Study/Studio Re-Decoration Part 1: Feature Wall

In a much earlier post ::here::, my study had bright purple walls, vinyl decals, etc. I felt it was too kitschy for my current tastes, and started redecorating. It has been a slow process, as decorating is costly, and there are other parts of our house that have needed our attention more urgently. The room isn't finished yet, but it's pretty close. As it's quite a complicated, multi-purpose room. 

Featuring the Wall

My feature wall, also termed a 'display-wall' or 'gallery-wall' is probably the part of my study that most embodies the aesthetic that I am aiming for with my study. It was initially a black wall with silver Valspar glitter for some sparkle. I repainted it after the initial surface got scuffed up by me reposition the pictures, knocking it with furniture etc. For the repaint, I wanted to have a slightly green colour, partly to balance the purple walls, and partly because I just like green. I couldn't find the shade that I wanted in the range my local DIY shop carried, and I had tried some testers, so I bought another of a more neutral black tester I liked and mixed it with a black that was more like a very dark blue-green and blended the two at home with more glitter to get a colour that I liked. The glitter shimmers somewhat green, rather than silver, because of the green dye. Yes, I am that finnicky! 

The display wall 

My collection of frames are mostly from TK Maxx and Dunelm Mill, bought before I decided to drastically reduce my purchase of new items. The moon painting that I did was professionally framed by Riverside Gallery in Inverness, and the large mirror with the swirly frame was bought second-hand in in Inverness' PDSA branch. I like the silver gilt finish on these different frames because quite a few have some texture to them, more than just a metallic finish. Some of them also have some dark dry-brushing in the cervices, or a wash - things to make them have a little more life on them. I think things like texture, some variance in colour, etc. quite helpful for making the arrangement more dimensional and interesting. They're not all the same silver, not the same level of metallic finish, they're diverse, but also - hopefully - harmonious too. These ones were bought like that, but in our bedroom I've repainted and varnished frames to try and get the same concept.

Very terrible photograph of my wall with bad lighting (and wonky stars).

Terrible grainy photos are what happen when I take photos on my own phone.

I managed to align the dado rail along the bottom of the photograph, but because of perspective distortion, lens distortion, etc. there's more slope along the top of the pictures than real life, however the wonky stars are all my own fault; I haven't got the black paint all the way up to the ceiling partly because I can't reach up and partly because I know that along the top there will be cornice, however unfortunately I didn't leave that gap evenly, and I matched the stars to the wonky edge instead of the ceiling. I regret this. I will stencil in some more high up stars at the right edge, and more low stars at the left end and try and level this out. I will wait until I have the coving up, however, so I have a good visual straight edge to match things up to. It's really important to have a good visual marker, especially when you're dealing with something big and you're painting up close. Also, it will never be truly straight when working in a building like mine, and I need to give the visual illusion of straightness when the walls and ceilings aren't straight. 

Antique sword. Also a close-up of the wallpaper and the orb string-lights. 

I collect bladed weapons - what I really like are swords (there is another one in my study) but I have a couple of knives. I would like more fine daggers, especially antiques. Currently I don't have the income to collect antiques right now. I have considered selling off some of my collection because of financial situation, but there are complex laws about blade sales in Scotland so I'm keeping them, plus I remember how much work I put into saving up to buy them in the first place. There's something fascinating about the history behind objects: for example, the sword pictured is Italian, I think from the 1870s, perhaps later, and while it is displayed in its scabbard, there are beautiful engravings - somewhat scuffed - that tells a bit about the military background of the sword, and it also has dings along the spine of the blade that look like it may well have actually used in a sword-fight, or at least in defence of another bladed weapon (the context could be all sorts of things!). I also think it fascinating how much beauty and art that is often invested in embellishing what is primarily a weapon. I am interested in H.E.M.A, used to do modern sport fencing, as well having had a few kendo lessons, so I have an interest from a historical swordsmanship perspective, too. I think a lot of people think it's creepy, or that I have some murderous intent - I joke that I'd never use my collection to stab anyone because they're too precious to get blood on (true, honestly. Even skin oils are bad for them!) and 'creepy' is a subjective judgement. These are art objects to me, even if that is not what they were made as - but they were made with craft, care, and creative skill.

I repainted this moon. The camera angle is really awkward.

Good camera because I used Raven's phone instead of my own... 

Moon iconography is a prevalent in my study - mostly in my near my Book-Nook and meditation space because one of my ways of remaining in tune with nature is doing devotions according to the lunar cycle at the meditation altar in my Book-Nook. My next blog post will have more details about my Book-Nook. This particular ornament was bought as a yellow glossy moon with the slogan "Sleep tight, sweet dreams through the night" painted on it, so I repainted it to fit in better with my study décor. The original ornament was £1.50 on eBay. I tried to make it a slightly adorable sleepy moon. It's hung up just by the entrance to the Book-Nook. 

Sword, mirrors, picture frames, art. 

I have, since these pictures were taken, got more pictures, and pictures I like better, to fill the frames. I'm aiming for more fine-art prints, as well as my own artwork. It is an ongoing process, but having the frames first means I can arrange the wall and then find pictures to fit on the wall, which I find is easier than when I have had the pictures first and then tried to find a place for them (situation with our living room). A lot of the prints are repurposed greetings cards and I'm eyeing up some Caspar David Friedrich and Salvator Rosa postcards.

The moon-phase banner was a Winter Solstice gift from Raven. He bought it for me from someone on Etsy and I have been asked on Instagram where it is from, but unfortunately he can't remember where. The moon-phase garland along the top was from SpookyBox Club when I was subscribed, and I painted and assembled it myself. 

Moon phase banner. 

I think the picture above is pretty useful for illustrating how the curtains tie together the aesthetic for the main area of the study/studio. and screens off the Book-Nook. I am not always proud of my decorating decisions, and often it takes more than one go to create what I visualise in my head, or for me to realise that what I visualised doesn't work out so well in real life, but I really like how the damask voile curtains go with the wallpaper and monochrome wall. Also, this is possibly the only photograph I have with the stand-lamp in it.

Terrible, terrible photo; why I'm part-exchanging my phone for a better one.

If you can see anything at all, it's an old photo of the Book Nook before the altar

I will be doing a few more posts about this room specifically, and then more about specific projects, especially furniture repaints. I will also chart more of decorating the rest of the house, although not all of the house is in a particularly Gothic aesthetic, so I will be focusing on the more Gothic-looking rooms. As you can probably tell from the square photographs, most of these pictures are or were on Instagram, where my accounts are @domesticatedgoth for this sort of content and @architecturallygothic for ruins, cathedrals, churches, monuments, and other spooky or pretty buildings. 

