Week Fifteen: Revision

Revision of Week Nine: Space Opera

This week we talked about the genre of space opera. The space opera was a landmark of the progression of human history as shown in popular culture and literature. The same principles of storytelling, the 'hero's journey', all wrapped up in a line of sight pointing straight towards the future-- best represented in the mid-1900's by space travel and the promise that outer space holds for the future of the human race. Everything that people thought that the future would hold, they projected onto the literature and media that they created. The common vision of the future was shaped by science fiction; and I think that in a way many of the advancements and things we have invented in this day and age came from our classic vision of what the future would be. Still today we are trying to create hoverboards!

This sentiment is one that I think still holds true... for example, the lasting effect that space operas like Star Wars and Star Trek holds even in our culture today is undeniable. Though, I think that there is a part of these stories that determines their timelessness that separates it from the rest of the genre and helps propel it so far into the collective consideration of what is a 'classic'. Movies like Star Wars cater to the viewer's emotions, and feel relatable. Even though the story is taking place on alien planets, with unimaginable circumstances, the viewer can relate to the troubles of the characters because the language of emotion never changes, even in a strange context. Many of the stories of this genre-- The Stars My Destination for example, which I read a bit of this week-- kind of fall back into the darkness because of this. The subject matter is so strange and alien, and without the heavy emotional relateability, the story is not one that is going to make it too far into pop culture.

Take for example, Interstellar, if you've seen it yet-- it's a big-budget sci-fi movie that plays hugely on the sensation of human emotions and humanity's undefeatable will to live and survive as a whole. It was hugely successful! And I think that is why-- after Star Wars, we learned that the most lasting works in the space opera genre are those that we as a whole can project onto and learn from.

Space operas are, as a whole, a glossy, flashy vision of what many of us perceive to be a perfect adventure. Strong, mighty-willed characters, evil villains and all sorts of troubles that the hero finds they are able to overcome with the power of love. They're totally unrealistic, but even after in later years we moved onto more gritty, realistic science fiction, we just can't quit the space opera. For years to come we will be seeing more space operas, reboots and new stories alike.

Week Fourteen: Science Fiction Parody and Satire

This week, I had quite an interesting time listening to I Think We're All Bozos On This Bus, by the Firesign Theatre. I can say that it was pretty hard to keep up with this one... at first it seemed to be some sort of convention or class for people with big, honking noses, then turning into an abridged telling of the creation of human, and all sorts of weirdness after that. It didn't even follow a usual way of storytelling, rather, it seemed very candid and like it was happening as I listened to it (I suppose that's normally the way a radio play goes? I get them mixed up with audiobooks a lot of the time).

When a genre reaches the point of being satired, often it has reached full circle. This does not necessarily mean that new and amazing works of the genre will not still be produced, but rather, that the genre has been around for so long that many of its characteristics are easily recognizable. So much so that the point that if they are parodied, the viewer or listener can still identify the story as making fun of the tried-and-true genre in particular.

I enjoy satire a lot, and I think it's a particularly attractive outlet for comedy, done correctly that is. Even aside from the comedic aspect, parody can also be a way to point out what's wrong with our world and draw the viewer's attention to the problem. Hopefully this can help make the viewer more aware of the situation on a wide scale.

Week Thirteen: The Aquatic Uncle

1. Are there any prominent symbols in the story-- if so, what are they and how are they used?
I think some of the biggest symbols in The Aquatic Uncle lay in the plot device of the younger generations being more 'progressive' in terms of literally progressing onto land with their new paws. A big central theme of this story is the clashing between the younger generation that has moved onto land and their stubborn great-uncle, who is embarrassingly set cold in his old ways and in the tradition of his people. The story uses the very literal plot device of 'land vs. water' to exacerbate the argument between the narrator and his uncle, and to drive the point home of the narrator's incredulousness when his fiancé leaves him to be with his uncle in the water.

2. What connections did you make with the story? Discuss elements of the story with which you were able to connect.
I'm definitely able to connect with the sensation of not being able to see eye-to-eye with older members of my family (namely, my parents). I feel for the narrator and I can relate to his stress, frustration and embarrassment over the ridiculous nonsense his grandfather spouts. I also have a lot of contention with my family members over subjects with which they feel are a part of their tradition or simply is just 'the way they are' according to how they grew up and how popular culture was at that time. I definitely feel for the narrator and his incredulousness at his fiancé leaving him and rejecting his way of life to be with his old-fashioned uncle... I can't say I'd take to that too well, either.

