Thanking Harmony Corrupted (again)!

I'm starting to roll out the 2025 blog-style book promotion for Volume Three, "All the World." To it, I wanted to specifically share the portion here that I wrote thanking Harmony Corrupted for their contributions and assistance over 2024 and 2025! Copied from the original NSFW post, wherein I swapped out the images for tamer variants!

With Harmony's Help: Addressing Volume Three's Grand Emptiness and Ambitions through a Good Friend (feat. Harmony Corrupted)

Horace Walpole's The Castle of Otranto of 1764 is still accepted as the "father of the Gothic novel," yet most observers of this novelette see it, with some justice, as a curiously empty and insubstantial originator of the mode it appears to have spawned (source).

—Jerrold Hogle, "The Ghost of the Counterfeit in the Genesis of the Gothic" (1994)

This is a 2025 addendum briefly (two pages) considers Volume Three has having big ideas it could never explore fully but which I was able to later with the help of friends; e.g., Harmony Corrupted, whose shoot material I commissioned them for throughout 2024 and 2025 will be used to fill the gaps in; i.e., on top of them being featured on this volume's outer/inner and chapter cover sleeves: to give Volume Three—which written mostly on Blogger originally—a bit more hardcore nudity! Said material will be censored to hide Harmony's eyes, as per a regular boundary between them and myself: 

(artist: Harmony Corrupted)

First, I'll be featuring images of Harmony here or there: a fixture of great power and endless pride that I love to exhibit, and who fills in whenever I need them to. They're a castle in the flesh, whose special bricks I have laid scattered through this older cathedral's deepest dungeons. I've worked with many awesome sex workers in my time, but Harmony is above and beyond the best (re: having inspired the entirety of my Poetry Module[3], as well as dozens of exhibits in the Monster Modules, and being my cover model three times); i.e., they work hard, are stupidly gorgeous, and produce impeccable results: few asses come close, Harmony's an offshoot of the Gorgon's own!

(artist: Harmony Corrupted)

Second, the piece directly after is called "Before the Plunge," but even when diving in, we'll basically be doing "just the tip." If that sounds confusing then I invite you consider the chapter summaries per chapter section (each with feature Harmony multiple times). You'll notice there's far fewer subdivisions (thus close-reads) than the rest of my series, and few if any of them dedicated to specific texts or individuals.

In short, I was thinking of things in dialectical-material language, albeit at its most basic; re: sex positivity versus sex coercion—with more of an emphasis on praxial opposition than liberation. The thesis arguments that would lead towards liberation—i.e., as something to push towards while developing Gothic Communism—would emerge when writing my manifesto and PhD after this manuscript was largely completed. I say "completed," insofar as it had introduced a wide variety of talking points (to be holistic), many of which would be introduced here and only here; e.g., twinks and femboys. Meanwhile, other terms—especially ones I specifically coined, including "the liminal hauntology of war," "revolutionary cryptonymy" and "the Shadow of Pygmalion"—would go on to make a variety of returns throughout the rest of my book series[4].

Here, though I was merely setting up shop, and consequently found myself going all over said shop. And while ignorance is no defense, here it's merely a statement of fact; i.e., I installed the first stars of a very dark sky and then used that constellation to go where I wanted, picking up steam along the way. I could taste the palpable presence of mighty things, but only by grasping at them in ways that didn't always bear fruit. But I never stopped playing with them through sex, drugs and rock 'n roll (and various taboo subjects; re: rape play and murder fantasies), learning more and mastering ideas (re: "Back to Necropolis") to eventually summon the Medusa to have the whore's revenge. Furthermore, doing so happened as much through friends like Harmony as by myself—with Harmony and I in particular frequently doing rape play (re: "Healing through 'Rape'" and the convulsionnaires, but also "Psychosexual Martyrdom") to hammer out what eventually became ludo-Gothic BDSM at its most thesis-driven. Said revenge isn't mine alone, then, but ours together as part of something bigger: the liberation of all whores, past and present, while empowering them in the graveyards of "Rome."

The key to power is playing with past forms of it that are left behind; i.e., that survive us, and help workers remember individually what they can contribute collectively towards: what society has forgotten, but which through the Gothic mode is scattered cryptonymically all around us in ways we can recollect, reassemble and reeducate with. The more I played, the more I learned from the past while investigating it; i.e., as something to master while it mastered me. The state historically-materially generates tremendous confusion; we dialectically-materially reverse said confusion (thus abjection) inside the labyrinth and its infernal concentric pattern.

