This essay takes Rob Ager to task, his review of Alien: Earth (2025) being bad enough merit special mention. I love the show and he doesn't, but the way he doesn't is especially baffling and indicates Ager's drunk the dog water mixed with Kool-Aid (or Freud's jizz). He's a snob, and a lazy one at that. Let's give him what for!

Note: "Straight Dog Water" 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; i.e., I've worked with muses and models beyond those on my Acknowledgments page, whose featured models worked with me while I produced Sex Positivity. To see everyone I've drawn before, during and after said series, refer to my Sex Work page. 

Also, this is the SFW version of this essay, which features censored nudity. The NSFW version can be found on my website (which features uncensored nudity). —Perse

P.S., My live reading of this work-in-progress—which will contain a final review for Alien: Earth when the show concludes—is being released near August 30th, Mary Shelley's birthday!

For the Visually Impaired: I read the SFW version of this essay 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 education, satire, transformation and critique, hence falls under Fair Use regarding copyright and free speech regarding defamation. 

CW: sexism, racism, rape, BDSM, all-around Gothic stuff (trauma, violence, exploitation) and spoilers!

Straight Dog Water; or Saving Alien: Earth (2025) from a Freudian Snob: Rob Ager Shows Full Ass, Reviewing Show He Hasn't Fully Watched

"I've known sheep that could outwit you, I've worn dresses with higher IQs, but you, you think you're an intellectual, don't you, ape!"

"Apes don't read philosophy!"

"Yes they do, Otto; they just don't understand it!"

—Wanda and Otto, A Fish Called Wanda (1988)

British white moderates aren't above the grift, it seems; in his latest "no shill, honest review," and despite having only seen part of the show, Ager calls Noah Hawley's Earth "another suspisciously [sic] overrated franchise installment" (adding "Disney," at the end of the title to really add to the clickbait). This is, as the kids say, "straight dog water." As a trans academic who also has her own website and also does all her own work independently (meaning without state pay)—and one who views pure psychoanalysis as anti-Marxist garbage—allow me to weigh in (said the Millennial goth nerd to the Gen-X fossil, the former scolding the latter for worshipping Kubrick, Freud, and Cameron, etc): Alien: Earth rules (so far), and you're dead wrong, Rob.

Table of Contents

• "A Quick Preface: Is Ager a Nazi?": I go into my reasons for writing this essay, including spotting and puzzling over Ager's anti-DEI dogwhistle (timestamp: 25:37).
• "Setting the Stage: Nerd versus Nerd, the Poet and the Prude": Introduces Ager and I, outlining how we're both nerds but of two differing types.
• "Lazy Nerd Is Lazy": Discusses Ager's laziness, mainly his having only seen three episodes for Alien: Earth before rendering a verdict.
• "Playing with Power (re: Metroidvania, Amazons, and ludo-Gothic BDSM)": Discusses playing with power as I've explored it, before; i.e., as something to defend Alien: Earth with from Ager's terminal prudishness.
• "The Fate of the Gorgon; or, Medusa Lives!": Quickly outlines how workers can revive Medusa for dialectical-material purposes; i.e., that serve workers, mid-duality.
• "Down to Earth (and Brass Tacks)": Applies my past work, outlined above, to Ager and Alien: Earth (which, again, I rescue from Ager's snobbishness).
• "Some Praxial Takeaways": Considers how we can take the previous ideas and apply them to real life, ergo rebellion.
• "In Conclusion"; re: Ager's work is dog water (a reprise).

Note: There isn't a section dedicated to Mary Shelley's Frankenstein (1818), which we'll discuss throughout vis-à-vis the Alien franchise. Also, while we discuss Ager a fair bit, we do so among other topics, too; i.e., I'm also a sex educator who teaches ways to cultivate the habits needed for good praxis: synthesizing different lessons useful to universal liberation; e.g., pornography as activism and art conducive thereof. In other words, to understand my arguments about Ager and how I critique him, you'll have to know where I'm coming from. Fret not! I've signposted everything here and link to plenty of additional material, in case my examples feel inadequate. —Perse

P.S., Unlike Ager, I won't review Alien: Earth until I've seen all of it. For now, know how it compares to Frankenstein. For example, Shelley frames her story between multiple concentric points of view. Earth emulates this through its expert use of crosscutting and crossfading—in present scenes, as well as flashbacks and flashforwards (some shots containing three scenes in one, framed around portraits onscreen, above). The full review will cover the script, cast, acting, effects, photography, ideas and sets.

P.P.S., That being said... the fifth episode is absolutely awesome (and don't just take my word for it)! A huge callback to Ridley Scott—and with Hawley directing this one—it's not perfect-perfect (e.g., watching the human captain outrun the monster for an extended period of time was a bridge too far), but it has a lot of fun with the material, anyways; i.e., in ways differently than Scott, Cameron, Fincher or Jeunet (though closer to Scott while mixing in bits of camp, below). I already thought Ager was way off when I saw episode four, but seeing episode five all but confirms it. Don't count your chickens before they hatch, my dudes!

A Quick Preface: Is Ager a Nazi?

Note: To speculate (written or spoken) if someone is a Nazi in America isn't defamation because doing so—specifically as a matter of opinion regarding non-criminalized activities; i.e., being a Nazi as a political position—is free speech protected by the First Amendment. Additional protections are given when opining on public figures like Ager (who has been interviewed publicly as a film critic, while also being an independent filmmaker and a YouTuber of substantial size). For more information on this concept, refer to "Explaining My Basic Approach" from my essay, "White Moderates Don’t Challenge Fascism" (2025). —Perse

"If you prick a centrist, a fascist bleeds." In turn, "centrist" is just another name for "white moderate," "liberal" and "neoliberal" (one pertaining to Western Liberalism, the other a freeing of the market tied to endless state and corporate growth). And while each label speaks to different things—and while I originally pegged Ager as some kind of goofy-ass libertarian from Old Blighty (and a Scotsman, not a scouser)—the fact remains, intent doesn't matter, outcome does; re: Ager complaining about DEI in Alien: Earth. This preface explores what I won't have time to stress, deeper in, but was the crux for me writing this essay at all: is Ager a Nazi?

Well, is he? I don't mean a flag-waving fash or even a cryptofascist, but anything comparable to, or in cahoots with, a climbing right wing in the UK (and elsewhere); i.e., for someone whose country of origin already has a bad history with fascism on home soil, Ager was saying some oddly hostile things towards a show with a strong neoliberal critique (the villain being a literal trillionaire, for example). Yet, he was also veiling things in his usual, "I'm a fancy-pants film critic and total rebel" veneer—one he's used for nearly two decades; i.e., despite his overreliance on Freud, Kubrick, Jung and other psychoanalysts or directors they glaze (mainly men), Ager's something of a steady knockoff copying decades-old academia. Moreover, he's a chip off the old block, longing for a particular 1970s and early '80s Gothic devaluing anything in my lifetime. His nostalgia invades his praxis, and his praxis is inert (see: "Overcoming Praxial Inertia" [2023] to understand what I mean by this).

Here, we find some clues speaking to Ager's "non-party" politics; e.g., John Carpenter's Escape from New York (1981)—with Ager writing on/speaking about "anti-capitalist themes in John Carpenter's classic sci-fi action movie" (source: video description, "The Dystopia Smokescreen*," 2025). The premise is fine, but one where I mistrust Ager for treating the director (and lead white cis male actor) as the center of attention (on and offstage); i.e., Ager unable to kill his darlings—less critiquing Carpenter and more worshipping the ground he walks on. I say this as a movie fan who loves Carpenter's early work, but can readily say that his ideology is far from perfect; e.g., Halloween (1978) looks and sounds fabulous, but remains incredibly conservative in its messaging and treatment of women. In times of crisis, we simply have to do better—something that will become readily apparent when we get to Ager's current work; i.e., Ager and I are both non-affiliated in our politics, but we're far from identical when applying them:

*Which seems to actually be a clip from an older review Ager did for the movie, years prior.

To that, I'm hardly a YouTuber by trade; my work applies to media and real life as readily overlapping whatever I choose to share on YouTube for historical reasons. Yes, I sometimes make react videos, but generally focus on/prefer essays centered around radical politics helping marginalized people, especially unpaid labor (which sex workers classically are; i.e., pimps take most of it). By comparison, Ager actually has two channels, both totaling over 350,000 subscribers. It's not crazy high, but also not anything to sneeze at. Furthermore, you'd be hard-pressed to see many videos from Ager that don't talk about film as stand-alone objects. I say this while noticing his channels being substantially bigger than mine, and in ways that feel more money-driven and status-quo. It's not that Ager refuses to get political, but generally feels removed from media as it ties to activism and current events. For him, the movies themselves take center stage (above), his politics (and audience) oddly veiled and obscure. It's borderline apolitical, which is never a good sign (read: MGTOW vibes).

Mopping the dregs up outside academia, Ager at least seems sincere in his practice of passing himself off as an authority on Freud and film. And if that were all he was up to, I wouldn't really care. But something about his recent Alien: Earth "review" bothered me; i.e., an anti-fascist trans woman whose alarm bells were suddenly ringing more than they should have. As someone specializing in a combination of Gothic theory, an-Com Marxism, ludology, BDSM and gender studies (re: the recipe for Gothic Communism as a holistic exercise), let's just say I have a nose for bullshit; Ager's "review" stank bad, and me—being a total cumslut who loves Mary Shelley and Frankenstein (re: "Making Demons," 2025), but also the Alien franchise that followed it—decided go in for a closer look...

