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Well her clothes are blacker than the blackest cloth
And her face is whiter than the snows of Hoth
She wears Doctor Martens and a heavy cross
But on the inside, she's a happy goth. — The Divine Comedy, "The Happy Goth"''
Vince: You're going to have to get a bit dark, like me.
Howard: Like you? You're the least dark person I've ever met. You're like candy floss.
Vince: You cut me open, I'm made of blackjacks.
Howard: You're fruit salad, Vince. Everyone knows that.
Not (necessarily) perky like that, you pervert. Perky Goth comes from the goth subculture, as distinguished from the Mopey Goth.
The stereotypical Goth character, especially in teen shows, is frequently a Daria type or a Deadpan Snarker. Sam Manson of Danny Phantom, for example, though " more Greenpeace than goth", has been known to act like a stereotypical goth on occasion, serving as a Deadpan Snarker (as Danny regularly acts Too Dumb To Live) and speaking in a Daria tone whenever the plot or humor would demand it. In fiction as in Real Life, however, they're not all that way, and this is occasionally acknowledged by introducing a Perky Goth.
Contrariwise, the Perky Goth, who is almost always female, operates on the principle that dark does not always mean depressing. She wears the clothes, but her personality is always cheerful and amiable (occasionally approaching Genki Girl territory). Real-life perky Goths are often pegged as former Mopey Goths who just " snapped" one day and decided it wasn't worthwhile to be depressed and sullen any more. Appropriately, this is a Sister Trope to Strange Girl and Elegant Gothic Lolita (the latter referring to an actual subculture mainly popular in Japan.)
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Examples
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Anime & Manga
- Yugi, the titular character of Yu-Gi-Oh! dresses either in all black or in absurdly cute outfits, has wild hair (that's natural) and wears chains, LOTS of leather and dog-collars... Yeah, collars. His monster theme is darkness and black magic and he is regularly possessed by an admittedly evil spirit. None of this stops him from being a pacifist, unbearably cute, friendship-obsessed and a real sweetheart. And cute.
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- Death in the anime Kamichu has a short scene with the god of poverty. She's a bit beyond perky and well into total bonkers◊. Or maybe she just knows something we don't.
- Misa Amane from Death Note, who also qualifies as an Elegant Gothic Lolita (if you ignore the words 'elegant' and 'lolita', that is).
- Maybe a subversion, since being cheerful and enthusiastic just makes her creepier when you consider her other traits.
- She does temporarily qualify as Elegant Gothic Lolita, as she's wearing clothes like that when she sings after Light picks her as Kira
- Yamie from Kure-nai, who is at her perkiest when interacting with Murasaki.
- Another male example: Nekozawa from Ouran High School Host Club. He's the president of the Black Magic Club, is obsessed with curses, and has plenty of fun being generally creepy. Not even the fact that he's allergic to light seems to bother him all that much.
- The disturbingly cheerful undertaker in Kuroshitsuji.
- Riho Yamazaki, Detective Shido's ditzy secretary, becomes this in Nightwalker: The Midnight Detective. Being a Nightmare Fetishist helps too.
- Nana Ohsaki from Nana.
Comics
- Death of the Endless (pictured above), from The Sandman comics by Neil Gaiman is described by her author as a Perky Goth. She is not just responsible for Death, though; she also gives the breath of life when someone is born. She's pretty much the person you'd most want to see at a stressful moment like that. Her brother, Dream, fills the Mopey Goth niche.
- Although in stories taking place in earlier eras, Death was a bit of a wet blanket herself before she started spending a few days each century with mortals.
- Creator Neil Gaiman could easily fit here too.
- Nico Minoru, a.k.a. Sister Grimm, in Runaways. In the beginning, at least.
- Lex from Gloom Cookie, on occasion.
- The Bride of Nine Spiders from Immortal Iron Fist is sometimes like this.
- Bettie Cooper, of "Archie" actually went goth in one issue (really!), and was still generally rather cheerful. Her two goth friends were even more cheerful than she was.
- Gilly Woods from John Kovalic's gamer comic Dork Tower is the quintessential Perky Goth; whch greatly annoys her brother Walden, who is a stereotypical Mopey Goth.
- Emily the Strange
- Nemi
- Death from the old Kelly run of Deadpool was pretty mucha Perky Goth. That or just a plain old death obsessed, somehow corporeal, skeleton of some sort.
- In a weird way, Harley Quinn could definitely qualify.
Fan Fic
- In The Return conversion into a succubus seems to synonomous with becoming a Perky Goth. Those Two Guys Sam and Naoko choose to dress as perky goth too.
