Persephone's (Gothic) Insights

A small book sample from my Sex Positivity series' upcoming Demon Module, "Radcliffe's Refrain" gives a quick rehash of the demonic trifecta (damsels, detectives and sex demons) vis-à-vis Ann Radcliffe's pioneering of it. Also talks about her history as "mother to the Gothic novel" and problematic legacy following her disappearance. Originally shared on my 18+ website on 1/25/2025:  https://vanderwaardart.com/2025/01/book-sample-exploring-the-derelict-past-opening-and-radcliffes-refrain Radcliffe's Refrain (reprise) Especially popular or remediated characters tend to get virally shared. Such sharing can be hard to regulate or track. In this case, we not only have detective pastiche, but Velma pastiche. Seriously, this foxy nerd is legion, but also a regular practitioner of the "explained supernatural" trope originally formalized by Ann Radcliffe. Defrauding the "supernatural" through spooky piracy is a common theme in Radcliffe...

I've written about my abusive ex repeatedly in the past under the alias, Jadis. Now I am showing their face alongside side alias under a longer writeup from my book series.  Note: The original write-up features nude images of me, which have been removed from this repost. ( source : Persephone van der Waard's " Why I Submit: A Subby Gothicist's Attitudes on Metroidvania, Mommy Doms, and Sexual Persecution," 2021) Abstract (from my website): Gives food for thought about demons as much being real people as fictional ones, during Gothic poetics. The example I give—and doing so in the Radcliffean spirit of demasking bad guys—is my ex and former abuser, Jadis. We discuss my act of doing so not to marshal violence against them, but to learn from the abuse they caused to camp and subvert, hence prevent future harm, on a systemic level; i.e., while making our own media as haunted by said abuse, doing so as a demonic act of thinking critically (through art and performance)...

A short addendum to my 2025 Metroidvania Corpus , addressing why speedrunning—although still important to my work—is something I, a trans woman an-Com, ultimately walked away from; i.e., while keeping my interest for Metroidvania ( vis-à-vis ludo-Gothic BDSM) largely intact; e.g., my abuse and alienation suffered at the hands of the shooter community versus the good treatment I received from Metroid speedrunners. In light of recently compiling and releasing my entire Metroidvania research as one giant document (re: " Debut for Persephone's 2025 Metroidvania Corpus ! "), hindsight denotes a strange and glaring omission: my exit from speedrunning research, as a whole! As such, I wanted to quickly address how speedrunning—while still important to me and making up the bulk of my early research—gradually became less important to me, as time went on; i.e., lasting from 2017 until 2021, before abandoning "pure" game theory in favor of a more holistic practice, and ...