3. What changed would you make to adapt this story into another medium? What medium would you use? What changes would you make?
I personally think that this story would make a great children's book. The ideas and imagery presented are not too complicated, but are still connected to an important real-world sensation that would be good to expose to a child early on. The imagery of using a fish-granduncle and his land-footed descendants is also perfect material to interpret cartoonishly and make quite visually appealing to any young kid.

Week Twelve: Diverse Position Science Fiction

This week, we spoke about emerging diversity in science fiction authors and the different POV's that these stories are starting to take with the inclusion of different demographics. Right off the bat, I want to say that I definitely think that science fiction (and storytelling in general) has become much more diverse and more subgenres have branched out since authors of different demographics have become more mainstream. In particular, Bloodchild by Octavia Butler brings themes and questions to the table that I think would never have been written about by a white man. I believe that it's almost impossible, or that it's quite futile to try to separate the art for the artist, as people say. The art you make (or words you write, in this case) come directly from your experiences and represent what you think and feel as a person. It would be foolish to think that you couldn't diversify the type of fiction we experience by hearing stories from different demographics of authors.

Bloodchild is a very interesting short story exploring a scenario far in the future where humans coexist with insect-like aliens who require a host body for reproduction. The insect aliens (who are sentient and can speak with the humans) use the humans as their host bodies, and it is treated as a special task and a great honor. Another special circumstance is, because the aliens need the female-bodied humans to stay alive so that they can keep the human populace going. Because of this, the aliens only use males to reproduce, and only male humans need undergo the horrific process of birthing one of the alien children (one that involves cutting open their whole body to extract the maggot).

It's an interesting scenario that provided an equally interesting in-class discussion. A lot of men get really touchy about female-bodied exclusive subjects such as childbirth, menstruation and those kinds of things, and I thought the story was a good catalyst for getting everyone to think about situations like that. In general, I think that things like menstruation and childbirth would be taken more seriously and be a lot less the butt of jokes if they happened to men, as well as many other things. Much of the stigma would be very different and probably translated into a point of pride for many men. It's an example of a valuable conversation that women and non-white people can bring to the table in the world of fiction.

Week Eleven: Cyberpunk and Steampunk

The selected reading for this week was Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? by Philip K. Dick. The story itself is the one that the movie Blade Runner is based off of, although it is a bit different. The topics of discussion this week deal with the subgenres of cyberpunk and steampunk, and the idea of alternate realities.

Cyberpunk stories are usually always set in the future, and are, much of the time, dystopian or following a great World War or apocalypse of some sort. They usually always deal with the possibilities of what could be following a tragic event like this, or sort of what horrors humanity would have to deal with if all of this went sort of wrong. Much of the time cyberpunk explores the idea of technology gone wrong, specifically designed to help humanity but always ending up turning on us in some way.

In Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? the story is centered around Rick Deckard, who is given the job of 6 man-made androids gone rogue. The world he lives in has been catastrophically ravaged by a nuclear war, and much of the environment lays in waste. It's a status symbol to be able to own a living animal, and much of Deckard's ennui in the story comes from the fact that he is only able to afford a malfunctional electric sheep instead of a real, living animal like his neighbor. The story itself holds a large amount of angst as opposed to the movie, and Deckard experiences a lot of existential crisis and struggles to find meaning in his life. Living in a world without animals, whom humans experience great empathy for, as well as having to coexist with a type of human who doesn't experience empathy at all (androids) seems to be very difficult for the average person to cope with emotionally. I think that was much of what Dick was trying to explore in this book, and what much of the cyberpunk genre tries to explore in general. That is, what circumstances may we have to live under if we let technology and war get too out of hand? How will the human experience be if we don't take care of our planet? The genre continues to raise questions about humanity and our future, even today.

Week Ten: The Fiction of Ideas

I believe I missed class this week, but I was able to read through a bit of Philip K. Dick's A Scanner Darkly, and I do have some thoughts on this subject of discussion. This week is about 'the fiction of ideas', or the exploration of where the science fiction genre began to go in the late 60's and 70's after the initial high-adventure, hero's story space tales had been run through. Many authors began to write darker, more dystopian stories, and essentially explore the negative side of what could happen with the possibility of all the advanced technology coming out.

