#StateVampirism
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vanderwaardart.bsky.social
Tim Walz, being a governor (therefore cop), tells ICE how to prey on workers—to "feed at night," essentially. I respond, discussing how we must #abolishICE, but also #capital and #statevampirism everywhere (including #Marxist-Leninism): www.youtube.com/watch?v=2RIV... 1/4
Walz, a pro bloodsucker for the state, cloaking state vampirism behind an electoral Democratic façade: "Feed at night, while they're helpless/don't suspect it!"
January 28, 2026 at 2:19 PM
vanderwaardart.bsky.social
The latest essay of mine on #statevampirism, this one offers an antidote— #TacticalFrivolity (namely #frogs and sex workers combating #racism, #fatphobia, and other bigotries!

nicksmovieinsights.com/2026/02/they... 1/2

#SexWorkIsWork #fascism
"They're Making the Frogs Gay!"; or, a Sex Worker's Musings on Tactical Frivolity to Combat Racism (and Other Bigotries) February 15th, 2026 This essay tackles tactical frivolity through costumed performance: frogs and similar clowns' role, fighting state abuse; e.g., fatphobia, racism, animal cruelty, whorephobia and police brutality (my emphasis being sex work/unpaid labor—achieving intersectional consciousness and solidarity [awareness and teamwork] during ludo-Gothic BDSM, Gothic maturity and ass war all having the whore's revenge[1]). "Like acid and oil on a madman's face, His reason tends to fly away" (Blue Öyster Cult's "Astronomy," 1974), leaving onlookers not in the know a bit perplexed. Wherefore art thou, frog? And what is tactical frivolity whenever one "feels froggy"? source: https://nicksmovieinsights.com/2026/02/theyre-making-the-frogs-gay-or-a-sex-workers-musings-on-tactical-frivolity-to-combat-racism-and-other-bigotries.html "Oh? You're approaching me?" A frog chad vs the virgin Nazis. source, Christie Thompson's "The ICE Protest Frogs Have a Long History of 'Tactical Frivolity' Behind Them" (2025): https://www.themarshallproject.org/2025/10/22/trump-ice-portland-no-kings-protest The frog suit from SMB3 (1990): perched on a platform, ready to pounce into a gentle blue sky filled with coins. Me holding a bullfrog while living in Florida, in 2020. I called him Chuck.
February 15, 2026 at 8:37 PM
vanderwaardart.bsky.social
My latest essay in my #StateVampirism series: exploring the life and death of #FredrickBrennan through a dialog of empathy and redemption: a desire to change from #fascist positions that heal chaotically towards less-hateful directions.

nicksmovieinsights.com/2026/03/whos...

