Have Yourself a Quirky Little Christmas

Well my original plan to write a new Christmassy article seems to have fallen through as I shan't have the time, so if you want a postpunkpixie Yuletide fix (though I don't know why you would) pop over to my deviantart profile and have a look at a couple of snowy watercolours I've posted there. There's some other new stuff up on there two, but I don't have any excuse to plug those.

A very late addition to Things Involving Me

I know, I know. Two weeks into the blog and already I'm behind and neglecting this damn thing. Two reasons: one, it's nearly Christmas and I have to do all sorts of tedious and vexing things like buy presents and put up decorations, and two, I've been busy talking to new and exciting people online. You see, in a moment of depression, I decided to join the lovely OkCupid, not because I particularly feel I need a partner, but more to meet new people and, crucially, to make new friends locally since all my friends seem to be elsewhere at the moment. I've used dating sites before with little success, meeting a few people that I talked to for about an hour and then being ignored for months afterwards. So far, however, I've been quite impressed with OKC. Their matching system means you can find like-minded people pretty easily and, unlike most sites, most of the users are friendly and willing to reply to messages instead of just ignoring you or never, ever logging on.

So yes, I'm sorry I haven't posted any of the usual rants and links, I've been having a social life for a change. Anyway, normal service will definitely resume post-Yule, with a few odd posts in between (hopefully) whenever I have a spare moment to avoid doing something more useful.

Online articles and the curse of internet users

I think writing content for the Internet can be trickier than writing for magazines and suchlike sometimes. I'm not talking about blogs, here, although certainly writing a blog that people actually read is an extremely difficult pursuit (not that I'd know). No, I'm talking articles. Now I write articles (and reviews and what have you) for a smallish site with little reputation and most of my stuff gets very little attention, which is fine except that's how I earn money from them but there you go. The real trouble comes when one because vaguely popular. Popularity brings stupid comments that need deleting, plagiarism and snarky links from other people's sites with snappy captions like "massive fail!" because they happen to disagree with the article or not like a picture or something.

Taking the piss out of someone for saying something stupid is one thing, ranting at them for having a different opinion is quite another. I mean, I really don't see any merit in the Harry Potter franchise and though I can pick it apart all I like, I don't feel the need to shout at people who do see some worth in it.

Anyway, part of the problem with writing online articles is since the internet is so very wide its hard to know what your readership will be. If I write a beginner's guide to something, will the people reading it know nothing about the subject, a little bit, or a lot and just be reading to see if I get it right? If I write a "top ten" list, will readers be looking for ideas for something to watch or to see if their personal favourites are included? Whatever you write, if it gets more than a hundred views, chances are someone interested in the subject will have a slightly different view on it than the audience that the writer had imagined might be interested. And of course there will always be some ninny who misses the humour in something.

Thankfully most people are too lazy to comment, else I'd either remove everything or have to spend all day deleting them.

Sometimes when I'm surfing, I wonder why I don't push out into the further realms of the 'net, then I discover some site/blog/whatever where yet another bigot decides picks people apart for dressing in a certain way or having green eyes or wanting to use a semicolon or liking cheese or something equally inane. *sigh*

I like my schadenfreude as much as the next person, but there's a difference between laughing at someone who has done something foolish and laughing at someone who has done something different. If we were all the same, life would be boring. If we were all clever, life would be easier.

Another day, another way to procrastinate, or why I love children's television shows

Another day, another rambling entry to the blog...

I love children's telly. I think I watch more children's television than I do adult's, which is probably only slightly fewer hours than I spend watching films. That last sentence made little sense, but rest assured, I do watch a lot of kid's tv. Partly because I have nothing particular to do during the day and partly because daytime television is a ghastly void of auction shows, talk shows, bad game shows and repeats of things I've already seen. Course, I only watch good children's tv, I'm not so desperate for background noise that I'll watch Chucklevision and Captain Mack, hell no, I'm a discerning 22-year-old woman after all!

The nice thing about kid's programs is there are certain types of shows that are always on; there's always one worthy show about animals, there's always a couple of wacky parody cartoons, a couple of shows in which loud male presenters do "fun" science, there's always the girly drama about best friends and the slightly less gender specific show about an eccentric family, there's always the cutesy program designed to send very small children to sleep, and... well you get the idea. And within ten seconds after tuning in, it's easy to work out which category you're watching, unlike grown up telly that can't make it's mind up. It's also reassuring that kid's tv is still just as watchable now as it was when I was younger and more easily amused.

