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Concerning Rape Play: a 2025 Note on My Development of Ludo-Gothic BDSM

A short addendum dedicated to the evolution of ludo-Gothic BDSM; i.e., from its 2023 coinage and dissemination by me, in Volume Zero, onto my 2024 expansion of its application, and beyond!

Note: An identical version of this page can be found on my 18+ website. That version includes the original uncensored images not included here. —Perse

Concerning Rape Play: a 2025 Note on My Development of Ludo-Gothic BDSM

Rape is something that demons play with during the whore's paradox. By extension, ludo-Gothic BDSM is effectively rape play combined with Gothic themes and BDSM practices to avenge state wrongs against nature (source).

—Persephone van der Waard, "The Whore's Paradox" (2024)

(artist: Aria Rain)

A lot has demonstrably happened since 2023; i.e., when I initially released Volume Zero and its introduction not just of Gothic Communism to the world, but also ludo-Gothic BDSM, the palliative Numinous and Metroidvania as I coined and synthesized them. Except while my 2025 Metroidvania Corpus discusses how I evolved the term "Metroidvania" through my own work (re: "Debut for Persephone's 2025 Metroidvania Corpus!"), said corpus doesn't delve too much into ludo-Gothic BDSM, itself; i.e., the corpus discusses the evolution of my Metroidvania research, including its gradual shift towards ludo-Gothic BDSM; re: as a form of activism for which Metroidvania is important while playing with rape to challenge profit, but mostly catalogs Metroidvania itself and all the scholarship I've written or otherwise produced on that particular subject. Here, I wanted to provide the other side of the coin; i.e., cataloging a short history (and body of works) that specifically concern ludo-Gothic BDSM and its evolution/application in my book series (and externalization of said series in my art).

To be clear, this is hardly "everything" that I've produced on the subject, but these are some of the most central pieces regarding ludo-Gothic BDSM's continued practice and evolution, from 2021 onwards. Scars aren't a weakness at all, then, but a profound strength we can employ after having survived much worse than capital's usual enforcers (soft and scared inside their armor). So by deliberately or at least intuitively introducing an element of control-through-play to our feelings, they become one less thing our enemies can use against us; i.e., we can turn such things into weapons of violence, terror and morphological expression that serve worker aims: the whore "in peril," but actually a Medusa seizing her prey (and recultivating the Superstructure)—a trap in disguise! In short, exploitation and liberation occupy the same dark poetic spheres, as do panic and pleasure as things to play with, mid-moral-panic. To establish a half-real grounds for humor and play during camp, on and offstage, is to give workers control over things over things normally out of their control; i.e., putting "rape" in quotes during calculated risk, which ludo-Gothic BDSM essentially treats as activism when developing Gothic Communism to break Capitalist Realism; re: on the Aegis' mise-en-abyme, during liminal expression (often through public nudism as performance art, below). Don't just smile at the gods, moon them; show the elite (and their dogs) your Aegis!

(artist: Nyx)

We'll give context, definitions and examples.

First, the context of my project has expanded through playing with monsters and rape during ludo-Gothic BDSM; i.e., as part of a larger non-profit project occurring continuously between workers fighting for universal liberation during sex work (from "My Book: Gothic Communism," 2023):

