I'm applying all of this to the creative process as give and take, and as Paracelsus put it: "All things are poison and nothing is without poison; only the dose makes a thing not a poison." Condensed to "the dose makes the poison," and pursuant to the Communist Numinous as a "dragon" to chase, the clash with capital is why we're here: sparring with authorities by evoking authoritative forces; e.g., the Numinous. Capital defends capital as thieves versus whistleblowers, the former killing and/or blackmailing the latter or otherwise discrediting them: dispatching assassins, forcing elicit confessions, turning brother against brother or de(s)posing of them in court with limitless funds, bulletproof contracts, Radcliffean surveillance and bottomless pockets, etc. Exposing that bloodbath/carving of meat is why we're here. But as gluttons for punishment with impressive stamina—and ones addicted to the birthing of empathy at birth by accident thereof—we still need to pop them out "in moderation"; e.g., babies, books ("babies"), boners and loads; i.e., some strain is important, but don't damage the oracle, mid-séance (the Gothic goofball making you laugh until you're sick).

To that, we want to be on good terms with our people, but also our "substance abuse"; i.e. knowing when to lead us by the hand to bed, but also to cut off those drunk on sex, cum, BDSM (sub drop), food, or stimulation in any form that combines these and others. To those who have "had enough," who get absentminded and forgetful, mid-jouissance (me: forgetting to take my blood pressure pills), there's no shame in quitting forever (over my dead body—"I was born a knight; I will die a knight!") or throwing in the towel for a smaller period. Likewise, surgeries—literal or figurative—get exploratory and addictive (doctors love to cut; so do I—to the truth of things). Birth (as literal or figurative) isn't just painful, but an endurance test for those with health concerns trying to heal the world in ways one person cannot alone, try as they might: physical, mental, sexual, emotional.

Per the Gothic, these manifest in reality and fiction on different levels. As such, grief and love (as things to express) bleed into sex and violence as a composite morphological statement. Metal or flesh fatigue can and will set in, especially when we take on the struggles for others routinely ignored by the mainstream (who only sit up and listen when people exactly like them [or who they tokenize; e.g., Jewish people aping their colonizers[1]] are affected; i.e., "think of the white, cis-het men!" This is a valid concern, but "missing while girl syndrome" or "think of the incels" [courtesy of Jordan Peterson] gets hella old when the Kurds or the Palestinians [or anyone in the Global South] is experiencing genocide. You can care about both, but only speaking out about Whitey is complacent, thus complicit in genocide. This isn't the early 1800s and you're not Jane Austen writing Mansfield Park [1814]; it's the Internet Age, wherein the people who devote the entirety of their platforms to the colonizer group are aiding in settler colonialism).

So do what you love while helping others. But also, be careful—cautious, as well as solicitous and nurturing to all parties involved. Yes, we and our "good work" (slutty but salubrious) bare it all to not just walk the line like the rockstars[2] that we are, but slink and strut our stuff between pleasure and pain, stress and release, life and death (a vibrating closeness to penetration within thresholds—what feels good for all parties, ace or not); but, "first do no harm." Sex and death are funny in jest (so-called "gallows humor" is a whole 'nother can of worms[3]); sex, drugs and rock 'n roll can do the trick in moderation (do not do "a Jimmy Hendrix or Janis Joplin," members of the ill-fated "27 Club"); but dropping needlessly dead due to gross negligence (willful or otherwise) from one's attending physician? Whatever the practice, it kind of defeats the point. Though we often play at them, we're not gods. So don't skip your checkups, however routine! Check in with yourself and see where you're at; take your vitals and remember to rest and relax. Unwind to the degree that you can (not everyone can and that's valid; but if it is possible and you don't do it anyways? That's a horse of another color).