To it, the more the state rapes us without irony as monstrous-feminine dolls, the more we can rediscover and play with such things during ludo-Gothic BDSM: putting "rape" in quotes to break the myopia's awful spell (fighting fire with fire, shadows with shadows, gorgons with gorgons, etc). Capital saddles us with strange appetites and toys to play with; learn from those who harm you if harm you they do, and then find others who don't—i.e., to play with and leave better lessons behind, using the same whorish monster hero toys that everyone plays with for different reasons. Double them and what they use to control you, taking said control away from them through play on and off the same stages that liberation and exploitation occupy! The refrain is concentric, anisotropic, and ergodic in its fractal recursion, so there's bound to be contradiction when doubling the past by returning to through calculated risk. But that is where power lies! Seek it out and play with it, leading to more emotionally/Gothically intelligent and class, culture and racially conscious workers! Normativity dies by straying into abject zones we reify. Development is a war of mirrors, so fight fire with Promethean fire! Kill your darlings, teetering between privilege and oppression!

(model and artist: Persephone van der Waard)

To it, Volume Three and its subsequent plunging into darkness faithfully serves as my Castle of Otranto—a modern-day Lady of Shallot's murky suggestion of great things, yet strangely full and empty while seemingly covering much and little at the same time (re: Hogle, epigram). In the same way that Walpole's castle did, Gothic Communism began as an incomplete shadow, and one I steadily built upon by constantly returning to it; re: including its rudimentary and insubstantial core. My PhD and manifesto would build on Volume Three's grand survey—notably haunted by older authors—to steadily evolve into what, at least in my mind, I consider to be my finest work: my Monster Volume, summoning the Big Whore to have Medusa's revenge; i.e., similar to Radcliffe and Lewis dabbling in Numinous energies that charged upon the same hellish fabric, I was blazing a trail with inadequate light while chasing ghosts, heading from Otranto to Udolpho and The Monk to The Italian through my own mastery of the Gothic mode, and subsequent meeting of great friends like Harmony Corrupted. Our bond filled the gaps between this volume and the others, but also patched up its own empty places with wonderful things to look at. "Stare and tremble!" indeed.

However truncated an afterthought that Volume Three ultimately is/feels like, then, Harmony is anything but; i.e., they're not just my best model and muse among a pantheon of excellent cuties thanks to their numerous contributions, but an excellent and important thinker in actively shaping what Gothic Communism critically evolved into (versus Cuwu's more passive and lateral inclusions, for instance). Not just hugging the alien, but fucking it mid-dialectic, they normalized the more radical, taboo aspects of play that ludo-Gothic BDSM evolved into; i.e., out of Volume Three's inconstant flirting with demon BDSM, they supplied the distinction by already doing it themselves!

Love you, comrade!

—Persephone, 4/20/2025

(artist: Harmony Corrupted)

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About the Author

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). Persephone 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 multiple playmates/friends and collaborators, Persephone and her many muses work/play together on Sex Positivity and on her artwork at large as a sex-positive force. That being said, she still occasionally writes reviews, Gothic analyses, and interviews for fun on her old blog (and makes YouTube videos talking about politics). Any money Persephone earns through commissions or donations goes towards helping sex workers through the Sex Positivity project; i.e., by paying costs and funding shoots, therefore raising awareness. She takes payment on PayPal, Patreon, and CashApp, etc; all links are available on her Linktr.ee. Every bit helps!

Footnotes

[3] Re: "Haunting the Chapel: A Cum Tribute to Harmony Corrupted" and "'That Ass Is a Higher Truth’: Leaving the Castle; or, Bookending Harmony Corrupted" (2024).

[4] This volume will repeatedly and retrospectively elude to said returns; i.e., with block quotes and parenthetical exhibit numbers, which I have updated accordingly for its 2025 debut (I've also replaced the asterisks with footnotes). This volume was originally written before I devised the exhibit system, but I have since added some exhibits and allude to many more, besides. Hopefully if there's a topic here that you feel isn't explored enough, there will be routes provided to where I've done it to death! Also refer to my compendiums on ludo-Gothic BDSM and Metroidvania for some handy reference guides.