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She wants to learn photography. Do it stupid. Take a million photos. Don't think about why they're not good. Enjoy the process of taking photos.

Pick out tge ones you like the most and figure out why you like them. Is it because the subject is centered? Is it because you caught them doing something cool? Is it because the light made cool shadows?

I don’t know how to explain it but, I wish I lived in the color of honey. 🍯

First, let’s skip the charcoal. A cuisine is not based on food color. I feel like our primary flavor is a combination of Sweet and Bitter. This is common in all the most popular gothic drinks; Coffee, Red Wine, and Absinthe. It would favor elaborate, ornate, near Victorian presentation and plating.    People’s values are also expressed in food so I feel that handcrafting, niche and novelty, as well as authenticity would come through. Cooking methods would probably prefer open flame and aging.

So okay, with that in mind here are some ideas. 

All goths love a a Charcuterie: You eat it with a knife and it pairs well with wine and absinthe. Breads in dark Rye (discuss the argot they may have formed! #witchtrials) and cheeses cave aged - like bats. 

Nightshades and bitter greens salad: Some tomatoes and peppers come in black. Black tomatoes specifically will look very very similar to belladonna. A salad made with dark, bitter greens like radicchio or endive, and black cherry tomatoes is a great combination. Add a balsamic vinaigrette for some sweetness and acidity. Is my date giving me healthy salad or deadly poison? Either way I love them. Bon Appetite!

Charcoal-grilled aubergine: Aubergine (yes, use the fancy word) is already a deep purple and has a natural bitterness that can be enhanced by grilling it over charcoal. Technically eggplants also contain nicotine so I feel they will feature heavily.

Squid ink pasta: Hella people said it, so sure why not?

Dark Cherry and dark chocolate: Make a tart, serve as a sideboard with the absinthe, leave it as a gift on your dead lover’s grave. There are no bad options for this deliciously gothic and bittersweet treat.

Black rice and root vegetables: The first is black and is notable for being black and sometimes called “forbidden”. Sick. And the second can come in black, deep red, and purples. Also they’re totally under ground. Fire roast these. 

Rip open a pomegranate for a charcuterie centerpiece to evoke the Persephone Mythos, and (according to one infamous tumblr debacle) it's reminiscent of a gory heart

Actually, why stop at evoking a Heart? Chicken hearts are available at a ton of Asian and Hispanic grocery stores and are actually really easy to cook up quick (very underrated Low Spoons food!) and what's more Goth than eating an actual heart?

Depending on what Goth Subcultures you're part of, there's a lot of less-eaten organ and bone meats that are less-commonly eaten because they're not aesthetically palatable to Normies despite being delicious. Tongue, Liver, Kidney, eyes, intestines, genitalia and BLOOD are all staples of many cuisines worldwide and really make you think about the very goth nature of. There's Duck-Blood soup at my local polish place that is EXQUISITE.

Hell, if you really want to think about how you are eating a once-living thing, consider a whole-animal roast like Trout, whole duck, suckling pig or even Rabbit. Celebrate it's life by cooking it well, pick it's bones clean and Memento your own Mori.

Re: Candles: Agreed, if it comes on plates, it comes with candles, but consider your dishware too: Black is a classic and obvious choice, but consider jewel tones to pop against a dark tablecloth and provide some contrast to your food. You know how birds of paradise and sunset moths and a lot of other animals with SUPER dark pigmentation also have patches of intense color? Take if from a Biologist and Artist- Jewel tones make Blacks Blacker, like how moments of joy make the despair so much more intense.

You can also try gold-tone tableware to evoke that Dracula's-Golden-Cutlery literary motif!

Do you know what stone fruits, potatoes, asparagus, tapioca, Rhubarb and cashews have in common? They're all plants where only parts of it are edible, or they need to be cooked very carefully or they're extremely poisonous. Think about all you ancestors who took their lives into their hands figuring this out while you eat.

- Total lack of atmospheric perspective (things don't fade into the distance)

- Very realistic shading but no or only very faint shadows cast by ambient light.

- Limited interaction between objects and environment (shadows, ripples etc)

- Flat textures and consistent lighting used for backgrounds that would usually show a lot of variation in lighting, colour and texture

- Bodies apparently modelled piece by piece rather than drawn from life, and in a very stiff way so that the bodies show the pose but don't communicate the body language that would usually go with it. They look like dolls.

- Odd composition that cuts off parts that would usually be considered important (like the person's head in the snowy driving scene)

- Very precise drawing of structures and perspective combined with all the simplistic elements I've already listed. In other words, details in the "wrong" places.

What's fascinating about this is that in early or bad CGI, these things come from the fact that the machine is modelling very precisely the shapes and perspectives and colours, but missing out on some parts that are difficult to render (shadows, atmospheric perspective) and being completely unable to pose bodies in such a way as to convey emotion or body language.

But now we are against Gandalf o.o!

New D&D comic! Featuring Daddy Lazarus

“In hospital” -> Americans say “in the hospital.”

“Motorway” -> highway.

“Crisps” —> “chips” but he knew that haha a lot of this is jokes

“Shite” -> “shit” but I think he knew that, this is clearly jokes

But most tellingly there’s an interesting one:

“Slippy” (“the road was slippy”)

British, Irish, and Australian people have a part of the dialect where describing something, and they make it “verb-y”. Examples are “squirty cream” (aerosol whipped cream), or “wheelie bin” (the big trash can with wheels that you park outside). A viral picture of a door with a sign: “Caution: door is slammy.” Filtered honey that stays stable at room temp is “runny honey.” “Slippy” comes in quite naturally before “slippery.” However, most of the time it’s spontaneous: you apply the verb instantly in the situation and are understood even if it isn’t part of the normal lexicon. Doors are not commonly labelled “slammy” but everyone gets it.

It is only something you really notice when part of the dialect and I don’t really know what it’s called - I’m not a linguist - but it would be called something like “compulsive verb dimunitizing” or something. And Americans don’t do it. An American in this conversation might say “the road was icy/slippery”, but would be more likely to describe the situation: “he went into black ice!” “He took a pothole at 80!”

To Americans, “the road was slippy” in a conversation like this sounds borderline deranged and slightly disrespectful - absolute baby talk, like saying “the road was slippy-wippy and Chad got very silly! Now he’s deady-weady!”

Being American but also raised by gnomes, I personally love it. Let’s make verbs diminutive and use them as adjectives! Yeah! Let’s be little freaks!