hello good afternoon !!! from what i can tell, sydney was a romantic/ victorian goth in high school… how did he present himself? was he a frequent sewer/ diyer or did he buy from particular brands? what bands did he listen to? all we get is “shitty” from jedidiah.. did he have any other goth friends or was he the odd one out!… and also if you have anything to say on part of yvonne id love to know about it!! as a goth i love canon rep that isnt. just stereotypes!
To be honest, Sydney being goth was a wish fulfillment based off my own being goth in highschool! And I was a bit of a poser, I think? Like, I'm not trying to be stereotypical when I write it, but moreso I am more ignorant in that I didn't have the skillset or resources to be the goth I wanted to be, yknow? I was a dysphoric shut-in with very little self expression beyond sneering rudely at people. I mainly listened to the music, wore black and spike-chokers, and wished I could do more! Ironically, despite being incredibly alternative, laze faire, and a hardcore metalhead herself, my mother was a very hands-off parent except to restrict me from gothic appearance. It's weird, she restricted near nothing else. When I later asked her why, she said she didn't want me in a suicide cult. Lol?
(As a humorous tangent for why this is so weird to me: She otherwise did not care that I'd go to random parties where all us 15 year olds were doing ketamine. That is how silly it was that she wouldn't let me dye my hair or wear lipstick? And she was alt herself. My wearing a yellow shirt once was considered "rebellious" as a joke, as that was how much darker alt culture was encouraged.)
So I am rediscovering goth myself!
But that being said: Concrete Blonde, Alice in Chains, Sisters of Mercy, and The Cure come to mind as choice picks. Jedidiah likely called any metalcore or deathcore stuff shitty, such as Bring Me the Horizon or Bullet for my Valentine; both I think he enjoyed!
In addition, I fully believe he indulged in the mall goth genre such as AFI, Evanescence, and... well I think he probably felt that he was above MCR, LMAO! Because he tends towards being intentionally peculiar or against the grain in-text.
In the text, he was poor and had very little, but I'm certain he did have cut up DIY'd clothing. The dress he wore to prom was no doubt bought by Jedidiah's parents, though.
Sydney had very few friends and was a chronic outcast :( I think his discovery of the subculture is likewise a very isolated one.
Yvonne uses the term "party goth" to insinuate neo-goth aesthetics. She's not a tradgoth, and she's haphazardly appropriating the subculture in her language, like in that common casual way, yknow? She's a scene raver (as an aside, google says scenecore originated from tiktok? uhm!??? no lol!) I believe she leans into mall goth in some ways, but if you had to pinpoint her genre, I would call it cybergoth! Yvonne is an alt maximalist, and adjacent to internet "weirdcore" fringe cultures such as emo/scene furry. Ravers in the UK type shit.
They were teenagers a little earlier. They were around 16 in 2013, so the height of subcultures in 2013 is where their developmental hearts lie!
