Author: Luna By The Lake With Cake

lolita fashion, Youtube

Doing Vlogmas!

I have been extremely busy this month! I’ve been doing Vlogmas on my YouTube channel and have yet to miss a day! I’m really proud of keeping on top of it. I also just started a new job. It’s my first time doing overnights so I’m a little nervous. It’ll be good though.

Vlogmas has helped keep me occupied my first holiday season living on my own. It’s been a bizarre year. I was absolutely delighted when I saw that there was a vaccine being distributed earlier today. I know it’ll still be awhile before things can go back to normal but it feels like hope on the horizon

I’ve been keeping holiday spirits up decorating around the house and calling family and friends. I’m happy that I don’t usually feel alone. In some ways I feel more connected than ever and I am so grateful for that.

I had a little bit of a hard time with my life transition and stress ordered a lot of blouses. At least I got wardrobe staples this time ^^’

One of the coords I made!

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Happy ILD!!!

It was quite the busy day today! I filmed a ton of videos for vlogmas and dropped off my laundry. Here’s what today’s coord looks like.

I felt so lovely in this coord!! Investing in blouses recently was a great idea. I highly recommend. This year has been a lot of twists and turns with me having a ton of life transitions and growing up to do. I enjoy having time landmarks to remind me to slow down and appreciate what I have like ILD, I realized it right before going to bed last night.

lolita fashion

Leaning on Nostalgia to Get Through this Year

After finishing watching a long slew of Princess Peachie videos, videos from when Pixielocks still wore Lolita Fashion, and reading ParfaitDoll through the wayback machine. I realized that I have been really embracing the 2010 sweet aesthetics that I adored when I first discovered Lolita Fashion on the internet when I was a teenager. I think clinging on to things that gave me comfort before can be helpful, especially when I had to catch myself looking at triggering content for two days before I realized I was doing it. Nostalgia seems the much healthier alternative, the bright colors and familiarity just warms my heart and emulating the idols who helped me get through some of the hardest times in my life in my existing memory has brought me more peace that I could have realized. I love seeing people embrace the things they love and I should be more careful not to deny myself of that.

In the past week I am delighted that I have finally figured out the perfect way to do heatless curls for my high pigtails, although I should get one of those classic twin tail wigs at some point. I also want to create more moodboards and allow myself to really dive into living the lolita lifestyle more. I had been really burned out from work and living in a pandemic but going wild and saying you know what a lace headdress and false lashes are okay for work if it’s a saturday has helped me remain excited about life when things seem really bleak. Lolita has always been this way for me but I think it’s exaggerated with everything going on.

Here’s the coord I wore to work today!

Anime

Why Madoka Magica is One of my Comfort Anime

I am an avid anime fan who is also a lolita, I think it comes as no surprise one of my favorite genres is Magical Girl Anime as my daily aesthetic is trying to look like a shoujo protagonist post transformation at all times. But one thing that does come as a surprise to many is which magical girl anime I lean on most for comfort. When things get super rough which honestly, as this pandemic drags on it has been increasingly harder to hang on to hope somedays I decided to rewatch Puella Magi Madoka Magica.

This show is undeniably sad and tragic so I surprised even myself when I reached out for it as I realized that it had been getting harder for me to get out of bed again. I have often reached out for more melancholic media when I have felt my mental health declining a good example would be Violet Evergarden, however that undeniably has themes of hope and growth and positive change for the main character whereas Madoka Magica is often a tale that is interpreted as the deterioration of these characters over and over again until Madoka Kaname makes the ultimate sacrifice at the end of the series. It isn’t considered a happy show.

However, given the current state of the world I think there is something relatable to being trapped in a cycle that you have to fight to survive in over and over again. Becoming an adult in the pandemic has been difficult, I’ve had to change jobs due to my medical bills being too high, I’m isolated from my closest friends from college due to the pandemic, and it feels like an uphill battle and so unfair. I know everyone is going through similar things right now but it’s still so frustrating and there is very little help being offered to the general population. I think the sentiment of either work or die, but working is hazardous to your health is very relatable at the moment.

