2026 will be my goth phase.
2026.01.03
I finished "Wuthering Heights" over the New Year holidays. Every character is insane, and I couldn’t emotionally relate to any of them. It’s hard to read and painfully long, but it became a novel I deeply love for some reason.
Heathcliff’s almost frantic desire for revenge, Cathy’s violent temperament, the dry, desolate nature of Yorkshire, and that distinctly British, ironic sense of humor. I felt like I was touching the very core of what “gothic” truly is.
The story boldly betrays any expectation of neat plot. Just when you think, “If they do this, then this must happen,” it swerves away without apology. It isn’t tidy or well-behaved. It’s chaotic, almost mythological. The fact that Emily Bronte wrote something like this in that era is astonishing. If I had a time machine, I’d want to talk to her.
She was apparently an introverted person, not sociable, never married, and spent most of her life without leaving her hometown of Haworth. It’s incredible that someone like her could create such a vast, intense story. Or maybe it’s because she lived that way that she could.
Honestly, though, without Kate Bush’s song of the same name, I might not have fallen this deeply in love with the story. That song captures the entire world of the novel in just four minutes. Her synesthesia must be incredibly sharp.
I already know, without even watching it, that her four-minute song will be far more beautiful than the two-hour film adaptation coming out in 2026.
So now I find myself completely captivated by Wuthering Heights, and I’m diving more seriously into goth, something I’d been interested in for a while. I plan to read more of the Bronte sisters’ novels, as well as Mary Shelley’s works, and lately I’ve been listening a lot to goth music like Siouxsie and the Banshees, The Cure, and Joy Division.
In 2026, my aesthetic interests seem to be shifting again, so I think my wardrobe will gradually gain more goth-inspired pieces. That said, I still genuinely love the aesthetics I already embody, things like “Heisei-era,” “girly,” and “cute,” and I’ll absolutely continue to keep those as part of my personal style.
What came to mind was my icon, Tommy February6 and Tommy Heavenly6. She embodied both a cute, pop side and a dark side. Seeing that made me realize I don’t need to confine myself to a single aesthetic. Like her, I want to be experimental freely.
