ENTER: Luna

Luna was my first best friend.

We met in the early days of kindergarten, during nap-time. If you're wondering why I didn't know who she was by whatever time that was by then, it's because I've always been rather introverted and tend not to hang around the others (for example, I often didn't want to play with the other kids on the playground at school). Therefore, it wasn't that much of a surprise that I hadn't talked to Luna that much at all. We hit it off fairly quickly, all though I think we were the only ones making any sort of noise, as it was nap time. I hardly ever went to sleep during those periods and hated them with a passion, but it was what it was, and I often simply sat around, lost in my own thoughts. So when Luna and I started giggling in that weird little kiddish sort of way . . . we never expected the teacher to hear us. I mean, after all, usually small kids are so stealthy, right? But maybe that teacher was a ninja in disguise, who knows?

Anyway, this girl and I started talking more and more, on the bus and on the playground and when we could during the day (which, considering that it was kindergarten, was quite a bit). It got to the point where I was always staying over at her house--which wasn't very far from the apartment complex that my family was living in at the time--every weekend. We became the best of friends, and I occasionally conversed with her older sister . . . . We were the same on many levels, and different on many others. She and I had arguments over the stupidest stuff multiple times, but our friendship has remained all this time.

A picture of Luna, stolen from one of her albums on Facebook.

She moved when we were in the third grade to the town over with her grandmother. I still came over to her house just about every weekend, and remained to be good friends, however surprising that may sound. Even so, though, Luna and I needed new people to socialize with. She met new people, and I started talking with those that I had known since kindergarten. I started to hang out more with the guys once she left, being the tomboy that I am, and interestingly enough, she started to hang out with Neji's cousin (but I didn't know about that until just last year).

Luna moved from Mississippi to Texas around the time when I was in the fourth grade. All though I was sad to see her go--just as most friends are--I had a feeling that she would be happier in Texas with her father than she would be back over here with her mother.

After she moved, I think I seen her once more--and that was four years ago, I think one or two days before I started talking to Neji. I don't remember if we spent the night, or if we just hung out, but we did something at that time.

I caught up with her on Facebook the summer after he seventh grade, I believe, and we talked a couple of times.

Shortly after I met Elise, I started noticing that Luna was posting more and more pictures of some anime show that I had never seen before (Tokyo Mew Mew, I think?), and her profile picture was considerably "gothic," if you know what I mean. I messaged her and asked her about it, and asked her if she had turned to the Goth subculture. She seemed to be very hesitant in giving me a yes or no answer, saying that she didn't know. I sent her to The Ultimate Goth Guide, and after reading it, she told me that she definitely was.

One day I may see her again, but for now we just have to settle with Facebook.

P.S. Her birthday is the thirty-first of October.

Twilight Saga

[Note:]  WildBlue sent an email to my father saying that we are reaching our Internet usage rate, which means that very soon, I won't be able to post a damn thing on here. Don't know how long, but hopefully it won't take for how many ever weeks, like it did last time . . . .



Does Twilight have anything at all to do with Goth? Yes, but only if you count all of the attention we've been getting lately because of it.

Many people--girls, especially--tend to believe that because Twilight Saga is full of vampires, it's OH SO GAWTHIC! Well, I'm afraid that you're wrong, there, my friends. Just because something has a vampire in it does not make it gothic. What does make something gothic, on the other hand, is . . . well . . . dark stuff! And I don't just mean angst shit, I mean something . . . like . . . like this! In To Kill a Mockingbird, Scout and Jem are attacked on the full moon during Halloween. C'mon, what's not spooky about that?

Besides TKAM, there's Edgar Allan Poe's works. If you don't want to go to the library or something, then you can always check out PoeStories, which is a site that I myself enjoy. (I can't talk about Edgar Allan Poe without suggesting my favorite poem by him, "The Bells." Check it out!)

Now, please keep in mind that you can like--and even love--Twilight and still be Goth. If you're a part of such a diverse subculture such as this one, then you're bound to find someone who's Team Edward (or Jacob) like you are. Keep in mind, however, that most Goths absolutely despise the series. If I had to guess a reason why, then it's probably because along with it came a shit-load of lovely Mall Goths. And Mall Goths, generally, are not welcomed into the scene with open arms.

