The eighth book in my Sex Positivity series is live: the Reflection aka Mirror Volume! Mostly. It's entirely written, the material primarily of old SFW and short blog posts and horror-themed YouTube videos that I'm reading and responding to after coming out as trans, but also an introduction written in 2026, "Interview with the Vampire"; I just have to finish assembling the PDF file, and then will do the video series tied to it (starting with my reinstated review of the 2019 HBO miniseries, Chernobyl, which until a few days ago Google had removed forcing me to reupload it). Until I do, you may check out its online promotion, "The Sphinx' Riddle," where all the material is already accessible (and age-gated; this skeet gives further SFW and NSFW screencaps and summaries).
Note (to anyone who cares): Like the other volumes, I appear in this book as a sex worker doing sex work (re: "About the Author"); i.e., defending sex work and reminding people that it's a part of the larger unpaid side of labor that Western Marxism and Marxist-Leninism historically ignore/prey upon: through the universal class subject as white, straight, male and paid as extensions of the state, sharing these same vampiric qualities in bad faith (re: "A Gothic Researcher [...] Responds to Woke Is Dead feat. @JohntheDuncan," 2025; see: "State Vampirism"). Also, Communism is a daily effort that continues out of the past into the future during the present. I illustrate this concept repeatedly in the book volume, itself, but refer to "Essay #11.25: My Latest Book Is Live (and Continuing Communism, feat. @JessieGender1)" for a quick demo (which also unpacks this post/volume and germane sources). For something even more conversational (and recent) but still based on the same holistic, intersection and good-faith ideas of exchange—meaning across different cultures and oppressed groups, around the world—refer to "Intersecting Discourse: Inviting Two Different Muslims to Discuss Trans/Indigenous Rights" and "Essay #10.5: Black Moderates Don't Challenge Fascism (re: Th3Birdman)" (2026). —Perse
CW: discussions of rape
Past volumes have all featured models other than me, on the covers. This volume is different, insofar as I appear on the cover with someone else. To keep this post SFW, here's a SFW promo poster of the cover models (similar to the book covers): myself and the lovely Cuwu!
(artists: Cuwu and Persephone van der Waard)
As for the inside of the volume itself, it contains (again) a new introduction with several essays written in 2026, but mostly catalogs old blogposts and videos dating back roughly twelve years.
First, the Mirror Volume divides in three (with some additional paratexts before/after these):
- Volume Summary
- Volume Five: A Chance to Reflect (volume opening)
Foreplay (refrain): State Vampirism and Older Works: Different paratextual bits from Volume Four, recycled in Five—namely the new introductions to "YouTube Videos (Symposiums)" and "Older Writing (2014-2021, refrain)."
Volume Five, part one; re: The blog posts, ranging from 2015 (where my blog begins) until July 2022 (when I started Sex Positivity in earnest).
Volume Five, part two; re: The YouTube videos, from 2014 to 2026 (with new summaries/reactions).
Volume Five, part three: Any interviews/essays after Volume Four (to be added after the initial release, not including "Interview with the Vampire," 2026).
"Front to Back: Future Reflections on Old Things; or, Remembering that Little Dragon from My Past": A note about Cuwu, in 2026.
"Of Wyrms, Witches and Wallflowers": A 2026 prelude, before "Interview with the Vampire."
Note: This post only has the volume summary (and the synopsis to state vampirism and disclaimers, at the bottom of this page). Go to my website/the book promotion, "The Sphinx' Riddle," to see the rest of it (as everything else is very NSFW).
Volume Summary
Volume Five, or the Mirror Volume, considers reflections on my past work having lead up to my book series and its system of thought, Gothic Communism; i.e., said reflections, or holistic study returning to old things, happen after said series was written.
In other words, whereas Volume Three covers the informed, intersectionally continuous application of successful proletarian praxis (meaning as we reinterpret the Gothic past pushing for universal liberation) and Volume Four puts that to practice—preserving our work (and public nudism) in practice—then Volume Five is me reflecting on all that came before and how it helped shape what resulted (especially an emphasis on vampires*, dragons or otherwise). This includes Cuwu, the model and old flame sharing the outer covers with me (and something of a "little dragon" I've written extensively about in said series already, from Volumes Zero to Four); it dates back to 2014 when I was only just beginning to exit my shell, and which happened primarily by meeting cuties who radicalized my life heading into Gothic Communism (an ode to eggs).