We'll get to Ager's review deeper in. As for Ager himself, I couldn't put my finger on him and his motives; e.g., to a similar degree as me wondering if Tommy Wiseau was actually a secret evil genius or total hack (above). Sometimes, a cigar is just a cigar. Originally, that's what I thought with Ager. However, while watching his "review" for Alien: Earth and hearing Ager dogwhistle annoyingly about DEI, I lost my temper and said under my breath, "motherfucker's a goddamn Nazi!" 

Of course, the reality is slightly more complicated. I don't think Ager's a literal Nazi, I think he's a white moderate; i.e., many bigots are moderately bigoted—with men like Ager just as likely to enjoy the perks of state abuse until it jabs them in the ribs and asks them to prove their loyalty. Non-Compete, for example, sums up liberalism well:

It is an unfortunate fact that bourgeois liberals do not ultimately seek to build a world free of oppression, for all their pretty words. Rather, they cling to the capitalist political economy which is built upon class division that brutalizes and dominates the majority of humanity. Fascism and liberalism are distinct ideologies with distinct political programs and institutions. They are not one in the same. They emerge from different material conditions and they serve different factions of the ruling class who have conflicting views about how best to rule over the workers of the world. But in terms of function they are one in the same [emphasis, me]. Both exist to serve and defend capital (source: "Third-Wayism and the Liberal-Fascist Bargain," 2025).

And for all intents and purposes, whatever label we could pin on Ager, "white moderate" is what I ultimately went with, despite being triggered. I did so partly based on one, his love for Kubrick and Freud (and similar "Goldilocks" radicals venerated by Hollywood and mainstream academia, from the mid-20th-century onwards); and two, for the many times Ager's evoked an outmoded academic parlance—one passed off as "gnosis" to the uninitiated. In other words, Ager's something of a charlatan and fraud (which many academics are, to be fair), leading this nerd to go to war against him: as an expert of the same media he's lectured about for years, but also other forms he really hasn't. 

(Rob Ager's "The Brutal Psychology of Alien: Isolation," 2021)

For example, some of Ager's work on videogames—especially his videos on Alien: Isolation (above, 2014)—are quite solid, if only because his "Freudian" approach gels nicely with CA's revival of Scott's 1979 original. That being said, his focus isn't really on videogames; i.e., Ager tends to use "videogame" as an insult in his material, leading me to dislike him similar to many academics stuck in "movie mode" (e.g., Barbara Creed, at least as of 2022, still focusing on movies): movies good, videogames bad. Yeah, sure. And yet, despite my Gothic ludologist credentials, it's not something I'll bring up too often, here; i.e., because Alien: Earth isn't a videogame. Even so, I thought I'd at least mention it. From Radcliffe and Lewis onwards, bitches love playing with the Gothic aesthetic of power and death, too. It's how you play with it that matters (which, again, we'll get to; re: with ludo-Gothic BDSM). Ager's approach, while veiled, betrays him through a lack of anything substantial—meaning in dialectical-material terms; re: him showing his ass: that he mostly likes old movies, not videogames or miniseries (the latter his green eggs and ham). 

To conclude this preface, Ager's a bit stuffy and broken-clock, only lending credence to the white moderate label I eventually settled on. Actual, full-blooded Nazi? Eh, bit of a stretch! White moderate who downplays fascism? Abso-fucking-lutely! Borrowing from Malcolm X' 1963 "foxes and wolves" argument, I hate moderates as much as I do knives-out reactionaries; i.e., they go hand-in-hand when fucking over people like me (minorities). But also, Ager's just a bad academic, period, and I want to show that, too; re: in defense of Alien: Earth—a series that I completely adore—from one of the worst videos I've seen from Ager. In it, he says some incredibly stupid stuff, which also inspired me to work as hard as I did critiquing him. 

Let's get to it, shall we?

Note: I'm critiquing Ager as an academic would—passionately about the same material, but as someone I don't know or encourage violence against. Save it for the Nazis, yeah? —Perse

Setting the Stage: Nerd versus Nerd, the Poet and the Prude

To be honest, we're both nerds, here, but very different in our approaches. While Rob is something of a prude, I'm a poet and a slut who "works it" using everything I got:

Alas, academia classically discourages sexuality and poetry in its arguments, and restricts those arguments to the very narrow sphere that Ager embodies. It should be noted that, while Ager isn't from academia, he acts like he were; i.e., in how he styles himself "an intellectual," one who dubiously prays at the altar of Kubrick and Freud (and other equally sexist men), doing so through a narrow psychoanalytical approach borrowed from late-20th-century film criticism (re: of the 1970s, '80s and '90s). To that, Ager has his own website and YouTube channel (the latter since 2007), and was a filmmaker as of the early 2000s into 2012 (when Scott's Prometheus came out). His latest project in that department was indie—specifically a low-budget horror film called Turn in Your Grave (2012):

(exhibit 0: Talk about living in someone's shadow! The main difference between Ridley Scott and Rob Ager is, while both men are filmmakers, Scott worked professionally in commercials before switching to studio films; i.e., in the 1970s—first with 1977's The Duelist [the same year as Star Wars but with a historically down-to-earth approach], followed by Alien in 1979 [where his skill as a storyboard artist convinced the producers to double the film's budget, which they enthusiastically did after seeing Scott's initial six months of preproduction, aka Ridleygrams; source]. Ager, on the other hand, was born in Liverpool, 1973, and didn't step onto a film set until his 20s [source]. His interest in film is definitely more on the critical side; i.e., versus indie film direction with a bit more skill, energy and yes, luck; e.g., the Spear sisters [above—also out of Canada, where Ager currently lives]; re: my interview series with them, after they made "Alien: Ore" [2019]: "'Alien: Ore' (2019) Q & A Project: Interview Compendium!" Under capital, filmmaking is always a business, one hindered by manufactured scarcity and competition; the Spears—twins and Shakespeareans—made "Ore" on money awarded by FOX, having placed high that year in a competition for Alien's 40th anniversary.)

First and foremost, Ager's a Film Critic™ similar to Roger Ebert; i.e., "nerd" as a status to enjoy (and darling to kill; re: me vs Ebert, in "Whores and Faust," 2025)—one the likes of which inspired me, back in the early 2010s*, but who feels increasingly underwhelming after I came out of the closet and wrote my own book series. Like Ebert, Ager's a prude, precisely the kind that nerdy sluts like me openly despise, and one whose sorry aversion to poetry and fun (and strange lack of thesis arguments) I will counteract, here; i.e., with my own patchwork nerdiness offering the audience a poetic, pornographic and artistic flair I've married to my academic thesis work (despite Ager's statement about "plain language" curiously echoing Wordsworth**, poetry and academia are no more exclusive mutually than art and porn). It's conversational, therefore accessible, but has plenty of academic elements among the porn (Gothic is porn, half the time; e.g., Giger and Alien).

*E.g., my 2014 Frankenstein essay, "Born to Fall? Birth Trauma, the Soul, and Der Maschinenmensch," inspired by Ager's old "Chest Burster Scene Analysis" video.

**His Preface to Lyrical Ballads (1800): "and endeavoured to bring my language near to the real language of men" (source).

Lazy Nerd Is Lazy

A huge problem, with Ager, is he's lazy—coasting by on his perceived "success" and status; i.e., so confident in himself and his position that he'll review Alien: Earth after barely watching half its episodes; e.g., for a failed filmmaker sitting in Scott's shadow (exhibit 0, above), Ager sure talks a lot of shit about the production values in Earth. Except, those aren't the focus of my critique, which targets his thematic analysis; e.g., Amazons, the Promethean Quest, and power fantasies; i.e., which Ager's "review" gets completely wrong by wanting Earth to be Aliens (1986—which we'll get to when we examine my past work on Frankenstein, onwards). Furthermore, far be it from me to accuse anyone of unapologetic schlubbiness, but Ager's own doesn't earn him carte blanche, either! White straight guys hide behind their ordinary appearance (and elevated place within society's patriarchal, ethnocentric hierarchy of values), Ager having flown under my radar for years:

(source: The New York Film Academy's "How to Become a Film Critic," 2014)

How quaint. The problem is, you still can't review something if you haven't seen it (and his review has nothing intellectual to offer). Ager's issue is, first and foremost, that he reviews Alien: Earth after having seen only three episodes (the fourth of which proves many of his arguments wrong; e.g., that the show treats its children as consciousness transferred, versus copies of the original [simulacra] that simulate a now-dead entity). Ager's premature dismissal is profoundly dumb, only having seen Hawley's maid-and-butler dialog en medias res ("settling the table," as it were). I don't care how nerdy you posture as, then, that's sophistry on Ager's part. In doing so, however, he likewise affirms an exceptional confirmation bias: arguing that he's right because other YouTube comments "agree" with him; i.e., he's right a priori (through parasocial* engagement), and falls on the side of state's rights versus worker rights, too (we'll get to that). It's Alien minus the irony!