Myself? Well, I liked the very first book.. When I read New Moon, however, I was wondering how in the world Meyer had made it suck (no pun intended) so bad. When reading Eclipse, it was very hard for me to get through with anything, because I was still suffering from the huge let-down of New Moon. And Breaking Dawn? Oh, jeez, don't get me started on how horrible that disgusting piece of garbage was (I wanted a fight! A fight, dammit!)!

Labels

I have heard over and over again by people who do not wish to be apart of any subculture ("to be themselves," as Neji says) that they "don't like labels."

Okay, I can understand how a person wouldn't like something stamped on their foreheads. It creates unwanted attention in many cases, and in certain ways takes apart an individual's, well, individuality. With that being said, I agree that labels can be horrible--and potentially dangerous, even--a lot of times. Human beings have a horrible knack for jumping to conclusions about people before they make time to give those people a chance to prove that they are different from the others (e.g., a blonde proving that she is smarter than the brunette).

However, calling a subculture a label is going a bit far, I think.

If a person lives in Australia and they call themselves British, do you say that's a label? I'm American. Is American a label? I have a friend on TinierMe who's Japanese. Is Japanese a label? All of these are cultures (or something similar), people, so how is a subculture any different (besides it being a "sub-", obviously . . . .)? It's not. Not in my eyes, at any rate. And I really don't think that it should be to anyone else's, either.

Since I'm Goth, I don't considerate that to be a label; rather, I consider it to be a name of a subculture, just as I consider Japanese to be a nationality of a culture. Understand where I'm getting at? So if you are afraid of "labels," then maybe you should take a different view of things. I mean to say, is it really that hard to consider something as MAJOR as Goth a culture?

Keep in mind that this is merely my personal opinion (*cough*fact*cough*), and if I offended anyone then it was completely unintentional.

Emo Goth: Does It Exist?

Now let me preface this by saying that one cannot be both Emo and Goth at the same time, and no one is an exception (sorry to crush all of your lovely hopes and dreams, Posers). However, what if there was yet another "type" of Goth that allowed you to be the next best thing? C'mon, do you really think it's that hard?

I've heard time and time again that there is no such thing as an "Emo Goth," and I want to make it clear that while I don't know the right answer, I am open-minded about the subject.

"Although the term 'Emo' has been around for over a decade or so to describe a paricular genre of Punk, it has recently become a buzzword of the 21st century to describe the features of the contemporary youth fashion movement. Visually a hodgepodge of many different styles including Punk, Retro, a touch of urban Japanese and Goth, it was inevitable that Emo would start demonsrating crossovers with Goth at some point."

(You can see the rest of this, uh, article here.)

I have a distinct feeling that, if this is true, then many people are probably going to get angry with those who describe themselves to be an Emo Goth while not being an emo and a goth at the same time. I think that it's perfectly possible for a person to be in love with the rock genre of Emo as well as Goth. Or maybe I'm wrong. I dunno. But I'm going to do some work on this, and I invite anyone reading this to do the same.

Looking Goth

Okay, so there are probably some Goths somewhere that have been told that they don't look Goth because they don't have pale skin, black hair, black eyes, black clothes, a black heart, black blood, a black brain, a black kidney, a black soul . . . . Or maybe I'm alone in this. Somehow, though, I doubt that. No, really, I do.

Back when I was still going to SPHS (which was just last year--as in 2011, not the eighth grade), I sat in the very back in my English 1 class, next to another boy. He and I had gotten along okay for the past few days, but people had finally started to notice that I wore at least two things that were black every day. This boy heard some certain rumors, but he wanted to ask me personally, I suppose.

"Are you Goth?"

"Yeah."

"You don't look Goth. Do the other Goths call you 'Goth'?"

"Some probably wouldn't, but I think most would."

"So you cut yourself a lot?"

"No, emos are more prone to do that, actually." (NOTE:  I am not saying that Goths can't.)

"I didn't know there was a difference."

Well, that was the conversation, basically. We talked a few times after that (I know, I wasn't accused of murdering a toddler! *GASP*), but he never asked what Goth was, and I never really bothered to explain it to him. I didn't think that there was too much that I would be able to do that would convince him otherwise that I am a Goth, even though I don't cut myself and have black hair.

