"Gothic Intersectionality" continues a prior examination of capital, building on "White Straight Guys with Beards (and/or Diplomas); or, Western Marxism and Its Flaws: Transphobia (and Other Bigotries) in the Anti-Zionist Movement" (2026). That essay focused on the individual, concluding that certain individuals (e.g., The Kavernacle) were "playing God" in bad faith; its follow-up switches gears, emphasizing systemic predation. To do so, it coins "Gothic intersectionality" to explore capital as Promethean, its emphasis on consumption-as-duality (the magic potion/seed trope) challenging state predation (the raping of nature) vis-à-vis two other work(er)s: Duncan and Aspinall's "The 'Hidden Roots' of Neoliberal Fascism" (2026), and Jessie Gender's "The Graham Platner Allegations Have Leftist Men Telling on Themselves" (2026).

Note: Though technically a work-in-progress, "Gothic Intersectionality" is mostly done. Mostly. It also covers the Promethean myth differently than I have previously (re: through the magic potion/seed trope). To see my earlier works on Promethean Quest tied to ludo-Gothic BDSM (which both return here), refer to "Monster Mom: Mary Shelley's Endless Legacy (and Effect on Me)" from "Reviewing del Toro's Frankenstein and Celebrating Mary Shelley's Immortal Legacy" (2025). —Perse, 7/16/2026

Table of Contents

• Disclaimers
• Concerning State Vampirism
• Preface
• Applying Gothic Intersectionality to Other Work(er)s; or, an Antidote to Prometheus, Fascism, and Its Cannibalism under Capital: Magic Potions and Seeds (feat. Jessie Gender and John the Duncan)
  • Defining Gothic Intersectionality
  • Roots and Intersection; or, a Promethean Fatal Portrait (essay body) 
    • Roots
    • Intersection
    • The Promethean Quest, Ludo-Gothic BDSM and Gothic Intersectionality
    • Learning from the Past (and those "of it")
  • A Note about Gothic Poetry versus Fascism; or, Having Fun in the Bargain (the belly of the beast) 
  • Reprise: Keep It Short, Stupid (essay prototype)
    • Gothic Intersectionality (the potion): What's It For, Again?
    • Into the Plasma Pool (drinking the potion together)

Disclaimers

"Gothic Intersectionality" 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 on my YouTube channel (new version).

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: racism, transphobia, whorephobia, rape*, fascism, genocide; censored artistic nudes

*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). 

Concerning Keywords (which this piece in particular doesn't rely on too much): 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.

Concerning State Vampirism

(artist: Karen B.; cited: "The World Is a Vampire," 2024)

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.

Preface

"White Straight Guys" (2026) grimly concluded that capital is Promethean—a system of theft proceeded by bad actors "playing God" ("with fire," etc): "Gothic villains lie, rape and steal in bad faith; Gothic heroines expose them, and the system they serve, by facing the complications that result. This unmasking navigates confusion (sometimes under cover but always in enemy territory overlapping with home)." Formerly an afterthought, "Gothic Intersectionality" has been given space to grow and explore that idea; i.e., beyond singular cases or even people, while keeping the Promethean myth squarely in mind: the root of the problem that white straight guys represent. It attacks the system responsible: capital as Promethean, pimping nature to wreck the globe. In doing so—and facing down fascism and climate catastrophe—it uses the Promethean myth (and Cartesian hubris) to holistically and dualistically push for Gothic intersectionality (during ludo-Gothic BDSM, combining teamwork and play): through the magic potion/seed trope commenting on cannibalism, transformation, and dark desire (e.g., revenge, survival the rape victim's revenge; re: the whore reversing abjection, foiling state predation). Apart from those—and John and Jessie's work, which I mentioned at the start—we'll reference other terms of mine, too; e.g., the Wisdom of the Ancients (and the Ancestors, per Indigenous thought).

(artist: Henri Fuseli; source: "On Giving Birth," 2023)

We have to, Gothic Communism holistic for a reason: capital—intrinsically Promethean (self-destructive but harming nature, above)—feeds in all directions, kicking up dust when binging and purging to conceal its own farm/food source (what Aspinall and Duncan call "soil," and which vampires use to rest and digest but also conceal ongoing predation). To shock the system and transform it, we must boldly poke and prod whatever's needed (to till the soil, turning it over). Only then can workers free themselves from planetary bondage, uniting efforts across the world to engender a world-ecology (as Patel and Moore* call it): one that combats state shift inside the Capitalocene, Gothic heroines (regardless of gender) exposing Gothic villains in solidarity. The dead can serve those aims, but require a certain morbid comfort while consuming them differently than capital does; i.e., Prometheus was a bad actor stealing fire for the state, and whose modern riddle is classically dualistic; e.g., Kav's Prometheus—stealing "fire" to feed in bad faith, while playing the savior (and the victim). We walk the same road, one in which painful antidotes—to Prometheus, fascism, and its cannibalism under capital—encapsulate things to eat and pass data (wisdom, "fire") along: magic potions and seeds (mad science/Gothic poetics) with the power to confront, then transform state predation accordingly.

*From their seminal book, A History of the World in Seven Cheap Things (2017). Various terms come directly from it, including "world-ecology," "state shift," "Capitalocene," and more. Furthermore, "White Straight Guys" segued into "Gothic Intersectionality" to consider the systemic side of the Promethean coin, but especially it's "afterthought portion, "Heroines and Villains"; i.e., Prometheus was a villain who—in Shelley's modern invocation of the myth—embodied capital as causes great harm globally to enrich the ruling class and trash the planet (state predation founded on Cartesian thought; re: "Making Demons," 2025).

Applying Gothic Intersectionality to Other Work(er)s; or, an Antidote to Prometheus, Fascism and Its Cannibalism under Capital: Magic Potions and Seeds (essay body; feat. Jessie Gender and John the Duncan)

Good academics synthesize their work, combining this-or-that for better understanding (thus praxis); this portion follows and builds on my afterthoughts, applying them to ideas put forward convergently by Jessie Gender and John the Duncan: intersectionality and roots, or an antidote to Prometheus, fascism, and its cannibalism under capital (the eating of the living and the dead at cross purposes). So I synthesize our collective work, doing so through the magic seed/potion trope (and Gothic themes of radical transformation they normally convey as useful: towards developing Communism inside capital's corpse, a painful and fearsome idea under Capitalist Realism during state shift). In doing so, I apply ludo-Gothic BDSM (an older term of mine) with Gothic intersectionality (a term freshly coined alongside redefining of fascism, below)—all to consider (and embark on) the Promethean Quest to undo state damage: in pursuit of "fire," or a Wisdom of the Ancients (and the Ancestors) that speaks to knowledge-as-power in so many forms, but chiefly the work of transformation through consumption in duality (re: potions and seeds that, when consumed, transform someone embodying knowledge regarding life and death, survival, cannibalism, transference of data, etc). Survival in particular is a two-way street, the whore's revenge survival by eating capital's babies (read: eating the cannibals, fascism and liberal before it can revive).

