Okay, why did you have to have a discussion about goth style while I was asleep? LOL

 

I dated a goth guy back then and I dealt with a lot of such people. What you're describing is mostly what they'd call "poseurs": those who pretend to be goths just for show.

 

There's goth lifestyle, goth fashion, goth music, goth art etc. People can choose to follow just one, or all:

The lifestyle is about respecting death and enjoying life. Carpe Noctem, he thaught me, enjoy the night. Some are introspecting and mysterious, enjoying to read (think Byron) and to philosophy about what we're to become, others like to simply enjoy. Pleasure is a goal, but not to be forcefully taken: they tend to be respectful towards others. If you see someone who claims to be a goth but wrecks a cemetery, he's a poseur, disrespecting death. If you see someone who's sad about really sad things, ok, but someone who's sad about idiotic things like my nail just got broken, he's most likely emo, those love to claim they're goths.

Goth fashion can be quite variable. There's renaissance goth (think classy vampire fashion!), fetish goth (corsets, latex and cuffs oh my!), cyber goth (decadent and technologic combined)... The thing you're saying about being as white as it gets and with black all over? Yep, most often a poseur thing.

Goth music's been mentioned, but I add to that: there's things like doom metal, which I love (like Haggard which is a basically orchestra band and sings of things like condemning the Inquisition and such), and new age (which I also love and is soft and lyrical and romantic and full of magic).

Goth art is an ode to where life meets death, it can be from a maiden's mourning over the death of her lover, to the grotesque of fetishing over horror.

Nothing wrong with "goth makeup" for Poser/DS being poseurish stuff, but if you wanna go actual goth, you don't need to limit yourself so much, be creative. Give me a moment, I'm gonna pull some references :)

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Feel free to call me Ohki!

Poser Pro 11, Poser 12 and Poser 13, Windows 10, Superfly junkie. My units are milimeters.

Persephone (the computer): AMD Ryzen 9 5900x, RTX 3070 GPU, 96gb ram.