Domesticated: Study Decor

Originally, when I set up Domesticated Goth, I intended it to be about crafts, homemaking, cooking and decorating - a blog to give people ideas on how to make Gothic things for their house, small art projects, etc. Unfortunately, I moved into a rental apartment that had strict rules on decorating, and that put a real dampener on that idea, and instead the blog evolved into a more general Gothic & Goth lifestyle bog, with Gothic tourism, art projects, accounts of my involvement with Gothic Lolita, photography, the odd musical post (I am terrible at writing about music intelligently) and discussion of the Goth subculture itself. 

Three years ago, however, Raven and I bought a house - we didn't buy it outright, we have a mortgage on it, and it's not a very big house, but it's where we call home. Over that time, we've been decorating. Not all of the house is Gothic (the living & dining rooms are open-plan with each other, and have a more earthy, slightly witchy sort of feel, with lots of greens, dark wood and natural and Pagan motifs) and some rooms are more Gothic than others. There's also still a lot of work to be done, so many rooms are still very incomplete; we don't have much money, so we can't hire people to decorate for us, and we barely have the time and the money to do it ourselves, so it has been dragging on. However, my study is the smallest room that isn't a bathroom, and therefore it's one of the more complete.

Spiderweb candelabra and skulls are still quite 'Hallowe'en'

My initial idea was to decorate it in a deliberately kitschy, Hallowe'en-esque sort of way - LOTS of skulls, cartoon bat decals on the windows and ceilings, and quite a vivid purple (Valspar's 'Purple Storm'). However, having had the room for 3 years, I feel that style both feels a bit overbearing and doesn't really reflect my personal aesthetic any more, as I've definitely got further and further into a Romantic, Gothic and very Victorian/anachronistic sort of aesthetic, and I want my study to feel more like it is inhabited by a vampire from an Anne Rice novel than one from a Tim Burton movie. I've still got the vinyl decals on my window because I simply can't get them off, and I think I'm going to have to use a heat-gun to remove them!

My window, with its bat stickers as well as SunSeal mandalas
There are a lot of pentagrams and stars hanging up in my window.

Some of the vinyl decals, those of Gothic architecture and Gothic arches, I will keep. I feel like it's still in keeping with the reproduction 1820s Gothic Revival wallpaper of window tracery, especially the arcade of grey/silver arches - something I need to get a good photograph of! I'm in two minds about the vinyl decals of buildings. I'm not sure if they are too cartoonish to look good, or if their simplicity is a good thing, or whether they should go entirely, or whether I should carefully take a scalpel to them and give them a few more details to make them a bit classier (including making some of the Romanesque arches into Gothic ones!). I don't want to make my study too Victorian either; my 1960's house doesn't have high enough ceilings to really pull off the Victorian look without feeling claustrophobic; the spaces are too horizontal. 

The rounded arches and lack of details annoy me!

I have two favourite sections of my study so far, my 'book nook' reading corner, and my feature wall. My study has a weird L-shape, with a short stubby bit over the staircase, and an above-the-stairs cupboard that I store manga and art materials in. In the stubby area, I have a book-case, a corner unit, a wicker peacock-back chair (inspired by Morticia Addams) and a two-handed broadsword! The broadsword is a claymore, the distinctive variation from Scotland. 

My book nook. Chair pulled out to get a good photograph.

The bookcase is all non-fiction. The top shelf is architecture books, the middle shelf history, culture and anthropology, and the bottom shelf is for big A4+ size books, mostly art, but a few history ones too. It's not big enough for all of my art and architecture or history books, but it's got a few. More shelving is actually something my study desperately needs, and is something I've been working on. Some friends of mine are moving to Scandinavia, and have a lovely double-Gothic-arch bookcase that I would like to buy off them, and I've put two new above-door shelves up in my study, one above the main door for ornaments, and one above the cubby door for notebooks (you can see a bracket for it, sans shelf, in the photo above). I'm awaiting some more shelves in our bedroom, so that I can move all my fiction books out of their stacks under my study desk! I've also got a stack of art books under my study desk, and another stack of art books next to the book-case, all of art books too big to go on the bottom shelf of the bookcase. I've got a few shelves above my desk, but they're for art materials, not books. 

Cubby visible in mirror!

My cubby needs a lot of work; it already has shelves, but they're too broadly spaced out, but too close to simply put an additional shelf in between - I need to take the existing shelves out and put new ones in.  There's also a crack where the back board of the cupboard has come away from the wall, and I'm not sure what the best way to deal with that is, as the problem appears to be lack of an allowance for the expansion and contraction of the building. I think perhaps an L-shaped piece of wood, attached to the brick wall and not the board, will cover the gap while allowing the different materials to expand and contract sensibly. I'm not sure whether the back wall of the cubby should have wallpaper or be painted, and if so, what colours. I also want to save up to get an electrician in, both to move the main overhead light at the conjunction of the two parts of the study, but also to install an additional light in the ceiling of the cubby, so I can see what's in there better. 

The purple and gold book is actually a Harry Potter themed lamp! They're available ::here:: and at the time of writing, they're on sale below half price at £35 (hence why I could afford one!). I'm a bit of a Harry Potter fan, so this was perfect. If there had been a silver on purple version, I would have loved that even more. I had the cover text customised to 'Liber Lux' - book of light (probably slightly wonky Latin; it's been over 12 years since I studied Latin!). When you open it up, the pages light up, and create a lovely ambient glow. I put mine on a mini-lectern/book stand so I can use it while I'm letter-writing or whatnot.

My mini-bodhran and a Gods' Eye weave.

Another thing I use my study for is music practice. I have my bodhran and my doumbek, my fiddle and a whole lot of recorders (flûte à bec, not for recording music), whistles and flutes. Eventually I wish to move my harmonium (pedal organ) up into my study, but my staircase is steep and winding, and Raven and I alone are not strong enough to carry it upstairs; I think it's a four-person job, but not a four-person staircase! I'd like to get a piano for the living-room to sit where the harmonium currently is; I used to play, and my nice piano is at my father's house. 

Raven, in front of a resin crow figure from TKMaxx
The silver and black damask bag behind has love-letters he sent me.
The silver and black box below has letters from friends and family.