Fascism Equals Cannibalism (for/of the State)

Fascism has many definitions. I define it as "cannibalism for/of the state" in John's comment section:

Going to watch and respond to your video, so these are my quick-and-dirty thoughts on fascism I'll refer to, as I do: Capital is the organ, fascism is the rot; i.e., when society becomes sick of/from Liberalism and enacts state predation not just at home but in ways that target state organs of power (neoliberalism and the market, the electorate, media, government, and education system, etc). Fascism assumes different forms in the tracts of state organs--the soil and its canals, in and out of worker minds. It has post-fascist forms, or remission into a less aggressive position of the same values; there's also what I call "pre-fascism," or what fascism evolved out of from pre-modernity (essentially the medieval period and Roman times). Fascism = when regular state feeding becomes cannibalism, the frontiers inward and local instead of far away [emphasis, me]. This includes reactionary and moderate forms—with liberals and fascists two sides of the same coin, and people marketing as "progressive" or "Socialist" able to exhibit fascist tendencies; re: cannibalization, which Gothic generally conveys through zombies and vampires, but also demons and animals (who feed and exchange power in comparable ways); i.e., abjection = flow going up or down, and state actors feed to send power up (state vampirism*) versus emancipatory worker varieties that send it down (using the same language in duality; e.g., Matheson's I Am Legend, 1954). Fascist or liberal, reactionary or moderate, they enact and embody the process [as something to] defend; e.g., TERFs in Great Britain, and chasers in America. In keeping with TERFs, there's often a token element. Regardless, such things must be investigated—to be found and pulled out by the root and the ground salted, as you put it:

["The roots must be torn up and the fertile terrain salted" (source: "Hidden Roots").]

That's not the best metaphor—because we're taking the soil away from the state and using it to grow our own stuff—but we still have to deal with parasites, invasive species (which again, with fascism, means our own populations turned undead for state aims).

*A large part of my research, which consolidates my book series (and its prior emphasis on TERFs, neoliberalism and fascism) to focus on state predation using Gothic poetics; i.e., through a holistic, intersectional, dialectical-material analysis: fascism "dies" and then rises from the grave, but so does Communism and workers at large under state dominion. There's a limit to this (state shift, in geological terms), a problem I try to address as well within my work.

In short: state grows, state eats more and more; state eats self to die, resurrect and repeat the cycle (until state shift, which we'll get to). Again, challenging fascism accordingly (during the Promethean Quest reversing abjection by breaking monopolies) requires not just ludo-Gothic BDSM "playing with fire" (re: mad science/Gothic poetics), but together mixing metaphors mid-praxis during Gothic intersectionality to transform the "soil" at large (to grow better seeds, embryos). It can't be done alone, so what is Gothic intersectionality?

Defining Gothic Intersectionality

Gothic intersectionality is fighting fire with fire (cannibalism)to have the whore's revenge; i.e., raising survival and reducing harm by making rape impossible (ergo Capitalism). Regarding John, Jessie and I (the heroes and heroines of this tale), we're good actors—Gothic heroines and heroes versus the usual Gothic villains (re: Prometheus) feeding in bad faith (our disguises [and food-like lures] versus theirs). However different (or similar) we three and our approaches might seem, and how separate we are from each other, our aim is the same: challenging fascism (and its cannibalism). This means not just through play during ludo-Gothic BDSM, but together (as much as possible, anyways) through "Gothic intersectionality" (a new term I've coined based on older ones, below):

Gothic intersectionality

The various engagements under Gothic Communism (a holistic discipline), and allowing mid-development for any intersection (encounter) and consumption, production and passage of data useful to transformation (escape from within); e.g., potions, seeds and eggs reifying the so-called "final product" of state predation, warning of a cycle thereof that hijacks life and death to serve dead labor (the bourgeoisie rendering us from inside illusory spaces, above). A larger theatre to liberate nature from state predation and develop Communism (an endless battle), Gothic intersectionality is both the act and location of intersection (frontiers)—a deliberate-and-bold merger of intersectional consciousness and solidarity (awareness and teamwork). One that imbricates under crisis (tactical unity), it raises emotional and Gothic intelligence; i.e., per awareness, regarding dialectical-material issues of class, culture and race* (while borrowing from psychoanalysis Freud's "greatest hits"; e.g., Medusa from him and Creed, symbolic of a dark revenge [and passenger] conducive to nature's liberation from state pimps): through Gothic media, and the anti-predatory act (and themes) of dark consumption, resurrection, prostitution, rape and cannibalism ("topping from below" through terrifying analogs of nature-as-criminal, its "corruption" conveying zombie-like whores [witches] vengefully "wrecking home" to replace it†; re: "The Caterpillar and the Wasp," 2024).

*No reductionism, no scapegoats.

†Reversing abjection (thus state vampirism) from inside the house (where it hurts); i.e., by targeting its "foundations": settler colonialism (and its invade-and-replace strategy), heteronormativity (through sodomy) and Cartesian thought (turning the tables on Society). The Gorgon's revenge is total, the state—normally white straight and male—utterly castrated, gutted and replaced, its babies eaten alive to feed Medusa's for once (and echoing ethnocentric fears weaponized against colonizer bodies and brains, the disguise leading up to a visceral gut-punch)! From Matthew Lewis to us, the deceiver deceivers the deceiver (the state's creation of an endless enemy its eventual undoing)!

(source: "'My Quest Began with a Riddle': the Caterpillar and the Wasp")

All's fair in love and war! Deception and food are two classic weapons thereof; class war is ass war fought, mid-disguise, in praxial opposition: their tricks versus ours, using the same (sex-and-force) language to pimp nature or free it. Said media speaks to real-world struggles and trauma in lateral ways (simulacra, from Plato)—doing so in seemingly "displaced" terror/counterterror poetics that workers, during Gothic intersectionality and ludo-Gothic BDSM, desperately consume: symbolizing transformation and growth, encapsulating the cycle (and chaos) that life and death afford; i.e., two sides of the same coin, one the state spends and rejects under Capitalist Realism while turning workers into "currency" (a blood bank); re: potions, seeds and eggs bearing a Promethean stamp (the Promethean Quest stealing power from the mighty past). These cosign "Elsewhere" (doubles, the alien, replication, and abuse) through internal/external forms of consumption/consumable (disguised predation, aka lures): the consequence of state predation, and one rebellious workers spend guerilla-style to free ourselves in duality (a dark desire occurring through radical change, namely transformation as eaten). A kind of praxial "pandemonium," Gothic intersectionality coalesces myriad practices; e.g., violence, terror and monsters (monopolies to break while in disguise); i.e., in the same "plasma pool" or zone such conferences hold, a coven to gather onstage and off*: among friends, commonly strange bedfellows mise-en-abyme (within ourselves, within discos, within capital, within the planet).

