"the music, poetry and other now 'forgotten' aspects of being Goth"


That about sums it up for me. With a heavy dose of the vampire aspect thrown in for interest.

Old-school romanti-Victorian-renaissance-Goth, since 1985 (I'd argue even 1984, though I was in middle school and not quite sure what I was doing). All about the period clothing, way before I joined the SCA, both the Victorian and the medieval/ renaissance. Obsessed with ghosts and hauntings, old historical places, forbidden dark and seksi things. A little Wester-Goth too, I dig that. Not into vampires now, but was in my teens and early 20's (though I never much liked Anne Rice at all). Fave movies in late teens/ early 20's were "Lost Boys" (I saw it opening night in the theatre), "Near Dark" (f'n seksi-hot cowboy vamps!) and "Bram Stoker's Dracula" (Gary Oldman & Anthony Hopkins were worth all the other bad acting, not to mention some of the dresses). I really liked books like "Vampire$" and I loved Skipp & Specter's "The Scream" (not about vamps, but hot book), and of course all of Nancy Collins' Sonja Blue vamp series. Got into Vampire: the Masquerade just about when it first came out (I seem to remember playing in 1992... is that right?) and then Werewolf right after that. LARP'd in the mid to late 90's, off and on (Berkeley game, some various Sacto area games). But yeah. All about the darkness and things that creep therein and blood and bats and shadows and lace and smoke and moonlight and autumn and sex and magic and naughty forbidden dark things and gothic horror and intelligently scary stuff and such. I was *never* a mopey Goth (then again, no one was in the 80's; it took the 90's to start that vile little habit). And I was never that into blood & gore as "scary" -- scare me *intelligently*, dammit! Though I did definitely go through a phase of watching every bad direct-to-video horror movie I could get my hands on. And I wrote 2 full supernatural-thriller screenplays, as well as starting a couple others. Haunted all Sacto area Goth clubs since 1985 (Club Gnaw, the Second Level, and so on), only been to SF Goth clubs a couple times, actually. Dated mostly non-goths, funny enough. Closest I got was my ex who was a former comic book illustrator (who worked on Sandman, actually) and with whom I wrote screenplays and watched cheesy horror.

And yes, I'm perfectly happy to NEVER STOP being Gothy and obsessed with all such things, thankyewverymuch. No matter how old I get or where life takes me.

I like dead things.

No, seriously. I'm an archaeology major. I like bones and other signs of people who are now dead. I like dead animals. I like fossils, old plants, old books, and everything else that time has forgotten. Dead makes me happy, because it reminds me that so very much happens to us while we're alive, and that finite snapshot we leave behind upon expiring is like a secret key to how we actually lived. We take bits of pottery, bones, and murals, and we try to tell a story about how things really were. It fascinates me.

I need a black dig hat, I think...