(artist: Hannah Hussein)

*Versus my trans friends and I liking the show, outside of YouTube; i.e., as a part of the extensive research I do on Amazons (while working with dozens upon dozens of models; e.g., Hannah Hussein, above) and Barbara Creed's monstrous-feminine (therefore the Alien universe), their tastes aligning with mine through actual social-sexual interaction (which YouTube comments certainly are not).

This is cultish behavior on its own, and one that cloaks suspiciously Tory vibes within a "no party politics" (above) and faux-rebel façade. Ager never defines his terms, calling Earth "bad" and "stupid" without citation. Instead, "good" and "intelligent" equal anything that upholds the status quo (versus raising class, culture and race consciousness, as I argue); e.g., he thinks DEI "is a problem" (a dogwhistle to his conservative audience while complaining about racial inclusion), and that Wendy is, in his words, "a power fantasy that infantilizes the audience." 

Um, fuck you, but also, come again? How dumb do you think we are, and furthermore, did someone pay you to write that?

This is pure DARVO on Ager's part—with him pining for the Cartesian "peace through strength," "might makes right" (fascist) approach that Cameron enjoyed: strength is good, and anything childlike is weak. It's a very schoolmaster approach, one conveying a nostalgic, Heinleinian obsession with nuke-the-Reds order from Ager that employs different double standards/strawman arguments. These aren't hard to discredit. For one, the show is the opposite of a power fantasy because it follows the same Promethean Quest that Alien did, and by extension, Shelley's novel* (which Ager never mentions): undermining the monomyth, ergo its heroic violence and Cartesian binaries (thinking vs extended beings).

*Frankenstein being the original sci-fi story in the modern sense; i.e., The Modern Prometheus born from Gothic yarns and written from a woman's perspective (and a teenage woman at that): versus state power through fixation on creation, said technology warped by parental hubris leading to offspring revenge: "Doesn't everyone want their parents dead?"

For example, Wendy beheads the Gorgon to bring it, the fire of the gods, back and speak in its voice*; i.e., the curse of the creature/nature pimped by the state invades Troy, Trojan-Horse-style, through Weyland-Yutani arguably outmaneuvering Boy Cavalier's Frankensteinian hubris: Faust aching to interview the Devil, Nietzsche's Thus Spoke Zarathustra (and the will to power, 1883), or Hippolyta interrogating Medusa versus shooting first, asking questions never (the settler-colonial MO, under Pax Americana). Wendy speaks the language of the native population, effectively doing what Ash suggested in the original Alien script: talk to the creature, virgin/whore (the opposite to what Victor largely does).  Instead of automatic violence, there's a diplomatic element—sympathy for the Devil (whose petrifying qualities, per the Gorgon myth, yield anti-predation results; e.g., acid for blood being an anti-rape tool versus tokenized predators, above): "Cthulhu fhtagn" (the clicking insect sounds heard in Earth indictive of various African tribes brutalized by the Western powers).

*It's also a neat nod to a deleted scene from Alien (1979); i.e., when they're listening to the S.O.S., and Lambert plays it back to the crew like a radio signal: "It doesn't sound like any radio signal I've heard." "Maybe it's a voice." One of my favorite bits from Scott's director's cut, and Hawley's turned it into a major plot point!

Before we get to Alien: Earth, let's consider the same Gothically poetic and playful arguments (regarding power and Prometheus) that Hawley borrows from elsewhere; i.e., from the sort of media that Shelley's novel inspired, including the Alien franchise and its spiritual siblings; re: the very sort I've studied for years, now.

Playing with Power (re: Metroidvania, Amazons and ludo-Gothic BDSM)

Before we proceed, Ager smugly talks about power fantasies like he's written books on them. It's basically an appeal to authority (re: he's a Film Critic™), one made by an ostensible virgin (the nerd who is always alone in his videos); i.e., someone who doesn't play with power fairly so much as pimp it unfairly. Unlike him, though, I actually have written books on this topic (and am not allergic to raw sex in my scholarship; re: on Metroidvania, Amazons and ludo-Gothic BDSM). So let's take him to school! A sex worker and academic trans woman, I'm the likeness of the Gorgon who fucks with such things, biznatch. I also know how straight men fear naked intelligent women who play with power as something to embody and reclaim; i.e., what the state can't control, try as it might. So "stare and tremble!" at Medusa set free, her Wisdom of the Ancients stabbing at post-scarcity! Behold, a pale whore! Fight ass with ass! —Perse

(artist: Persephone van der Waard)

Given my expertise, here's an extended section with several citations about playing with power (namely rape play and the power of creation, post-abuse); re: as core themes in my work; i.e., the fire of the gods a classic plaything that mortals play with, meaning Promethean stories furthering Kristeva's abjection process or reversing it (regarding sex and force, the ancient language of the Imperium bleeding into a Protestant ethic, the Cartesian Revolution and Capitalist Realism under present theatres borrowing from the past). "She mighty mighty" refers as much to castle-like bodies as body-like castles, mise-en-abyme (re: "Castles in the Flesh," 2024), but any exploration = interrogation; i.e., movement = dialog during ludo-Gothic BDSM through Gothic spaces of power abuse (rape), or playing with gendered ideas of derelict power "for the taking" whose kinky, iconoclastic potential is classically Numinous (the Gothic quest for the Numinous [re: Varma] while embodying such things, person and place); re (from Volume One):

Volume One invites the reader to consider investigating power and trauma through theory and praxis as things to synthesize and express; i.e., through active, informed, collective participation; e.g., through shared exhibits like the one below. Said exhibit was created between Roxie Rusalka and myself, with Roxie being informed of my project ahead of time and agreeing to take part. It was deliberate/planned, and took time, money and work to pull off, but also mutual/informed consent:

(exhibit 6b2: Model and artist: Roxie Rusalka and Persephone van der Waard. Instruction occurs through the interrogation of trauma, wherein power is perceived and performed; i.e., through ludo-Gothic BDSM/general Gothic poetics and simplified theories that incorporate a fair amount of former worker history pushing towards liberation. Said history is typically "lost" under state operations and must be repeatedly reclaimed through a liminal pedagogy—the act of reimagining systemic abuse received by workers from state forces. This reclamation very much includes monsters that are historically regarded as treacherous to status-quo agents, but especially regarding men under the Cartesian model; e.g., the nymph or siren as a regular emasculator of traditional stations of male agency and authority. To that, Roxie's handle, "Rusalka," refers to a type of Slavic water siren, which Roxie suggested I use as inspiration for depicting her in my book. Seeing as I already recognized the mythology from Thomas Happ's 2014 Metroidvania, I drew Roxie as a Rusalki from Axiom Verge to instruct viewers with [source: "Manifesto/Instruction Volume Outline," 2025).

(model and artist: Mikki Storm and Persephone van der Waard)

In stories like Alien: Earth—which is to say, stories like Shelley's novel (ergo Metroidvania)—Medusa is a talking head, of sorts; i.e., a witness to/victim of trauma, hence thing to be raped and killed, only to be reborn for future survivor's dialogs the terrorist vice character has, about rape "on the Aegis"; e.g., a costume to wear or mask to put on, playing with "rape" in quotes, during calculated risk: a refusal to be victim, Creed argues, while relegated to spheres of doom, mid-abjection, whose ironic play therein can reverse abjection (re: me). The Gorgon is a paradox, then—a walking vaso vagal death fetish built for pleasure and pain confused, ergo the virgin and the whore having a secret side she can reveal; i.e., like a weapon as needed: one of guilt, shame and lust, but also sadness, insanity, disorder and rage. It is what it is, a gift and a curse for offense and defense, mid-cryptonymy* (re: Hogle's "Restless Labyrinth" from 1980 and Nicolas Abraham and Maria Torok's The Wolf Man’s Magic Word: A Cryptonymy from 1986).

*Meaning a "double operation," showing and hiding (e.g., the Gothic castle is a big-ass shadow that, despite being a space of concealment, shows a presence of obscured trauma). Cryptonymy is one of four main Gothic theories I use holistically in Gothic Communism, the other three being Kristeva's abjection process (us-versus-them), Bakhtin's Gothic chronotope (the black castle/time-space), and Derrida's hauntology (retro-future). Alongside those, there's also Castricano's Cryptomimesis (2001)—or writing with ghosts similar to how Derrida's 1993 Spectres borrowed from Marx (either case denoting an echo of trauma between pieces of language)—and Hogle's ghost of the counterfeit (the lie of Western sovereignty haunted by victims behind/upon said lie's surfaces and thresholds; e.g., the Medusa). These are big (and obscure) academic ideas my work relies heavily on, and which these samples here are only a taste of. For a deeper look into all of them, refer to the "Four Main Gothic Theories" section, from "Paratextual (Gothic) Documents."