*Meaning half-real; i.e., while camping the canon, from Broadmoor to me (2021 and 2023)—and by using "mere play" (or shadows; re: Gloggins, 2020) while capital alienates/sexualizes everything (1844 and 2023): "that discovers a hidden second function; i.e., trapped allegorically inside the fad, craze, or anything else Gothic has been called (with some justice), over the years—and one that people with relative privilege don't realize subversive potential for until much later (as was the case for me)!" (source: "Gothic Ludology"). Whatever language capital weaponizes to pimp workers, nature-is-alien (monstrous-feminine), workers can re-weaponize for a humanizing-if-terrifying counter aim; i.e., one that paradoxically attracts and repulses our prey to varying degrees, hybridizing cute/ugly and polite/rude, sex/force, pleasure/pain, predator/pet, etc: to confuse and overwhelm, excite and overload through the anisotropic/apotropaic (anti-predation) power of Athena's Aegis. We embody her mirror shield during ludo-Gothic BDSM (camping rape/fearsome exposure),

(artist: Kentucky Cryptid)

and employ sword-like displays of feral public nudism (and varying warrior-maiden stages of undress, above); i.e., adorned as such with useful corpses—the Wisdom of the Ancients (and the Ancestors) that, once conjured, seek revenge/survive as data for those aims (the whore's revenge): "When the Man comes around, show him your Aegis!" Function = flow, not aesthetic, reversing the terror/counterterror binary cryptonymy-and-abjection. A kind of "full moon" causing lunacy-as-method—meaning to the madness, one that shows/conceals revolution behind buffers/within thresholds of play to wreak havoc (re: "revolutionary cryptonymy" and "transgressive nudism" as "Interview with the Vampire" footnote 10 describes). So we "top from below," during positions of presumed vulnerability (thus perceived disadvantage) that, however exposed, may still attack: in "phallic," anti-predatory ways (the avenger "castrating" the enemy through unmasking them, exposing a "chaser's" aggression and hypocritical appetite)! In turn, we empower sex as a weapon (to attack our foes) and potion (to offer our friends), giving hell and succor as needed (all while teasing either side with ironic, psychosexual threats of pleasure and pain the empower the broadcaster).

Such is Gothic, in general—a vanishing point of (dis)comfort, one whose fearsome intersections (the home as alien/a backwards frontier) deal cryptonymically with dark, fairy-like things; i.e., whose singularities predicate on encryption in duality! They're the granters of secret wishes, giving them like the Devil to Faust from inaccessible places relegated to fearsome dreamworlds (typically of transformation-as-revenge):

(source: Testament's Dark Roots of the Earth, 2012; artist: Eliran Kantor)

Per Hogle, the ghost of the counterfeit furthers abjection through the middle class upholding status-quo arrangements of power and knowledge through Gothic fakeries; i.e., viewing colonized land as dark and alien, vis-à-vis Cartesian thought and heteronormative language demonizing older forms of culture connected to nature, life and death, having become alien in ways that uphold capital (and its black/white colonial binary argument). Under Capitalist Realism, something is "dark" if it ostensibly moves anything of value (re: power and knowledge) away from the status quo. Generally this darkness is associated with the vengeful imaginary past based on buried historical atrocities, the latter paradoxically twisted by the former to keep control right where it is (among the elite). Anything that challenges this paradigm is canonically framed as dark, evil, profligate; i.e., nature as vengeful whore, which capital takes revenge on through DARVO-style police violence/obscurantism, witch hunts, tokenism and moral panic; e.g., Medusa and her Aegis' forbidden sight [or anything comparable, above] (source: "Demons: From Composites and the Occult to Totems and the Natural World," 2024).

In other words, "Hell" encapsulates the awesome potential for radical change that "wakes up"; i.e., partitioned, stored and disguised until then under state exploitation, the latter's incessant fakery replicating unheimlich (a confusing vaudeville space of fear and cannibalism, the lie echoing the truth of state vampirism: as sold cryptomimetically back to workers). Gothic intersectionality embraces the alien made product, and does so across a polity of disciplines, disguises, pedagogies and peoples—all to foster Patel and Moore's world-ecology unifying spaces (and containers) of desire; i.e., a brothel "of nature" (and fire of the gods) versus state predation pimping nature out, the former treating the latter as weak/strong prey mid-abjection (during "Nature vs Society" under Cartesian thought). It's a battle for the planet already black, exploitation a domain of involving that requires participation (and disguise) to liberate: while inside the same "veins" (field, devil's workshop, etc), and flowing with the same sludge. There, rebellious workers shamelessly weaponize their own abuse (and abjection): sprayed skunk-like in the state's face, transforming capital cryptonymically into Communism.

(source: Ashley Falls' "The Art of the Movie Poster: Kenny Gravillis on Alien," 2018; artists: Steve Frankfurt and Philip Gips; cited: Interview with the Vampire")

This happens while counteracting state lies; i.e., with our own, the former turning holocaust into cheap "tasty" garbage that furthers (and hides) itself. It's crude but effective. By subverting Gothic "junk food" (to disguise temptation, mid-abjection; e.g., Amazons; re: "Toxic Schlock Syndrome," 2025), revolutionary cryptonymy stays productive, endless, stealthy and seductive—intersecting deception and food (ancient weapons) to fight state doubles (and their monopolies/Capitalist Realism). Anything can weaponize to terrify as such, reversing terror/counterterror in service to nature "inside the jail." Good and bad, black and white—the aesthetic can vary but the function (of abjection) boils down to state fakes vs worker fakes: to pass "Satanic" things cryptonymically forwards, consumed by future workers who revive Medusa for her revenge (the Big Whore, aka Mother Nature and her Numinous offshoots, above; i.e., potions/seeds/eggs reflecting the oldest struggle [sex work] as "primordial," Promethean). A killer queen, she's both prisoner and power source—one seeking freedom through Gothic intersection (e.g., the Radiance from Hollow Knight and similar Metroidvania; re: "Policing the Whore," 2024); i.e., "tonight, there's gonna be a jailbreak," said power taken to the streets! That blade (abjection) cuts both ways; for Medusa (a punk rocker), reproduction = revenge evolving under pressure—a Trojan whore acting cryptonymically as bait while saying to the curious, "Eat me." It's a trap, one spreading Communism while hiding in plain sight (a shadow): something to gather, bump into, absorb, and burst gloriously from inside! The more frontiers capital makes (and enemies to exploit, therein), the greater the blowback during the whore's revenge!

Keeping Gothic intersectionality in mind (and everything else it anchors to), let's paint the larger problem; i.e., the big picture (or fatal portrait) we're currently wrestling with (or apothecary/garden, to keep with the potion/seed gimmick). Then we'll remind people to have fun, mid-struggle (to "smile at the gods," as Camus might put it), discussing potions (and drinking them/planting seeds/eating eggs) more succinctly afterwards: a reprise that concludes with a shorthand approach to these bigger ideas.

Roots and Intersection; or, a Promethean Fatal Portrait (the Big Picture)

Gothic stories concern fatal portraits to survive, presaging rape from smaller to bigger (the stakes). Big pictures have small parts—ideas present throughout that, like drops in a bucket, dictate praxis: roots and intersection. These mean of and with state predation, furthering abjection to feed the bourgeoisie-as-class-structure: capital and the state. Big and small, its frontiers continue; we use them to reverse abjection (thus change course), Gothic intersectionality vital when subverting state predation: a broken-record, dead-end cannibalization, one whose smaller resurrections (fascism into liberalism) sprint toward state shift—an irreversible destruction, in geological terms, of the ecosystem, and one made permanently uninhabitable; i.e., by capital's making repeatedly inhospitable the land (a "finite web of life") in search of infinite profit (everlasting life, sucked from nature). "Fire" = different things, commonly energy for different work. In Promethean (self-destructive) terms, profit = "fire" as the ravenous (cannibalistic) means to continue capital—to drive towards "progress" (a mirage/code word for ecocide) until the world gives out (or "goes feral," as I put it; re: "Nature Is Food"). It's "Prometheus, eat your heart out (or liver)!" To survive (thus prevent) state shift, workers fight fire with fire; i.e., taking back from false gods/saviors (the owner class) what they stole from us: the land and we of it, including our labor (our "fire" a mixing of different metaphors and methods "to seize the means"; e.g., "fire" = energy [vitality] but also wisdom, its exchange a form of vampirism/cannibalism).