I find that in that situation I often beat myself up for having negative emotions or feeling like I’m feeling but when I rewatch Madoka seeing these girls in these impossible situations and feeling nothing but love for these characters I am better able to have compassion for myself and be grateful that I wasn’t literally tricked by a little demon creature. (Kyubey is pretty cute and I want a plushie of him even though he’s evil) I think being able to compare yourself to characters and sympathize with them can help you be kinder to yourself and recognize value in yourself that you didn’t see was there. So I’ll continue on my kick and rewatch this Bad Apple AMV for the 50th time

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Trying an Experiment with My Hair

Here are some things I’ve been doing the past two months that have made a huge difference for my hair! It hasn’t really made it grow faster but it has made it much nicer

1.) Start Moisturizing My Ends

2.) Try to Space Out washes more (Right now I’m at every other day

3.) Wear Braids instead of Ponytails

4.) Stop Cutting It

5.) Deep Condition Once a Week

6.) Brush it Correctly

This has helped my hair quite a bit while growing it out! I’ve been using dry shampoo and leave in conditioner for moisturizing daily and extending between washes

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Purism and Lolita Fashion

This is a really interesting topic for me to cover and I have really complex feelings about it. This may not be a popular take and I acknowledge that. I think that Lolita Fashion has a purist culture problem. In multiple ways, I have found that if you like to produce lolita fashion content online showing interest in other niches will make you less popular or so it seems. There are ways to go about it and there are certainly efamous lolitas who are known for multiple things but some topics seem fairly off limits if you present yourself in lolita fashion on the internet. One of these is showing interest in anime and manga, a lot of times if you are a lolita on the internet who expresses interest in anime and manga outside of specific shoujo manga it can feel restrictive.

I identify as a lifestyle lolita and enjoy incorporating lolita fashion into as much of my life as possible but the community pressure in internet spaces to have lolita fashion become an all consuming part of your life can be pretty intense. I don’t see this sentiment as much in public places online but one quick look into behind the bows or cgl and these sentiments are pretty plain to see. There seems to be this pressure for lolitas to be pure maidens that never have any faults even though that is the antithesis of the core message of the subculture. We’re meant to be a space where anyone can be a princess regardless of personality, interests, or body type. I have also noticed pressure for those who publicly wear lolita fashion to keep their image “pure” in the sexual sense and this is where my thoughts get complicated.

Where I appreciate respecting the core beginnings of the fashion as a way to desexualize feminine presentations I don’t think people can be expected to be that way 24/7. For example, I don’t think that it’s a good idea for individuals to do fetish things online while wearing lolita or to expose minors to kink in fashion spaces. However, if people want to use their account to talk about anime characters they like or talk about celebrities they’re attracted to they shouldn’t be shamed for that. Wearing Lolita Fashion doesn’t dictate someone’s personality and there shouldn’t be the expectation that it should. No one owes you being your ideal maiden. Most people wear lolita fashion for themselves, I know I do. I choose to reach for being like what I consider to be an ideal princess because it makes me happy. Nobody owes me that and I don’t owe that to you. Let’s do what makes us happy as long as it doesn’t hurt anyone.

In conclusion, do what you want, but don’t expose minors to explicit material or the general public who hasn’t consented. That’s it. You want to tell me all about your favorite video games while wearing lolita fashion, go for it! Tell me about why you think moths are neat, go for it! Give me the entire history of the horror genre, I’d love to find out! Enjoy your fashion, but don’t restrict yourself.

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Etiquette for Photoshoots in Cemeteries

It’s that time of year where the spooky season is here and we celebrate spirits and death. You may be considering doing a fashion or cosplay shoot in a cemetery. There seems to be varied opinions on whether you should do this at all. It is up to your own discretion whether or not you wish to participate in this activity. Here are some tips for respectfully conducting filming or a photoshoot in a graveyard.

