If anyone wants to filter out the polls, I'm going to tag everything with '#cdrama poll' going forward! (and please let me know if I forget!)
Current poll:
Most successful double agent
Minipoll - favourite dumpling cooking method
Past polls are under the cut!
Masterlist of minipolls, part 2
Masterlist of completed polls 2
Character who most needs an aspirin | Worst person to invite to your primary school concert | Most wifeguy husband | Most likely to literally bite the hand that feeds them | Person with the most jobs | Most narratively haunting character
Best Shifu/Shizun/teacher | Cosiest home | Sexiest Shizun | Villain Most Prone to Monologues | Worst son in law
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An Archive of Our Own, a project of the Organization for Transformative Works
Chapters: 1/1
Fandom: Nine Worlds Series - Victoria Goddard, Tales from Ysthar - Victoria Goddard
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Relationships: Raphael Amian | Lord of Ysthar & Robin & Scheherezade & William Shakespeare (Nine Worlds Series)
Characters: Raphael Amian | Lord of Ysthar, Robin (Nine Worlds Series), William Shakespeare (Nine Worlds Series), Scheherezade (Nine Worlds Series)
Additional Tags: Donât copy to another site, Friendship, Till Human Voices Wake Us, Humour, Post-Canon, the perils of UK home ownership
Summary:
An Archive of Our Own, a project of the Organization for Transformative Works
Chapters: 1/1
Fandom: ç çćŚ | Nirvana in Fire (TV)
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Relationships: Lin Shu | Mei Changsu | Su Zhe & Xiao Jingyan
Characters: Lin Shu | Mei Changsu | Su Zhe, Xiao Jingyan
Additional Tags: NIFTREAT2022, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Angst, Misunderstandings, bell cutting scene, sick!MCS
Summary:
Both Mei Changsu and Xiao Jingyan are having a bad day.
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"character deserved better" (but they were never going to get it that's the stuff great tragedies are made of) vs "character deserved better" (but the writers really blew it)
this show is actually very pretty - from colors, to styling, to fabrics, to overall visuals. just look at that framing! from layers of clothing to layers inside the shot to create a multi-dimensional effect, it's just overall so beautiful.
An Archive of Our Own, a project of the Organization for Transformative Works
Chapters: 1/1
Fandom: ç çćŚ | Nirvana in Fire (TV)
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Major Character Death
Characters: Yan Que (Nirvana in Fire), Lin Shu | Mei Changsu | Su Zhe
Additional Tags: NIFTREAT24, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, what if yan que does blow up the imperial family, Guilt, Rocks Fall Everyone Dies, Angst, seriously everyone dies, Death, well nearly everyone
Summary:
Anya is live and ready to show you everything. Watch her strip, dance, and perform exclusive shows just for you. Interact in real-time and make your fantasies come true.
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An Archive of Our Own, a project of the Organization for Transformative Works
Chapters: 1/1
Fandom: Nine Worlds Series - Victoria Goddard, Tales from Ysthar - Victoria Goddard
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Major Character Death
Relationships: Raphael Amian | Lord of Ysthar & Circe of Aiaia, Raphael Amian | Lord of Ysthar & Robin (Nine Worlds Series), Raphael Amian | Lord of Ysthar & Kasian ChrysaeĂłr, Raphael Amian | Lord of Ysthar & William Shakespeare (Nine Worlds Series), Raphael Amian | Lord of Ysthar & Scheherezade (Nine Worlds Series)
Characters: Raphael Amian | Lord of Ysthar, Robin (Nine Worlds Series°, William Shakespeare (Nine Worlds Series), Kasian Chrysaeór, Circe of Aiaia (Nine Worlds Series), Scheherezade (Nine Worlds Series), Angelica (Nine Worlds Series)
Additional Tags: Donât copy to another site, Till Human Voices Wake Us, Grief/Mourning, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Guilt, Friendship, Angst
Summary:
The old Lord of Ysthar is defeated. His body will lie in state for three days before the coronation of Lady Circe.
An Archive of Our Own, a project of the Organization for Transformative Works
Chapters: 1/1
Fandom: ç çćŚ | Nirvana in Fire (TV)
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Relationships: Lin Shu | Mei Changsu | Su Zhe & Xiao Jinghuan
Characters: Lin Shu | Mei Changsu | Su Zhe, Xiao Jinghuan
Additional Tags: Donât copy to another site, Angst, Manipulation, Hanahaki Disease, Worldbuilding, so itâs not non-consensual drug use but itâs not exactly consensual either
Series: Part 3 of (definitely not) 31 days of Thebes
Summary:
Chapters: 1/1
Fandom: Tales from Ysthar - Victoria Goddard, Nine Worlds Series - Victoria Goddard
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Relationships: Kasian ChrysaeĂłr & Raphael Amian | Lord of Ysthar
Characters: Raphael Amian | Lord of Ysthar, Kasian ChrysaeĂłr, Scheherazade (Nine Worlds)
Additional Tags: Donât copy to another site, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Non-Consensual Drug Use, Truth Serum, Confrontations, Angst, Hurt/Comfort, spoilers for Till Human Voices Wake Us
Summary:
When one begins to live by habit and by quotation, one has begun to stop living â james baldwin
There is something more in the cup of nirgal slaurigh that Kasian slips his brother.