This requires transformation, a kind of trick commonly involving vampiric lies and food; vampires or otherwise, the tricks and thievery continue in duality (doubles, opposition)—the state stealing from nature by raping it (a death goddess), and workers fleecing Prometheus to free nature (the Gorgon). Anything goes, playing with fire—with the Wisdom of the Ancients (and the Ancestors) during the Promethean Quest (re: ludo-Gothic BDSM, in Gothic intersectionality) to achieve a better outcome (read: not state shift).

Roots

First, roots. Duncan and his co-writer explain, "To dismantle the current construction of fascist politics requires demolishing its (neo)liberal foundations. Such resistance must, importantly, offer not a return to neoliberal normalcy, but a fundamental break with the system from which fascism is emerging. The roots must be torn up and the fertile terrain salted. The question which is beyond the scope of this paper is whether 'progressive' politicians and social movements are up to the task" (source: "Hidden Roots"). I understand what John is trying to say, but also recognize the language is scorched-earth (or salted earth, in this case); i.e., we still use the soil, "seizing the means" accordingly while denying it for the colonizer. We aren't walking away from Omelas, then; we're transforming it from within, and generally while "in the basement" (as Le Guin's Omelas child classically is: endlessly tortured, like Prometheus, but while being stolen from). That means no scapegoats; i.e., during Gramsci's omen, "the time of monsters" speaking to a means of production (and power) that workers vampirically steal; re: "fire," subverting cryptonymically per abjection's reversal a changing of the flow power travels, mid-predation (workers vs the state). Doing so requires access—to the soil (the external container or incubator of data) but also the seed (the internal container): to consume (thus internalize) a hellish vase, one housing an embryo or otherwise transformative device whose data/act of transference regarding ties to life and death as a reproductive cycle. We ingest "fire"; "fire" burns us to a purifying degree, rising anew like the phoenix.

It's a riddle, one whose cryptic cycle leaves workers both with monstrous soil (or ashes) and seeds. Classically derelict, discovered and ingested once more (as "ancient" fire of the gods), doing happens on the Promethean Quest (re: "Giger's Xenomorph," 2025): the former occupied by and cultivated for the latter as currently fascist, meaning primed for it (a program to follow). Fascism's fed to people, who in turn don't even realize they're constantly eating (and turning into) fascism, into liberalism. And yet, the duality—and the cannibalism—remain; they're concealed, an abstract deed of cannibalism: ingesting things that slowly (then all at once) transform us. The xenomorph, for instance, comes from a seed to eat (or potion to drink, fire to house, etc); it turns the consumer (as force-fed, in its case) into another potion or seed as egg-like: a continuation of an ongoing cycle of consumption walking hand-in-hand with reproduction, with deception, with rape, with trickery and war (food and lies dating back to Sun Tzu, fire even further). Doing kills the host, or appears to, by changing them radically into something else. Survival demands it, death unavoidable save as data that survives (and whose "fire" [of a dark sort] tells of the rape taking place); this requires engagement, bearing out the above qualities mise-en-abyme (the belly of the beast a concentric scheme, below)—an intersection with discomfort, including our mortality and culpability as animal beings not above "baser" function; i.e., of sex and force, of rutting and dog-eat-dog (the xenomorph chimerically an animal, planet and fungus, but I digress): something to embrace that is, to a degree, our own death turning monstrously-femininely back into life, rinse and repeat.

(artist: H.R. Giger)

I mention concealment, the code consumed as corrupting Western Liberalism (the status quo hiding its cannibalism) in different ways. Here, you probably don't realize the potion is a seed and the seed an egg (the "fire" oxymoron, or paradoxical mixing of metaphors; e.g., Milton's "darkness visible"). You don't realize it's cannibalism as a preservation device, a life preserver eating the embryo to prepare the consumer unwittingly for transformation—all guided by the logic of war (where "all's fair"), thus food and deception; i.e., as that seductive, trickster's gambit of survival after death (which can't be avoided, only confronted and survived by passing data forwards). Here, the potion-in-question as fascist or Communist, occupies the same smaller container inside a bigger one sharing the same zone (the field, the pool, the portrait, etc): one liberalism (and its centrism) frames as alien, during Capitalist Realism. For them, final death = something to survive; i.e., with offspring (embryos) that, eaten, eat the host contained to produce horrifyingly fresh babies that lead back to liberalism (a normality). Fascism is the antibody of the state chasing greatness (to punch death), and Communism is the antibody of workers seeing post-scarcity inside a predatory system; both transform (thus cannibalize) vampirically for these aims. Ash the science officer, then, admires the xenomorph "for it's purity." A survivor in its purest form, even the Gorgon (or rather, her avatar) can't escape the duality that humans (and their language) employ. It survives through consumption; i.e., as guided by these principles (or held captive by them) to transform: through cannibalism as concealed, ergo the process of transformation (and flow of power it guides) to lead to more monsters. These hyphenate food, lie, code, etc, as fertile grounds for corruption of the liberal order in two basic directions: back towards itself (under fascist occupation) or towards a better world wary of state shift. Life and death remain; scarcity and state predation will not (what Marx calls "a stateless, classless, moneyless society"; and which I—envisioning "pandemonium" [a place for all demons]—holistically add "raceless and genderless").

Intersection

That's roots. Now, intersection (whose Gothic qualities we've already defined). Jessie Gender says in her own video,

To me, as a leftist, the work that we do is not to just we need to win elections. We need to be speaking on class issues [...] Those are all very very important. But a deeply important part of our work is making sure we are coalition-building and that we are actually listening to the numerous different people who are affected in different ways through elements of [...] class, race, gender, [and] sexuality, all of these things together. And we are constantly told over and over and over [to] not look at issues [of] racism, antisemitism, Islamophobia in these figures that fit the aesthetic of who we want. Normally, simply strong man dudes so that we can get behind them because they're speaking to [the] class element of this. We are constantly told that class is the most overriding factor when to me no the work is looking at how class is affected by all of these different economic racial gendered and so many other factors important to look at them in totality and yet we're totally constantly told to ignore them to not listen to them to downplay them in order to get the aesthetic of the strong man guy and give the strong man guy endless grace to be able to deal with these things (source: "The Graham Platner Allegations Have Leftist Men Telling on Themselves"; timestamp: 8:31)

I agree with everything Jessie is saying, while being reminded of John's appeal to intersectionality. In fact, both join my own holistic calls for intersectionality beyond Western Marxism; i.e., in practice (e.g., my "Hailing Hellions" interview series alongside my books and those I relate to in and outside of those, below),

(source skeet [alt-text]: vanderWaardart, 1/31/2026 [the thumbnail for "The Value in Showing Intersectional Solidarity When Combating Fascism"]: "From top-left to bottom right: Mercedes the Muse, Vic Menza, Lady Izdihar, Mexican Indigenous dancers honoring Alex Pretti in Minneapolis, Alicia Axiom, Olurrinati Politics (center), Black Liberation Media, a local Indigenous protest in Minneapolis, Jessie Gender, Rhyna Targaryen, and Julesss Next Door")

and happening alongside another writer's, George Rockhill (a white man working alongside different non-white minorities through his own 2025 book The Pipers of Western Marxism, below):

(source video thumbnail: Black Liberation Media's "Gabriel Rockhill on Intersectionality and Radical Recuperation," 2026)

Different strokes for different folks, but in ways shared among larger polities; i.e., addressing the same larger problem (Capitalism) through different flavors of intersectionality tied to root problems (and their poetry of consumption, cannibalism and transformation; re: potions and seeds, which we'll get to). My emphasis remains sex work and monsters, the former an old struggle under state control into the present, and the latter a powerful poetic means of reifying and emphasizing different stereotypical things: to subvert and reclaim, warts-and-all, from broken clocks. None of these are mutually exclusive; they seek the power of the gods (or Prometheus, playing god to rape the Earth), using the Wisdom of the Ancients (and the Ancestors) to avoid disaster for all life (across space and time). If you wanna make an omelet, you gotta crack some eggs!

