Persephone's (Gothic) Insights

For those of you who don't know, I'm trans and came out on July 22nd, 2022. More more recently,  I was able to get health insurance, and today marks my first day of gender-affirming care! A lot of it has been research and figuring out what works for me and what I have in mind as far as my HRT journey is concerned. Luckily I am blessed with a bevvy of wonderful GNC friends, all who know (or know someone who knows) a great deal more about these things than I do. So while it's been a bit of a learning experience, it's also been one assisted by teachers invested in a shared happiness; i.e., in helping a like-minded person find peace on her own journey towards self-fulfillment and -definition. For me, that means "titty skittles" (as my partner called them, haha); gonna start slow and introduce blockers after a few months, once I mark my progress: Anyways, I'm posting about this to mark the event and celebrate it. In the meantime, I'm also continuing to work...

This post is dedicated towards helping my partner, Bay , find support/mutual aid by promoting his services (we eventually want to have him do sex work directly through my site, but for now I’m promoting his links and content on this page). Note: This is essentially the same post as on my website , but I wanted to post it here on my blog, too. Bay is disabled and does sex work to support himself. This means that he partially relies on the help of friends and donations through mutual aid requests in order to make ends meet. Currently he is on hiatus but you can support his work in a variety of ways: directly on his OnlyFans (where he still produces a small amount of regular content) sharing his work on Twitter / Bluesky donating to his Ko-Fi Donate; get a drawing! Large donations will also get a drawing from me. Donations of $45 USD to will get you a personalized sketch from me, $60 a colored sketch, $90 a rough pinup, and $110 a fully-rendered pin-up of your choice. These drawings...

What's going on in Palestine is wrong, but so is the larger geo-political argument trying to justify it—what is, quite simply, genocide for the same old reasons: bourgeois hegemony. The Imperial Core of the Global North sanctions, funds and incites genocide to enrich the elite, including the one occurring right now in Palestine at the hands of the state of Israel and its war criminals (Bad Empanada, "Israeli ETHNIC CLEANSING of Gaza Begins - 1 MILLION Expelled in Another Nakba," 2023). This is entirely wrong on every conceivable register (and demonstrates how nation-states exist purely to serve the profit motive). Palestine is in the right, Israel is not; even when Hamas becomes indiscriminate in their killings of Israeli citizens, you must remember that said citizens are occupiers of stolen land taken through lies and by force—i.e., the ethnostate using its own women and children as human shields during an unlawful occupation that has been ongoing for over seventy years...

Volume Zero/the thesis volume for my book, Sex Positivity , is officially live! Go to my website's 1-page promo and pick up a copy for free (it's non-profit)! While you're there, you can also learn about the other three volumes, project history and logo design.  The rest of the volumes are planned to release between the remainder of 2023 and all of 2024. In the meantime, give Volume Zero a look. It is easily the hardest thing I’ve ever written, and I’m very excited to share it with you all; if you like it, please share it with your friends and let me know what you think! (model: Persephone van der Waard ; photographer: Zeuhl ) Persephone van der Waard is an anarcho-Communist, sex worker, genderqueer activist and Gothic ludologist.  She sometimes writes reviews, Gothic analyses, and interviews for fun ; or  does independent research for her PhD on Metroidvania and speedrunning  every now and again. She's also an erotic artist and a writer. If you're interested in he...

With the release date to my upcoming book,  Sex Positivity vs Sex Coercion, or Gothic Communism , drawing near (on Halloween!), I decided that I should finally design my own logo for Gothic (gay-Anarcho) Communism. Included in this post is the logo itself (and the always-awesome Blxxd Bunny ), as well as a brief history of its recent inception and cannibalized source materials: Update, 11/5/2023: My book has been divided into four volumes; there are no concrete deadlines, but the volumes are being released numerically (from 0 to 3) throughout the remainder of 2023 and all of 2024. The good news is that of 10/8/2023, the first volume—my thesis argument—is now live! Go to my website's 1-page promo and pick up a copy for free (it's non-profit). While you're there, you can also learn about the other three volumes, project history and logo design (the last being verbatim what's posted on here). This volume is easily the hardest thing I've ever written, and I'm very ...

Hi, everyone! I wanted to give an update about the book, as it's been awhile since I've posted on here and a lot has happened since my last blogpost.  Update, 11/4/2023: This post is quite outdated, and I only keep it up to maintain a historical record. First and foremost, my book is now divided into four volumes, the first of which is now live on my website; go to my website's 1-page promo and pick up a copy for free (it's non-profit)! While you're there, you can also learn about the other three volumes, project history of Sex Positivity and logo design. Second, the changelog that used to be in this blogpost has been consolidated into a single document you can also access at the same location on my website . Original post, 4/8/2023 (minus the changelog): As many of you know by now, I've been working since July 2022 on a book called Sex Positivity vs Sex Coercion, or Gothic Communism . A large, semi-censored sample—including my manifesto—is currently available...