Music Spotlight: Eliza Rickman

Is everyone else having as crazy a summer as I am? I thought I would just lie about and be lazy, but much to my surprise it's been exactly the opposite! And I do hate venturing out of my house when it's so ridiculously hot outside. It's been up to 38 C here the last couple weeks and that makes it hard to wear many of my outfits without melting.

On the bright side, I got to see Welcome to Night Vale live in Vancouver just a couple of weeks ago, and I'll definitely do it again if they come back around. Cecil brings so much energy to the show and Dylan (Carlos) is such a cutie pie. I met both of them afterwards and they're really the sweetest. Also, they signed the poster I bought, and a couple of unfinished pieces of artwork. (Which I won't be showing off because they're really only sketches). One thing that I noticed? I'd never seen so many awesome shaved/funky/colorful haircuts and awesome styles at a geeky event like this before. I mean there are always some people, but there were attractive alternative fans everywhere I turned! It was a lovely experience.

Carlos' hair really is perfect XD

Meg's dress was lovely

I look like I'm in pain
 That's because I was desperately trying not to embarrass myself.

 

Now with my part of the adventure out of the way I can focus on the highlight of this post, which is the musician who went on the Canada tour with them. If you're not familiar with the podcast, what they do for the 'weather' on Welcome to Night Vale is play a song, usually from a lesser known artist. Normally, I'm not a fan of the weather songs, but to my extreme excitement the artist on tour with them was none other than Eliza Rickman.

We'll start off with the fact that half of her dresses are lovely, ethereal things that I need badly in my closet. As for the music, well I'm not great with genres so I can't tell you exactly what hers should be called, but I can tell you that she has the most haunting, beautiful voice I've heard in a long time, and at certain points she reminded me a bit of both Siouxsie and Emilie Autumn. Still, there's no question she has a style that's uniquely her own. I bought her CD after the show and there's maybe one song on it that I don't like. Unfortunately, or fortunately, she was even better live and I really got the full effect, so now I definitely have to see her again.

I'm also a fan of Cinnamon Bone and Start with Goodbye, Stop with Hello. If you're a Nick Cave fan she's covered Into My Arms and that's on this CD as well. You can buy her album on her bandcamp page, and currently she's got two more in the works, so if you'd like to donate to her kickstarter here's the link.

Pants Two Ways and a Whole Lot of Cosplay

This blog and I don't seem to cross paths very often anymore! Never fear, I'm not going to up and vanish one day without leaving a note. If I ever decide to leave the blogger community rest assured I'll keep you all informed. However, between school, sewing, cosplay, reading, learning to play guitar, orchestra, etc. (really the list of things I do nowadays goes on and on) I just don't have time, or the motivation really to keep up a steady posting schedule. I'll probably drop one or two posts a month and that'll be it, but at least I'll be here! That being said, I'm much more active on both my tumblr (which is more fandom/comics than Goth I'm afraid) and my Goodreads. Both links can be found off to the right if it interests you.

I was going through my huge backlog of photos and I found two outfits showcasing these brown and black spin doctor pants. I love the whole steampunk vibe I get when I wear them. When I was looking at the pictures I thought it was a really good example of how you can make the same item from your closet look totally different depending on your accessories.

A plain black shirt is all I really need with pants this loud.

but when offered a pair of suspenders how could I say no?

We're going to have to ignore the change in hair length here, because I'm pretty sure that's having some effect, but a pair of glasses, corset, and turtleneck instead of suspenders and the whole look is changed! I just love mixing and matching things from my closet. I really try my best not to wear the same thing twice in a month, which proves a fun challenge.

I found a pair of old docs at Value Village! They were only $8

Now I'm going to move away from anything remotely goth related and stray into geek territory. Last month I went to Vancouver Fan Expo and I had a blast. I promised pictures so I tried to pick out the best ones. My favorite panel was definitely the one with the Soska Sisters (AKA Twisted Twins). Sure, seeing Karl Urban and Tom Felton was fun, but these directors were hilarious and being less famous were able to engage us in  conversation. They complimented my hair and hit on me! It was lovely. I highly advise checking out their movie American Mary or perhaps even Dead Hooker in a Trunk which has become something of an indie hit.

The sisters are on the left and the gorgeous Tristan Risk is next to them.
Their musician/friend's name was Kenny I believe.

 As for cosplay... well I had most of my Cecil costume put together around Halloween so that was relatively easy. I still need to find a much better wig and headphones, as well as make a few more props and update the clothes, but I'm happy with how the tattoos turned out. A few people recognized me so that was fun.

Of course the main event was my Arkham Asylum Scarecrow costume. Wowie did I put a lot of time and money into this one. And there are still things I need to redo! Cosplay will destroy your life; that I can assure you. Int he pictures I look significantly less dirty and 'authentic' than if you were to meet me in person, and I didn't bother to take off my flip flops for the first pic, but I think you get most of the effect.

And because I couldn't steal the spotlight for myself with so many wonderful cosplayers around, here are a few of my favorites from the weekend. We took a lot of pictures so I tried to pull out the ones I felt were most deserving of recognition.

Pyramid Head

Sauron I believe. His gauntlets were killer.

This Titan's dedication to body paint is impressive.

That makeup was crazy. And I'm pretty sure it was makeup.

Game of Thrones! Look at that wonderful Brienne.

She was extremely attractive and lovely to talk to. Trust me.

I thought my hands were restricted with the gauntlet...