I also have a desk, which is where my computer sits, and where I do a lot of my art-work. I haven't taken any proper photographs of the desk itself, because currently my desktop is just some MDF (medium-density fibreboard) and I'd like to get something like some black sparkle formica to make desk-top. I've been looking at the wonderful geode-inspired resin art-work of ::Mrs ColorBerry:: (which is totally incredible; I seriously recommend checking it out!) and I'd like to learn to do something similar to make a cool poured-resin worktop for my desk, although I wonder how heavy that would be! Raven built my desk, and to get ornate table-legs, he cut some banister spindles down to size! 

Hand-painted skulls, and easy DIY project. Just prime then paint!

I do like skull motifs, even if they are sometimes a bit kitschy. These three are small skull decorations from Hallowe'en - £2 for a pack of 9 - which I repainted using nail-polish, to immortalise some of my favourite nail-polish combinations. The iridescent green and purple one is my favourite. These skulls are tiny, about and inch and a half high each. 

I love the Art Nouveau packaging

I love burning incense in my study, although it tends to leave an ashy, dusty mess around the burner. I keep the incense for my study (which has cheesy names like 'Werewolf's Bite' or 'Gothic Prayer') in that purple vase. I used to have dried roses in the vase, but they just disintegrated entirely. I love the Art Nouveau packaging for the 'Yesteryears' incense, so I keep that particular incense out on display. The wall faces on the window aperture are painted a lighter purple (I think it's called either 'Lightning Bolt' or 'Haunting Melody'; I can't remember which of those two I eventually settled on. More Valspar paint.) 

My favourite part of my study is the wall behind where I sit at my desk. I painted it black, with silver glitter dusted into the paint, and it is the feature wall I use to display art work. The art work is on rotation. Currently I've got a lenticular image of a crow on a skull, which I think is from Alchemy Gothic, and a postcard of a cat as Moriarty (having stolen the crown jewels). Half of the picture frames are from TKMaxx and Dunelm Mill, and the other half are thrifted. I'm starting to swap out the artwork for fine art images. Not really visible in this picture, but the image in the concentric rectangles frame at the upper left is a postcard of a Edward Burne Jones sketch  (it is of a woman looking down to her left, with a crown of golden leaves, done in chalks or pastels on a purple background, you can see a version ::here::). I'm going to hopefully fill all the frames with classic art soon, just need to accumulate prints/postcards at the right size. The picture of my father (at work, he's an archaeologist) on the far right is going to be re-framed in a black frame and moved to our bedroom, where we have a wall of friends and family pictures.

Display wall from the other angle, with sword.
Also note the Gothic Revival wallpaper in grey.

You may have noticed I have another sword. I collect them, especially antiques. The sword on my display wall is an antique officer's dress sword from the 1870s-1880s, from Italy, with a beautifully engraved blade. I love the duality of beautifully made weaponry; both artistic and aesthetic, yet designed for a lethal function. There are dents along the spine of the dress sword that indicate it's been used in some form of combat, and I wonder if someone fought a duel with it. It's definitely not a battle weapon (unlike say, a cavalry sabre). 

Unfinished wall with broken sconce; the mirror got shattered.

As you can see, this is not a complete over view of my study, and there is much left to do. I'm going to put a Gothic arched cabinet over my radiator, and I've got facings to put on the shelves over my door. I need to take more pictures of things I have added to my study, like the two new shelves. I still don't have a final floor covering; I've got a rug over floor-boards as I can't afford enough laminate flooring to cover my study yet (however I do have a roll of underlay!). I'm going to try and 3D print a single tile of cornice, then make a mould, and then use that to make dozens of foam ones, in order to get a repeating Gothic arch design to go around where the ceiling connects to the walls. I've already painted skirting board gloss black, but I can't put that in until I've got the laminate floor down. I still don't have enough shelving, as detailed above, and I still have lots of stuff in boxes. 

If my readers are interested, I can update the blog with progress on my study, and with how other rooms are decorated. Please comment if you want to see more of the Gothic décor in my house. There's the witchy living & dining area mentioned before, a French belle-epoque inspired aesethetic, just with added skulls, for our main bedroom, a more modern take on Gothic decor for the spare bedroom/games room and the kitchen. The upstairs hallway is going to be quite opulent, with some really fabulous wall-paper, but I'm still currently stripping the original wallpaper! 

I also suggest checking out two Gothic DIY blogs:
::GIY: Goth It Yourself::, which is currently on hiatus, but which has an archive of PLENTY of projects worth reading and looking at, and

::Me And Annabel Lee:: which is also full of wonderful Gothic decorating and craft ideas and tutorials. 

'Goth' and 'Gothic; A Disambiguation

Most of my readers probably already know the difference, but I commonly see the two words used interchangeably, so I feel like a disambiguation could be useful. I guess part of the reason is that the Goth subculture is built upon the Gothic, but Goth is a more complex layering.

The term Gothic comes from the name of the architectural style, which itself was a misnomer. The pointed-arch style which is called Gothic was named so after Neo-Classical styles became fashionable, where the pointed arch style was misattributed to the historical Germanic tribes, whereas it mostly originated in France. The application of the term to things that were a specific kind of 'spooky' came a bit later, with late Romanticism bringing about a certain sort of horror novel, where an atmospheric setting was an essential component as much as supernatural elements, and the setting was often something like an old castle or abbey or such building, and often those buildings were Gothic - because by the 18thC those buildings were already centuries old and a good few had plenty of myths and legends already attached to them. That genre of horror, at that time primarily literary, but with a few illustrations and artworks beginning to emerge, which became the 'Gothic novel'.

As time progressed, the elements of the Gothic novel - the conflict between good and evil, the idea of there being a secret or mystery to uncover, the supernatural entities such as ghosts, vampires and werewolves (or the 'explained supernatural' of the likes of the works of Ann Radcliffe), and the atmospheric setting - got applied to more works in other mediums, such as paintings, poems, plays, music and into the 20thC cinema.

It is this Gothic genre which underpins a lot of the Goth subculture - it has given us a fashion aesthetic, an attitude of dark Romanticism, and plenty of subject matter for songs - however, it has also influenced aspects of metal, and there's plenty of people who enjoy aspects of the Gothic without being members of any subculture too, they just read a lot of Gothic novels and watch vampire movies. Those elements have permeated pop-culture, as well as subcultures, and are very prevalent. Often, when something is misidentified as 'Goth', what has been identified has been an element of the Gothic.

So, what makes Goth different to the Gothic?
I would say - in general terms, with exceptions - that all Goths are Gothic, not all Gothic things (or people) are Goth. The Gothic is the fertile ground from which Goth grew, but Goth is more than just an appreciation for the Gothic, and it has a very specific manifestation.

