis-het men, gym rats are a dime-a-dozen; there’s not exactly an overabundance/”epidemic” of sex-positive Casanovas in the cis-het male population.

[9] The exact ratio varies; e.g., I’m a service top and get turned on by helping my playmates feel good. Some people are sadists, masochists, tops, bottoms, switches, etc. All’s well that’s sex-positive!

Originally part of an undivided volume—specifically Volume Two of my Sex Positivity (2023) book series—this blog post now belongs to a promotion called “Brace for Impact“ (2024); i.e., that went on to become its own completed module in Volume Two: the Poetry Module, aka Volume Two, part one. The Poetry Module was primarily inspired by Harmony Corrupted.

Click here to see “Brace for Impact’s” Table of Contents and Full Disclaimer.

Further Reading: Volume Two actually divides into three modules/sub-volumes, each with its own promotion and release. “Brace for Impact” is the first (re: Volume Two, part one), but there are also promotions for Volume Two, part two’s twin Monster Modules, The Undead and Demons: “Searching for Secrets” and “Deal with the Devil“!

Update, 5/1/2024: Volume Two, part one (the Poetry Module) is out! I wrote a preface for the module along with its debut announcement. Give that a look; then, go to my book’s 1-page promo to download the latest version of the PDF (which will contain additions/corrections these posts will not have)!

Permissions: Any publicly available images are exhibited for purposes of education, transformation and critique, thus fall under Fair Use; private nude material and collabs with models are specifically ally 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.

“Following in Medusa’s Footsteps”: Conflict, Mothers-in Conflict, and Liberation

Samus is more than a classical Perseus; she’s Athena. In the Medusa myth, Athena is an androgynous figure, both masculine and feminine; she forges a shield, but gives it to Perseus. In Metroid, there is no Perseus, no male hero armed to the teeth. Only Samus. Samus kills Mother Brain, but also intimates her by stealing her power. I see this cycle as hereditary in a Bakhtinian sense: told through the castle, Zebes. It’s written all over the place, including Samus’ pilfered gear (source).

—Persephone van der Waard, “War Vaginas: Phallic Women, Vaginal Spaces and Archaic Mothers in Metroid” (2021)

Picking up from where “Teaching and Coaching” left off…

This third-and-final subdivision to “Medusa’s Footsteps” concludes the “Teaching” chapter by examining conflict relative to the monstrous-feminine: per conflict as an essential, definitive feature of language, mothers in relation to that (mothers-in-conflict), and ultimately their liberation as monstrous educators we should value and defend. Under attack, monster mothers (the Medusa or otherwise) seek liberation through themselves as monstrous-feminine, thus alien and fetishized across a variety of simulacra capital reduces to a singular (and dogmatically lucrative) type:

(artist: Urbanator)

In regards to general conflict, the human condition is rife with it as something to live with; e.g., trauma, guilt, alienation, desire, etc, as carried around with us. Crippled under capital, we must fight as heroes do in order to influence maternal outcomes as not being automatically punitive: for the oppressed, which ironically under capital, are workers not the state. The elite discourage revealing this, which means that all teachers, detectives, heroes, and monsters (or artifacts of these instances) become part of the same dialectical-material struggle; i.e., for workers or the state. Beauty and strength sit in the eye of the beholder (re: I like monster mommies as cathartic devices and profound levers of speculative thought) but their dialectical-material function is not subjective. Mommies or not, Team Caterpillar or Team Wasp—all are completely fine provided they don’t betray worker interests in service to the state; i.e., what Marx would call class traitors, meaning cops. Enjoy Wonder Woman and her strong thighs and lasso of truth (exquisite “torture”), but also critique her ideal form as containing pernicious aspects the Gothic will reveal with glee—in short, how its material conditions are used to change how we think, create, and act regarding animalistic mothers as part of a bigger struggle fascinated with “antique” derelicts (re: “Borrowed Robes” or “War Vaginas” [the epitaph] and my love for Amazons as protectors, teachers and nurturers that I want to be and fuck; i.e, since I first saw Alien when I was nine and played Super Metroid when I was eight): I’m always playing and thinking about/with monster mommies.

(artist: Frank Cho)

It’s true that (from Volume Zero): “Returning and reflecting upon old points after assembling them is a powerful way to understand larger structures and patterns (especially if they’re designed to conceal themselves through subterfuge, valor and force). It’s what holistic study (the foundation of this book) is all about” (source). And I’ve done this with Amazons and Metroid a great many times (see: the glossary’s definition of “Metroidvania as closed space” and “Metroidvania” to track this process, yourselves). The likes of comic books (above) constitute just one facet of popular media as colonized by weird canonical nerds and liberated by weird iconoclastic nerds; i.e., comics inform us, but also other forms of popular media that are alive and active, carrying idealized forms (and their profane counterparts) across novels, movies and games (video or otherwise) just as easily and often. Back and forth, heroes-as-monsters present Amazonomachia as educational in poetic forms—an endless, dialectical-material process whose pedagogic conflict serves workers and the state at the same time in opposition to each other.

As such, we must think just as critically about our relationship to these things “as one” and ourselves “as one”; i.e., to think about Gothic poetry repeatedly and how it affects and shapes our ability to think, feel, and empathize through understanding others not with identical lived experiences, but shared unalienable rights: in stories that speak to shared struggles where everyone’s experience is unique/weird, and which empathy is feeling for those whose experiences are different from, thus alien to, our own (re: Volume One’s “Healing from Rape” chapter): a pedagogy of the oppressed where mothers are loved, not killed for their weirdness. Achieving a collective understanding in spite of these alienating factors, especially through creative action and imagination, is the prime Communist directive of the Humanities, medieval expression and Gothic poetics; i.e., monsters as critical lenses, but also roles through which their various senses (expanded, inclusive, animalistic, and crude; e.g., the sense of humor as medieval, thus carnal, thus abject/toilet) open up and expand our minds, offering up things to experience and see differently to achieve new vital perspective relative to our positions in capital. Such options help workers see it for what it is and to fight back any way we can. I envision the Gothic as our home, insofar as it quests for the Numinous through us working as detectives and advocates for all peoples affected by capital and the past (thus future) it tries to regulate through imagination; i.e., the Wisdom of the Ancients. The Judgement of Antiquity becomes, per my arguments, something to camp and replace the gentrifying twin trees with (again, the Base and Superstructure) through flexible, maternal poiesis. Medusa.

(artist: Jan van den Hoecke)

“People are not trees.” No, but they are informed by them as often personified in memetic refrains that speak to wider myths as useful[1] to critical thought; i.e., by identifying wider harms acknowledged and apologized for by canonical scenarios proving ipso facto that “rape is everywhere,” insofar as it affects nature-as-food, meaning “monstrous-feminine, thus abject”; e.g., Zeus rapes women, who escape him by turning into trees. To that, maybe transformation isn’t just a means to escape at all, but fight back, Medusa-style, and refuse to be told what to do; i.e.,  “turn into a tree I can rape” versus trees that fight back who can move to defend themselves; e.g., dryads and forest nymphs: to not be kept by taking borrowed robes and using them as a revolutionary means of education-through-disguise, through cryptonymy (no matter how harmless, badass or cool we seem). Expression is defined within limits, then, and there’s only so many dots and theories I can provide while teaching you to assemble and connect them as you decide; i.e., in a given current form to speak to larger battles taking place during class/culture war as one in the same. So try as I might, I can’t mention them all here (the struggle to do so is what matters), but they will come up throughout the book.

As they do, look for patterns in movies, songs, poetry and porn, et al, that you can endlessly repeat and vary to help yourself and other workers find liberation by reifying a collective jilt, delight (success being the best revenge). Quote, play and create things that, from complex-to-simple (successful praxis, a pedagogy of the oppressed, synthesis, and the basics: anger/gossip, monsters and camp), leads reliably to catharsis—in short, what makes our hair (and other things) stand on end, in jouissance, to stand up and pay attention, captivated, to ravish us like John Donne’s “three-person’d God” or fill us like his infamous “Flea”; to “park its Big Mac truck right in this little garage” (size difference for the win; but we’re not all size queens[2])! Like Medusa, or the caterpillar and the wasp, the monstrous-feminine can be said and expressed in a billion different ways all speaking to the same thing. A lover saying “Yes, baby! More!” is not an actual baby but a teacher who can be loved with a profound emotional, physical and/or sexual connection that mirrors such familial hyperbole (re: Cuwu); reality yields funny paradoxes that aren’t impossible, but perceived: the angel in class who listens to Enya with her students, and who—per Foucault—goes home and fucks big time in the bedroom. Per us, “art is love made public[3]” to break these barriers down a little (or a lot). We’re taking our rights back, one incremental fuck at a time (e.g., Sabrina used to be a Playboy bunny and struck out for the territories seeking bigger opportunities—definitely a size queen!):

(artist: Sabrina Nicole)

In short, the Gothic is the study of experience that leads to transformative proletarian knowledge through popular media; i.e., as part of who we are in conflict. In turn, our Galatea is something to sculpt and embody as forever ongoing and unfinished, en medias res. All heroes are monsters, and all monsters are idealized, but also highly idiosyncratic characteristics of the human condition as at war with capital and itself regarding nature as something to destroy or defend. Existence within capital raises difficult questions about a system that is designed to control us, to which we must fight against its natural-material constraints to become our true selves by synthesizing the two, processed through critical thought to achieve liberation: to be unafraid to say “I love you” in monstrous ways. To take it all. Every. Last. Inch (which is easier to do if you’ve had a hysterectomy—meaning your vagina won’t have a cervix, just the elastic tissue that remains).

Mothers aren’t defined by biology (or any other essentialized factor). This brings us to mothers, mid-conflict. To that, the rebellious maternal is a reunion that happens by routinely challenging capital’s illusions during iconoclasm: to bend reality to our will and needs by breaking Capitalist Realism as patriarchal by design. It is synonymous with “true sight,” class consciousness and worker action, including deceiving our captors in good faith via combative metaphors (animals, sex and war) that, when combined, collectively help all parties “break on through”; i.e., onto a better, more humane world by rescuing motherly personas from abject bondage, hence tutelage regarding actual or figurative forms of motherhood (which Zeuhl ironically helped with by recommending Stuart Mills’ “What Is Acid Communism?” [2019] to me as a rebuttal, which led to my original December 2022 manuscript [then shorter than this chapter by itself is—roughly 50,000 vs 85,000 words] ballooning into nearly a million words, four volumes and lots of future success and happiness for me. That’s your legacy, Zeuhl; I didn’t need you and found people who actually give a shit. Fuck you, with [tentative] love).

Conversely, Cartesian thought is synonymous with blindness, with bad faith, with deception, division and enslavement to keep all workers in Plato’s cave, to keep things operating behind the curtain much as they always have for hundreds and thousands of years; i.e., when cities emerged and started to order existence in ways useful to the powerful:

The ancient poets animated all sensible objects with Gods or Geniuses, calling them by the names and adorning them with properties of woods, rivers, mountains, lakes, cities, nations, and whatever their enlarged and numerous senses could perceive. And particularly they studied the Genius of each city and country, placing it under its mental deity. Till a system was formed, which some took advantage of and enslaved the vulgar by attempting to realize or abstract the mental deities from their objects. Thus began Priesthood. Choosing forms of worship from poetic tales. And at length they pronounced that the Gods had ordered such things. Thus men forgot that all deities reside in the human breast (source: The Marriage of Heaven and Hell, 1790).

In other words, Capitalism was already ordering nature into something it could dominate, which Blake saw as finite and fallible, thus challenged through poetry as a Hellish physical process—a Satanic means of rebellion:

The ancient tradition that the world will be consumed in fire at the end of six thousand years is true, as I have heard from Hell. For the cherub with his flaming sword is hereby commanded to leave his guard at [the] tree of life, and when he does, the whole creation will be consumed and appear infinite and holy, whereas it now appears finite and corrupt. This will come to pass by an improvement of sensual enjoyment. But first the notion that man had a body distinct from his soul is to be expunged; this I shall do by printing in the infernal method by corrosives, which in Hell are salutary and medicinal, melting apparent surfaces away, and displaying the infinite which was hid. If the doors of perception were cleansed everything would appear to man as it is, infinite. For man has closed himself up, till he sees all things through narrow chinks of his cavern (ibid.).

These visions, seemingly drug-induced and quite mad, speak honestly through poetic confusion to the critical, virulent power of the Gothic, of thinking openly about sacred and profane things in relation, like Blake’s proverbial marriage but also Milton’s combative argument, Paradise Lost (for which Blake saw Milton of the devil’s party without realizing it; re: Jamal Nafi’): it opens our minds to have society progress in harmony with nature, language, history and ourselves as monstrous-feminine freaks of nature enslaved through Cartesian menticide.

(artist: Bubble Wolf)

The ticket to unfucking the mind is, paradoxically enough, “fucking” it. Just as everyone likes playing with sex, death and monsters (ace or otherwise), everyone[4] likes the Hell portions of stories like Dante’s Divine Comedy (1321), Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales (1392), Milton’s epic and Blake’s Songs of Experience (e.g., “The Tyger” vs “The Lamb,” 1789). This “infection” cannot happen without derangement and paradox; i.e., without grasping the whole of it, however impossible that may seem. There will be pain and disappointment, as all struggles and growth involve. But the cost will be worth it—liberation of, and reunion with, our lost Galatean power! More than that, complex evolution takes trial and error over time. But regardless, it still remains our basic human right as supplied within nature and later in relation to the state seeking to enslave us; i.e., by abusing the dialectic of shelter and the alien to benefit the few at the cost of the many as potentially abject. It’s a big deal, a matter of life and death, a virus whose cheap knockoffs of the Gothic (which is ironic, I’ll give them that)—and incessant febrility of constant moral panic and crisis—collectively lead to actual dead people and brains, not Richard Matteson’s zombie-vampire Commies:

(exhibit 33b2c2b: Monsters aren’t just theatrical preferences to speak poetically about things; they readily lend a punchy shorthand to collocative issues [mouthfuls, gushers]. Since at least the Black Death, zombies concern social strife tied to unrest caused by natural disasters and manmade interference [Capitalism in its earliest forms]. Fast-forward to the present and the same factors continue to play out from generation to generation, under capital; e.g., since I was eight—since high school, when I played hooky with Uncle Dave to see Zack Snyder’s Dawn of the Dead [2004] and play Metroid: Zero Mission [2004] for the first time; i.e., a potential cadet during early-2000s, post-9/11 moral panic, Samus’ “zero mission” being the state’s “project zero” to infect the nation’s youth with the androgynous spirit [and sport] of death: patient zero, a targeted host and peer pressure to kill the enemy at home and abroad with—a moral panic that elides different xenophobia into a perverse, wretched psychosexuality. The confusion of pleasure and pain, where the bounty hunter delights at killing “Mother Brain” for the state until the end of time. Stripped down to a baby-blue birthday suit—and scared of the same old ghost of the counterfeit, mid-homecoming—Samus’ blood ritual is meta and diegetic: punching her own dark reflection inside all the usual neoliberal hauntologies. “Kill the pig! Spill its blood!” Her blood.

[artist, top-right: Jack C. Gregory]

Instead of George Romero’s critical bite, then, such apocalypses manifest like Zack Snyder‘s Dawn of the Dead “gettin’ down with the sickness”—not Matteson [or Cronenberg’s] “new flesh” at all, but an exchange of the Communist “could be” for a dated fear of the fast and terrifying infector threatening a conservative house and home [Snyder’s film being grimly homophobic, having the gay man slice up the hot blonde with the chainsaw]: “Here it comes, Mommy. Get ready to die!” In consequence, the infection becomes an infarction [dying tissue, often from blood clots in the heart, brain and other organs] as we’re supplied a death knell of perceptive satire/pastiche and Medusa, insidiously replaced with Jameson’s “statue with blind eyeballs”: a return to childhood as hopelessly damaged and yearning for fatal violence to kill the monsters under one’s bed as projected onto all the useful groups; i.e., the givers and receivers of state force and division—a generation bred on DBZ music videos and other AMV/neoliberal exports “falling victim to a radical new virus.” The kids definitely aren’t alright:

In true anisotropic fashion, the zombie war is a Children’s Crusade set to catchy music, one whose enfants terribles mirror the state as threatened by “degeneracy” [a dogwhistle attached to Capitalism’s usual cycles of rise and collapse] and workers threatened by the state’s weaponized children. The state’s Pied Piper leads to kids killing kids, adults killing kids and vice versa. And like all civil wars, you love those on both sides and don’t want to see anyone get hurt. For example, I love Adult Gohan—if only because he is valiant, tragically protecting a tween Twunks from harm—but his swan song doubles for a fascist call-to-arms we need to be mindful of. We need to while working through our own problems, onstage, because those useful to the state—the capably dogmatic with mommy issues blindly worshipping heroes—become headhunter operatives to hog the venue with; i.e., in times of perceived crisis, chasing down their own bugbears and war brides [rulebreakers and rewards to report and reap] when Capitalism decays towards a fascist state; i.e., like Jadis did with me: a “new flesh” for them—a fat pig on par with Barker’s cenobites or Priest [below] slurping disgustingly on my stolen lifeforce—to toy and play with like an unwilling plaything. Their harmful, unironic approach to BDSM was “cool” in their eyes; my sex-positive, ludo-Gothic BDSM was not. I could never be cool to them; I was only ever and always a victim for them to crush under their boot, eating me alive. That’s how the state-in-small operates: a sexual predator playing the victim, up to no good.

[source]

I get the appeal to transform, thus escape abuse in badass ways [or equally understand getting “stepped on” by doms who help us process trauma as living in and around our bodies]. There’s nothing wrong with such morbid chapels, provided it doesn’t lead to more abuse—that the congregation isn’t compelled to harmful worship, dogma, canon. Sex positivity can be entirely lovely in that respect. But Jadis “made it lame” by sacrificing me for no other reason than it made them feel powerful, a head of their own private church—of forced confession, of suffering-under-duress carried out by a tried-and-true taskmaster. Through such dire and coerced transformations, the fascist past [and its Hugo-Boss regalia, per Sontag’s 1974 “Fascinating Fascism“] becomes something to unironically revive during the liminal hauntology of war. It regresses to traditional divisions of violence against the other—a teenage [tom]boy’s weaponizing of illegal fireworks [and other makeshift explosives] alongside power tools, daddy’s shotgun, and mom’s medicine cabinet [“Pills here!”]. This necrosis becomes something to debride, but from one’s own sense of self and home as sick.

This requires inspiration, to which music, muses and games work best, I think—a cradle-like plane to urgently play inside and reclaim from the usual monopolizers; i.e., to, as Daft Punk put it, “Lose Yourself to Dance!” [2013] inside the chapel, to go a little crazy and kick it out. Many people can’t, having been made to see such shambling hybridity as repulsive, even—no, especially—in Gothic circles [academics are some of the biggest snobs and sexually repressed weirdos on Earth]. Gotta get past that, my dudes, or at least let us speak for ourselves [who wants an aging dinosaur like Fredric fucking Jameson telling them the Gothic is boring and exhausted? Puh-lease]. Otherwise the fascists win. The battle for the youth as for workers or the state dates back to Coleridge and Lewis, pushing forward from the Ike Generation savagely lampooned by Jim Sharman’s Rocky Horror [1975] to our present moment: J.K. Rowling marshalling TERFs to police weird culture to suit state aims, yet-another-case of fash-vs-antifash. Well, “Nazi pigs, fuck off!” This is our dangerous disco, discourse, and dance of the dead—our succulent patchwork to flaunt and twist ecstatically a) in spite of state prudes criticizing us, noses held high, too “grown up” to act as rebellious children themselves; and b) in defiance of state hunters infiltrating our ranks, both parties undercover, out on the sweaty dance floor.  

Out there and in here, we wrestle and rest on the same arena’s murky enclosure, guerillas winning the war of attrition one calculated [and indulgent] shake of the booty at a time; i.e., by using what guerillas generally are reduced to, reclaimed by us and held together by duct tape [Millennium-Falcon-style]: not weapons, but lies [e.g., Edward Norton’s 2009 Leaves of Grass: a classically-educated identical twin thinking his pothead brother was murdered with a crossbow (“They’re… inexplicably popular where I come from”) when, point-in-fact, it was all a ruse to get said nerd out of his ivory tower… and to help his dealer brother out of a territorial jam] contributing to the proletariat’s enduring inventive ability to [counter] terrorize, thus raise Cain for workers. This includes our bodies and gender trouble as something to make with a smile; i.e. we exist despite offended calls for silence from the audience, rejoindering with our bodies, our identities: “Fuck the nuclear family model! Fuck settler colonialism and genocide! Fuck America as emblematic of these things! Onto to something better!” And take it from me: Nothing seals the deal—peels the panties [or banana]—better than the forbidden illustration [thus promise, sacred contract] of mutual consent amid intersectional solidarity [except with Nazi bitches, but only Nazis go to bed with Nazis]. “Stare and tremble!” indeed!

[model and artist: Quinnvincible and Persephone van der Waard]

And like a cake to decorate, we lay it on thicc—networking by spreading the delicious sugar [and cheeks] around as much as we can, and using such wonderful and tasty phrases that freely play with language despite veiled threats issued and directed at us to: “go back inside [to the shadow]” or “get back”; i.e., as a complicated extension of our GNC selves. Out of the closet, we become more than a moderate message of marketable hope to middle-class Americans; we become actively combative, our andro/gynodiverse [trans, enby and intersex] bodies providing the necessary push towards liberation by throwing old levers to cultivate new praxial stances—i.e., through revolutionary cryptonymy [masks] whose theatrical “flashing” exposes those aligned with power by using our power as outing their true motives. Eve’s Aegis—his big, crunchy “apple’s” pleasures of the flesh—becomes a scrumptious, sacrilegious means of temptation and heft to buckle the knees of any Nazi dumbass [extending to moderates who, when scratched, bleed like any fash]. Suitably tailored, we synonymize sex and gender parody with rebellion, updating 1960s anti-[state]-war “free love” with an expanded, all-inclusive post-millennial body lingo and [if needed] academic arsenal: class war and culture war prosecuted for workers, nature and Medusa.)

The lengths that Matteson goes to bring illuminating infection to a Cartesian suburbia should be a hint, one that speaks to the daily struggles of sex work across space and time. Jeopardized by state operations biased in favor of profit—as well as tokenized retribution that is anything but impartial—our colorful poetry and flexible campy rebellion is our greatest strength: one that is invisible in the absence of material conditions. So we must materialize it with dignity and grace under fire, which are something they can never take from us—not by force, lies, or manipulation at large (as the status quo trains workers to do since birth). We may not be able to pick our roles as “sullied” in the eyes of the state, but we can pick the place, uniform, dosage, and flow of power regarding us as the perpetual center of attention. Their eyes are always on us, but we can decide what to permit, what to spike—to toy with our enemies and relay double messages to our friends: signs, tells, hints, games. All as if to ask, “Well, what are you waiting for?”

(artist: Quinnvincible)

All the while, it becomes flirtatious, coy and fleeting per access supplied by us as something to contract, per contract, through de facto channels of communication. It’s not as simple as showing skin or “bumping uglies,” but managing attention, funds, and other resources in confidence with trusted friends while keeping our foes in check: outing and placing them with our “wagons” (and other corporal-to-cosmetic projections) rocking the larger boat outside the bedroom (vis-à-vis Foucault). Power aggregates. Viewed by the moderate and reactionary watchdog as preying on us for the state, there is always an acute and chronic risk of harm for sex workers; but the final stage of genocide is silence, so we must keep people talking (“the only thing worse than being talked about is not being talked about”).

Gothic entertainment, then, becomes an ironic, at times bizarre means of speaking to awful things—of expressing rape through “rape” as dramatic/comedic theatre, but also the unequal conditions for what normally leads to rape when society grows increasingly sick by design; i.e., exposure; e.g., bare skin, female genitals, a feminine affect in male bodies, and a masculine one in female bodies, intersex potential, etc. We don’t want to “rank” rape, here but strive to prevent it in all its forms. All become a praxial sum to synthesize towards catharsis for all, which occurs by fostering intersectional solidarity to hit the issue at its core: challenging power from the bottom to the top with things that leave a void when they’re gone. This includes our monstrous-feminine bodies, conditions, and boundaries, but also our booties to squeeze, eyes to catch, and yes, holes to fill: “Get busy living or get busy dying.”

(artist: Quinnvincible)

Per Creed, Medusa fights victimhood using what she’s got as fetishized by the state; per me, we stick to our strengths insofar as these encompass our bodies, labor and creative endeavors. Likewise, our fuel has many names: grace, grit, poise, and moxie, etc. We perform, but won’t stand on ceremony when a spread pussy will speak just as well. All the same, we’re happy to give an orator the floor or a doctor room to treat, using whatever the “medicine,” in a given theatre’s (operative, or otherwise) stage and number of performers, patients, pudendum, and so on. This fleshy alliance includes sex workers with a secure living arrangement, and survival sex workers down on their luck, dependent on the former’s help (with people’s exact position not always being clear based on the images they [and their body parts, below] produce). The haves and have-nots, it’s a group effort in that respect, too, and one whose solidarity remains determined; i.e., to overcome harmful boundaries, which include stereotypes: the stigma of the whore, baby-crazy mother and transient sex demon as “asking for it,” but also a class division precluding consciousness and cooperation between uneven parties rescuing Medusa while she represents different struggles among an oppressed polity. It’s an appeal to our humanity and a business maneuver that aims for societal improvement through the expression of vulnerability (which love is). To bare it all, to show off the goods.

(artist: Mugiwara)

Capitalism reduces people to sex objects useful to profit; i.e., not just like pieces of meat in that regard, but processed meat. Rendered into Jell-O like sludge, we exist as pink slime whose process of manufacture must be reclaimed by us for our own sake: valuing our own jiggly parts’ worth as an extension of our monstrous humanity. This starts with creativity as a social act and covenant between workers against the state. Humanity is monstrous, thus without limits. In game language, Capitalism frames the human condition as a profit margin to maximize—a zero-sum (win-lose) game where the elite win at the expense of monsters (workers). For workers, monstrous liberation is a positive-sum game—a win-win that actively accounts for the needs of all parties involved: sex, or things better than (or comparable to) sex, in exchange as needed. Working in concert, we can negotiate a tenable balance of what we both want regarding our needs as generally unequal but complementary—to snuggle, fuck, snugglefuck to music, with the lights on or off; do it doggy or masturbate for each other, edging to bigger and better climaxes; to go for a walk holding hands, or cook a tasty meal, etc (to never have sex again)—and likewise allow ourselves outlets when one party isn’t available (to “rub one out” to porn).

From top to bottom, Capitalism translates to a system of predatory paywalls that reduce survival to a constant, endless need: to slave over basic necessities like food, shelter and comfort routinely gatekept by opportunistic fat cats. In the same top-to-bottom fashion, this ranges from industry barons to landlords and local pimps (token or not) all being part of the same problem; i.e., generally by contributing to a series of disabling factors (trifectas and monopolies) that socially and materially (through settler-colonial, heteronormative dogma and tollways) cripple the individual (and the group) by needing “A for B,” “B for A” and so on. To offset this vicious cycle, workers must busy themselves with self-liberation as a group ordeal; i.e., as occurring between work and play as something to inventively combine among ourselves—to even the odds as a social engagement that speaks through bodies, money and labor as persuasive (“money talks, sex sells”), but also enriching. It becomes a careful game of investing energies, of management regarding debt, disease and disuse as normally crippling by design. It’s a causal, symbiotic relationship between workers creating the means to help one another and voice our oppression as one over space and time: as people who have done this before, having worked a day in their life but also played just as much, on and on.

From all our yesterdays to the last syllable of recorded time, the Gothic-Communist goal is the same: to offer but not rush, nor push what is refused (the sweetest butter tastes bitter when burned; the subbiest pup will bite the hand that feeds when said hand forces a collar round their neck, etc)—all to “meet our maker” not as a Wizard of Oz or prescribed divine authority, but ourselves and our dark poetry as the authors of our fate. Such routine, fancible invention might seem like pure magic, but in truth is as natural, artless (effortless) and easy for the initiated as the magician pulling a rabbit out of their hat. We must do the same with whatever needs producing at a given moment. To tease, “I heard you like magic? I got a wand and a rabbit!” to make our audience, who—suitably tantalized (and in on the joke, completely silly and dead serious)—grin and respond, “Now you’re speakin’ my language!” We like something and into us it goes, exiting again in some shape or form (fluid or otherwise). In turn, “great magic” can be done with cheap parlor tricks—by those who like the simpler magics (with my character, the witch queen Ileana Sanda, canonically favoring such illusory and compelling gimmicks over more forceful and literal spells):

(artist: Chapelle Roan)

Human history is mostly communication. Most of that is a nudge and a wink, a look to know and join in with—to flirt with boundaries during artistic, love-made-public displays that exhibit galleries buffering those who don’t want to see (or hear) such “sex” in public. Ideally control is allowed for both parties without enslaving the invigilator to censors, with exhibitionists playing with their identities, sexualities, and gender roles/performances less as literal and more as figurative but hinting at the latter the way policed media always does: because sex is policed, women are policed, the monstrous-feminine as sex, drugs and rock ‘n roll (originally an African American euphemism for sex, repressed by white culture commodifying black culture as settler colonists always do). But as Volume Zero put it (an extended quote, because this is important):

it’s fine if [an] exposed vagina in art/porn isn’t someone’s cup of tea, but videogames—especially those in the Internet Age—are a public space, a forum/galley to some extent. This means the rules of such places also apply to videogames (and other mediums); i.e., they’re an exhibit that isn’t curated to cater to a single group’s vision. If someone is sex-repulsed, that’s a valid consideration, but it should always be raised in ways that aren’t sex-negative. To that, sex-positive galleries shouldn’t have to compromise their sex-positive, xenophilic vision to meet a smaller group’s needs if the exhibit is about showcasing naked monster bodies in a sex-positive way. Putting the vagina in the closet when male genitalia are plastered all over everything is a modesty argument, often used by moderate individuals conflating their own sex repulsion as transcendental; they feel vulnerable when they see someone else’s vagina, but are probably acclimated to the cock as everywhere or the breasts as a commonly adjustable feature of avatar cosmetics. To include one but not the other is arbitrary and harmful, especially when the precedent of the game invokes sexual and gender expression to begin with. To exclude a particular morphological identity from the game is segregation, which generally will have a cis bias; players should be able to represent themselves however they want: Big Titty Goth GFs or Big Booty Goth GF with a girl-cock! So I ask people who would want to prevent that, “Why do you care if that’s in-[text]?”

[…] Yes, sex-repulsed people being triggered by exposed genitals is understandable; but their feelings about their own genitals doesn’t extend to other players within a shared world any more than it does in real life (the relationship, here, is half-real). This isn’t John Lajoie’s “Show Me You Genitals” […] the vicious historical-material cycle of tragedy and farce oscillating in public discourse at large); gender expression through the human body isn’t even automatically sexual. So no, people having the option to express themselves in a nudist sense with their [various] avatars isn’t you being forced to also “play doctor” or look upon someone who wants to have sex with you.

Put differently and in regards to Sex Positivity as a whole, it’s not up to the invigilator to manage their gallery to meet regressive, sex-negative standards; if the [text]-in-question provides inclusive options that represent a change in the paradigm shift troubling to creepy reactionaries fantasizing power abuse […] or even ace people, frankly that’s their problem (the option towards being ace, or at least not having genitals in videogames, is certainly nothing new); it’s not being done to offend others and even ace people need—and I promise this is coming from a place of love, my ace comrades—to manage their expectations while realizing that monster identities, especially genderqueer ones often are sexual and conveyed through nudism. Love it or hate it, them’s the breaks (although this book is largely about sex-positive Gothic expression, this doesn’t preclude asexuality at all. We will thoroughly explore ace options in Gothic media, too). Nudity and monsters have always been political, but this has to occur on our time, not that of moderates (versus overt reactionaries) telling us how to do our activism for us; we’re not doing this for just ourselves, but fighting for a better world for all—a post-scarcity world where nudity isn’t automatically a sexual act, sin doesn’t exist, and people can be more open about their sexuality and gender without feeling vulnerable, fake, criminal and/or exposed in fear of reactionaries killing them and aloof, smug moderates turning a blind eye or prioritizing their own victim complexes. This requires imagining that world ahead of time, which requires having thoughts that will be considered sinful and anathema by the elite and their proponents (source).

As such, the GNC need for iconoclastic exhibits will always trump ace people’s comfort levels when being near but not directly inside something they’d rather not think about at all. Silence is genocide during moral panic—a death sentence we’d rather not have the indifferent-to-hostile issue the warrant of, just because we play at “measuring coffins” onstage. The thing at stake is our sexual agency and gender, something that aggressively ace and sex-negative people need to tolerate without pushing for our sisterly silence. Wrinkle your noses if you want, but we’re not trying to rub your faces in it. All the same, try to understand the underlying message if you please—to imagine yourselves getting it after the moral panic (and its uncanny nostalgia, below) have temporarily subsided and we’re gone; i.e., from being genocided and the state compelling you to have their children, then sacrificing you for the child’s life, even when the fetus isn’t viable: in short, when your rights are in the toilet and the crucible to mending them is scuttled. “They’re coming to get you, Barbara!”

The basic idea is called mirror syndrome and it’s generally mimed through popular media. For example, the countdown mechanism in Alien is a self-destruct metaphor occurring inside a larger dying organism (a life craft) as tied to our own fragile life cycle. In turn, Scott’s seafaring-in-space gag is a similar lunar ploy to Matteson’s own zombie schtick: compartment syndrome, or the release of toxins into the bloodstream. Scott would have been seventeen when I Am Legend released, but bred on such stories as older than both men, and indeed Capitalism: a horror vein whose sex, death, murder or rape scenes have been a common main attraction, center stage since Beowulf and capitalized on by enterprising storytellers keying in on audience fears: “In space, no one can hear you scream.”

Such chill-inducing taglines (and their deathly delirium) are feigned and extensive, but tied to real problems pushed “far away” using go-to promotion schemes at home in the Gothic. Per Hogle, the medieval theatre’s ghost of the counterfeit and narrative cryptonymy came “back” to 1979 British and American theatres (on the cusp of Thatcherism, what Ian Curtis would go on to call “disorder” in Unknown Pleasures [1979] and Derek Jarman would speak on through The Last of England, eight years later), delivering a catch-and-release mechanism who ghost ship/castle floats in the vast expanse of “outer space” as the latest haunted-house/zombie (the Nostromo/xenomorph) metaphor for the Imperial Core; i.e., as a threatening perspective for Capitalism having made homely places threatening but also forcing workers to go into inhospitable environments at home and abroad for profit (re: allusions to Conrad with the borrowed slave-vessel names for the ships in the movie). Per Scott’s astronoetic critique, it’s “crew expendable,” but experienced (for GNC people) from the POV of blue-collar space truckers wearing Hawaiian t-shirts: “Something’s definitely wrong.”