To it, she's darkness visible, Milton's Satan a rebel that Medusa—when empowered to receive new bodies, mid-Amazonomachia—can enact rebellion as "data" through a given population; i.e., Gothic Communism, whose corruption of capital (and vice versa) is the data; e.g., Mikki Storm and I (with Pyramid Head, above), but really any engagement with whore as palliative Numinous, therefore Gorgon to parlay with, punk-to-postpunk (e.g., Joy Division, above) mid-ludo-Gothic-BDSM: a giver of forbidden knowledge (fire or otherwise), offering the power to change the world in darkly radical ways (the desert 'round Ozymandias' colossal wreck, below)! Nature is whore holding the keys to life and death between her thighs and upon her criminal, reprobate ass (under the Protestant ethic married to mad science). Her stony bum is the Sphinx Bonaparte stood before, the smaller of the two by a country mile:

(model and artist: Blxxd Bunny and Persephone van der Waard)

Meanwhile, power flows on said Aegis in different directions; i.e., the Promethean Quest anisotropically reversing abjection—hence the flow of power (the fire of the gods, therefore nature)—away from the state; e.g., land back, labor back, sex back to perform during the whore's cryptomimetic revenge; i.e., between pieces of language haunted by a larger process as much as ghost of the counterfeit (re: Castricano and Hogle). While the state pimps nature to preserve itself, mid-cryptomimesis, the whore works at cross purposes; i.e., the oldest profession (therefore exploitation and struggle) gracing a variety of popular (often infamous) stories and media types invoking Shelley's Modern Prometheus; re (from Volume Two):

Astronoetics are what Michael Uhall calls a celestial, intelligible presence ("Astronoetic Cinema," 2019). Reframed by me slightly, it is the colonial gaze of Planet Earth in any imaginary scenario, which the Metroidvania commonly portrays as nature vs civilization. [...] The fact remains that men like Weyland rape nature all the time, but only double their efforts when they—like the system they personify—reliably starts to die (false power). In turn, the state and its men of reason will do anything to preserve themselves, weaponizing their own bloodline against nature, the latter having evolved to resist dominion (thus rape) through counterterrorism and asymmetrical warfare. [...] That's what the Promethean Quest effectively encapsulates and discourages, Medusa fucking back to reverse the flow of power and information the monomyth normally supplies in outright parental language, but also monomythic media exposed to middle-class children at a young age (source: "'She Fucks Back'; or, Revisiting The Modern Prometheus through Astronoetics: the Man of Reason and Cartesian Hubris versus the Womb of Nature in Metroidvania," 2024).

From novels to movies to Metroidvania, all embody Mother Nature's revenge. In turn, the whore's revenge against profit (re: "Rape Reprise," 2024) embodies a cycle of violence versus the usual dialectical-material forces of capital (and its forebears); e.g., the Cycle of Kings and Shadow of Pygmalion's Patrilineal Descent, but also Cartesian hubris historically-materially having the state's revenge against nature; i.e., blaming the whore for "gating Paradise," ergo cockblocking Bacon's rapacious desire: to penetrate nature's womb, thus achieve everlasting life for the elite, mid-Capitalocene (re: Patel and Moore; see: "Away with the Faeries; or, Double Trouble in Axiom Verge" [2024] for a good example of this larger process). Shelley clearly disliked and critiqued such men of reason, in her novel; i.e., a desire of the rape victim that survives in a variety of media forms "standing in for absentee parents (videogames, for our purposes): the givers of Cartesian dogma, but also rebellious sentiment through Promethean allegory (the appearance of the black castle/fallen manmade paradise to begin with)" (ibid.):

(artist: MirroredR)

The idea is both older and newer than Forbidden Planet, surviving in various stories that came after it. This brings us to Metroidvania, whereupon games like Metroid and Axiom Verge present the Promethean Quest as the fatal discovery that one's actual or de facto parents suck royal ass, and that one's home is ultimately doomed because of it (founded on nature as raped by science); i.e., there's a couple basic ideas about Metroidvania that come from Forbidden Planet, At the Mountains of Madness, and ultimately from Frankenstein (and to a lesser extent, The Tempest):

• • a hero is summoned from earthly spaces by the gods to break the stalemate between nature and civilization
  • they learn about their infernal, godly parentage (raised by wolves, bird people, or mad scientists, etc); i.e., that they're Persephone come home; or Alucard, son of Dracula; etc
  • the land of the gods is destroyed afterwards; e.g., blowing up a planet, sinking an island, or closing a gate that leads to such places; i.e., destroying evidence and witnesses, but also keeping monomythic mementos (souvenirs) while treating the larger event as dream-like similar to A Midsummer Night's Dream—something to suggest and dismiss

Science and technology become mythical, even magical, but still comment on our world now in relation to technology and Capitalism "back then" as inherently illusory, manipulative and unstable.

[Whatever the form, a] Promethean story revolves around the child as coming of age while inheriting the past through such discoveries: hell (and the gods, fascism and nature) coming home Their parents are away, asleep or otherwise, and the child (often grown up, like Morbius and Victor, but also Samus, below) must explore the hellish home (the unheimlich) to put the wrong things right. In doing so, the home wakes up, putting the child in danger while teaching them about their doomed past (often through heraldry and statues, below). The past, then, becomes something to inherit and destroy with whatever's on hand, scuttling the castle, the boat, the giant (or some combination of these things) as having the means to self-destruct built in; e.g., the switch in Morbius' lab or the Nostromo's scuttle mechanism, etc (ibid.).

(artist: Harmony Corrupted)

The Cartesian rubric is always one of rape, thus genocide dressed up as "progress," "civilization," "reason," what-have-you. Whereas revolutionary cryptonymy reverses abjection on the Aegis and the exhibition/voyeurism of "strong" bodies/the paradox of empowerment through apotropaic exposure (re: "Rebellious Subterfuge," 2025), state cryptonymy furthers abjection by abusing nature, specifically her monstrous-feminine "peach" buttressed by this or that (often God-given bodyfat, above); i.e., a routine prize cut up by state proponents (re: "Nature Is Food," 2024). Across a state's lifetime, the Earth and its territories and peoples, animals and environments, are endlessly cannibalized by "thinking beings" scared of death (and sex), yet emboldened by Divine Right (from Columbus, onwards). We stewards of nature escape capital's hellish stalemate, liberated mid-exploitation by using rape play of the special kind Shelley offered; i.e., to free the Gorgon during ludo-Gothic BDSM; re: as I envisioned it based on Shelley but also those she learned from:

As far as I see it, the Gothic isn't solely empty escapism, but tries to imagine things beyond Capitalist Realism using the Numinous language of the imaginary past (through bad replication): to evoke powerful sensations that penetrate state deceptions; i.e., a retro-future that envisions possible futures good and bad through the reclaimed language of the past as it once was reimagined, not the future (as Fisher's hauntologies, the cyberpunk, speak to/with). Like Milton's Satan, it is defined by its ability to create things that go against pre-conceived ideas of the West, haunted instead by Western atrocities and failings. The future is gay and hellish, set free to express reality in Gothic maturity (source: "Always a Victim," 2025).

(artist: Duart)

To grant the ability to play is to regain control (e.g., rape play and calculated risk, above); the Gothic is writ in decay (re: "A Song Written in Decay," 2024)—Gothic maturity the ability to openly discuss taboo things in ways that reduce harm on a systemic level. On the Aegis, we whores (de facto or otherwise) use what we got; re: "when the Man comes around, show him your Aegis!" (re: "It Began with a Whisper," 2025). The state assigns the Gorgon (and her offshoots) "victim" status to police nature, but any victim can be a survivor who lives to tell the tale (sometimes if only from beyond the grave, returning home as ghost, zombie, vampire, etc). To that, Medusa's also a pirate who may challenge said status (wearing black as she does, below)—a bold and intrepid explorer who can take it all back, her seizing of the means of production referring to (and with) her actual body (female or not).

This happens through the same endless dialogs we've discussed, which embellish but also marry sex and force, war and Gothic, to poetic freedoms of expression (therefore existence); i.e., half-real dialogs raising intelligence and awareness (therefore Cain) versus state actors pimping Amazons in bad faith (re: "Witch Cops and Victims," 2025). What they cage, we set loose, and in defense of workers and nature! That's our utility, and what Ager's notions of "intelligence" and "good" lack (a real pimp, he is): a means to materially challenge state power (and state shift; re: Patel and Moore) through social codes played out. We (and our secrets weapons) hide in plain sight, power "in the flesh" something to behold, "monkey see, monkey do." Come to Mommy, little one! She has needs like you wouldn't believe (the Amazon a "conqueror/abductor" archetype [from Athens, onwards] that plays into RACK, consent-non-consent, and ageplay kink, among other taboos the Gothic explores easily enough)!

Let's touch on that briefly (the fate of the Gorgon), then jump into Alien: Earth proper!

(artist: Persephone van der Waard)

Note: The above examples were merely "sample sizes" from a much larger body of work. For a comprehensive look at Metroidvania, refer to the entire chapter, "She Fucks Back," but also my 2025 Metroidvania Corpus and extensive work on Amazons (e.g., Medusa vs Amazons in "Always a Victim," or Amazons and anal sex in "Our Sweet Revenge," both 2025), as well as my chapter on Shelley and her novel ("Making Demons," 2025). Such things are dualistic (cops and robbers), so fuck back, take back land, labor and sex in dialectical-material ways; i.e., that make Amazonian cryptonymy a rebellion whose subversive variety challenges subjugated (cop-like) forms! Aesthetics (form) don't determine function, flow (of power) does! Cops, billionaires, states—ACAB! ABAB! ASAB! —Perse

The Fate of the Gorgon; or, Medusa Lives!