- Especially Yuki/Nabiki the "cute" succubus.
- Played very weirdly on My Immortal, where the main characters are mostly depressed but have pretty much the personality of the preps they hate so much.
Films
Literature
- In the Christopher Moore novel You Suck, Abby Normal is determined not to show her perky side to the vampires she meets or to other Goths, but she does let the reader in on her secret.
- Steven Brust's Dragaera series has two examples:
- Telnan, introduced in Dzur, thinks like most Dzur warriors (as Vlad sarcastically notes) that black-on-black is a wonderful color combination, but acts like The Ditz.
- Sethra Lavode might be a better example, dressing all in black and having an unsettling pallor (she is an eons old undead), but is surprisingly friendly. She also has a disturbingly silly sense of humor. In one book, she passes sentence on one of her apprentices for attempting to kill several of her friends, influence the succession of the House of the Dragon, and start a war. The sentence is to strand her in an alternate, desert dimension with shelter, plenty of food and water and a stick, and instruct her to write "I will not interfere with the Dragon Council" in the sand 83,721 times.
- Wherein hangs the tale: Sethra IS eons old. Having seen so much, there's really only two ways to go, and the other way would either have destroyed her or the world, one way of the other. If there's anyone entitled to live and advocate the sentiment of "Live Here Now", it is certainly Sethra Lavode!
- Molly Carpenter from The Dresden Files has shades of perky goth, 80's Brit-punk, and BDSM fetish going.
- Raven Madison from Vampire Kisses, she is a mixure of highly sterotyped goth who listens to Him, Marilyn Manson, and strangly enough The Cruxshadows (Strange not because she's goth, but because most music refences were ones that are what people think goths listen to), wears mostly black, is obsessive over vampires, and is disliked by most people, besides that she acts like any other teenager.
Live Action TV
Music
Pro Wrestling
- Former WCW and now TNA wrestler Sting is essentially this, as he kept the costume inspired by The Crow he adopted during the nWo angle, but has gone back to his former upbeat showman persona.
Tabletop Games
- It's implied a lot of Sin-Eaters are like this. They were given the chance to come back from the dead and gladly accepted, so why shouldn't they be happy? Their general culture is one of celebrations and gatherings in the vein of the Day of the Dead and New Orleans funerals.
Video Games
Web Comics
- The main character of Buttercup Festival is a perky goth, and embodies perhaps the more whimsical side of the trope.
- Gilly The Perky Goth (obviously) from Dork Tower.
- Miho from Megatokyo has been defined by Fred Gallagher as a "perky goth", though she's more of a Little Miss Badass.
- Crystal from Zebra Girl. She starts out completely bubbly from the get-go, and one day decides to go goth on a lark, without actually changing her personality in any way.
- Blossom from Rhapsodies (though she's more Industrial Punk than most examples).
- Dora from Questionable Content. Her transition from "mopey" to "perky" allegedly came before her first appearance, and she's called out on it in an early strip by a member of her former "coven". This same member (Raven) shows up a few weeks later with a job application as a non-gothic Genki Girl.
- Death in the webcomic Finder's Keepers seems to be this.
- Subversion: On the outside, Alisin in Fans! is cheerful, fun-loving, and free-spirited, and it's only when you look closely that it's revealed that underneath the perky exterior she's a neurotic, self-loathing and nihilistic mess.
- Happy Goth from The Devil's Panties.
- Vanity Thorn from the webcomic Sequential Art.
- Esther from Scary Go Round. Her friend Sarah has also become much perkier throughout the comic.
- SGR actually plays with Goth stereotypes quite a bit overall — Sarah goes a bit Tsundere for and winds up dating the much older Ryan, while Esther and Sarah's friend Big Lindsay is less goth and more of a Class 3 The Big Guy (who is eventually Put On A Bus by getting pregnant). And then there's the odd case of Roxy Postlethwaite, who is supernaturally Changed into a "White Goth" — part banshee, Cloud Cuckoo Lander, all Nightmare Fuel.
- Marius, Mordred, and Sarah from My Life in Blue.
- The Order of the Stick's Tsukiko. Evil necrophiliac mystic theurge, but she loves what she does.
- Cassie from The Wotch is a goth and proud of it. Oh, and she always wanted to see a unicorn.
- Katie and Abby from Weregeek, especially Abby.
- Silverblue from Jack is very much this by the time she realizes that everything that happens to her in hell is her own self punishment, and no, she does NOT have to watch the same round of musical holes every day if she really doesn't want to.
- The Dark Lordess Tyfnee from Dumnestor's Heroes, as exemplified by this strip.