While Goth is a manifestation of the Gothic, Goth has more elements to it than just the Gothic, and it is something more specific. Most obviously, it has the Goth genre (and it's subgenres/similar enough genres) of music; the stuff that evolved out of '80s post-punk. You can see the influences of the Gothic in the lyric content and imagery of that '80s post-punk ("Bela Lugosi's Dead, Undead..." playing vampires in Gothic horror movies), but there are other visual, philosophical, and musical influences in that genre. Goth as a subculture is an eclectic amalgam of other aspects of primarily Western culture - it's taken from fetish culture, it's got fuzzy borders with the realms of metal (Fields of the Nephilim... ), it's taken horror tropes from outside the Gothic genre of horror (a I know a lot of Goths that are interested in the murderous psychopath sort of horror stories, for example), and it balances nihilism and Romanticism. Goth came about in the '80s, so there's stuff in the Goth fashion/style that's just a darker adaptation of what was popular in the '80s, such as angular makeup and back-combed hair. Goth also grew from punk, so there's aspects of punk thinking, although somewhat less political, in Goth, too, obvious in Goth's emphasis on the resistance of individuality despite external pressures to conform.

For example, while I'm a Goth because I like Goth music, try and make it to gigs when I can, participate in the club scene (as dwindling as it is where I live), have an attitude with roots in those movements outside of the Gothic that influenced Goth, and I take aesthetic cues from Goth fashion as well as Romantic fashion, I'm fundamentally also Gothic because that is the underpinning mind set - which, in me personally manifests itself in a love for the Gothic as originated in Gothic novels; the ruined architecture, the spooky castles, the ghosts and vampires, the cemeteries, the ancient curses and that dramatic, Byronic sort of decadence... 'Gothic' is the broader umbrella under which Goth shelters. It's also probably the term which should replace 'Goth' in terms like 'Pastel-Goth' or 'Cholo-Goth' which seem to have very little to do with the Goth subculture, but do have a connection to the darker things in life and, at least with Pastel Goth, I've seen Gothic elements like vampires, ghosts, bats and zombies as motifs.

I've seen terms like 'Darksider' and 'Schwarz Szene' to describe the broader miasma of dark subcultures (I'd say 'cloud' but we're being spooky here!) including Industrial, Cyber-Goth, and some parts of Metal, and I don't think Gothic can really replace that, because certainly some of the darkness embraced  in these subcultures is from quite a different angle than that within the Gothic genre - lots of dystopian, science-fiction inspiration exists in Industrial and Cyber-Goth especially, and again, the sort of horror that explores themes of madness, psychopathy, and a generally more 'clinical' (for lack of a better word) look into why people do terrible things, rather than a philosophical or supernatural/religious angle. There are still elements of the Gothic, however - songs about demons, devils, vampires and ghosts, supernatural motifs and a sort of Gothic-meets-science-fiction reminiscent of things like the 'Doom' gaming franchise, it just seems to be less of a thematic core, and certainly less of a strong underlying principle or aesthetic.

[An aside on Pastel-Goth: I've seen the term 'Creepy-Cute' used for what is known as 'Pastel-Goth'and I know that this is probably related to the play on words  in Japanese between 'kawaii' (cute) and 'kowoi' (scary), so maybe that is a better term altogether? I also don't know what this aesthetic is called in Japan, which appears to be where it originated.]

I think the word "Gothic" as a term to describe a person whose personality includes that sort of mind-set, those interests, that sort of aesthetic, is under-utilised, and is the answer for a lot of people who aren't Goth specifically, but want an umbrella to identify with - 'Gothic' is probably the better term. Certainly, it's an adjective rather than a noun, and lot of us are used to rolling our eyes (perhaps discreetly) when asked "so, are you a 'goffik'?" but I think it's the perfect term for people who love spooky things, but aren't so keen on the sound of the genres considered 'Goth' and would rather listen to say, metal or darker classical works, or maybe darker folk or similar, and just can't get into fishnet and backcombed hair, and hate clubbing, and as all Goths are inherently a bit Gothic anyway, we're all under the same spooky umbrella, so it's not excluding anyone by saying they're not a Goth, rather including a wider range of people by saying 'we're all Gothic', and most of the arguments over the term Goth don't really stem form what Goth is or isn't, but whether someone is included or excluded from the category. 

Carpe Nocturne Interview

I have been interviewed in the fall issue of Carpe Nocturne magazine. 

Feeling regal in the forest

::Carpe Nocturne:: magazine interviewed me electronically this summer for their fall 2016 edition of the magazine, as part of their Goth Fashion Around The World writings. It live far from the metropolis, previously living in Culloden and having moved since then, so I'm writing from both a rural perspective (primarily from the Highland scene, as that's what I've become part of), and from someone in Scotland (although I'm not Scottish; I'm 'Franglais' - if you hear me talk it's funny because I say all these Scottish words and phrases with this cut-glass English accent!). It was quite interesting to write about, because I hadn't really thought about if the fashion here is any different to anywhere else before. 

I haven't actually got my printed copy yet (it is being shipped from the US and I have an estimated delivery date in December), but I took part in two photo-shoots for my interview, with the image above being one of the results, so it's hopefully illustrated too. The other photo-shoot was in Steam-Goth attire, and that's going to get its own post later this month. You can find the magazine in print at Barnes & Noble ::here:: or digitally via Magzter ::here::. I'll probably write about this some more when I get my copy in the mail! 

As this was for a fashion interview, I should probably talk about what I'm wearing, so here's an outfit run-down:

♕ Circlet: hand-made, bought via Far Fetched, Inverness
♕ Small bat pendant: ::Vampyr:: by Alchemy Gothic, secondhand on eBay
♕ Large bat pendant: ::Gothic Bat:: by Alchemy Gothic, secondhand on eBay

♕ Bat brooch: A.R. Brown, secondhand on eBay
♕ Cropped jacket: Golden Steampunk, via ::Corsets UK:: (no longer available)♕ Ruffled shirt: Debbie Suchat, secondhand n eBay

♕ Lace gloves: Claire's Accessories

♕ Celtic belt buckle: ::Two Dragons:: by St. Justin, secondhand on eBay
♕ Long mesh cardigan: New Look, secondhand on eBay
♕ Skirt: Raven, secondhand on eBay

♕ Leggings: 'Macbeth' leggings by ::Punk Rave::

♕ Boots: no identifying label remaining, secondhand on eBay

I was aiming for a mixture of Nu-Goth and Romantic Goth in this outfit - the mesh jacket and boots are definitely Nu-Goth, but the jacket and shirt are both more Romantic, and the skirt is somewhere between Romantic in its use of satin and lace, but punkier in its cut and style, and the leggings are a wonderful modern-meets-Romantic design from ::Punk Rave::. I'm a big fan of their styles; they offer a fresh and unique take on Romantic Goth fashion, probably because of the influence of Japanese Goth and Visual Kei fashion on their designs. These leggings are a) the only leggings I own because I usually hate leggings and b) one of my favourite garments, despite how I usually hate leggings! - I love the lacing up at the front, the embroidered mesh panel and the (nearly impossible to photograph) paisley-esque pattern embossed into the pleather; they're gorgeous, they make my legs look longer, and I love them.