Traditional Western gender roles generally portray healing roles (sexual or otherwise) as "maternal." Except, mothers need days off and this holiday is frequently a psychosexual, monstrous one (moonlighting as an Amazonian protector/vigilante detective). In the alien-fetishized language of prisons, torture dungeons and hospitals (a fine line between them), "'mommy' has needs" that address unseen woes/scratch various itches. Sometimes, though, someone needs to play nurse with themselves, a "battle medic"/Amazonian mommy dom in the place of God who nurtures, feeds and fucks depending ("'Mother' is the name for God on the lips and hearts of all children." If you think otherwise, you've never gotten between a loving mother and their child): food, sex, medicine, enrichment (games, puzzles) and sleep, etc. Someone who cares, who's "a handful," feisty. Husky and growling. Secretarial and sweet. Lucky and healthy. Ample and tasty (delicious, full of "gravy"). Holy and hot (thick thighs, zettai ryōiki[4], big buttocks, hair and tits, etc). That female/monstrous-feminine portrait of "The Miller's Tale" is us, cuties, so measure up to your own needs by looking after yourself as you actually deserve/want to be treated—well.

This wellness plan includes intake of various sorts: meal plans, work-life balance, ergonomics. You can't help others without helping yourself. So give thanks without literally carving yourself up when trauma comes home to roost (in terms of healthcare, the ghosts of past friends or family members classically manifest as complexes; i.e., survival guilt; e.g., I was harmed, and wrote this book to help others see the ghosts of trauma inside it and their own lives).

To that, do what you need to "right the ship," release stress (eat, gamble, laugh, fuck [aka "sexersize"]…) to the speed, music (whatever slaps), texture and sensitivity (leather or lace), intensity and depth you require. Then, after you "bounce back," go where you need to be in order to help those you can. We all wanna put these ideas to practice—to fuck-start Capitalism's face to bare better, new-and-improved fruit; i.e., strap-on-style; e.g., like Eowyn vs the Witch-king[5] if the sword was strapped to our Shieldmaiden's crotch and she "chose her slain" by shoving it into the shadow lord's mouth and down his unhappy throat, Better-Call-Saul-pilot-style ("Put your wang in its throat hole!")—the death knight/Skeleton King "taken" by the lacey female paladin (aping Monty Python's Sir Lancelot: "'An accident?' You shoved your sword through his head!"):

Except, instead of rapacious, rotting scapegoats[6] to skewer like throwaway straw dogs, our Dark-Ages approach to wedding sex and force wants (needs) to abstract the post-capitalist metaphor and take it to an ever further (albeit non-jousting) extreme; e.g., with Frodo and Sauron (from The Return of the King, 1955):

But please, remember they have kick. So camp, thus butcher canon to your heart's content, but also beware: self-care is community care. Pound what must be pounded (smite whatever "ruins" on whatever "mountainsides"); then steady on, girls!

This concludes "Teaching"; onto "Facing Death" (when it posts)! After that, check out my website for the uncensored samples! To that, the follow up section, "The Medieval," can be found on there!

 

 

[3] Gallows humor is a theatrical means of disconnecting due to compassion and alarm fatigue (from waves of terror). Except, Capitalism is a race against time, which means we can't afford to reflexively involve ourselves in collective platitudes and false hope (which neoliberalism and fascism are built on). We need to actively diagnose the root cause, not fall back routinely on empty coping mechanisms during trench warfare; i.e., compartmentalizing while hurling towards disaster as having its own (compartment) syndrome, and which can trigger when the floor beneath crumbles into fragments and the walls close into a tighter and tighter corner. Losing false hope, we can desperately pacify and grow complacent, even violently complicit—second-guessing what should be second-nature: trading wider catharsis for local, short-term power fantasies (the dominant, the slayer) that revolve around unironic rape and murder instead of calculated risk as a subby acclimation towards mirroring symptoms, not harm. The entire operating principal behind ludo-Gothic BDSM as I authored it is calculated risk; i.e., as a submissive gesture (favoring unequal power against a dominant), which in BDSM is the polar opposite of the dominant picking up a weapon to kill the enemy through force (homoerotic "jousting"). Against the end of the world, such high-strung masculine threat displays are utterly meaningless, little more than a forlorn Crusade resorting to vulnerable scapegoats; i.e., of which the crusader carves their white, Cartesian image into (white genocide flows outwards, away from white boys conducting genocide as always): woman, twinks, and other marginalized groups (eating the pie inwards, placing the so-called "upper crust" at the heart of things, not the outer rim).