- Abel of DMFA became this after he got over his understandable wangst phase. Also, his goth wardrobe got too impractical.
Web Original
- At least one of the hosts from the podcast Lime and Violet alludes to having been one of these in the past, after a teenage stint as a more typical Mopey Goth.
- The website SuicideGirls exists to document these women in their natural habitat. And naked.
- Moria from Gaia Online kind of drifts between this and Regular Punk depending on her characterization. (Though she was a vampire for about a week once, which ranks pretty high on the goth scale.)
Western Animation
- Lydia, from the Animated Adaptation of Beetlejuice. (Not the near-suicidal emo kid from the movie.)
- She did lighten up at the end of the movie, and new wardrobes are expensive, So Yeah...
- Jinx from Teen Titans.
- Perfectly opposite to the darker Raven. And given Jinx's Heel Face Turn at the end of the series, one wonders if they manage to get along now.
- Gwen from Total Drama Island dresses in Goth style and makes the occasonal snide comment, but is otherwise a normal, friendly teenage girl.
- Somewhat Lamp Shaded in "Total Drama Drama Drama Drama Island" in which she shows pictures of her Goth friends back home, who really make her look tame by comparasion.
- Ditto Triana Orpheus in The Venture Bros, in sharp contrast to the unrelenting weirdness surrounding her home life.
- If you were a goth, wouldn't having a necromancer for a father make you perky too?
- Creepie Creecher from Growing Up Creepie.
- She lives with what are basically bug versions of the Addams Family; how could she not be a Perky Goth?
- Debbie of American Dad seems to have an obsession with death and the dark side, but for the most part seems very friendly and well-adjusted.
- Shareena from the shortlived animated series Detention.
- Ruby Gloom◊, her ilk, and the people who wear her merchandise.
- Only the ones who get that it's ironic. Those who don't get it, however, are a lot like those people who wear Happy Bunny merchandise because OMG it's a cute sassy bunny wabbit and ooh so cute and ooh it comes in pink.
- As mentioned above, Sam Manson is very clearly one of these. By outward appearance, she's your stereotypical Goth girl. But she's actually quite happy with the way life is! It generally appears as though Sam considers herself a Goth because she likes the style...or because she wanted to rebel against her parents.
Real Life
- Cassandra "Elvira" Peterson built an entire career out of being cheerful, sexy and dark.
- This Troper has spent many times on gothic forums and have found it that at least half of the real goths are of this kind (while angsty ones are mostly just angsty teens to overcome it).
- This troper supports this theory, with an addendum. Those who tend to congregate online will be 50% perky goths (looking to socialize, discuss and vent some... rather non-perky ideas from time to time) 25% mopey goths (with tendencies towards self-pity, though not always in a derogatory way) and 25% romantic goths (who may be, variously, perky or mopey — but are a breed apart for other reasons). On a bad day, most romantics will act like angsty suburban teenagers. Feet will be stomped. Bitch fits will be thrown. Perky goths just... snap. Loudly.
- Real life being what it is, this troper has found that the three personality types are more tendencies than absolutes and one will sometimes blend into the other and then back to whatever the default preference is.
- The various Xgoth lables are very broad, and application varies not only with the person, but the age and mood as well. The excessively angsty teens are typically written off as "spookykids" by the more self-effacingly humourous mopeygoths.
- As one website owner maintained, Salvador Dalĺ. Think about that. It makes sense.
- Photophobia didn't bother Real Life example and late Church of Satan founder Anton Le Vey, either. After he got rolling, the witty religious rebel played off and played jokes on, off, and with his own image and reputation to a level you'd expect out of (irony noted) the Devil. This was even noted in a interview with him prior to his death undertaken by the pornographic publication High Society magazine.
- However, most of his fangirls insist he's a Woobie/Emo Teen.
- He certainly became one in his later years. He started out as campy and fun, but over time he lost both his sense of humour and his original drive, eventually ending up wallowing in self-pity, abandoned by nearly all his worthwhile followers and family. And it was his own damn fault, too.
- Real Life Example: Voltaire. Nono, not the eighteenth century french author; Voltaire Hernández, the twenty-first century songwriter, author of humorous perspectives on being a Goth, and occasional stand-up comedian. That Voltaire. He also does music for the Grim Adventures of Billy and Mandy, so that makes him double cool.
- Tim Burton.
- The Lady of the Manners, webmistress (and now author! ~shameless plug~) of the Gothic Charm School.
- Who, although she'll probably never admit to it, has shown some distinctly mopeygoth leanings in the past.
- This t-shirt.
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