A lot of people bash Nu-Goth as a whole as just being a trend based off the Goth aesthetic, but as long as it isn't divorced from the Gothic subculture, I see nothing wrong with it. To begin with, I was one of the people quite skeptical, wondering if Nu-Goth was like how Mall-Goth was when I became Goth; tangental but related, with witch-house music like Ritualz, CHVRCHES and Zola Jesus being the new 'not Goth, but dark' music, taking the cultural place of H.I.M, Marilyn Manson and Evanescence had in introducing teens to the darker subcultures, but now that I've thought about it more, I realise that this isn't a bad thing, any more than Mall-Goth was (after all, I was a Mall-Goth when I was a baby-bat!) as while some of it involves disaffected teenagers trying to hard to be ~edgy and dark~, a lot of it is sincere, and gives the subculture some fresh blood and new influences to keep it alive. Also, a lot of Nu-Goth people are actually into the Goth subculture as a whole, not just the parts that are Nu-Goth.

I'm not going to turn Nu-Goth, even if I might like witch-house music; while I like some elements of Nu-Goth fashion, the overall aesthetic is just too minimal and modern for my tastes, but I'm not going to balk at incorporating elements of it that I do like, and I'm going to keep adding pieces from brands like Punk Rave that bridge the gap between the modern and the historically inspired.

Also, note how much of what I wear is secondhand; it's cheaper, there's no shame in it, and secondhand clothes from a variety of original sources means I have outfits that are quite unique compared to if I bought everything I own directly from what Goth brands are selling right now. A lot of my Goth clothes, although not in this specific outfit, are from the '90s and '00s, too - some are from the '80s, but sizes back then seem to run small and do not fit on this Goth of Amazonian proportions! Buying clothes secondhand - and selling on unwanted clothes - is good for the environment, too, as the manufacture of clothes is actually very resource intensive, and the dyeing process especially has pollution issues, so keeping existing clothes circulating rather than increasing the demand for new clothes helps. (I'm writing a whole long post on ethical fashion).

Photograph by my partner Raven. He did run a photography business called Chance Photography, but he's now taken down his website to focus both on advancing in his nursing studies, and to set up a jewellery business. Photograph is in the woods by my house (the new go-to location for my outfit photos since I moved away from the meadow!). 

Disclosures: 

1) I am now working with Punk Rave and will be doing an upcoming sponsored post, but I'm not being paid to endorse them here; this is outwith that - I'm saying this because I genuinely love those leggings. I also only accept sponsored endorsements from companies I actually like, anyway. 

2) The above image is from a photoshoot for a magazine; it's air-brushed, tweaked and poked at (mostly by myself), plus has been artfully lit, posed and taken from my best angles by my partner Raven - in real life I've got worse skin, I look shorter (I'm 5'9½") and my legs probably look chunkier, especially when I'm not wearing 7-inch heels! Body positivity includes owning up to digital editing! I'm a UK size 12, not especially thin. 

Metal Meets Goth Near Loch An Eilein

As I mentioned last year, I am slowly embarking on a project of photographing members of the local Goth community. This set is one of two I took of my friend Joel at a ruined building on the shores of Loch an Eilein, at Rothiemurchus in Speyside. This is the first of three sets of photos that will have come from that day out - these are the ones I took on my little point-and-click camera as tests of different poses, etc. I also brought the Canon camera and took proper photographs on a proper camera, but I mislaid my memory card with those on. I also took photos of Loch an Eilein's ruined castle in the middle of it. I would love to visit that castle by boat... something I may have to try and arrange in the future with the castle's owner.

Joel is both a Goth and a Metalhead, and his outfit for the photoshoot was meant to reflect that, and I had a lot of fun doing his make-up; I don't often get to do make-up on men or in different styles. 

Photograph by HouseCat

I'm not quite sure what I was aiming for, specifically with the make-up; I went with something akin to the effect of wearing a half-mask with the shading drawn on, but it wasn't refined enough to exactly create this effect, plus the make-up over the eyes and bridge of the nose doesn't fit in with that theme. I guess in the end it was abstract geometry and shading. Either way, Joel seemed to like it, and I was quite happy with how it turned out. Crisp lines were achieved with using tape to mask. Using bandage/dressing tape seems to work best for this sort of thing. 

Photograph by HouseCat

I really like all of the textures in Joel's outfit. The complex strapped arm-piece is one really cool accessory, and I'm a little jealous of Joel because it looks pretty darn cool. I actually lent Joel a few of my spikes, even though he has heaps of his own, to balance it out with an eclectic selection of spikes on the other arm. I also lent him one of my spiked chokers, to layer with his own. I don't wear spikes half as much as I used to; I guess my fashion these days leans too much to the anachronistic to embrace the punkier aspects I used to love. Perhaps some of my spikier Goth friends will end up being a better home for bits of my collection. 

Photograph by HouseCat

Taking these photographs was a scramble through rough ground. I was wearing trousers, army boots and a rain-coat, and the weather wasn't warm. I'm surprised Joel wasn't complaining about it being chilly in that mesh shirt! The building (I am not sure if it was a boat-house or fishing lodge for the loch or what) is partly mounded around by rubble and earth, and I did climb up the mound for photographs, but they will probably be in the other set when I find the memory card for the better camera. 

Photograph by HouseCat

I think my photography skills have improved since ::this:: photoshoot I took of Ducky and Catastrophe Plague at Beauly priory (not that I'm not still pretty chuffed with the photos I took then). I am going to continue with my Gothic photography project, documenting visually the variety of Goths in the Highland scene. In the not-to-distant future there will be the second set of photographs of Joel taken with 'the good camera' and also the photographs of the island castle of the 'Wolf of Badenoch'. [Who needs Game of Thrones if you live in Scotland? We've even got a Wester Ross...]

Raven took this photo of me taking a photo.

I've been taking photographs of other things too - there's more graveyards, old churches and creepy things coming up, as per usual. I'm on summer break now, and trying to make up for how little I was posting while studying. University is more work than a full-time job; I've never been so busy in my life, not even when I was studying before. I'm also working on decorating the house and sorting the garden this summer, so I won't be posting every day, but updates will now be far more regular. 