Sex Positivity seeks to raise awareness and engender activism towards and from all workers, but especially sex workers and the marginalized more broadly (many of whom turn towards sex work to survive); i.e., I do sex work, myself (see: "About the Author"), and the vast majority of sex workers I operate alongside are marginalized in some shape or form. To it, the overarching goal of my work is to humanize the dehumanized by reclaiming monstrous poetic tools of dehumanization; i.e., during informed mutual labor exchange, using the dialectical-material context (and social-sexual factors) of every exchange separately and together to vividly demonstrate protest: through artistic invigilation and expression, one whose holistic, intersectionally solidarized cooperation unfolds during a larger pedagogy of the oppressed (and its modular axes of privilege and oppression synthesizing praxis, mid-duality and -opposition). Those who walk away from Omelas, we seek to amplify and mobilize our cause using what we got—to unite and stand against the state, profit and capital's various traitors (cops, which pimps are, token or not) by reclaiming not just our bodies, sexualities and genders, but our labor and its holistic performative value: developing Gothic Communism through stochastic means and de facto education. The state from the beginning is a pimp, one that antagonizes nature as monstrous-feminine to put it (and those of it) cheaply to work; i.e., by pimping it genocidally through imbricating persecution networks guided by pre-emptive revenge labeling workers (and nature) as "terrorist," "black," "alien," "witch," and "other," etc; e.g., Amazons and the Medusa—with Athenian women tokenizing to attack themselves and the natural world they (and other workers) belong to. In turn, sex work is the oldest profession, hence the oldest form of labor exploitation through rape (which is all that profit, hence wage and labor theft, is); the oldest form of worker revenge is the whore's against profit, which sex workers (and by extension all workers) attain through collective protest raising emotional/Gothic intelligence and class, culture and race awareness on all registers: reversing the terrorist/counterterrorist refrain (thus abjection process) through ludo-Gothic BDSM (see: footnote, above) cryptonymically playing with power as it is understood in society at large (re: Gothic poetics and the dialectic of the alien). We not only heal from rape as something to survive by playing with it; we seek systemic change and universal liberation by playfully putting "rape" in quotes, showing and hiding various things during the cryptonymy process, mid-paradox (refer to "Paratextual (Gothic) Documents" and "Audience, Art and Reading Order" for further summaries of these terms and arguments). To accomplish this, we must endure shameless tokenization, unchecked police brutality and widespread decay in the interim. Sex workers are offshoots of the Medusa, which the state has exploited since Antiquity into the present space and time; i.e., from Athens, Sparta and Rome into the First, Second and Third Reichs leading into Capitalism and Pax Americana as it currently exists. Labor has infinite value, and the elite only have what power we give them in that respect; i.e., monopolies are impossible, provided we fight back any way we can; re: by showcasing our humanity on the very fruit the elite want to harvest. On our Aegis, Medusa speaks through us, our peachy cakes and pies freezing capital Numinously in its tracks, breaking Capitalist Realism. "Stare and tremble," indeed! (source).

(artist: Nyx)

Second, some definitions; i.e., let's quickly remind our readers what ludo-Gothic BDSM and rape play through Gothic poetics are all about. To do so, I'll cite "A Rape Reprise; or, the Whore's Paradox Having Its Revenge During Ludo-Gothic BDSM" (2024), which not only outlines the term's most current usage, but discusses playing with rape as a matter of revenge; i.e., of the whore against profit (workers vs the state):

try to understand how demonic desires are shadowy and repressed, given form by oppositional poetics in dialectical-material argument. So when I say "revenge" from here on out, I do so with concerns to the usual us-versus-them, cops-and-victims language that demons manifest as/relate to us with (and we them) while pinned between nation-states/corporations and nature growing increasingly turbulent; i.e., said revenge had by one against another pursuant to worker or bourgeois needs. Rebellion through demonic poetics happens through a particular thesis to counteract: nature is monstrous-feminine (re: Volume One)—a whore under state control, which the elite rape for profit, and for which both sides seek revenge before, during and after structural abuse. The exploitation is endless because profit and labor value (of nature) are endless!

(artist: PiMo)

Demons, then, are whores under Western (Cartesian) dominion opposite virgins, but also are virgins depending on the circumstances; e.g., subjugated Amazons like Psylocke, left. This need for state control and dominion introduces a paradox from which a new thesis can arise during ludo-Gothic BDSM (for this chapter/module, indented for emphasis):

Ludo-Gothic BDSM has many theoretical definitions[1] and applications. In practice, though, I frequently utilize it through rape play that paradoxically achieves catharsis; i.e., by putting "rape" in quotes, thus healing from rape without quotes. Often by rape survivors, such people classically find power/agency through theatrical reenactments of unequal, unfair or otherwise rapacious treatment and conditions; i.e., by relying on a concept I'll heretofore call "the whore's paradox."

[...]

The paradox  simple: demons are maidens and maidens are demons, but both are virgins and whores, and each finds power (and knowledge) according to how the state forbids access, yet access happens anyways; i.e., (de)valued, mid-exchange, thus used to humanize or dehumanize the demonized through performance and play. Per Marx and myself, Capitalism alienates and sexualizes everything. Nature is monstrous-feminine as such, "empowerment" applying to any aspect of our life, bodies, violence and terror the state wishes to monopolize/control, and any trope, convention, cliché or fetish that might be used to degrade, humiliate, rape or otherwise demonize/dominate beings "of nature" per capital's qualities (re: settler-colonial, heteronormative and Cartesian); i.e., that we can reclaim during ludo-Gothic BDSM, hence through unequal power letting us "get a leg up," topping from a position of normal disadvantage to have our revenge: perceived disempowerment becoming a paradoxical, interchangeable means of escape, regarding universal worker liberation onstage and off (versus equality of convenience inside the text).