The Promethean Quest, Ludo-Gothic BDSM and Gothic Intersectionality

I digress; regarding John and Jessie: I essentially encountered both, "in the wild," and found their work to converge synchronistically with mine; i.e., workers, not the state, preventing rape and state predation in totality during the Promethean Quest; re: Gothic Communism factors, into its solution, state-corporate mechanics (re: Mussolini's "Corporatism")—meaning concentrically under neoliberalism as the latest-and-final configuration (whose mad expanding of the markets [and crisis on infinite frontiers] lead faster towards fascism as state vampirism-turned-cannibal; e.g., TERFs aka "fascist feminism"), and all to address matters of class, culture and race in a Gothically intersectional way. Capital does what it does to cheat death and buy time for the ruling class, but time has run out for them and for us: state shift is nigh, an oblivion (for most life on planet Earth) that Capitalist Realism simply accepts. To survive, a more radical solution is required; re: ludo-Gothic BDSM and Gothic intersectionality. Games are played, onstage and off, to undo the damage Prometheus wrought; same question, different players.

(source: "I'll See You in Hell," 2025; cited: "On Holistic Struggle: Healing the World from Different Positions within It" from "Interview with the Vampire," 2026)

The system was dead from the start, demanding better life cycles gestate and emerge from its shared mighty corpse; i.e., the planet is sick to death, a Promethean examination of the root cause: both as and where it actually occurs; re: intersectional problems require intersectional solutions, radical queerness "what the doctor ordered" by virtue of our comfort with abjection by being so close to it (re: the root and intersection). There's no exit, per se, no "silver bullet" to magic away our problems minus toil. All we can do is transform—meaning while trapped inside our dying world but also bodies and minds (escape a deeply terrifying-if-exciting prospect)! Dark desires emerge; they symbolize, through potions and seeds, a radical change while backed "against the wall": the chopping block, state shift, set to swallow our species whole (the Gorgon, Mother Nature, waking up "feral" unless we humanize the harvest, becoming better stewards treating "home" [the state, assimilation] as hostile towards life in general; re: "Nature Is Food")!

These considerations are very real, but express well enough in poetic language abstracting them (capital too large to tackle "in one bite"): saving the world from bad guys, who lie and steal in bad faith (usually false flags of some kind to expose; re: "Heroines and Villains"). The state (and men behind the curtain) enact capital to deplete everything of nutrients, which through constant crisis begin to starve because nothing will grow (and left, as they are, with bottles of stolen essence they use to promise future regeneration—an afterlife watering their soldiers with their own dead, like mad cows: broaching deeply uncomfortable ideas like "men cannot eat gold," persecution mania, toxification and auto-genocide, and so on during state predation being tied up in endless crisis, cyclical decay and resurrection through cannibalism, below).

(artist: Chris Bourassa; cited: "Leaving the Closet" and "The World Is a Vampire")

I mean that both in the literal ecological sense and a figurative, poetic one (the two going arm-in-arm):

• Capitalists ecologically rob farm soil of nutrients—doing so through an unsustainable (and deeply unstable) system of theft and rape (which profit is); i.e., that won't take fresh "fertilizer," plundered first on the frontiers then injected brute-force into home soil (to "jump-start" it: the place of profit).
• The seeds aren't just literal food, "grown for the masses" alone, but people-as-food of a different poetic kind: as defenders of the state when push comes to shove—born, Matrix-style, into glass (invisible) jars filled with blood; i.e., as stolen from older dead workers (those watered by them activating as fascists do [undead cannibals]: defending the system, grotesquely eating itself to ready the next bourgeois life cycle).

Either speak to abjection, specifically its furtherance for state predation (a system of death "built in," specifically cheating death for as long as possible on the backs of nature [thus workers]: the ruling class "playing God," flowing power up until they bloat and explode). I've discussed abjection repeatedly elsewhere (often through the imagery of games, above and below), but here liken it to a dualistic metaphor I rely on: the parasitoid—specifically the wasp eating the caterpillar to hijack the life cycle (2024)—as something that speaks to fascism and Communism; i.e., when neoliberalism expands its markets (ergo frontiers and crisis points) to begin to globally die: when life at large has been reduced to nothing more than raw materials without rights versus the elite (who become alien to the Earth by eating it from inside-out, below). There's a riddle of concealed violence and revenge, throughout, but also a deathly womb from which springs a better chance at the future. That is our revenge, one wasp eating the other by turning the tables where said tables turn! Prometheus was a dick:

(ibid.)

To it, we're not just "pulling out the roots and salting the earth" (degrowth); we're transforming the soil itself (the ecosystem, literal and figurative). This means transforming capital with fresh growth towards a new, more stable world-ecology—one that doesn't cause state shift under bad-faith cure-alls (re: state snake oil squeezed from nature and workers, world-wide, to pacify and weaponize them): a "new necromancy" for engaging with the world—one whose pre-capitalist language includes Gothic, but also science, sex and gender gleaned from different cultures (especially BIPOC ones); i.e., when performed through Gothic intersectionality during ludo-Gothic BDSM. They intersect, a shared madness (dark desire) pushing towards post-scarcity to break the life cycle of Capitalism inside a larger cycle of life and death. It's akin to a magic seed after all, or magic potion to drink that isn't sold to us by capital; it's cultivated, grassroots, by Gothic intersectionality. My use of "potion" and "seed" are somewhat interchangeable, here, but mix and unmix to make certain social/ecological points; e.g., a potion is like a seed (or an egg as the animal side of that metaphor)—to ingest and incubate, but also something to water oneself as seed-like, mid-ingestion. It's not a question for science to solve, alone, but mad science using Gothic poetics learning from the past; i.e., that speak to intersections useful to workers (and nature), from Mary Shelley onwards (re: "Making Demons").

Learning from the Past (and those "of it")

The past isn't history as "the memory of states" (as Henry Kissinger put it); it's those of the planet ("extended beings" under Cartesian thought) being better stewards—i.e., while not denying our connection to nature as a life-and-death equation, one comfortable with cannibalism, transformation, etc, and part-it-parcel with survival, ergo fresh growth in a healthy ecosystem (versus capital raping everything to death). Simply put, it's a relationship to the land while living and dying that doesn't deplete everything (as Prometheus does, shackling the Gorgon): we learn from the past (or those treated as "past," as "undeveloped") as pre-capitalist language, which pushes towards post-scarcity away from capital-as-Promethean, unsustainable, rapacious. We're born, helpless and confused, in the belly of the beast; escaping it requires understanding the root of the problem, the intersection within broken things to repair through better growth (and destruction, life and death).

