Teen Gothic

I’ve always grown up in the American west, and I find a gothic feel within the sublime atmosphere that is resonant within it. I’ll listen to old blues or country songs that speak about and romanticize death and sorrow like few songs I’ve heard. The feeling and history is so palpable sometimes that I’m surprised I’ve found very little people that express themselves the same way, is this something odd, or something you guys have experienced, come across, or could see? I’m curious whether people here see any meaningful thematic or historical overlap between the tradition of goth’s preoccupations with death, decay, and romanticism, or whether this is better understood as parallel inspiration rather than direct connection.

For example, these bands that I listen to have some of the deepest gothic elements, and western/folk structure or style, and seem to be offshoots of goth’s upbringing:

Angels of Light, Wovenhand, 16 horsepower, Fields of the Nephilim, Swans, The Gun Club, Lilium, Rattlesnake Milk, and even some Sisters of Mercy on a spiritual level, like First and Last and Always

The attached images are taken of or by me and are just to illustrate the atmosphere I’m trying to describe, please lmk if this is out of the context of this sub but I do think they are tied together

I understand that what I show is purely regarding the Batcave club but I feel bands and lots of artists don't go for this kind of imagery all that much, and this nowadays (or something similar to it) is mostly adopted like anywhere in the Black Metal community… I also understand that this is 80's stuff and lots went for the "horror movies" look of the time but I feel like lots of bands simply have a post-punk outfit/wibe to it from the 70's or minimalistic imagery that everyone complains that are generic "skull, crow, dark plants, basically the mainstream's idea of the look… Correct me if I'm wrong.

Hi all, I am an old punk but I was around a lot of Goths around probably 1993 '94. From what I remember it was kind of the very beginning of a scene that got bigger later on in the '90s.

I'm writing a country album about my experiences and couple of the characters are goth kids. The setting is a small town, the type of place where weirdos who grew up in the surrounding rural counties would have congregated. Think college towns or tourist towns that ended up with like an LGBT community or other weirdos. I was personally in Asheville at the time but that was not at all like Asheville is today. At the time there were a very small number of weirdos/artsy types in small towns, as it was a lot harder to find subculture since there wasn't really an internet.

The folks I actually knew back in the mid '90s are no longer reachable.

Help me out with some memories: What did you do that was part of Goth subculture when you were being romantic, flirty, mysterious seductive with your significant other "back in the day"?

Was your significant other also part of the that scene? What would date night have looked like? What about if you lived together and had a date night at your place?

I dated one of these pagan goth folks for a while and we were part of a scene that was into the occult. Kinda remember a lot of tarot cards and candles and red wine but I wasn't very serious about the occult part which makes my memories kind of hazy about what my significant other was doing much of the time when we were hanging out.

We and lots of other weirdos used to go to an old cemetery, not that all surprisingly. There was some hanging out on rooftops downtown and a little bit of 'by the railroad tracks' stuff but I'm really looking for suggestions on what to make my characters do indoors on date night because it's relevant to a song. Right now I have a couple of different songs where people are messing around with tarot cards in the candle light but I can't reuse that same image for multiple songs