(artist: ALT3R4TI0N)

To do so is to break capital's hold on all things demons, darkness and nature they stole and monopolized, in turn smashing their own abjection against them and breaking Capitalist Realism with our Aegis—to deny capital's dead labor and language feeding on living labor and language according to what power and knowledge we exchange to and fro. The whore's revenge is to break the profit motive by making a world for which it (and rape) are no longer possible using these methods; i.e., by using the same demonic and slutty language capital does, but at cross purposes: to hug the alien—not demonize it to receive state violence—thereby (ex)changing how the world is seen to begin with. We aggregate power differently than state forms, outlasting and outperforming them to dismantle their harvesting mechanisms, social and material, foreign and domestic.

Nature, then, is always a whore who punches up against state pimps to end profit as an endless structure of genocide. History more broadly could be described as whores vs pimps, hence workers vs the state; i.e., something the seemingly cannot die, but whose aforementioned whores are as imperishable as Medusa despite being beheaded.

That's basically the gist of the whore's revenge during the whore's paradox (source).

Third, examples. Now that we've given larger context regarding ludo-Gothic BDSM—and supplied you with its various definitions and current application through my present work (re: playing with rape to challenge profit)—I'll supply some additional reading material that readers may peruse at their leisure:

Note: I wrote this book volume while still formulating the theory and application behind ludo-Gothic BDSM, a term that I coined when releasing Volume Zero; i.e., alongside "the palliative Numinous" and "Gothic (gay-anarcho) Communism," but also my definition for "Metroidvania"; re: "Paratextual (Gothic) Documents" for the unique terms, and my website's Metroidvania page for the latter (which contains all my research on Metroidvania alongside said terms). Starting with Volume Zero, I formally introduced in the term "ludo-Gothic BDSM" with the "Re-Play" tenet of my Six Rs, but in truth had conceptualized it at least as far back as 2021; re: with "Our Ludic Masters: The Dominating Game Space" (some of the history of which we'll touch on, here). Even in 2023, I would only hint at the term's application; i.e., "ludo-Gothic BDSM" only appears 36 times in my thesis volume, going on to appear 40, 180, 293 and 357 in Volumes One and Two, parts one and two, respectively (the manifesto, followed by the Poetry and Undead/Demon Modules). This means that I've not only expanded on the term's application since October 2023, but also revisited and reapplied it numerous times while quoting older sources I wrote; i.e., narrowing the broader Gothic-Marxist tenet version to "rape play" in the Poetry Module's "A Note about Rape/Rape Play" (2024); re: after writing Volume One's 

  • "An Uphill Battle (with the Sun in Your Eyes): Operational Difficulties": A four-part chapter, one that outlines the many pressures and forces existing during the struggle to synthesize praxis and unify workers using predator/prey animal-monstrous poetics; the three monsters (and their trauma style) we focus on are gargoyles, Amazons and Tolkien's vampires (wraiths and rings).
  • "Manifesto Postscript: 'Healing from Rape'—Addressing 'Corruption,' DARVO and Police Abuse with the Pedagogy of the Oppressed in Ninja Scroll and The Terminator" (feat. Cuwu): Discusses learning about the trauma of others to help someone process their own in lieu of state abuses (through the police and their deputized terror tactics in stochastic forms): with heroes and monsters.

to flirt with ludo-Gothic BDSM in late 2023 and early 2024, only to revisit the idea many times afterward. It would take some time to compile the exact number of pieces I've written on ludo-Gothic BDSM, but for now I can recommend the most central; i.e., a good few from Volume Two's three modules, all written and released in mid-to-late 2024:

  • "A Note About Canonical Essentialism": A short opening piece from the Poetry Module, one that collects and unpacks various canonical ideas—i.e., of the ludic sort; re: the canonical refrains of Tolkien and Cameron's work—that, while the piece itself doesn't directly articulate, can still be consciously engaged with during ludo-Gothic BDSM, post hoc: rape play seeking praxial catharsis and development.
  • "Book Sample: Psychosexual Martyrdom": Another opening piece from the Poetry Module that flirts with ludo-Gothic BDSM; i.e., as an applied concept useful towards developing Gothic Communism. Written with Harmony Corrupted's help, "Psychosexual Martyrdom" lays the groundwork for those pieces on ludo-Gothic BDSM I wrote afterwards.

