Further back to the 1980s

The post about what would happen if the Prodigy were to start out more recently, well in the late 2000s when that thread was taken, got me thinking about what would happen if the Prodigy came about at the tail end of the 1970s instead of the tail end of the 1980s. Musical trends and the overall cultural atmosphere are different, instead of the emergence of acid house and techno we’d get the emergence of post-punk and new wave. The closest real life precedent the Prodigy has from the late 1970s would be Depeche Mode, as the latter also came from Essex though from Basildon rather than Chelmsford and Braintree. But this would have odd ramifications for some of its members if they started out in the late 1970s as young adults.

Liam Howlett would’ve most likely ended up as a keyboardist for some new wave/post-punk band, pardon if it’s the Duran Duran fan in me peaking through, but he’d essentially be a less stylish Nick Rhodes and one with more classical training beforehand. Maxim Reality was in a duo with somebody else and also considered pursuing a career in reggae, so he would’ve went straight ahead into reggae if he was a young adult in the early 1980s. Leeroy Thornhill said online that he started Djing when he was a teenager, so he would’ve gone on as a DJ for some reggae or dub outfit if he was a young adult in the early 1980s. Keith Flint is probably the hardest for me to pinpoint what he could’ve done as a young man in the early 1980s, given there’s no precedent for him in any way I think of.

He’s done a lot of odd jobs before such as working as an investigative driller, among other things as well as having considered becoming a farmer, but you could argue that he would’ve been part of some post-punk or punk rock outfit. The reason he became the way he was in the Prodigy because he didn’t have anything better to do, so becoming a dancer for the Prodigy was one such outlet for him. Just as the Prodigy would be rather different if they started out in the late 2000s, they’d be just as nearly unrecognisable if they started out in the late 1970s and early 1980s. To reiterate, Liam Howlett would’ve most likely gone on as a keyboardist for some new wave band, Maxim Reality would’ve become a real reggae artist anyways and so on.

In all honesty, Keith Flint is the hardest to come up with any late 1970s precedent for him. You could have a dozen keyboardists for any new wave band that Liam Howlett would’ve easily joined if he was a young adult in the early 1980s, but it’s hard for me to come up with who would be the Keith Flint of the early 1980s. Perhaps you’d say that he could’ve gone on as a punk rock singer, which is just as likely but he could’ve essentially been Ian Curtis of Joy Division. He too committed suicide, leaving behind his colleagues to go on as New Order. Anyways, a Prodigy of the early 1980s would be just as unrecognisable as a Prodigy of the late 2000s given the differing musical milieus that their paths would be different from what the band ended up doing in the late 1980s.

Goth characters

It’s not necessarily wrong to have a Goth character, however in theory and to some extent in practise, if because it seems it’s the female Goth that gets fetishised and objectified a lot. Like when it comes to some men, they want an unconventional woman this badly. So they go for alternative women and especially Goth women at that, I actually know somebody who seemed to be sympathetic to the Goth scene but objectified the one Goth girl he created. Especially when she showed up in another story as a love interest to his self-insert, that’s to put things very politely because it’s actually graphic, that it seems when a non-Goth writes a Goth girl she’ll risk becoming a sex object.

So I propose to you the character of Rose Marie Gaultier, a woman with the power to talk to the dead. But she’s not what you expect her to be because I don’t want her to be objectified by men who fetishise Goth and alternative women a lot, so she’s really more Kate Bush than Siouxsie Sioux right down to the long dark hair with bangs and the romantic dresses she wore in both versions of the music video for the song ‘Wuthering Heights’. At this point in time it would be real hard coming up with a Goth girl character without having her get sexualised by horny men, that you might as well not make her Goth to avoid the creepy sexualisation. It wouldn’t entire curb this to be honest.

But at least it wouldn’t be to a big extent as this befell the likes of DC Comics’s Death or any other Goth girl character in fiction, since it’s kind of common that though they’re Goth they rarely have Goth boyfriends. This same writer I brought up before did create a Goth guy character but he was a rival to another self-insert of his, instead of being somebody who gets the Goth girl himself. The objectification of Goth girls is this bad whenever they wound up as the lovers of some non-Goth guy, seldom do they ever date and marry Goth guys themselves. You could say it happens in reality too.

However I wouldn’t want it to happen to Rose to a disgusting extent, so she’s not going to be Goth and she’ll look more like a younger Kate Bush instead of Siouxsie Sioux in her 1980s prime. Not that I despise Siouxsie and the Banshees, but the sexualisation of Goth women is pretty unsettling. As for who gets to be the resident Goth of the group, this goes to a guy and he’s a part-time musician. Since there’s not a lot of people who’re sexually attracted to Goth guys, this fellow (John Zelensky) wouldn’t have the same sexualised baggage as it befell many of his female counterparts. For the record, he plays covers of Goth songs like ‘More’ by Sisters of Mercy.

