Gothic Defined, and a Portal to a Mysterious Place

Gothic is an interesting word.

You know who the Visigoths were: those unsophisticated, crusty and crude pre-Germanic types who swooped down on the slothful, stuttering remains of the Roman Empire in the fourth century and gobbled them up. They were fairly illiterate victors, so they've gotten a bad rap in history. (Pardon me if I'm a little defensive. You know that my cultural/ancestral totem is Viking Barbie, yes?) They remain unpopular to this day.

Fifteen or twenty years ago, the most r...