I have three favourite categories myself. First is the ever-so-cute stuff I tend to refer to as "hangover telly". You know the sort of thing: gently paced slices of nothingness narrated by silken-voiced celebrities and featuring adorable characters designed by Ragdoll or whatever company is trying to replace them. At the moment it's shows like Waybuloo (aw yoga for tots, what a sweet idea!), In the Night Garden (although there is something innately creepy about the way the characters nod), and Bookaboo (in which celebs read picture books to a puppet. One episode had Meatloaf reading a book about a wolf. It was awesome). The second is the "funny stuff for little boys and little girls who hang around with little boys" category, which splits into "naughty character" shows like Horrid Henry (he's like Dennis the Menace for the new millennium) and Bear Behaving Badly (in which a puppet blue bear who talks entirely in catchphrases), and the "gross stuff" subcategory, including such classics as Wolves, Witches and Giants (in which Spike Milligan narrates fairy tales with typical surrealism and irreverence), Grizzly Tales for Gruesome Kids (in which Nigel Planner narrates impish cautionary tales). Finally there's the "standard funny cartoon" category, for which I'm always spoilt for choice, though I'm currently giggling at The Twisted Whiskers Show (which is old fashioned Looney Tunes style humour but in CGI and is actually surprisingly good), The League of Super Evil (a superhero parody involving hopeless supervillains who all have suspiciously familiar voices), The Secret Show (a stylishly animated spy parody) and of course Shawn the Sheep (which surely needs no introduction). Of course since I'm a bit of a goth and a bit of a geek I'm drawn to parodies and all things ooky spooky, so I'm keeping an eye out for reruns of Frankenstein's Cat and Zombie Hotel.

But by far my favourite kid's show of the decade has to be Young Dracula. On the surface of it, it's a variation on the "eccentric family" motif I grew up with, spiced up with a "The Little Vampire"-like storyline (remember that show? Everyone was really 80s and it was dubbed out of German. Damn I used to love that). It's full of obvious vampire jokes and worthy themes, and covers "issues" in a kid-friendly way, but what makes it great is the stylish Hammer-esque production and some brilliant characters. Keith Lee-Castle really stands out as an arrogant and extremely childish Count Dracula, stomping around dressed like Ozzy Osbourne. It's really very funny. I'm hungrily awaiting a third series, or at least a dvd, but in the mean time, all of the episodes are up on youtube thanks to the efforts of equally keen kiddies, like this person. If you have some time to kill, you know where to go.

Now if you'll excuse me, I want to go giggle at Scream Queens. Why yes, my viewing habits do only work in extremes, funny you should mention that...

Sunday Links: Shopping!

First things first, I want to say an enormous Hello! to my first ever blog follower. So...hello!

Now, back to today's topic. It's uncomfortably close to Christmas, yet it's a Sunday so all the fun shops are shut. Well never fear, here are some lovely online shops to peruse, either to buy pretty things for your nearest and dearest or just to window shop.

So let's start with some of the more expensive retailers. Clockwork Couture do some simply exquisite Victoriana and Steampunky styles, including skirts, blouses and bloomers. Actually to be fair to them their prices are very reasonable for the amount of work that goes into each piece, and if I did have 300 dollars to fritter, I would definitely be buying one of their lovely two piece Victorian travelling suits.

Next up, and a little pricier is Kambriel, so upmarket they list their dresses as "gowns". But oh they are very very pretty.

And the last of the higher-end gothy shops is Voodoo Lounge, an indie designer on Etsy who makes beautiful dresses, skirts, blouses and mutton-sleeved shrugs in some of the prettiest damn fabrics you'll ever see.

But where does one go for pretty gothy things that aren't so pricey? Why to ebay of course. One of my favourite ebay shops is Reincarnated which sells reasonably priced hand made victoriana and will often slip a free pair of gloves alongside your order.

For cute Japanese accessories, one of my favourites is Refuse to be Usual. A lot of the clothes are designed for teeny tiny people, but you can't go wrong with a stretchy tutu or any of the charming Gothic Lolita cuffs, chokers and hats to be found in the accessories section.

If Refuse to Be Usual is a bit too small and pricey, Wail222 has a larger range of sizes and some deadly cheap accessories though they don't have quite the same range of items.

Or for some slightly more glamorous accessories, try the beautiful range of chokers and trinkets at The Art of Adornment, another generous store that'll pop a freebie in with a large order.

What about shoes? Try the lovely Pennangalan who make and sell incredible made-to-order boots. I have a beautiful pair of purple platforms from them which are my favourite shoes in the world, but be sure to check out their new steampunk collection and the comfy looking boots they designed for the Tomb Raider movies.

