30 Day Goth Challenge, Day 4

I'm usually mostly out and about after dark. That is partly because I've moved North, and the days here at least feel considerably shorter than they were, but I think that this is partly because I am ringed by mountains, so the sun has set behind the mountains long before it would set behind a flat horizon. This is also because my partner works until quite late, he often finishes work at gone 19:00 and then has a 45 minute commute home, so if we want to do anything together, including mundane shared chores like food shopping, it is usually done after 20:00. I am up and awake long before then, and do get up at a sensible time, but with the weather having turned for the worse, there's less conservation work for me to do, and I am less inclined than usual to walk into town, especially as I know I'll be walking home alone in the dark if I do that. Also, if it gets dark before 16:00 and light after 09:00, there's not that much of the day when itisn'tdark here in Winter :P I'm also a sucker for not going to bed until I've done a task - for example last night I stayed up working on a Doodle or Die drawing of a Samurai, in great detail, until it crashed at 03:30. If I start something, unless something really distracting happens, I'm usually locked off from the world until I've completed it.

Pale As Death

I'm naturally rather pale, though pale with a reddish tinge, and I tend to do my makeup not to make me actively paler, as I'm pale enough anyway, even for the Gothic look, but simply to make my skin less pink. I am often asked if I'm feeling ill, or what the matter with me is, but the truth is I'm fine, this is my natural, normal skin-tone. I've also got poor circulation, so my hands and feet are often very cold. As you can imagine, this means I end up the butt of corpse-jokes, but that's fine by me. I've found a lot of Goths are naturally pale people, maybe it's because Goth provides a style alternative for people who are never going to pull off the sun-kissed blonde look but can do pale and interesting quite well.

All Black Everything

Black is not my favourite colour, but it is one of them. I do tend to pick the black option even when buying items with little inherent Goth potential, not just because I don't want my cleaning stuff to clash with my clothes, but simply because I like the colour black. My four favourite colours are purple, green, black and blue - in that order. This said, I have, and this list is not exhaustive, the following: black coat-hangers, black-handled cutlery (and that actually IS deliberately Goth), black serviettes, black bedding (also Goth), a black "Gothmas" tree, square black crockery, a black electric-guitar-shaped grater, black towels, black coffee mugs, black tissue-box, black sushi plates, black plastic cooking utensils, black-handled scissors, black photo-frames (also fairly Goth) etc. etc. My wardrobe is a black-lined pit of black clothes and black shoes. Sometimes I wear a bit of green, blue, or purple, but it's mostly black on black. I get teased by friends who, when I buy something totally not goth-related and it turns out to be black, say "Oh! What a surprise! It's pink! Wait, no, it's black." Even my socks are at least mostly black.

Skulls Are Beautiful

I collect animal skulls, collect skull-shaped items, wear skull jewellery, and generally love skulls. I even paint and draw them. I also like Reapers, and bones, and other stereotypically skeletal things. I want to get a biology model skeleton to hang on my wall because I think they're aesthetically pleasing as well as educational. All my animal skulls are found pre-deceased (and mostly picked clean) on walks. I do boil them thoroughly and wash them thoroughly before displaying them. I like deer skulls the best, but have the skulls of other wildlife. I want a raven skull. My favourite art pieces are Memento Mori and Vanitas paintings.

Caught In An Explosion In A Lace Factory

I think this is as much a Lolita/Aristo stereotype as it is a Gothic one, but it's often true for me. I'll wear shirts with triple-lace cuffs, a lace trimmed skirt over petticoats, a lace jabot, lace head-gear and lace as cuff-bracelets and then tie another bit of lace in a loop under my collar and over my jabot, probably in contrasting black, and then carry a lace parasol. Trim my lace with more lace! Lace is a favourite material of mine, I love its intricacy and delicacy and the beautiful patterns it is made in. If I liked pastels and suited them, I'd probably be a Sweet Lolita cliche. I always feel very elegant when I'm wearing lots of lace.

Breathing Is Unimportant!

I lace my corsets tight and wear them pretty much constantly. I'll wear leather studded corsets with buckles, and I'll wear fancy brocade corsets over lacy tops. I like underbust, I like overbust, I like anything as long as it is mostly black, has proper steel boning and pulls me right in like an hour glass. I like white and ivory corsets to wear under period-inspired clothes, I like fancy PVC outerwear corsets to wear as a futuristic cyber-goth. I really, really, really, like corsets. In fact, I think I'm in love with them. They make me look skinnier, bustier and better proportioned. They're warm in winter. They're sexy. They're classy. They're everything I could wish for in one garment.

Bleak-eyed Writer

I wrote my fair share of angst-ridden poetry and bleak, dark fantasy fiction as a teen. Now I'm writing an apocalyptic novel set in a world where civilisation has collapsed and humanity is tearing itself apart, the environment is ruined and a lot of people die. I guess it's gone from Gothic to Rivethead literature, but hey, it doesn't depress me to write it. That said, I'm writing this novel as a warning, not an instruction manual for annihilation nor as a morbid adrenaline-junky's holiday brochure. I also like black humour, and write things that are funny-yet-morbid. I still write poetry, though it is more in the vein of admiring the beauty (and dark beauty) of the universe than in complaining about how awful my life is in poorly-written verse. My poetry abilities have also improved since I was a teen, mostly because writing poetry is one of those things I do quite frequently, for example when bored, on trains, while waiting for public transport, on long journeys, or anywhere else I get 5 or more minutes of sitting-down time. I have also learnt that angsty ramblings are not good subject matter and that good poetry requires more than just rhyme and raiding the thesaurus.

These are the main ones, but I also love ravens, magpies, crows and other corvids, do Siouxsie Sioux style eye makeup or draw curlicues, tend to go out everywhere pretty darn goth, read lots of vampire stories and hang around in graveyards. Yep, I'm a cliche, but I'm having fun being a cliche, so I don't care.