#Gothic #Communism
My husband loves to "nerd snipe" me. This particular time he told me about Fredrick Brennan, the founder of 8chan (2013) with brittle bone syndrome who died yesterday. This blogpost—the first in a good long while (on a blog mostly full of extended essays and book chapters)—discusses the desire to change from nadir-level positions; i.e., while seeking empathy mid-redemption, and while recognizing how I had basically no idea what 8chan even was despite my research on fascism (e.g., TERFs); re: Brennan, who Bay described for me as I brushed my teeth, on call [...] I digress; our focus, here, is empathy and redemption through unlikely heroes, namely Brennan (and similar half-real characters we'll unpack, deeper in; e.g., Chelsea Manning and R. Derek Black, from real life, and fictional "Gothic" examples like Vader from Star Wars, Neo from The Matrix and Norman Nordstrom from Don't Breathe 2—1977 1999 and 2021). In turn (and to supply a small thesis argument), the state kills empathy to preserve itself; i.e., to prevent change by keeping power vampirically "top-down," fascism defending capital by denying redemption while raping worker minds, cryptonymy-and-abjection (our focus being on Plato's Allegory of the Cave [c. 380 BC]—with The Matrix and similar simulacra [meaning "shadow" or "likeness"] informed by Plato's famous thought experiment: casting shadows on cave walls to fool ignorant onlookers in ways games let workers interrogate; re: me, vis-à-vis Gloggins; e.g., "The World Is a Vampire," 2024). Empathy—as something to encourage, under capital as inherently divisive (Cartesian or otherwise)—demands work to "unfuck" ourselves, mid-abjection (facing shadows); without work (which play and poetry are, "Gothic" or otherwise), people can't redeem thus change themselves/society as having shaped so many peoples' way of seeing the world, before, during and after one's "hour upon the stage." Gothic Communism is a holistic discipline, so once more unto the breach! Plenty of people say they'll change and never really do, their insincerity preventing empathy ipso facto by doubling down on broken systems while alive (and haunting them after death); i.e., labor and legacy walk arm-in-arm, as far as rebellion goes (true or false). Think the plot to Mary Shelley's Frankenstein (1818) and you've got the right idea [...] Yet Brennan seems to have actually put in the work before death, striving to right past wrongs he put into motion—so much so, in fact, that trans rights activist and cartoonist Sophie Labelle [above] wrote his eulogy yesterday after his passing (on March 8th, 2026): I was saddened to learn about the recent passing at 31 of Fredrick Brennan. He was born with brittle bone syndrome, an inherited genetic condition, and early in his life developed the belief that people like him should be forcibly sterilized. At 12, he joined 4chan, which further radicalized him into incel culture and white supremacy. / When 4chan banned discussions about Gamergate, he decided to create the unmoderated 8chan. But after a few years, he realized that his creation brought out the worst in people. He gave the website to his associate, and went on to spend the rest of his life backtracking on his previous politics trying to get the website shut down and making amends. I wouldn't say that we were friends, but we did talk several times. He first reached out to me in 2018 to offer a formal apology for the harassment and doxxing I suffered from 8chan. After that, he kept monitoring the forums, and would let me know whenever people were planning to cause trouble at my public talks and things like that. / When I think about Brennan's complicated story and legacy, I'm reminded how people can change. His change of heart inspired me to keep creating through hardships. I hope you rest in peace, Fredrick. Apologies accepted (source, Facebook post, Assigned Male Comics: March 8th, 2026). Back to Brennan, our resident "Vader" forgiven by "the princess" for his actions; i.e., as formerly abhorrent, going on to demonstrably renounce and deconstruct his own hateful creation, time and time again. If this isn't redeeming then I don't know what is, but redemption applies on a case-by-case basis (with Vader reclaiming his lost humanity without apologizing for empire). The moral isn't easy forgiveness, then; it's redemption, which again takes work by the person seeking penance from those they actively harmed—not an simple pardon, at all, but death of the old self someone turned into and currently rejects: by recognizing one's choices through hindsight/upon reflection (mid-abjection) before voluntarily chasing new metamorphosis. Like resetting a broken bone that healed wrong, doing so hurts; it levels the proud, requiring genuine humility over a long period, enacted in good faith—i.e., not when the patient is young and dumb, but "sad and wiser" through age trying to unlearn past mistakes and faulty knowledge. [...] Such delusions beget from capital, which workers break only by blaming themselves and their actions for capital's continued existence. So it bears repeating how Brennan consciously left 8chan in 2018, his place filled by Jim Watkins, who—it also bears repeating—is either Q (of Qanon) or someone who knows him: "I definitely, definitely, 100 percent believe that Q either knows Jim or Ron Watkins, or was hired by [them]" (source: Adrienne LaFrance's "The Prophecies of Q," 2020). Fascism relies on scapegoats, apathy and conspiracies to work. In turn, conspiracies—while built on kernels of truth—make up realities that become alternative; i.e., to the one we live in while alive (with Qanon touching on state predation [re: Epstein] while blaming it on Jewish people): spaces of escape, of violence that expands when trying to "break the spell" of state lobotomization (zombifying workers; re: Principal Skinner, above). Furthermore, some people—when faced with the illusion of reality as not only false, but a perfidious, invisible factory-prison the inmates unknowingly call home—promptly go mad, killing empathy to preserve state hegemony (re: Vader tormenting his son, Luke, to either recruit or kill him; see, also: The Matrix, Andor and Severance, footnotes); others, embrace it, changing through work to empathize with others versus the state (and its illusions; re: The Matrix, below): exposing "home" as fake, hostile, and ultimately vampiric under capital; i.e., as something workers change from inside, and practicing through replicas that capture the feeling of the lie "at play" (a given "matrix" as maze-like, a labyrinthine "playground" housing monsters [which heroes are] who give and receive, under these arrangements, state force: as something to uphold, yes, but also subvert—bending reality to our will/serving actual rebellion inside cartoon façades haunted by fascism's false double, below). This isn't new. The most famous example, at least in the West, is probably Plato's allegory of the cave—a text endlessly cited and revived, from the tragically imperfect heroes of Greek plays into future simulacra from an expanding state, mid-abjection; e.g., Cervantes' Don Quixote (1605), Shakespeare's Macbeth (1623), every Neo-Gothic villain ever (1764, onwards), Austen's Northanger Abbey (1803), Carroll's Alice in Wonderland (1865), Baum's Wizard of Oz (1900), Foucault's Discipline and Punish (1975), Scott's Alien (1979), the cyberpunks of the 1980s (e.g., Brazil, 1985), Shirow's Ghost in the Shell (1995), the Wachowski' sisters Matrix franchise (1999-2021), etc—all the way to Gamergate, Qanon, and similar stories being suitably half-real, in the 2010s onwards: the aforementioned "dupes" of Capitalist Realism tilting at windmills (or shadows), but also heroic explorers in various liminal spaces seeking human connection (which empathy is); i.e., out in deserts* thereof [...]
March 10, 2026 at 3:55 AM
vanderwaardart.bsky.social
A #StateVampirism / #Metroidvania crossover that responds to S. R. Holiwell's "A Maze of Murderscapes: #Metroid II" (2015/1991): exploring homelessness, genocide and #Gothic themes/poetics. 1/3

nicksmovieinsights.com/2026/03/read...

www.gamedeveloper.com/audio/a-maze...

