Queer Death Cult

Abstract

This thesis is a fictional novel – or at least a portion of it – that aims to represent a unique queer internet sub-culture often under-represented in modern transsexual art: that of the online spaces harboured on the /lgbt/ 4chan board and affiliated Discord servers. Engagement with such spaces cultivates a peculiar mentality within their users and affects their internalisation of the transsexual experience. With this manuscript my aim is to form an autoethnography of sorts, one that can archive this sub-culture from a particular point in time and present it to an unfamiliar reader through an engaging text. The writing is comprised of two distinct elements. The first is that of the general manuscript: a paperback horror novel written by a fictitious author named ‘Alice’, her work of autofiction centering around the damaging psychological influences 4chan /lgbt/ culture has on her and her online friends. The second: fabricated marginalia around the text at the hands of an imagined editor whom ‘Alice’ has sent this draft of her manuscript to. As the editor’s notes progress they evolve from standard editing notation towards a one-sided dialogue aimed at ‘Alice’, guiding her to a less fractured worldview from the perspective of a trans person who had previously challenged and overcome her own internalised transphobia.