Or as my partner Bay Ryan explains (shown with a metamour of mine, below): "Indigenous Cultures treat the land in such a way that you just throw seeds onto it and they will grow. Americans have to do all kinds of things just to get things to grow in the ground." The same idea applies above the soil, the minds of workers depleted or sick so that only fascism is primed to take root, then germinate with "sick seeds" (that only grow death). But when capital is weak, the usual solutions don't always work. Socialism may take root, instead, but must be done within the same soil using the same seeds and potions; i.e., to achieve a different life cycle, next time: emerging from the corpse of empire defending its bourgeois core, mid-crisis (under neoliberalism), from Socialist wasps (the monstrous-feminine). Under the usual contradictions of state gaslighters' DARVO and obscurantism, us and ours are typical food; i.e., in the larger life cycle the state decrees, and while always monstrous are doubly so when we demand recognition and escape from bondage (thus predation). We fight back by first making ourselves visible, then voice our concerns together while punching up; i.e., during "A Paucity of Time" (2024). It happens together (and for my book series focusing on sex work tied to BIPOC struggles, incorporates [and preserves] over a hundred participants). White straight men are savage, in this scenario—divided hopelessly from nature in ways we terrify by reminding them, "you, too, must die" alongside "I'm still here, white man!" So survival is the best revenge, but gagging your rapist (of the planet and its peoples) a close second. We drain them by refusing to lie down and die, having our dark revenge released (classically a decaying of the state bloodline, never to return)!

(artists: Bay Ryan and Beat)

"The old world is dying and the new one struggles to be born," Antonio Gramsci one wrote. "Now is the time of monsters." We are those monsters, the poison and the cure, the potion and the seed versus state doubles; i.e., as reversing abjection, the process normally furthering to cannibalize workers and state bodies per fascism: defending capital to rebirth as liberal (the ideology), when neoliberalism (economics) destroys empire by design. We cannot let them, for the planet is entering state shift. There won't be "a next time" at the imperial level, requiring workers transform locally to "seize the means." The rest of this section will explore preventing catastrophe in poetically "cannibal" ways; i.e., similar to my book series, while keeping John and Jessie's work in mind: the potion and drinking it together "into the plasma pool." Our doing so reverses abjection (ergo state vampirism), doing so in oft-painful Promethean ways and composed of old dead things—the power of the gods, the Wisdom of the Ancients and the Ancestors stolen from the past, Prometheus-style, and reingested devil-may-care: to birth during ludo-Gothic BDSM and Gothic intersectionality a new chrysalid, one that isn't white, straight, and male (thus Cartesian, settler-colonial and heteronormative), and all while breaking the usual monopolies (of violence, terror and monsters) to deregulate sex and force away from state models (and regeneration). Transformation hurts, as does the truth before it that our world is dying and won't survive unless we act now (Capitalist Realism and its praxial inertia the most common roadblock). "How 'bout some hot chocolate?" Yes, have some!

Gothic intersectionality means discomfort (above)—crashing into hard truths played off as potions, seeds, what-have-you, while dealing with state indigestion. We need to enjoy ourselves or we'll burn out long before the war is won (capital Rome in its current form, and one whose much-outed "burning" takes many times over time)!

A Note about Gothic Poetry versus Fascism; or, Having Fun in the Bargain (the belly of the beast)

If the above image is any clue, "Applying" is poetic, fun, and short (a taste test). But it still targets fascism through the Comedy (and Drama) being conveyed; i.e., of the state eating itself and workers through said workforce, and one to identify (and counteract) through the magic potion/seed trope (wish fulfillment): the ingesting and/or planting of ideas that, unto themselves, concern Gothic Communism and its concentric themes of transformation through bitter pills (namely state vampirism as something to challenge while "inside the dungeon," below). Either announce and conceal the violence that made them, and the power they offer as vessels of a vampiric sort centered on transformation-as-revenge through bitter pills coated in sugary things (the paradox of poison-was-the-cure, death to capital and life to Communism rising from the grave).

Poetry concerns, among other things then, a playful way to think about/express the world under capital's thrall: a lack of ethical consumption, whose usage isn't universal but instead turns readily enough into hidden advantages when exchanging vitality from old life to new life (death the passage point, a space of transformation). Potions highlight internal consumption, while seeds externalize the larger farming process: ourselves grown into food for future generations, the proverbial "grapes of wrath" to dualistically nourish workers or the state (the two forever at odds). It's good code, a ready means of concealment able to reify a larger process (of state predation, mid-abjection) into quick, simple, accessibly transferable/transformative ideas: desire, (dis)empowerment, eating and drinking (a weapon since ancient times; e.g., Sun Tzu's Art of War [c. 500 BC] notably concerned, in practice, with deception and feeding one's men: life comes from life and death, part of the same cycle states can't monopolize).

Note: My usage of either metaphor is somewhat interchangeable, abjection = flow as something to reify and reverse state predation (and generally in the language of the harvest, the vampire, and potion/seed as something to siphon power with). Also, I wrote "Gothic Intersectionality" vis-à-vis John the Duncan's "The 'Hidden Roots' of Neoliberal Fascism"; i.e., after watching his video and reading "Heroines and Villains," at the end. This spurred me to clarify some points to John, which occurred to me after my video commentary was mostly shot while recalling these initial notes I prepared in his comment section; re: "Fascism = when regular state feeding becomes cannibalism, the frontiers inward and local instead of far away."

Again, I had already written "Heroines and Villains" in "White Straight Guys." While watching "Hidden Roots," I responded with a video track—a commentary on John's before "Gothic Intersectionality" existed, and which I planned to combine together into a YouTube video called "An Alien, Dualistic Parasitoid; or, Change from Within: Fascism or Communism?" Alas, thanks to recording errors on my part, the commentary track was unusable (and mostly saw me rehashing my books, anyways). But "Gothic Intersectionality" (the written portion) survives, containing those conclusions I drew after watching and commenting on John's video and re-reading "Heroines and Villains." Doing so is simply how I write, meaning backwards and out-of-joint—something of a sexy space alien, responding to a fellow nerd the only way she knows. "Sir, the 'person' identifying as an attack helicopter is trying to communicate!"

All kidding aside, we're talking about the same stuff (alienation, predation); I'm just a little sexier/more theatrical in my discourse than John (who still has his moments, next section)! Call it food for thought, a "devil's compost" within a larger discourse that—through my contributions—introduce Gothic, Indigenous and ecological themes; i.e., through a larger eco-Socialism, one John also contributes to (a shared cauldron's "plasma pool" to make potions from). For a bit of extra fun, today's theme is the Promethean Quest but specifically magic potions: a complicated, antisemitic symbol of consumption that, when accessed and vengefully imbibed, speaks to forbidden knowledge and radical change but also a heretical desire to see things through (a madness stealing power from the gods' mighty past/vineyard, including the bourgeoisie's ambrosia squeezed from living labor)! Why potions? I never wrote a book section on them (and John gave me the idea, drinking dramatically from his water bottle)! —Perse, 7/13/2026

Reprise: Keep It Short, Stupid (essay prototype)

We're spelled out the issues at play but, in my usual style, took forever. Having the cauldron, let's boil it down to something more accessible (the prototype)!

Gothic Intersectionality (the potion): What's It For, Again?