This alarm-bell approach isn’t unique to Alien or Scott, but vibes synchronistically with other artists then and now. For example, The Offspring hit upon the same senescence in 1998: “When we were young, the future was so bright […] Now the neighborhood’s cracked and torn […] How can one little street swallow so many lives?”; re: “The Kids Aren’t Alright” from their Americana album reflecting a dark shadow on Pax Americana (and by extension, Britannica) at large—the place where worker childhood dreams go to die, the graveyard and ghost of empire. No one ever said Gothic material critiques were anything but sobering. You can hear the same entropy through Ian Curtis and the boys:

The cover to Unknown Pleasures is solid black, its surface stamped with a mysterious chart: the sequence to a dying star. But you might not know that looking at it. Instead, you might see the symbol and wonder what it is; it might pique your interest, even, but does so with veiled hostility—not from concealment, but through frank opaqueness. It’s there for you to see, but yields little except mild discomfort and burning curiosity.

This curiosity definitely kills the cat. The album sounds like the end of an explosion, the silence afterward heavy and bleak. The energy it contains is dissipated, a bodiless vigor surrounded by darkness visible. Breaking glass stabs the silence, the shattering of which cuts like a knife and closes like a wound. Ian Curtis croons like a gloomier, less raucous cousin to Jim Morrison. Control is never lost, because there’s none to be had; in this endless void, any kind of scream would only ring hollow.

[…]

Cohesive and hypnotic, this album weaves a dark, chilly spell, one that lends just enough warmth to keep you alive. Thrown open, its doors submerge the listener in thickened air, heady and difficult. But amid this smoky gloam lurks a menacing power, addictive and destructive—a pathos that yields pleasures found only in the darkest corners of the universe. There are moments of giddy madness, but just as many that allow you to reflect on your slow, inevitable disintegration. What follows a supernova? A black hole, of course (source: Persephone van der Waard’s “A Hell without Mirrors, Only Darkness,” 2019; which she wrote shortly after Zeuhl left her for their future husband).

It’s all rather gloomy but nevertheless remains the place to make our stand and let our feelings be known. Often we’re preaching rapid-fire to the choir—a little goblin-like creature “that gestates inside a living host and has concentrated acid for blood” (“no ordinary fetus,” as David put it)—but that’s the point: to see our evil twin and rattle on paradoxically (a merger of pleasure and pain as pleasurable adjacent to harmful pain) to our gremlin-y lovers to sing together in Sisyphean defiance of the gods: to cum neurodivergently (and gay as fuck) together with those we love until we’re dunzo; i.e., trauma-bonding (sex) and psychosexual catharsis, the feeling of us actually being food where we live—e.g., fictional band Cherry Bomb’s “Hunger City” (1986): “daddy’s pride and joy / slithers down the drain instead, fast food for the mutants!”—and to find other lost souls to take comfort, however brief, in that perilous fact as something to endure and find joy together in, anyways: as fucking weirdos fucking together despite feeling fucked by our surroundings. You know you’re lucky when you’ve found someone who’s just as weird as you are, likes all the same weird shit that you do/takes pleasure in seeing you geek out at weird hybrids of trashy garbage and high culture combined; e.g., Alien by itself, or Alien and Howard the Duck alluded together in my weird-ass book, listening to Annihilator’s Alice in Hell (1989) while I hang with Bay and Beat, chopping and screwing things together… and leaving my gloomth-filled, corpse-like cathedral for people to comb over and walk around inside—to play within and with like an (excuse the Tim-Burton necrophilic phrase) rotting sex doll (“What’s this! What’s this!” Haha). I’ve gone and mentioned necrophilia and Howard the Duck in the same sentence; my life’s work is now complete, but legend has it, I’m still writing (if you walk around inside, years from now and hold your breath, you can still hear the clacking of my keyboard, Jack-Torrance-style; e.g., King Diamond’s “Twilight Symphony” [1988] or Michiru Yamane’s “Dance of Pales” [1997]. “Welcome home,” as they say—all singing together and me among them). And with that, I think I just wrote my favorite paragraph in the whole book!

Certainly, the cliché is known to us all—that “death is where we feel most alive.” Canon’s commodification of the Gothic is akin to what Bay describes as “lobster-fication”; i.e., taking a pauper’s dish like lobster, black pudding or lamb shanks, and gentrifying it. Per the Gothic as something to reclaim, we wacky fags feel most alive when we put “death” in quotes, slapping things campily together through ludo-Gothic BDSM to find psychosexual enrichment. Is it predatory for the Straights (or us) to “cash” in on that? Such moral probes/high ground aren’t as cut-and-dry as you might think. For Alien, given the film’s rocky production—and much of the money disappearing into corporate vaults when Fox famously refused to pay out, citing a lack of profit (Charles’ Schreger’s “The ‘Alien’ Papers: Can a $100-Million Film Lose Money?” 1980)—I’d say that Scott and company existed in a space where money-making and statement-making can both take place to a shared degree. It’s good old-fashioned liminal expression, not unlike Shakespeare’s theatre house being the barber shop for GNC bleeding hearts across space and time: the violent pornography of sex, death, and capital reifying over and over again.

Furthermore, the phenomenological differences—however alien they might seem per case—actually mirror a shared parallel struggle. We can influence it to help each other decide what is often too big for one person to conceivably choose regarding matters of the heart, of development: to want what we can’t have, but could if the state’s powers were reduced. Neoliberals swap possible dreams for false hope. So we must make our dreams (whatever they are) come true at their expense—to, with our partners-in-crime (during sex or something equally fun)—delightedly howl like gay bubbly comedian werewolves, “We’re doing it, babe! We’re doing the nasty!” to our legions of adoring fans’ frantic cheers mixed with slow nods of solemn approval; i.e., not the incompatible/unavailable crush that we hopelessly cling to, but a compatible likeness of them that is a) able to keep up, and b) still their own person (and not a shambling copy to fill the gap with): someone better than those who treat us poorly who is still cogent enough to appreciate us the same way around.

To that, we’re the face of a given production and the theatre operators behind-the scenes. Our treatment comes from a cavalcade of willing wackjobs howling at the moon, all to challenge the hubris of those who posture dogmatically as heaven-sent. We speak sense through “lunacy” to challenge dogma, clearing the field with brilliant puppetry—ourselves. Watch and learn, but remember, we’re professional weirdos operating under informed consent. It’s our trade secret, then, one that—when administered—must solve complex systemic problems by having precisely the kind of fun that doesn’t treat workers as “zombie-like” problems to “solve” through force (or force them to be someone they’re not, likenesses aside); i.e., the cis-het numbskull repeatedly barking up the wrong tree, trying any way he can to coax said “animal” down instead of respecting its rejection (subtle or overt) and its boundaries (ace or otherwise).

The praxial idea with any healthy (stable) relationship is to learn what one needs and find it with whomever can supply it both ways; we do it while looking out together for all monsters. Drenched in pathos, these alien-fetish personas must also be met in concert, the habitual focus of a given example being movement towards a shared goal, a (non-nuclear) village of mothers, sisters and allies likewise meeting each other halfway through different signposts. To be frank, our focus isn’t pregnancy* or a white wedding to broadcast the amatonormative ceremony trotted out in broad daylight; it’s a cemetery gradient of those who generally can’t afford such luxuries (children, healthcare and families are expensive, under Capitalism)—indeed, are swept under such Hallmark posturing as “of the middle class” at the expense of everyone else (the ghost of the counterfeit and process of abjection): those at home with genocide as commercialized, never affecting them on a systemic level. White Anglo-Americans and their allies!

*With my staunchly pro-life mother hovering to adamantly and proudly declare regarding abortions, miscarriages and stillbirths, “Even the Antichrist deserves a chance!” Hell’s midwife, a delivery woman for any and all demon babies jumping ataxically from host to host—with my demented mother loving King Diamond’s “Abigail” (1987); mind you, this feverish bias only extends to human/selectively humane babies and “cute” animals: kittens, puppies, piglets, foals, etc.

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A paradigm shift requires a change of perspective (ruffling feathers, Said-style), but also a structuring of optics, of triggering factors, of outcomes that feel doomed, but which a part of us never sees coming. Families are always rising and falling in America. We can prevent that, but have to change the system by seeing its grave danger (mirror syndrome) for what it is; i.e., by who it views and treats as monstrous-feminine, the wild and the feisty but also the innocent. No one deserves dehumanization for doing sex work, many of whom are merely trying to survive, but also many others doing de facto social work through elevated positions of sex work as stylish, well-produced. All are important, rooting for a common cause, courting prosperity through informed workers raising their collective intelligence and awareness—to increase worker safety and research solutions, but also shell out and afford changes through redistributions of wealth.

We’ve talked about illustrating mutual consent and paying sex workers, then. But there’s something else to consider and entertain more than we already have (the service top in me begs repetition, here): the social element, to which class and culture war through sex work are definitely an enterprise of.

In regards to sex workers and marginalized peoples at large, but especially GNC people, we’re separated by vast gulfs of space and (at times) emotional distance and distress. But the beauty of the Internet, though bittersweet, remains connection; if one hurts, we all do. And we all supply force fields to bar enemies from entry with and venues to exchange what is needed among ourselves: mutual aid. This isn’t for posterity or performance art, but simply to get by as we work; but, as this book demonstrates, remains something to exhibit in artistic forms that serve a dual purpose. Prevention trumps treatment by a mile, and some risks are ventured by those who can afford to take them; i.e., to do sex work to speak to civil rights, and stand up for those who cannot devote themselves to these policy-changing dialogs beyond surviving from moment-to-moment[5]. We need them to feel welcome (thus safe) enough to be present to receive aid (with genocides made to keep state victims “in the wind,” exiled and adrift).

(artist: Mugiwara)

This book’s definitive statement always returns to holistic expression, one regarding workers vs the state; it’s something we add to as much as we can, shameless entertainers smoothly putting on a show (making a slick “entrance” to communicate as people do [and which Capitalism has aliened workers from, save in harmfully fetishized forms]: through motion, sound, scent, taste and touch, but also music, dancing and other rhythmic forms of instructional fun as a) sexual and asexual [many sex workers are ace but still enjoy sex work] and b) whose various ways of feeling good happen together while balancing interpersonal needs—maintenance, motion and lubrication). These functions and forms all translate fairly well because that’s how people generally tend to work on any register/configuration, full circle.

Onstage and off, we forms cracks on apathetic fronts (and executors) where people are hemorrhaging help. Of that, there is no doubt. We’re the support group, the lecturer of those who don’t just fail and trouble our friends, but actively harm them; i.e., by keeping things the same, yet also fishing for the virtue of theatrical charity. We combat this through the power of suggestion and charm (of which we have plenty to spare), but also strictness and terror to petrify the things that sabotage our partnership: the blood flow of a giant called Capitalism. We can save our spite and venom for that son of a bitch, giving those we shelter and assist all our goodness, humility and love (our compromises). Using hard, consistent stances that never yield, budge or otherwise give an inch from threat of force (which the state always defaults to), we’ll take back from the former all we can to enrich the later. From a cookie to a glass of milk (our double entendres always allowing for innuendo, of course), we’ll start slow, then race together towards a glorious, sticky finish (our finest, self-serving hour). But we can’t afford to be innocent, either—to be willfully naïve about the reality that all work is sexualized and alien, thus demanding patronage from privileged peoples to move forward to happier days. So spread the love, pay it forward! You’d be lonely and miserable without us (as “MGTOW” and TERFs [incels and nice guys/girls] generally are—deeply cynical people, hopelessly afraid of everything while somehow still expecting the state not to betray them in a given cycle).

Call that an agenda, if you want—our enemies don’t deserve honest discussion and respect as equals if they won’t treat us in kind. They clearly have the power but choose not to. Except, human rights aren’t up for debate, and those who act like it aren’t to be trusted; they merit our steel, our rage, our fury the likes of which Medusa would be proud. I might be a poly slut who wants to fuck all my friends (what Cuwu once called “a little horndog”), but the same doesn’t really apply to my enemies. Yes, I’m full of nothing but love, but all the same, words have the power to cut deep. Rest assured, I have plenty of choice ones to spare for the ghosts of capital, including Margaret Thatcher and Ronald Reagan’s neoliberalism surviving in current-day forms. To that, a cutie’s pen (or aspects to them a pen might describe) is mightier than the sword, if only because labor is a collectively creative act, not a singular destructive one; and labor is something the elite can never fully control. We must expose this reality every chance we get: through bodies as propaganda, as a joint exercise of creative expression fighting for our rights and that of nature, of Medusa’s (squishy melons). People deserve to know how they’re being abused, and communicating is a skill that draws on many talents simultaneously.

(artist: Mugiwara)

The above section is, in my opinion, the finest thing I have ever written. As such, I’ve dedicated it to my friends Quinn, Mugi and all the rest. I love you all very much and hope my work can continue to make a difference in your lives! —Perse

In turn, capital will be exposed as a prison, its sick home an unironic torture dungeon filled with patriarchal jailors and tokenized fiends. To transition away from that to post-scarcity requires reflection on the present world with pre-capitalist nostalgia in updated, non-fatal forms: Medusa as friendly to the Cause. It requires seeing the false harmful qualities in idealized things, to tell them we don’t want their “protection” but to be left alone; i.e., as a collective monstrous-feminine working against state predation, inviting all workers to grow and develop in harmony with nature: not unironically alien and fetishized, but part of the same complex interaction made ironic. Thanks to Enlightenment thinking’s modern interference, our traumatic past becomes involved. But through Gothic reflection and reinvention, it lets us become the thing that never quite existed: a xenomorphic, biomechanical assisted by recent technology and pre-capitalist forms whose combined thinking achieves post-scarcity through natural resources and morphological freedom of expression. It is not posthuman, insofar as our basic human rights are attained and humanity reclaimed from a thoroughly Western idea sickened by Enlightenment thinking and Cartesian domination; it’s merely the conclusion of the riddle(r) reclaimed by us—to make our own monstrous-feminine arrangements of something akin to a caterpillar and wasp that leads to future metamorphoses as healthy regards of what emerges from the chrysalid.

We don’t need a paternal “protector” at all, then, but merely to be left alone by colonizers acting in bad faith through shared poetic devices. But convincing their enforcers to cease their attack (thereby surrendering their hold and their power on Medusa) requires humanizing us through the very things the state lies to us with. It requires steady demands, but also the will to fight back inside the realms of imagination and reality as intertwined; i.e., through courage and wit, cunning and perspective, the ability to blend in and play with illusions natural and material. “It takes a wizard to beat a wizard,” but we are all of us wizards, kings, queens, gods and devils with the power to unite inside capital: to escape it by transforming it, thus ourselves, into a better world over time. It is, like Ovid’s Metamorphoses (c. 8 CE), a magical make-believe to bring the impossible “could be” into existence: from an egg, a caterpillar, and from there a beautiful butterfly? Or is it a wasp inside the caterpillar to emerge from the same container a sleek sexy “destroyer”? Does it represent our revolutionary potential to win, as the Punic invader does, through splendid-mendax deception, or as a double of that exposing Troy as false and we, like Medusa, wrongfully accused? Does it portend to our own unmaking through inaction by capital devouring us from within, or we turning the tables to avoid such a fate when Medusa eats us? Why not both? Poetry is a battlefield.

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Such a riddle (of steel[6] or otherwise) must be answered in duality amid class war through culture as an active process of thinking and existing through language as an organic living unit. Flow determines function, and form follows function, be that a wasp or butterfly as part of the same poetic struggle to become our best maternal selves as stewards of nature; i.e., using the language of the Gothic to speak to capital’s universal alienation and fetishization, its grim patriarchal (Cartesian) harvest.

In turn, all of “Teaching” is food for thought, regarding things to return to, deconstruct and rebuild as signposts towards a goalpost: Gothic castles (and castle-like Destroyers) leading to the Communist Numinous (the proletarian monstrous-feminine) amid a war of titanic forces, gargantuan but vague; i.e., felt through paternal disturbance, Capitalism being Communism’s mortal enemy and the true Great Destroyer labeling its foil as “devil-in-disguise.” Both are, but only one wants to enslave and destroy workers, Medusa, and the planet as a sustainable habitat: capital. We have a right to exist; to dye our hair, take HRT or pierce our nipples and worship Satan; to be recognized as squishy and delicious; to groan or fart as we pee (or pee in someone’s butt—not my kink but you never know who likes what). All constitute intimacy, which the state doesn’t care about (seeing ours as “passing for” their own coached doubles and so-called “winners”).

Again, it’s just “crew expendable.” Why? Because “fuck you,” that’s why! They want to own us and cheapen our lives for reasons purely of greed entertained by the lamest vultures on Earth (real “divorced dad energy”). So we must fuck them (and their monopolies) by freeing the monstrous-feminine to become our true selves with, whatever form that may be (simultaneously resisting the urge to “punch the Nazi” [a personal scapegoat] versus publicly excoriating billionaires, the closest thing to a personified systemic issue [apart from heads of state or the church, monarchs, etc]: we don’t owe either an ounce of politeness and should absolutely give them hell online, but our pressure attack should fixate on those with the potential to do the great amount of systemic harm. This means removing billionaires, those with formal power, from said power to prevent systemic abuse; it’s the hardest to achieve and takes the most work. Outing personal abusers is just that, a personal choice). Liberation is a journey to survive in deathly forms, wherein we escape, fight censorship, and endure embarrassing double standards (enshittification[7])—to fight the good fight, forever.

In the interim, the fight is a war and not all survive. To that, my friend Ginger likened being queer to being like a squad: of ace fighter pilots that go out each day. But not all return in the evening to those in hiding. Some lose their nerve, cut and run; others still sell out; many die. If one GNC person is raped, killed or otherwise betrayed—and our allies and fellow oppressed people as well—then we all feel it, a pandemonium banished to the darkness to varying degrees (which Dante called “circles”). Our liberty is non-negotiable, so we must make the world around us unafraid through appeals to escape from the cage that’s built for them, too (the classic princess paradox: danger in fantasy but “there’s no place like home”; except home can change, can yield fresh possibilities and first-movers by ladies seeking love with those they’re told not to, outside of marriage). This isn’t new. Medusa was killed during Amazon panic; Harvey Milk, during gay panic. Indeed, a genocide is, and has been, happening just about everywhere except if you’re a white cis-het European person (the colonizer class/group) who toes the line. For them, this requires redemption; for us, rescue and revolution.

But we must unite and never let them forget we are human. For the long haul, till the angels sing. Except kindness is taught by being enough to love a priori, to sing that love together against our destroyers; i.e., donations, platforms, charity and service/voluntary empathy as second-nature inspired by Communist mothers, not Cartesian dildos. Care goes both ways but focuses on big fish to fry while helping minnows. Communism is our white whale to rescue from Ahab. And if we cannot do that, we can at least help it be remembered with dignity. With the sun on our face surrounded by the big blue sky. When we go home. That lives on, that’s what matters: like a Valkyrie, a protector to look over those we love to tell them they are not alone. The eulogy is a benediction, a salvation, an anthem, an apologia the Gothic sings electrically using Communist hands, bodies, voices, imaginations. A place where the brave live forever (or as The Scorpions say in “The Best Is Yet to Come” (2014): “How can we grow old, when the soundtrack to our life is rock and roll?” The best is yet to come!): Medusa’s graveyard, two snakes facing each other!

(artist: Renato Casaro)

This isn’t a state of grace through default martyrdom, but prevention of genocide, murder and rape—unchecked fetishization and alienation—as routine universal consequences of capital plugging along. It’s waged by caretakers against sickness. Except caretakers need rest, too. A break. Sometimes, it’s retirement. Sometimes it’s a change of pace, of scenery and/or of form—a life change, or per Alien, a lifeform change.

Mothers, it turns out, are a perfect encapsulation of this. From the start of our lesson, Sylvain’s riddle speaks to the cyclical, maternal nature of history as hijacked by capital and leading routinely to the destruction of capital and the natural world by the former in the decay while harvesting the latter as monstrous-feminine: “Killing is easy. Saving someone is hard work.” So reflect again on the riddle with that in mind: “A thousand years ago, Gandahar was destroyed and all its people killed; a thousand years ago, Gandahar was saved, and what can’t be avoided will be.” It constitutes a riddle that takes place over space and time through stories, of which there is no true outside. Vis-à-vis Derrida, there is only inside and the healing or devastation that take place there: relative to binaries as things to install and uphold, or to tear down and replace with a more flexible, gradient approach to language as lived.

Another way to view state shift, then, is Mother Nature seriously pissed off. It is the classic death knell of oppressive structures, except the oppressive nature of capital abusing the natural world is so great that the subsequent “rubber band effect” will cause said “band” to snap[8]. The Gothic loves such riddles, staring down the gaze of Medusa in a repeat venture—from the ancient Promethean myth to Mary Shelley’s Modern Prometheus (1818) to Scott’s Alien, Cameron’s Aliens (and its refrains, the shooter and the Metroidvania), Prometheus (2012) and Alien: Covenant (2017), my master’s thesis “Lost in Necropolis” (2018) and eventual book series-in-progress Sex Positivity (2023-present) and Fede Alvarez’ Alien: Romulus (TBA; 20th Century Fox’s “Alien: Romulus | Teaser Trailer,” 2024). We’re living in Gothic times, grasping at an ancient riddle (a problem exacerbated by capital as a recent affair) to isolate through the puzzle of “Antiquity” as forever lost and found, isolated inside it:

(artist: Persephone van der Waard)

Through medieval duality and monomorphism, such stories—and their endless, looping Marxist/GNC potential—speak collectively to the monster mother in and around all of us. As such, their tangents routinely show that “death,” far from a chaotic stranger to us in real life, becomes material, something we can use when challenging the state/profit motive through counterterror (whistleblowers): to lose ourselves inside and infringe playfully on our boundaries, making new ones by muckraking and playing with the goop, the hysteria, the bicycle face (all critiques of capital, from Shelley to Scott to me, using Gothic language); i.e., the saints and imposters as a widening comfort zone established through calculated risk, of calculating it, of calculus. Per this Galatean vein, maternal conflict and triage express insofar as the state will try—by gaming the system they rigged to pad the numbers, and promise infinite growth through illusions thereof (the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow)—to greedily fleece the same pacified people they push towards such harmful ideations (suicide or otherwise). We must challenge that on all registers. I shall do so as the ancient rhetors and poets did, but unlike Socrates, shall recruit writing into my Renaissance-girl approach: not the Platonic insistence of memory death, but a life after death yielding Communist fantasies that reify systemic change through hearts and minds. Medusa shedding her skin.

Writing might be the death of memory (re: Socrates in Phaedrus, c. 347-399 BC) but the Gothic thrives on/writes with disintegration in mind. This infuses the medical and the morbid to the traditional domain of caregivers (women) as essential dogma; i.e., to uproot in monomorphic expression that yields a means of non-binary and intersex forms that fight back against the state by reclaiming monstrous language as combative—Amazonomachia. Like all media, it can toe the line, or veer off into old possibilities certain copies have forgotten. Rememory occurs through media and us oscillating within work at cross purposes, manifesting in a variety of aliens; e.g., stress manifesting in the body as told through psychosexual hyperbole onstage. Such theatre gives the audience a scare/fright to speak deliciously to actual things while playing with fact and fiction, the truth somewhere in between them, inside-outside and correct-incorrect (the Gothic loves hyphens). These speak to criminogenic conditions, axes of oppression, crime and punishment, etc; i.e., scapegoats/relative punishment and its collective/selective double standards; e.g., white pearl clutching when a token threat snaps, versus when a white man does it—to uphold a system through punitive justice instead of preventative justice; cries for help through suicide ideation (or martyrdom), drug abuse, getting into fights, and so on.

(artist: Sabrina Nicole)

To that, mothers are essential, potent, greater than Patriarchal Capitalism, Francis Bacon, and all the rest. From porn to art (they are each other), maids to mothers great and small, from Amazons to Medusa, demons or whores, to the Sapphics to Edna St. Vincent Millay—I love all my mommies; i.e., as a family I found elsewhere, or saw in a naughty painting or portrait, their pussies wild outlets and their (other) prisons butterflies and light, a home I am happy to lose myself inside.

As a trans woman forever invested in the wellbeing of others, my muses (alive, dead, or in between) inspire me; pregnant, I spread monsters (“book babies,” mighty idiots) in all directions that challenge the status quo, defibrillating the collective inside the home, putting it there in place of the state and its cancer. Both are imposters that work back and forth, in and out, like sex, but per the Renaissance, is also asexual and poetic as the medieval generally is; i.e., mixed metaphors, but also theories within metaphors, with us, copies of us, a bit from Column A and Column B (more Marx puns). Like Medusa, like the xenomorph, like the caterpillar and the wasp as a bigger cycle the state can’t kill—it’s ironclad, bulletproof, our acid for blood something to teach, to pass along as a wonderful defense mechanism. “It’s like a man, it’s big!” But Medusa’s not a man; they’re monstrous-feminine!

These, in turn, translate through compound metaphors (comparisons of unlike things over time): poetics, of course, but often as combat theatre and kayfabe being “ancient” poetics revived; i.e., speaking to labor action against labor theft and genocide, etc, in ironic forms shared in duality. Like the caterpillar and the wasp, then, cancer is a part of the natural world and cannot be destroyed, but life is equally stubborn; the state can be shrunk and sent to a status of remission and stasis, lapsing into perpetual dormancy while Medusa (and Communism) rise beautifully from sleep, cancer-free: “Look and see her, how she sparkles. It’s the last unicorn!” Keeping with our ancient riddle, this motherly beast can be a butterfly or a wasp, but feel free to teach with your own poetic devices. But also, respect the power of Galatea defying Pygmalion. To the mommies of the world teaching us, then: Each of you is a priceless treasure who shows the sexiness of consent—as you are, in defiance of capital. In life, you make a difference that echoes in eternity.

(artist: Sabrina Nicole)

Straight allies can do this, too; i.e., Scott’s hauntological penchant for astronoetic, queer-tinged matelotage (“hey, sailor!”) speaking to poetic standards commenting on present realities: capital, ships and industry as perilous, but also lifeboats and chances to take. We want to improve ours through death/rape theatre as monstrous, hideously beautiful and maternal, hilarious; through stress manifest in physical forms that we must face not with fear but informed confidence: “Come to Mommy!” Just as we can’t die in these stories, Medusa can’t be killed when capital guns for us; so we, gunning for capital at the same crossroads with/as the devil-in-disguise, should keep her eternal memory alive in us to survive after we are cold and dead.

Ideas are bulletproof, so we should let one crawl from our body that isn’t cancerous. Rather, our little homunculi share and spread our goals in life; i.e. to seek compassion and quality of life (and document those who don’t) through teaching as a transgenerational act: setting a better example, a feral one that loves all of it—the holistic process; i.e., to hold off and build up one’s hunger for a tasty meal, be that a leaf or a grub. Then, when it’s time, our throwbacks shall lead our partner(s) by the hand, snugglefuck and have a good cry (to rival Jane and Tarzan) and cum, getting it all out; to play with those when and where it is safe to varying degrees, licking our platters clean and “tagging” each other (with cum) as owned by no one but ourselves. Every. Last. Drop.

(artist: Bokuman)

As such, we sit on the cusp of disaster and have one of two basic choices: evolve inside capital and survive by transforming it from within through an oppressed tutelage, or consign ourselves to its boundaries, thus go down with the ship (many things can be combined, but the state-as-Faustian and rebels are diametrically at odds). The way out is together through intersectional solidarity as alien fetishes united against capital; i.e.,  according to how it divides and controls us, controls Medusa. By enjoying what’s forbidden to us by capital, we can expand what’s possible through empathy as something to imagine, create and leave behind as an actionable offense; i.e., a seminal affair that upends traditional familial norms in favor of post-scarcity ones informed by past peoples gone but not forgotten. In short, we’re putting the pussy on the chainwax (“starting a thing!”) as Sylvain does, hence are able against all odds to make that fatal choice: not to rape the womb of nature as Francis Bacon argued, but make love to it in harmony (as a caterpillar, butterfly or wasp—pick your poison) while stealing fire from the gods. Orgasm! Victory! Great success! All occur in and out of the classroom and bedroom as a liminal space to find truth in all its forms useful to us. The vital part to teaching is, like sex, communion: that we do together and while listening to and respecting each other’s needs and boundaries (“More, more!” being just as valid as “No, stop!” Green light, red light).

Like nature, then, the Gothic is full of startling transformations and tremendous, motherly conclusions/translations, and all quests begin with riddles similar to the one I’ve proposed as a Great Chain of Being—the caterpillar and the wasp, the maiden and the xenomorph, the mother and the child, the master and the apprentice. Medusa. My Promethean Quest (for Numinous mommies) did; so does yours, whatever mommy you’re looking for. The caterpillar and the wasp bookend this volume. Solving said puzzle means solving existence as a balance of pleasure and pain to avoid systemic harm, through the strangers we “uncover” (create), but also the weird friends we make along the way. This includes inside the classroom and the bedroom. Learning and fucking needn’t be separate, and both are fun, as is solving puzzles while relieving stress. Yet, while it’s lots of fun and we don’t wanna stop—the Humanities endless search for knowledge as limited but imagination encircling the world—like sex, pacing ourselves is good.

We’ll briefly explore this on my old blog next, in “Prep, part two: Medicine“! Here, we’ll proceed to “Castles in the Flesh“!

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Footnotes

[1] Re: Mark Madoff’s “The Useful Myth of Gothic Ancestry” (1979): “The idea of gothic ancestry endured because it was useful” (source). This utility applies to workers and the state.

[2] “How big are you looking for, exactly? Something the size of a jumbo jet?” Thank you, Samurai Cop (1991).

[3] From Sense8 (2015), what Hernando declares to his class when he’s outed quite nakedly as gay.

[4] Except for moderate prudes like Jameson, but more on him later in the volume.

[5] My friend, Mugi, is a survival sex worker and a plural personality caring for his daughter. The realities of care are higher when the street looms overhead, but also the need to shield one’s identity from harmful parties waiting to prey on unhoused victims. Most sex workers use aliases, but those in a housing crisis are especially vulnerable, thus need our help most of all. If you can help Mugi, his webpage has multiple donation options. Any bit goes a long way.

[6] I.e., the riddle of steel from Conan the Barbarian (1981): “Steel isn’t strong, boy! Flesh is stronger! What is steel compared to the hand that wields it?”

[7] Coined by Cory Doctorow’s “Pluralistic: TikTok’s Enshittification” (2023):

Here is how platforms die: first, they are good to their users; then they abuse their users to make things better for their business customers; finally, they abuse those business customers to claw back all the value for themselves. Then, they die.

I call this enshittification, and it is a seemingly inevitable consequence arising from the combination of the ease of changing how a platform allocates value, combined with the nature of a “two sided market,” where a platform sits between buyers and sellers, holding each hostage to the other, raking off an ever-larger share of the value that passes between them (source).

Sex workers are a common casualty of this, and travel nomadically to make a living. Selective punishment means that sex workers who exist as “cash cows” (excuse the term) are allowed to exist where normally they would not; i.e., pimped out by de facto jailors; e.g., Elon Musk, as he uses his tremendous resources… to spitefully attack trans people after his wife divorced him and slept with Chelsea Manning, but also corral and intimidate labor into living under his thumb. The banality of evil really isn’t “cool”; it’s just a bunch of sad, pathetic and cruel old men alienated from nature abusing a system they were born into—e.g., with Musk inheriting his means, motives and opportunities from his allegedly emerald-mine-owning dad:

In an interview with The Sun UK, Errol Musk revealed that Elon Musk went on a four-day visit to his emerald mine in South Africa when he was just a teenager. According to him, they went to the mine in the Lake Tanganyika region “to pick up a cargo of emeralds and fly them back to their native South Africa.” As per his statement: “I visited the mine once, Elon came with me. It was lousy. There was nothing to eat except stamp mielies [ground dried corn]. Elon never ate anything for four days in a row.” Back in January, Elon Musk had tweeted that he’d offer one million dogecoin, worth $93,000 at the time, to anyone who can prove that this emerald mine actually existed. In a previous The US Sun report, Errol Musk had revealed that he can prove the mine’s existence. He further added, “Elon knows it’s true. All the kids know about it. My daughter has three or four emerald pendants. Elon saw them (the emeralds) at our house. He knew I was selling them” (source: Priya Singh’s “Father Details 4-Day Visit to Emerald Mine with Billionaire Son, 2023).

The point isn’t that the mine is real, but that the rumors of it orbit around someone who has far surpassed his father’s ability to do harm; e.g., Musk enabling Nazis on Twitter (one hand washing the other), weaponizing tech bros against labor through gentrified products made at racist factories, and presenting himself as a god to worship despite inventing nothing. He’s a real Wizard of Oz.

Censorship and segregation really is no defense for sex workers. Those on larger platforms are able to make ends meet, albeit as the exception that proves the rule; i.e., they often have to push their practices to cater to the status quo; e.g., trans misogyny is a thing and effects other sex workers through marginalized in-fighting: me, being dogpiled by cis and queer AFAB sex workers (source: Persephone van der Waard’s “Setting the Record Straight, Transmisia Experience: 5/26/2022”). This isn’t always the case. Some, like Nina Hartley (as we shall see) become activists; but she was also an industry pro who survived swimming with sharks long enough to have the luxury of a platform, thus a voice. My whole book revolves around giving sex workers a voice who don’t have that kind of privilege.

[8] The breaking of societal and material bonds, but also the childish desires to kill our problems through Malthusian solutions; i.e., a snap reflected in smaller forms like suicide and genocide; e.g., Aaron Bushnell killing themselves to speak to a systemic problem out of desperation, and Thanos during fascism solving an imaginary problem with godhood because he cannot imagine a better world than the one outside Capitalism. Yet while heroic fantasies and calls for correction emerge during crisis, the state (thus workers) are always in crisis, meaning such theatre is fine so long as it serves workers, not the state (constants and variables).

Originally part of an undivided volume—specifically Volume Two of my Sex Positivity (2023) book series—this blog post now belongs to a promotion called “Brace for Impact“ (2024); i.e., that went on to become its own completed module in Volume Two: the Poetry Module, aka Volume Two, part one. The Poetry Module was primarily inspired by Harmony Corrupted.