Last of all, what glamorous outfit is complete without a glamorous perfume? Starborn Alchemy make stunningly lovely perfumes, lip balms and body butters, all organic and hand made. Since buying perfumes without being able to smell them is nigh-on impossible, they do a reasonable range of generous testers too. I'm still kicking myself that I missed getting some of their Repo! tie-in fragrance.

Well, that's me all shopped out. Don't spend too much now.

Saturday Rant: The Stressed Factor

It may surprise you to learn I quite like certain reality shows and, though I prefer the variation available in "Britain's Got Talent", I do quite like the X Factor. Or rather, I did like the X Factor: the latest series has been riling me almost as much as the horrible peak time advertisements we're subjected to in between segments. No, it's not the "Simon Cowell is taking over the charts" problem; no, it's not the John and Edward farce; no, it's not Louis Walsh's drivel about rules, Dannie Minogue's nonsense or Cheryl Cole's girly whining. What really annoys me about the X Factor is its lazy, infuriating and relentless use of music.

Now, I understand that it's a music show and I understand that since it's a mainstream show it's not likely to include a lot of my favourite tracks in its repertoire, but do we really need to have the continual wall of sound in between performances? Do we really have to have the same handful of "inspiring" tracks blared over soundbites and shots of the contestants looking emotional? And do we really have to have snippets of film scores over montages? Use of film scores for irrelevant material is something that really bugs me. ITV aren't the only ones who do it, the BBC often use snatches of music in unrelated documentaries or magazine shows too, and the epidemic has even started reaching film trailers; earlier in the decade, Howard Shore's spectacular scores for the Lord of the Rings trilogy were pilfered, now we have fragments from Gladiator, Pirates of the Caribbean, and even Saw turning up in trailers for films in no way linked to the music. Take the trailer for "The Box", which looks thoroughly awful, which uses the theme from Saw (remember that bit at the end of each film in franchise where the driving strings swell up over montages of various previous events when the denouement is finally revealed?) to suggest "this is a tense and gory thriller full of twists". Except it doesn't suggest that, because all it makes me do is sit and think "Yeah Saw was actually quite a good film. I should watch Saw again."

Which is why, film makers and trailer makers everywhere, using music from another piece is not wise. The number of programs I've completely forgotten to watch because I've been trying to remember where that piece of music is from is beyond counting now. And for tracks that I can trace, I find myself not watching the television but instead thinking of the film. So when last week the X Factor used music from Edward Scissorhands, Gladiator, Pirates of the Caribbean and more as "themes" for its stars, I couldn't help but wonder what on earth Joe whatever-his-name-is has in common with a Tim Burton film.

But that's not the only musical mishap that has me seething. Oh no. There's the insipid snippets of pop music that are designed to cruelly toy with the audience's emotions. Now I admit that this was done most frequently way back in the early auditions, but since they're my favourite part of the show, I'm going to rant about them anyway. See, for me much of the fun of the auditions is trying to guess in advance who's going to be good and who's not, who's a nutcase and who's a rather sweet young thing that deserves a chance. Unfortunately the X Factor editors have decided that letting the audience judge for themselves is far too dangerous, so each individual is introduced by certain tracks which signal from the instant they first appear what they're skill-level is. Before someone even opens his or her mouth to speak, the audience is told whether they have some sort of tragedy in their life, whether they're going to amaze you or whether they're going to make you double over laughing. And then, once they've performed their ten second snippet and the judges have said yay or nay, we have a choice of about three songs for people who will get through.

Clearly if we're allowed a split second of silence we might lose interest and switch channels. But what makes this whole sorry experience even worse is the sheer laziness of it all. We don't just hear tracks that tell us what to think, we hear the same tracks that tell us what to think. Hardly an episode has gone by this year without having to hear that whiny-voiced chap from Snow Patrol ask if he can "lie here" or that dreary Take That chorus that moans that "you and me we could light up the sky". Neither track is one I'm particularly fond of. Why yes dear, you can lie there, just wait while I find a steamroller! Calm down, pixie, calm down.

Now, I admit I'm not exactly up to date with mainstream music other than what gets played on adverts or what-have-you, but I'm pretty sure there's more than two "inspiring" and "uplifting" songs out there if the folks behind the X Factor would kindly do some more research. I might not get to hear a song I like, but at least we could get some variety!

The X Factor baffles me sometimes. I understand the music, I understand the rags-to-riches business, I understand the schadenfreude of watching the hopeless ones in auditions but what I don't understand is the bitchiness of it. Do people honestly enjoy watching Walsh and Cowell bicker, or the tabloids scream bloody murder every time they think someone is being "arrogant"?

It's all very strange.