To that, the notion of praxial synthesis through workers' social and love lives are a huge part of what Volume Five offers; i.e., from a reflective state, its paradoxical perspectives dwelling on the past (and its occupants brought poetically back to life in ghostly forms) to consider the vampiric (or otherwise monstrous-feminine) potency useful to us: when reversing state predation while furthering Gothic Communism vampirically among ourselves, love-is-a-battlefield. Dragons all the way down, babes!
approximate volume length ("): words/pages[1] and unique images to be determined
[1] Minus the original paratext material, not including new paratexts for Volume Five, specifically.
Note: Every volume contains the same paratextual materials: "Paratextual (Gothic) Documents" and "Audience, Art, and Reading Order" (as well as the full series acknowledgements, glossary and disclaimer). Much of the unique paratextual materials for Volumes One, Two and Three, and for Volume Four, are contained in their own paratext compendiums: "Appetizers" and "Leftover Rice," respectively. For even more information about the paratexts, refer to "Frontload: Series Paratexts" in the one-page promo's table of contents. —Perse, 4/24/2026
*E.g., Takena from "Midnight Vampire" (above, 2024): "Soon, the sun sets and the night falls, our feminist fearmonger back for seconds, making guilty men afraid, squirm or otherwise think twice—as she castrates their doubles, onstage! For her (and us), it's sweet relief, but also returns to and from the beckoning grave! Whoever said chivalry was dead?" (source: "Vampires and Claymation" (feat. Takena's 'Midnight Vampire')," 2024). Power (as something to be under) cuts both ways! The Gorgon's a renegade and loose cannon (with loose morals), someone who handles their shit with aplomb amid hot/cold strength and fragility.
Apart from that, I write on Bsky (when promoting the volume release):
"This is the big one, the one I've been waiting for all my life!" Sort of. It catalogues my journey towards my later work, and I'm very proud of it. [...] The theme of the series [this book volume] is vampires, inspired by Cuwu but also my mother. Another theme is healing from rape*; i.e., during the whore's ultimate revenge against the state: making rape systemically impossible, and eliminating the use of scapegoats accordingly (source skeet: vanderWaardart, 5/10/2026).
*Meaning (from my definition) "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) […] 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" (source: "Psychosexual Martyrdom," 2024).
[skeet alt-text: Biff Tannen from Back to the Future* (1985), taking out his frustration on George McFly for standing up to him/interrupting his assault on Loraine Bates. He is much stronger than George, and there's seemingly nothing to be done (until the two gang up on the bully).]
*A film I enjoy but critique in equal measure:
Marty's plan is terrible for several reasons. Not only should it have not worked; it presents George McFly as this self-made man when in truth, the entire coercively manufactured production made it possible for him to "get Lorraine back" (despite never earning her to begin with), then take all the credit after privatizing it in "his" novel. Back to the Future is easy to like; dialectically-materially it's a giant, dangerous lie. That's not "just" Reagan's 1980s in a nutshell; it's something that's continuously being sold to the next-in-line as "wholesome, good, and safe" for workers, making them stupid. / To borrow from Anita Sarkisian, though, I can enjoy "Earth Angel" rerecorded with the orchestral accompaniment (1985) and refuse to endorse Ronald Reagan, Robert Zemeckis, et al in the same breath (source: "Challenging the State's Manufactured Consent and Stupidity (with Vampires; feat Cuwu†)," 2024).