Click here to see “Brace for Impact’s” Table of Contents and Full Disclaimer.

Further Reading: Volume Two actually divides into three modules/sub-volumes, each with its own promotion and release. “Brace for Impact” is the first (re: Volume Two, part one), but there are also promotions for Volume Two, part two’s twin Monster Modules, The Undead and Demons: “Searching for Secrets” and “Deal with the Devil“!

Update, 5/1/2024: Volume Two, part one (the Poetry Module) is out! I wrote a preface for the module along with its debut announcement. Give that a look; then, go to my book’s 1-page promo to download the latest version of the PDF (which will contain additions/corrections these posts will not have)!

Permissions: Any publicly available images are exhibited for purposes of education, transformation and critique, thus fall under Fair Use; private nude material and collabs with models are specifically ally 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.

“Following in Medusa’s Footsteps”: Teaching between Media and our Bodies, and a Bit of Coaching

To escape the closeted freakshow status of nature-as-abject, we can employ monstrous language that allows for sex-positive forms of essence, knowledge and power exchange through ludo-Gothic BDSM; e.g., not just the Amazon or knight, damsel or demon, but the vampire (queer person), gross person (fat/muscular) or person of color, etc, as combined with a whole army of Gothic status symbols and arrangements of power and control. As profound ontological statements concerned with Cartesian abuse, these make up a collective ludo-Gothic paradox/educational act; i.e., rooted in Gothic play and psychosexual performance, thus adjacent to phallic harm as normally produced by the state and which we to overthrow through cryptonymic rebellion: to look the part, but no longer play it by refusing to obey the elite’s evil commands; e.g., as Anubis does to Emperor Tulpa: “Ronins, I am one of you!” (source).

 —Persephone van der Waard, Sex Positivity, Volume One (2024)

Picking up from where “Meeting Medusa” left off…

This second subdivision to “Teaching” part two proceeds from meeting Medusa in our daily lives, considering the monstrous-feminine as instructed according to two additional factors: the liminal relationship between our minds and multimedia, and as something to coach while keeping that in mind.

Teaching is learning and both require being in tune/touch with—following along, paying attention to—nature in ways that help us think critically about important things (our rights), which all appear in popular media as the Gothic connects and encompasses. The Gothic mode draws attention to things that carry value, including heroes as idealized and taboo subjects, inviting critical comparison between the two: as secret identities and alter egos that are, themselves, open secrets to ongoing and unaddressed societal problems; i.e., the monstrous-feminine, regardless of where it appears in media; e.g., comic books speaking to a repressed desire to transform and become “strong enough” (through critical thought about such things) to actually “do work”—like animals that, when invoked in a wonderous, freakshow fashion, help ourselves through others (e.g., the xenomorph, of course; Stan Lee’s 1963’s The Amazing Spider-man; and female Amazons, next page, as having animal qualities: Batgirl/woman): a thing that cannot die, but stubbornly survives in ways that “flip the bird” to Cartesian forces, seemingly shouting “Suck my girl cock, Descartes!” as they do.

 (source)

Media is symbiotic. What’s important to remember here is that all operate in connection to each other as interconnected beings that, like a game of tug-o’-war, relate to the experiences of either party in either direction within capital (thus disorder and panic as made to panic and frighten us). This kayfabe is ultimately meta and forever at play insofar as it interrogates society-as-Puritanical through mimetic copies of itself that are more modest or less:

(source: a fan edit to Bruce Timm’s original page)

As such, the Gothic is cryptomimetic, meaning its cryptonymy (often masks and costumes—a theme we’ll explore in this chapter and others) uses mimesis through popular forms of disguise-like media (that emerge in times of scarcity out of natural/oral forms into material/written ones locking horns; e.g., spandex less a disguise and more a censorship of the statuesque nude whose imaginary antiquity is restricted to modest lifesavers under American Puritanism: echoes of the Comic Code Authority as the comic book equivalent of the infamous Hayes Code in cinema). This includes the Internet Age and automation (which includes things like Pinterest recommending me things as I write, helping me weaponize the Algorithm against the state—suckers). My approach to thinking critically about the Gothic is to focus on it as a mode of being and thinking concerned with, and composed primarily of, popular media in many different forms (source: Persephone van der Waard’s “Sex, Metal, and Videogames,” 2021); i.e., to be sex-positive is to think critically about commonplace things that store or reify value according to a mode that studies their reactions back and forth; e.g., memes[1] as a repeating image generally used to communicate through humor about society at large: through aggregates but also sequences that disagree and clash (my mother and I as she helps me write this book, helping it grow and evolve despite our mutual differences. “Mothers of the world, unite!”).

This includes us in relation to it as artists, but also detectives and advocates using our critical-thinking skills to contribute to a pedagogy of the oppressed: regarding complicated things like muses, monsters and mothers that normally are bought-and-paid for within capital (“voting with our wallets”) but for us are thought about independent of that voting mechanism; i.e., to advocate for, and investigate issues of, people, places and things underrepresented by established courts and jurisdictions (lawyers are usually threats made by wealthy people—attack librarians). We must critique those, and by extension capital, by thinking about them in ways that burst bubbles; i.e., that include everything normally left out in popular media as a matter of profit and maintaining the status quo (cops and victims, damsels and demons, us versus them); e.g., as lawyers, jokers and educators like Legal Eagle does, handsomely encompassing all three while mixing humor[2], stylish clothes and education (teachers are parental and sexy in ways that invite, at times, less-than-platonic admiration):

Like them, the praxial-synthetic idea is to loosen up but not be too loose regarding teaching and monstrous-feminine motherhood; i.e., to be as creatures of habit whose good habits are consciously informed and tempered during synthesis to prevent harm caused by bad habits; e.g., ludo-Gothic BDSM and parental kinks (daddy and mommy doms) versus actual incest (and other such harm) through performances that aren’t the same thing. The idea is to be ready and flexible, thus prepared, for whatever capital throws at us, including our friends (and other disruptive methods that frustrate our efforts to challenge capital using sex-positive monsters; re: elaborate strategies of misdirection): “Something doesn’t fit, but why?” In turn, the Gothic demands you “solve for X” regarding generational problems (“that moment in high school where they told us algebra would save our lives”); it becomes not just a question to ask in repetition, but an exercise to repeat, a mantra, a detail to condition while asking questions that remind us of ongoing hidden threats (cryptonyms): “My breathing is off, but why?” (we’ll explore the medical side of “remember to breathe” in the next prep section).

Our focus, here, are mothers-as-monstrous—something to paradoxically rescue from its “own” bad rap using slutty language reclaimed for subversive, liberatory reasons; i.e., Medusa’s a slut, but doesn’t deserve to be harmed for it. In short, being a slut without harm is her right. Achieving such recognition in society at large is what liberating monster moms is all about.

(source: Jake Rosenthal’s “The Pioneer Plaque: Science as a Universal Language,” 2016)

To that, monstrous-feminine subversion and education go hand-in-hand, but more than two hands because ours is a group effort (and involves andro/gynodiverse monsters that never heard the word “Vitruvian,” or saw the Pioneer Plaque [1972] and its whitewashed, Cartesian view of the world from a colonizer’s eyes: the panoptic astronoetic eye colonizing anything different for profit, a) resulting in a eugenics-grade* homogeneity that enslaves all of nature’s “emergent” beings by white European descendants from the same Imperial Core literally jettisoning its likeness into outer space; and b) echoed by older pioneers, gold rushes, and arms races behind which military optimism always conceals a military function to 20th-century science fiction stories): of children wise beyond their years and game wily sages speaking in riddles but seeing the world as precocious children do—playfully and by adding to something that must also grow and change, leaving all of it behind in a puzzling trail (the narrative of the crypt) that shows we’re not so different from animals; i.e., that we both feel fear and can be manipulated to attack when angry and scared. To find out who’s who and get to the bottom of things, we’ll have to return to animals and nature armed with our wits (entering Hell and breathing it in, not holding one’s breath). This occurs through the power of the Humanities (to think by creating in many forms and vice versa) married to the Gothic and monsters; I am a monster mother and Renaissance girl, but you can be too! “We all float down here!”

*Which, Harmony Corrupted points out, occurs “aside from being instrumentalized by corporations to keep us self-conscious and hooked to consumerism under the guise of self-improvement”—the usual self-evident (ipso facto) cryptonymy of settler-colonial fabrications barricading the mind.

(artist: Demi Levato)

“We’ll get you, and your little dog too!” As such predator-prey stories and interactions demonstrate, it’s all about the blend, the balance; i.e., in service to workers (not the state; re: centrists and the balance of order through conflict that quells chaos-as-labor) treated as witches, threats. The praxial idea is to use what we have (our bodies, labor and material resources) to speak through monsters (mothers or otherwise) as things to live with in open secret, but confront in non-lethal/non-harmful ways that humanize their nostalgic past as equally non-fatal when revived in the present: the madwoman in the attic (the Medusa as much as Antoinette Causeway) as dehumanized, even non-human, but still deserving of human rights and humane treatment despite their limited power and/or faculties. To prevent her death and ours, the power is in our hands to overcome the sins of the father to acquire our mobile objective/ambrosia; i.e., to imbibe it like medicine and habitually dissolve it into us before we explode (re: Dr. Leo Marvin’s “death therapy”).

This proposed solution requires riddles to wrestle with, thereby using a concurrent means of monitoring and assessing our vitals: to teach in methods that last (in bed and elsewhere) according to memory as something virtually without limit; e.g., the rhetors, but also imagination, creativity and passion through monsters as world-famous globetrotters; i.e., akin to insects like the wasp and caterpillar as covering the planet: a cultured presence, and one aware of culture’s power to (re)shape the face of the Earth—through the battles lost and won on all fields real, imaginary and in between. “We can’t trust the insect,” Seth Brundle insisted; and yet, insect politics, Amazonomachy (“monster war”) and forlorn hopes become a vital means of performance and play on smaller doubles reared from history as partially fabricated, wrought from whole cloth:

(artist: François-Louis-Joseph Watteau)

Close-minded people will mistake our ghoulish enthusiasm, excitement and willingness to engage with rape and war simulacra for being “upset,” or “simping[3]” for Medusa; i.e., “female weakness” as Oedipal. While this aims to invalidate, it’s also partly correct. Our enjoyment of monster mommies overlaps with trauma as something to confront in popular theatrical places; i.e., the ghost of the counterfeit and process of abjection; e.g., the Pyramids of Giza and Orientalism, a routinely traveled gravesite alive with a curse of fatal knowledge tied to an imaginary past forever received (from Shelley to Napoleon to Lovecraft to Mercyful Fate). Furthermore, would you put your trust in someone who loves monsters (and mothers—mommy issues) or hates them? Love knows no bounds, especially regarding monsters by those who live them in a sex-positive way. You could say the same about actual cruelty but why would we want to make the world more cruel (animal cruelty or cruelty towards human groups treated like maternal animals, which sex workers often are)?

In all forms, Hell is a place to play with inside according to what people (traditionally the middle class) like but can be occupied and reclaimed by all homies. Often, it happens through various classes of mix-up, including etymological ones—Gaza (“strong city”) versus Giza (“the place of the pyramids” and “cut stone”)—and murder/rape fantasies: the “curse of the Pharaohs” being the spectre of settler colonialism feared by a fascinated middle class, and who the oppressed weaponize against capital (counterterror’s murder fantasies given an outlet) since Napoleon and the Battle of the Pyramids. Propaganda battles aside, Napoleon was a master of propaganda regarding public opinion, but ultimately had to leave Egypt; the same postcolonial principle is used by those seeking truth when spiraling into Hell as a Gothic classroom (to prevent spiraling and suicide ideation in real life). It becomes something to admit into us; i.e., by refusing harmful realities we substitute with our own mysterious mothers. That is, inside a world where nothing is owned by anyone except workers owning their labor and their rights, nothing can be stolen; except Capitalism tries to own everything thus steal it from around them, most notably labor by dimorphically sexualizing and alienating it! Mothers as monsters, teachers, caregivers, lovers, etc.

The iconoclastic idea is to mix and match, provided the speculative thinking and playfulness that emerge demonstrably lead to better things. To that, consider how parents are a bit like doctors, in that both save lives by not doing harm as something to teach, but also to play at (“doctor” or “parent”; re: BDSM and kink, often in animalized forms). So do monsters like the Creature when expressed in parental forms serving a medicinal function that cures larger issues (alienation from nature-as-fetish). Per the Gothic, this regards institutions like hospitals, but also antiquated forms of maternal instruction that often combine: animal poetry and house calls (“doctor’s orders”); i.e., the home as where we are, thus making moving unnecessary when saving the lives of others. People who feel sick often push others away to protect them. Keeping with the doctor analogy, suicide victims often do; keeping with the animal metaphor, such behavior apes a dying cat, leading predators away from loved ones. And yet, it also demonstrates crisis through mixed metaphors: those like Medusa and mothers—in pain, nearing death, as crying out for help through code (as humans and animals do in different ways that overlap): suicide as praxis, vis-à-vis Aaron Bushnell’s martyrdom (re: “An Ode to a Martyr“).

As such, a collective assistance towards all life is as much about technique and talent as natural and supplied through work, but also the mindset of those wielding these devices and who they want to help by mixing this with that; e.g., pleasure and “harm”; i.e., aiding others through desperately reckless self-surgery that is exploratory and palliative (calculated risk) but also assisted suicide of the self as a perceived problem, a burden on the home, the group. Their tragic martyrdom—the exiting as an actual, cataclysmic event—can be prevented through theatrical stories indebted to ongoing dialectical-material struggles: “to be or not to be” made “to be” by showing Medusa there’s nowhere you’d rather be—by their side as someone to help, thus healing the home by finding empathy among the insectoid wretched and vulnerable: as made strangest only by capital shrinking compassion with canon, and camp seeking to expand the humanity (and humane treatment) of Medusa through what they create (e.g., music, like Jethro Tull’s “Aqualung” [1971]: “Feeling like a dead duck…”): monsters, mothers, heroes, and animals. Through the hero as monstrous-feminine, motherly and animalistic, we’re left with helpful puzzles like the caterpillar and wasp as abstractions of an imaginary past to learn from; in turn, these become something that stays on, a maternal allegory living in and around us when “Frankenstein has to go.” No matter how hard we cry for them not to leave—to call for them to save us and then hold tight as the dark, titanic winds rip them from our weakened grip (“dying in our arms”)—we can rest easy knowing nothing is truly ever gone.

This remains true in idealized forms we can raise as graveyards to what isn’t but could be in the future; e.g., Autumn Ivy disappointing me (from Volume One):

The problem here, isn’t selling sex, but that Autumn’s approach became prescriptive and self-important; i.e., a weird canonical nerd smiling their Hollywood smile, getting fake tits to emphasize their female attributes within the Amazon persona, and treating false modesty like a lucrative virtue exclusive to them and their brand: the bogus and incredibly harmful argument that partially-clothed bodies and implied nudity are somehow “worth more” than fully naked ones are. It wasn’t explicitly stated, but nevertheless showed in how Autumn treated me over time: they were always the victim, and I could never be one (source).

I.e., my reflexive attraction to mommy doms like Autumn versus Autumn being an unapologetic transmisogynist who policed my work: through their false modesty of “no ham sandwich” while punching down at me as someone actually fighting for all sex workers: as an AMAB artist, writer and trans-woman sex worker myself.

To err is human, and even if we mistake a subjugated Hippolyta for one that doesn’t bow to Theseus, hope remains. Despite heroes being doomed to disappoint, meeting and questioning them and their monopolies stays vital because in them we can see a thing that inspired me: Medusa as perfect.

Glimpsing her idealized form, I became determined to resurrect a maternal protector of my own; i.e., informed by past ideas given to me as a little girl; e.g., Alien, but also Fred Dekker’s benevolent Creature: a paternal guardian[4] I envisioned (through monster bias) being a tall and strong Amazon—one who wouldn’t flinch when facing true adversity, capably protecting the little girl in all of us. “Goodbye” becomes “Until we meet again, in this life or the next!” as something to envision or hope for based on past failures we can parade, revised into better examples: what we loved about those who hurt us. It becomes beautiful in death as ecstatic and precious, like lightning in a bottle—a deathly reflection that, like the caterpillar and the wasp, intimates total death and salvation through transformation on the same heroic body the mirror shows us: a pussy to put on the chainwax (to camp canon with)! A better mommy.

(model and artist: Autumn Ivy and Persephone van der Waard)

In turn, history is married and written on monsters and imagination as half-real, which cannot be owned, thus stolen. Engagement is endless, but occurs from cradle to grave, interacting Numinously with those mighty and beautiful who have gone the way of all flesh. Such life after death is profound, and becomes something to capture all on its own. To do so here and elsewhere in the book, I have borrowed trauma and value from the past as it exists in the present (monsters, mothers and popular media) to put into myself and, in turn, write my motherly heart out on these pages: monsters as food for thought, for courage, for love eternal as something to give like a gift, not take by force (“You have heart; I’ll take that too!”). It is grown inside us from external forces, then eaten out of ourselves and what we create and give back (through “little deaths”) towards others who, enriched, may better the world with: according to a prandial idea of enriching ourselves. We become something to eat and pass onto the next generation “cannibalizing us”; i.e., to—as Bay taught me—regain our power and knowledge as a sign of mutual respect and love between workers bonded to nature against capital, which in turn will make us stronger than we ever thought possible/would otherwise be had the heart of the corpse been malnourished (as immiserated bodies generally are). We become not just mothers, but warriors of an Indigenous character.

In relation to the caterpillar and the wasp, their dualistic roles—of consumption amid life and death as part of a disguised cycle—hints at a speech Adam Savage originally gave to the Harvard Humanist Society in 2010:

[…] There may be no purpose, but it’s always good to have a mission. And I know of one fine allegory for an excellent mission should you choose to charge yourself with one: Carlos Castaneda‘s series of books about his training with a Yaqui Indian mystic named Don Juan. There’s a lot of controversy about these books being represented as nonfiction. But if you dispense with that representation, and instead take their stories as allegories, they’re quite lovely.

At the end of The Eagle’s Gift, Don Juan reveals to his student that there’s no point to existence. That we’re given our brief 70-100 years of consciousness by something the mystics call “The Eagle,” named for its cold, killer demeanor. And when we die, the eagle gobbles our consciousness right back up again.

He explains that the mystics, to give thanks to the eagle for the brief bout of consciousness they’re granted, attempt to widen their consciousness as much as possible. This provides a particularly delicious meal for the eagle when it gobbles one up at the end of one’s life.

And that, to me, is a fine mission (source).

Except, Savage loves Scott’s Humanities work in the Alien franchise, and whose own “caterpillar and the wasp” we’ve touched upon; i.e., echoes the idea that motherly food isn’t just “for the Eagle,” but other workers as a collective whole that challenges the state as a giant animal, kaiju-style. The state is the caterpillar and the wasp, and so are we. What matters is how we speculate through animalistic “violence” to achieve liberation while keeping these theatrical paradoxes in mind.

The fire of the gods, then, sits among workers and is given back to them from us by virtue of familial absorption; i.e., between us and those we see as family (us) where sex and protection overlap: monsters as coaches, role models, parents, in life and death everlasting. It becomes a source of renewed pride and love to share between voyeurs and exhibitionists according to our mutual established boundaries (exhibit 33b2c); i.e., our bodies’ morphological variations—our zweihänder and our mommy milkers, but also big booties, small booties, itty-bitty titties, thunder thighs and stilts, soup cans and vices (the owner[s] usually set[s] the tone for the level of self-disparagement, unless they have a humiliation kink that is understood by all parties)—all as a source of pride unto Medusa, but also our gasping feral appetites merged with our “extra” senses: humor as something that comes magically alive during such performances.

The silly weirdos[5] are the best in bed, I’ve found, and the ones who laugh, roll their eyes, and shakily breathe, “I love you!” as I fuck their stupid brains out; e.g., glasses are “windshields” to protect the eyes from flying jizz—no laughing matter and yet oddly funny all the same as we lose control and push for ecstasy together! In doing so, we’ll have spurned capital to know what love is, thus can pass it on as a maternal refrain: to always learn and encourage when searching for by our monstrous-feminine example.

To that, look at our passion, our warmth, our fluids and messy aftermath, our silly O faces (“You should see your face!” a means of spreading cheer and delight through Gothic sex)—then go out and make your own by living as we have! Discovery is a process that searches for the “right fit,” which is different for everyone. Some people like bossy and some like gentle; e.g., I like gentle mommy doms[6] with a strict aesthetic, but like to top them as they command me from the bottom (and give praise while demanding worship through cum tributes). Some people want romance, snuggles, or gestures of (often public) displays of affection. Some people wanna just go home and fuck; i.e., to take their coffee with sugar or take it black, but it’s given based on preference. No shame in either provided everyone’s on board, that everyone trusts everyone, that no harm is done and that all rights are upheld.

In other words, when “slaying” pussy yourselves, don’t enact the caterpillar and wasp’s predator-and-prey relationship too literally (causing actual harm, beheading Medusa); find out what you like (what fits) and go from there. Fence and touch your “opponents” (whatever the shape) to bond, thus unite, against the true foe of all workers (Capitalism). “Seize the day” (fuck) until you’re blue in the face, remembering as you do that however incendiary and inflammatory something seems, all’s fair in love and war provided sex positivity is upheld! This goes for all monsters, mommies and daddies alike; e.g., Bay is AFAB, but also a daddy who I can call “mommy” if I want (earned trust and respect).

(exhibit 33b2c2a: A corpse on a bed, or a cutie with soup brain? Though sick and vulnerable, Bay taught me the value of life by treasuring it while we’re alive [not throwing it away as Cartesian warriors so often do].

Apart from things to show off in private galleries open to the public, and to flash those in power as a means of provoking them, and that doing so is a right we have in defense of our other rights, there’s also another function: to show off not just the bodies and the sex as intimate [which it is], self-serving and amusing [which it is], and uniquely beautiful per case [which it is; e.g. the amount of cum and distance a tight little pussy makes a big dick shoot—messy and far], but the relationship between those bodies to express its contract in visual forms. This includes the spoken and unspoken aspects [hard and soft boundaries] of the people involved, whose sex-positive subtext becomes part of the exhibit teaching people regardless of the artist’s diminished capacity [their absence, however that appears]: their art speaks for them and for us as belonging to the same larger group. All is shown in boundaries that navigate power as a place to go and interrogate among ourselves: capturing our relationships and their power as something to exchange and perform through the dynamics of each working in unison; i.e., whose frank, honest invigilation invites not just the same behaviors in the painting but also the presentation of the painting as something to do elsewhere—a monstrous-feminine Renaissance revived and achieved through teamwork.

Of course, not everyone has to partake and the game isn’t “fair” [asymmetrical warfare]. But the fact remains: censorship denies people the right to express themselves in safe spaces featuring sex positivity and sex coercion as forever-at-odds; i.e., in ironic and unironic forms. Sex-positive art can’t harm you, but its censorship can; censorship is tantamount to genocide, meaning it reduces logically to violence against those things [mothers] the state controls through weaponized masculine force; i.e., since the days of the Caesars, of city-states, of pretty much anything after hunter-gatherer societies: win against the enemy-as-different [alien] to achieve glory through endless military conquest. Capitalism is a system of thought that prioritizes the individual in service to the elite, meaning that to speak out through open, monstrous, sex-positive expression [as we are] is paramount to preventing it [which we owe to ourselves, “just because”; i.e., there’s no logical argument for or against genocide, it’s simply incorrect relative to our rights being essentially in conflict with state predation]. Canon and camp, sex positivity and sex coercion—these are literally functional opposites, as are the coaches and artisans promoting them and all their forms that follow function as a flow of power towards or away from the state. Permission can be granted implicitly in pre-established relationships that are already secure; those smaller relationships interface and relate to bigger ones and even bigger ones that, in medieval language, often work as animalistic shorthand [also known as art; re: our aforementioned caterpillar and wasp]. And if you disagree, I’d like to respond, “Welcome to real life! I’m Persephone from Earth; what planet are you from?” 

The fact remains, we all come from a “sample of one,” and the usual Cartesian divisions [and their historical-material patterns] can be reconciled with and rectified while surviving as people do; i.e., who must kill for food, build shelter and acquire/devise enrichment as part of a natural world they’re stewards[7] of [nature and animals can do all of these things, but they can’t consent]. Those aren’t mutually exclusive unless you’ve been coded to treat nature as alien/monstrous-feminine and rape it endlessly for profit, for victory, for the state. Our victory is “Rome’s” fractal recursion successfully transformed—castle by castle, cathedral by art exhibit, blowjob to smiling portrait—into an anarcho-Communist utopia made here on Earth through Gothic poetics. The more the merrier, of course, but also the more language to use; i.e., producing a more flexible attack and redundant security system [often expressed as a matter of optics and presentation].)

Monstrous-feminine puzzles like the caterpillar and wasp might seem to oversimplify things while steadily and stubbornly stating the obvious (and sounding like someone who’s never boned before, but the best sex should always feel new, exciting and fresh); it’s also a profound, regenerative testament to our fading existences as profound—i.e., through prophetic revelation and dark delight felt through the living who survive us: “Her tits were there.” Her tits, man. In computer science, this is called “redundancy”; i.e., the more of a given message, the more failures it can endure before total system failure. For us, the message of Medusa is memory as the very stamp of worker life—of what Capitalism through settler colonialism craves to snuff out, to exterminate: people, their lives and culture, their dreams and nightmares, their sex and monsters, their poetic renditions through the likes of our animalistic bug duo. All extinct, all gone, and for what? So Elon Musk can feel cool on Twitter? To tell us what goes where; i.e., dicks-in-pussies-only regardless if the pussy owner consents? The idea is to go home with whomever we want—for John Denver’s proverbial “Mountain Mama” (of any gender or location) to take us home and have whatever part go into whatever part because all parties agree.

(artist: Sabrina Nicole)

In short, we live by Sex Positivity in order to speak with our bodies and their labor through sex/gender expression as medieval towards a post-scarcity world; i.e., “be stupid and gay together” to whatever degree of intimacy we’re all comfortable with (some people hate kissing and some fucking—ace variation) while making the world a better place one step at a time between great warring beasts on either side of us, and expressed in animalistic language beyond the caterpillar-wasp example I gave; e.g., Mae Martin’s Sap (2023). Martin’s argument presents succor-in-shelter as besieged from both sides (outside and from within) as an apt metaphor to our lived realties, inside which we become free to play with; i.e., reality as something to make our own delightful “sap” with: using everything we can to build something colossal on the mandala’s freedom of expression. This happens within boundaries broken and bent, but also socio-material constraints and fading inhibitions: giving way to matriarchal expressions that challenge the status quo. Doing so through Medusa is not to state the obvious—that a dark motherly cutie is as lovely as the day is long—but to make the world like their beauty and image through repetitious appreciation: that which develops better habits among different people and the things they leave behind as, diverse and intersectional, marrying collectively to empathy and pleasure; i.e., our walking synonyms and paradoxes, the gradients of infinity and their outcomes, our dark sides and light confused delightfully as the Gothic does, etc; to crow endlessly love-drunk on obvious things, to want to devote a book to each and every one. So pro-tip, lovelies: If you put yourself out there and are sex-positive, don’t be surprised when unicorns (of any value, color or gender) stroll up looking for some sugar (speaking from experience here—with this book, and college; I went to get an education and find love. I got [and continue to get] both)!

The idea, in the interim, is to coach (which I shall do a little longer before we conclude the “Teaching” element of our prep with a heroic refrain focused on conflict and mothers): motivating is wrought with clichés and homegrown advice regarding dragons to “slay”; e.g., “remember to breathe” pertaining to those who routinely feel small hiding from capitalistic forces (me as someone suffocating myself in ways not completely foreign to my mother’s, but also different to her constrictive habit[at] and survival mechanisms); i.e., in relation to death and similar titanic forces—to be kept waiting by a mistress who never lets us go outside, and to which its paradisiacal “beyond” is paraded in fantastical homecomings before death; e.g., by me, a queer orator and speechwriter/giver who has written for funerals and weddings (echoing Tolstoy’s Anna Karenina [1878]: “happy families are all alike, unhappy families are unhappy in their own way”). Our expertise speaks to the power our enemies do not have over us relayed in speculative verse selectively applied per moment of a given “turn at the helm”; e.g., “my will is as strong as yours and my kingdom as great; you have no power over me” being a phrase my mother taught me to banish evil men with; i.e., Tolkien’s black arrow received “from my mother and she from of old; if ever you came from the forges of the true Queen under the Mountain, go now and speed well!” Such gender swaps (of one of my favorite Tolkien foils) finance rebellion as active between people and fiction, sticking the bullseye by prodding us to respond (with Cupid’s thick shaft) against those rich in gold but poor in spirit; ready, take aim, loose!

To this, Gothic-Communist equilibrium is maintained in monstrous-feminine continuum. As such, a consumptive and interpretative activity like reading about monsters is merely one of many ways to pass knowledge among people who partially disagree about Medusa (often heatedly at that; i.e., to take the verb “haggling” from Twain, whose titular Huckleberry Finn dragged a sawblade over a dead forest animal to fake his own death with): its pedagogic limits stretched taut as a bowstring and honed as sharp as an arrowhead through friendly contest—e.g., my mother, a linguist and lover of “literature” (rhetorical quotes, but defined by class, culture and bias) convinced that readers read by opening a book, turning the pages and looking at its words; me, a ludo-Gothicist, who sees the value of ergodic motion (attained by non-trivial effort) to interpret and use the words inside to appreciate them beyond one’s idiosyncratic interests, entering a shared generational struggle: liberating mothers. Despite our differences, then, the bricks of this castle were a mother-daughter effort (that’s your immortality, Mother).

In turn, “death” (expressed with the Gothic likeness of natural forms, mid-poiesis) becomes something to face and delight in, celebrated through scholarship that is encouraged from older mothers to their literal or figurative daughters; e.g., for whom my mother gave me a room of one’s own to practice, perfect, and produce my own echoes thereof. Except qualities of those in small have, over time, reached the same place of maturity learning from my matronly stances. I’m 37 and, while not exactly “old as fuck,” see in my muses (not teens but younger than me) echoes of my former self. We can be there together—alive on the edge (close to the sun) in so many forms of “free care” (through myths and monsters, in the flesh and in spirit); i.e., nation-sized but locally distributed helpers serving workers, that hold the information of our future in our hearts, bodies and minds. In devilish confidence, we hustle up as proletarian rainmakers who take on capital and live to tell the tale; i.e., by showing them who we are through the false pretenses of impostors that define us in paradox: monsters, warts and all, including jealousy and desire, love and respect, frustration and fulfillment, caterpillars and wasps.

Like Medusa, accidents and flaws define us (and monsters) through function, speaking to something so big, so profoundly massive that it might not fit (which is what size queens are for, taking it like a champ) and yet also “too small” to notice but for the appreciators of small things (truffle pigs). Goldilocks or not, all shapes and sizes have value. Failure and success, then, happen to the best of us. The mark of any good coach is persistence—to throw mud until something sticks; i.e., the mad scientist inviting a spark of inspiration inside the host until learning catches on, galvanizes: to see people not as dollar signs or free labor (sex or otherwise) but humans to respect, thus reflect that in nature as something to treat humanely.

In other worlds, every con has a mark to fleece, someone they clock from a mile away. Capital is a cabal of conmen. It’s not even about money as piles of gold, but capital as it functions—as positions and status. It’s about power and control through unequal arrangements thereof that serve the elite by moving money through nature. No amount of false hope or kind of magic pill will change the compulsions or behavioral/mood disorders (e.g., eating) and side effects of such diseases (e.g., withdrawal from alcoholism) pinned on Medusa; i.e., stemming from the state’s underlying material conditions (disguised through biological essentialism—a lack of consent, thus informed consent regarding AFAB persons forced into roles of biological motherhood, thus experience postpartum depression and all the other symptoms of pregnancy before, during and after).

To rescue Medusa, we have to change how power is distributed, which starts with how it is performed and viewed; re: ludo-Gothic BDSM when critiquing and responding creatively to theatre and other popular forms of media as vital to praxial synthesis in order to develop Gothic Communism. Anything else won’t work, meaning it’s always too little, too late; e.g., like singing “You are My Lucky Star[8]” (1935) on board the Narcissus, death there to greet us and take us home, one way or another. Catastrophic failure is incumbent on capital making our home, nature, inhospitable: Medusa as abjectly furious, feral thus unable to recognize us, expectant for a maw of death crammed more food—the battered housewife’s murderous womb (Shakespeare vis-à-vis Creed) but also queer and black revenge, and all other state victims occupying the same angry shell as monstrous-feminine, of nature; success is incumbent on preventing that by… putting the pussy on the chainwax (“starting a thing”)!

For us, this means “living with Mother” by abjuring the nuclear family unit (which orphans children as soon as they hit eighteen—by those with means, opportunity and motive; i.e., the elite). Patriarchal bloodlines start with the Superstructure, thus with entertainment inside the Imperial Core preying on the Global South; iconoclastic Gothic entertainment, by comparison, is “maximum care, minimum profit” through sex-positive icons, fashion, monsters as glamorous, arm candy and genderqueer[9] plus-ones; i.e., “the works,” provided the prestige it brings from the halls of power meaningfully challenges canon. Revolutionaries must be visible and doing good work, wearing their serpentine hearts on their sleeves; i.e., must do so precisely because dogma and blood libel, but also compelled marriage and motherhood (waifus/war brides) are bred into us—are force-fed to us by those making our home sick in order to rape and murder it, over and over (thus us): “I am the destroyer of everyone, / And the fall will be plentiful…” (TR/ST’s “Destroyer,” 2017).

(artist: Omar Dogan)

This maternal iconoclasm starts and ends with our diet as alienizing. In a Gothic sense, the gap to bridge invokes nature and monsters as like Medusa; i.e., humanize them from the dialectic of the alien, addressing greed and human rights regarding all opposing forces on a poetic level (again, with the likes of something vivid and classic, like our caterpillar-wasp refrain). Capital enslaves cuties to dominate the world as monstrous-feminine. To these same hotties, Communism shows kindness to a maternal group of monsters that, when combined, make a better world with each turn of the globe: with what each provides towards the whole; i.e., our money as something to pay workers with and put where our mouths are. “Just eat it,” Weird Al sings. Right in your cakehole, bunghole, any hole.

