New Colors for a New Post

Goodness, but have been a terribly negligent blogger lately! I do apologize for my absence from the cyber-world, but I have been re-packing trying to get ready to go back to college and I have honestly been dressing to combat the heat more than to look awesome, so the combination has led to no blog posts. I'm back, though-I've done a lot of sewing that I just have to post about, and I'm starting to develop a better sense of hot-weather Gothiness. Today, I was just going to meeting, so I knew I'd be inside in the cool, so I dared to wear a corset. Love my corsets, but in hot weather the three layers of fabric can really make for a Sweaty McGee me-I wanted to wear one badly enough today to risk it, though!

Forset green lace dress: Goodwill
Cream silk underbust corset: Punk69
Mary janes: Goodwill
You'll be seeing a lot more of these dresses as I go back to school and have outfits everyday-they are one of my favorite things to wear. Throw one of the five of them on with one of my multiple corsets, and I have an instant, elegant, easy outfit. I think this corset was a little nicer to wear than some of my others might have been because it is silk rather than poly or PVC, so it breathes a lot better. I wasn't sure about the ivory/cream and forest green color combination initially, but I actually think it's a really good coordinate. As much as I love my blacks, I want to try and branch out from my black/everything color combinations this year and try some other, more unusual ones-ivory and dark red, goldenrod and navy blue, aubergine and gray all being colors I have in my wardrobe but haven't really worn together because I usually wear them individually with black. Do any of you have favorite non-black but still goth-y color combinations that you like? 

Black and Ivory-ChurchyGoth Edition

I could've made a dreadful Ebony and Ivory pun in the post title, but I didn't. Aren't you proud of me? This is actually one of my favorite color combos; it has a cool elegance and sort of antique-y air, and comes across very delicate and china-doll-ish. It's also great for summer, because it's cool and comfortable but still looks very goth.

Cream lace and chiffon dress-Thrifted (Arc?)
Black taffeta corset-Punk69
Black sandals-Demonia via Goodwill

Showing off my snood-a lot of people pooh-pooh them on account of "they are old-ladyish" or some such twaddle, but I love them. I think they are a quick simple way to achieve and elegant and put-together looking hairstyle for really long hair. I also love this dress-I am not kidding, I seriously have this exact dress in five different colors: Cream, navy, forest green, lilac, and the all-important black. I've found them all at different thrift stores in different parts of the state at different times, and every time I see one I snatch it up. The crinkles, lace, and chiffon all combine to make a dress that can be casually elegant or extremely dressy depending on how and what you wear it with. They're extremely cool and comfortable, great for wearing with corsets, and just generally awesome pieces of clothing. I've tried to do some research on the company, but since it's called "Nostalgia Clothing", googling does little good. I'd love to have it in even more colors if I can find it-a brilliant crimson or a warm aubergine would be lovely, so despite already having five of them, I'm keeping my eyes peeled for more. (You start to see why my wardrobe is so massive...) Do any of you have one item of clothing in more than three colors because you love it so much?

Gypsy Goth and Geekery

Hello, and welcome to the first geek installment of Geeky Goth Girl, with bonus outfit post! Today was really fun-I went to church with my mom, to lunch with my cousin, and then to see X-Men: First Class, which really was, pun intended, a first-class film-as I'll discuss in my review. Here's what I wore today for my fun day:

Black peasant blouse-Goodwill

Magenta corset-Canal Boat Trading

Multi-colored patchwork skirt-Mellow Yellow 

Copper ballet flats-Wal-Mart

Here's another pic, that shows the detail of the skirt-ths skirt is so awesome and fun to wear. It's actually a wrap skirt, I just tucked the ends of the ties up into my corset. This outfit is very Ren Faire, I know, but I personally love the Gypsy/medieval-ish feel of the whole thing-I love feeling like a handsome knight is going to come by at any minute and scoop me up on his horse! Speaking of handsome guys:

Oof! These two definitely aren't just pretty faces, but danged if the pretty doesn't help. I wasn't honestly too sure I would like X-Men: First Class for anything except the man-candy; unfortunately, the too-busy X-Men 3 and the beyond-awful X-Men: Origins: Wolverine (or however the hell that was punctuated), had significantly lowered my expectations for X-Men movies. When the combined hotness of Hugh Jackman, Lieve Schrieber, Ryan Reynolds, Dominic Monaghan, and Taylor Kitsch can't distract me from how bad a movie is...that's a bad movie. So I was very pleasantly surprised to discover the series at a return to the height of it's X2 form in Matthew Vaughn's expertly directed, tightly paced, and overall well-acted X-Men: First Class. Spoilers ahoy, so if you haven't seen it yet, don't read!