A Scanner Darkly is a story about drug culture and abuse. The main character, Arctor, lives a double life living in a house full of drug abusers and also as an undercover agent given the task to spy on the household. While on the job, Arctor becomes addicted to Substance D, the fictional psychoactive drug mainly portrayed in the story. As the story progresses, Arctor becomes progressively more and more incapacitated by his drug use, and it comes out that he has become unable to perform his job because of his addiction. He is sent to a rehabilitation center called "New-Path", and the reader learns that the police had wanted to infiltrate New-Path all along. They had intended Arctor to become addicted so that they could have a way into the rehabilitation center, and essentially ruined his life trying to get the job done.

The story raises a few questions about the real trustworthiness of law enforcement, and the extremes that they are required to go through in this day and age, where infiltrating a place or finding the source of some mysterious funding may not be as easy as it might have been 10 or 20 years ago. In the age of artificial intelligence and super-drugs and incredibly easy to access information, it has been made undoubtedly harder for law enforcement to bust people as they get smarter and more difficult to penetrate. What really is the worth of one person in the face of the greater good? In the presence of dangerous new super-drugs, is it really so bad to sacrifice one guy in order to help stop a drug more deadly than the world has ever seen before? Many of these stories raise questions such as this, questions not bothered to ask in the high-adventure scifi stories of previous, where the greater good has always been cut-and-dry and good and evil is clearly identified. These scifi stories have become more realistic and more sophisticated in the way they raise these questions. They become less of a complete escape and more of a way to invoke thought about the real questions one could be asking about this world.

Week Nine: Space Opera

This week we talked about the genre of space opera. The space opera was a landmark of the progression of human history as shown in popular culture and literature. The same principles of storytelling, the 'hero's journey' and all that, all wrapped up in a line of sight pointing straight towards the future-- best represented in the mid-1900's by space travel and the promise that outer space holds for the future of the human race.

This sentiment is one that I think still holds true... for example, the lasting effect that space operas like Star Wars and Star Trek holds even in our culture today is undeniable. Though, I think that there is a part of these stories that determines their timelessness that separates it from the rest of the genre and helps propel it so far into the collective consideration of what is a 'classic'. Movies like Star Wars cater to the viewer's emotions, and feel relatable. Even though the story is taking place on alien planets, with unimaginable circumstances, the viewer can relate to the troubles of the characters because the language of emotion never changes, even in a strange context. Many of the stories of this genre-- The Stars My Destination for example, which I read a bit of this week-- kind of fall back into the darkness because of this. The subject matter is so strange and alien, and without the heavy emotional relateability, the story is not one that is going to make it too far into pop culture.

Take for example, Interstellar, if you've seen it yet-- it's a big-budget sci-fi movie that plays hugely on the sensation of human emotions and humanity's undefeatable will to live and survive as a whole. It was hugely successful! And I think that is why-- after Star Wars, we learned that the most lasting works in the space opera genre are those that we as a whole can project onto and learn from.

Week Eight: Mythic Fiction and Contemporary Urban Fantasy

This week, we talked in class about contemporary fantasy and stories by authors such as Neil Gaiman. I (regrettably) didn't get around to reading Anansi Boys this week, but in class we did watch Coraline and saw an interview with Gaiman and touched on that.

I loved the use of myth in Coraline because it was definitely set in a contemporary setting and very relatable to any kid having grown up in this modern technological era. The movie played on the "distant parent" trope, one created with the invention of the computer and with parents having too many things to do on the computer-- whether they be work or games. I personally know friends who have parents that are more addicted to the computer than they should be, and it can be very damaging to a kid who needs any kind of direction, supervision, or accountability.

So Coraline has to deal with moving away from her home to a rural area so that her parents can focus on their work (their computer work) and Coraline gets stuck trying to supervise herself however she can, whether it be avoiding the neighborhood boy or just finding something to keep herself occupied.

She discovers this fantasy world and becomes enthralled with it, without anything else to keep her occupied in life. I feel like this really speaks to the imaginary world that a child can cook up for him- or herself in the modern era, and how it can start to run rampant if not properly supervised.

The 'myth' in this story came from Coraline's very real invention of her imaginary world. This is by no means a concept that is unheard of being created by a child or otherwise, as I said before. Gaiman does something very special by making a fantasy book out of a very real situation, one having to do with neglect and an imagination run rampant-- he does bring the point home by giving the 'imagination' part very real implications in the real-world context, but the point still stands.

I think Gaiman put a modern twist on both the concept of Coraline and the idea of how the story stands as a myth on its own. This is for sure a reason why it's so popular.