In unrelated TV moans, what's BBC4 up to? Where's my pre-Christmas ghost stories, eh? A repeat of Crooked House does not count, they've already repeated it at least twice and it wasn't that good to begin with. Much as I like Mark Gatiss, the overarching Amicus-esque plot of Crooked House was pretty weak. They could at least show one of those lovely MR James adaptations they're sitting on. To steal a phrase from the M&S ads, Christmas just wouldn't be Christmas without my ghost stories. Sigh...

Vamping Out

I seem to be having a bit of a vampire day today, since having a day to myself does not equate to getting things done but to sitting in front of the television.

First of all I needed to catch up with True Blood which is quite possibly my favourite thing on television at the moment (especially if we're not counting children's programs). The glitzy, HBO-funded mixture of fine acting, well-formed characters and civil rights allegories all to the heady soundtrack of blusey rockabilly and sultry Southern accents has me utterly hooked. (Incidentally what is it about Lousiana and horror? Rice, Brite and now Harris have all crammed the state with their own brands of vampires and then there's the New Orleans voodoo and the ghost stories from the Waverly Hills Sanatorium. Is there something about fabulous accents that just attracts fright?) Now I know its based on a series of books and I know the second season is already out in the states, but shh! don't tell me what happens. I have to admit I feel a little guilty for not reading the books. I read the first one way back when I was still a member of the SF and Fantasy Book Club, but I never found the time to read the others because you see as much as I love the vampire genre, this sort of thing I prefer to watch than read and Charlaine Harris' style isn't really my sort of thing, it's more mystery and romance than horror and fantasy.

In fact until a month or so ago, I'd rather gone off vampire literature, which is a terrible thing to say considering that's what I write but it's true. Anne Rice got a little too involved in her cod philosophy and started going off the rails, to my mind, half way through the third in her Vampire Chronicles, Brian Lumley's work is a little too bleak and epic for me and the Anita Blake series wasn't dark enough. Now we have the "paranormal romance" genre muddying things up and skimping on the gore. Until very recently the newest vampire novel I'd read and enjoyed was Poppy Z Brite's utterly perverted Lost Souls which came out in the mid nineties (of course I didn't read it then, I would have been about six) simply because violent gay goths rather appeal to me.

Thankfully now I've got my grubby hands on a copy of Let the Right One In by Swedish author John Ajvide Lindovist, having seen (and adored) the movie, and I'm pleased to say that I'm enjoying the book just as much as I did the film, despite a few sections in which the translation from Swedish is a little clunky. It has that unsettlingly dispassionate air that splatterpunk had but uses it in a way the splat-pack could never have done. There's a frankness and a realism to it that's just as disturbing as the violence. Yes it's grim, yes it's disturbing, but it's so refreshing to find something so innovative and affecting is still being done in literature.

Because, you see, that is whatmakes the vampire such an enduring and fascinating creature. It's so much more versatile than, say, the ghoul (don't call them zombies, zombies are corpses reanimated by magic, those shambling, contagious creatures so beloved of George A Romero are technically ghouls) or the werewolf. Vampires can be metaphors for sexual dominance, transgression, AIDS, addiction, repression religious fervour and the power of faith, or... well... practically anything. They're still being toyed with in film but literature had become a little stagnant. Well, let's hope Mr Lindvist's incredible efforts breathe a bit more life into the genre again. Or should that be undeath?

(Oh and a quick word on the upcoming remake of "Let the Right One In". I'm swimming with mixed emotions on that. On the one hand hurrah Hammer are making a vampire film that doesn't involve rave music, on the other hand why remake a perfect film? I don't buy into this trend of remaking foreign language pieces or older films simply to "give the original a wider audience". Let's hope Hammer's 2010 offering "The Resident" will be more original.)

Speaking of the wonders of the vampire on film, my vampire day is reaching its peak with low-budget New Zealand action flick, Perfect Creature, which I'm watching as I write. In a way it's the inverse of True Blood. Where True Blood has a society in which vampires are "coming out" and trying to be accepted in society while most of them still act like Lord Ruthven (fiction's first decadent aristocratic vampire, beating Dracula by nearly a century), Perfect Creature is set in an elegant neo-gothic future in which vampires are a race evolved from humanity, respected as a benign and friendly fraternity until one loses his marbles and dashes about killing people and infecting them with his own polluted blood. The script is messy and the acting often below par, but the special effects are incredible and the concept is fascinating. It combines the two main disparate directions the vampire film went in the nineties; the artier, high-concept styles of The Addiction and Nadja and the adrenaline trash of Underworld and Blade along with aspects from wider fantasy, with a dieselpunk twist that reminds me of Dark City and sequences reminiscent of Hammer. It even has Zeppelins. Zeppelins!