In all seriousness, everyone deserves love and thanks, to be told “I love you” like it’s our last night on Earth. Faced with crisis, we become motivational speakers, cheerleaders “boosting” through complementary sex, words and monsters, etc; i.e., lifting Excalibur by putting our backs into it, thinking outside the box to address problems inside the box—thinking with our box, meaning our junk, but also our mind (what my paternal grandfather called “you kop“)! Have faith in its ability to routinely thwart power as guerrillas have historically done for millennia (re: Roberts Asprey’s paradox of terror)—by surviving when empire wanted “to smash them out of existence, to be free of their cursed memory forever!” So whether it’s literally just that, or expressed playfully on safer ground—i.e., movies; e.g., Skeletor telling He-Man (whatever the gender) to “kneel before your master!” or Garth from Wayne’s World 2 (1990) saying “Do not eat the red liquorice!”—our murmurs of dissent must rise to a clamor whose storm, like Medusa, freezes the elite in place.

It’s quite an experience to live in fear (“That is what it is to be a slave!”). So we must be able to say in response, “No, never!” to imperial forces. So enough talk! Let this be our final battle, one—like Dracula’s 1997 soliloquy—to quote throughout the ages!

The road to mutual respect lies in how we treat the wretched; i.e., like building a cathedral (a theme we’ll return to often in this volume) that occurs as required, being in sync amid forces that aim to throw us off (those in power who, accustomed to things as they are, see our equalizing as a threat, something personal to resent, mid-scandal, no matter the cost). “Eye on the horizon, not the prize”; but also, sometimes the other way around, regarding contact with supplemental elements that compound, expand, and break the levy apart. One way or another, something’s gotta give (from state shift to more localized and personal breakups). So we have to look for warning signs even when things “seem fine,” when we’re dealing with people and/or ideals that seem “invincible”: capital, mothers, Medusa, etc. It’s not to push for a “hard reset,” but encourage radical change using speculative methods that recruit monsters (often maternal ones like the wasp) to evolve capital and workers in relationship to it; i.e., before we’re dead in the water thanks to climate change. Manufactured crisis leads to collapse by design, but Capitalism’s push for infinite growth cannot change the cold hard truth: the hubris of “cannot fail” by virtue of “built-to-fail” must reconcile with stressors leading to a final outcome only workers can prevent, not capital and the actual end of the world as manmade; i.e., by the state as something to speak out against in motivational forms like the Medusa.

As such, we speak truth to power and give actionable hope to workers through motherly monsters: a holistic method as something to teach and pass on, which I call Gothic Communism. It’s wherever the magicians go: “Behind the sky. On the other side of the rain[10]“; i.e., over the rainbow, with trash or garbage that—like Baum’s magical Scarecrow—springs to life (our “pieta”) and begins to dance for the delight of all… Until they don’t (from death or because our hour is up and they need more payment) and all we’re left with is the still, lifeless form: of the dark mother as an old friend, one whose powerful ancient memory wiggles snake-like, ever onwards!

Oh, duckies, how I could show off my own knowledge and delight—to endlessly prattle on and on like Schmendrick gushing about his make-believe Robin Hood! But we’ll see “him” again (true magic), so let’s cut short the pep talk (a brief gag to tourniquet the flow) and press on! “The woods are lovely, dark and deep[11]!”

As perpetual caretakers to ourselves and the world, I’ve shown how we shoulder the brunt of the blame as harbingers of Medusa in one of two forms—enabling our doom or salvation. I want to devote the rest of “Teaching” to my favorite sex-positive teaching device—monstrous mothers—as preceded by conflict during liminal expression. First, conflict; then, mothers-in-conflict and finally just mothers (the monstrous-feminine), liberated.

Onto “Conflict and Liberation“!

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Footnotes

[1] Humor enhances lessons, as do theatre and abstraction to solve problems through violence and monsters (e.g., the Ronin Warriors “solving fascism” by chopping it up, which we can question in different ways).

[2] See: “malicious erections” (from Washington State Legislature, 1881): “An injunction may be granted to restrain the malicious erection, by any owner or lessee of land, of any structure intended to spite, injure or annoy an adjoining proprietor. And where any owner or lessee of land has maliciously erected such a structure with such intent, a mandatory injunction will lie to compel its abatement and removal” (source). Sexy!

[3] For men who use the term unironically, “simping” is coddling within a double standard. Men can fuck up, even get drunk. They just can’t show weakness or vulnerability (and if they do, they must challenge and eliminate it through force) as coached into them by older men of the house: “No losers in this family! Win, win, win!” Very American, thus settler-colonial.

[4] Other examples include pets (Where the Red Fern Grows, 1961), monstrous children (Super Metroid, 1994), and manmade creations (Terminator 2, 1991).

[5] I.e., the sort touched by trauma who play dead/possum, “rape” play and somno, sleeping on Hell to work dark wonders, playing Hell on our dreams. The castle’s a girl; the girl’s a freak: “A rare, fatal vision, a Gothic dream to haunt the chapel with; a dark freaky church where no one gets hurt and there’s lots of sex, it’s the Neo-Gothic in a nutshell: visions of a better world when threatened by the ghost of capital, keeping the aesthetic of torture but not the context! It’s exquisite ‘torture,’ with a darky mommy queen!” (re: the review I wrote of a video Harmony Corrupted sent me—more on this in the medieval prep section). It’s a closeness with “death” to raise the blood pressure for just a second, an orgasm to give into and lose control, a little death that feels massive; i.e., a regaining of control through the medieval aesthetic of power and death, a building of fatal glory with non-fatal results or nostalgia that exposes, like the Oracle, the dark horrors of capital, of the home as alien: the family annihilator as genuine and guaranteed by good little soldiers who rape their mothers, shoot their fathers, and turn settler-colonial violence in on their own families through the home as fallen. Our “death” fantasies avoid that by confronting doubles of it that raise empathy from the dead, of the dead, for the dead, to the death. As usual, the enemy is Capitalism, which we combat through Neo-Gothic paradox: live burial and secular challengings of canonical, holy dogma; e.g., cum tributes. This isn’t purely psychological, but psychosexual and dialectical-material.

[6] Kinks generally overlap and vary per person. As discussed in Volume Zero, domming and subbing are separate from topping and being a bottom. Dom and sub are distributions of power as “more/less,” with the dom ostensibly having “more,” but the sub having the most in a mutually consenting scenario; and top and bottom generally mean to give and receive sexual pleasure (not always). And these overlap and exist with additional qualifiers amid negotiated boundaries.

For example, I’m 37 and ask the cuties I top to “gentle mommy dom” me while I fuck them; i.e., with praise, as they tell me how to use my dick and that I’m a good little girl. Despite my relatively advanced physical age (compared to my partners), I’m performatively regressing in a scenario where I’m dominated from the bottom by a gentle mommy dom, often by a dom who’s physically younger than me but acting older in a gentle way (with Harmony being 26, issuing praise, and acting nurturing and feral as I breed them in an online social-sexual exchange). It’s a highly tailored combination of sex, gender identity and performance amid flexible pre-established BDSM roles that can likewise change, mid-session; i.e., in a playful way based on feel, but also animal elements and spoken communication: safe words, commands, “breeding,” etc.

To this, BDSM, kink and Gothic poetics are actually three distinct things, each being modular and idiosyncratic—a constant exercise of establishing and maintaining trust, boundaries and power amid hard/soft rules; i.e., as articulated between two people’s social-sexual contract as ludo-Gothic, psychosexual. It helps confront and interrogate trauma, relieve stress and practice communication. For me, such BDSM (unequal power exchange) is sexual (kink) and roleplay dependent, except the obvious Gothic elements inform the sex/gender performance; i.e., as likewise adhering to my daily gender identity but sometimes diverging from it (regression). There’s a lot to keep track of and learn per case and I find it to not only be very engaging but also good social-sexual practice. The skills applied are useful during roleplay and bedroom stuff, but also regarding power exchange and relationships more broadly under any poetic scenario, anywhere it occurs (an obvious game or interaction, regardless if it’s an overt transaction or not); i.e., any “caterpillar” or “wasp.”

[7] Thus have access to technology including medicine as collectively able to a) end worker problems and b) maintain balance and harmony with nature until the sun burns out… except such things are tied to capital and industry as made to destabilize, enslave and exploit workers and the natural world; i.e., by withholding technology on purpose.

[8] Weaver was a Broadway actress who improvised the line in her theatrical debut:

Written by Arthur Freed and Nacio Herb Brown in 1935 for the MGM film, Broadway Melody of 1936, the song “You Are My Lucky Star” was released months before the film’s premiere to draw attention to the film’s production and stir up anticipation for the film’s premiere. […] It was made famous again with the release of the 1952 film, Singin’ In the Rain – this time as a duet between the movie’s stars, Gene Kelly and Debbie Reynolds – and is probably the most well-known version. For the 1979 science fiction horror film, Alien, actress Sigourney Weaver had the idea for her character, Lieutenant Ripley, to be shakily consoling herself with the classic song’s lyrics when facing the alien head on during the film’s climax – a more literal take on the song and an intentionally stark contrast to its glittering Hollywood origins (source: Busy Beaver Button Museum).

[9] Medusa as glamorous, like Ursula from The Little Mermaid (re: Jack Coleman, 2022). Superheroes, drag royalty and gender trouble (we’ll explore gender performance much, much more in Volume Three), elaborate strategies of misdirection (divide and conquer) and Gothic theatre (the sex trafficker banditti abducting not just maidens, but any and all small, helpless and sexually vulnerable*—those fragile little folks who can’t consent, thus blameless in a larger scheme that goes straight to the top: “all roads lead to Rome”). This is not impaired judgment, but a redundant operation of concealment in the open; i.e., cryptonymy disguising entertainment, back-to-back, as allegory among adversity drilled within franchises that are branded but aren’t people (though there is overlap; e.g.,  uniforms). They teach the brave to ask for help and the scared (our little fighters) to be brave, to look for care in others part of the same oppressed group: workers at large (this means all of them, not just white Imperial-Core teens playing detectives to achieve equality of convenience to “make Daddy proud”; i.e., “Radcliffe Syndrome”; e.g., Vecna’s “type” to torture and kill slowly and deliciously—white girls—while killing token non-female victims instantly and spitting them out like garbage).

*Child abuse, animal abuse, spouse abuse, guilt by the owned from the owner as classically the property’s master in all respects—father, husband, teacher, judge, head of state, etc. Medusa becomes something to brand, own, convert—to bind, torture, and kill. Except it’s ultimately bad for men, too, because they become unable to care for themselves, thus dependent on the very thing they’re alienated from as both mother/daughter and fearsome; i.e., unable to fend for themselves inside the household as woman’s domain; e.g., cooking (“Where’s my dinner?”), cleaning and laundry, compelled sex where they can’t please their partner (and often develop Virgin/Whore Syndrome) or look after their kids. In short, they become useless save as a breadwinner, thus a nervous wreck if the tides of the market don’t favor them at all times.

“Happy wife, happy life,” except times of economic hardship have men acting like infantile stoics who hide their feelings and their resentment of their position until they snap, all while being denied healthy therapeutic outlets and chained to their end of the nuclear family model. Some men run away (“go out for a pack of cigarettes”); some men neglect, beat or rape their wives and/or kids; many turn to drink; and an alarming number kill themselves and their partners by murder-suicide when the woman threatens to leave with the kids. They are his property and he invokes the “ancient rite of Athens,” Egeus-style, except he adds “Roman fool” into the mix (to save face). It’s idiotic inside the home as alien and broken, but fascists recruit vulnerable men everywhere; i.e., from stochastic death cults that, per Capitalist Realism, see the world as ending if they “can’t get a girl.” In these cases, lonely hopeless men can’t threaten to kill themselves if a girl leaves because they can’t get near one to put her in that position (thanks to early forms of feminism educating white cis-het women to know better, first and foremost). Instead, these chudwads become incels who hate and covet women (or feminine GNC people) from a distance: chasers of the Medusa.

Pro-tip to cis-het dudes: My guys, relationships are built on trust and mutual exchange. So listen to a girl and find out what she wants and likes instead of defaulting to male-coded behaviors; i.e., great deeds; e.g., Prince Lear and Lady Amalthea. So-called “manly men” aren’t really pussy magnets, but weird dudes who attract other weird dudes who “glaze” them (the latest Zoomer slang for “brownnose,” a dick-rider). So be sex-positive in good faith instead of openly or secretly creepy and the people you’re into will show interest; i.e., because you’ve stopped giving off Norman Bates vibes, thus aren’t the routine threat (cis-het misogynists) they’ve learned to avoid. From there, learn how to see the monstrous-feminine as human; i.e., people to compliment for the purposes of friendship and love, not a selfish goal. This requires actually being interested in them, as well as paying attention to, and asking questions about them. The more you do that, the closer you’ll become; and if she’s into you and feels safe, trust me, you’ll know because she’ll tell you (usually letting you into her bedroom and giving you bedroom eyes—if it’s not obvious, always ask if something is okay and wait for a clear answer). And if she doesn’t want to sleep with you but still thinks you’re good people, she probably knows a few sluts who are looking for some fun (casual or others); i.e., Austen’s matchmaker Emma, but X-rated.

Treat girls (and those force-coded as “girls”) like humans; your sex and social life will thank you!

[10] From Suzanna Clarke’s Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell (2004).

[11] From Robert Frost’s “Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening” (source, 1923).

Originally part of an undivided volume—specifically Volume Two of my Sex Positivity (2023) book series—this blog post now belongs to a promotion called “Brace for Impact“ (2024); i.e., that went on to become its own completed module in Volume Two: the Poetry Module, aka Volume Two, part one. The Poetry Module was primarily inspired by Harmony Corrupted.

Click here to see “Brace for Impact’s” Table of Contents and Full Disclaimer.

Further Reading: Volume Two actually divides into three modules/sub-volumes, each with its own promotion and release. “Brace for Impact” is the first (re: Volume Two, part one), but there are also promotions for Volume Two, part two’s twin Monster Modules, The Undead and Demons: “Searching for Secrets” and “Deal with the Devil“!

Update, 5/1/2024: Volume Two, part one (the Poetry Module) is out! I wrote a preface for the module along with its debut announcement. Give that a look; then, go to my book’s 1-page promo to download the latest version of the PDF (which will contain additions/corrections these posts will not have)!

Permissions: Any publicly available images are exhibited for purposes of education, transformation and critique, thus fall under Fair Use; private nude material and collabs with models are specifically ally 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.

(artist: Lera PI)

“Teaching (the Caterpillar and the Wasp),” part two: Solving Riddles; or, Following in Medusa’s Footsteps

When Perseus slew the Medusa he did not—as commonly thought—put an end to her reign or destroy her terrifying powers. Afterwards, Athena embossed her shield with the Medusa’s head. The writhing snakes, with their fanged gaping mouths, and the Medusa’s own enormous teeth and lolling tongue were on full view. Athena’s aim was simply to strike terror into the hearts of men as well as reminding them of their symbolic debt to the imaginary castrating mother. And no doubt she knew what she was doing. After all, Athena was the great Mother-Goddess of the ancient world and according to ancient legend—the daughter of Metis, the goddess of wisdom, also known as the Medusa.

 —Barbara Creed, The Monstrous-Feminine (1993)

Picking up from where “Angry Mothers” left off…

Due to repeated expansions, “Teaching” part two has been divided into multiple subdivisions (“Following in Medusa’s Footsteps”) for an easier reading experience:

• “Spilling Tea” (this post): A quick vibe check before we meet the girl of the hour.
• “Meeting Medusa” (this post): Articulates how we can encounter “Medusa” in everyday life—a touch of the extraordinary lurking in those we meet as normally policed or controlled by the state. This classically falls under a male/female binary, which I will try to hyphenate based on my own experiences and expertise (scholarly synthesis).
• Postscript (this post): Gives an extension to the monstrous-feminine that considers the spatial relationship of the monstrous-feminine; i.e., the spaces and actors inside them as going beyond the Western kayfabe of Amazons vs Medusa: the kawaii/kowai dichotomy of J-horror in relation to Metroidvania as something I have studied extensively.
• Post-postscript/Further Reading (this post): Supplies further reading and gives a fun little anecdote about people who don’t like being given further reading.
• “Teaching between Media and our Bodies, and a Bit of Coaching“: Shifts focus, expanding on the monstrous-feminine as something to consider (and teach) through a) the space between multiple forms of media and our bodies, and b) is something to materialize and grasp at through coaching behaviors (of which I shall demonstrate).
• “Conflict, Mothers-in Conflict, and Liberation“: Concludes the chapter by concentrating on themes of conflict that double as praxial struggles insofar as language hermeneutically functions; i.e., always in conflict in a variety of ways. I consider that variety unto itself, then regard it in relation to mothers (and the monstrous-feminine) as trapped, fighting for liberation.

“Following in Medusa’s Footsteps”: Spilling Tea; or, a Small Vibe Check

Blood was running into the tea pot,
Then I heard them laugh:
“A bit of this in a cup of tea, is what it
Takes to set them free!”

—King Diamond; “Tea,” on King Diamond’s Them (1988)

Before we “meet Medusa,” let’s have a quick vibe check, just to cover some ground. So sit with me, girls. Let’s spill some tea!

(artist: Eugène Emmanuel Amaury Duval)

Monster movies (and similar media) are commonly “creature features,” meaning the creature is the main attraction (or the castle, or the creature as castle-like or vice versa, but I digress): us; our hormones, our minds, our bodies. E.g., I’m something of a Medusa myself—AMAB, and when I’m on estrogen, it changes me in a variety of ways. For one, I don’t wake up with erections (an inversion of Jekyll’s magic potion, insofar as trans men tend to experience expanded sexual appetites while they’re on T) unless I stop E (“a return to boyhood”), but I do experience sore nipples and an increase in sexual stimulation/orgasmic dimension (morphological/psychological qualities that would expand if progesterone were thrown into the mix: weight gain, aka “love weight,” or “fuck, I have to buy new clothes!”). However, I also don’t get vaginismus. But I am a firm believer in sex and force as something to camp through the monstrous-feminine during campy (counterterrorist) psychosexual operations while being mindful of state operatives; i.e., professional, deputized or vigilante (stochastic) dragon slayers keeping power in, and flowing towards, state hands (the state using fascist copaganda/nostalgic killers to fight Communism for over a hundred years, if you factor in the Beerhall Putsch, American Nazi bund and KKK, etc; e.g., The Birth of a Nation [1915] and cowboys/territorial “speed killers” and gun freaks* [duelists per the cult of machismo, weapons and death, from Eco’s 14 Points] in American movies; Bobby Fischer in American chess; and tech/trader bros in Silicon Valley and Wall Street into America’s Second Gilded Age, etc). Keeping them in mind, we Medusas become a mad-scientist-level, genderqueer/postcolonial act—of shapeshifting defiance that, like the village kid from Black Dynamite (2009), says “Can’t kill me” over and over to our dumb American heroes, who, ever the killer himbos, can only hear, “Why, Black Dynamite, why?”

*Small rant about firearms, war language and BDSM: When it comes to guns, I’m generally more involved in thinking about the things shot at versus the hunters doing the shooting. Furthermore, the American flag as heraldry always gives me pause, precisely because capital’s regular genocides rely on “moving merchandise”; i.e., selling guns at home and guns and bombs abroad to past, present and future war criminals brutalizing the oppressed for profit (“killing is a business, and business is good!”). But there’s still a gradient; re: our aforementioned “speed killers” versus someone like Kentucky Ballistics firing a giant hand cannon (or somewhat novelty weapon) clearly meant for education, venue-type sporting events and entertainment purposes (the crowd loves a big spectacle). That being said, “sporting weapons” imbricate with pure weapons of war used by stochastic terrorists. I’m not for American gun culture, period, and realize your garden-variety shotgun is just as likely a tool for homicidal white boys mad at the world, or chasing glory while treating other humans like the most dangerous game. Except they’re essentially shooting fish in a barrel—synonymizing sex and violence while penetrating others (sometimes their peers, but usually the underclass) with phallic lead rounds, not blades.

Neither is acceptable, of course, and settler colonialism is a cowardly enterprise regardless of the implements used; but from a culture of overtly macho men that act tough, they come across as especially craven and pathetic hiding behind all this firepower and empty bravo. But if I had to choose the greater of two evils, it’s the quick, accurate tools I’m more worried about—the combat rifles, the AR-15s wielded by obscurantist reactionaries playing monomyth while defending “Rome” from “invading barbarians”—and Kentucky Ballistics’ work is clearly comedic/the lesser of two evils; you’re not going to see someone do a school shooting with a Loony-Toons-style 50-pound cannon calling itself a rifle (Kentucky Ballistics’ “The 950 JDJ FAT MAC,” 2024).

All this being said, the language of war and objectification can yield destructive analogs in harmless forms, during sex-positive BDSM “playing war” in bed to spice things up(which limits the “damage,” with or without quotes, to just the couple and [sometimes] other participants); i.e., dirty talk framing the male and female ends as warlike tools-for-the-job (which again, pit male force against female/monstrous-feminine targets of nature as game to hunt): swords and scabbards, arrows and targets, or ramrods and cannon barrels, but also toys of war whose poetic language imitates harmful forms, but also our body parts (e.g., super soakers); or abject ones we won’t really discuss at all, but which I feel I should at least mention, such as toilets and plungers, or …jawas and Sarlacc pits(?). The sky’s the limit, really—i.e., whatever everyone’s on board with, provided no one gets attacked and injured or killed (“no harm, no foul”). Having fun is all well and good, but safety remains paramount. So remember your safe words and steer clear of choking, knife play or anything involving harder prolonged impact, electricity or fire(!) unless you or yours have training or experience as a professional sadist. Vet that shit and work within a community whose dungeon you know and trust.

(artist: Andy Warhol)

As such, Medusa is something of a “pop art” chaos dragon, one whose visual inkblot means different things to different people as something to react differently to; i.e., emulating things like size difference per morphological realities present in a male-to-intersex-to-female gradient, insofar as the human species tends to exhibit variations depending on where you exist on said gradient; e.g., male persons tending to be bigger than female persons (I refuse to say “male” or “female” as a noun) even though a true binary doesn’t actually exist and instead must be enforced through a eugenic tendency of phenotypic qualities that suit state needs: the creation of sexual difference, of the monstrous mother as someone to sacrifice for patriarchal individuation built around profit. Contrary to Cartesian thought (white Anglo-American men and their subordinates), bodies and minds aren’t discrete or biologically essential; i.e., they aren’t writ in stone, but can change (to a wider degree) before puberty, and (to a lesser degree) after it; e.g., if my 37-year-old ass can learn and change (who says you can’t teach an old dog new tricks?), then so can other workers, so can the state.

The ritual is less part actual and invented, and instead actual-invented clarified gibberish; e.g., Magma’s pithy combo of French and “zeuhl” per Zëss: Le Jour du Néant (2019) as suitably absurd and poignant simultaneously—as hard hitting as Holst’s “Bringer of War” (1914), as wild as Stravinsky’s Rite of Spring passage, “Glorification of the Chosen One” (1913), or as deliciously dark as Modest Mussorgsky’s signature tone poem, “A Night on Bald Mountain” (1867), or King Diamond’s “Black Horsemen” over a century later (1987). Up against such odds as Capitalism, and listening to such immortal music inside it, I feel unafraid of death, imagining instead the Numinous (divine) presence of life everlasting. I begin to spin and dance, losing track of space and time; i.e., Wordsworth’s “Intimations of Immortality” (1807); e.g., entrusted into my care, I become unafraid of my mother’s eventual death, because she will live on in me and me in my work as something that survives us both: a great black fortress of girthy gentle love, a fatal portrait/cradle of death whose gloomy atmosphere whispers hellish delights, Castlevania-style (with touches of Cryochamber)—mixed with sweet terrors! “Death is only the beginning, and we shall haunt you!”

To join us there in that special in-between membrane, you need only close your eyes and search within yourself for that dark mad place: where the world of the living and the land of the dead become one-in-the-same—a Hell-on-Earth as your joyous wellspring, a world without end! We’ll be waiting, lovelies, greeting you with open arms:

Where are these men? Asleep beneath their grounds:

And strangers, fond as they, their furrows plough.

Earth laughs in flowers, to see her boastful boys

Earth-proud, proud of the earth which is not theirs;

Who steer the plough, but cannot steer their feet

Clear of the grave (source: Ralph Waldo Emerson’s “Hamatreya,” 1845).

The key to liberation, then, is dark (Gothic, Satanic) poetry as something that queer people regularly lean towards in order to describe their daily lives under capital—to find the words in things around them, often from one’s childhood nostalgia as “fatal,” murderous: opportunities to mutate; to embrace the weird as dark, sexy and fun; oxymoronic, medieval, paradoxical; mad, etc (Zeuhl found out I liked Can, the band, and spread their legs lickety-split). Binging on monster chow, you are what you eat as much in regards to food for thought as good for growing boys’ and girls’ bodies; so when the circus comes to town—Dracula swooping in to love you and leave you before flapping away like a bat out of Hell—let him in. Ignore that preachy part of you normally saying “no” and heed that which says “yes, yes, yes!” (echoes of Joyce’s Ulysses, 1920). Feast or famine, indulge in the terrible junk food, the excessive cummy goodness as something to make amongst yourselves (an anti-work sentiment: idle hands are the devil’s workshop; i.e., a mad scientist; e.g., Anqmorphic’s “Herbert West Being Questionable and Fruity for Almost 10 Minutes Straight,” 2021). We fags tend to get it because the devil’s playground is where we live, baby. Context matters; irony matters.

(artist: Black Absinthe)

Or in the words of Black Absinthe’s On Earth or In Hell (2024):

“Rise up! Make love! Do everything above!”

I eat puss[a]y!

I eat ass!

I drink liquor!

I smoke grass!” (“Dead Queen“).

Such a campy redistribution of fun moves notably pleasurable activities like sex, drugs and rock ‘n all (and freedom of expression) away from the Puritanically holier-than-thou’s usual ghost of the counterfeit and towards the rightfully (and good-faith) queer folk they abject, ipso facto. These ephemeral sentiments are not new, then, but made new time and time again to tempt the proverbial kiddies with; i.e., those whose de facto education the Man Box demonizes as “groomers,” to which Ashley Gavin, channeling her inner Pazuzu, apes her mockeries (to a room of adults, mind you):

What’d they think I was gonna do? Right, like how gay do you think I am? That I’m just gonna bust out, on stage, at the PG show? And be like, “Alright, listen up, kids!” [drags on imaginary cigarette] “How old are you guys, eight? Nine? Alright, so some of you little boys, yer gonna wanna ram a cock down yer fockin’ throat! And some of you girls, yer gonna wanna bury yer face in pussayyyyyyyyy!” [does best Gene Simmons impression] “And some of you sick fucks, yer gonna wanna do both! Now you go run and tell Mommy and Daddy that you heard it from the dyke first!” (re: ” Live in Chicago,” 2023; timestamp: 12:00).

Laughter is often described as “the best medicine.” Ours is delivered by vacillating throbbers engorged with “clown power” (e.g., Gary Oldman’s ’90s Dracula or Killer Klowns from Outer Space, 1988): the patron saints of lost causes laughing maniacally during triage while addressing the grievous wounds of the unpaying poor that take a legion of cuckoos to combat—not for profit, but simply to heal while we make our rounds, calming others down. “First do no harm” becomes “hurt, not harm.” More or less! (Still better than the shark-like, superficial charm of Robert Patrick’s liquid-metal policeman phoning in: “To care and protect,” “to serve and protect,” or some equally-false-and-swapped-out slogan to pacify the public with).

Communism, then, becomes possible as a genderqueer intimation felt in monstrous-feminine forms: a “terrifying” vigilante clown-car horn (e.g., Sweet Tooth’s killer ice cream truck) to beep and raise the alarm of nearing state shift by “painting it black” (camp versus Batman’s coffin-shaped cop car—i.e., “Bat” canonically synonymous with “fash” [“Batmobile” = “fashmobile”] to strike fear into “criminals” [any victim of the state] performed by an imaginary billionaire useful to actual billionaires during state decay as projected onto “Gotham” or some such location; e.g., the Bounty Hunter from Darkest Dungeon 2 [2021] not needing money [he takes “candles” as payment] while playing the BDSM Destroyer role, his fetish gear a costume/avatar for cis-het men to delight in wearing: “There is no man behind the hunter’s mask, only a terrible thought”). There’s something altogether different about being a clown on purpose versus by accident, and for what that purpose (the masked agent) serves when its invoked; i.e., with or without violence, music (at times literally breaking out into random bloody musical numbers; e.g., Caleb from Blood [1997] singing “Over the Rainbow” [1939] while decapitating zombies with a pitchfork), or theatre, etc, as campy or canonical: for workers or the state.

Furthermore, though, humans tend to poetically convey alternatives in monstrous-feminine (monomorphic) ways; i.e., the reversal of size difference and reproductive power—with giant female entities (the Archaic Mother, in psychological models) both massive and sexually dominant (“phallic”), often to a cannibalistic degree. This might sound odd and thoroughly impossible regarding literal beings that “do not exist in nature,” but do exist in a half-real, poetic sense: as a ludo-Gothic BDSM extension of the human condition for anyone abused by the patriarchal status quo and its operatives (e.g., Ripley or Samus, but also Jadis—more on that, as we go). The more we experiment, the more we see things on both sides of the equation in ways we wouldn’t under natural assignment (the exception being intersex people to varying degrees); in turn, this can change how we think, thus express ourselves/respond to past expressions that survive into the present space and time.

Like Alien, Medusa concerns the strictly animal side of the human psyche triggered by stress (that being said, non-human animals tend to have much stronger fight-or-flight mechanisms, thus respond more reliably and immediately to uncanny scenarios than humans do). She’s classically die-hard and revengeful against rapacious patriarchal authorities, except we want to learn from her to liberate workers and nature-as-monstrous-feminine; i.e., through the pest (another Freudian slip) revenge we can achieve: happiness and success, which demands harnessing our ability to terrify patriarchal forces to achieve equality for all.

To that’s, let’s go meet the girl herself, the Medusa, and follow in her large comely footsteps (or boobs; big boobs = big nuts)!

(artist: Angel Witch)

“Following in Medusa’s Footsteps”: Meeting Medusa

This paradoxical authenticity is something I can vouch for in my own life. Despite Cee obviously being a cis-het teenage boy navigating the monomyth inside his own house as hellish, I had a very similar experience myself while still inside the closet. In a galaxy not so far, far away… a past friend and sex worker called Cuwu (who the book has mentioned repeatedly by now) used me for their own stupid, selfish needs after Jadis kicked me to the curb. Like a vampire hypnotizing their prey, Cuwu’s courtship happened in ways I didn’t completely agree to. All the same, they made my wildest dreams come true (source).

—Persephone van der Waard, Sex Positivity, Volume One (2024)

Our second subdivision to “Teaching” part two considers learning from mothers, no matter how monstrous they seem (or the past they represent); i.e., as something to meet. I want to consider such rendezvous relative to language as a whole, then give more bodily and socialized (romantic, erotic) anecdotes that inform my opinions. To that, “other” is monstrous-feminine on a linguo-material level; e.g., hysteria, mania, Mothra, chlamydia—ailments and embodiments of them are generally given feminine genders, and Medusa is framed as the disease; i.e., nature as sick, needing to be “cured.” The patriarchal idea is unwarranted penetration, of course—of taming something they biologically essentialize and mark, but also celebrate for being “ripe,” thus ready-for-harvest.

Except, any melon-haver beyond a certain size will tell you the first thing that big tits are good for is back pain, followed immediately by unwanted attention (from lusty cis-het men or jealous cis-het women[1]). The same idea applies to any part of the female body as either “too big” (“non-white,” in settler-colonial terms), or simply visible (“her tits were there”) regardless of size, thus difficult to dress in anything that fits because a visible externalized woman under capital is always out-of-place: a damsel and a threat. As such, the owner of a given body can’t escape its size being eyed hungrily by Capitalism’s horny-angry toddlers; we must critique both sides[2] to prevent universal harm—to lower the odds of co-dependency and predation (sex trafficking and other social-sexual forms of psychosexual dysfunction, enabling and rape) by examining the ghost of the counterfeit to achieve more stable, interdependent relationships between all workers. Many fairly present as “biologically female,” but their orientations, genders and performances don’t always align as such—i.e., the owners buck heteronormative assignment vis-à-vis natural assignment of these things expressed through iconoclastic context:

(exhibit 33b2c1c1: Artist, from top-left to bottom-right: Crow, Juliana Ferrera, Cuwu, Blxxd Bunny and Felicia Clover.

The human body tends to be symmetrical and repeat assorted elements amid corporal variation. To that, mimesis expresses a likeness of the human form, poses and context; through cryptomimesis, this extends to trauma: the AFAB body [or feminized body as male, female or intersex] is a classic site of harm, insofar as porn is liminal, always adjacent to unironic rape [disempowerment] through the monstrous-feminine as something to control by patriarchal forces. The Gothic space of play and sex work are former “torture closets” of disempowerment that, when facing a palliative Numinous [dominant], GNC people may crawl back inside to face and reform their past; i.e., in order to classically regain power over their identities, bodies, friendships, and voices. All intertwine through BDSM, kink and appreciative irony amid Gothic poetics that invent and arrange classical factors differently to assist workers collectively—through a pedagogy of the oppressed: an Aegis whose mighty ghost haunts the dreams of those who seek to dominate Medusa without irony. Such dialectical-material feuds are precisely why you can have Berlin be a sex capitol of the world and the heart of the Nazi Reich. Such things exist amid conflict over universal human rights [and that of nature] vs the equality of convenience.

Furthermore, on the Internet, the power-spread of self-employed sex workers reflects anisotropically across concentric spheres of media and the relationships we form within them—from a shoot to a gallery to a Renaissance. It’s a paradoxical place to put trust in ourselves; i.e., as something we can build together to raise awareness about harmful structures, power hierarchies, illusions [obscurantism, bad faith/acting and education; i.e., dogwhistles and strawman arguments; e.g., Greta Thunberg’s octopus “gaff”[3]] using campy doubles that fundamentally oppose these canonical “originals”: through shared aesthetics and language reclaimed by us, our reclaimed labor value challenging the established paradigm. Or, in the words of Carl Sagan, “If you wish to make an apple pie from scratch, you must first invent the universe.” Labor comes from labor, art from art, inspiration from muses to artists back and forth, announcing as one, “To the workers of the world.”

