Selkie fall 2023, inspired by Lucy of Bram Stoker’s Dracula

actually dark wood and carved ornamentation and gilding and clawed feet and ornate gold frames on paintings and etchings and gothic arches and jewel-toned velvet upholstery and tapestries

so jot that down

intricate ceilings and chandeliers, if you even care

"This is beautiful" and "this is a nightmare to clean" are, alas, facts that coexist.

I don’t want to find out about world events anymore

in addition to the fact that people just have different natural rhythms, a big reason why we can’t seem to go to bed as early as we “should” is that nighttime is, for many of us, our safest and most fulfilling time of day. we don’t have to work, we won’t be contacted by bosses or insurance companies or collection agencies or other suffocating life business… we’re likely only to be contacted by our friends, or by no one at all. night time is release; it’s ours. we can rest or recreate. we can do things we actually want to do. who would choose to cut that short?? just to usher in the next morning when our lives are not our own again? nighttime is precious and nothing could be more normal than the desire to embrace this

So, y’all remember that post that said animals in urban areas slowly became nocturnal to avoid encounters with humans? Apparently that includes humans.

Goth DIY

It has become apparent that the gothy DIY knowledge of years past has not fluttered out to many folks. Here, let me give you some quick suggestions:

Things To Do To Any Garment:

And finally, here's the Gothic Charm School post on Gothy DIY essentials! Go forth and alter your clothes!

Because the "goth is bougie" discourse nonsense made me realize I should reblog this ...

Ghosts by Katherine Blower

Mer!Will is a cannibalistic lil guy. Basking after feeding.

INTERVIEW WITH THE VAMPIRE (1994) dir. Neil Jordan

I feel very defensive about the "goth is bougie" shit because it is historically incorrect, yes, but also and more personally, because it just erases the generations of goth kids who grew up in trailer parks and project housing or just straight up homeless, helping each other out.

I suspect this may be the topic that draws me out of my torpor about updating the actual Gothic Charm School site, but some quick asides here: The majority of goth fashion in the 80s, 90s, and early 2000s was DIY out of necessity. Even when there WERE pre-made goth clothes (Lip Service, Bogies, indie designers), most of us couldn't afford them. Even basic goth staples like fishnets and black lipstick or nail polish weren't available year-round. We waited until Halloween and cleared out the costume aisles of our local big-box retailers. A group of friends spent an evening pouring over the pages of the big fall fashion edition of Vogue that one of us bought so we could see what dark style clothing would be trickling down to the mall department stores so we could hit the clearance racks in January, or the thrift stores in March. We memorized the discount day schedule for thrift stores and bought wedding and prom dresses to hack apart and dye. We saved for shitty plastic-boned "corsets" from Frederick's of Hollywood to wear over those hacked-apart dresses. Goth, especially in the previous decades, was about getting whatever you could afford and figuring out how to make it spooky. Plain black leggings + thrift store or clearance black slip + layers of thrift store or clearance belts were a standard "goth uniform" for femme goths. Did we look amazing? No, not even half the time. But we took whatever we could afford and made it work as well as we could.

“Dionysus”, Joanna Jankowska (InvisibleMartyr Photoraphy)

Cackling.

In case the original goes away:

Text version:

Washington State Department of Natural resources tweets:

(Falling to my knees, begging, pleading)

Please.

Folks, seriously.

PLEASE.

Do not - and I can’t emphasize this enough - set the state on fire this weekend.

Fire danger is abnormally high this holiday weekend.

URGING you to consider firework alternatives:

- screaming “bang! boom!” at the sky

- dropping a stack of large books on the floor

- wrapping a toga around a candle

- play America the Beautiful while combining Coke and Mentos

Mad Monster Party [1967] ༺🦇༻

The Hunger (Tony Scott, 1983)