The vampire may be one of the oldest figures in fantasy (in all senses of the word) and it may be one of the most popular, but these three pieces I've been looking at today have proved that it's not going to die out or stop evolving, and that's a reassuring thing for a vampire fan like me. Twilight and it's ilk have given the genre a bad reputation in recent months, but, as Lestat would put it "There's still life in the old lady yet!"

I'll leave you with a nicely splattered still from Perfect Creature (pilfered from the truly brilliant blog Taliesin meets the Vampires, if you love fictional bloodsuckers do check it out: Taliesin's reviews cover everything from the obscure to the mainstream and does so in a fair but interesting way). Although looking at it, I'm now terribly tempted to include "pretty men covered in fake blood" as a regular feature. Hmm.

Things involving me

I'm terribly sorry I haven't yet posted anything worth reading as yet. This week has ended up being far busier than I had at first thought, what with trying to find Christmas presents and going up to Oxford for my monthly night on the town, as well as art class and the other mundane things that need to be dealt with and a going to a pub quiz yesterday evening. Oh and I did have to stop and sulk/browse because Borders, quite possibly my favourite bookshop chain in the world, is closing down and the decimated shelves had some irresistible offers on them, which is why I'm now sitting on a pile of graphic novels. Oh and my mp3 player is lost to the ether, so I'm sulking about that too. It had a brand new AAA battery in and everything. Anyway, I do have some things I intend to write about at some point, it's just a matter of finding those spare points at which to write.


When I'm not dashing about the South of England looking for elusive presents and making friends with interesting people at goth clubs, I'm working on/editing my novel (or devourer of time), which currently labours under the working title "Fangs" but might transmute into "There Are Such Things" since that's a far more dynamic and exciting title, methinks. People who know me in the real world (and quite a few people who know me online) will probably have heard about it: it's a fantasy/horror piece about a young woman who falls for a deeply neurotic vampire (call it "paranormal romance" at your peril). On and off I've been working on it for almost seven years. Sounds excessive, but I ignore it for years at a time and it's changed considerably since it first popped into my head as a parody way back when I was in secondary school. Right now this minute I'm tearing my proverbial hair out trying to edit a sex scene into something that a) isn't too long, b) isn't out of character and c) isn't too strange. It is not going all that well. Sex scenes are not my strength, but sadly I can't fill the all of the book with descriptions of gore. Shame, that.

Anyway, I'll probably gab on about the novel more at some point, but right now I should be writing it rather than writing about it. Curse these writer's block days. Curse my insane keyboard (well actually it's my mouse that keeps spontaneously clicking on or highlighting things, but it's my keyboard that deletes the things that get highlighted. I need a new laptop).

I'm really not getting into the swing of this blogging malarkey am I?

In which the pixie introduces herself and sets her schedule EDIT

Well that first post was a lot of drivel so let's start again, shall we?

First things first, who is postpunkpixie? Well, I am. *waves* Hello. I'm a young woman living in the south of England, fresh out of university with an ancient history degree which doesn't seem to be doing me a lot of good. I write and am currently working on a deliciously trashy novel that will soon be dumped at the door of a myriad agents. I also draw, paint and craft strange things and sometimes DJ at a goth club in Oxford. This blog is a chance for me to share the stuff I love and promote the people who inspire me as well as promote myself a tad. I call it "Post Punk Pixie Dust" because these are the things that keep me going, just as pixie dust keeps fairies flying if you beleive JM Barrie.

So, what will this blog bring you? Links, for the most part. Links to my work, links to interesting sites, articles, pictures and what have you. My focus? All things dark, spooky, kooky and quirky from the goth subculture, from Hollywood, from the fashion world and beyond. I had set out a day-by-day weekly schedule but soon found I couldn't fit every subtopic I wanted into a week, so here's the rough schedule of uploads for now: Thursdays will be Things involving me, when I'll post links to things I've been doing, Saturdays will be topical rants and Sundays will be shopping spree day with links to desirable
objects and fabulous shops. Other matters will be covered as and when it suits me.

There is a possibilty that eventually I'll split these out into separate blogs if it gets too much. Who knows?

See you soon!

Hello! or In which the writer tries to justify her whim

Welcome to my brand new, sleek and shiny blog! Here you will find the links, news, oddments and opinions that keep me going; from fashion to feminism, from media to goth, as well as a few bits and pieces about me, my thoughts and my work. I'll try to sort out my posts so that certain days have certain themes, but as I'm starting this on something of a whim, I haven't sorted my schedule yet. I'm a novice blogger, so any advice from the bogosphere would be welcome.