[model and photographers: Cuwu and Cuwu/Persephone van der Waard] 

This comes from a delight—at giving and receiving care from those we care about and mutually respect. Furthermore, to the conversational nature of this module/volume, I find that such deathly portents generally go down easier with a slice of pie and/or cake—to celebrate bonafide babes[4] as delicious people to learn from without harmfully objectifying them, but taking their healthy and harmful aspects as object lessons to speak to the human condition at large. Is it a little indulgent to show off my stable of yummy goods, basking in their wet pastures? Sure, but never trust a skinny cook, girls.)

While we want to move away from Capitalism, Medusa does live in an imperial world—one where language and societal practices shape and maintain material conditions as dimorphically gendered by Cartesian edicts. As someone to learn from and follow to varying degrees, then, I want to be well-rounded when looking at Medusa; I’d like to invite you to consider Medusa as someone to encounter in daily life as it presently appears: something historically female-centric under state myopias that, like Cuwu’s hairy snatch, is wild in ways that Gothic poetry readily speaks out regarding. My focus remains on GNC (thus not exclusively female) components of the monstrous-feminine, of course; but “meeting Medusa” includes more traditional female forms, which certainly informed my transition from closeted to openly trans—i.e., when dealing with Cuwu as GNC, but also rather cliché in terms of their fractured behaviors: a tragic love story. We’re all damaged. The idea is to be more open about our trauma in ways that help each other find meaningful connection as a collective; i.e., generally relayed in classic love stories involving two parties personified in visually immediate forms, charged with latent eroticism (or any other means of jolting workers out of class dormancy).

 (artist: Geminisoku)

In regards to Cuwu, but really monster poetics at large expressing through them, my digging up of their figurative, “skinny-thicc” corpse and actually showing it has made me want to exhibit them—to talk about their treatment of me with fresh eyes through fresh eyes: a revelation whose voice is important towards worker survival, insofar as we must learn to reflect on painful things (trauma) in order to regain and maintain our humanity in ways the Gothic loves to bandy about; i.e., in bombastic theatrical forms that aren’t silent about things normally silenced by genocidal forces. A paradox between animals and humans, then, is that animals are often quiet to avoid predators, including apex predators. Humans, however, are generally preyed on by the state; i.e., a predicament that requires us to speak out and riot, to make some noise and damage property as something that is largely alien to other animals.

So bear with me a little  as I unpack these old engagements—considering as I do the kinds of powerful forces female bodies contain as linked to chaos as a Cartesian theatrical device with praxial inertia (a resistance to change):

(exhibit 33b2c1c2: Artist: Luca Maria. Earlier we mentioned the fat lady singing to signal the end—state shift from someone fat, sassy and loud bringing the Cartesian house down. This isn’t psychological mumbo-jumbo but a poetic commentary on vast, intersecting socio-material factors that lead to systemic change; i.e., singing out of multiple mouths, of which many things come out and for which those of a female/non-male body [or feminized AMAB body] are treated as alien/fetish. We could focus on the twink asshole [the “bussy”] if we wanted to, but we’ll explore that kind of gender trouble later in the volume [and much more in Volume Three; e.g., “Conan with a pussy” as something to exemplify with our own plastic bodies and genders—source tweet: Noah, 2024]. So, vaginas it is. For one, the vagina is often likened to an eye, implying surveillance and sentience, but also older androgynous myths of chaos that pass entropic forces of darkness into the world of light; i.e., darkness visible; e.g., the evil eye, the eye of confusion as viewed from Hell looking in on empire to wither it with scornful optics[5]: a phallic, penetrating gaze like Medusa’s stare, but other such serpents “attacking the sun” as a historically fascist power source; e.g., Apep, the Egyptian Serpent of Confusion, attacking Ra the sun god, above]. From a physical standpoint, the only human organs that lubricate are the eye and vagina; many things come out of vaginas as “eye-like,” insofar as “Hell” is a sentient, dark mentality scrutinizing the seemingly pure having ulterior motives tied to formal power.

And yet, just as readily the vagina is also a home for unwanted medical conditions primarily unique to AFAB-leaning morphologies [who frankly have far higher medical needs and restrictions regarding their bodies, per the state treating them as baby factories]; i.e., tokophobia, or the fear of pregnancy, often stress-induced but grounded in physiological torments more or less alien to AMAB bodies; e.g., yeast infections, polycystic ovarian disease, hormonal imbalance [violent mood swings], easy UTIs, toxic shock syndrome, PMS, pregnancies and menstrual cramps, rape pregnancies, etc; i.e., the cycle of the female body something to resent revolving around to the cycles of capital [attached to cycles of weather and commerce; e.g., Halloween] controlling the bodies of people who give birth: forced to give birth and sacrifice their careers and lives for “the greater good”—of the state, not the proletariat or nature. Under such circumstances, the ancient, medical notion of “hysteria” tied to female biology becomes something to fear and hold a grudge against when abjected onto foreign objects, infections, enemies. Such projections can be used to alienate someone, but also to reverse paralysis by freezing the owner’s enemies; e.g., with a thunderous queef [air], various discharges and secretions, ejaculate [from “unicorn jizz” to actual offal on par with Oblina’s turning delightfully inside-out like a frog in Aaahh!!! Real Monsters (1994), the selection of either hinging on one’s fascial preference]; i.e., flaring releases of passion as psychosexual and psychedelic, Christ-like and tortuous but also erotic when pleasure and harm confuse due to repressed trauma. It’s standard-issue abjection against the colonizer—a loud, gross-out [thus repellant] reversal using the Medusa’s classic “Aegis”: her pussy and ass as comfortable sites of tremendous, sizeable force going both ways. It has phallic potential, what the kids call “big dick energy” married to “big mommy energy” to own and playfully/comically wield his/her/their own pie and cake [whatever the gender of the baked good and its size: it’s our bakery—”oven (uterus),” included]. 

Per Angela Carter, “A free woman in an unfree society will always be a monster.” But more than that, any monstrous-feminine [she or not] will be outed and attacked by TERFs—assassins of character and person alike, punching down against the “underworld” as something to reify then protect the usual wards of the state from; i.e., Ripley, below, killing the Alien Queen to protect Newt because “black = rape baby” or whatever other pyramid-sized chip-on-their-shoulder bigoted cis women project onto/pull the trigger against state scapegoats; e.g., it’s our fault so-and-so miscarried [we fags do love a good scandal, but that’s ridiculous]. In other words, it’s “the Straights” combined with standard-issue “white people shit.”

As a friend—let’s call them Mira [pronounced “My-ra”]—puts it, this holier-than-thou approach lets privileged people be more radically in control; i.e., from medieval systems, you have priests, teachers and medical personnel suddenly driven by profit, and the ghost of the counterfeit and abjection reflecting that in a new, non-feudal system; e.g., “Young Goodman Brown” [1835] or Inside [2008] showing something other than war and male violence: female violence that is to some extent, medically accurate [as memento mori generally are] and gratuitous—all good and well if you have that information up front and can consent to paying to see it in various forms of calculated risk during Gothic entertainment. Otherwise, you’re torturing the audience [who, as Mira demonstrates, can be triggered by stress even without rape-as-a-penetrative-act[5a] being a formative experience].

There’s generally a violent character and fortress-minded reactionary [neocon] politic to such “warrior Madonna” fantasies [which are less to strictly whitewash pregnancy (immaculate birth) and more abstract it as Amazonomachia—a story to be “won” as men generally do: through combat against an evil double; i.e., non-white/trans people]. Except the usual theatrical tensions are anisotropically linked to literal physical effects, too. New mothers and babies-to-be classically teeter on a knife’s edge, the common casualty usually being the mother to prioritize the tot. This isn’t the sexless, dragging disappointment of George Eliot’s Middlemarch (1872), then, but a thoroughly more complicated and messy bildungsroman—one where our stand-in “Anne of Green Gables” (the adventuresome debutante) bumps spectacularly into the spectre of death while spreading her pussy lips for so-and-so. Talk about splitting the baby! A lady “on the market” can be cautious and ward off untoward/unwanted romantic advances; however, if a girl relaxes, she can involuntarily release different things from a secret, even shameful place, but also an intimate special container to let things in—i.e., with a wild, voracious hunger and feral jouissance [Cuwu: uttering “Green, bright green!” when wanting more cock, more attention, more power]. But raw hostility can outstrip vulnerability and dalliance within canonical modesty arguments, meaning a monstrous-feminine’s entrance-exits are also a mirror that reveal repressed sides of female abuse displaced onto settler-colonial scapegoats; i.e., a white, fearful gaze looking for protection with a shield but also a sword against a perceived threat: inside-outside the human and home as Gothically blurred. The Medusa is both a sex and war machine, then, but also a debutante and a milf squaring off against heroic doubles puzzled by her bare, exposed fury.

[artist: Akira Hiramoto]

To that, Segewick’s imagery of the surface[6] denudes bodies that are covered or not. So when AMAB people see not even an exposed vagina but simply the suggestion of one, they often see an opportunity or an alien fetish per heteronormative conditioning factors; when AFAB people see it, they often see a place of trauma [a void, a dark forest, but also the abusive/imposturous home; e.g., the forbidden dungeon] whose power can potentially be reclaimed by communing with the ghost of the counterfeit—i.e., the secret thing wedged deep inside a predatory victim, their mind poisoned by an unwelcome presence, a trauma, an emotional turmoil: as passed generationally through mediums, identified imperfectly on common sites of pain, of abuse, among those who could be mothers/victims [which often become abusers themselves]. It becomes superstitious, a nomadic transient force of nature [a tornado or hurricane] like that pink shit from The Cat in the Cat [1957]—a rabid, imperial-to-postcolonial force[7] that can possess and take hold; i.e., through persecution mania smashing survival mechanisms together during moral panic amid opposing social, structural, and bodily forces.

Unfortunately, it’s just as likely that surveyors of a dark presence will attack the host, marking them as banditti—as homeless, foreign, other—than see them as human: a folie-a-deux [shared psychosis] and ménage à trois [an illicit love triangle]. What’s more, social conditions and military de rigueur overlap in popular fiction’s usual clichés made medicalized and torturous, hauntologized: the coochie, the blackguard, the harlot—the romance something to field and thread within a captive audience’s enforced constraint/politeness trapping’s ceremonial courtship displays [e.g., buying a drink, lighting a cigarette in a venue of sin, but also exchange]—as biomechanical, dated, eternal [outside time]. It speaks to secret shames, guilt and eroticism, the sexual predator and traumatized angry survivor’s rape and incest, murder and madness as built up in the tissue, flaring up and expelling through a body or area of the body as damaged and overstimulated, confused and charged, but also septic and overridden with Numinous power [again, the ghost of the counterfeit]: primed to explode with a confused ejection through a walking testimony of repressed evidence rising to the surface. Per the Gothic, such paradoxes express in inherent contradictions, moral dilemmas, ontological strife, swelling and irritation, vanishing clarity and augmenting decay through masked disintegration part of a larger disease process and its complications: its diminishing stability [the sands of time] counting down, running low to higher degrees of entropy.

In turn, this surface tension only invites more opportunities to abuse; i.e., those who are pegged as vulnerable initially become abused by a system that crosses their wires to an apocalyptic extreme; it leads to a revelation regarding unspeakable harm, which reports on those who, threatened by it, self-report. The idea is dignity through praxis. So, with Jadis and Cuwu, I worked with them to try and help them because I knew they had been hurt, and learned that it’s still ok to have limits and break things off—what’s called an “extinction burst”:  

An extinction burst is a sudden spike in the frequency of a behavior when the reinforcement for that behavior is removed. Because the action has produced a desirable result in the past, it is tried rapidly until it is clear the action no longer will result in the expected reward [source: Study.com]. 

 This goes both ways, of course; e.g., Jadis did it for me when I stopped giving into their demands. I did it with both them and Cuwu when it became clear they each were bad for me. Even so, it wasn’t my first choice. For one, I was emotionally battered/invested and sought compensation amid intrigue and peril, unequal conditions, sex and separation. Social work, while never easy, is especially rugged when the predator and prey are confused in one body and across them: I was small, weak, and marked, but also generous—the perfect prey being a former victim as seen by once-victims convinced if they seize control, they won’t get hurt again, themselves. Except, I’m not convinced Cuwu or Jadis was always in control of that, and often seemed fractured and at war in highly psychomachic ways—their confused fight-or-fight mechanisms somehow “always on,” thus further alerted and incensed by always feeling trapped [what Jadis referred to as “hypervigilance”]: within boundaries rising and falling through membranes of exchange [sight or otherwise].

Was I manipulated into withdrawing my complaints, driven into hiding while sending my abusers along? It’s not a simple yes or no, and the fact remains that outing powerful sexual predators [or frankly just bad partners] requires solidarity. By showing Jadis, Zeuhl and Cuwu mercy in my case, I demonstrated I wasn’t a product of abuse that simply led to more abuse; by critiquing them, post-escape, I could prevent it by outing societal problems—red flags to recognize and avoid, second-nature.

This is more important than picking fights against single scapegoats. If someone is abused, outing their individual abuser is ultimately their choice. In my case, I spoke about what I felt mattered to make society better. To that, my desire to enrich the world trumped my need for petty revenge or fairytale closure (with “revenge” often translating to a code of silence/omerta that protects the state; e.g., the thin blue line closing ranks to defend property at the cost of workers; i.e., cops are criminals with a badge [and stochastic, de facto deputized forms of police violence] because “criminality” is to abuse people and nature for profit: the “greater good” of the state versus workers making decisions that affect their own lives [and the lives of other workers and nature] for the better).

 [artists: Persephone van der Waard and Cuwu] 

This resolution comes from repeated reflection based on limited perspective. In Cuwu’s case, I was their lover and photographer—always looking at them in a mirror or through a camera lens, seeing various parts of them from so many different angles and vantage points. Despite how vain they were and how perfect they appeared, I saw good sides and bad. Yes, Cuwu abused me. Except, they ultimately helped me, too. When Jadis threw me out, Cuwu gave me a place to stay and a bed to sleep in [not that we always used it, left]. They showed me their books, giving me their copy of A History of the World in Seven Cheap Things. They also encouraged me to experiment—to try messing with gender and anal sex, eventually making me feel brave and beautiful enough to come out as trans[8] [the anal sex wasn’t just a fun alternative to vaginal sex (or backup when Cuwu’s pussy got sore from marathon sex), but helped me overcome my closeted anxieties and bigotries regarding that part of the body]. In the end, it wasn’t stable or secure—Cuwu was a profoundly messy person, a walking carnival whose own history of giving and receiving abuse prevented them from staying my friend—but I’ll never forget what they did when it mattered: to give me a safe [if untidy] venue to transition towards my future self.)

All this being said, we’re aiming for intersectional solidarity as monomorphic; i.e., regarding the liberation of all workers from a heteronormative paradigm and its universal alienation, fetishizing and grim harvest. As such, the same predicaments outlined above apply not just to AFAB people, but the monstrous-feminine at large as something to dig up and fuck with (a reversal of the “bury your gays” trope, but also investigating the embodiment of different frustrations and anger exemplified by the Medusa; i.e., as someone to celebrate and recognize: the overmedicalization of female bodies as controlled by the state and its proponents, therefore policed to uphold the status quo).

I love cuties, and could make a whole book celebrating just Cuwu’s beauty and pain as something to learn from—to say proudly that I knew someone so profoundly force-of-nature, focusing on the Destroyer or lamb-like aesthetic they exuded. Medusa, however, is an androgynous figure divided and shared amongst a legion of GNC personnel. So as much as I’d like to stay and enjoy the non-binary memory of Cuwu as someone to bask in, I’d rather focus on those persons with the capacity to a) not cause harm, and b) actively participate in Gothic-Communist rebellion: to help animals like Bay does, to be a thorn in the state’s side.

To that, fate is often likened to a cruel mistress who denies, a fickle bitch not out of place in a BDSM scenario (e.g., orgasm or penetration denial, or other such treats to condition non-violent restraint with); Mother Nature is generally regarded as the Alpha and the Omega, the denuded invincible viewed as “pure chaos” by psychoanalytical quacks one step removed from Cartesian dominance—i.e., from “nature is female” to “chaos is female” to “woman is other” as a furious ancient, the shapeless place of maternal death where the patriarchal buck always stops. It’s “true power” insofar as the state cannot dominate it; nature will survive, smiling knowingly while the state eventually crumbles to dust—from old age, which we outlast and outbreed, but also out teach, consulting our own experience, second opinions, regulations, unions, etc. This often starts with us being hurt, or seeing others being hurt in our lives or older past lives, and wanting to help them heal; and prevent future harm, too. This isn’t a curse, but a mighty gift. Per Creed, this kind of generosity and reactivity becomes something to fear as alien to the state’s existence, but also what the state needs to exist by tampering with it, causing it to lash out.

(artist: Bay)

Volume One previously extended this Cartesian myopia to my arguments, applying “other” to all of nature as monstrous-feminine food moving money through nature to generate profit; re: “Women (and all monstrous-feminine ‘non-men’) are food whose harvesting serves a Cartesian profit motive,” by which monster mothers like Medusa (as in, likenesses of the Medusa, which the xenomorph is) refuse to be victims differently than Creed put it in 1993 (abridged, from the glossary):

monstrous-feminine

While Creed focuses on the desire for the cis woman not to be a victim, thus terrifying men in abject, monstrous ways (which are often then crucified by heteronormative agents, including token ones like Ellen Ripley), the fact remains that the monstrous-feminine extends to a much broader persecution network; i.e., of any “feminine” force that falls outside of what is acceptable within the Patriarchy’s heteronormative colonial binary. I have placed feminine in quotes to account for anything perceived as “feminine” thus not correctly “male”; i.e., “woman is other” expanded to trans, intersex and non-binary persons (and the animals associated with them…

For the rest of this chapter half, then, we’ll consider Mother Nature as abject in ways we can ultimately reverse by humanizing her “ancient alien” fetish in spite of capital.

Doing so, our focus remains bodies first, structures second. We’ll focus on living spaces whenever we examine Metroidvania; for the remainder of the current lesson, I’ve outlined five person-centric steps for us to explore. We’ll start by examining teaching as expressed between media and our bodies—a connection we’ll showcase as something to coach,. After that, we’ll segue into conflict, mothers-in-conflict, and monstrous-feminine liberation.

Onwards, to learn from Medusa in other media forms besides! Onto “Teaching and Coaching“!

Postscript

Before we press on, consider this postscript: the Gothic tends to diverge and synonymize things that, on their own, merit a whole field of study. As such, I want to give a minor extension to the concept of monstrous-feminine as it pertains to space and occupant as hyphenated, concentric, ergodic, anisotropic, etc. Monsters speak to givers and receivers of state force, whose iconoclastic ironies during ludo-Gothic BDSM rope gentler groups (e.g., pillow princesses, catboys and subby twinks) into the same Gothic scheme: courtly love and chercher la femme. I wanted to use an example other than Alien or its obvious Amazonian doubles, insofar as they all involve Amazonomachy-style kayfabe pitting the warrior-detective (the cutie with combat training and professional equipment) against the Archaic Mother/demon lover as occupying a doubled house infected with the ghost of the counterfeit; e.g., Samus killing her doubles offspring (a war of extermination, per settler colonial relegated to “empty” ruins); i.e., a liminal space and occupant, but also exchange that is both diegetic and meta (the Nostromo a castle-in-small, both as a set to run around inside and a miniature to film with giant cameras held by giant hands—a ludic concept that extends to videogame players holding the controller and looking at the tiny avatar onscreen as armored, but hounded by giant, pissed-off alien moms):

The ambivalent paragon, Samus is the perfect switch for me to control. She’s also linked to the monstrous castle: its heir, the potential gorgon. And I, attracted to female heroes, project onto it. She’s my conflicted sense of self, including my conscious desire to be a woman—not Marilyn Monroe or Emily St. Aubert, but a capable scrapper who’s decked in armor and easy on the eyes (for me this means “boyish,” like Tolkien’s Dernhelm [“hidden protector”] and Joan of Arc) [source: Persephone van der Waard’s “Why I Submit: A Subby Gothicist’s Attitudes on Metroidvania, Mommy Doms, and Sexual Persecution,” 2021].

(artist: Moonshen)

Being balls-deep* in the text, and related stories, I’m extra sensitive to stimulations that yield fresh discourse (so much “discourse”); so my muses (all of them) make me sing more prolifically and readily than normal. As such, this section is heavily informed by my PhD research/formative works. If you like this and want to see more, reference to the raft of sources (my older writings) [supplied at the end of this postscript]; if you’re into Metroidvania and speedrunning in particular, I also recommend checking out my “Mazes and Labyrinths” Q&A, Interview Compendium” (2021). It interviews a lot of Metroid(vania) speedrunners according to/in line with my research ideas. —Perse

*Medusa demonstrates how normal mothers are a myth. Case in point, the above phrase, “balls-deep,” once came up when my mother and I were watching Kick Ass (2010); i.e., the head gangster, mad with rage, spitting to his cronies, “I wanna be balls-deep in their ass!” Without missing a beat, my mother—sitting in the periphery—smiled wickedly, nodded approvingly and repeated the phrase with pure relish, “‘Balls-deep in their ass.'” I repeat, there are no normal mothers—including me and my mother, but also those from both of our childhoods extending forwards and backwards; e.g., all of the monsters in Metroidvania and similar monstrous-feminine stories; i.e., portents of the Medusa in all directions, spaces, bodies, BDSM, etc.

Moving past Amazons, I still want to examine something that is still unheimlich and psychosexually violent, but with a different kind of infantilization than that of the newborn xenomorph giving out “free hugs” with blind reckless abandon; i.e., the doll house and doll-like simulacra lurking inside of it as monstrous-feminine space—the walking fortress as outwardly cuddly in muse-like palimpsestuous echoes of Western exports imported back in a global market: videogames and anime as moody digestions of classic factors endemic to the colonizer body made in Japan and sold back to American audiences.

This is rooted in a Neo-Gothic past that originated in Great Britain; or, as I write/cite in Volume Zero, “Classically the diegetic heroine’s perfect past is doubled by the Gothic castle as an expression of power beyond just her or her sense of self and home. As Audronė Raškauskienė writes in Gothic Fiction: The Beginnings [2017]”:

The castle, Bakhtin remarks, as a literary reminder of an ancestral or Gothic past of “dynastic primacy and transfer of heroic rights” [actually, it’s “hereditary rites,” though I do the same thing in this book, too] is overlaid or criss-crossed with meanings from legend, fairy-tale, history, architecture, and an eighteenth-century aesthetizing discourse of the sublime. Montague Summers’s note that the real protagonist of the Gothic novel is the castle emphasizes a very special feature of that structure: in a sense, the Gothic castle is ‘alive’ with a power that perplexes its visitors. It tends to have an irregular shape, its lay-out is very complex and mysterious, whether because of an actual distortion of the whole structure or because a part of it remains unknown. In Manuel Aguirre’s words, “this basic distortion yields mystery, precludes human control and endows the building with a power beyond its strictly physical structure: the irregular mysterious house is, like the vampire, a product of the vitalistic conception of nature.”

In addition to this, Radcliffe’s setting (the castle) derives its claim to sublimity also from its being “not-here, not-now, an Other place, an Other time.” Critics have often remarked on the choice of the exotic, the foreign, the barbaric as the background for and source of Gothic thrills. In other words, the Gothic castle is the world of the Numinous. As David Durant notes, “the ruined castles and abbeys are graphic symbols of the disintegration of a stable civilization; their underground reaches are the hiding places for all those forces which cannot stand the light of day.” In Radcliffe’s novels the Gothic castle is in the first place an anti-home, a nightmare version of the heroine’s perfect past, in which many of the elements of her home are exaggerated and replayed in a Gothic form. The Gothic space, which provides a scene for the most dramatic events in the novel, is totally different from the other spaces – indicating heroine’s home.

The gigantic size of the castle is opposed to smallness of heroine’s home, its labyrinthine confusion stands in opposition to the elegant and tasteful arrangement of her home, dark and dim castles replace cheerful and full of sunshine homes, the feeling of constant danger and lack of security in the castles is contrasted with the feeling of safety in heroine’s home, etc. The heroine’s parents are replaced by Gothic substitutes or Gothic opposites. The castle hides some family secret the revelation of which usually helps the heroine to disclose her own identity. At the same time, the Gothic castle is the place of confinement in a literal and figurative sense. Moreover, the castle may be interpreted as the image of the body and, eventually, as the heroine’s secret self (source).

The original point of the big-ass quote was my connecting it to modern media, namely videogames as a Japanese export. Per Metroidvania and my master’s thesis, “Lost in Necropolis” (2018), the Gothic historically-materially yields trauma as a) paradoxically unmappable but mapped nonetheless in various texts that likewise branch out through the same viral pathways, and b) personified through odd valleys of contrasts: size difference; i.e., the knightly space cowgirl stomping around foreign-familiar territories, a galactic operative strong-arming settler-colonial frontiers back into federal control.

(artist: François Coutu)

Samus might be the baddest bitch of the Imperial Core (in space); she’s still dwarfed by the eternal size and beauty of the maternal spaces she’s sent to rape for the Man: a little girl who grows up with daddy issues, bitch-slapping echoes of female abuses (and their pet male dragons) that cannot be contained.

Moving past the Amazon, the monstrous-feminine isn’t just mommy doms and Medusas with big-girl bodies, though, but smaller bodies with big trauma, thus big angst and ultimately power and craft, manipulating it against potential threats unwelcome in their home; i.e., us versus them enacted by the vulnerable-made-Numinous: little monsters that hold all of Hell’s power inside of them, of the house, as two sides of the same warped ontological statement. They become like walking gravestones that throw giant shadows to terrify patriarchal forces, including tokenized inspectors sticking their noses where they really shouldn’t. Curiosity killed the cat, after all, beckoning you inside while reaching towards you with a shambling corpse’s impossibly long arms:

(artist: Bryton Spurgeon)

Keeping with that adage (not Lady Macbeth’s: “the cat likes fish, but does not like to wet her paws”), we absolutely must inspect the kawaii and kowai (“cute” and “scary”) dichotomy of J-horror culture, embodying a “killer doll” of “daddy’s little girl” (the ghost of the counterfeit) lurking in the Gothic castle as a nightmarish copy of the heroine’s perfect past (re: which can be gender-swapped, Dennis-Cooper-style, to afford the twink-in-peril some delicious “danger” to play with): a liminal space whose partially lucid dream must be carefully navigated to confront hidden secrets obscured by a restless labyrinthine cryptonymy (not really any different than strictly Western [occupier] forms). Waiting at the center of the claustrophobia (Radcliffe’s Black Veil and closed space) is generally the queen of the space, a fractured Numinous that is both infantilized and feral, a queen bitch trapped in a little girl’s body or vice versa; i.e., the euthanasia effect of acknowledging “Medusa’s” pain while still “pulling a Radcliffe” and putting her down like a rabid bitch.

All the same, the idea for spaces that master players who try to master the space through its coded instructions (re: Giddings and Kennedy) are, per my own arguments, enacting ludo-Gothic BDSM through a steady and negotiated ludic contract between them that goes beyond novels and cinema, into videogames, but also real life as half-real. This happens, then, as per the dom and the sub in any kind of roleplay scenario; but in Metroidvania and similar stories, the perfect dom (the one to take you to the edge but not harm you) is as much the castle, the game, the text as it is the Medusa-like persona inside.

In poetic terms, they are one in the same, synonymized and hyphenated to delivered the paradoxical goods: exquisite “torture” unto another generation of workers living with trauma. This has many utilities that, when synthesized, can lead towards catharsis while stripping us bare, vulnerably exposed to a capitalist and Communist Numinous we can invoke as needed:

(exhibit 33b2c1c2b: Aguirre’s aforementioned geometries of terror, presented with a wide corpus of texts and their liminal spaces from different mediums: Top-far-left: The Nostromo’s exterior, from Alien; middle-far-left: Rugrats episode “In the Dreamtime,” 1993—horror being a common theme through the whole Rugrats series; bottom-far-left: The Witch’s House, 2012; middle-left descending strip: Little Nightmares 2, 2021; middle descending strip: scenes from Coraline, 2009, and Inside, 2016; middle-right descending strip: scenes from Among the Sleep, 2014; far-right descending strip: the Nostromo interior from Alien; bottom horizontal strip: scenes and locations from the 2017 Metroidvania, Hollow Knight.

All these texts explore liminal parallel spaces as ambiguously Gothic—with monstrous hauntologies, concentric nightmares, and uncanny inhabitants that intimate a re-remembered “return” to a reimagined childhood. Not only is this lost childhood imperfect; it is replete with abusive intimations that generally convey regression through fantasies of paradoxical danger and rape fantasies tied to chronotopic power structures: “a fearful inheritance tied to an ancestral location loaded with decaying, heavy time,” to paraphrase from David Punter’s definition of a Gothic tale [or Baldrick’s]. Seeing as I can’t find the exact quote [academia, especially British Gothic academia, paywalls everything in sight] this quote from James Watts’ Contesting the Gothic: Fiction, Genre and Cultural Conflict [1999] does the trick:

In a period of industrialization and rapid social change, according to Punter, Gothic works insistently betrayed the fears and anxieties of the middle classes about the nature of their ascendancy, returning to the issues of ancestry, inheritance, and the transmission of property: “Under such circumstances, it is hardly surprising to find the emergence of a literature whose key motifs are paranoia, manipulation and injustice, and whose central project is understanding the inexplicable, the taboo, the irrational” (source: “Gothic Definitions,” 2021).

I think Punter is definitely more overtly psychoanalytical than Marxist most of the time [source: “Punter Notes on Gothic” from The Literature of Terror] but I still enjoy his analytical approach sometimes. As for my own thoughts on such spaces [from Volume Two]: the aim is to expose past traumas related to state abuse, but also to fuck with the player as someone seeking agency within these spaces by negotiating with the game; e.g., Metroidvania, but also games like The Witch’s House.

[artist: Smolb]

Simply put, fucking is fun, but it takes many different forms, including BDSM as asexual. In either game, the gameplay is based on mastery of the player “forced” to submit in different forms without bringing overt sex into the equation [merely echoes of it]; while Metroidvania are ludic and learn into ludo-Gothic themes of dominating the player mid-execution, the cinematic nature of The Witch’s House yields a more orthographic/cinematic twist that stubbornly resists player dominion. Courtesy of Bakhtin, the castle and its endless dynasty of power exchange have thematic primacy—i.e., the fear of inheriting one’s role in a larger destructive cycle that relegates the hero to a lonely doom in within the interminable stone corridors of a hungry tomb (that literally has their name on it). As I write in, “Our Ludic Masters”:

Metroidvania players consent to the game by adopting a submissive position. Most people sexualize BDSM, but power is exchanged in any scenario, sexual or otherwise. This being said, Gothic power exchanges are often sexualized. Samus is vulnerable when denuded, her naked body exposed to the hostile alien menace (re: the end scene from Alien). Metroidvania conjure dominance and submission through a player that winds up “on the hip” (an old expression that means “to be at a disadvantage”). Another way to think of it is, the player is the bottom, and they’re being topped by the game. 

[…] A person motivated by sex is hardly in control. Not to mention, the sex historically offered by Metroid is fraught with peril. The entire drive is illustrated by gameplay conducive to speedrunning at a basic level. The same strategies employed by the best runners are executed by regular players. You play the game and begin to play it faster. In some sense, this “maze mastery” is involuntary. The player cannot help but play the game faster as they begin to re-remember the maze. The game exploits this, repeatedly leading the player towards self-destruction and domination.

These feelings are orgasmic, but differently than the Doom Slayer’s own attempts at conquest. They’re a Gothic orgasm, a kind of exquisite torture. I say “exquisite” because they occur within the realm of play [which grants them asexual elements]. For Metroidvania, this jouissance is ludic. But sometimes a game can blur the lines. Though not a Metroidvania, the RPG Maker game The Witch’s House remains a salient example.

You play as Viola, a young girl visiting her mysterious friend’s spooky house. Inside the titular house, the player can learn its rules, thus explore the gameworld. This inexorable progression is inevitably doomed, the outcome heinous no matter the player or their skill. Like Charlotte Dacre’s titanic Zofloya providing Victoria with poison, the game lends the player the instruments for their own demise[: the sword for the Roman fool to fall upon]. Tenacious players are even promised a “best” ending if they “master” the game, beating it without dying. The game only doubles down, punishing the player with virtually the same ending. / This ending is about as brutal as they come. Even so, such players will have beaten the game already and know the ending—if not it, then games with a similar outcome (re: self-destruction). Players are expected to revel in the game’s sadism, deriving pleasure from “punishment” while the game, for lack of a better term, bends them over and fucks them (source).

[artist: Yune Kagesaki]

Just as the Gothic often takes an asexual approach to sex, “fucking” isn’t literal, but yields many different applications within monstrous power exchange as a fun activity. It’s fun to fuck with people, especially when they’re in on the performance to some extent [though perhaps only to a degree]. Whatever surprises, deceptions and “fucking” do occur happen relative to fearful spaces occupied with concerns about imposters, but especially a tyrannical past’s “return.” While Giddings and Kennedy’s “Little Jesuses and *@#?-off Robots” touches on a game’s mastering of players, “allowing progression through the game only if the players recognize what they are being prompted to do, and comply with these coded instructions,” players can fight back; yet, this is proposition is, as I have stated, more of a compromise or negotiation between the player and the game:

I can watch other people try to master the game, and watch them be dominated by the space. Not even speedrunners can escape this embarrassment, their blushing faces conjoined with the statues already screaming on the walls. How fleeting a victory like Shiny Zeni’s is, when it will eventually be bested. Or buried [ibid.].

To use a BDSM term, some games are clearly more “strict” than others; e.g., The Witch’s House really doesn’t fuck around [an extended quote from “Our Ludic Masters,” just because]:

There are many phobias and taboos surrounding this position, from men being afraid of penetration, to women wanting what they can’t have unless it’s given to them. Being fucked by a videogame, the player consents or stops the game, thus has power. But if the game fucks them at the end, the player can feel like they’ve been fucked from the start. Sneaky! There’s invariably a sense of misdirection at times. The game—and by that I mean many games, not just The Witch’s House—remain dominant. Metroidvania and The Witch’s House use Gothic situations and imagery to suggest danger while simultaneously misleading the self-deceiving player to be fucked.

Sometimes the already-initiated go willingly and joyously partake of the Numinous pounding. Even so, the ending for The Witch’s House is brutal. The “witch” isn’t actually the witch; she’s Viola, the story’s victim. The avatar is Viola’s body, possessed by the witch. The story begins when “you” take control, sending “Viola” to the witch’s house. Before you do, Viola’s father sends you a note telling you not to go into the forest; you aren’t the witch, so the forest is dangerous. Little do either of you know… 

The note misleads the reader—in this case the player—into thinking Viola is you, not the witch. Turns out, you’re controlling Viola’s body but the witch is inside with you. Zoiks! The possession is gradually hinted through journal entries you find inside the house: The witch “swapped” bodies with Viola before the start of the game (it starts right after the possession, in the forest). The house tries to kill you upon entry. So why go back?