The Gorgon is classically a thing to revive, mid-poetics; these poetics serve the revenge of the pimp or the whore (re: workers vs the state, man vs nature, etc). While difficult to fully kill, mid-cryptonymy (during extermination for profit; re: "Toxic Schlock Syndrome," 2025), Dark Queens are also classically fetishized and punished—meaning by state chastity narratives, mid-monomyth. So often, the warrior maiden or princess—a pale Madonna playing cops-and-robbers from a tokenized position—rapes their own as "terrorist" (re: Federici; see: "Policing the Whore," 2024); i.e., repeatedly only for Medusa to curse all parties with her revenge (e.g., the Radiance, above). But these are things we rebels can interrogate through the Gorgon "in the flesh"; i.e., as de facto educators of the infernal lesson Medusa offers up, "in small"; re: bringing "Hell" to Earth in a half-real sense (on and offstage, mid-liminal-expression); e.g., Cuwu and I, or Nyx and I—like the Gorgon brought back to life—turning the nuclear model upside-down (therefore "Rome" in all its hauntologies).

So do whores—relegated by state power to unspeakable-yet-commodified states of existence—fearsomely invade the present with retro-future echoes of monstrous-feminine; re: (from "Regarding Tokenism and Fighting It," 2025): fucking back, for a change, coming home to roost! What they alienize and rape, mid-dialectic, we humanize through the language thereof; i.e., hugging the alien during a dialectic of the alien that weakens our jailors' hold on nature (thus labor). So often, "hugging the alien" involves various double entendres—a warm wet embrace, the exchange being for "data" of all kinds that camp unironic Wandering Womb, moral-panic "hysteria" arguments with silly-serious hyphenations of sex and force (forbidden fruit, below)! "Wet ass pussy make that pull-out game weak!" Sex is education. 

Most of canon sees the heroine denying she's a whore; we Commie sluts do it backwards—not retreating from runaway libido, but embracing it on a social-sexual spectrum of public nudism (many sex workers being ace to varying degrees; e.g., Blxxd Bunny)! Nerds fuck, too, so rub it in any snobs' face (not just Ager's); in-your-face, we rub together what capital keeps apart—each other! Don't be afraid to play with what is forbidden to reduce harm onstage and off (respecting and illustrating mutual consent as you do, of course):

(artists, top: Cuwu and Persephone van der Waard; bottom: Nyx)

Medusa just wants hugs, you say? There's a method to the madness. "Not only can terror be employed as a weapon," writes Robert Asprey, "but any weapon can become a weapon of terror: terror is a weapon, a weapon is terror, and no one agency monopolizes it” (source). Same idea with violence (re: Weber) and monsters (re: me; see: "The State: Its Key Tools; re: the Monopolies, Trifectas and Qualities of Capital," from "Paratextual Documents"). Gothic Communism uses any and all to break capital's "monopolies" (and monomyth) on Medusa's Aegis! We were the Gorgon the entire time—the very Destroyer capital lusts after and runs away from!

All in all, Medusa lives in us, yet remains an undead, demonic and animalistic polity of expression (a chorus of whores, fragmented by generational theft and trauma). This includes our playing with power as passed imperfectly (dualistically) down; i.e., from mother to child and from child to future creations punching up at profit and Patriarchy (on and on and on)! She's a voice of rape presented as monster in ways that must be humanized in monstrous-feminine language; i.e., in relations thereof, which brings us back to Alien: Earth (and Ager's policing of it).

So now that I've given you a crash course in power and playing with it/the whore, let's get down to brass tacks; let's put things to praxis (re: through "synthesis," one the xenomorph essentially embodies)!

Down to Earth (and Brass Tacks)

Learning hurts, the growing pains of childhood into imperiled maturity a core theme in Alien: Earth. It's also what Ager inaccurately (and dishonestly) calls "a power fantasy"; re: one that "infantilizes" the audience despite children learning through play using whatever toys are on hand. "Are ya ready, kids?" "Aye-aye, captain!" It's an essence to capture, speaking to a variety of factors at play.

• Lost Childhood (and Reclaiming It)
• Needs More Thesis: Ager's Reactionary Antics
• What Ager Missed: A Postcolonial Potential

We'll go over the ones above (which I've chosen arbitrarily as food for thought), then move onto some praxial takeaways and wrap up!

Lost Childhood (and Reclaiming It) 

All of this is dualistic, of course; i.e., Peter Pan (1904) both about child (sex) trafficking (and stolen youth/shattered innocence), as well as a child-like rebellious desire following trauma, mid-regression—meaning of any character, princess or otherwise, to explore power through nostalgic privateering (which Hawley marries the Pygmalion myth [and Hippolyta's capture/forced marriage] to Lolita). Pirates are cool; xenomorph pirates (and robots), even more so! Gothic historically plays with such pulpy "darkness visible," doing so to cryptonymically explore taboo topics in adventurous media's "mere play": a long-lost return to spaces of trauma and play that are forever unresolved, but begging for fresh exploration by dead ringers. "The Course Has Been Set. There Is No Turning Back." 

The land of adventure—already a half-real proposition—is one where anything is possible (and which woefully lame nerds like Ager police). In turn, music and theatre empower because they let us spar with colonial forces; i.e., doing so to continuously break Capitalist Realism, hence reclaim what they stole (the Gothic combo of Ancient Romance and quotidian novel a thing to revive, Walpole onwards)! "Ha! Hoo! Hi-Ya!" Yes, Cervantes' two-part Don Quixote (1605 and 1615) was classically a tragedy about old men set in their ways (re: Ager), but there's room for revolutionaries tilting at windmills (dragons), too: to punch up at bourgeois agents, high above! Fighting is the point, and play is a vital means of doing so; i.e., that any revolutionary can take part in (and pass down)! 

Simply put, people are "full of juice" (the stuff of rebellion, which walks the line between controlled and uncontrolled opposition), but need a way to get those "juices" flowing (the booty to plunder, so to speak; re: Ridley Scott's "space matelotage" but also Amazons at sea from other directors, below)! In doing so, there's a big difference between total escapism and temporary regression, thus walking the tightrope (or the plank) between heroic idiocy and adventuresome make-believe. To infantilize someone, as Ager argues, is to turn them into, or treat them like, an dupe. The best stories don't do that (re: "Valorizing the Idiot Hero," 2021); they give room for mistakes to be made and fun to be had—in short, allowing for playing with power to occur, especially with a given "past" as something fanciful; e.g., pirates (the core of Gothic villainy since Radcliffe, which Metroid projects hauntologically into the stars, mid-Amazonomachia) with female stars (Gothic heroines) and male co-stars: the ability to act, thus take action versus the usual passivity afforded to minorities and women (and classically relegated to spaces of imagination, below). "Impunity is the apex of privilege," which inclusive play—to steal from the state—overcomes. There's a class character and material outcome to the proceedings.

Returning to Alien: Earth and its playing with power (and duality of pirates; i.e., corporations vs xenomorphs), it behooves us to remember that children are expected to subsist in Paradise as troubled—overshadowed by the Tree of Knowledge speaking to their own abuse as tied to the rape/pimping of nature (ergo workers made in God's likeness). But while Earth stresses actual talking versus capital punishment, the Amazon (warrior) dialog is not incongruous, so far as horror goes. Amazonomachia ("monster battle") is, unto itself, a kind of dialog expressing power as monstrous-feminine; re: during the abjection process—one that is suitably "ancient" (and derelict) into the present world, workers of all kinds rediscovering Medusa's power resisting discovery/colonization (to astronoetic extremes). As Creed notes:

When Perseus slew the Medusa he did not – as commonly thought – put an end to her reign or destroy her terrifying powers. Afterwards, Athena embossed her shield with the Medusa's head. The writhing snakes, with their fanged gaping mouths, and the Medusa's own enormous teeth and lolling tongue were on full view. Athena's aim was simply to strike terror into the hearts of men as well as reminding them of their symbolic debt to the imaginary castrating mother. And no doubt she knew what she was doing. After all, Athena was the great Mother-Goddess of the ancient world and according to ancient legend – the daughter of Metis, the goddess of wisdom, also known as the Medusa" (source: The Monstrous-Feminine, 1993).

And when the Gorgon survives to be interrogated by Wendy charming snakes, the robot girl befriends the monster who charms her (reversing abjection, having the whore's revenge; re: "Rape Reprise"). The would-be maiden learns from the whore a different side of a bigger struggle (re: nature vs the state); i.e., the Gorgon might be a size queen, but she's also a "grower" who starts small only to grow out of control: "Big things have small beginnings," and Rome wasn't burned in a day!

In any event, forget what Ager says about the show's "power fantasy" infantilizing the audience; Wendy is a victim infantilized by capital—i.e., until she reclaims her power from the state by not playing into its hands (as Cameron's sexless Wonder Woman does). The same goes for the other children, the Lost Boys; i.e., abused by the cult-like head of state: as manmade, Boy Cavalier supplying each a warlike body through the creator's warped view of himself (Ozymandian syndrome inflicting Lolita syndrome); re: like Shelley's Victor Frankenstein. All of this goes over Ager's head, of course—with him blaming the show (and the children, below) for the "failure" of not being "intelligent" (war-like) enough. 

