I've just released Persephone's 2025 Metroidvania Corpus as a PDF! I did this to allow for easier accessibility using Adobe's bookmark system and in-text hyperlinks. The new corpus combines the "From Master's to PhD" catalog and earlier postgrad work on Metroidvania, "Mazes and Labyrinths," into a single, larger document (76 pages). The blogpost, below, has my editor's notes, which—apart from giving a download link—also describe the PDF's contents (which are SFW/only about Metroidvania). Patch notes for the most current edition are located below the editor's notes.
For a spoken summary of the corpus, refer to its partner YouTube video, "Persephone's Metroidvania Series #4," which discusses the 2025 Metroidvania Corpus and its contents; i.e., the title page, patch notes, table of contents, note to Jeremy Parish, several excerpts, and the Further Reading page.
Editor's notes, 1/6/2025: As stated above, Persephone's 2025 Metroidvania Corpus has been edited and assembled as "SFW" (no nudity), and combines everything from "From Master's to PhD" and "Mazes and Labyrinths" into one handy place. You can download newer editions of the PDF for free on my 18+ website's one-page book promo (at the top of the page); if you want to download a version of the corpus without going onto my website, click on this download link for v1.01 to access it directly (and which I won't be changing on account that it's a massive pain in the ass).
As part of Persephone's Metroidvania Corpus, I've made updates to the original "From Master's to PhD." Said changes include: a full-fledged table of contents with section summaries, a whole new subsection ("Persephone's History of Formulating Metroidvania"), a compendium for my Tolkien scholarship (which shares the same performative space*), multiple visual aids, and several new entries to my "Further Reading" subsection on Metroidvania, in particular. While there's lots of theories and ideas being discussed, here, this survey will gloss over most of them (the ones closest to Metroidvania will get the most focus, of course; refer to the Paratextual Documents page on my website for a broader theoretical/exhibitory outline). The new corpus also contains excerpts from "What I Learned Mastering Metroidvania" (2024), my critique of Jeremy Parish from "Modularity and Class" (2024), and a final written response to Jeremy Parish.
*I.e., the cartographic refrain, my work critiquing capital through its routine, neoliberal (videogame) abuse of monomyth police violence occurring inside spaces of play where the player(s) can routinely map out and conquer, ad infinitum: Tolkien's refrain (the High Fantasy treasure map) gentrifying war, and Cameron's refrain (the Metroidvania/shooter) ringing a call-to-arms through neo-conservative revenge fantasy. We won't have time to unpack that here, however. For a good summary of it, refer to "A Note About Canonical Essentialism" (2024). See, also: "Goblins, Anti-Semitism and Monster-Fucking" (2024) for a more recent interrogation of the idea, through Tolkien's work. —Perse
Patch Notes
v1.1 (1/7/2025) - Expanded "Persephone's Further Reading (on Metroidvania)" to include ancillary research to her Metroidvania work, namely on FPS games. Includes reviews and on write-ups on Ion Fury, Blood and Doom Eternal (among others), but also additional interviews with game devs (e.g., James Towne and Yellow Swerve), filmmakers (e.g., the cast and crew of "Alien: Ore") and world-class speedrunners (e.g., FrostyXen, CScottyW and King Dime). Full changes are under "Further Reading."
v1.0 (1/6/2025) - vanilla release
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Persephone van der Waard is the author of the non-profit book series, Sex Positivity—its art director, sole invigilator, illustrator and primary editor (the other co-writer/co-editor being Bay Ryan). She has her independent PhD in Gothic poetics (focusing on partially on Metroidvania), and is a MtF trans woman, anti-fascist, atheist/Satanist, poly/pan kinkster, erotic artist/pornographer and anarcho-Communist with two partners. Including her multiple playmates/friends and collaborators, Persephone and her seventeen muses work/play together on Sex Positivity and on her artwork at large as a sex-positive force. She sometimes writes reviews, Gothic analyses, and interviews for fun on her old blog; or does continual independent research on Metroidvania and speedrunning. If you're interested in her academic/activist work and larger portfolio, go to her About the Author page to learn more; if you're curious about illustrated or written commissions, please refer to her commissions page for more information.
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