Week Seven: The Novel of Spiritual Education

I'll admit it, I'm one of those people who has probably reread the entire Harry Potter series about five or six times. It was really big for me throughout my childhood and the timing of the book releases were well placed for my generation, as I felt that I grew up with the characters in HP as the books were released chronologically through their teen years.

This week, I revisited the Harry Potter series and it brought me back to the values it presented to me as a teen (I haven't re-read the series in a long while). One of the impacts that I remember most about this series is the theme of growing complexity as a child becomes an adult, and their growing awareness of the complications of the world around them.

In the first book, the world of Harry starts out very whimsical, magical, full of wonder. Harry is introduced to the Wizarding World for the first time, as is the reader. In a way I feel like this reflects the wonders of the world exposed to someone who has finally grown old enough to have the capacity to learn and understand the world on a larger scale than ever before. This, of course, is a trend that continues throughout one's teen years in general. As you age and grow, your capacity to understand also grows, and you start to experience more of the negative sides of the world as well as the positive. You become disenchanted, a bit, and start to feel wronged and attacked by all the unjust things that are being done to you in the world. The poorer sides of life feel like a personal attack when you are a teen, and being so young, you have no idea how to cope with this yet.

I feel that this trend is mirrored in the HP series. As Harry and his friends grow and learn, and as the series progresses, the books get darker and darker and the characters start to learn more and more how twisted the world is, but more importantly, they learn how to cope with it. I think the Harry Potter series is an effective series for teenagers dealing with various difficulties for the first time in their lives-- learning how to cope is an important part of growing up, and not necessarily something that is focused on, or that everyone talks about. I know it helped me in a way, and that still stands out today as one of the best things I learned from this series.

Week Six: The Heroic Journey

This week I read The Hobbit, by J.R.R. Tolkien. I have never read any Tolkien books before, nor stayed awake during any of the movies-- so I was surprised when I was able to really enjoy and actually finish the entirety of The Hobbit. It wasn't quite as long as the Lord of the Rings series, which I'm sure helped, but it was still a good sized book! I was surprised at how accessible the language in the book was, and found myself really enjoying it.

The book reminded me very much of the Redwall series, also written by a man from the UK. The style of writing as far as the worldbuilding, songwriting, elaborate descriptions of feasts, and inherent good/evil alignment of certain races of beings in both books are very similar. However, I did notice that in The Hobbit, the tone was very conversational, as if the author himself was telling you the story in real time. I think this is definitely one of the things that made the book so accessible, and probably helped in the popularity that it gained.

I don't always agree with the Hero's Journey as being an the only possible way to write a cohesive story-- though I recognize that it's a tried-and-true way to write a long-form fantasy story. The Hobbit is a good example of this-- the story is very structured, but you don't realize this while you are reading it. The story flows and the transitions are not easily spotted. I do understand why the movie seemed to embellish the story so much however, as it is written subtly and not in a flashy way that would be at all appropriate for a movie.

Week Five: Witches and Women in Genre

Internalized misogyny, as present as it is in our culture, has an interesting way of manifesting itself in our stories and media. Many times it is so subtle and so common that many people don't even notice it even when you isolate it and point it out. There are not just a couple ways that women and femininity have manifested themselves in the horror genre in particular, but many-- and not all are very flattering.

There are usually two types of women characters in the horror genre: helpless and powerful, opposite sides of the same spectrum. Many 'helpless' woman characters are side characters, whose role in the story is to be saved be the (usually male) main character. If a helpless woman character is the main character in the story, many times she is a passive character, not active-- meaning that much of what goes on in the story happens to her, instead of her being the catalyst to moving the story forward.

One of the ways that a 'powerful' woman character manifests herself in a horror story is in the form of a witch. Witches have magical powers and are usually more evil than good. These witches are usually very ugly, warty, and extremely hard to be around. If she is not evil (like the Good Witch of the North) she is usually incredibly beautiful, idolized, and in a way, untouchable.
All of these tropes say a lot about how our culture views many women in a way.

By putting powerful women on a pedestal, or making them incredibly evil and ugly, I think it sends the message that power is something that women cannot inherently achieve. Though if she does achieve power, she must be so far removed from femininity that she is hardly a woman anymore, or at least not one that looks any good (green skin, anyone?).