Keeping with Frankenstein, it's Cartesian, ethnocentric—prone to view anything beyond the status quo (the state a worker extends from) as degenerate, weak, childish and stupid; i.e., the master and the slave under an astronoetic enterprise of endless conquest into space (with Ager attacking Hawley for a retro-future dystopia, despite Ager sucking Kubrick's nihilistic dick). Such conquest—and its cartographic refrains' routine exploration (of old space to conquer anew)—are Cartesian, ergo Puritanical in their policing in and out of themselves. It's Pavlovian to a generational extreme, Ager convinced he is correct versus "those meddling kids" while he punches the whore to correct her "immodest" antics: Saturn devouring his son, Perseus killing Medusa, Pygmalion raping Galatea, etc. Kindly or not, the state champion is always rigid, intolerant and blind, living in denial; re: Don Quixote—with Ager both abstaining from Gothic media (of a rebellious sort), yet high on his own supply borrowed from a sadly Freudian dogma.

To it, anything that makes the state look weak, incompetent or bad is, unto itself, bad and must be punished, in Ager's eyes; i.e., the company must make intelligent decisions, Ager argues—his astonishing tone deafness (and privilege) overlooking a bourgeois propensity for cruelty and alienation by capital (which alienates but also sexualizes [fetishizes] everything for profit; re: "Thesis Body," 2023); e.g., Boy Cavalier torturing the machines he makes into children, exploiting the living for their memories and the mechanical for their labor (which includes the warlike elements projected onto a superiority complex from the master versus the slave, the general commanding child soldiers). The alien eggs are the ultimate byproduct of this theft, the danger and the prize.

Despite Hermit's moxie, that character is likewise critiqued as boyish, silly and discounted by Ager. He doesn't care about equality but the proper place where power currently is: by celebrating Aliens' 1986 Zulu Dawn (1979) rehash-into-Vietnam-revenge as the end-all, be-all; i.e., Cameron's false power fantasy and neoconservative, neoliberal, Neo-Gothic power dynamic subjugating the Amazon for decades after (re: Cameron's refrain [the shooter] pimping Hippolyta into Metroidvania; re: "Derelicts, Medusa and Giger's Xenomorph," 2025). Ripley roars for the state, utterly cowed in that Radcliffean refrain: the Black Veil to summon and banish, whenever the liminal hauntology of war (the traveling castle) comes home to empire (the Imperial Boomerang seeking the very police states that set it to motion). Trigger the rape victim, then hand her a gun and kettle, mid-DARVO and obscurantism (the fash playbook, TERF feminism fascist in practice): a killer of "zombies," but also a zombie herself; re: Marx's "capital is dead labor, feeding on living labor" (source: "The Limits of the Working-Day," 1867). It's not rebellion, but armored subservience through a feminist cop gunning for the Reds—the neoliberal revolt of the elite played out through their semi-unwilling dupe (the straw dog white Indian/savior endlessly cloned for war)!

The alleged monomyth power fantasy—one that emasculates Ripley in a very "pick me," Quixotic way (upholding genocide while acting "pure" per the Protestant ethic pimping her out, our warrior Madonna made jobless, homeless and childless by the very state she cleans house for)—is exactly what Ager wanted with Wendy, and which the show's writers denied him through a proper Promethean Quest (and in hauntological [retro-future] ways he whines about; e.g. deducting points for the dead bourgeoisie in costumes [as if theatre and parties don't exist in the Alien universe, below] while forgetting Scott's Gothic is hauntological: a flying castle sailing through outer space). 

Needs More Thesis: Ager's Reactionary Antics 

In the absence of an actual thesis, Ager lazily resorts to reactionary "critiques"; re: calling something "bad" or "dumb" (code for "weak," meaning inferior to Western values). However, his white moderacy betrays itself in others ways, too. He also whines about the actress who plays Wendy's body, specifically her neck and childish mannerisms (also dismissing the show's allusions to alleged pedophile J.M. Barry's Peter Pan). Never mind that Ager has zero rizz (and looks like a pale chubby Gordon Ramsay); he forgot Wendy is a performance and that her uncanny aspect is deliberate.

So is interrogating the immortality fantasy that Ager accuses the show of supporting (re: Wendy). The whole point of Shelley's Modern Prometheus (and, by extension, Hawley's), is a reckoning for the proud; i.e., that their desire to conquer death is a fool's errand. Despite the show's emphasis on critiquing Cartesian sophistry and pseudo-intellectualism (e.g., Cavalier misquoting Arthur C. Clarke the way David misquoted Percy Shelley in Alien: Covenant, 2017), the biggest fool, it would seem, is Ager pointing fingers at Hawley while calling himself "intellectual" (dismissing, as he does, much of the show's thematic content; re: Peter Pan and child disempowerment/trafficking by childish men preying on boys or girls). Excluding Cameron's tokenism in Aliens, Ager hates inclusion, ipso facto. He sees Wendy as a failure to be Ripley, versus a completely different character playing with power differently. In doing so, Ager overlooks the impressive cast, the latter teamworking to tell a collective Promethean story (of rebellious creation) versus a singular monomythic one (or cheap nostalgia grab; e.g., Romulus*, 2024).

*A film with racist themes, to be sure:

However compelling or enticing the Amazonian drama seems through its emotional-sexual appeals, its praxial crux operates on keeping the detective functionally white with a token black male simulacrum's help; i.e., will he betray his childhood 'of the people' friend to help Ash's duplicate achieve immortality for settler colonialism in space? No, he won't! But by that same token [so to speak], Alvarez has Andy submit to the white girl as knowing better than him—the two of them bargaining for her to liberate him from corporate bondage… only to be returned to bondage under her care; i.e., as made that way by her father having salvaged Andy from older 'corporate models' built for the frontiers.

In short, Andy's a 'house negro' and the heroine is literally his owner who chastises him through force [the ghost of the father literally occupying Andy's mind/programmed to tell dad jokes]: female Gohan with Black Goku the Amazing Robo-Dad telling her to kamehameha wave Cell from Another Hell" (source: Giger's Xenomorph," 2025).

Ager's dorky moral outrage/superiority complex extends beyond the actors or the plot, though; e.g., hating Noah Hawley's heavy metal selection—i.e., despite Hawley being an accomplished musician, and Romantic music being the heavy metal of the 1800s before electricity—but also hating camp in Gothic like Alien (though apparently Ager thinks it's okay in Rambo II, 1985). In doing so, Ager operates on par with Samuel Taylor Coleridge; i.e., complaining arbitrarily about Matthew Lewis writing The Monk (1794), meaning despite Coleridge's hypocritical "Christabel" (1797) having the old man colonize Gothic (re: "The Future Is a Dead Mall," 2025), and in ways that Ager does while aping Cameron (who eclipsed Scott's neoliberal critique with an endless false flag punching down): the Man (any man) using the Pygmalion fantasy to eclipse the girl who wrote Frankenstein (which she published the year Marx was born; re: 1818). "Give me a boy until he is seven," said Aristotle; "Behold, a man!" said Diogenes. Hopelessly regressive, Ager settles for Cameron's immaculate conception, aborting Wendy for disappointing him. 

Why? my friends and I ask. For we fags, the show goes in really interesting and delightful directions—creepy but not a rehash of Cameron's military retro-future (itself sucking any liberatory potential out of Star Wars, 1977). Instead, Alien: Earth discusses cataclysm and alienation in pursuit of found family and friendship among misfits trapped between human and machine*, which we trans people (and similar aliens under Capitalism) historically love. By comparison, Ager complains constantly about being unable to relate to most of the cast (most of whom were women [e.g., Essie Davis, with a Bride-of-Frankenstein bob, returning from Jennifer Kent's excellent Babadook**, 2014] and/or minorities); he merely wanted military violence committed by a white hero against black/non-white victims (and for which the shows speaks to a demand for empathy wrapped in childhood nostalgia—by the oppressed of the oppressor when the former reaches their breaking point: "Have a heart, or face my fury.").

*Transhumanism, from Roden's Posthuman Life (2015); e.g., Tootles thinking she's pregnant to regress to a human state: to escape her transhuman prison—physically strong but mentally undeveloped; i.e., akin to the Major from Ghost in the Shell (1995). Humanity is a product, from the offset, but made into machines the corporation can't fully dominate. Instead, from Shelley to the future, sci-fi classically explores the moral and philosophical dilemmas that habitually unfold, tied to mad science (and corporate abuse).

**A story I very much adore, and not without its own nods to the Alien franchise (re: Persephone van der Waard's "Close-reading Gothic Theory in The Babadook," 2018).

Whatever his target, Ager's an old man yearning for a perfect past that never was—one where children with agency don't exist; i.e., the sort who find power when disempowered by state forces sending them into anti-homes (e.g., haunted houses, per Freud's unheimlich and Bakhtin's Gothic chronotope; re: "Seeing Dead People" [2024] and Kubrick's Shining [1980] twins, above). Much of the Gothic explores inheritance anxiety under capital's lies. Vulgar displays of power see the powerful playing god in ways that uphold capital, haunted by spectres of Marx (which the Medusa very much is). By comparison, Ager does all of this while appealing to the ghost of an audience (re: YouTube comments) and franchise; e.g., his spuriously calling Cameron's marines "well-trained badasses," despite those being—in Cameron's own words—late-stage versions of incompetency from the Americans during Vietnam's Tet Offensive. Hudson was a dumbass, but so was Gorman, Apone, and everyone else following the leader into certain death.