(artist: Harmony Corrupted)

(artists: Persephone van der Waard and Cuwu)

(source: "Debut for Persephone's 2025 Metroidvania Corpus!")

After "A Rape Reprise," the rest of the Demon Module segues into challenging tokenism through ludo-Gothic BDSM, in Volume Three, but expects the reader to apply my arguments on the concept to the Praxis Volume retrospectively; i.e., I wrote the Praxis Volume, first, and am only releasing it now after the other volumes: as something with which to apply my theories and developments yourselves, synthesizing praxis during your own creative successes; e.g., like my Ozymandias spoof with Blxxd Bunny (next page), but also any of the Gothic parody and pastiche we've separately and together used to camp the canon during ludo-Gothic BDSM. As such I've revisited "rape" and played with it many times, because successful ludo-Gothic BDSM demands holistic study to subvert canonical forms; i.e., inside structures designed to conceal and expand themselves. We must become like demons, then, opening our own doors of perception wide to break Capitalist Realism on our Aegis—upon our surfaces and inside our thresholds thwarting state monopolies. When chasing Medusa/the Communist Numinous, hit it from the front and the back, lovelies! Spit-roast the bourgeoisie, but also yourselves in duality while having the whore's best revenge: taking your power back by putting "rape" in quotes, thus camping the canon to death! Show them no quarter!

—Persephone van der Waard

(artist: Blxxd Bunny)

***

 

Persephone van der Waard is the author of the multi-volume, 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 and ludo-Gothic BDSM (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 eighteen 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.

Footnotes

[1] The word as I coined it has several definitions. One (from the Six Rs):

games occur along Gothic, liminal routes, wherein workers playfully articulate their natural rights in linguo-material ways between reality and fabrication that go beyond games as commodities but are nevertheless informed by them as something to rewrite; i.e., through play as a general exercise that involves a great many things: a reached agreement of power and play in Gothic terms, whose luck/odds are defined not through canon, but iconoclastic poiesis that can be expanded far beyond the restrictive, colonial binary and heteronormative ruleset of the elite's intended exploitation of workers to challenge the profit motive and all of its harmful effects in the bargain; e.g., genocide, heteronormativity and Max Box culture. The sum of these concepts in praxis could be called "ludo-Gothic BDSM."

Another (from the glossary, abridged):

My combining of an older academic term, "ludic-Gothic" (Gothic videogames), with sex-positive BDSM theatrics as a potent means of camp. The emphasis is less about "how can videogames be Gothic" and more how the playfulness in videogames is commonly used to allow players to camp canon in and out of videogames as a form of fairly negotiated power exchange established in playful, game-like forms

As I've moved through this series, though, the definition has narrowed, according to my focus on the term specifically to play with rape as I define it; re (from the Poetry Module's "A Note about Rape/Rape Play," 2024):

as something broadened beyond its narrow definition, "penetrative sex meant to cause harm by removing consent from the equation." To that, there is a broad, generalized definition I devised in "Psychosexual Martyrdom" (2024), which will come in handy when we examine unironic forms of rape, but also "rape" as something put into quotes; i.e., during consent-non-consent as a vital means of camp during ludo-Gothic BDSM:

martyrs are generally raped by the state, which we have to convey mid-performance without actually getting raped if we can help it ("rape" meaning [for our purposes] "to disempower someone or somewhere—a person, culture, or place—in order to harm them," generally through fetishizing and alienizing acts or circumstances/socio-material conditions that target the mind, body and/or spirit) [emphasis, me]: finding power while disempowered (the plight of the monstrous-feminine).

Rape can be of the mind, spirit, body and/or culture—the land or things tied to it during genocide, etc; it can be individual and/or on a mass scale, either type committed by a Great Destroyer (a Gothic trope of abuse of the worse, unimaginable sort, rarefying as a person, onstage) of some kind or another as abstracting unspeakable abuse. It's a translation, […] adding the irony afterward as a theatrical means of medicine; i.e., rape play challenging profit through the usual Gothic articulations in service to workers and nature at large (source).

To that, rape is something that demons play with during the whore's paradox. By extension, ludo-Gothic BDSM is effectively rape play combined with Gothic themes and BDSM practices to avenge state wrongs against nature.

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