The film we watched in class, Kiki's Delivery Service, is an example of a story in which the witch characters are not viewed as evil, untouchably beautiful, or otherwise-- they are viewed as borderline normal members of society just trying to fit in. Kiki, the main witch, seems incredibly human. More and more stories these days are expanding their horizons and including the trope of the 'witch' character as one that is more normal and human, but it is important to talk about how internalized misogyny affects how these characters (and how women characters in general) are interpreted in other works of literature, films and comics.

Week Four: Old Weird and New Weird

I appreciate strange or non-linear storytelling in particular-- not that I think I'm above 'regular' kinds of storytelling or anything. Both are good. I'll admit that a lot of nonlinear books I read or movies I watch go way over my head, but I enjoy the surprises and I enjoy the way that these works challenge the way we normally experience media. I think that's a very important theme to have, especially in a genre such as horror. This genre is riddled with all kinds of tropes and predictability, though at its core you would think it's supposed to be weird! I see a lot of interesting dramas and documentary-type films, but when I see a horror film challenging the norms I really get excited.

I read a bit of King Rat outside of class, which I'd always wanted to read, but I really don't think I got far enough to explore what was so weird about it.
The movie we watched in class however, was far more compelling. We watched Under the Skin, a 2013 film starring Scarlett Johansson that definitely explored the world of "new weird". Right off the bat it turns over a number of tired horror tropes on its head, as it seems to feature a woman prowling the streets of Glasgow and preying on men-- not the other way around, as you would think. Before long, you realize that supernatural elements are involved-- but again, not the way you would think. I sincerely enjoyed the way that this film approached these scenes. At first I was under the impression that the movie was highly metaphoric. The strange pool of liquid that the main character was luring these men into seemed to come off as a way to represent a woman serial killer in such an alien way because the concept itself is so alien. I later learned that the film is actually very supernatural, but I still stand impressed. I feel that these elements were very gently and excellently handled.

I think 'weird' is very compelling, for me at least, because it gives you a break from a world saturated with formulaic storytelling. I respect people who work structurally but I try to think of storytelling as an organic process and that each different story is its own living, breathing thing, and that you may treat it as such. I feel when I watch films and read books like this that they are really pushing the limits of storytelling and I can really respect that. I know many people are afraid of things that are 'weird' or foreign but I think that weird keeps the world interesting and we should not shun it, but embrace it.

Week Three: J-Horror

This week I read parts of A Wild Sheep Chase by Haruki Murakami.

I read Murakami once before in high school, and I hated it, which I now find interesting. I found it hard to relate to, too subtle, and just straight up boring. I had heard great things about Murakami and I remember being disappointed, because the book I had read wasn't near as great as everyone had made his work out to be. Needless to say, I didn't pick it up again until I was to read this book for this class.

When I came back to Murakami this time, I was hoping that I would receive it a bit better than I had before, because I definitely wanted to realize the genius of his work. I was pleased to find that I had a great time reading A Wild Sheep Chase, so much so that I definitely want to be able to read and finish it on my own time. The fact that I now find it so interesting was, in itself, interesting to me-- what was different about myself now than before, and why did I perceive this book so differently?

One of the things I have been thinking about a lot the past couple years is the difference in context between Eastern media and Western media, and the respective values that they represent. I think in high school I wasn't, er, 'read' enough, and though I enjoyed Eastern media such as anime and manga, I wasn't really ready to enjoy the elements of Eastern values that Murakami's more heavy work embodied.

I found that I appreciated a lot of the subject matter focused on by Eastern media, even in respect to eastern horror movies and such. The West so heavily emphasizes 'Good vs. Bad', 'Righteousness vs. Evil', good guys and bad guys... I found it very tiring. In real life the distinction between the two is sometimes very blurred, if even there at all. Why would I enjoy watching media that has values that are so alien from what my actual values in real life try to embody?

When I would watch or read Eastern media, often there is no good side or bad side. The lines between the two are both much more hard to distinguish. There is also an emphasis on the mundane and the vague, which I can appreciate. The West is very much about action, while much of Eastern media is about also focusing on the space between those actions, as well as how we as an audience can relate from everyday life. Much of Eastern character animation includes everyday gestures and mannerisms, which makes it that much more relatable.

The themes in J-Horror are similar. In many of these films, from a culture that considers many romantic interactions to be frivolous and unnecessary, sex scenes are absent, and it includes the standoffishness of the characters as a theme as opposed to the teamwork featured in Western horror movies. Someone who loves Western horror and grew up on Western media their whole life, they might be hard pressed to relate to some of these movies.