Summer Garden Goth

An Outfit Of The Day Post

This is actually last Friday's "outfit of the day" - well, I actually wore three different outfits that day for different things; work, rest and a dinner date, but this was the one I photographed, and I think it would be a bit weird if I posted every single outfit I wear. This one was a bit a fancier, and I think it looked quite nice, so I am posting it up here. The skirt is familiar - it is my favourite skirt, from Restyle, but you will see that my hair has changed quite a bit. This outfit has obvious Gothic Lolita influence, but I wouldn't class it as actually Gothic Lolita because of the stripy tights, hair, and lack of accessories. 

I no longer have a beautiful meadow right near my apartment to be photographed in, but I now live in my own house (well, Raven's and mine) and we have our own garden. It was left untended for quite a while 0 I think the property was vacant for some time over the growing season, and now it is a bit unkempt. There are some lovely rose bushes that I really must photograph, but for the most part it is scruffy and a bit overgrown in places with weeds. There are some nice fields near where I live, but I would need to be photographed by a second person, whereas I just plonked my laptop on top of the bins and used the timer function on webcam for these. There was not much time between having to poke the laptop and it taking a picture, so getting far enough away from the laptop for my whole body to get in shot while wearing platform boots was a bit tricky, especially as I am co-ordinationally challenged at the best of times! Scampering about the garden in ridiculous boots is not exactly something I am good at. 

Selfie by HouseCat

Outfit run-down: ☠ Blouse: HellBunny ☠ Cincher: Restyle ☠ Skirt: Restyle Stripy stockings: can't remember who made them, bought them in Osiris, Glasgow ☠ Boots: TUK ☠ Gloves: Accessorise ☠ Necklace: secondhand on eBay, not sure who made it. 

It's not the best set of photographs to show my new hair-dye off (I will make a post soon just about my hair), but it is now violet underneath, then a layer of royal blue, then turquoise, then spring green on top, with gradiation. I did it myself, and it took a whole day of dyeing to get it done, and lots of bleach to get my dark, nearly-black regrowth to blonde. In the next few days, expect a proper blog post on my hair in all its rich colours. The filters I used on editing these photos washed out quite a lot of the colour. In real life, it is quite vibrant. 

Selfie by HouseCat

I wasn't wearing the most complicated make-up that day. It was just thick eyeliner with wings and points, basic foundation and some lip-gloss. I was going to work later and I did not want to spend a long time on elaborate makeup just to take it all off again! 

Selfie by HouseCat

As mentioned, these are taken on my webcam, which is not the best camera. If anything, it's somewhere about "potato quality" and both low resolution and poor at handling varied lighting. I edited them in ::PicMonkey::, which is what I edit all my selfies with. The only way these could be worse if I had taken them on my phone-cam. When I have my new house set up, I am going to mount a camera opposite a relatively blank wall so that I can have somewhere to take decent outfit of the day selfies. This blog will probably end up with more outfit posts on account that I will not have as much time to write extensively. 

Selfie by HouseCat

This outfit was something of a trial run for what I am going to wear to my induction day for University. I don't want to wear a completely fancy "vampire queen" sort of outfit, nor do I want to look too plain, because then I will feel like I am giving a false impression. I think the changes I will make are to wear a plain black blouse rather than the feather print one - something less visually cluttered - with a statement necklace. I will also swap out the striped stockings for plain black tights or over-the-knee socks, and swap the platform boots for something a bit easier to walk in. As much as I love my big platform boots, I do have quite severe dyspraxia, and wearing them out and about is impractical for me.  I have a tendency to try and pretend that wearing very high heeled footwear is a good idea and do it anyway, but it always ends badly (and often painfully). I will probably also wear more extravagant makeup, and braid my hair so that all the colours show through more. 

How I Came To Realise I Was Goth

One of the most frequently asked questions I get is "How did you become a Goth?", but I don't think I became anything, I think I just followed the road marked out by the things I like.

I think my preferences happen to align with the Goth subculture in many ways, but when I decided "I am going to be Goth" it was not really with any understanding of what Goth was, and what I became was a pretentiously 'rebelious' teen for a few months, and then over the next few years discovered more and more of how this subculture I had chosen for all the wrong reasons was actually home for all the right reasons. Usually, when I am asked this, I have to either explain in conversation, or at best get a paragraph or two to write - I wanted to write out the story of this chapter in my life a bit more fully. I've written thousands of words here, I know, but even that has not touched on everything.  

One of the things I have written about in the past was ::this article:: on how Church music, and spending a lot of my childhood in various ecclesiastical buildings has influenced me. I looked at these incredible structures towering over my head, lit by the sun shining through stained glass, interiors often painted white or beautifully decorated with murals, filled with richly carved wooden furniture, the music of the choir and the sound of pipe organs, and to me this was the closest to Heaven you could find in the human world - I always felt the wild was the closest you could get to Heaven while still alive, as far away from the rest of the human race as possible, but the beauty I experienced in church made a close second. I rarely felt spiritually connected by church services, but I felt something close in singing old polyphonic choral songs with the choir, when the harmonies rang out just right and summoned a glimpse of something holy and glorious. If Heaven had cities, in my imagination, they were entirely built of medieval Gothic architecture, like the illustrations in old manuscripts of white shining cities of spires and towers, and filled with music of angels singing. I was never entirely sure there actually was a Heaven or a Hell, but I liked to imagine that there might be, just so there could be somewhere perfect and untainted.

It was never cool amongst those I encountered to have this sort of imagination, especially as a child, not even a teenager. It wasn't something I could share with other children - even my more religious peers seemed to think there was something a bit dorky or strange about my feelings, and very few seemed to have any sort of personal religious experiences. I was starting to have more and more of those sorts of experiences... but outside of Church and the framework of Christianity (but this would diverge into the territory of "how I became Pagan"). 

I definitely became aware at quite an early age that my reaction to this sort of thing was unusual, and as my peers became teenagers, and my spirituality diverge further from Christianity, I felt quite isolated and unique (in a bad way) in my reaction. I don't think I actually am unique, just that during that point in my life, there was nobody I knew who seemed to have the same reaction, to feel the same way and as strongly. Perhaps they did, but those people were probably adults and felt uncomfortable talking to a small child about these sorts of things, or perhaps other children who felt like this had the social understanding to realise that speaking up about these sorts of things wasn't considered normal. I seemed to see jewels in the pictorial windows where others only saw painted glass, and the glory of the Divine glittering in the candle light where others just saw fire, and heard the voices of angels echoed in the practice of the parish church choir where other people just heard accidental dischords and humble harmonies.