Turns out, the witch’s powers are tied to her body not her mind. But her original body is occupied by Viola’s spirit, who angrily tries to attack the witch using the witch’s powers. These include the house, which is effectively an extension of the witch’s power (re: Dracula’s castle, in Castlevania). To steal her power back, the witch needs a knife locked inside a cabinet near the front of the house (spatially the start of the game). To get the knife, the witch must use Viola’s body to navigate the house, reach the “witch,” and steal a key from her. The key unlocks the cabinet, which has the knife. 

Once the power is hers, “Viola” leaves the house; the “witch” follows her, crawling along the ground with her eyes gouged out (symbolizing the player’s blindness). “Viola” taunts the dying girl until a man approaches, Viola’s father. He sees the “witch” and panics, drawing his gun. He rushes to protect “Viola,” yelling for the “monster” to get back. Viola doesn’t heed him, crawling closer while saying his name. But she has no actual voice; her words appear only in her mind. He fires his weapon, killing her. With the “witch” killed, the house (an extension of its owner’s original body) collapses into itself and disappears.

During the finale, the player is meant to identify more with the “witch” than their own avatar. Viola becomes “Viola” through the player’s realization that she (thus the game) has been lying to them for the entire story. The avatar is occupied by two individuals: the player controlling her, and by an imposter the player can no longer control. Almost like being possessed, no? The player thinks they are Viola, hence Viola’s body belongs to them. They aren’t Viola, they’re the witch; or rather, the witch is inside them, and assumes control once Viola is dead.

The real horror is retrospective: One, the hero was already dead, trapped inside a blind, disintegrating body while attacking Viola to warn the player (the player reacts towards the hostile home like Viola’s father did towards his transformed daughter—with fear and aggression). Two, every action made by the player to preserve “Viola” was actually keeping the witch, the hero’s destroyer, alive. Three, the hero ultimately fails, and the villain wins. The player is hoodwinked into self-destruction. Ignominious death? Check. Initially the player controls the hero thinking they are the hero. Future playthroughs are made by a player who knows they’re playing an imposter. Perhaps they think they can defeat this menace by “really” beating the game: acquiring the “best ending.” Instead, the game wins, trapping the player inside a foregone conclusion. There is no escape. [Time to die, to get fucked, to relish in the sweet, sweet domination of you by the game.]

This entrapment highlights the game’s storybook nature. The words on a page are fixed, fating the hero. Slowly by surely they’re lead down an ominous path, and to the Spooky Room Where Bad Things Happen. This promise of danger becomes Radcliffe’s infamous Black Veil—known not for its ability to conceal (which it doesn’t), but for its constant threatening nature. This danger is liminal—felt regardless if the veil is parted or not. 

Part of the joy is the journey, but the destination remains important. The so-called “bad ending” is famous in Gothic stories, delivering feelings of self-destruction through reliable modes (abjection, the uncanny and the Numinous, etc). In this sense the aforementioned “fucking” is received by the player through these modes. The Witch’s House employs them expertly. Yes, the ludic structure is different than Metroidvania typically are; their rapturous, self-destructive outcomes are more similar to each other by far than to Doom [source].

Yet the ludo-BDSM arrangements outlined above are ultimately cathartic because they occur as part of an informed exchange in regards to one’s own trauma and agency going hand-in-hand with Gothic poetics. In sex-positive realms, then submission is more powerful than domination because the game cannot be played without the sub’s permission. Barring someone holding a gun to your head, there is always a choice.)

There’s no clock/expiration date/statute of limitations on rape; it fucks up one person and all of them inside shared spaces and stages to perform when challenging state forces and doubles across history as forever being written. From Strawberry Hill/Otranto to the Nostromo/Zebes to The Witch’s House to my thesis and Sex Positivity series, the Gothic “rape” space gives us a vital liminal space to relieve stress, but also perform and play with power as a profound means of interrogating trauma dressed up as silly-serious entertainment warped by historical forces that are constantly upgrading “evil” as something to sell controlled opposition to workers that workers can own, thus reclaim through speculative thinking* vis-à-vis performative interpretations; e.g., Jason X (2001, above) being just thing this sub-drop junkie (me) would seek out; i.e., supplied by the state and subverted by us when developing Gothic Communism, synthesizing praxis to achieve a wider catharsis more emotionally and Gothically intelligent, but also aware at a class-cultural level during wars thereof. Inside these ludo-Gothic BDSM spaces and roles’ liminal positions (dungeons and damsels/demons), we can purposefully lose control and fuck ourselves—all the better to escape state illusions inside our own liberatory one’s of “imprisonment”: “Oh, no! My little bussy is totally in danger right meow! Owo!”

*The Gothic loves to investigate things that seem “off,” on all registers; i.e., that seem both completely random and oddly specific; e.g., from state shift and climate change to Alien‘s pair of haunted houses to Gilligan eating the skipper to your weird neighbor or relative with the dodgy eyeball.

Post-Postscript

Post-postscript: In regards to the further reading I want to supply, I don’t wish to “flash my badge” needlessly. All the same, I did write my MA (“Lost in Necropolis“) and PhD (my thesis volume, aka Volume Zero, 2023) on Metroidvania, and have several more books in the works including this volume (written when the sample was live, but the volume was not)—a reality that is often questioned by Dunning-Kruger types who project/transfer their own inadequacies onto experts such as myself. This isn’t hypothetical; I once had someone on Reddit (there’s a surprise) attack me for writing about Garfield and the Gothic (Persephone van der Waard’s “Is Garfield (1978-present) Gothic?” 2019), requiring me to essentially tell them, “I’m not your dad”:

Zeuhl—ever the twit and spineless, sell-out square—told me not to engage in such revelatory antics, but frankly I don’t give a damn and think it’s funny (two more ways to get even, twisting the knife through my own Austenian successes; i.e., politely telling them [more or less] “to eat shit” while fanning my eyelashes). Also, pro tip: always document everything and stand up for yourself when others won’t.

Note: If the above exhibit is, for some reason, hard to read, you can access the original on Reddit at r/imsorryjon “News: Is Garfield (1978-present) Gothic?” (2019). 

Further Reading

Here is some further reading you might find fun (lifted from two definitions from the Sex Positivity glossary):

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 (not including my entire book volumes, but citing some salient essays from those books):

• 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 YouTube video summarizing Metroidvania and its spatial qualities (sort of a precursor to the 2021 “Mazes and Labyrinths” abstract): “Metroidvania Series #2: Mazes and Labyrinths” (accompanied by its original script, on Google Docs; both 2019)
• 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” (2021)
• a chapter on Metroidvania from my PhD, aka Volume Zero of Sex Positivity (2023), which details extensively my history with Metroidvania from childhood to my graduate and postgraduate work: “‘Make it gay,’ part two: Camping Tolkien’s Refrain using Metroidvania, or the Map is a Lie: the Quest for Power inside Cameron’s Closed Space (and other shooters)” (2023)
• an essay from Volume Two, part one, which conceptualizes the middle class’ constant inheritance and exploring of the imaginary past through a privileged “savior” position, but one that can develop ludo-Gothic BDSM as a sex positive force; features Samus Aran as a “white Indian”: “‘In Search of the Secret Spell’: Digging Our Own Graves; or, Playing with Dead Things (the Imaginary Past) as Verboten and Carte-Blanche (feat. Samus Aran)” (2024)
• an essay from Volume Two, part one, which critiques Jeremy Parish as a Metroidvania research inspiration of mine: “Monsters, Magic and Myth”: Modularity and Class (feat. Jeremy Parish and Sorcha Ní Fhlainn)” (2024)
• an essay from Volume Two, part one, which reflects on how the Gothic is queer as realized through my Metroidvania work and beyond: “Facing Death: What I Learned Mastering Metroidvania, thus the Abject ’90s” (2024)
• a three-part book chapter* on Metroidvania from Volume Two, part two, which covers Frankenstein (aka The Modern Prometheus) and talks extensively about the Promethean Quest as it appears in popular media after Shelley’s novel—Metroidvania, of course (with close-reads of Hollow Knight and Axiom Verge), but also movies like Forbidden Planet and Alien: “‘She Fucks Back’; or, Revisiting The Modern Prometheus through Astronoetics: the Man of Reason and Cartesian Hubris versus the Womb of Nature in Metroidvania” (2024).

*Said chapter combines my PhD research after writing my PhD, making “She Fucks Back” a culmination of my life’s work on the subject; I’m very proud of it!

Last but not least, I wanted to share my favorite essay about Metroidvania. Already the culmination of my life’s work, I wanted to cap off my magnum opus [re: “She Fucks Back”] with a fun little announcement, letting you all know the last part of that chapter is now on my website: “Sleeping Beauties: Policing the Whore; or, Topping from Below to Rise from the Ashes” (2024)!

(source: Materia Collective)

Normally it’d just be another post in my book sample series for Volume Two, part two, “Searching for Secrets” (2024). However, “Sleeping Beauties” is extra special because it’s the capstone to my Metroidvania work after my PhD and what I esteem to be my crowning achievement; i.e., I write about rape play a great deal, talking about it outside of Metroidvania all the time (e.g., “Into the Toy Chest, part zero: A Note about Rape/Rape Play; or, Facing the Great Destroyer,” 2024), but “Beauties” complements that work by marrying it to one of my favorite games, Hollow Knight, and its secret final boss, the Radiance! There’s just so much fun academic stuff to unpack (e.g., Manuel Aguirre, Michel Foucault and Mikhail Bakhtin, to name a few)—with me doing so in a way that’s hopefully more accessible, sexy and fun than those authors to read!

To summarize the piece, itself, my website describes it as, “Articulates Aguirre and Bakhtin’s ideas per my evolution of ludo-Gothic BDSM after my master’s thesis and into my graduate work, then considers the Promethean Quest as something that presents the whore as normally hunted by police forces, only to escape their subjugation and imprisonment by acting out her own rape; i.e., as Hollow Knight‘s final boss, the Radiance, does” (source). In short, girl’s a freak, but camps her abuse at the hero’s hands to say something not just about the Pale King, but Capitalism, too, and why it sucks. Maybe in reading “Beauties,” you’ll change how you view not just the game and its approach to sexual violence in Gothic forms, but also the world at large…

In any event, it’s a huge relief to have “Beauties” out there, and I’m very proud of it. Give it a look and let me know what you think!

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.”

Further Distinctions: There are further ways to identify if a Metroidvania space is a maze or not. As I explain in my 2019 YouTube video, “Metroidvania Series #2: Mazes and Labyrinths“:

What ultimately determines a Metroidvania’s maze-ness are three sequences: the start, the middle, and the end. The start is what I consider to be the collection of essential items—power-ups you’ll need to use for the entire game. Mid-game is the meat of the experience. The end sequence makes the win condition available to the player.

I mention item collection relative to these sequences because they are a core element of Metroidvania play, hence determine what kind of space the player is dealing with. In Metroid, for example, the Morph Ball, Bomb and Missiles are essential, and the player can acquire all of them rather quickly. Apart from those, however, there are few items you actually need to complete the game. One of them is Ice Beam, which is required to kill metroids, thus gain access to Mother Brain (the game’s end condition). Large portions of the game can be played without it, though. Like many Metroid power-ups, it is a mid-game collectible.

Item collection allows the player to leave the start and enter the middle. This section, I argue, determines whether or not a Metroidvania is a maze. If the majority of the game allows for sequence breaks, RBO (reverse boss order) and low-percent, then it is a maze; if not, it is a labyrinth. A Metroidvania can be either (source: the original script on Google Docs).

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.)

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Footnotes

[1] Capitalism generally reduces all AFAB people to women and all women to sex objects; from there, it forces them to compete for limited positions, encouraging tokenization: so-called “pretty privilege” really being conventional dissonance and conformity.

[2] E.g., Cuwu harmed me, but my critique of their still-available erotic material is done under the boundaries last negotiated by us. I provide these critiques to foster dialectical behavioral therapy as something they introduced me to, and which I liken to Gothic Communism in practice: preventing the self-destruction of one’s friendships by learning gracefully from past mistakes. As such, I have left Cuwu anonymous, and would ask people to leave them in peace, wherever they are.

[3] Referring to a social media incident shortly after the Hamas attack on October 2023, where fash-friendly types went after Greta Thunberg—by taking a neurodivergent “octo plushie” in her solidarity photo op and applying a strawman argument to it; i.e., what is essentially video window dressing in order to “win” a debate in bad faith: getting Greta to censor something about themselves and their production that everyone knows isn’t a Nazi argument. Or as Ed Dickson writes in “Targeted for an Octopus” (2023):

In a follow-up tweet, Thunberg, who is autistic, clarified that the plush octopus on her shoulder was not a reference to a (frankly, somewhat historically obscure) anti-Semitic canard, but to a common toy used by neurodivergent people to express their feelings. “It has come to my knowledge that the stuffed animal shown in my earlier post can be interpreted as a symbol for antisemitism, which I was completely unaware of,” she wrote. “The toy in the picture is a tool often used by autistic people as a way to communicate feelings. We are of course against any type of discrimination, and condemn antisemitism in all forms and shapes. This is non-negotiable. That is why I deleted the last post” (source).

Unfortunately for Greta, conceding this frankly absurd point to fascists is negotiating with them (except, to be fair to Greta, she was being dogpiled, thus kettled, by a pack of fascist bullies [defense of Israel is fascism] intent on rattling her). We can’t play the game by fascist rules; i.e., being a doormat to their obscurantism (the octopus doesn’t belong to fascists any more than the Swastika does). But sparring with fascists pigs does take thick skin and experience, to such a degree as can sorely test even the likes of a 21-year-old, 4’11” firecracker like Greta (a wallflower she ain’t). Chin up, kid; you rock, and Neo-Nazis bottle J. K. Rowling’s farts (such literal, “Yass, queen!” brownnosing echoes Adin Ross sniffing Andrew Tate’s chair* without his consent and getting filmed for it [with Tate, ever the unironic Count Dracula, having installed his castle with cameras Ross probably didn’t know about, but in this case, the camera being their interview installation that Ross did know about]; i.e., Nazis continuing to dig their own graves, and which we—”enjoying” the little perks of journalism—look on in abject horror before camping them to death).

*Ariana Baio’s “Adin Ross Did Something Incredibly Gross to Andrew Tate after Chess Match” (2023).

[4] In the gender-neutral use of the term (of endearment), not the infantilizing classically misogynistic one.

[5] Akin to Robert Frost’s “All out of doors looked darkly in at him” from “An Old Man’s Winter Night” (1921).

[5a] Trigger warning: Discussions of survived sexual abuse. As my “token cis-het friend,” I’d like to outline Mira’s own thoughts and feelings on the Gothic and tokophobia. Their tokophobia was triggered by the stress of recently seeing a horror movie that involved rape, so they agreed to be interviewed for the book about it.

Mira’s own tokophobia is a hard limit—so intense, they actually used to experience pain after sex (“my body was rejecting what was happening”). However, since they started taking anxiety meds, it’s helped lessen the pain, but not the anticipation (what they call “injection” phobia—they hate needles, too). This, in turn, informs their thoughts on pregnancy as a disease*. In their opinion,

Babies are parasites by nature. They leech your energy, cause all sorts of problems as they grow bigger and bigger, and when it’s time for them to come out, it’ll be the wort pain you ever experience and there’s not much you can do about it. You can’t avoid it; it’s inevitable, excruciating trauma that your body will take months to recover from. I get the same smaller response with foreign objects. IUDs make me feel ill thinking about them, and so do menstrual cups and tampons. A condom came off inside me one time (thankfully empty); I nearly passed out when Gary [the alias for Mira’s partner] had to go fishing around inside me to get it out. Same idea with pelvic exams: I’d beat a nurse to death with a speculum if they go anywhere near a hole with it.

In other words, they explain, “Once this thing’s in you, it’s not coming out without a lot of extreme pain (the worst in your life) and people expect you to be happy about that; i.e., middle-aged women, who guilt-trip you into having kids, calling it [state-compelled sexual reproduction] a ‘blessing.'” This ties into Gothic modesty arguments as frequently morphological for cis-het women fearful of their biology (their uterus) as something normally controlled and regulated by state forces (the same way trans women are afraid of their penises).

*Mavis disagrees—would rather have house the baby (viable or not) even if it cost them their life, and confesses of their own volition that they would get raped to become pregnant if it was the only way they could conceive. It might sound strange, but rape fucks you up; i.e., rape as “fucking women up” in order to compel them to want to reproduce against their will. Mavis would rescue all babies (dead or alive) from the jaws of Hell; Mira would boot them unceremoniously like a football out a window and into a trashcan rigged with C4, detonating it with a smile on their face after quoting The Toxic Avenger (1984): “How much for a kid on a bicycle!”

To that, consider the shaming of a “modest-looking” woman like Rosemary from Rosemary’s Baby (1968) getting raped by the devil. Except in the 1967 novel, Rosemary cums from Satan’s big dick as immediately visually imposing like a knife might be, or a giant club; i.e., a delicate pale wallflower involuntarily cumming (the bodily response separate from their mental status) but cumming all the same to a big black dick as likened to a weapon leveled at a white women’s “portal” as “exit-only” for “dark forces.” However childish and cruel this might be, white men often project these bigoted anxieties onto white women as needing to “guard their virtue” for the sake of the bloodline’s “purity”: they belong to the husband to sire his children as “pure, uncorrupted.” This tracks; since Walpole, the Gothic chronotope is one of rape (the ghost of the counterfeit) tied to dynastic primacy and hereditary rites—of Lord Manfred chasing the heroine around the castle after he invokes a king’s “right” (to rape his wife) after his son (the original bridegroom) is crushed by a giant falling helmet. If that sounds campy as hell, it is; that’s generally the point of Gothic fiction. Such stories generally purvey and procure spaces of rape to safely play around with psychosexual trauma inside. Often, these are sacred in order to be profaned; i.e., a sacred female “temple” fouled by the defiler of a virginal church owned normally by a white man feeling insecure about his own penis (something—for those of us brave enough to actually face our fears—to poke fun at and play with, below).

(artist: Slugbox)

It’s not uncommon for such coded fears to point to personal childhood abuse. Except, in Mira’s case, they love horror media at large and weren’t sexually abused as a child. They actually acquired their tokophobic response due to trauma experienced at primary school; i.e., the teachers forcing them to learn unnecessarily about periods (after Mira had already experienced them at age nine), whereupon they underwent a vasovagal response (automatic fainting at the sight of blood, or things that can lead to blood—a knife or a needle, or something that resembles such a device: an erect penis). This event followed them into secondary school, whereupon sexual reproduction courses made them instantly feel faint (they passed the courses in question purely “by text,” meaning inside a controlled environment without unknown factors). For many rape victims, the trauma of the event supersedes the trauma of anticipation; i.e., getting “the stick” as something to fear versus it actually happening and someone regressing (whose disassociation can complicate trigger responses).

Faced with that, the anticipation of sex would make Mira tense up; i.e., their body but also their vagina—a hardwired mechanism called “vaginismus,” or

the body’s automatic reaction to the fear of some or all types of vaginal penetration. Whenever penetration is attempted, your vaginal muscles tighten up on their own. You have no control over it. Occasionally, you can get vaginismus even if you have previously enjoyed painless penetrative sex. Vaginismus does not necessarily affect your ability to get aroused and enjoy other types of sexual contact (source: NHS).

This either happened to the point that penetrative sex was impossible; or if they had PIV sex, they would hurt like hell afterwards—not from vaginal chaffing or stretching thanks to their partner’s big dick (they’re kind of a size queen) but from post-coital and post-orgasmic cramps.

Mira describes these as “a retroactive red flag”—akin to anxiety of a Neo-Gothic sort: rape phobias; i.e., the cum (and automatic fear mechanisms) literally associated with something dreadful to anticipate and fathom about after it’s been inside them. In their own words, there’s no risk of actual pregnancy from the sex (they always have sex with condoms and birth control pills), but the anxiety they feel (so-called “lizard brain”) is something that only lessened after they started taking medication for their mood (similar to HRT and trans people—brain chemicals affecting the body and mind in relation to external factors, including media). And even so, they can still get seriously triggered by the Pygmalion-esque torture-fest that is heteronormative cinema; i.e., echoes of sexist wackjobs like Hitchcock or Kubrick—men who loved torturing not just their female actors, but their audience members fearful of rapacious anticipation relative to familial locations: the household’s bathroom, bedroom, and kitchen as invaded by alien threats. During moral panic, such xenophobia easily extends to the audience in the theatre as afraid of a current moral panic. Normally this is likened to “scaring the panties off,” but can—in cases like Mira—backfire horribly.

In Mira’s case, they really don’t use BDSM to help ease these symptoms, then. For them, it’s a hard limit/pass to which they and their partner must respect until the symptoms, when triggered, pass. To that, their horniness and creative expression is generally separate from Gothic media as something to consume or express; i.e., monsters can be something to view as a threat and a safety device at the same time (e.g., me and mommy dominators topping me from above or below—or as a friend of mine confided in me: “I’d let a balrog fuck me”). Except, for Mira, this just isn’t the case. It isn’t despite them having been sexually assaulted as a teen by a teacher after class.

Mira’s story is as follows:

I had a friend, Autumn; the normal teacher was on maternity leave and a male supply [substitute] teacher was standing in. Because it was a mid-2000s lower-class secondary school, rumors of the supply teacher being gay followed him around—skinny jeans and “guyliner,” basically a dark academia twink. On our sixth or seventh lesson (which happened to be biology), Autumn—sitting next to me—ironically was the one to pass out, face-planting the desk. Turns out, her blood sugar was completely fucked (a hyperglycemic fit, according to the nurse). The teacher took everyone outside; afterwards, I was upset and crying alone with him, and while we were walking through the hall, he put his hand ’round my shoulder and squeezed my right breast… right as the superintendent was rounding the corner towards us. Needless to say, the supply teacher was fired.

Mira explains that they were already scared about Autumn, so it didn’t even register to them that they’d been assaulted until later that day. But to their credit, they didn’t let the experience color their view of queer people despite a—at the very least queer-appearing—sexual predator having taken advantage during a moment of weakness (sexual, for him; physical and emotional, for Mira). They didn’t go on, Posy-Parker-style, to ask cis men to invade women’s bathrooms with firearms and go looking for gay men in dresses; i.e., trans women. As such, Mira largely experiences sexual dysfunction relative to general anxiety and pain anticipation, not a particular sexual trauma or queer form of xenophobia (many of their friends, including this bitch right here, are gay as fuck).

Keeping that in mind, when they’re with their partner seeking mutual support, they don’t immediately jump to something sexual to make themselves feel better and, when they do, they don’t view their partner as a monster to fulfill a medicinal role (rape play), either. Instead, both they and Gary were close friends for all of secondary school. To that, Mira doesn’t even reflexively see Gary as “someone to have sex with,” but rather “spending time with their favorite person that may or may not lead to sex” (aw); i.e., big ace energy. Except, this is more due to anxiety, depression and their meds not working versus a congenital element (not defect, but neurodivergent condition: ace people aren’t diseases). Thanks to these factors, Mira exudes ace tendencies and a low sex drive, hence has no expectation of sex at all; stress makes their body “nope the fuck out” in ways my male body never could [stress causes erectile dysfunction in AMAB people, not cramps—this might be different with intersex people, of course]. By comparison, if I’m triggered, I need sex to get it out of my system (a purge response, Mira calls it; i.e., “some systems naturally respond by ejecting bad vibes, trauma, and [vis-à-vis the Gothic] rapacious forces; ‘report, purge, restart,'” Alien-style). Nymphomania isn’t unique to male bodies, but female bodies nevertheless remain sensitive to external stress as something that will variably cause vaginismus [and other symptoms; e.g., “spotting” or early periods] in a strictly animal, involuntarily sense; i.e., even without a history of acute and formative sexual abuse. It’s more annoying for Mira than actually scary—a painful case of “taco block.”

Things might seem discrete for Mira, then, and to some extent they are. But there is an element of crossover into their sex life, or at the least, something Mira and Gary must keep in mind: stress. Except, this includes their roles in the bedroom vis-à-vis Mira’s headspace relative to their biology as a cis-het woman. When Gary is subby and wants Mira to initiate, Mira has to put actual thought into it because it’s not something that comes naturally to them: Mira likes experiencing sex, but doesn’t initiate; they follow Gary’s lead (though when Mira gets dominant, Gary says they get “bite-y.” Mira calls it “involuntary nibbles”—to munch on Gary or control him while Mira rides his dick, no one knows). Gary is subby when he’s “had a bad week”; otherwise, he leads, and under those circumstances, Mira feels the physical and emotional impact of sex in an overtly sexual way. But due to their medically-induced dysfunction being regularly triggered by stress, they don’t jump at the chance to top or initiate (which would conflict with their anticipation anxiety/tokophobia). Meds help, but at the end of the day Mira follows Gary’s lead. To that, generally when Mira engages with horror media, the expectations are similar in that they don’t look for sex, but also feel that it wouldn’t be welcome if it parallels their traumatic experiences in school. They can’t “prep” themselves for it; it’s just reflexive and hardwired into them—a hard limit that can be triggered by calculated risk (and rape scenes shot in bad taste). But even so, Mira still doesn’t treat queer people like space aliens to shoot with a gun, or reduce to automatic, unwilling robotic slaves (for a master [or those accustomed to being treated like masters; i.e., cis-het men] to command, regardless of what: “pour me the tea, David”; “quack, damn you”; or “send nudes,” etc); their trauma is valid, but they have a healthy understanding of it, hence outlets, hence outlets, thus lots of queer friends. Mira is a good ally —as in, feminism without all the conditions you normally see from white cis-het women: “You’re human if you [meet these criteria, first]”; i.e., quid pro quo. And if you’re an ally without conditions, you might be a little gay yourself (a quality we look for when selecting our token straight friends).

[6] From her essay, “The Character in the Veil: Imagery of the Surface in the Gothic Novel” (1981).

[7] I.e., “the spectre of Rome” and other raiding factionalized forces; e.g. Christendom and Islam as patriarchal and monotheistic versus Pagan, matriarchal forms: spectres of Marx.

[8] Persephone van der Waard’s “Coming Out as Trans” (2022).

Originally part of an undivided volume—specifically Volume Two of my Sex Positivity (2023) book series—this blog post now belongs to a promotion called “Brace for Impact“ (2024); i.e., that went on to become its own completed module in Volume Two: the Poetry Module, aka Volume Two, part one. The Poetry Module was primarily inspired by Harmony Corrupted.

Click here to see “Brace for Impact’s” Table of Contents and Full Disclaimer.

Further Reading: Volume Two actually divides into three modules/sub-volumes, each with its own promotion and release. “Brace for Impact” is the first (re: Volume Two, part one), but there are also promotions for Volume Two, part two’s twin Monster Modules, The Undead and Demons: “Searching for Secrets” and “Deal with the Devil“!

Update, 5/1/2024: Volume Two, part one (the Poetry Module) is out! I wrote a preface for the module along with its debut announcement. Give that a look; then, go to my book’s 1-page promo to download the latest version of the PDF (which will contain additions/corrections these posts will not have)!

Permissions: Any publicly available images are exhibited for purposes of education, transformation and critique, thus fall under Fair Use; private nude material and collabs with models are specifically ally 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.

“Teaching (the Caterpillar and the Wasp),” part one: Angry Mothers; or, Learning from Our Monstrous-Feminine Past

“How can they cut the power, man? They’re animals!” —Hudson, Aliens (1986)

Picking up from where “My Quest Began with a Riddle” left off…

Part one of “Teaching” aims to establish the monstrous-feminine past as something to learn from in the people we meet and media we consume: us versus them as a liminal sphere with mixed messages, metaphors, monsters, mothers, etc. “Who is this Medusa lady and why is she pissed off?” To answer it, we’ll use me as the mother teaching you about the monstrous-feminine from where I encountered, thus learned about it—from Alien, and similar stories explored between myself and my past’s working and romantic relationships to people: cuties messily making monstrous memories and artwork together that ultimately settled into a four-volume book (which snowballed as more people wanted in).

The number of volumes should indicate the complicated, highly meta nature of our relationship. As such, we’ll explore the “caterpillar and the wasp” refrain a bit more fully on page 161. For the moment, I just want you to consider that enemies exist in relation to how they’re taught using different predator-prey metaphors—a caterpillar and a wasp, but really any symbiotic relationship you could identify in nature. This includes animals and monsters, which generally operate as personifications (often with animal characteristics) to get a larger point across: the xenomorph as an expression of said “past” that we can take on ourselves.

(source: Derek Vanlint’s “Alien and Its Photographic Challenges,” 2017)

In Alien, the monster—a combination of undead, demonic and anthropomorphic qualities—was primarily inspired by a symbiotic relationship with nature-as-abject: that of a wasp mother (the monstrous-feminine) that would punch through the bark with its stinger/ovipositor to inject its infantile prey and by extension its host with an egg that would ultimately kill the host—parasitoidism. This is just animals being animals, who kill for shelter, territory and food as part of a habitat they belong to, first and foremost. Humans also do this, but likewise operate through the solving of puzzles-in-abstract; i.e., they consciously think about things, including trauma, in ways that other animals (let alone plants and fungi) can’t. For non-human animals, fight or flight is more basic. For humans, our brains are more complex so “friend or foe” is more complex, as are our psychosexual responses to trauma as inherited, imagined and/or lived; also for us, animals are both a) descriptions of animal qualities in humans, and b) more complicated puzzles to solve, thus think about the world with, through increasingly complex-critical means.

Again, this often involves monster mothers as castle-like; i.e., in a dialectical-material sense, where workers are your friends and the state is the enemy and both use the same kinds of puzzle-like metaphors, often with animals, to express friend or foe in a dialectic of the alien useful to workers and the state in opposition (e.g., The Poisonwood Bible [1998] by Barbara Kingsolver, a story about a forbidden relationship between a white minister’s daughter and a local native in settler-colonial Africa. Books, like all popular media, concern such forces): adversarial castles/mothers squaring off in humanoid forms that blur the lines between body and home, friend and foe, as waged between mankind and nature-as-food, as-alien, as-monstrous-feminine. It becomes operatic, channeling Helen Reddy’s “I am woman, hear me roar!” and the Commodores’ “She mighty-mighty” through a formidable display of weight to throw around, black garb and spike-like implements, etc: “mother” as teacher, including “deathly” ones speaking to hard truths we can swallow more easily during calculated risk. In BDSM, this is called “size difference”—a Numinous whose divine enormity is generally preceded by fleshy parades that often feel weaponized, “ready for battle”; i.e., war machines and sex machines that promote great risk, punishment and reward (awesome power) in complicated ways; e.g., booties, cocks, fat, muscle, etc. It becomes, like Tolkien envisioned, a potent source of temptation insofar as Galadriel’s hypothetical taking of the One Ring unleashed her potential to be a Dark Queen dominating Middle-earth, uncloaked! Big mommy energy.

(artist: Harmony Corrupted)

Like Marx, we would assign this bellicose character to class and culture war. However, this human-animal relationship is a time-honored tradition, and one that starts simple, but like all puzzles grows with the student into adulthood and maturity as they learn to think. Bullies, through canon, become conditioned to think reactionarily for the state; workers, through iconoclasm, to think emancipatorily for themselves—surviving the state by liberating themselves from it; and all use the same language starting from simple to complex.

In turn, understanding is generally predicated on the ability to explain complex things in simple ways, as one might to a child. So animals and monsters work in that fashion, too—starting as simple puzzles alluding to bigger hypermassive problems that students become more engaged with (always in the abstract due to their size); i.e., as the puzzles grow more advanced, but also oscillate back and forth as needed inside different media forms: books, movies, videogames, etc, as opportunities to learn for or against the state regarding all ages for all ages. Poetic manifestation and interpretation routinely “grow up,” becoming giddily sexual:

(exhibit 33b2c1a1b: Artist: Selvaggia Babe. The way to parody academia is through heroic sex; e.g., Quistis from Final Fantasy VIII [1998] gobbling male essence up with all her mouths. This notion of wisdom and sexual heroism isn’t as quaint as you might think. For one, Academus was an Attic hero, whose garden was selected for Plato’s lectures and where the word “academia” hails from [with platos meaning “broad[1]“]:

The Academia was originally a public garden or grove in the suburbs of Athens, about six stadia from the city, named from Academus, who left it to the citizens for gymnastics. It was surrounded with a wall by Hipparchus, adorned with statues, temples, and sepulchres of illustrious men; planted with olive and plane trees, and watered by the Cephisus. The olive-trees, according to Athenian fables, were reared from layers taken from the sacred olive in the Erechtheum, and afforded the oil given as a prize to victors at the Panathenean festival. The Academy suffered severely during the siege of Athens by Sylla, many trees being cut down to supply timber for machines of war. Few retreats could be more favorable to philosophy and the Muses. Within this enclosure Plato possessed, as part of his patrimony, a small garden, in which he opened a school for the reception of those inclined to attend his instructions. Hence arose the “Academic sect,” and hence the term Academy has descended to our times (source: Mathieu Deflem).

[artist: real xxiii]

More in line with Gothic thought [and the above collage], though, the university [and academia at large] is a place of secondary forbidden education; i.e., a renovated place of higher learning that—just as often through medieval power structures surviving into the present—yields its own ghost of the counterfeit to abject: the fetishizing dysfunction of teachers sleeping with their students—the modest nun-like nerd as someone to deflower while discovering forbidden pleasures together. Echoes of Original Sin and Matthew Lewis aside, this remains a highly popular fantasy that can just as easily be reclaimed by iconoclastic workers; i.e., releasing stress and tearing down canonical boundaries normally obsessed with controlling sex through essentialized conventional means: the fetishes and clichés of porn deliberately confused per Gothic liminal expression [vampires and other hungry undead metaphors]. Hauntology pits heroes against ordinary and otherworldly dangers often sharing the shame [there’s a Freudian slip] uniforms and positions of status and control, release and disobedience—the nun, the whore, the knight, the damsel.)

Gothic-Communist development requires thinking about teaching and other things we’re generally not encouraged by the state to do unless we’re assigned a discrete profession within it—teachers. But it’s possible to do more than one thing at once and indeed, mothers often must; i.e., teaching valuable, life-long lessons to their figurative and actual children while being treated like animals and monsters by the state. To that, I often think of myself as a teacher-first, academic-second, but still have to routinely put these things into perspective when trying to explain them in relation to one another. Lessons have plans, meaning they’re prepared in advance and developed over time according to your audience (research, which is work). My audience is adults and workers more broadly so I have planned my lessons to keep them in mind.