Indeed, Cameron's entire revenge fantasy hinges on weakness, Ripley avenging the marines killed by the Alien Queen; re: Hippolyta versus Medusa, the White Queen vs the Black—with Ripley becoming a dark Valkyrie* temporarily to fire fight with fire (a white Indian/savior); i.e., Eco's mantra, "the enemy is both weak and strong" (source: Ur-fascism, 1995). From Shelley onward, such stories historically revolve around ethnocentric ideas of servitude; i.e., predating Ager that Ager arguably embodies; e.g., Weyland and David, in Covenant—the latter character inferior to the former as the sorcerer's apprentice: "Poor me the tea, David." With Weyland's Prometheus flying "Rome" into the stars—and cosmic nihilism being the universe rejecting the rapacious colonizer—he may as well have said, "Render unto Caesar that which is Caesar's."

*What I describe, after seeing Covenant, as "the Invincible Heroine" (re: "Choosing the Slain," 2017), one Scott happily dissects and Hawley gives an alien voice.

What Ager Missed: A Postcolonial Potential

Despite its dated callbacks to empire (and operatic stamp), the original Frankenstein undoubtedly has postcolonial potential (the strongman is a fraud outmuscled by his victims). Per Parenti, Ager's ceaseless fussing (and deafness to allegory) amounts to a false rebellion—one where Ager makes a pro-corporate stance; i.e., while scapegoating Disney and throwing the director under the bus, and all for giving Shelley's Creature a voice once more (muted previously by American gay man, James Whale). Given Andor's (2022) excellent writing and production values, followed by Earth, I think Ager's anti-Disney stance is a bit too blanket for its own good.

Furthermore, Ager's dismissal happens in multiple steps: saying first how Noah Hawley should have been guided by the Coen brothers(?) as executive producers (versus Ridley Scott, I guess); second, that horror doesn't exist alongside child characters in popular media (Ager's "protect the child" argument ignoring Disney's own marriage of child heroes to horrifying violence); and third, whining that Wendy has "plot armor" while implying that Ripley doesn't? Bullshit, my guy! Wendy falls prey to one xenomorph; Ripley's literally female Rambo—a TERF-style girl boss "acting like a man," therefore working tirelessly for the Man to kill black people, Commies and sodomites, et al and en masse; re (from Volume Zero): 

Under Capitalist Realism, Hell is a place that always appears on Earth [or an Earth-like double]—a black fortress threatening state hegemony during the inevitable decay of a colonial body. Its widening state of exception must then be entered by the hero during the liminal hauntology of war as a repeatable, monomythic excursion—a franchise to subdue during military optimism sold as a childhood exercise towards "playing war" in fantastical forms; e.g., Castlevania or Metroid. Conjure a Radcliffean menace inside the Imperial Core, then meet it with American force. / Threatened, the state always responds with violence before anything else. Male or female, then, the hero becomes the elite's exterminator, destroyer and retrieval expert, infiltrating a territory of crisis to retrieve the state's property [weapons, princesses, monarchic symbols of power, etc] while simultaneously chattelizing nature in reliably medieval ways: alienating and fetishizing its "wild" variants, crushing them like vermin to maintain Cartesian supremacy and heteronormative familial structures [...]

[artist: Persephone van der Waard]

In neoliberal copaganda, canonical heroes are sent solo or in small groups, deployed as much like a bomb as a person; hired by the powerful, these "walking armies" destabilize target areas for the mother country to invade and bleed dry [a genocidal process the aggressor sanitizes with cryptonymic labels like "freedom" and "progress"]. To this, they are authorized, commissioned or otherwise sanctioned by those with the means of doing so; i.e., a governing body centered around elite supremacy at a socio-material level. After infiltration occurs, the agents work as a detective/cop, or judge, jury and executioner—either on foreign or domestic soil, the place in question framed as loosened from elite control, thus requiring the hero [and their penchant for extreme violence] to begin with. This makes them an arbiter of material disputes wherever they are: through police violence for the state in its colonial territories at home and abroad. They always follow orders: "Shoot first, ask questions later and enslave what survives" (source: "Scouting the Field," 2023).

To that, Ager considers Aliens to be "the best feminism film ever made." Yeah, I'm gonna have to hard disagree there, mate; i.e., "the problem of Cameron's centrist feminism is that it 'empowers' the female warrior to uphold the status quo, dooming women at large (say nothing of everyone Ripley attacks to 'save the world' by paradoxically blowing it up; or as Metroid put it: 'Pray for a true peace in space!')" (ibid.). Ripley's a Zionist policing "space Hamas," immune to acid but allergic to Wandering Womb during insect politics (re: "Military Optimism," 2021). She seeks power to rape nature as men historically do (therefore as token Amazons do, from Athens to America): slaying dragons while chasing them.

Some Praxial Takeaways 

Furthermore—and to preach rebellion for a page or two—assimilation is poor stewardship, the real empowerment fantasy one where workers subvert the state's idea of strength through service; re: on the Aegis, nature taking her power back through any and all forms (the booty of the Amazon but also the Gorgon, below). Unlike the Amazon (who historically sells out, part of the time), Medusa is the weapon that refuses to play ball; the vice character who breaks the Fourth Wall (ergo Capitalist Realism), her crushing aura pulls you in and tears you apart! "Destroy me!" goes both ways, "is it in, yet?" a prophecy to foreshadow a parade of acquired tastes (re: "strange appetites"; see: "A Cruel Angel's (Modular) Thesis," 2024). 

Whatever the code, it's preferential as a means of stealth and attack, mid-abstraction (speaking to larger forces through smaller symbols). It's a mood; make its complex funerary trauma, Pandora's "Box," the gift that keeps on giving! Ass war is class war of an asymmetrical sort, Medusa an unruly cemetery cunt giving and receiving backshots from the shadows: sex as a weapon, said "arms" tied to one's animal side exterminated by state force (re: Medusa's snakes, ergo venom, acid, etc, a kind ambrosia-through-combat). The monomyth preys on Hell; when the harvest becomes "grim," Hell's heroine sends the sickle back at the reaper(s)—a "useless eater" refusing to be unironic food by staging the enemy's demise through addiction (virgin/whore syndrome). "Hit it from the back, little man? Try blue balls, instead!"

Hug the alien; humanize the harvest to expose the state as inhumane—i.e., through any and all dehumanizing language the latter alienates labor (and nature) with! They take from us what they say we don't have; yet, if we didn't have value, there'd be nothing to take. In other words, capital is criminogenic ergo conducive to harm, including rape; labor has infinite value and sex work is work—i.e., the most ancient form of work, distributed dualistically among soldiers, spies, saboteurs, femme fatales, and martyrs bartering through forbidden forms of trade serving state's rights or worker rights, depending. Liberation and exploitation share the same spaces, onstage and off.

(model and artist: Itzel and Persephone van der Waard)

In turn, the state classically fetishizes nature to forbid and chase it (a cruel game classically "for men" that extends to token cops boxing themselves in; re: Mark Greene's Man Box [2019] a tokenizing proposition among weird nerds). Through the whore's paradox and revenge, the Gorgon "in small" embodies poison as the cure: the awesome, entropic power we both have none of, in state eyes, yet wield since birth the very instruments they seek to steal! Such is the black swan, trapped between life and death as swan and siren song alike!

In keeping with ludo-Gothic BDSM, the Gorgon (and her campy holocaust) are things to play with, vice embodied through social practice and physicality alike; i.e., the pun-heavy poetics of the neo-medieval revived through vitalistic fleshy means married to inorganic elements (the golem); e.g., a vice-like pussy whose "lips that grip" go HAM: a biomechanical steel trap—one with bite, its "feral," tooth-and-claw approach as prickly as the rosy thorns or vampire's fangs: the live burial of graveyard sex, the strange appetites therein tying to nature as undead, demonic, and/or chimeric (re: "Call of the Wild," 2025)! A black rabbit to chase by witchfinders—and someone nourished by anguish and revenge—she's the sword and the sheath (and inspiration for Indigenous/non-white, but also disabled, non-Christian, neurodivergent, mentally ill, and trans, intersex and non-binary people, everywhere*)!

*What the Māori call "taonga," meaning "treasure" in regards to those who are different (which capital can only punish while making others feel alien).

As Percy Shelley once wrote in "Defence of Poetry" (1821), "Poets are the unacknowledged legislators of the World" (source). IIndeed, so we are, acting rebellion out as we "legislate" far gayer than Mary Shelley's atheist (and sexist, womanizer) husband (the Gothic being a bit randier and pulpy than the high-minded Romantics*, especially the first generation's Wordsworth and Coleridge). What matters, here, is direction—not violence, terror and monsters to abstain from, but rather send power flowing mid-struggle towards workers and nature! Intersectional solidarity is key, as is creativity to achieve tactical unity as such (the glue holding things together)! Diversity is strength, the state a brittle, angry and sad thing scared of its own shadow (a bit like Peter Pan)!