This difference between how I felt about Church was one of the many things that taught me the bad habit of not talking about what made me happy because it would often just be something else that set me apart and probably get me into trouble. Being able to openly talk about what I enjoy is probably the greatest blessing of the Gothic subculture. I have this blog, I am a member of online communities, I have Goth and Goth-friendly friends, and I can actually rejoice and talk at length about what I love, openly, freely and with enthusaism, knowing that others feel the way I do about these things and share that passion and interest. 

I didn't feel any connection to the Christian concept of God, but I could see there was something genuinely Divine in truly spiritual art, and the first spiritual art I came across came from a Catholic and Church of England context, so I wasn't aware yet that I would feel the same when I came across Buddhist chants, statuary and artwork, or that I would feel completely humbled by the sky at Stonehenge rather than the stones themselves. I guess in some ways this sort of strong emotional connection to the art, architecture and music of medieval to Victorian Britain and Europe gave me a direct connection to the Gothic in the art historical and literary meanings of the word.

When I was at primary school and the other girls in my class started caring about being pretty and fashionable (or at least wearing the kinds of clothes popular with other girls their own age, rather than fashionable in terms of what grown women would have considered fashionable in the mid 1990s), I was more interested in wearing tomboy clothes and my big black duffle-coat, and a bit later, when I tried experimenting with make-up, I decided I wanted to look scary rather than pretty and drew my eyebrows in arched and pointed, and painted my lips deep red; when other girls wanted to be a Spice Girl, I wanted to be Morticia Addams. Later, in my early teens, I decided that purple and black eye-makeup like a tonally-shifted Cleopatra was what I wanted - not a long distance from the Siouxsie-esque dramatic make-up of Trad-Goths! I think this is when I started to realise that a) what I cared about in regards to my appearance was not really in line with what most other people cared about or thought was the "right" way to look and b) that not looking "normal" was going to get me bullied even more.

For a while after I started boarding school, I decided that as it was a clean start that I would at least try and look normal and fashionable, but I could never quite get the look done 'right'. Like the rest of my attempts to pass as normal and give the impression of normalcy in order to try and fit in, it just added to my fears and anxiety, and left me feeling constantly worried about when I would be "found out" as a "weirdo" and "freak" - something that came about soon enough. My feigned interests in popular culture was always caught out as faked when I just didn't have the shared cultural knowledge base of those genuinely interested, when I couldn't pretend to be enthusiastic convincingly enough, when I made a constant stream of little faux-pas, when I accidentally let slip my genuine interests... 

I eventually gave up the pretence for the sake of my sanity, and it was at this point I used my mistaken idea of Goth and attemptedly Gothic fashion choices as a way to signal that yes I was a "weirdo", a "freak" and "creepy", but that I was PROUD to be those things, and that maybe those who had been bullying me and ostracising me ought to be a bit afraid - of course, with my attempts at Goth being so poorly executed, I think I managed to be more pathetic than intimidating, but at least I felt confident at the time, which is more than I had ever been before. I would imagine that this last paragraph resonates with quite a few of my readers, as this seems to be quite a common experience amongst Goths and other Alternative lifestyle folk.

Of course, I was not really a Goth at that point, or really part of Gothic culture - I had grasped onto something through which I felt I could resist the pressures around me - both by rebelliously trying to appear as the antithesis of what was expected of me and the opposite of what those around me lauded as good and proper, and by doing something that felt very freeing, as I decided to shed all that was conventional and desired of me, and do something outrageous, something that meant I would never again have to pretend to be "normal" by the very narrow standards of those around me. This initial "Goth" phase was short lived, but I had thrown off my shackles through it, and it started me on the path to actually becoming a Goth. 

After that point, I became more interested in actually Gothic things - I had always loved science fiction and fantasy, and had already a tendency towards liking the darker parts of what I'd had access to - the latter Harry Potter books had plenty of rather Gothic themes in them, and out of all the strands in those books, these were probably the aspects I had liked most, and I had loved books like Phillip Pullman's Dark Materials Trilogy. I loved the worlds these authors had crafted, full of magic, Gothic architecture, monsters, villains and people who had to accept that their world wasn't perfect and good, just as ours is not perfect and good, and as I became a teenager and started reading more books aimed at adults, I looked towards more books that would satiate this. I began with Michael Moorcock's Elric novels, with the sadistic Melniboneans, the strange and beautiful worlds, the cursed sword and other elements that while still High Fantasy of an almost surreal nature, were definitely erring towards the darker and more bloody. 

I then got into vampires and started reading the Vampire Chronicles by Anne Rice and their lavishly described dances through time and place as the long and fascinating lives of her vampires were recounted just drew me in - even her latter novels, which I now recognise as not necessarily being her best, drew me in as a teenage fangirl. I wanted to live life for the experience, travel the world, and have grand adventures, and long centuries to do so, like one of her vampires, and of course, have some torrid romance with a beautiful creature of the night (oh, how foolish of me!). I was also reading comics at this point, especially things from the Gotham world by DC and also Witchblade, which I initially thought horribly violent, and then thought was actually pretty cool. 

I didn't deliberately choose my reading by "what is Gothic", otherwise I would have probably read far more vampire books at that point! I just read what I found interesting, what fed my imagination, what transported me to worlds far away from the life I currently had, from my depression, from my isolation, from everything that made me unhappy. It was escapism, but at least it was imaginative escapism full of creativity and full of themes that introduced me to stuff that I probably would not otherwise have found to be interesting. I tended towards more traditional high fantasy when miserable, and then darker fantasy when I was more cheerful and thus not liable to end up morose from reading too many novels full of sadness and tragedy. 

Whether it was books (which I read a lot of), comics (which I read a few of), films (which I was rarely able to see), video games (which I think is an anachronistic term, and which I only got to play at friend's houses as we were too poor for such things) or TV (which I hardly watched), the themes, characters, imagery and setting I kept being drawn to was what I would later come to identify as the Gothic in the literary meaning of the term. I don't think that it was that these things influenced me to like more and darker things, it is that I seemed to like dark things anyway and went in search of them; these things connected with me on some inner level. 

Gothic novels are so named after the architecture that often serves as the setting, and which is often a part of the plot, or even almost a 'character' itself (I think of the the great citadel-castle of Gormenghast, for example), and that itself stirred a chord, reminding me of all the cathedrals, churches and castles that I loved (and still love, as a quick look through the 'architecture' tag in the sidebar will show!) and I felt at home there, even if these versions were haunted by monsters and ghosts. A lot of the time, in my social alienation, I felt like I might be the monster doing the haunting, not quite human, never truly acceptable. A bit melodramatic, I know, but as a teenager I think I was prone to melodrama. 