To that, I still get survivor's guilt for my own rape despite all these books, but also that of my mother's and of Cuwu's—of all women/those treated like women who survived (or didn't‡ survive): "Get off her! Stop it! God damn it, why doesn't anyone do anything?" Trauma isn't something you escape, but live with to break the cycle. This goes not just for women and children harmed by the state, but also men; e.g., my grandfather being a holocaust survivor (though he was only ten when the Nazis invaded Holland, and fifteen when liberated/already fighting as a boy to free his land [warts and all] from fascist rule). Rape apologia is rape apologia, my work concerned entirely with the whore's revenge denying the pimp "his prize." For rape victims, vampirism (and its carnal sensibilities and piercing stare—exhibit 1, further down) denote a kind of "morbid charm/fatal attraction"; i.e., one paradoxically useful to surviving future abuse (once abusers clock you as "victim," third time or otherwise): while topping from below, controlling the room through sex as much as threats of force but often hyphenating those through complex trauma, PTSD, psychosexual trauma and scars (which healing from rape always leave) during ludo-Gothic BDSM:
The Western world is generally a place that testifies to its own traumas by fabricating them; i.e., as markers of sovereignty that remain historically unkind to specific groups that nevertheless survive within them as ghosts of unspeakable events linked to systemic abuse. Trauma, in turn, survives through stories corrupted by the presence of said abuse. There is a home resembling a castle, where a ghost—often of a woman—lurks inside having been met with a sorry fate. But undeath is something that can be felt through echoes of ourselves that aren't diegetically spectral; they feel spectral through an uncanny resemblance, like standing over our own graves. This becomes something to play with during ludo-Gothic BDSM, akin to an (at-times) humorous, even trashy gallows theatre rife with dark, forbidden language: sin, vice, violent sex, all-around death, and other taboo subjects discouraged by privileged (and unimaginative) moderates who historically frame the Gothic as a puerile, good-for-nothing backwater while simultaneously suffering from conservative delusions of privilege and/or tokenism (re: Jameson). In other words, the pedagogy of the oppressed faces its classic foil: tone-policing (source: "Healing from Rape†").
†Both pieces featuring Cuwu, whose testimony and tutelage helped me formulate ludo-Gothic BDSM (re: "Returning to Volume One, Two Years Later (give or take) after Five Books; or, Cuwu's Hand in Forming Ludo-Gothic BDSM," 2025).
‡This includes fictional reenactments of women who died, like Maria Falconetti in The Passion of Joan of Arc (exhibit 1, further down—1928), but also the ghosts of women killed by pimps, husbands, fathers, and boyfriends (etc). My mother when she was homeless saw a pimp kill a woman before her very eyes, and though I never saw it myself the image still haunts my nightmares, asleep or awake (which "The Rememory of Older Mothers" from "Interview with the Vampire" shall explore more, regarding Mom's teaching of me [and her own photographic "ghosts," exhibit 0, further down]: a very special set of skills, one acquired over a very long career that makes me a nightmare for people like [rapists]").
(artist: oxsidiancastle; cited: "Vampires and Claymation")
I speak of the Gorgon and her own rape (the OG whore; re: "Always a Victim," 2025; see, also: Elizabeth Hadley's "More than a Monster: Medusa Misunderstood," 2024). To that, rape is a weapon that turns women into monsters (cis or not); and while we can reclaim it (re: "Our Sweet Revenge," 2025), the fact remains that monsters are made. This including rape survivors fetishized by pimps, post-rape and/or postmortem. But whatever they do to us, we can still attack during ludo-Gothic BDSM by fetishizing ourselves (rape play calculating risk while changing the world around us): through the abuse that shows in our eyes, turned by Athena into a weapon that paralyzes and castrates anyone foolish enough to dare try again. "Sticks and stones" goes both ways, motherfucker! You get one shot, so make it count!
Adding fuel to the flames, this includes the terror of simply seeing the shameful, sorry dead, sex-as-a-weapon; i.e., which rape canonically equates to, and which whores reverse abjection with by cryptonymically invoking the dead (often their former selves, below):
(exhibit 0: Artist, left [cited: "The Rememory of Older Mothers" from "Interview with the Vampire"]: Tim Jacobus [cited: "Death by Snu-Snu," 2024]; middle and right, models: Regina Kay Walters [footnote 18] and Melody [at the time] van der Waard. Cops don't prevent rape, rape survivors [or their ghosts].)