Lady Loki is really high on my cosplay list

Hopefully I haven't lost all of you by now with the giant stream of photos. I'll do my best to get another post up this month and it'll be one more "Goth" related. I'll leave you with a picture of the loot I scored at the con. I'm a sucker for artwork and with the knowledge that I might not see these pieces ever again I blew all of my money on posters (And a Beetlejuice Funko which is just adorable). My room has since turned into a Den of Geek.

Fun fact! The artwork tot he far left was done by the same artist who designs the album art for Johnny Hollow. Their CDs were being sold at the booth as well. You can't see it very well, but I'd advise looking him up.

Hair Evolution and Clothes Revolution

First off, sorry if you jumped into this post thinking 'revolution?? this should be exciting," because what it really means is,  I've been out buying things again. Oops? I haven't put up an outfit post in so long though, that my hair has managed to go through various stages of growth. Therefore, this photoset is basically half showing off my new threads, and half hair study. It went from short, to shorter, to a full on mohawk which I am loving right now.

New sparkly scarf. It's so glittery I'm calling it my Bowie scarf.

My weirdly patterned Japanese/lolita style dress

and a new fringy jacket I bought to go with it.

Off-white is apparently a color I'm braving for springtime.

Testing out the new pool table
Does it look like I know what I'm doing? ;)

I've been wearing darker lipsticks as well

My spiked collar has been seeing a lot of action lately.

This is about as colorful as I go for spring/summer styles

Another new scarf

I'm sorry for the blindingly white face.
The sun was especially bright that day.

Record hunting. I got some 80s synthpop here.
Then I hopped over to underground and bought Juju.

This vintage day dress type thing is my new favorite thing to wear.

I had shaved off both of my sides at this point.

Slowly turning into a mowhawk...

There it is!

I like that I can go somewhat androgynous with this.

So I've had a lot of additions and style changes since I last posted. I feel like my style is constantly changing. Some days I'll like one thing and a week later I'll be looking for something else. How about you guys? Is your wardrobe constantly in flux or do you get stuck in style ruts often?

An Assortment of Horror

I've really been on a horror kick lately. For a while I avoided it entirely because all I could find were generic slashers as far as movies were concerned and predictable plots for novels. However, things have been looking up lately, as I've been turning towards older movies and cult hits once again. Here are a few of the highlights this month.

The horror aspect of The Fly is pretty slow to pick up if we're being completely honest. All the same, it's a great movie, and when the horror does start occurring...well. I'll admit there was one scene towards the end that had me squirming uncomfortably. The Fly is a great example of 80s horror at it's best and the makeup is fantastic.

This was actually a re-watch for me, but I'm going to mention it anyway because Hellraiser has got to be my favorite horror movie of all time. The giant Pinhead poster over my wall says a lot about how I feel about the film. To be honest, I'm a bit obsessed. Obsessed enough to stick through the train wreck that was the franchise after Hollywood got a hold of it. Granted, number three wasn't awful, but everything after that makes me cringe. Still, the first two movies are horror movie gold in my opinion, and I highly recommend the book it was based off of as well.

Eraserhead is at the top of the list of movies that have disturbed me so deeply I'm not sure I want to watch them again. The whole movie is unsettling from start to finish, with it's black and white arthouse style and surreal filming. There's one scene at the end that I just really don't want to think about too hard, but I can appreciate this movie as a work of art, as well as an absolutely horrifying film.

  

You can't go wrong with Vincent Price. You just can't. I love every single one of his B-grade, cheesy, wonderful horror films and House of Wax was no exception. I didn't like it as much as say, The Abominable Dr. Phibes, but it's undeniably a masterpiece.

Ok now this has actually been a consistent horror source in my life so I can't say it's a new discovery. However, season two has been airing and I feel the need to express how wonderful it is. Season one was a fresh take on the many escapades of Hannibal Lecter, (And of course, I fell in love with Will Graham immediately) but season two hasn't lost any of the creativeness of the first, while amping up the horror aspect. They're not holding back anymore, and let me tell you, the cinematography in this show is phenomenal. As are the relationships between the characters, dialogue, and of course, death scenes.

Finally, a book! This is one of the coolest books I've read in a very long time. The horror in this book is the  kind that nags at the back of your mind and doesn't want to let go. It's psychologically unsettling, no gore here, but it really doesn't need it. The premise is simply a house who's inner dimensions don't match it's outer ones, but that discrepency turns into something no one could ever have expected. The only thing with House of Leaves is that the format is extremely bizarre. The whole thing isn't like that, but I had to put several hours into this book in order to make sense of some of it. Just google the book and you'll see what I mean. You're either going to find it very pretentious, or extremely clever and fun.

This has been sitting at the bottom of my movie list for a very long time and I finally got around to watching it. I didn't expect to love it the way I did. The costumes are a Goth's dream and the story an absolutely delicious concept. Is it perfect? No. But it doesn't have to be because Repo was a thrill ride from start to finish. Graverobber's songs were my favorite so it's a shame we didn't see more of him. I think it's safe to say I've developed another character crush... Now I'm off to watch the Devil's Carnival!

I don't know where to start with this movie. I went to Vancouver Fan Expo this weekend (There will be pics quite soon) and one of the panels featured the Soska Sisters, AKA The Twisted Twins. They. Were. Wonderful. I have to say I enjoyed their panel the most. They weren't afraid to curse, tell stories about running away from cops while filming, or to be brutally honest about the pieces of themselves they put into this movie. I don't know if they identify as Goths, but they certainly had the aesthetic. I was ridiculously happy to see some girl directors. They weren't afraid to call out sexism and also they hit on me in front of everyone which was wonderful. Basically, this movie deals with a lot of issues like rape and sexism, and also heavily features the body mod community. A lot of research went into this film and I highly recommend it.