For starters, I feel like I shouldn’t have to define teaching and what that is, but fascists are literally anti-intellectual and moderates are just fascists waiting to happen, so here’s a quick rundown: Teaching gets you to learn by engaging with the world, including media, by asking questions. Asking questions demonstrates an attempt to understand something by interrogating it or something related to it. This ideally should start when people are young by involving things that interest them. Discouraging questions and replacing them with singular reactionary interpretations is called dogma, which is generally predicated on fear as something to communicate through socio-material conditions. Instead of the proposition of friends, you have the enforcement of enemies—aliens, “stranger danger” and the “other” amounting to us versus them; i.e., prescribed by the state as the enemy to workers, making us fearful and mistrusting of nature: by using monsters as poetic language to discourage critical thought, thus societal bonds, through bad education, bad puzzles and bad teachers that lead to bad students, to bullies.

We don’t want that, because community is built on trust through an ability to recognize friend from foe under difficult conditions. We want people to question their surroundings from a young age, thus think in ways that further their development for the better of them, other workers and the world. This demonstrates an ability to observe and learn, which is important regarding relationships with other people and learning their boundaries, their needs and wants while communicating your own; it also encourages people to imagine ways of improving their world to help themselves and others. This starts in early childhood and progresses well into adulthood, but for reactionary people will always be arrested because they are always dogmatic, thus isolated and scared of just about anything different than them (re: Crawford’s invention of terrorism). They will be unable to imagine anything outside of Capitalism, and monsters (for them) always personify us versus them. This is largely because Communism is extracurricular. It’s not taught in schools and is basically outlawed. You’ll have to, at the very least, ask questions to find it, including about and with monsters.

Furthermore, if a child is precocious, you’ll want to encourage them so they keep asking questions, thus learning through repeat questions (often the same classic refrain, “why?”) that likewise correspond to how they check in on friends, loved ones, lovers; i.e., to let them see that you care, even if you seem fine but might not be. This is vital, lest the problems burrow horribly to the surface and painfully convert the living to the undead (“Kain seemed fine…”); i.e., in statuesque forms likened to “Antiquity” as also[2] statuesque through perceptive sculptors chasing poignant messages with the statue: the muse that is not material (a person) coming to life and placing itself in the artist’s cathedral as a fellow exhibit made by two. A given cathedral is wrought from and with many muses working for a better future during our Song of Infinity (more on this device in the medieval prep section, “Monsters, Magic and Myth”). No one person can take all the credit, our labor value trumping money value through a “laboratory” of mad science playing out in sequence; i.e., from one vacant galley made full of Gothic wonders into another and another until the fat lady sings.

My book, then, is but one example, though I hesitate to call it “mine.” While I might technically be the author (thus art director) of this particular chain of comely oddities, I really hate to take “the lion’s share” of glory proffered. Art is work, sex is work, sex is art, and all come from older forms (e.g., Medusa, Alien); and if you’ve ever tried to direct a shoot, or be directed in a shoot, you’ll quickly realize just how much work goes into such productions: costumes, makeup, lighting, scripts, acting and physical stamina (a big one, when it comes to sex). I learned that from Zeuhl, a photography nerd and music snob (their alias should be a clue) who helped me make my first sex tape (with them) and do my first nude shoot together (them, filming me). They also showed me how to date online and helped me set up my website after leaving me for their future husband.

It became not just something to survive the heartbreak and abuse of, but to understand that I was lucky for what came to pass; i.e., that I eventually learned to see through their awful illusions and find people who treated me better because of what I learned from my exes. Their treatment of me became something to evolve regarding—to adapt. It made me a better partner, writer and art director. But I had to kill my darlings, to bury my idealized versions of what I wanted them to be and look for that in future cuties. But what I loved about my exes still lives on in my book, and what I feared about them is something I can face without fear. They can’t hurt me anymore.

In turn, I took all they exposed me to and applied it with the same degree of interest Zeuhl showed postpunk, Manchester and twinks; Jadis, to insects, female domination, and Tool musical videos; and Cuwu, to worker rights, weed, and Pagan pageantry—i.e., I had a series of adventures and happy accidents, all leading circuitously to the present moment, of which I feel the happiest I’ve ever been: my book as counterterrorist apologia made with people I utterly love and adore loving me just hard.

Mastery takes time and sacrifice, which means you can’t have a Promethean Quest (and badass cathedral associated with it) without making some enemies/strange bedfellows to dig up at a later date. This disinterment also includes former friends—those who weren’t ready for the sort of commitment a better future requires:

(exhibit 33b2c1a2: Artists: Cuwu and Persephone van der Waard. Some wasps look soft and femme, but can “sting” sweetly or deeply—i.e., in ways that cause genuine delight and severe emotional harm. Cuwu was one such person—soft and genderfluid, needy and vain, they sucked me dry and ultimately hurt me. But I still have fond memories of them [most of which are videos and photographs[3]; I’d learned my lesson from not taking nearly enough with Zeuhl in Manchester]. It left me hurt, reflecting on my mom’s motto: “No pussy’s worth it.” But I’m glad I had the chance to learn, because some pussy is. You just gotta find cuties who won’t mistreat you, confusing the boundaries between pleasure and harm. Cuwu did that because they had been badly hurt—a histrionic with borderline personality disorder who sought power and control to empower themselves by victimizing others; all my exes did. Eventually I learned how to meet people who treated me well minus the predatory harm [exhibit 33b2c1b]: camping canon with this book to prevent future disasters intimated in past Medusas I couldn’t help.) 

I’ve often been accused by trans misogynists of devising this book as a wicked scheme: to “just” get laid. First off, while I love getting laid, surely there are far easier ways to have sex than writing a four-volume book series based on ten-plus years of research! Such persons seriously miss the point, then; i.e., my revisiting of old strategies of reflection to bond with new cuties I can teach important lessons (and they me) while we relate back and forth (which making art and having sex both consist of and combine). The point in doing so is to build on something that liberates all parties, targeting the Superstructure with Gothic poetics mastered by a community of awakened workers building in perpetuity (always out of breath with more to say). This requires trust in good faith, not deception (which my critics seemed to have projected onto me regarding their own humanistic shortcomings): the valuing of that which Capitalism normally cheapens in pursuit of profit.

To this, a director is precisely fuck-all without a muse to blow up, and a model often needs a platform to work their magic. As such, Sex Positivity was and always will be a group effort, its total collective statement on/with artwork and sex work entirely impossible if not for all my muses, models, partners (currently friendly or antagonistic) and friends (sexual or platonic) working in concert. Nor is ours the first. Like the patchwork group of (mostly cis-het male) art nerds who made Alien, celebrating the monstrous-feminine in Gothic panache, my cuties and I don’t own each other while raising temples to our own dark gods. Instead, we’ve worked together to contribute to a diverse, inclusive labor of love that we can all feel proud of; i.e., a dark progeny begot from enthusiastic, heartfelt teamwork. It’s an orgiastic journey to document and leave behind, a procession of memories to learn from (as Alien very much is). Or as Scott himself put it: “It takes an army of dedicated people to make a feature film—and on Alien we had a marvelous army” (source: American Cinematographer’s “The Filming of Alien,” 2017). So did I.

(ibid.)

Per the Humanities, such marbled dialog is not set-in-stone, then, but sculpted in our own caring gestures cheering others up and looking out for them; e.g., wagging “tails” manifesting as a simple “How are you doing?” (capital makes us forget to breathe, thus ask, thus think—waves of terror—so we must regain a prompt ability to think on the fly less as “total recall” and more as being quick on the draw). The more they learn, the more they can change the world provided they learn things that allow them to. In turn, this requires someone who will seek answers out, not take things at face value, including with things that interest them. They’ll enjoy them, but call them out if they’re pernicious, and invent curious solutions to hornswoggle/trick the state and its proponents (e.g., my older brother’s Mr. Kazakhstan; i.e., the useful myth of Gothic ancestry).

Just look at Gamergate to see the effect of canonical tutelage on worker minds; i.e., players as puzzle-solvers who, stuck in fear and dogma, become unable to solve even the most rudimentary of social puzzles (spoiled rotten). Puzzles don’t just teach us to think, but help us relax and relieve stress, but per dialectical materialism is also dualistic; e.g., a soldier or soldier-like (for the state) worker’s R&R and scapegoat to kill versus a proletarian worker’s R&R and dragon to slay. For the state proponent, they remain as children, their minds closed off to further development save as better soldiers, better killers for the state; and we, as class warriors, learn through entertainment and relaxation as going hand-in-hand while repurposing dogma to suit our needs; e.g., me recognizing videogames as neoliberal refrains imparting the monomyth to acclimate future children to future wars for the state, thus furthering Capitalist Realism (space cadets, scouts, and cops, etc, of any gender the state needs to tokenize).

My countering of that focuses on a simple principle: children are far easier to teach than adults (the latter requiring learning incentives like sex [and other such treats] to motivate them). Children start as hungry and absorb things like a sponge; the state takes advantage of that to make soldiers that maintain its strength and position: “Give me a boy until he is seven and I will show you the man.” For Gamergate types, everything is a stranger and wrong except whatever fits with their narrow, fragile worldview, and they respond predictably to that in ways the state can control; i.e., through us-versus-them violence, made into a holiday (a cycle): the ghost of the counterfeit to summon and abject.

As such, gamers (the metonym for conservativism’s lost boys) hate Anita Sarkeesian because she encourages critical-thinking skills in regards to entertainment, which for weird canonical nerds is anathema. They liken cognitive estrangement/dissonance to a biased confirmation that they must be right; i.e., she is an enemy who is wrong—an animalistic monster not to be trusted, but attacked and killed because it apparently threatens Man like death personified (meaning “a threat”; e.g., Michael Myers in Halloween [1978] as a threatening Shape that h(a)unts you: “In Samuels’ writing fate is immovable like a mountain. It stands where man passes away. Fate never changes”). By extension, all women are the enemy. Nature is the enemy. Monsters that evoke these motherly characteristics (the topos of the power of women making Aristotle out to be an ass) are the enemy. Teachers (the intelligencia) are the enemy. In turn, cis-het men become isolated, lonely and desperate; they take by force what capital routinely denies them, knowing they’ll play along to move money through nature. Forget “double-secret probation”; this time, it’s war!

Conversely, I was a precocious child, always asking questions with my twin brother (we once asked a service tech at my grandfather’s work showing off a heart-and-lung machine filled with cow’s blood: “How did they get the blood out of the cow?” “Did it hurt the cow?” “Where’s the cow now?” The technician was speechless). Over time, my brother stopped asking questions and escaped into videogames, started a family and upheld the nuclear family model. I, on the other hand, became a wandering spinster and academic, studying videogames and monsters until counting myself among their number by coming out of the closet and writing this book series; i.e., using my expanded vernacular and general education/experiences through a show of solidarity informed by my childhood; e.g., by my grandfather and I, as a little girl, walking in the fields and I stopping to see the flowers as a child does. “Aren’t the flowers beautiful?” I asked him; to which my grandfather looked around him and saw them as I did.

“Why yes they are!” he remarked, touched by my childish observation having reopened his eyes to a thing forgotten regarding that which was in right in front of, and all around, him—nature. “Lest ye become as little children, you shall never enter the kingdom of God!” Except per Rudolph Otto, this isn’t a Christian kingdom, but one expressed through placeholders that is quested for by Gothicists (and other such poets) looking on awesome things: “Look on my Works, ye Mighty, and despair!” Awesome things lead to awesome thoughts, to awesome problems, to awesome solutions. Memory becomes a lesson to trust passed down as “Antiquity”—a challenge that rings bells of devastation not rung in some time: a lost lesson, a rememory we return to as a colossal wreck surrounded by sand (ashes to ashes, dust to dust—what Hamlet called a “quintessence”).

To that, I still have to teach my ideas to people or it’s all for naught. While accessibility and replicability is a common theme of my book (abjuring academic superiority and cognitive estrangement), a desire to teach lies inside my biggest volume: about monsters, with monsters, as motherly and animalistic. I want to teach not just because academia did me dirty but also because I learned to teach correctly through the women in my life as there for me; i.e., in ways that made me feel welcome, loved, and safe. This is another duality insofar as the state treats all women like animals and monsters, forcing them to be mothers who teach their children to be better inside the system caging both; chattelized, they often fight enslavement through their children as the future that outlives the patriarch controlling them “to be a man” like him, a coach from Hell: “Our babies will not be warlords!”

In Western myth, women are the classical guides for men through Hell (with Virgil being a classic exception). Not all of them were proverbial good witches, but likewise, through Hawthorne I learned that moral distinctions (value judgements) like “good and bad” are far less useful critically than dialectical materialism expressing the using of such qualifiers onto monsters as complex societal roles; morality is automatic insofar as actions do what is moral relative to human, animal and environmental rights protecting them from the state, from echoes of tyranny. The best teachers prepare us for the world, including our own growing sexualities in relation to those who protect us as being people we will want to be close to, including sexually—the generally accepted role of the teacher and the parent versus the Gothic’s enjoyment of the paradox, the student desiring the teacher as (through the ghost of the counterfeit) donating to incest, thus rape. This can happen through paradoxes of ironic bodily reactions; i.e., the body reacting to rape with physical pleasure divided from the mind (the tickle or laughter paradox—of tickling or laughing feeling good until they don’t, or if they are unwanted—but also of complaint, of “methinks the lady doth protest too much” during #MeToo, legal bias and sexual harassment; e.g., Amy Black Stone et al’s “Legal Consciousness and Responses to Sexual Harassment,” 2009).

In other words, context matters; contending with capital means playing with these paradoxes and their context through signifiers thereof that manifest in daily life and media as half-real, echoing across imagination, therefore time and space. Precocious children want to “grow up” quickly and jump into sex as a learning device; we often only have access to canonical instances of porn that, unlike worker-friendly forms, prepare us for a rude awakening when we discover that women/the monstrous-feminine aren’t without weapons. While they gatekeep (cockblock) and teach us about sex through boundaries as likewise informed by media, they can reject unwanted connections and harm to teach vital lessons; i.e., that they are not sex objects to own and abuse, first and foremost, but people we must acknowledge and treat with respect while managing our own bruised egos (and pent-up frustrations). Like a teacher in class but a lover in bed, such fuckable, motherly personas will be waiting when we’re both ready to play:

(artist: Sabrina Nicole)

The idea of such maternal BDSM and kink is to mother a pedagogic connection that isn’t harmful—a “first time” that is cute, thus special. It probably won’t be earth-shattering (unless you both know what you’re doing and understand what you both want and like) but it can be in the future if chances to experiment are allowed—to repeatedly take each other out “for rides.” This will happen if you trust each other and look for a likeness of mothers in those you befriend and yes, fuck—not to encourage incest, but calculated risk that prevents incest and other abuses common to the state falling apart under its routine collapses; e.g., I have a mommy kink, but engage through such personas to heal from power abuse (rape) that I have survived at the hands of many abusers, be they more readily classifiable as male or female (and arguably intersex, in Zeuhl’s case).

In turn, there’s so many monsters (mommies or otherwise) to examine, so many ways to think about/with them as memory aids and psychosexual teaching devices; i.e., that speak to underlying dialectical-material forces at work, thus myriad conclusions to draw/fun to be had through what’s uncovered and in turn played with (children should play with dead things). Holistic intersectionality demands solving Capitalism through poetry and monsters, but also critical thinking as something that involves fluency in both; i.e., with people who don’t always agree (often on protocol but also deeper issues like morality and other such cultural values) and who must find common ground in shared interests. It raises questions; i.e., desires to quest for answers that rise from media as dualistic, thus puzzling. And like all quests, fluency starts with a riddle.

In the interests of playing with poetry as an invaluable contribution to solving Capitalism, I’ve devised this riddle in a particular shape inside the mind: the caterpillar and the wasp (which, if you haven’t figured out already, is a metaphor for Ripley and the xenomorph as monstrous mothers). Except we’re thinking of these devices as abstractions of things (the monstrous-feminine), which just as often abstract other things (mothers, nature, BDSM and kink, etc). Their socio-material engagement works back and forth, providing delivery systems for trauma and catharsis on a systemic level: the Archaic Mother as a big-ass (full-of-eggs) man-eater.

(artist: Bay and a female mantis)

Contrary to Cartesian dualism, though, this actually describes a very human way of approaching the world and learning about it. As such, we’ll jump around a fair bit, but try to return to the original placeholder forms (our titular caterpillar and wasp) every so often, if only to keep things anchored and consistent. Regardless, try to remember that Gothic theatre roles like the Great Destroyer and sacrificial lamb each occupy the human body—not simply a blank canvas, but a “murderous” art studio (akin to Scott’s psychosexual, 1970s arthouse splatter revived and parodied; e.g., with Jeremy Saulnier’s 2007 Murder Party and Macon Blair’s own contributions[4]) whose prolific gradient of expression—painted in all manner of unspeakable pigments and fluids—is anisotropic amid dialectical-material dispute; it all shares the same shadow zone, one that talks about multiple things at the same time, but stresses different qualities as needed to make a given point. To that, a human body can represent “power” as closeness to trauma, further symbolized by animals and theatre on and offstage; i.e., as something to impart by acknowledging its complicated, linguo-material existence; e.g., the counterterrorist ability to buck systemic abuse normalized by the brutal ordering of nature as moralized to serve Cartesian interests: something as ridiculous as “All Wasps Are Bad” (capital demands profit, which demands genocide, which demands wars of extermination, which demands a misunderstanding of what nature is in relation to human fear and dogma). Humans must be humanized; other animals, treated humanely.

Those touched by trauma pursue “trauma” as something to control through calculated risk; the Gothic invites this through paradox, pushing the hero (the protagonist) towards Hell as an edge of destruction that wholly transforms them. Capital harms us and conceals its harm through cryptonyms that announce the structure it cannot fully hide. In pursuit of Communism as our Numinous, then, our Gothic quest begins with a caterpillar bookending itself. It starts with an egg and a leaf and from there the egg hatches and the caterpillar start its life. In one branch, it grows up, enters its chrysalis, and emerges a butterfly. In another, or at the same time insofar as time is a circle, it emerges a wasp. What represents Capitalism and what represents Communism? Capitalism is a cancer and Communism is the cure, but cancer-as-capital is both a natural thing and unnatural insofar as Capitalism is and isn’t an animal, because it is alive but also too big to be expressed as such. But such poetic abstractions (metaphors) are common in popular stories because popular stories are what work insofar as oral culture is far older than written culture but expressed within it; e.g., Medusa as expressed through likenesses (the xenomorph) that speak to the human condition as in flux through dialectical-material exchanges: commodities vs activism. The process as alien becomes something to reunite and play with as much as the body encapsulating it. Pursue it from all angles and positions:

 (artist: Lera PI)

Swept up in that is an innate (congenital, internal) and taught (external, societal) desire to help others and fend for ourselves; i.e., to value and appreciate the defenseless, caring for/treating them so they trust, feel safe and will spend time with us: protection and comfort. It’s not supernatural but it is alienated from us and fetishized by capital, which in turn speaks to those of us who identify with monsters (often in familial language that speaks to our psychosexual desires for protection and comfort) by virtue of this alien-fetish effect—the monster’s motherly affect bouncing back onto us as marginalized collectively among differences; e.g., me as trans, intersecting with people of color and women, religious minorities, disabled persons and Indigenous people as needing to unify together through these maternal sentiments: to fight collectively against the state as a patriarchal settler colony that has already won, collaring Medusa. It’s like Star Wars, except the Death Star is still operational(!). Salvation for one group demands salvation for all, lest said Star become an Omelas.

Like Star Wars, people tune in for drama because it speaks different things to them in personified forms (all heroes are monsters). Ideals and taboos. You don’t just have a character die randomly[5] because then the story stops before anything has been said. People learn through popular entertainment because it’s popular in oral and written forms. This includes the Gothic juxtaposing contrasting and oft-personifying elements (and multiple interacting and interrelated, interesting factors) through theatrical paradox to express the whole through disturbance according to ideals and crimes through “what stinks” (where the bodies are buried); i.e., using what captivates and holds people’s attention: puzzles and games, but also fear and dogma, struggle and victory.

To that, is the puzzling case of the caterpillar and wasp a simple mimetic game, something idealized that “stinks,” mere poetry or dogma meant to elicit a fear response? Can fear be used to keep us alive through devices that help us think critically about our surroundings as eating us? The short answer is, all of the above, in duality! The riddle is one of motherhood (the wasp’s maternal predation of its specialized host, the caterpillar) as enslaved to abject forms that can always be conjured up and crushed under heel. Doing so speaks to something I outlined in Volume One:

Rape and war are two sides of the same coin; Gothic Communism seeks to prevent both (and Capitalist Realism) through worker intelligence as something to raise well beyond canonical, Cartesian standards. Trauma writing/artwork, then, are vastly important insofar as they grant workers an awesomely potent means to speak out against the state and its normally myopic dialogs on rape, war and death: Gothic poetics as a counterterrorist device, by which to regain control over portrayals of our own trauma, thus lives; i.e., by reclaiming the ability to perform and play with these things imagined for ourselves, seeing possible worlds beyond Capitalist Realism’s endless rape and war. Women (and all monstrous-feminine “non-men”) are food whose harvesting serves a Cartesian profit motive.

To that, it’s actually quite common for heroic canon to include trauma, but not to process it in any meaningful, healthy sense; i.e., of actually stopping its criminogenesis by recognizing and subverting these coercive material conditions and linguo-material factors in reclaimed language and iconoclastic, Gothic theatricalities. […] The most effective (and final) form of genocide is silence; the best way to combat its execution is to speak out in ways that highlight our trauma in recognizable forms. […] Capitalist Realism as a Cartesian enterprise. Under Cartesian thought, nature is female food tied to profit in ways that alienate workers and the natural world in classically Gothic ways that lead to police states and grim harvests, but also harvests at large regardless of their outward appearance; i.e., the monstrous-feminine through settler-colonial models that continue to plague workers and nature as victims of capital (source).

To that, what could be more vivid (and indicative of the monstrous-feminine) than infanticide, paralysis and cannibalism? It certainly strikes a chord, and speaks to things normally left unspoken in Western media save as ghosts of the counterfeit: the fed-up mother feeding on her baby to pass a rebellious double along inside the hollowed-out shell—a Trojan.

Except, abject theatre seems to be unsatisfactory insofar as it’s “just gross.” Indeed, it would seem far easier to ditch all of this gnarly mayhem, stick to theory and “speak plain” (there’s a paradox) minus the gross bugs and infanticidal gestures. But doing so would ignore how people learn, thus make us terrible teachers, hence Gothicists (the Gothic doesn’t speak plain, and wouldn’t to save its life); it would ignore the repressed matriarchal fury—of a) not wanting to be a mother forced to give birth to soldiers for the capitalist, patriarchal hive, and b) wanting to look and feel human as something that can be as outwardly comely as a butterfly or as hideously beautiful as a wasp being two sides of the same magic: “Set me free! We are sisters, you and I!” The puzzle to liberation—to “cleaning house” once and for all—lies in both as scholarship and cool-as-shit. Unicorns and harpies? Fucking. Metal.

(exhibit 33b2c1b: Unicorns fuck to metal. The chase of the Numinous is a reoccurring theme in this book, but especially this volume. It’s the proverbial elephant in the room: the womb of nature—not just a church but a cathedral in a vast string of “might in small.” This grappling duality reflects in phallic women and Archaic Mothers; i.e., doubles of a light and dark side through all the usual Gothic binaries sliding on a warring gradient; e.g., Hippolyta and Medusa, but also the harpy and the unicorn: as monstrous-feminine similar to the wasp and caterpillar as predator and prey through stigma animals amid a commercialized pastoral, the strong and the weak [which for the fascist is both, but also for the Communist]. Per the Gothic, these dueling foils mobilize the formerly arrested, fusing nuclear division [the family unit and its labor] while haunting the counterfeit’s dark funerary heritage as something to investigate; re: Radcliffe and us, to get to the bottom of an ongoing curse we [unlike Radcliffe] will actually do something about. We won’t banish Marx’ spectres; we’ll revive them in “prisons” that set workers [and Mother Nature] free from the abjection process [a concept we’ll continue exploring throughout this volume].

Powerful men [or those in the same Man Box] aren’t just intimidated by powerful, sexy women, but the monstrous-feminine at large. Those forced to identify as “women/femme” under heteronormative schemes, then, inherit the burden of care, the need to be creative as a teaching/enrichment device [apart from enterprising auteurs, cis-het men are terrible cooks, dancers, photographers, child rearers, artists, instructors, etc; and even those who excel are self-centered and destructively competitive]: pulling thorns out of wounded lions’ paws. Except, mothers of the future are forced by the state/status quo to care for the murderously infantile as given everything except what they need to socially and emotionally thrive. It becomes “gimme or die,” a demand made by those living in a capitalistic bubble that leads them to think they’re entitled to everything—to own what they don’t understand [e.g., girls pee out of their butts].

Our flowery subversion of the usual pride-based theatrics includes confirmed bachelors of any preference; i.e., I love my grandfather but would much rather write about the monstrous-feminine [especially monster mommies and Amazons] for-fucking-ever than spend one second apologizing for patriarchal forces [from Volume Zero]:

We will invariably discuss cis-het, male proponents (exhibit 63b) of the status quo throughout the book, but our transformative interest really lies more so in TERFs and other heteronormative cross-sections within tokenized canon; i.e., the class traitor’s assimilation fantasy that maintains the colonial binary by emulating white supremacy and toxic masculinity through internalized bigotry and self-hatred as a discipline-and-punish panopticon, one that perpetuates the status quo of dominating the monstrous-feminine—i.e., the rebellious slave or barbarian, effeminate meathead or thinking/feeling soldier, worker, athlete or statue essentially being property-come-alive and thinking for itself—through the rape culture of “prison sex”: acting like a man as something to perpetually watch over everyone else within and remind them of it. Not only are the terms “prison sex” and “Man Box” synonymous in this book; they’re performed by token minorities, including women but really anything that “isn’t a white, cis-het, Christian man” wanting to assimilate, thus occupy the guard tower. All functionally become a double minority relative to the power of their voice for the status quo, but also against the status quo in proletarian discourse [source].

Gondor, the Emerald City, Omelas—the Patriarchy is “Goldilocks Imperialism,” historically-materially whatever fails living up to a promised better future during theatrical conflict. Aragorn is a heartless sham, the Wizard of Oz a perfidious humbug.

[left: a saucy conversation between Bay and I]

The likes of Tolkien [and his imitators] might seem like tough acts to follow, historical materialism regressing to times of revenge, sexual division and high adventure at the fascist beginning and end of time [“Rome” by any other name]. Such calculated risks might be tempting to enjoy without critique; e.g., Witch Hazel’s “Ride On” [2024] yet-another-power-fantasy with clear-cut ground rules, its friends and foes easily defined, its roles, revenges and rescues restoring a centrist balance of power. As such, it’s our monstrous-feminine “past” against a Man’s world, the latter envisioned as such by perilous fraudsters laying claim to everything from Cleopatra to the Pouch of Douglas. Our bedroom code and its curious preferential allowances, whatever form they take—whatever tension and release their salubrious locomotion provides and lubricates—helps gear workers towards development; i.e., of what Capitalism deems “impossible.” Fuck them; this is our cake, our cathedral to taste and share with those who are invited—that, like Gloria Gaynor’s spectacular refrain, operatically belt “I will survive!” while saving all our lovin’ for someone who’s lovin’ us. Like the unicorn, our fur[r]y is dainty and cute; it remains inarguably terrifying to the privileged as cowardly through domestication—e.g., like this tiny bird furiously attacking this ‘fraidy cat [Daily Dose of Internet’s “Random Tire Flies Off Car, 2024; timestamp: 2:46]: “That rabbit’s dynamite!”

Moreover, class/culture war is fought and won with love and nature as subversively maternal and sororietal—to reclaim from a heteronormative, tokenized mind prison of nuclear-familial bad instruction and poisonous love [re: TERFs]. Female or not, so many people are completely afraid to love at all. Many often love deeply once and then, unrequited or otherwise denied happiness, fall into a deadly celibate trap: of thinking that it can’t get better. Speaking from experience, I’m a certified nymphomaniac, but didn’t date successfully until I was 29[6a]. After that, I had a series of exes who harmed me until 2022, except I started seeing my past as like all relationships: an opportunity to grow and learn from.

As such, my luck started to change because I was calibrating my search parameters, each abuser a setback that taught me what to look and watch out for [the proverbial green and red flags]. In other words, creativity became my superpower because I could take whatever an abuser threw at me and make it something beautiful; I eventually started to find “mommies” who didn’t hurt me while making me feel good [unlike with Cuwu, exhibit 33b2c1a2] and that’s when the real magic started to happen—i.e., when this book sprang to life.

To that, unicorns are visible to those who search and trust; generally mistaken for ordinary things, they are both ordinary and extraordinary as something to learn from. Zeuhl loved to swallow cum [and make eye contact, mid-gulp]—was an invigilator who had the tightest, most perfect pussy imaginable [with lots of fuzz and sliced ham, but tight as hell]; Cuwu’s bedroom door had a literal unicorn on it; and Jadis was a chonky entomologist, dark mommy and orc chiefess who lured me in, deliberately groomed me for harm [if failing is fucking then I’ve “failed” a lot—many lifetimes’ worth because I’ve lived a lot]. Their friendlier ghosts are the figurative “mothers” we leave home to find; i.e., to make “home” among those who actually nurture and protect us, teaching us how through roleplay and sex, through Gothic teasing and thrills [“the gift that keeps on giving”]. Dating for love as casual or serious, roomies or strangers, SOs or FWBs, we may not ever get to fuck in-person, but we can learn and bond long-distance just fine [the classic “love-by-letter” approach, but extending to images and video on the Internet; i.e., Trans-X’s “Living on Video” (1983) or Taco’s vampy “Puttin’ on the Ritz” (2024) but overtly pornographic]: I love my job because the people I work with [through interdependence, not codependence] are all awesome mommies and daddies I can proudly show off without regret!

[models, from left to right: Ms. Reefer, Blxxd Bunny, and Quinnvincible] 

How could I have any when working with such angels, and while having survived the complete-and-utter torture that preceded them? Jadis was my Great Destroyer. They took with impunity. They scattered my wits, drained my sanity and stole my will to live [source: Persephone van der Waard’s “Setting the Record Straight; My Ex’s Abuse of Me: February 17th, 2022”]. By comparison, these cuties—stellar and glowing—utterly restored it, gave me something to live for—something warm and serene, but joyous, thunderstriking and awesome: helping my friends avoid similar fates; i.e., an angelic and devilish bliss comparable to what Matthew Lewis described following the riot and fall of Ambrosio in The Monk:

The remaining years of Raymond and Agnes, of Lorenzo and Virginia, were happy as can be those allotted to Mortals, born to be the prey of grief, and sport of disappointment. The exquisite sorrows with which they had been afflicted, made them think lightly of every succeeding woe. They had felt the sharpest darts in misfortune’s quiver; Those which remained appeared blunt in comparison. Having weathered Fate’s heaviest Storms, they looked calmly upon its terrors: or if ever they felt Affliction’s casual gales, they seemed to them gentle as Zephyrs which breathe over summer-seas [source].

To that, I’ll let you in on a little secret: The greatest irony of Jadis harming me [something we’ll go into more detail about during the undead module] is they accidentally gifted me with the appreciation of calculated risk. Scoured with invisible knives, I don’t view my scars as a “weakness” at all; I relish the feeling of proximity to the ghost of total power—of knowing that motherfucker took me to the edge but didn’t take everything from me: I escaped them and lived to do my greatest work in spite of their treachery! Like the halls of a cathedral, my lived torments and joys color this castled work, ornamenting its various passages with the power of a full life. I’ve known such terror that makes the various joys I experience now all the more sweet and delicious. I am visited by ghosts of my rapturous design, the empress of my fate, the queen of a universe shared with seraphs the likes of which I can hardly describe; “no coward soul is mine.”

[artist: Persephone van der Waard]

Am I privileged enough [white, male, American/middle-class] to not be immediately killed by those with the stomach for it, trapped on the wrong side of the imperial fence or the law? Yes. But let it be known all the same that all of our abusers—however powerful they might seem—can’t completely own us, nor take the best things “during the divorce”; i.e., they don’t monopolize “what works” when combined adventurously by us [which we may do as we want—to have fun and learn with those we have “eyes for”]: my creative stealing of their power through my own work, eliding sex and warlike metaphors to liberate the monstrous-feminine by illustrating mutual consent with sincere revolutionaries. The Imperium divides along sex and force; birth and creativity are a classically feminine act, whereas traditional masculinity operates through rape dressed up as “birth” [re: Zeus and Metis]. Sex Positivity is our subversive playground, primarily funded by me but occupied and performed inside by a great many artists; i.e., those with access to forbidden, medieval, alienated things [their bodies and genders] and utterly determined to catch[6b] your attention, but also get you to think about sex worker liberation once your tails start to wag: “Don’t be afraid to play ‘dangerously’ [to slay] in order to learn how to love better!” No horseshit, it’s bonafide scholarship in our case, but also slutty and freaky as fuck. There’s praise, release words, collars and puppy play abound!

As such, a given pair offers the usual “fencing” quality mid-argument, albeit often within a theatrical BDSM cosmetic whose dialogic stance is literally worn: black leather symbolic of the alien, the profane, the lance-like penis as something to ride on a helper body—a dominant assistant that supplies the Destroyer component/stance as a physical component. But per Gothic oscillation, the role can waffle between submissive and dominant, the merger of white and black reflecting a given paradox; e.g., of evil, the gentle mommy dom appearing dark and deadly but being harmless, or the trans penis as penetrative but obedient towards the sub or dom as someone to top.

As such, the Gothic loves monsters, Hell, sex, violence, oxymorons; but contrary to modern capitalist thought, good villains [vice characters] hold an audiences’ attention long enough to get them to think while eating popcorn entertainment [bread and circus, with a healthy dash of fake blood and cum]. Gender swaps/trouble and role reversals—the revelatory [and descriptive] possibilities of iconoclastic roleplay [and its visual expression] are virtually limitless, their appreciative irony liberating such wild motherly things from prescriptive canonical bondage; the original, however harmful or seemingly immutable, can mutate into something fresh across generations, but also in the current one—e.g., from Super Mario Bros. 3 [1988] to Akihabara Electric Circus [1988]. When you hear the cry of Medusa, it’s a sigh of relief as much as a wail of the damned—a dark mommy getting’ her breeder’s freak on, begging ahegao for that baby batter!