Week Two: Vampire-- Love and Pain

This week I watched the movie "Only Lovers Left Alive" (2013), directed by Jim Jarmusch. (I was a little unclear on whether we had a choice between the book or the movie, and I've read a bit of the beginning of the book since, but I spent most of my attention on the movie so I'd like to focus on that a bit more).

When an author is writing a vampire novel, they have a few interesting themes to play with. For example, vampire characters are very much like human characters in a sense, at least when you compare them to say, animal characters-- however vampire characters create a certain type of 'trope' for themselves that can be a special kind of playground for the writer. Authors like to follow a certain set of rules for vampiric characters, whether those be rules following popular vampiric lore (asking permission to be let into a residence, sleeping during the day, etc). or lore that the author themselves add to spice up the tired old recipe. This allows the writer to explore the world created within this specific set of boundaries for these characters; in certain ways this can be more interesting and produce different kinds of results than if the author is building a character that has no pre-determined set of rules dictating how they may behave or what their motives may be. The latter way of building characters is often more challenging because of the wider variety of options; I think that stereotypes and literary character tropes exist for this very reason.

Springboarding off of that-- the vampiric characters in "Interview with the Vampire" as well as "Only Lovers Left Alive" operated within a specific set of motives that came from things like their long lifespans/immortality, their need to feed, their lack of companionship and loneliness belonging in a world scarcely populated with their own kind; many vampire characters often deal with similar problems thanks to their similarly dire circumstances. The two main vampire characters in Rice's novel, Louis and Lestat, face this conflict when Lestat turns Louis out of his need for companionship in the lonely world (of course later this turns into trouble for Lestat, as you cannot force someone into immortality without some kind of retaliation). In "Only Lovers Left Alive" there is a similar situation with the two main vampire characters, Adam and Eve, who are traversing through time with only each other and a few others. When the two lose only a small number of vampire friends, because they are so scarce, this forces them into some hard situations, for example when Eve's vampire friend dies-- and his connection to a good blood supply goes with it.

Many vampire tropes are present in almost all vampire novels and movies, and I think the fun that the writer has coming from working within these sets of rules and tropes to give a fun spin on a classic story.

Week One: Gothic in Contemporary Culture

The gothic aesthetic is one that is has been present in popular culture for many years, specifically in the form of 'counterculture'. I'm sure it has been viewed as weird and scary even back when it first came to be as much as it is now.

A specific example that I can think of is how prominent the idea of 'gothic' is in recent fashion throughout the last 15 years or so. There's the obvious idea of the gothic fashion style that one thinks of when they think back to the 2000's. Lots of black hair dye, lipstick, and nail polish, tripp pants, band shirts, Hot Topic... not such a great way to look. People who considered themselves as 'gothic' seemed to be really into the culture of horror movies, classic monsters like vampires, werewolves, bats and spiders, acting or looking 'creepy' or mysterious, many of the traits that we decided were earmarks of the gothic genre in class. In any case it was a super popular way to dress and I can't think of a single person I know who wouldn't know what gothic fashion is on some level.

Today gothic fashion has taken some new turns. There's still the classic 2000's gothic look (we call it 'mall goth' now) but there's definitely a surge of trendy looks one can label themselves as that are a direct descendant of the mall goth look. Personally, I think this came from the fact that those who considered themselves a mall goth in 2005 are a bit older now and a bit more conscious of how they look. It's easy to think you look great in middle school but we become a bit more self-aware as we grow older.

I can think of some popular trends that a lot of people in their 20-something's like to identify as, fashion wise-- 'pastel goth' is a big one, and I think a lot of people who are into this look definitely think of themselves as being part of some counterculture movement (though I will say that it's a bit wildly popular for that idea, but that's another discussion). Pastel goths still enjoy dark makeup and nail polish but might swap out all the black for more pastel colors, dying their hair pink, blue, or lavender, wearing lots of sheer blouses and inverted-cross patterns, and wearing some more antique-inspired necklaces and earrings. There's a bit less of a connection to the gothic genre in terms of spider webs, spooky castles, and general halloween aesthetic, though the term is known as pastel goth and this is why I'm sure it comes directly from many people who identified as mall goths in their teen years. Not necessarily a bad thing, just an observation.

There are some other great looks that have come out of gothic fasion, though. My favorite right now is surf goth, seen below--

You can definitely draw some similarities to early gothic fashion, and even though it may not be apparent at first you can do this with almost any fashion trend with 'goth' in the name. It's pretty interesting!