Gothic Communism is a holistic practice, one whose poetic refrain (and chaotic, dualistic qualities therein) repeatedly stress Gothic intersectionality. If ludo-Gothic BDSM is the spirit of play being uses, then Gothic intersectionality is the playground and playmates, but also potions (and seeds) being consumed. The state takes, giving us bottles filled with stolen blood (ours, the planet's); we turn the tables, watering the seeds of their destruction in a shared garden (or pool, as we'll get to). Data is data (and less discretely mechanical/organic and more cybernetic). Our aim, tactical unity (teamwork despite difference), exposes state vampirism continuously gestating and reviving inside itself (a biomechanical structure of invasion, vis-à-vis Wolfe and Foucault). Such mise-en-abyme, or concentric belly of the beast, invokes "alien" as highly ambiguous, politically-charged proposition therein; re: a potion to drink, a seed to plant mid-harvest and mid-cannibalism. Fascism is alien as such, but so is Communism: a premonition (thus threat), for those under Capitalist Realism, of radical change to the point of death (of no return, Agamben's state of exception aka apocalypse): they've taken too much, death the expected result before empire dies and rises through fascist pallbearers (cannibals eating Socialism when the bourgeois core is momentarily open)! Time to level the playing field (death the Leveler of monarch and serf alike, in medieval thought)!

(source: "The 'Hidden Roots' of Neoliberal Fascism"; timestamp: 53:00)

For those developing Communism, "death" = radical change—namely transformation into something different, the alien home extending from itself the same "tools of the trade" that feed backwards (the potion or seed power from past theft, condensed into fuel for present struggle). The state sows seeds with stolen blood. Development away from that happens "in the garden," among the soil we cultivate with seeds that resist our "foreign spores"; i.e., liberal strains in a neoliberal field that, given the choice, more readily accept fascist infiltration—to germinate in defense of the state through seemingly "viral" outliers (they are, in fact, state antibodies concealing Soylent Green: a potion that, drunk, drives workers towards madness). Something is—like always, like a magic potion—desperately being consumed by workers; i.e., a transformation, "from within," of oneself: while seed-like inside our bodies, the latter trapped by organs of state power! States kettle you/wring you out, then offer the "cure" to a hidden bloodletting (a poison in disguise, whose elixir feeds the apothecary through the drinker); they monopolize terror (the kissing cousin of force) to rape workers before, during and after violence: a threat to possess, harvest and devour their prey as grotesquely buried, then eaten, alive (a sarcophagus)! It's uncanny to be sure, but not entirely out-of-reach (for the more Faustian among us, below): something to ingest, mid-intersection, and all while throwing caution to the wind. Bottoms up!

Desperate times call for desperate measures (transformative classically an anti-predation device, including the Gorgon; re: Athena's Aegis). Workers must fight fire with fire to survive state vampirism, becoming vampires (the potion akin to drinking undead blood, in that respect); i.e., the state as made of us when eating different seeds or potions (and dualistically at that—the birth is often seen as violent, bursting from within to eat the parent body alive). Not all mad science is bad, then, but they generally resemble home (and symbols of home; e.g., women, above) as copied, a simulacrum.

Fret not. Whereas Victor Frankenstein made his golem to aggrandize himself and Enlightenment thought (re: "Making Demons")—and the Philosopher's Stone uses similar ideas of dark magic to demonize activism for "playing God," centuries later (read: blood libel, sodomy and witchcraft accusations framing science as deeply mistrustful, also above)—Jekyll was a solidarity madman (and queer metaphor predating James Whale's gayer Promethean Quest) tasting it, the plasma/fire of the gods, directly. Gothic Communism (and those who call it something else) reverse abjection "on the Aegis," finding creative ways to transform the seeds or otherwise plant the soil—to fertilize the ground, but also grapple with rival gardeners across different registers and rungs of power (the ruling class and their servants doubling us). State predation and worker liberation employ the same language, whose arbitrary metaphors mix to include a potion-like parasitoidism of different kinds; i.e., a grander life cycle for which death (and radical change) merely belong: to the rise and fall of empire, generally through metaphors haunted by spectres of change—embryos, if you will (which seeds basically are, growing in "wombs" of dirt). So often, they're imbibed and explode from the host, yielding endless chaotic proliferation (the xenomorph emblematic of disorder/nature unchained and set free to seek revenge).

Fascism is cannibalistic, stillborn—a death fetus that incubates hideously inside Western Liberalism, but also its current neoliberal arrangement opening up more and more frontiers to vampirically drain the land (the fruits of dead labor draining living labor as holocaust-in-a-bottle, above); i.e., economics, or what Thatcher calls "the method" (1981)—one tying umbilically to assorted ideological values and contradictions ("the soul"; ibid.). Capital survives through fascism cannibalizing itself and workers. It does so from cycle to cycle, and through a deceptively wasp-like approach (so to speak)—one that injects, into workers, the dreaded egg of fascism (a seed inside a host). An egg lives after death, carrying echoes of something forwards (re: data). Fascism defends capital-in-decay (from Communism and its eggs, below); Communism survives under fascism by using the same procedure: drinking the same basic potion (or eating the same seed, etc) to transform workers (the container), cryptonymy-and-abjection.

Fascist, liberal, Socialist—they share the same garden under crisis, the same host organisms therein, the same wasp/caterpillar feeding principles (and disguises, below); i.e., for cannibalistic consumption and reproduction as notably two-way (whose state benefactors [of the liberal sort] frame us as alien-fetish—a cosmic rapist compared phenotypically to fascist "outsiders," below). Pods, prey and seeds concern a transfer of power flowing up or down; the flow of power changes per cycle (or threatens to). In turn, "Socialism or barbarism?" crosses different strains that visually elide, mid-struggle: the harvest is here, a time of monsters fascist and Communist sharing space, abused by state powers to resurrect (with some luck) as liberal. Or not, if we're the wasp—eating their babies in a deeply cuckoo fashion, one that turns the tables onto the rapist: "I admire its purity" (and killer dress sense, below).

(source: "Leaving the Closet," 2024)

When the state drinks too much (which it always does), the soil sours and nothing grows; entropy climbs, the ecology of the planet entering crisis while capital begins to die. It's grip weakens. So revenge = space to reverse roles, "consumption" our running theme (and payback's a bitch, above); i.e., regarding dark desires: a plasma pool composed of many potions, seeds and alchemists, et al. We got the booze (our liquid courage); let's dive in and mingle!

Into the Plasma Pool (drinking the potion together)

Gothic Communism—a more ready separation from fascism, capital and the state, but also Western Marxist and Marxist-Lenin's bigoted elements—doesn't happen overnight, but inside a constant interregnum/state of change (that drinking the potion vampirically symbolizes). To understand it requires multiple specimens over time, each as unique to each other as to fascism and its own strains developing under different socio-material conditions (e.g., middle-class women in Nazi Germany vs TERFs in 21st-century Britain). To dive "into the plasma pool" while furthering the Promethean Quest, I reify it as seeds to "plant" inside yourselves, vampire-style (a fluid to drink: plasma carried in the blood and transporting a variety of things, including trauma): "I have begun to plant thee, and will labor / To make thee full of growing" (source: Macbeth, c. 1606). Duncan said that, only for Macbeth gut him like a fish; I'm less about that, staying holistic by offering you samples in academia and out; re: intersectionality and roots from John and Jessie, synopsized.