In turn, we as workers have the right to express ourselves however we wish to say whatever is required to liberate us; e.g., the monstrous-feminine reified by “ancient” fertility throwbacks from Pagan harvest/resurrection rituals: Easter and egg-laying rabbits. The state, by comparison, has no rights insofar as it interferes with our right to exist and thrive. It must be throttled, irreverently choked to the point of total irrelevance by the jailed set free—often to the point of cartoonishly staged, parodic access; i.e., as borrowed from childhood favorites that already “get the idea”; e.g., pinching its snoot with a pair of chopsticks set to Beethoven’s 9th[7], shouting “OVERDOSE!” holding a dubious cure in both hands[8], or taking Hugo Snyder’s threat “I’m going to crush your head until slimy ooze comes out of your eyeballs[9]!” a bit too literally. Be it with fake blood and/or placental slime, it’s all been done before, so do whatever works.)

Liberation-amid-torture might seem like a fever dream, except historical materialism presents history as a dialectical-material cycle described by Marx[10]; i.e., like a bad dream where evil doubles would seem to haunt us for pure torment save for the riddle they provide meant to save us from the same sorry fate: one predicated on bourgeois socio-material conditions (the canonical Base and Superstructure), but also shapes how we think through popular stories; i.e., in arguments through doubles (from Volume Zero):

Doubles invite comparison to encourage unique, troubling perspectives that “shake things up” and break through bourgeois illusions. To that, the paradox of performing power compounds through the visitor(s) from other worlds, planets, times as fabricated, but also doubled in a praxial sense; i.e., Satan builds pandemonium and hell follows within him, but he looks and acts uncannily like those he’s rebelling against. While warring against the status quo, the monsters from either side (which come from/occupy the same shadow zone, whose nebulous, psychosexual “forces of darkness” we shall unpack during the thesis proper) start to resemble and not resemble each other. Sure, they look a lot alike, but dialectically-materially are actually polar opposites (source).

The problem to solve isn’t a monstrous identity and abject appearance, but Capitalism as a structure these things rage against. Medusa has good reason to be mad: Capitalism deliberately kettles her and canonizes her angst, making such conditions unequal, thus harmful; Communism is a polity whose intersections need solidarity to survive by making said conditions (and the views that spring from them) equal, balanced, and healthy. Therefore, to solve monstrous-feminine riddles of motherhood/nature-as-abject is to think critically about them; i.e., by using, like Odysseus, what we have on hand: our bodies and minds grappling with nature as something to learn from, no matter how fearsome and unmotherly she seems.

I’ve given you examples from my own life, but want to consider liberating mothers and the monstrous-feminine more broadly (mimesis) across a variety of media forms. We’ll back these (Gothick dumpers) up next, in the opening to “Solving Riddles; or, Following in Medusa’s Footsteps“!

(artist: Lera PI)

---

Footnotes

[1] “‘Plato’ seems to have started as a nickname (for platos, or ‘broad’), perhaps first given to him by his wrestling teacher for his physique, or for the breadth of his style, or even the breadth of his forehead” (source: Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy). True to form, “virtue” and power are conveyed through strength as classically gendered—”big equals strength” having many applications; e.g., a big ass, orgasm, cock, smile, intellect. The classical world would have relegated women to the ignominious position of male property. But hauntological forms allow us to present female/GNC schoolmasters who subvert male institutions of power to liminal degrees.

[2] Is the silence of the breathless pieta an overwhelmed/unresponsive alarm to true distress, a jest, or a worrisome trifle? I’d say it’s somewhere in between. Diagnoses like those must happen on the fly and can be stressful, but are important for the health of all peoples involved. They revive through the wardrobe—the costume, the prop, the makeup, etc—as a canvas on which to breathe fresh warnings and excitement, relief and ultimately restoration; e.g., a variety of rainbow shades as limitless as there exist colors of lipstick*, as flavors of food (sweet, savory or bitter, etc), and mixing those through a confusion of the senses whose magical assembly sets us free (more terms to explain in “Monsters, Magic and Myth”).

*And all those qualities that women (or those forced to identify as women) canonical porn organizes into types: redheads, brunettes, blondes; big, medium and small tits, hips, buttocks, etc. Like parts to a car. To be bought, traded, exchanged, turned in for a newer model—abused and neglected like all property ultimately is. We use a lot of metaphors in this volume, but people are not functionally slaves because that is wrong. Imperialism is wrong. It’s going to kill everyone on the planet and make most of our lives suck ass until then. End of story.

[3] Regarding the middle photo, here’s a bit of medieval architectural nerdiness: vintage cathedrals would have been built facing the dawn to represent the rising of Christ’s soul to Heaven. To that, Cuwu facing the dawn is like a cathedral in more ways than one; i.e., her front, or heavenly façade, is awash in sunlight, and her hellish, shapely backside is covered in growing shadows. In the Gothic sense, she intimates my own stabs at Strawberry Hill, my own personal “Lilith” who haunts Sex Positivity’s hallowed gloomth, but mostly without images to give her shape.

[4] As I wrote in “Murder Party (2007): Review” (2018):

Jeremy Saulnier and Macon Blair—I stumbled upon Blue Ruin several years back, and immediately fell in love with both men; they operate in tandem, much of what they deliver working through a constant, healthy partnership. For example, the stark conclusion, of the suicidal revenge plot, is realized by a shrunken, speechless Blair (a directorial talent in his own right: I Don’t Feel at Home in This World Anymore [2017] is one of my favorite films). I was hypnotized, and driven to watch more (source).

From Shakespeare’s Titus Andronicus to Scott’s Alien to Saulnier and Blair and ever onwards, the Gothic’s carnage is a sexy blood smear our own bodies, rooms and intersections of these carry into the future. Follow the pussy slime, the “snail trail,” the white rabbit!

[5] Heroes are like videogame characters; they don’t take actual permanent damage and can express themselves in immediate, impactful language everyone understands: sex and violence (the language of the Imperium).

[6a] I didn’t drive and had to take the bus to college, going back after nearly a decade-long hiatus. I met a future ex on the bus, Constance, who was going to a nearby college. To be charitable, it was a short relationship, and one that involved their mother not wanting us to spend time together because I was a broke bitch; they were worried I’d get their daughter pregnant. Unable to provide for Constance, she eventually stopped talking to me altogether. But about seven years after the fact, I reached out apropos of nothing and we caught up; Constance said she still remembered me, and that I had treated her very well and inspired her to do the same with her own future partners. I was reading A Midsummer Night’s Dream (1605) when we dated, and I often described her as my fairy queen. And seven years later, I mentioned that to Constance; she replied: “You’ll always be my fairy queen.” We did plan to meet up after their relationship went “on the rocks,” but I had to get tested first. By the time I got my healthcare set up, Constance and her fiancé had patched things up and we had to cancel the trip; but we did have a couple of fun days where we were fantasizing and talking about old times together—to fuck like it was new to us.

The moral, here, is you can meet people in person or online; what matters is that you enjoy it and take away something vital that you and others can collectively learn from and pass on.

[6b]

Not harmful lures or traps, but a means of setting you free in sexual-to-asexual forms (many workers are ace, but ace variation is immense—something we’ll explore much more in Volume Three); not as an imposition of torturous conversion or unironic peer pressure (for you ace types), but an invitation to try new things, to seize the day! Is there a price? Of course, but this payment helps sex workers and customers combat material scarcity and apathy provided customers and creators work together to ease suffering in all its forms: lessening harmful anguish, loss, agony and torment in exchange for campy theatrical forms (excruciating delight), sincere encouragement; “perilous” excitement, chills, awe and frisson (“skin orgasms”); and genuine, distinctly dizzying erotic pleasure—to help those in need fill empty reservoirs with fresh reserves, not oasis-grade fabrications administered by practiced frauds/repeat offenders.

Holistic creativity isn’t mere distraction, then, but a medicinal and material redistribution of means, knowledge, care, love, etc, into proletarian depots; it becomes something to put on and take off the table per negotiation. But it also demands active fieldwork and social work, one whose gradual adjustments slowly shirk the sidelines, scanning wider and wider for opportunities (thus achievements) of friendship, love, education—of, once unstunted, ready to jump at fresh chances to experience new fun relationships (stepping stones) while being prepared and respectful towards rejection. Such growth may not be normal under capitalist standards, but Communist pressure alters what the “low bar” is, starting with human rights and going from there as the bare minimum. We become not just a division of sex workers and regulars, but a circle of friends, a support group of comrades issuing complaints, self-defending by attacking and accusing proponents of an abusive and predatory system—to reach for something better by fighting back in ways that humanize all methods, including sex. It’s not a crutch or a Band-Aid, at all, but a device to eliminate such requirements through mutual reciprocity—of giving and receiving whatever we all need to thrive in a post-scarcity world while progressing towards it; i.e., a total fix versus a quick one (which isn’t a fix at all).

[7] From Surf Ninjas (1993).

[8] From Re-Animator (1989).

[9] From 3 Ninjas (1992).

[10] Re: “The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte” (1852).

“Brace for Impact” is blog-style book promotion, originally inspired by Harmony Corrupted—i.e., written, illustrated and invigilated by me for my upcoming Monster Volume, aka Volume Two of my Sex Positivity (2023) book series. “Brace for Impact” has since become a full, published book module in said series: Volume Two, part one, aka the Poetry Module. This promo post includes the entire module’s table of contents (and hyperlinks to each post), followed by the book disclaimer.

Further Reading: Volume Two actually divides into three modules/sub-volumes, each with its own promotion and release. “Brace for Impact” is the first (re: Volume Two, part one), but there are also promotions for Volume Two, part two’s twin Monster Modules, The Undead and Demons: “Searching for Secrets” and “Deal with the Devil“!

New chapters (v1.2, 6/14/2024): I attached several chapters from Volume Two, part two onto the end of the Poetry Module (v1.2 onwards). I have updated the promo series pages to reflect this change.

Volume Two, part one (the Poetry Module) is out (5/1/2024)! I wrote a preface for the module along with its debut announcement. Give that a look; then, go to my book’s 1-page promo to download the latest version of the PDF (which will contain additions/corrections these posts will not have)!

Permissions: Any publicly available images are exhibited for purposes of education, transformation and critique, thus fall under Fair Use; private nude material and collabs with models are specifically shared with permission from the original model(s). For more details about artist permissions, refer to the book disclaimer at the bottom of the page.

Concerning Buggy Images: Sometimes the images on my site don’t always load and you get a little white-and-green placeholder symbol, instead. Sometimes I use a plugin for loading multiple images in one spot, called Envira Gallery, and not all of the images will load (resulting in blank white squares you can still right-click on). I‘ve optimized most of the images on my site, so I think it’s a server issue? Not sure. You should still be able to access the unloaded image by clicking on the placeholder/right-clicking on the white square (sometimes you have to delete the “?ssl=1” bit at the end of the url). Barring that, completed volumes will always contain all of the images, whose PDFs you can always download on my 1-page promo.

(artist: Harmony Corrupted)

Contents (for Volume Two, part one) 

“Brace for Impact” divides into multiple blog posts. Some are posted on my old blog (meant for any audience); some feature explicit, pornographic nudity* and will post exclusively here on my website.

*My website is 18+ and contains full uncensored images of everything being discussed and exhibited. To that, “Angry Mothers,” “Solving Riddles,” “The Medieval” and “Facing Death” will all contain a variety of erotic nude images discussing psychosexual trauma. The purpose of their inclusion is art criticism, transformation and education regarding erotic Gothic media.

Summary

Now that the module is published, I can summarize it more completely and concretely. Rather than a smaller part of Volume Two, the sample has become part one of that volume, the Poetry Module. It includes most of the module (excluding some paratextual documents).

Whereas the Monster Modules focus on the history of Gothic poetics—i.e., as something to learn from when poetically articulating our own pedagogy of the oppressed—the Poetry Module focuses on Gothic poetics as a historical-material process whose history we contribute towards. Its emphasis lies in teaching with Gothic poetic devices by applying them, the module explaining said devices while going over them, one-by-one; i.e., in a series of poetry-themed sections: “Time,” “Teaching,” “Medicine,” and “the Medieval.” Last but not least, the module includes a sizeable extension that goes over different ways to play with the imaginary past; i.e., per ludo-Gothic BDSM and rape play.

Module Posts

• 0. “The Poetry Module Is Out! A Preface Written Afterwards” (opening): Explores how our struggle—to hug the Medusa as something to teach, to reclaim our bodies (our asses) as Aegis-like and disguise-worthy—sits inside a dangerous hall of mirrors. Per my usual style, this section was written last (and after the module was already live) and put first in the table of contents. Opening Length: ~1 page.
  • Preface: Inside the Hall of Mirrors (feat. Jordan Peele’s Us and Natalie Wynn): A preface I wrote after the initial volume released, to comment on the mirror like nature of trauma; i.e., as something to communicate differently by pro-state and pro-worker forces with a shared aesthetic on the same surfaces, but from different sides of the cryptonymic equation (revolutionary vs complicit). Uses Jordan Peele’s Us (2019) as a reference point; critiques Natalie Wynn (aka Contrapoints). Length ~28 Pages.
• 1. “Psychosexual Martyrdom” (sample essay—on my old blog): This post samples from Volume Two, specifically the first half of its opening, “Concerning Martyrs, from Demons to the Undead: Learning from the Monstrous Past” (2024). Volume Two is the upcoming Humanities primer/monster volume for my book project, Sex Positivity (2023); its opening asks the reader to humanize the oppressed through reclaimed monsters by learning from the monstrous past as something to recreate ourselves. Length: ~14 pages.
• 2. “Haunting the Chapel: A Cum Tribute to Harmony Corrupted” (dedication): Dedicates to my friend and muse, Harmony Corrupted, who inspired me to write the entire “Brace for Impact” module. Length: ~2 pages.
• 3. “Hugging the Alien” (module opening—on my old blog): Introduces a concept of reunion with nature as alien and fetishized, requiring us to “hug Medusa” (the monstrous-feminine) as the classic punching bag of Cartesian forces. Length: ~6 pages.
• 4. “Time” (“Prep, part zero”—on my old blog): Thinks about the Humanities—and the humanization of those perceived or identifying as monsters under capitalistic hegemony as invariably decaying towards fascism—less as pure fiction and more as something to cultivate using Gothic poetics in relation to space and time as relayed through fiction and reality during an ongoing relationship: dialectical and historical materialism. Length: ~7 pages.
• 5. “Teaching” (“Prep, part one”) : Focuses on the duality of monstrous language when employed in either direction, but generally in opposition, during dialectical materialism; i.e., as a means of introducing children to fear and dogma (to serve the state) or as a profoundly playful and performative means of worker liberation: getting children to learn as early as possible about their world (and the language that composes it)—to learn from the imaginary past as monstrous-feminine. In other words, “Teaching” explores how learning happens when playing with trauma, confronting and voicing it in symbolic terms whose duality must, in turn, be repeatedly puzzled over through incessant examination and application; i.e., theatrical/Gothically poetic metaphors the likes of which often involve animals-as-monstrous. “Teaching” thoroughly invokes Medusa through “the caterpillar and the wasp” refrain, but will branch out to adjacent forms of monstrous-feminine expression to explore teaching more broadly as a powerful Gothic-Communist device.

Due to its size and multiple topics, I’ve divided “Teaching” into three total pieces:

• • • 5a. “‘My Quest Began with a Riddle’: the Caterpillar and the Wasp” (chapter opening—on my old blog): Introduces the chapter goal (learning from the past as monstrous-feminine to liberate it from Capitalist Realism) and outlines the poetic, educational refrain: the caterpillar and the wasp. Opening Length: ~6 pages.
    • 5b. “Angry Mothers; or, Learning from Our Monstrous-Feminine Past“: Establishes the monstrous-feminine as something whose ancient past is forever in development—for the state or for workers. I consider this idea through Alien, but also my own work as inspired by Alien and the cuties that I work with. In short, it asks how I learned from Scott’s “ancient” past (and similar stories) to touch on post-scarcity in my own work. Length: ~26 pages.
    • 5c. “Solving Riddles; or, Following in Medusa’s Footsteps“ (subchapter opening): Considers the monstrous-feminine as something to learn from in a variety of multimedia forms; i.e., starting with a broader relationship between our bodies and minds as interconnected with themselves and media at large, then narrowing down to conflict, mothers-in-conflict, and liberation. Opening Length: ~1 page.
      • 5c1. “Solving Riddles”; “Spilling Tea” and “Meeting Medusa” (included with subchapter opening): Articulates how we can encounter “Medusa” in everyday life—a touch of the extraordinary lurking in those we meet as normally policed or controlled by the state. This classically falls under a male/female binary, which I will try to hyphenate based on my own experiences and expertise (scholarly synthesis). Length: ~36 pages.
      • 5c2. “Teaching between Media and our Bodies, and a Bit of Coaching“: Shifts focus, expanding on the monstrous-feminine as something to consider (and teach) through a) the space between multiple forms of media and our bodies, and b) is something to materialize and grasp at through coaching behaviors (of which I shall demonstrate). Length: ~20 pages.
      • 5c3. “Conflict, Mothers-in Conflict, and Liberation“: Concludes the chapter by concentrating on themes of conflict that double as praxial struggles insofar as language hermeneutically functions; i.e., always in conflict in a variety of ways. I consider that variety unto itself, then regard it in relation to mothers (and the monstrous-feminine) as trapped, fighting for liberation. Length: ~33 pages.

• 6. “Medicine” (“Prep, part two”—on my old blog): Reflects on the synthesizing of good praxis from a medical standpoint; i.e., to pace ourselves and look after ourselves/monitor our vitals while engaging in subversive Gothic poetics as poets, sex workers, and rock stars, etc, generally do—actively and boldly. Length: ~8 pages.

(artists: Cuwu and Persephone van der Waard)

• 7. “The Medieval” (“Prep, part three”): Reflects on the Humanities through the poetic lens of monsters, magic and myth; i.e., an object lesson on how to think about, and engage creatively with, Gothic poetics the way a Gothic poet would, thus better synthesize praxis to foster Gothic Communism as an artistic movement.
  • I have divided it further into many pieces—“Monsters, Magic and Myth”—which cover the some of the messiest (and most exquisite) aspects to what Volume Two is about and which we’ve touched upon, but here I really want to go over as thoroughly as possible: as things to sell to others not as commodities, but propositions; i.e., for them to buy as a social-sexual exchange between cuties.
    • 7a. Opening to “The Medieval,” and “Castles in the Flesh; or, a Personalized Example of Derelicts”: Provides a personalized anecdote from my life regarding how Gothic derelicts (castles or castle-like bodies; i.e., suits of armor) are expressed in more literal human forms: those we relate to with using Gothic media. Opening Length: ~3 pages; “Castles” Length: ~11 pages.
    • 7b. “Green Eggs and Ha(r)m; or, ‘Fucking’s Fun, Try it!’“: Partway on the road. Considers the Gothic as something its critics turn their noses up at like green eggs and harm, conflating capitalist forms with our iconoclastic doubles (making them bad critics); this subchapter outlines Gothic castles and draconian occupants in their half-real, dialectical-material totality (ours vs theirs). Length: ~15 pages.
    • 7c. “The Eyeball Zone; or, Relating to the Gothic as Commies Do“: Still en route! A more autobiographical subchapter, one that explores interpersonal relationships in the broader context of ludo-Gothic BDSM during class and culture war—how we can relieve stress and address praxial concerns that we leave behind; i.e., to be consulted when we become overstimulated (or don’t exist anymore) relative to our own web of relationships: a buffer when our walls go up, a glorious “eyehole” to peep through and engage with while the blinders are still on. Length: ~37 pages.
    • 7d. “Knocking on Heaven’s Door; or, Prepare for Entry!“: Arrives and waits for the door to open. Goes over some Marxist signposts and liberatory sex work exhibits, which seek to underline how the Gothic (and Communism) transcend mediums to speak across them in everyday relationships that help put out fires while not starting new ones (a complex spectrum of social-sexual exchanges, whose material factors and aesthetic elements of unequal power and trauma hyphenate to address systemic abuse). Length: ~10 pages.
    • 7e. “‘Heaven in a Wild Flower’; or, Exhibiting the Monstrous-Feminine Ourselves“: Greeted in the antechamber, and given pamphlets. Supplies a gender-studies hermeneutic, regarding the monstrous-feminine in relation to everything discussed so far in the book; i.e., there is always an aspect of the Medusa (war-like, morphologically diverse, and rebellious) to any monster that isn’t—figuratively or literally, in part or all together—a white, Anglo-American, cis-het, Christian male. Length: ~12 pages.
    • 7f. “Medieval Expression; or, ‘Welcome to the Fun Palace!’” (subchapter opening): Enters the palace. Explores the idea of the Gothic as a liminal, holistic dialog that transcends mediums, precluding harm through a confusion of the senses, jouissance, magic assembly of old dead things, and other medieval devices tied to magic and myth as a dark, sexual affair (often an operatic one linked to popular controlled substances—metal when reclaimed by fags camping the canon with sex, drugs and rock ‘n roll as synonymous with each other and iconoclastic learning and expression). In other words, “Medieval Expression” explores the dialectic of the alien as generally expressed through monsters, magic and myths, mainly paradoxes and oxymorons that blend all of these things; i.e., how they hook up and interact, once conjoined. Opening Length: ~6 pages.
      • 7f1. Part one, “A Song Written in Decay”: (included with subchapter opening) Outlines all of these points, and gives an example of mise-en-abyme through a disintegrating Song of Infinity exemplified by Lewis and his spiritual, academic-prone descendants—namely Hannah-Freya Blake and myself as coming from a lengthier Galatean, gallows-humor tradition not entirely foreign to Gothic academia. Length: ~28 pages.
      • 7f2. Part two, “‘Red Scare’; or Out in the World“: Seeks out further examples in between my friends and I for this project specifically—namely the relationship between past media orbiting Red Scare (from Star Wars‘ rebellious allegory to American Liberalism and subversive potential in The Abyss to Chernobyl, and more) as also including non-academic sex worker friends’ old photographs and warlike, often-red symbols that contain Communist potential whose Gothic maturity can be built upon during our day-to-day relations. Length: ~37 pages.
      • 7f3. Part three, “‘With a Little Help from My Friends’; or, Out of this World” (sub-subchapter opening): Explores an-Com rebellion (the dismantling of the state) as actively expressed between current sex workers using ludo-Gothic BDSM to inspire and invigilate a more recent (and actionable) portrait of rebellion; also inspects the classics—from The Wizard of Oz to Big Trouble in Little China—as things to learn from with our current friends as sharing a similar love for the imaginary past as rebellious for monstrous-feminine rights. Opening Length: ~3 pages.
        • 7f3a. Part one, “What Are Rebellion, Rebels, and Why (feat. Amazons and Witches)?”: (included with sub-subchapter opening) Articulates what rebellion is, followed by what a rebel is and why they do what they do—then takes a break to discuss modules and criminality (with several performative examples: Samus Aran, but also the Wicked Witch of the West) Length: ~45 pages.
        • 7f3b. Part two, “Meeting Rebels; i.e., What Inspires Us to Meet and All of It Carrying On and On (feat. Harmony Corrupted, Jack Burton, and Blxxd Bunny)“: Explores how to meet rebels, followed by what inspired us to meet them (hint: them, but also their sexy costumes), and what carries on as all of this repeats, repeats, repeats. Length: ~45 pages.
    • 7g. “Monsters, Magic and Myth”: Modularity and Class (feat. Jeremy Parish and Sorcha Ní Fhlainn)“: Packs up to leave (carnival prizes underarm, balloons in tow). Considers the purpose of this volume’s pointedly medieval voicings through a signature lack of restrictions and its thoroughly iconoclastic nature, as well as its dialectical-material function, modular devices and monster classes separately and then together. Also criticizes a former academic superior and Metroidvania research inspiration of mine (Ní Fhlainn and Parish, respectively). Length: ~54 pages.
• 8. “Facing Death: What I Learned Mastering Metroidvania, thus the Abject ’90s (feat. Kirby, Marilyn Manson and Maynard James Keenan)” (module conclusion): Concludes the “Brace for Impact” module by reflecting on how the Gothic is queer and has been since day one; i.e., my revisiting and reflecting on this dark odyssey as it exists for me—the smaller journey I’ve been on while writing “Brace for Impact,” but also my entire life pursuant to my Metroidvania work. Length: ~33 pages.
• 9. “Halfway There: Between Modules; or, Facing the Past to Move Forward“: Discusses transitioning from a poetic understanding of the imaginary past with historical elements to a historical understanding of these poetic elements. Length: ~3 pages.
• 10. “‘That Ass Is a Higher Truth’: Leaving the Castle; or, Bookending Harmony Corrupted“: Bookends my appreciation for Harmony Corrupted as a muse and friend, and supplies a backside to their frontside (during the initial dedication)—to say once more (unto the breach) how much I value her friendship and respect her work. ~10 pages.

(artist: Harmony Corrupted)

Extension

After releasing Volume Two, part one (originally on 5/1/2024), I wrote several follow-up chapters to cover topics that would come up during Volume Two, part two: tokenization and rape play. Originally I planned on releasing them with Volume Two, part two’s promo series, “Searching for Secrets” (and eventual publication). However, given their flavor concerned the application of Gothic poetics more than the history of Gothic poetics, I decided to attach both chapters to v1.2a of the published Poetry Module, instead (on 6/14/2024).

• 11. “Another Castle, Another Princess: Two in-between Chapters about Tokenization and Rape Play” (extension opening): Summarizes both chapters and gives some editor’s notes to keep in mind (due to the transplant). Opening Length: ~2 pages.
  • 11a. “‘In Search of the Secret Spell’: Digging Our Own Graves; or, Playing with Dead Things (the Imaginary Past) as Verboten and Carte-Blanche (feat. Samus Aran)” (chapter opening): “Sets the table” by transitioning from what Volume Two, part one outlined (using Gothic poetics to make new histories/a sex-positive Wisdom of the Ancients) to focus on the imaginary historical aspect of Gothic ancestry we’re always inheriting, playing with and subsequently learning from as a self-defining exercise. Using Samus Aran “as a white Indian,” this chapter outlines the riddle of exploring said past as “half-real,” commonly as a member of the privileged group (the Anglo-American middle class) whose various privileges intersect with various axes of oppression (similarity amid difference) that allow us to play with the past and heal from its older rapes by putting “rape” in quotes; i.e., to cultivate a pedagogy of the oppressed that acknowledges power abuse (which is what rape is) dressed up as ludo-Gothic BDSM: a complicated, xenophilic, multimedia and transgenerational means of liminal expression that can serve workers or the state, but for us is a potent means of interrogating trauma to prevent it again in the future.  Opening Length: ~18 pages.
    • 11a1. “Splendide Mendax: the Rise and Fall of ‘Rome’ as Built-in(to Us)” (subchapter opening): Considers nature vs nurture relative to Gothic poetics, insofar as this can be used to code humans to war against/rape nature; i.e., how for humans under Capitalism, nurture is currently tied to giant linguo-material structures called “capital” that weaponize the imaginary past’s splendid lies against workers and nature: Capitalist Realism dipping the hero into the river Styx to “gift” him with the aura of invulnerability as haunted by narcissistic echoes of other Roman fools having fallen on the same proverbial sword. Opening Length: ~5 pages.
      • 11a1a. “‘Cruisin’ for a Bruisin’!’: From Herbos to Himbos, part one (feat. Dragon Ball Z and Big Trouble in Little China; Wonder Woman)” (included with subchapter opening): Outlines the idea of history as toy-like through Gothic action figures: the herbo and himbo (aka the Amazon and the knight). Length: ~35 pages.
      • 11a1b. “‘Death by Snu-Snu!’: From Herbos to Himbos, part two (feat. Ayla, Weaponlord and Savage Land Rogue; Autumn Ivy and Claire Max)“: Explores further examples of the herbo as pro-state or pro-workers, and gives two real-life examples. Length: ~46 pages.
      • 11a2. “Into the Toy Chest: Gothic History as Toy-like Amongst Ourselves” (sub-subchapter opening): Considers the monstrous-feminine as a ludo-Gothic BDSM historical device that operates in relation to ourselves and its effect on us; i.e., rape play (aka consent-non-consent). Opening Length: ~1 page.
        • 11a2a. “Into the Toy Chest, part zero: A Note about Rape” (included with sub-subchapter opening): Outlines rape and the Destroyer persona as something to camp per our definition of it previously introduced during “Psychosexual Martyrdom” (2024). Length: ~5 pages.
        • 11a2b. “Into the Toy Chest, part one—the Nuts and Bolts of Rape Play” (included with sub-subchapter opening): Covers the nuts and bolts of Gothic history as toy-like through its parasocial exchanges. Length: ~38 pages.
        • 11a2c. “Into the Toy Chest, part two—My Experiences“: Observes the nuts and bolts of sex-positive rape fantasies when reflecting on my interpersonal exchanges; i.e., between exes and current partners. Length: ~37 pages.
  • 12. “Back to the Necropolis: Reflections on Mastery as Backwards; i.e., When Camping Myself as More and More Gay (feat. Black Nazis and Castlevania)!“: A reflection on my growth as a person since originally writing the Monster Modules (before Volume Zero). Applies the idea of modularity and monsters to a more advanced synthesis of my work vis-à-vis Afrocentrism, token queer black Nazis in Castlevania: Nocturne (2023). Length: ~54 pages.

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

Disclaimer

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

(artist: Harmony Corrupted)

Originally part of an undivided volume—specifically Volume Two of my Sex Positivity (2023) book series—this blog post now belongs to a promotion called “Brace for Impact“ (2024); i.e., that went on to become its own completed module in Volume Two: the Poetry Module, aka Volume Two, part one. The Poetry Module was primarily inspired by Harmony Corrupted, and this page dedicates the Poetry Module to them.

Further Reading: Volume Two actually divides into three modules/sub-volumes, each with its own promotion and release. “Brace for Impact” is the first (re: Volume Two, part one), but there are also promotions for Volume Two, part two’s twin Monster Modules, The Undead and Demons: “Searching for Secrets” and “Deal with the Devil“!

Update, 5/1/2024: Volume Two, part one (the Poetry Module) is out! I wrote a preface for the module along with its debut announcement. Give that a look; then, go to my book’s 1-page promo to download the latest version of the PDF (which will contain additions/corrections these posts will not have)!

Click here to see “Brace for Impact’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).

Haunting the Chapel: A Cum Tribute to Harmony Corrupted

The book, then, has been a series of “births” dragging the hellish child up from the depths of my own making and design (my own infernal concentric pattern, perhaps; i.e., the repeated plunging into the abyss while stuck inside it: mise-en-abyme). After the majority was written, I desired to summarize everything as pithily as I could into our aforementioned thesis statement. I didn’t have to; I wanted to, treating it as an educational device according to how I had been taught. Through the benefits of a classical and campy education, I once again “fell pregnant,” this time by myself with myself, but also with Bay who—like a slutty incubus from afar—had filled my slutty cum dumpster long distance. Now “full” of the dark swirling material as having been written and refined many times (many creampies), from toe to top full of these joined ideas, theories and plans, I had to give birth once more and set about it. While unsteadily “pregnant” with this saturated material, I pulled and manifested the entirety out of myself as a comprehensive stab at mapping and summarizing everything that I (once again) had to organize and refine over and over (source).

 —Persephone van der Waard’s Sex Positivity: Volume Zero (2023) 

Succubaen transference is this book’s MO. As the epigram notes, Bay was central to one cycle of it, inspiring me to write and write until the birth was over (sex and creativity classically connected, but also topically conjoined; i.e., having sex to inspire someone to write about sex, and with other things using sex as a driving factor between model and artist, friend and partner alike); per “A Ship of Theseus,” they went on to haunt the cathedral, one ghost among many in our special pandemonium.

(artist: Harmony Corrupted)

I wanted to thank Harmony Corrupted to a similar degree, insofar as the entire, novella-sized module, “Brace for Impact” (~300,000 words/~795 pages, ~625 unique images) was written based on our playing and working together. The cum that resulted—those profane creative juices—built and raised something that, part of a renovation to a preexisting structure (the modules), went on to haunt them, in response: repeated “bukkake” excursions into the doomy void that, in true vampiric fashion, deliciously flavored (and urgently spurred on) that which came next. Harmony’s forbidden fruit passed itself on as an orchard of knowledge, a bakery of tasty cakes filled with yummy “poison.” Food always comes to those who love to cook; Harmony puts the “cum” in cumulative, the “semen” in seminal, helping me through her body and labor (sex work is work, sex is artwork) create something special that—like Communism—couldn’t be done alone, or in one lifetime. She’s a total blessing, one I’ll happily invigilate and ornament, counting her among my finest gallery of muses: “Look at this person and how awesome they are! Go support them!” Doing so brings me joy.

(exhibit 33b2b1: Artist: Harmony Corrupted, who provided me with various materials from her Fansly account to use [with her permission] in my book, including cum photos. For those of legal age who enjoy Harmony’s work and want to see more than this book can show, consider subscribing to her Fansly account and then ordering a custom/tipping through her Ko-Fi. You won’t be disappointed!)

I once likened Harmony’s content to “A rare, fatal vision, a Gothic dream to haunt the chapel with; a dark freaky church where no one gets hurt and there’s lots of sex, it’s the Neo-Gothic in a nutshell: visions of a better world when threatened by the ghost of capital, keeping the aesthetic of torture but not the context! It’s exquisite ‘torture,’ with a darky mommy queen!” (a review I wrote of a video Harmony sent me—more on this in the medieval prep section). Indeed, her ass is a fortress of which mounts tremendous assaults on my imagination (and creative organs). Hopelessly swept up in an erotically Gothic poiesis, Harmony’s vampire castle demands cum tributes, yielding fresh delights in the process: a sweetly profane communion with the dark divine, a delicious purveyor of new forms of reason. Her Aegis is an antagonistic black mirror that, ventured deep into, thoroughly breaks Capitalist Realism between its pumpkin-sized cheeks.

To Harmony and her SO: This module is my favorite section of my favorite volume; it and its cummy magnum opus are dedicated to your combined efforts. Thank you both, mommy!

Update, 4/26/2024: The size of “Brace for Impact” has required I divide Volume Two in two. What I said still holds true, though: Volume Two, part one is my favorite part of the entire book! —Perse