#Communism #transrights
"Once More unto the Breach"; or, Reading and Responding to S. R. Holiwell's "A Maze of Murderscapes: Metroid II" This write-up summarizes and responds to S. R. Holiwell's "A Maze of Murderscapes: Metroid II" (2015/1991), exploring homelessness, genocide and other Gothic themes and poetics (the home as alien, battlefield, fake, etc). It joins my research on Metroidvania, Amazons and ludo-Gothic BDSM (thus appears in v2.25 of my Metroidvania Corpus), but applies just as well to my series on state vampirism, anti-fascism and anti-racism (some of these research bodies have a SFW version on this blog and some don't). The featured image of "Unto the Breach": featuring Holiwell (top-left) and me next to NEStroid Samus and a Chozo statue (bottom-left) next to a screencap of Holiwell's article (right): A Maze of Murderscapes: Metroid II (Or: Metroid II: Return of Homelessness) I first played Metroid II: Return of Samus in the women’s wing of a homeless shelter in Providence, Rhode Island. There I endured five months of homelessness; the rest of the time was spent on streets or in psychiatric wards. I screamed a lot and frequently lost my mind. It wasn’t the first time I’d been homeless or nearly died, and it won’t be the last. Nestled in my palms like a religious text is the videogame machine. If it were a console and not a handheld, it would be the idol of the shrine that is an entertainment center. Should someone blaspheme my idol or denomination of favorite games, I am conditioned to swell with indignation. But nevertheless I play and play. I insert the monolithic gray cart into the slot. I slide the switch up on the side of the handheld device. A veneer of light and sound materializes before me, like the face of god in a machine. Table of Contents Note: I've expanded "Unto the Breach" greatly since first publishing, table of contents included; and while I've made numerous changes throughout, the clear-and-obvious addendums are in bold and color-coded. —Perse, 3/18/2026 -Concerning State Vampirism -Disclaimers -Changelog -Foreword: An Axe for the Frozen Sea within Us -Preface: Some Context before We Start --Metroidvania Guru (and Metroidvania definitions) --Chozologist, Their Video, and Discovering Holiwell's "Murderscapes" -Summary and Theory (re: Gorgons and Amazons) --Summary (of "Murderscapes") --Theory ---Canonical Metroidvania; or, Geopolitics, Cartesian Dualism and Token Amazonomachia Enacting State Predation, under Capitalist Realism ---White Indian, Black Planets; or, Navigating Amazon Confusion in the Shadow of Pygmalion (alongside the General Duality of Gothic Poetics) ----White Indian, Black Planets ----The General Duality of Gothic Poetics -Full Commentary on "Murderscapes" I wrote this document on Metroid II for my 2025 Metroidvania Corpus (which, again, I'll update when I finalize "Unto the Breach," for the 2026 edition). Most of the keywords already appear there, hence why I don't go out of my way to redefine them (except for Metroidvania). I do rehash some talking points, here, but only to revisit and build further on them using terms that didn't exist before (e.g., Amazon confusion). Per my usual "start backwards" approach, the Full Commentary portion is more conversational—written first and unpacked in the subsequent Theory subsection; i.e., added after "Summary" as the academic or "essay" half to my initial response to Holiwell (the preface is pure context, written before Holiwell and I even spoke). Basically "Summary and Theory" outlines my overall approach, one whose underlying thought process fits my conversational elements into a larger preexisting body of work: what I had in mind when pulling these paragraphs "out of my hat." Furthermore, the document was originally called "Reading and Responding to S. R. Holiwell"; I tacked on "Once More unto the Breach" after writing what I feel to be its thesis argument: "As my corpus determines (re: "Regarding My Amazon Research"), Metroidvania have a canonical role: upholding Capitalist Realism to hide state predation—generally through Cartesian dualism and token Amazonomachia, mid-abjection, in heroically monomyth language: "metroid" = alien, and alien = bare life/the unhoused as something to canonically feed on; i.e., while fearing it, and which—like Frankenstein's Monster/Creed's monstrous-feminine (the Promethean Quest)—reliably return to seek revenge, doing so "from inside the house." Moreover, the language shares "in duality" between workers and the state; i.e., fighting over power in rarefied forms, change a painful thing for both: as being "trapped under ice" and, at the same time, having what Kafka calls "an axe for the frozen sea within us" ([...] epigram, above).
March 22, 2026 at 10:14 PM