An Archive of Our Own, a project of the Organization for Transformative Works
Chapters: 1/1
Fandom: ĺ°ĺš´ćčĄ | The Blood of Youth (Live Action TV)
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Relationships: Tang Lian & Wu Xin | Ye Anshi
Characters: Wu Xin | Ye Anshi, Tang Lian (The Blood of Youth)
Additional Tags: Donât copy to another site, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Fix It, wu xin is a little shit, I have no idea if the timelines work but they sort of work
Series: Part 11 of (definitely not) 31 days of Thebes
Summary:
âAmitabha,â Wu Xin sighed, shoving the unconscious eunuch further into the bush (though not bothering to redress him), âthe things that I do for friends.â
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.
it's specifically such a supportive subculture for poor and neglected kids and I really fucking hate that this has been revised and erased. juggalos and goths are very culturally close and many subcultural people are both, and juggalos have the same (and, I would argue, even better defined) culture of collective support. the Skids in Letterkenny are not made up for the show, that's just a real type of rural subcultural person. this has also been forgotten in the interim but in the 90s and 00s we didn't even really refer to OURSELVES as "goths" very much except in a joking way. goths had regional endonyms (like "skids" or "trenchies") even if they could all go to a convention or a club in a city and in that context be all called "goths" together, once they went back home they would go back to being whatever the locals called them or whatever they called themselves. this is a whole linguistics and sociology subtopic that's out of scope for a Tumblr post but is sort of related.
my point is that people who wore actual rags, and sharpie instead of nail polish, and wet n wild eyeliner instead of black lipstick, and dyed their hair with markers or food coloring or kool-aid, were and are the core of the goth scene. the majority of the pictures the mallgoth blogs are posting are from catalogs, fashion shows, costume events, yearly balls and fetes like Wave Gothik Treffen, and other places where people save up literally all year, or many years in a row, to put together ONE outfit. and there's nothing wrong with that, personally I'm proud and pleased that our hard work is being recognized and preserved. but just like formal studio photographs from the Victorian era, it is not representative of the daily or even weekly (for clubs) reality of people in the scene, some of whom were completely out of goth clothing during the day or week just to fit in at work or sometimes just to get along without being bothered at home by family members who thought the Cure was Satanic.
the people who RUN the scenes, the promoters and DJs and gogo dancers and independent designers and people who run the mailing lists and websites, the people who organize the room parties at conventions, and yes even most of the original Burning Man camps like Thunderdome, they mostly live in poverty. especially if they're young. when people organize club nights and shows, they're lucky if they break even. I wasn't aware of any of this until I started working at DNA Lounge in San Francisco, which hosts one of the oldest goth nights in the country, Death Guild. I got to know the owner of DNA well enough to find out about the financial reality of the entire scene, even the people who own the means of production and the actual property in this case, and it's not lucrative. I mean, it sometimes is, if you're running a bar for normal people and have investment captain etc, but the majority of legit subculture economics is just barely breaking even. every single event is 90% volunteer labor.
the issue of labor is maybe the confusing thing for the zoomers who are confused. goth outfits take actual physical work. maybe the Aspirational Spectacle of Labor that makes up most of TikTok has made it appear unreal to the audience rather than something you can just sit down and do?
it takes forty seconds to make the fishnet tights into a shirt. you don't need instructions, you really can just look at it and figure it out. then you think, hm, if I can make fishnets into a shirt I wonder what other things I can turn into something else. your brain will amaze you. my mom would save her tights from her formal work outfits for me when they got holes or whatever and I would just go crazy with scissors and safety pins. lots of young designers are getting attention for this layered, tights-n-pins look at the moment and it really is a fantastic aesthetic but I wonder if people think there's something special about the people who make these clothes? there isn't. you can just do it at home while you watch trashy youtubes.
one time, around 2008 or so, @gothiccharmschool and I were at the photoshoot for tabletop RPG Unhallowed Metropolis. we were there with a bunch of local goths to all make the pictures for this book together. we had all brought tons of our costumes from home to cobble together outfits for the book illustrations, and there was a moment when I just handed Jilli a pile of black skirts and some pins and said hey Jilli, could you please make me up a bustle skirt for this model real quick while I shoot these other models? and of course she did, and they were beautiful, because she knows exactly what she's doing, and because that's all a bustle is: it's a way of bunching up a skirt with another skirt. you can do it at home. you don't need instructions or to hire a seamstress or watch a video. you can just look at something and say hm does it look like a bustle? let's drape it and play with it and pin whatever works. and then you wear it for the photoshoot, or to the club!!! and then next week you pin it a different way and it's a cape instead and you wear it again!!!!!!!
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.
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I watched Nirvana in Fire and fell completely in love with that show, so here's some sick/dying man and his besties/lovers (appreciation left to the viewer).
Nemainofthewater (is me!) @nemainofthewater - Tumblr Blog | Tumlook