To it, and before we go, here are several "seeds" (or potions) I've relaid in video/symposium-style form; i.e., while reading "Heroines and Villains" and keeping its ideas in mind (from my larger book series; re: state vampirism). One took root,

For a video that combines my ideas on Gothic intersectionality with someone else's, see: "Jessie Pops Off: Combating Rape Culture and Genocide Through Intersectionality" (thumbnail, above). It comments on, and explores, Jessie Gender's excoriation of rape apologia after the Platner scandal, but especially white straight guys on the Left. She calls them "stress points"; I identify them (now) as intersections—to merge and synthesize good praxis, thus become "Brundlefly" on the Promethean Quest for radical change (not something the video discusses, but certainly one my books do). The more people radicalize—an act commonly associated with transubstantiation, or the drinking Christ's blood (often Kool-Aid or wine)—the more the state damns them. But damned if you do, damned if you don't (fascists "rabid dogs" to euthanize, and Socialists space aliens to nuke from orbit); better to rule in Hell than serve in Heaven (which eats everyone, eventually)!

and one seemingly didn't; i.e., beyond what you've already read (and whose synopsis remains, below):

For a video that responds to Duncan and Aspinall's roots, watch "An Alien, Dualistic Parasitoid; or, Change from Within: Fascism or Communism" (thumbnail, above). As I summarize here, it applies "Heroines and Villains" to them, raising others concepts I touch upon as well; re: our caterpillar/wasp refrain, whose "xenomorph" metaphor during Gothic Communism I have already described above (and which said video contains); i.e., in duality mid-dialectic (of the alien) to liberate nature-as-alien while inside capital, you-are-what-you-eat: a boring out of the original organ to replace it with something beyond fascism or Liberalism, the genesis of Communism (and survival of its seeds) requiring generations of toil. Potions are brewed from blood, sweat and tears, after all—of different taboo things tied to bodily functions and nature, but also state crimes: a testimony of older victims (usually drunk as "essence")!

But these and others have tangled together in root-like ways, our roots vs state roots competing for soil and seed, alike. Drink whatever potions to do the trick and seize the day. Such is Gothic, its intersectionality most pronounced (and productive) when consuming dark things that develop Communism and free nature as wasp-like: hitting capital where it hurts (the family jewels). Everything above is "but taste," so go to my book series if you want more; e.g., "On Holistic Struggle: Healing the World from Different Positions within It" from "Interview with the Vampire."

Whatever the potion being drunk (or seeds planted and watered with blood in potion-like ways), there must be struggle; i.e., something to hug and bond with, per case, and generally through massive warning signs: as food reifying cultural concerns risen to the surface; e.g., castles as spaces of fear tied to an approaching harvest, mise-en-abyme (what I call the liminal hauntology of war): "When such a castle appears, it is time to be afraid; the colonial harvest is at hand. Yet, precisely because the state does not hold a monopoly over violence, terror and morphological expression, a demon [and/or] castle needn't spell our end; it can represent our sole means of attack, reclaiming said poetics' endless inventiveness to turn colonizer fears back into their hopelessly scared brains" (source: "Prey as Liberators," 2024). Survival seems unlikely ("the exception," Sagan puts it). The clues lie within nature as alien; i.e., as Gothic, as bottled or egg-like monstrous-feminine: a subversive and deathly means of trade—one smuggling infernal back and forth, swapping state varieties out for ours to alter the flow and tip the scales.

(artist: Persephone van der Waard; source: "Away with the Faeries; or, Double Trouble in Axiom Verge," 2024; cited: "Gothic Ludology," 2026)

To conclude, our species survives through dialectical-material engagement as Gothically intersectional; i.e., drinking potions good for us (as stewards of nature) and avoiding ones bad for us (that serve the state, destroyers of nature): the point of intersection is where the choice is made, Gothic function a matter of intersectionality to reverse abjection by staying thirsty for radical forms of data. It applies to fantastical stories haunted by genocide (above) and local areas of physical land (e.g., Kentucky Cryptid, below) and what Duncan and Aspinall call Historical Blocs:

we understand neoliberalism and neoliberal fascism as forms of hegemony which operate amongst a "shifting constellations of long-term societal alliances" (Skyrman et al. 2023) called Historical Blocs. Historical Blocs may hold differing (or even, to an extent, contradictory) interests; however, they are unified by a commitment to maintaining the conditions for the group's continued reproduction (source: "Hidden Roots").

(artist: Kentucky Cryptid, who I interview for "Hailing Hellions")

The same idea applies to Communism and its competing pieces, the roots thereof seeking holistic intersectionality through Gothic, sex work, academia, and YouTube (etc) "on the Aegis." Whatever the register (sexuality and public nudism), metaphor being used (seeds/fields, potions/pools, Amazons/Gorgons), or medium and work—which play is, during ludo-Gothic BDSM; i.e., on different frontiers to empathize using the language thereof; re: "Gothic Ludology")—we have to learn to grow together and reclaim our labor and the land, side-by-side/class-war-is-ass-war. Lack back = labor back, sex back, monsters back (seeds) to grow a better world in place of the old while using the same language, the same tactics, the same costumes and kayfabe in praxial opposition: something to synthesize, by cultivating through better daily habits, the means of doing so from moment-to-moment and place-to-place, camping them onstage and off while dealing with bad actors feeding for the state[1].

No salt needed! Just the power of those who came before, giving the living strength while they stand shoulder to shoulder!

Footnotes

[1] This includes Marxist-Leninism, which "State Vampirism" explores, but also parallel works of mine; re ("Yesterday's Leftover Rice," 2026):

Marxist-Leninism is conservative thinking splashed in red paint to further state vampirism (ibid.). They're philistines, incels and falsely pious/fake friends—the butt pirates they accuse us of, monopolizing sex through DARVO and obscurantism (of lies and force) for the state. They don't just lie; they love-bomb and gaslight, unable to fess up to prior state abuse, let alone current bullshit. If they can't even do that, why should we trust them? As I write in "The Price of Rice" (2026):

The elite have many tools to divide-and-conquer with;

from Marx to me, capital alienates and sexualizes everything (1844 and 2023); it monopolizes violence, terror and morphological expression (monsters) through sex and force (re: Weber, Asprey and me; see: "The State: Its Key Tools" from "Paratextual Documents"); and its qualities through the state are settler-colonial, heteronormative and Cartesian (ibid.) [... and through different imbrications of modular persecution language ...; e.g.,] blood libel, witchcraft and sodomy through whores policing whores; i.e., for the pimp and their revenge, stealing power from the past (the Promethean Quest), divide-and-conquer (re: "Idle Hands," "Policing the Whore," and "Rape Reprise," 2024). Again, skull = theft and flow of power determines function, for workers or the state. Workers can further/enforce abjection to flow power up, mid-predation, or they can play with "rape" (and its symbols) to change polarity during ludo-Gothic BDSM (source: "Dead on Arrival").

under state vampirism, they do so across generations and geopolitics under Capitalist (and Socialist) Realism. In turn, problems of race overlap with culture (sex/gender) and class, intersectional problem.

To it, raise a flag and see who salutes/who turns their back; i.e., MLs love to discredit or neglect whores, GNC folk and BIPOC while saying "we love LGBTQ+ people." Burst their bubbles, with butts or otherwise; let Medusa out to reverse abjection by expose the state's bad actors (the "scratching method"; re: "Raising Awareness"). Again, Gothic is dualistic; we share the same stages, bodies and costumes, abjection merely the flow (thus function) of power anisotropically and apotropaically up or down. When the Man comes around (or someone acting like a man for the state), show him your Aegis! No Omelas whores; incubate (and lay) better eggs!

(artist: Lilith Mae and Soleil Succubus)

Public nudism is an excellent tool of stating our case, scratching bad actors into outing themselves while refusing to segregate, ourselves (the Aegis)!