  • Don’t sit, lean, or prop up equipment on any gravestones or monuments
  • If there is a funeral going on or a large amount of mourners that day, reschedule.
  • Remove or blur out any names that are visible on graves in the shot. Avoid shooting near newer gravestones
  • Leave the area better than you arrived, take some time to pick up any litter you may see and be sure not to damage anything that was already there.
  • If you are asked by anyone who is there at the time to stop what you are doing and leave, do not argue and respect their wishes. This is first and foremost a place to mourn.
  • Be prepared for any photos you use to potentially be controversial if you post to social media, be prepared for that and be able to respond to concerns with grace.
  • Don’t take anything from the cemetery
  • Be sure you know the hours that it is open for visitors and only go during those hours
  • Have fun and be safe!
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How Vlogtober is going, and why I need to stop talking myself down from my dreams

I have been extremely busy on my Youtube channel and it has been so much fun! However a couple days ago I started to get demotivated even though the reception to my vlogtober content has been even better than I could have ever imagined. I actually hit 100 subscribers, my new years resolution long before the actual new year and yet…. I started having less and less energy to film content. Part of that is that it is indeed very difficult to film and upload videos every day for a month while I am also working a full time job.

However, I think a part of my is scared of actually succeeding at what I want. There’s always been expectations in my life that I would be the “successful” child and that all that my parents put themselves through is so I could live the lives they never had. I’m the child of a whole group of teenage parents who did their best but put a lot of pressure on me and that pressure often contradicted itself making it very hard for me to actually know what I wanted. Now that I am an adult it’s becoming clearer and clearer to me what I want to be in life, and what I want to be is an entertainer, that’s what makes my soul light up. I want to be an artist, youtuber, model, blogger, voice actress, fashion designer and whenever I admitted that to myself I would always tell myself I was being unrealistic and that that wasn’t a respectable thing to want to be and I would keep pushing myself to do the “sensible” thing. I don’t want to be sensible, I want to dream and that’s okay.

I think it is important to have a plan and to go about what I want in a way that will support me, for example I am saving up an emergency fund and will keep my current job until I would be able to safely sustain myself on other income but that doesn’t mean that I can’t work towards those goals. It doesn’t have to be all or nothing. I even got back into music again recently. I have my fiance to thank for a lot of this, he is a the prince of pep talks and although this feeling has been bubbling inside me for awhile it finally clicked when he said that it was okay to have grandiose life goals and to see your life as stepping stones but if that changes that’s okay too and I am so grateful I have him. So I’ll choose to dare to dream again.

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My Gothic Reading List

I will include a mix of books that I have read and also still want to read, some of these are actually gothic literature and some are just things that remind me of the aesthetic

1.) Dracula

I have actually read this book and there is a lot of surprising details inside of it, at one point a man eats a spider. It is a bit more confusing than I expected but all around highly entertaining and I reccommend

2.) Coraline

It’s a children’s novel but it is genuinely very spooky, it’s a short read and a delight. Also the movie is very cute as well.

3.) Frankenstein

An amazing book that is largely misrepresented in media. I really loved reading it and now understand how it was so frightening to Shelley’s colleague’s at the time. The main theme I gathered from it is if you create life don’t be a deadbeat dad.

4.) Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde

I can’t believe that I still haven’t read this book, it’s been on my list for awhile and I want to promise myself to read it this month.

5.) The Haunting of Hill House

I’ve only recently become aquainted with this novel’s existence but the premise of a haunting is a classic and it is on my want to read list

6.) We Have Always Lived in the Castle

This is another on my want to read list as I love psychological thrillers in movie form but haven’t experienced any in book form

7.) Edgar Allen Poe’s Poems

I love all sorts of his poetry and I believe his work to be fairly standard of gothic literature

8.) The Yellow Wallpaper

This is an amazingly disturbing short story that I adore and illustrates a lot of the horror of being a woman in that time period

9.) The Phantom of the Opera

At this point the musical is much more famous but the original novel is very compelling and much more disturbing

10.) The Picture of Dorian Gray

This book is a delight and I didn’t know it was considered gothic literature until very recently, I read it for AP English in high school and it still sticks out in my mind