He even manipulates electricity but that’s kind of unheard of, especially when it comes to creating Goth characters at all in fiction. So he belongs to a painfully rare breed of Goth character whose powers have nothing to do with Goth stereotypes, the only other one in his class would be Scrap/Supervision. So that’s just them against the other Goths whose powers play into stereotypes about Goths as a whole, it’s bad enough that not only are Goth girls sexualised but that they play into other stereotypes about them. It’s also really rare for a Goth character to be actually into Goth music, even if it’s a stronger marker of their tie to the Goth scene this way. Admittedly it’s possible to listen to Goth bands without being part of the Goth subculture, but that’s one way of knowing how oddly specific Goth actually is in ways outsiders miss and misunderstand.

I kind of had something of a Goth phase but one where I actually listened to real Goth bands like Siouxsie and the Banshees, Sisters of Mercy and Bauhaus, the character of John Zelensky homages this by playing covers of songs by Siouxsie and the Banshees, Sisters of Mercy and Ausgang (another Goth band that I listened to before). If Goth is really all about music then it should make a lot of sense that what John Zelensky isn’t just his habit of dressing in black, but also his habit of listening to and playing Goth music a lot. That’s a little nuance that most non-Goth writers don’t get when it comes to writing Goth characters at all.

So when it comes to creating Goth characters, the risks are always there if somebody’s not Goth themselves. So there are going to be misconceptions, sexualisation and half-truths that somebody who’s into Goth would rarely stumble into, if because they personally know the ins and outs of the Goth scene well. I feel somebody like Kai Decadence might be a more trustworthy arbiter of what makes a character Goth because he’s this deeply intimated with the Goth subculture, so he’s a good judge of what makes a character Goth (or sometimes what doesn’t). I kind of agree with him here that a number of characters deemed Goth aren’t really Goth at all, especially when it comes to music.

At best they are outsiders’ idea of Goth, not so much Goth as cooked up by actual Goths. So it becomes easier to tell that a certain character isn’t Goth if they don’t have a tendency to or history of listening to actual Goth music, as in songs by those considered to be part of the Goth music canon like Siouxsie and the Banshees, Sisters of Mercy, Bauhaus and The Cure. Like their connection to the Goth scene is highly superficial if they’ve never listened to Goth music in any capacity, so it’s better to have the lived experience of being into actual Goth music and ins and outs of Gothdom than relying on cliches and ideas about Goth.

At least you could really tell what makes something Goth, but it’s easy to go by first impressions rather than a deeper understanding of it.

Whatever that is pure, think of those things

Something in the Bible where that involves choosing or finding media and the like that doesn’t offend or compete with God in any way, especially if it’s something that doesn’t make you stumble a lot. It could be anything that edifies and is pure, so think of those things because they don’t make you sin a lot. I pretty much pointed out that Taylor Swift is kind of predatory when it comes to creating songs that focus a lot on heartbreaks and the like, which would make certain people fall susceptible to it. Especially if they are romantics at heart, that it would be better to turn to God more for his advice.

I also think this is true for romance novels, the more I think about it this way. A number of them are pretty predatory in the sense that they play on readers’ desire for appealing or attractive men, but it doesn’t just stop at vanilla romance since there are skeevier things like those that fetishise certain ethnicities, certain features like piercings and tattoos and more disturbing content in the case with dark romance. I feel with dark romance novel stories and the like, we pretty much have subject matter that wouldn’t be too out of place in a Marquis de Sade story. It’s pretty much something that’s right up his alley, to the point where any one of those scenes wouldn’t be out of place in something like 120 Days of Sodom or Justine.

I actually know somebody online who is romantic at heart, yet is unable to land any man she wants. She reads romance novels a lot but has dogs instead, listens to Taylor Swift and stuff that she’s pretty vulnerable to this sort of subject matter. If God advises us to abstain from lust, whether if we’re single or in a relationship, admittedly for me this is an uphill battle. I have struggled with it for years and from time to time, there’s somebody else in the family who also has these and likely read a lot of dark romances before. If it’s something that makes you lust, then cut it you and put it away as you need to.

I remember reading a book where it states that some romance readers do masturbate to these stories, so anybody vulnerable to lust will be susceptible to these kinds of things. This is a rather circular argument of mine so to speak, but it proves my point that certain things are rather predatory. Conversely speaking, there are media, topics and stories that don’t cause us to sin a lot. Most especially the Bible, devotionals and the like though secular things also count to a possible extent. It’s like if planets don’t make you lust, then think of those things and focus on them after God.

The stumbling block could be anything, so we shouldn’t let others stumble even if we fumble at this at times. I imagine any one of you would be defensive over this, but it has to be said because at times the problems are self-inflicted. We reap what we sow, if you lust a lot and read romances then you’ll be unable to control it in any way you like without relying on God and/or suffer from the consequences of it. I’ve been through this before, likely this is true for somebody else as well. She might lose her husband to an accident in the future, so this is something she has to be careful if she were to live without him for long.

I myself try my hardest to be careful with my tendency to sin, even if I stumble and fumble at various times. But whatever that is good, enjoy these things to paraphrase the Bible.