I must confess, I'm not the hugest X-Men fan in the world; I'm more of a DC girl than a Marvel girl when it comes to comics. With the exception of Joss Whedon's run on Amazing X-Men, I haven't really read many of the comics. Almost all of my non-movie knowledge comes from the animated series and X-Men: Evolution, both of which are excellent (in my opinion, better than some of the movies!), or TV Tropes, so I'm not nearly the stickler for canon in X-Men that I would be for, say, Birds of Prey or Nightwing. That said, I was still a little leery of this particular film-I didn't know if they'd be able to really justify having Mystique, who I always felt came off considerably younger than Charles and Erik, as growing up with them and being the same age, but they did! I'm not going to give a point-for-point recap (I'm not the Agony Booth!), but I will point out what I found to be most satisfying about the film:

*Besides bringing a buttload of hotness, the two leading men also gave really quite wonderful performances. Michael Fassbender actually does bear a striking resemblance to Sir Ian McKellan, but beyond that, he brings the same richness of character to Erik/Magneto as Sir Ian does. Throughout the film, he really shows us all the conflicts that inform Erik as a person-you understand his drive for vengeance, and you kind of want him to win, even as you feel he's going a little too far (or, towards the end, a lot too far.) It's a mark of a great performance, in my mind, that even though Magneto going evil is a foregone conclusion, you keep thinking that maybe, just maybe, he'll stay good. James McAvoy is no slouch either-though the physical resemblance between him and my old-man crush for the ages, Patrick Stewart, is minimal, he has the attitude down pat-a great combination of near-Shakespearean gravitas, combined with a twinkle of wry humor. His Charles Xavier is a slightly arrogant but ultimately idealistic young man poised on the edge of greatness-and a man struggling to save a friend from the abyss. In both roles, McAvoy delivers beautifully

*Jennifer Lawrence as young Mystique-I thought she was great in Winter's Bone, and she certainly doesn't disappoint as Raven/Mystique-she's sweet, vulnerable, and conflicted, and I just loved her. I haven't yet read Suzanne Collin's Hunger Games books, but I want to now because Jennifer Lawrence is going to be in the movies-and from what I've heard about the heroine of those books, I think Lawrence is going to give one heck of a performance.

*Nicholas Hoult as Hank McCoy/Beast. He's always been my 3rd favorite X-Men character, after Rogue and Gambit, and I loved this particular portrayal of him as a kind, brilliant boy who desperately wants to be normal. I never really cared for Nicholas Hoult's character Tony on Skins (I just can't go for assholes, no matter how cute they are), but I loooved him in this role and found him to be completely adorkable in it.

* Short but clever cameos from Hugh Jackman as Wolverine and Rebecca Romjin as older Mystique. 

*Two really good jokes about going bald from Charles.

Overall, this movie was just fantastic. I've gushed about the acting here, but the direction, design, and editing are all pretty damn amazing too. There's one particularly spectacular bit of editing, in the "training montage" when the good guys are getting ready to fight the bad guys, and they use shifting comic-panel-style lines to transition between segments. I traditionally don't care for training montages, finding they tend to be goofy and over-the-top with strong callbacks to bad '80s sports movies, but this one was really well-done. It was very well-written, and did a good job of fleshing out the characters and driving the plot forward in a very small amount of time-compression storytelling at its finest. If you haven't seen this movie, I highly recommend it; and if you have, what did you think? 

Red and Black Week Day 1, and an apology

Hey, guys-sorry for my absence, but I've been crazy busy moving back home from Denver, so I haven't had either spectacular outfits or the time to blog about them today. Here's my (late, but still there!) post for day 1 of the lovely VictorianKitty's Red and Black week-a blogging challenge I accepted with gusto, those of course being two of my fave colors. This is also my first Churchgoing Goth post-i.e., what a Goth girl wears to church, being true to both her respect for her faith and the people in it and her dark and spooky self. It's really not as hard as you might think!

Black lace blouse-Fusion Federation

Red camisole-Somewhere in New York

Black and red patchwork skirt-Savers

Sandals-Demonia via Goodwill

I love this skirt-it is so fun, gorgeous, and unique, and never fails to get compliments every time I wear it.

Here's a close-up of some of the different fabrics in it-it's three tiered bands of patches. In other words, awesome!

One of the last things I did with my best girlfriends before leaving Denver (sniffle) was redo my nails, specifically for Red and Black week:

Both these polishes were filched from my friend Kira-the under is just a drugstore red, and the black is the OPI crackle polish, which I'd wanted to try but didn't want to spring for. I like the effect, but I don't know if I like it enough to spend $8 on a bottle of polish for it. I tend to pick up the $2.00 store brand polish at Walgreens-when you have my job (costumer for the university theater program), polish chips and flakes off so fast -even when I've picked up nicer polish on sale, it still gets scratched off by pins or chips when I pick up bins of fabric. It just seems silly to spend a lot on something that'll only look good for a couple days. I enjoy painting my nails, I just don't spend a lot on it because it's hard for me to maintain. Do any of you have beauty habits that you enjoy but don't particularly indulge in financially for whatever reason?