(exhibit 1: Artist, top-left: Cuwu [cited, cropped: "Challenging the State's Manufactured Consent"]; bottom-left: Maria Falconetti; right: Pam VanChaos [cited: "Arrows for My Quiver" from "Quality Beyond Measure: Remembering Jonathan Joss," 2025]. Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned. However, while the token Amazon declares to any would-be-witch, "You stand before my lord and kin; if you touch him, I will smite you!" the subversive variety values herself and all women [and other victims of state predation] as the things to protect from witch hunters: with witchcraft, which the Maori called "makutu," and something that translates, in Gothic, to a wide variety of things having the whore's revenge, making would-be abusers uncomfortable enough to think twice [even big strong men with community backing will hesitate if they think the attempt will cost them]. Gaslight this!)
Concerning State Vampirism
(artist: Karen B.; cited: "The World Is a Vampire")
This piece (essay or otherwise) is part of a larger series on state vampirism. As I conceive it, state vampirism = feeding through the state mid-abjection*, be it openly capitalist or Marxist-Leninist. These are largely questions of aesthetic, whose Promethean (self-destructive) function extends to other configurations "of Omelas"; e.g., Zionism. Furthermore, there's overlap between my anti-Zionist work and my work critiquing Marxist-Leninism/state vampirism alongside capital, so consider reading both.
*Which state predation and revolutionary action both rely upon to function; i.e., "on the Aegis" as something to further or reverse, mid-vampirism, through paid/unpaid labor (re: me, vis-à-vis Julia Kristeva). To that, abjection (us versus them/alienation and fetishization) is one of four main Gothic theories my book series utilizes—the other three being hauntology (retro-future), cryptonymy (show/hide) and chronotopes (time-space) alongside smaller theories; e.g., Jerrold Hogle's ghost of the counterfeit† and Barbara Creed's monstrous-feminine (Gorgons and Amazonomachia, as I study it). As a queer sex worker and academic, I dialectically-materially prioritize abjection and vampirism through unpaid labor—chiefly sex work as exploited by Cartesian dualism and its harmful, maximalist binaries under Capitalist Realism, treating nature as monstrous-feminine (re: "Nature Is Food," 2024)—but mention the other theories, too (access "Four Main Gothic Theories (the Four Gs)" in "Paratextual Documents" for their longer definitions). In essence, capital/the state rape by design, which unpaid labor prevents by breaking Capitalist Realism mid-abjection; i.e., reversing abjection during ludo-Gothic BDSM (rape play) when having the whore's revenge (which "State Vampirism" explores at length): "to break the profit [and productivity] 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" (source: "Rape Reprise," 2024).
†Re: "Raising Awareness" (2025), footnote 1.
Disclaimers
"Interview with the Vampire" is part of my Sex Positivity book series, which continues after its June 2025 finale in small-form content; e.g., essays on and interviews with other sex workers, all of whom I credit on my Acknowledgments pages and Sex Work page. This piece doesn't focus entirely on sex work, but widespread exploitation that includes sex work as problem/solution; i.e., in a shared predatory system, "whoring nature (and workers) out" in highly abject ways.
(artist, left: Bay Ryan; right: Persephone van der Waard)
For the Visually Impaired: I read this essay out loud on my YouTube channel.
Disclaimer Regarding Essay Contents: All opinions are my own; i.e., as part of my research, conducted alongside my book series, Gothic Communism (2023). The material within is written/speaks about public figures and popular media for purposes of (sex) education, satire, transformation and critique, hence falls under Fair Use regarding copyright and free speech regarding defamation/obscenity laws (the Miller Test; source: Justice.gov). Click here for my entire series disclaimer. Lastly many of the links on this page lead to my age-gated 18+ website where my entire work on Gothic Communism is stored and exhibited.
CW: classical artistic nudes (oil-painting female nipples), bikini-style pin-ups and cleavage (e.g., boobs and butt cracks); fascism, genocide and rape; police brutality and carceral violence; whorephobia, racism and queerphobia (of different kinds), and Gothic poetry and violence (especially vampires and blood, for you squeamish out there)
Concerning Keywords: My arguments rely on various keywords I've previously coined, which here present in bold while color-coded (usually only once, while stressing their keyword status; e.g., ludo-Gothic BDSM, Metroidvania, or the palliative Numinous, etc). While some are given here, in abridged form, "Paratextual (Gothic) Documents" provides all neologisms, in full.