There was another instance where a kind girl in the twelfth grade told me that she was pretty darn sure that if I was really a Goth, I would wear nothing but black, have black hair--well, have the list that I made in the first paragraph of this post. I did try to explain it to her, but she just nodded in that way when you know people aren't really listening to what you have to say. I gave up on trying to convince her and left her believing that I was a wannabe.

Now. I'm sure that really everyone has been told that they're not a Goth for some reason or another, but at this time, I'm focusing on the reason being because we don't look it, not because we're not depressed and don't write horrible poetry and practice self-harm. Sometime or another, though, I probably will get to the other side of being told that we Goths aren't really Goths.

If I had to guess, I think that the Ice Goths would probably be the most recognizable targets for these types of accusations, and then maybe Ghost Goths, then Casual Goths, and then Perky Goths (please keep in mind that there is a vast number of "types" of Goths, many of which are different from the next and I don't know all of them). The Ice and Ghost Goths wear a lot of white, we Casual Goths wear simple clothing, and Perky Goths wear a lot of pink and purple. I don't think there's much wrong with any of that, but . . . .

There are people in the world who don't agree with me (*cough*logic*cough*), both in and out of our lovely subculture. If I had to guess--and it's hard for me to say anything about this with confidence, because Perseus and I are the only Goths in this part of Mississippi that I know of--I would say that you're more likely to be told that you're not Goth by someone who has no idea what in the world Goth really is, rather than be told the same thing by a black-clad forty-year-old elitist (like I said, I'm not saying that it doesn't happen). So when the redneck in Wal-Mart tells you that you aren't a Goth because you're not crying, maybe you should just ignore him.

Or, better yet, tell him to leave you alone in a very threatening way.

On the other hand, if you're being told that you're not a "real Goth" by someone who was in the first generation, then it might hurt your pride a bit. You could choose to ignore them, or you could try to explain to them that you love Bauhaus and The Sisters of Mercy and all of those olden bands--your call. It might not be a wonderful idea to name any of the newest bands, since a lot of older Goths are moaning that the scene is dead.

I, for one, am not about to go out and buy corsets and stockings just because I have been told that I don't look Goth, and I hope that anyone who is reading this doesn't do it just because someone told them that they don't look Goth. If you're doing it for that . . . maybe this subculture isn't for you.

The Importance

There are three main different things that generally makes up a Goth:  the music, the fashion, and the (general) mindset.

However, there's been a lot of debate on which is the most important, and from what I've seen, music usually wins. The winner is understandable, really, since there probably wouldn't be a necessarily Goth subculture without it (all though it is possible that we all would have stuck with something else). There seem to be quite a bit of Goths across the Internet who prefer the dark fashion, despite the fact that many people believe that one needs to love the music to be considered Goth. Then again, without this particular fashion, we wouldn't be able to see who's who, now, would we? Besides that, it makes us different from the rest of the world when we dress how we want to dress.

So, what's more important:  music or fashion? Ultimately, there's no correct answer for that question. You'll have to find out for yourself. If you prefer the music, then that's more important, and if you prefer the fashion, then that is. Those of us in the subculture who have half a brain won't belittle you for your choice. However, I must go ahead and say that you should do the fashion and listen to the music. My favorite bands of post-punk and related subgenres are probably The Cruxshadows, Apoptygma Berzerk, The Birthday Massacre, and Emilie Autumn. First, though, you should probably check out the original bands before anything:

• The Cure
• Siouxsie Sioux and the Banshees
• Joy Division
• Bauhaus

Finally, though, here's my thoughts on which is "more important":

Neither. I vote for the (general) mindset. Without it, there would be no Goth music, nor would there by any Goth fashion styles, NOR would there by any Goths. See? I have a point, dang it!

AAAHHH! I WAS BITTEN BY A JAGUAR . . . Oh, Screw It! I Don't Have an Awesome Excuse!

I know, I know, I've been out for a couple of years. Not literally. But I haven't been on (or at least, I haven't written anything) since October something, or something like that, so this post is long overdue. Not that many people are reading, but hey! :)

The main reason why I stopped showing up was because of my incredibly crappy Internet service. WildBlue. Satellite. I'm sure most of you know how horrible that can be. Lucky for me, though, I should be getting cable pretty soon. In a few months. Something like it. Hey, at least then I'll be able to listen to music freely.

I have not died. I repeat:  Have. Not. Died.