*Scott would revive the muddy relationship between the Gothic and the British Romantics—first with Mary Shelley's novel in Prometheus (2012), then misquoting Percy Shelley by attributing his "Ozymandias" (1818) to Byron, in 2017's Alien: Covenant (re: "Making Demons" and "Dissecting Radcliffe," 2025).

(artist, bottom-right: Bay Ryan)

To that, the cake is a lie, our mendax utterly splendid when walking away from Omelas (a danger disco in disguise, offering up unknown pleasures)! The perpetual scapegoat (animal, criminal, terrorist) automatically slated for death—i.e., by state warrants of modular imbricating persecution (e.g., blood libel, sodomy and witchcraft; re: "Idle Hands," 2024)—we psycho sluts are political under duress, reviving Medusa's Marxist potential by parting a particular Black Veil; re: the anti-Marxist buffer psychoanalysis classically raised, moving away from Marx in favor of Freud and other dialectics that lost their material standing (e.g., Id versus Superstructure). We fags have to or we will not survive, meaning those state orderings of nature pimping us like chattel. Hailing "from outer space," we build new black churches, castles, what-have-you: to weaponize such lies "on the Aegis," turning any and all power they afford against the elite (and their traitors [cops] among the working class).

Barring state shift, there's always another castle! Enter if you dare! Flirt with disaster to break the spell (of Capitalist Realism) with fresh proletarian magic! Worker rights versus state's rights, a struggle that never stops. So make it fun, combining battle with sex in all the usual ways! "If I must die, make it a story"; e.g., Soviet Russia's legendary Night Witches air unit being run and comprised entirely of women who scared Nazis senseless while dropping bombs—literally death from the skies—on their stupid heads (Red Pen's "Women at War: Communism," 2025; timestamp: 8:57). Every version we make, our enemies will double in bad faith (Red Pen's "Women at War: Fascism," 2025); i.e., the state bridled these Amazons after the war, but their badassery survives regardless:

Oscillation is a core facet of Gothic, one whose signature "push-pull" beckons and forbids to friend and foe, alike. In turn, the sex, drugs and rock 'n roll on display are fun and informative to a cryptonymic degree—to dance, perchance to scream, we shake our sizeable, monstrously pornographic goods, wagging them furiously at any colonizer acting as "friend" in bad faith; i.e., the white moderate being as harmful to any marginalized group framed as nighty visitor (e.g., the vampire or succubus deemed "lady of the night" as much as any xenomorph). The struggle must vocalize*, the Gothic go-to being darkness visible—meaning in ways whose fatal nostalgia the state will colonize through men like Ager preserving the status quo. The struggle is dualistic, pro-state and pro-labor workers sharing the same poetic shadow zone; e.g., Ager versus me, if only because his head's more swollen than Ozymandias (and I'm more than a match for him/a worthy foe to rival him with me and my friends' fire of the gods; i.e., from Blake to us, we're the gods, now):

*As Sophie Scholl of the White Rose once wrote (and payed for with her life):

If German people are already so corrupted and spiritually crushed that they do not raise a hand, frivolously trusting in a questionable faith in the lawful order of history; if they surrender man’s highest principle, that which raises him above all other God’s creatures, his free will; if they abandon the determination to take decisive action and turn the wheel of history and thus subject it to their own rational decision; if they are so devoid of all individuality, have already gone so far along the road to turning into a spiritless and cowardly mass – then they clearly deserve their downfall (source: "I. Leaflet of the White Rose," 1943).

Remember that the state will make workers illegal for profit; i.e., to profit off their deaths by design; re: capital decays into fascism by design. Sooner or later, there must be struggle or they will take everything (re: Fredrick Douglass). Liberation—as Scholl shows followed by Hawley fighting fire with fire (re: Nelson Mandela)—is commonly fought by children versus adults (Scholl was 21 when the state executed her): "A freedom fighter learns the hard way that it is the oppressor who defines the nature of the struggle, and the oppressed is often left no recourse but to use methods that mirror those of the oppressor. At a certain point, one can only fight fire with fire." It must be done, Scholl herself calling for active sabotage:

Sabotage in armament plants and war industries, sabotage at all gatherings, rallies, and meetings of organizations launched by the National Socialist Party. Obstruction of the smooth functioning of the war machine (a machine for a war that goes on solely to shore up and perpetuate the National Socialist Party and its dictatorship). Sabotage in all the areas of science and scholarship which further the continuation of the war – whether in universities, technical colleges, laboratories, research institutes or technical bureaus. Sabotage at all cultural events which could potentially enhance the “prestige” of the fascists among the people. Sabotage in all branches of the arts even the slightest bit connected with National Socialism or rendering it service. Sabotage in all publications, all newspapers in the pay of the “government” that defend its ideology and aid in disseminating the brown lie (source: "III. Leaflet of the White Rose," 1943).

Gothic sabotage is cryptonymic (re: "Rebellious Subterfuge"). Yet, all war is built on deception, Sun Tzu wrote. To identify with those monsters from Alien (Gorgons and Amazons) is to side with Shelley's Gorgon; i.e., as a natural saboteur the moment it learns to fight. Wake the fuck up! If that means playing cops-and-robbers to a subversive, fuck-the-alien degree, then so be it. Our home is already a nightmare, and liberation comes from within the cave.

You don't kill home rule with kindness, kids; the secrets to universal liberation are in Necropolis, meaning as a half-real place of ironic hope among genuine despair. Both a ruin of tremendous obscurity and hideous-yet-divine power to intercept, mid-decay, and a treacherous gravesite of self-discovery among the unholy bones, such forbidden and come-hither places—from one faraway castle to the next—invent and invite danger-as-Oracle at home. A dark commentary on home as fallen empire bounced back, they collectively depict capital's infernal concentric pattern (re: Aguirre); i.e., to reify and interrogate power as Gothic has done, from Walpole to Radcliffe to us: where the brave routinely go to find and hug the Gorgon haunting the crypt! 

The pedagogy of the oppressed is a revelation, then—one whose spectral voice (and controlled chaos/uncontrolled opposition) has one, been demonized previously by state forces, and two, been turned back around by iconoclastic means fertilizing revolt on the corpse of empire (overthrowing what Professor Jiang Xueqin calls "the tyranny of the dying"; i.e., fascism is when empire is weak, but also desperate and dishonest, below). That's what Hawley has done, and what Ager's smugly conspiratorial dismissal has completely overlooked: struggle shifts between order and chaos, the ensuing harmony often discordant, a necrobiome. Gothic poetry is a means of provoking thought, ergo conscious among said biome.

In Conclusion

To that (and to conclude), Ager's "review" is a sad fatal joke—one stuck "in celluloid," and which he comes across as profoundly regressive, ignorant of and allergic towards those who step outside Freud's shadow/the silver screen (re: my work being multimedia on purpose/hostile to Freud; e.g., "Ghosts of Freud in Forbidden Planet," 2024); i.e., regarding the land back, labor revolt, and punching up allegories Alien borrowed from Shelley (and Shelley from Milton's seditious and defiant Satan). In Plato's cave, Ager abjects them in highly snobby ways; i.e., whose shamelessly nerdy (middle-class) entitlement pimps Hogle's fakery/ghost of the counterfeit (re: the Gorgon) while foisting its crimes onto critics of capital ("You're doing a power fantasy, not me!"). Odd to see a psychoanalyst sci-fi nerd who has no idea who Shelley is, or Barbara Creed (a film nerd who wrote her PhD on the monstrous-feminine using Freud's essay, "Medusa's Head," 1922). A pimp is a pimp—Medusa the whore such men of reason endlessly fetishize for their own delight, and which Ager grumbles at Hawley for daring to liberate. Silence is genocide, and Ager's decree is one of muting Medusa. 

Again, straight dog water. You can't kill the Gorgon, little man; for her, life and death are part of the same endless equation—one Alien: Earth explores by emphasizing the parent/offspring dialog of the characters*. You know, like Mary Shelley did? Girl was a cosmic whore, wrecking homes across the stars!

*Read: plural, the show being communal versus singular in its heroism, lending a Sense8 (2015) feel to its Lord of the Flies (1954) panoply.

(model and artist, left: Mary Shelley and Richard Rothwell; artist, right: Persephone van der Waard)

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About the Author

Persephone van der Waard is the author of the multi-volume, non-profit book series, Sex Positivity—its art director, sole invigilator, illustrator and primary editor (the other co-writer/co-editor being Bay Ryan). Persephone has her independent PhD in Gothic poetics and ludo-Gothic BDSM (focusing partially on Metroidvania), and is a MtF trans woman, Tolkien and Amazon enthusiast, anti-fascist, atheist/Satanist, poly/pan kinkster, erotic artist/pornographer and anarcho-Communist with multiple partners. Including multiple playmates/friends and collaborators, Persephone and her many muses work/play together on Sex Positivity and on her artwork at large as a sex-positive force. That being said, she still occasionally writes reviews, Gothic analyses, and interviews for fun on her old blog (and makes YouTube videos talking about politics). To learn more about Persephone's academic/activist work and larger portfolio, go to her About the Author page. Any money Persephone earns through commissions or donations goes towards helping sex workers through the Sex Positivity project; i.e., by paying costs and funding shoots, therefore raising awareness. She takes payment on PayPal, Patreon, and CashApp, etc; all links are available on her Linktr.ee. Every bit helps!