In other words, our group
coping mechanism needs to expose and address systemic issues, not
contribute to them as dependent on/addicted to military optimism; i.e.,
incumbent on the rape of nature by design, martyrdom of the male stooge in love
with war culture and spilling blood. Again, it's a can of worms that, left
unchecked, will eventually spill over everywhere, bathing the world (and the
idyllic, resort-like home) in a reversal of Exodus, an ignominious closing of the Red Sea to
drown exile and conqueror alike; to avoid internal bleeding and total exsanguination
("bleeding out"), our folie-a-deux' chez folie needs to exist in quotes, our blossoming "agony" and ribbons of explosive, fiery
pleasure leaning in a less bloodthirsty (and unironically alienating and
fetishizing) direction, regarding the monstrous-feminine (from a metal/NWOBHM
standpoint, less Saxon's heteronormative Demin and Leather, 1981, and
more Accept's queer-coded Balls to the Wall/"London Leather Boys,"
1983): it's not a vampirism state fangs can ever hope to match. "Hurt, not
harm" when experimenting and broadening your horizons, cuties! Fuck to
metal, but remember to worship Satan responsibly! 

(artist:
Saturday
Night Satan)

[4] A Japanese
phrase that translates to "absolute territory." Per Wikipedia, it
"refers to the area of bare skin in the gap between overknee socks and a
skirt or shorts" (source). In short,
it's uniform fetish slang that focuses on fixation by Japan as being
eco-fascist and psychologically incestuous. We'll explore eco-fascism and
incest in Japan in Volume Three, but here's the source; i.e., Terry
McCarthy writes in "Out of Japan: Mother Love Puts a Nation in the
Pouch" (1993):

Satoru Saito, head of
the sociopathology department at the Psychiatric Research Institute of Tokyo,
doubts that mother-son incest is any more common in Japan than elsewhere. But,
he says, "emotional incest" between mothers and their sons is almost
a defining feature of Japanese society – "the entire culture has this
undertone" (source).

[5] A classic scene of "pure medieval lust" whose chaste military eroticism—begot from a cushy Oxford dweeb gentrifying war with a lore-heavy and built-world/treasure map refrain—is displayed most nakedly during Tolkien's neutered take on the courtly romance; i.e., during the famous (and entirely unfair) duel that has been remade a million times (source: Lady Fellshot's "Looking at a Scene…" 2011).

[6] (From Volume Zero): 'Basically, Blue Beard from Charles Perrault's "Blue Beard" (1697), the demon lover holding the delicate female swooner captive and relayed through fairytales or operas (and various other Gothic stories; e.g., the "black novel" or "noir/black detective story" as peering into the imaginary site of the black space/shadow zone as routinely fabricated by the ghost of the counterfeit, feeding the profit motive). Facing such a sexy beast, a less bellicose heroine might swoon and face almost certain doom; an Amazon, on the other hand, might pick up a sword and stab the fucker—a proposition that can certainly be cathartic but needs to be exercised with care to avoid harmful xenophobia as something to execute on- and offstage as informed by these kinds of stories; i.e., TERFs attacking trans people when their own trauma is weaponized by the status quo, turning them into harmful imitations of Dacre's woman-in-black, Victoria de Loredani; e.g., Ellen Ripley—formerly traumatized by the myth of the black male/crossdressing rapist—is handed a gun by James Cameron and told to play cowboys and Indians in service of the state: "Become vengeance"' (source).