Free Republic

The gothic flat where the Spice Girls famously shot the music video for their 1996 smash hit Wannabe has gone on sale for £11.5million. St Pancras Chambers Penthouse Apartment in London is a Grade I listed gothic building which was designed by George Gilbert Scott in 1873. Gilbert Scott is a renowned architect known for his work on the Albert Memorial and also the Midland Grand Hotel at St Pancras Station. The property, which has rarely featured on the market, is a triplex apartment which offers near to 6,000 sq ft of living space.

The campus of Yale University, 1921. Midnight. It is perhaps the most important job of your career. You, a successful architect, have been selected by a rich donor to build a new tower here, on your alma mater’s campus, at Yale. The tower, Gothic in style, named “Harkness,” must look archaic, timeless. It is 216 feet tall, one foot for every year since Yale’s founding. You could be building history…except that the tower does not look nearly old enough. So you—in, presumably, a long cape, high collar, and top hat—sneak to the construction site. You pull a flask from the...

This is a rough excerpt from the introduction of a book on Victorian werewolves I am writing right now. It should be finished sometime around March 2013. (I have way too many projects to give it my full attention this year) Introduction It has been suggested that the Vampire legend, largely created by Bram Stoker, is the most enduring and famous creature mythos to emerge out of popular Gothic literature. While this may be true the lowly werewolf must also be given a place of distinction. The literature of the Victorian era werewolf has nowhere near the enduring popularity of...

H.G. Wells may be known as one of the first writers of science fiction but his novel The Island of Doctor Moreau is one of the first modern horror stories and hits upon four of the greatest fears of the Victorian age. His work does this in such a subtle and inventive way that we may need to reevaluate Wells and name him one of the modern fathers of horror fiction as well. The four fears that Wells so intricately weaves into his story are the fear of science, the fear of internal corruption, the fear of reverse colonization, and...

A reader points out that President Barack Obama's new typeface is Revolution Gothic, a style inspired by retro Cuban propaganda posters. Who vets the fonts? (Obama press secretary Ben LaBolt emails: “Your GOP operative should have had the courtesy to stay sober before noon, and BuzzFeed should go back to labeling cat slideshows.”)

SHICKSHINNY (PA)– Two people who allegedly pierced three kittens that they marketed as “gothic kittens” on Web sites are facing animal cruelty charges. The Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals of Luzerne County filed six counts of cruelty to animals and three counts of criminal conspiracy against Holly Crawford, 34, of Dobson Road, Ross Township, and William Blansett, age unknown, of Sweet Valley, on Tuesday. The charges were filed with District Judge John Hasay in Shickshinny and mailed to Crawford and Blansett. Humane officers with assistance from the state police at Shickshinny executed a search warrant at Crawford’s...

ROSS TWP. – Three kittens with ear, neck and tail piercings were removed from a home by humane officers on Wednesday. One of the officers from the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals of Luzerne County said the pierced kittens were being sold as “gothic kittens” on an Internet auction site. “This is a first,” said Officer Carol Morrison. “It’s unbelievable anybody would do this to kittens.” Morrison said the investigation began about a week ago when a man from another state noticed “gothic kittens” being sold on eBay. The kittens were also being sold on a pet...

St Giles' in Cheadle, Staffordshire is an exceptional Catholic church. Built between 1841-46 and financed by John Talbot, the 16th Earl of Shrewsbury, A. W. N. Pugin endeavoured to create "a perfect revival of an English parish church of the time of Edward I". Often, Pugin's ambitions had to be scaled down because of the lack of funds, but here at Cheadle, Pugin's patron had seemingly ample resources to match Pugin's imagination and skill. Consequently, the church possesses a soaring 200ft spire, so that the church dominates the town as no other Catholic church in England does, and inside, the...

Black lips, reminiscent of the dark 90s, emerged at the YSL, Giles, and Luella Fall/Winter ‘09 fashion shows. Black lipstick showcases the magic power of decadent Goth aesthetics, along with the potential to be elegant and sophisticated, when applied correctly.

In our last “class” on Greco-Roman, Early Christian and Byzantine Art, we saw how the realism of Greece and Rome was repudiated for more spiritual abstraction. The Christians saw the soul as more important than the weighty, physical body, and thus their works were flat and filled with the gold of paradise. My connection to spiritual twentieth century abstraction received mixed results, but that’s fine. Today, we’ll see how artists gradually added some bulk and realism to their work from 1000-1400. Then in the next “class,” we’ll study how the Italian Renaissance united a rebirth of Greco-Roman realism with Christian...

It would be extremely beneficial at this point if we could simply produce the original autographs for examination. This would greatly simplify the operation of establishing correctly the New Testament Text. But this simply cannot happen. It has long been acknowledged by scholars that we no longer have the "originals." They have long since passed from the scene. This is due to the fact that scribes were known to destroy worn out MSS after they had copied them. Apparently the church valued the WORDS of the original more than the original itself. Therefore, the readings of the originals must be...

http://www.karendecoster.com/archives/Satire/gothic_look.html Los Angeles, California - A new study by the Institute for Womens’ Clothing (IWC) has shown that the Gothic look is no longer fashionable outside of Goth parties and private Freak Shows. This intensive study pertained mostly to women who were not necessarily of the Gothic lifestyle, yet exercised “the look” in public. The IWC’s “Why Ya Wearin’ That?” study attempted to find out how and why the drab, black-Gothic look became an everyday norm outside of rave parties and Addams Family conventions -- for nearly one-twentieth of one-percent of the female population. It also zeroed in on personality...

Everyone should own a fine piece of Early American Art.