Often times, the horror of the Gothic is brought about through an atmosphere of menace, of the anticipation that something horrible is coming - and that tension drew me in. I felt like the world was closing in on me in real life, and to have fictional characters survive more terrible (and often more supernatural) terrors and live in dread of what was to come was something I could identify with, and as the good overcame the evil through personal strength, I hoped maybe I could overcome the things that were troubling me. I still struggle with anxiety issues, and, often feel like everything in my life is about to go wrong, like I am always on the brink of the next disaster (perhaps because I have gone through so many things that have severely impacted my life in a negative way, and I find it hard to believe that any respite from that is anything but temporary, even after years have passed) and as such, that ominous atmosphere was something that seemed familiar, but at the same time was distanced enough through fantasy to be safe, manageable. 

A lot of Gothic novels address the supernatural, some more realistically than others. Most opt for terrible monsters that are quite fantastical (for example, the traditional werewolves, vampires and zombies), but others are stories of magic, ghosts, spirits, and curses - things that I have experienced in the real world, perhaps not always as they are written about in fiction, but they certainly  seem very real and very much a part of our world. I am, after all, basically a witch (even if I'm not overly fond of that word). I have been having supernatural (or praeternatural) experiences since I was a child, and while modern society in Britain is often very secular, atheist and disbelieving when it comes to such occurrences, I have had too many strange things happen to me to claim they do not exist. I guess some people might think me credulous, gullible or perhaps mentally ill for those experiences, or decide that they are a subconscious expression of childhood trauma or something, but as far as I am concerned, they are as real as any ordinary thing. I am not afraid of them, nor think that experiencing them makes me special, they are just another part of the world, alongside more mundane things like trees or cars or toasters. Reading fiction that actually addressed these things, written sometimes by people whose accuracy in what they present compared to what I have experienced, and what I know about things like the occult and witchcraft lend me to believe that the authors have experienced something similar, let me feel a little less alone. Anyone who has seen The Sixth Sense knows that you can't just tell people that you see ghosts! 

(Nobody can talk of why ghost stories are still relevant quite like Neil Gaiman in ::this:: article for the New York Times)

While ghost stories and vampire novels were giving me an introduction to the Gothic in literature, and to contemporary horror writing, I was still not that much of a Goth yet, and my musical tastes were rather eclectic and I didn't encounter Gothic rock of the post-punk, darkwave, French coldwave and similar varieties until my late teens. The first music that really stirred me, from outside of classical and ecclesiastical music, was the prog rock, folk rock and psychedelia my Dad would occasionally play in the car. I was brought up with Joni Mitchell, Yes (I have my own Yes compilation CD set...) The Moody Blues (before they went commercial), Jefferson Airplane, The Strawbs, Spyrogyra, etc. etc. There are songs from that era that spoke to me, and which I still adore - especially Moody Blues songs about the emptiness of space, the vastness of the universe, melancholia and the transience of life. A turning point was when I heard Melancholy Man by the Moody Blues for the first time, when it goes into the second section, with booming synthesised organ, wailing chorus and dirging guitars - I was transfixed. A song had grabbed hold of something in a way that had not happened since the soaring descant in Allegri's Miserere in church, but this time I felt like a song was singing about someone I could empathise with. I felt like the outsider, who could not see the world like others do, and in my minds eye I was watching something halfway between the rapture and a science-fiction apocalypse as they sang... Sure, it certainly was not Goth rock, and it wasn't even the symphonic metal I started with when it came to attempting 'being a Goth', but it is that same sort of reaction to a song that I have sought after ever since. 

The next song to really change my musical perspective was Severance by Dead Can Dance. I wasn't really into any form of Goth music yet at the point where I encountered Dead Can Dance; I found a CD of theirs that looked atmospheric in the school's archive of music for theatrical performances while working on a production of The Crucible by Arthur Miller (a play about the Salem witch trials, and a metaphor for the McCarthy-era 'witch-hunt' for possible communists). The CD was 'The Serpent's Egg' and the cover and name looked a bit spooky and witchy, so I stuck it in CD player and had a listen. I'd struck shuffle instead of repeat by accident, and I think the second song I heard was Severance - again, I got transfixed by music, my head filled with visions of wide and open spaces, leaden skies, and a solitary tree with its last leaves caught on the wind, birds flying in migration formation high above me... Dead Can Dance became my new favourite band, but I didn't know how they fitted into a musical context, or what bands might be similar, so I unfortunately did not end up getting into Goth via Dead Can Dance as an entry point. 

A few years later I did finally encounter proper Goth rock - in the intermediary years  I did however get into symphonic metal (Nightwish, Within Temptation, etc.) and the kind of music that got labeled 'Goth' by mainstream media that doesn't understand what Goth is (Marilyn Manson, Evanescence, Rammstein).  While I was doing music in my late teens, my teacher/lecturer (I was studying at the local community college) a very classically minded and trained fellow, was also a bit of an ex-punk and knew quite a bit about various rock genres. I think he got a bit fed up with my ignorance on Goth, so when we had to write about an album that marked a changing point in music history, he encouraged me to pick something out of Goth rock history... I ended up listening to a big chunk of the back catalogue of the big-name 'original Goth bands' (Siouxsie Sioux, Joy Division, The Cure, Bauhaus, etc.) and was torn between writing about Unknown Pleasures by Joy Division and Press The Eject And Give Me Tape by Bauhaus... so wrote about JuJu by Siouxsie and the Banshees as I felt it was their first really Gothic album (I tried arguing that in my essay, and now when I look back on it, I'm not sure I was right - but we go to school to learn, right?). I fell in love with this genre of music I hadn't really explored before and I think finally became a proper Goth that understood what Goth actually was, where it came from, and learnt about what the subculture was like beyond the other babybats I had encountered so far. JuJu ended up the first album I bought on vinyl, and my fashion, which went through phases of experimentation with other subculturally affiliated styles but had returned to mostly Goth, fixed itself firmly in black, and my love for all things both Goth and Gothic just grew. 

About a year later I went to a Goth club for the first time, and I started mixing with the Goth scene outside of people who went to college with me or school with me in the past, and suddenly met all these wonderful people and was making new friends - actually making lots of friends rather than having only a small handful of people I talked to. I had a proper social life, I had a community I was part of, and I think I realised that this was where I belonged, and I have never looked back.