Fam, this was great. Seriously, I go to readings by the fiction and poetry students at the local college, and this would be politely applauded. One point of order tho:
as she ages out of the goth/punk/emo scene in the mid-sized midwestern city she never bothered to leave, she finds her social circle shrinking more and more
afaik most goth scenes are pretty welcoming to “original generation” people. I think this is also true about punk scenes. I don’t know much about emo but I read that it’s having a bit of a revival, i.e. clubs are having nostalgia “emo nights”. So I don’t think she would age out as you describe. What’s more likely is that as her peers move away or drop out of the scene, she’d become bitter and/or gatekeepy and/or passive-aggressive so people would just start to be emotionally distant around her. Hmm… come to think of it, yeah, her social circle would shrink. But it wouldn’t be directly related to age.
Yeah, also medium sized Midwestern cities remain a hub of those countercultures, not because people never bothered leaving, but because they remain trapped, or maybe because thats where they managed to leave to. It’s easy to think that if you don’t wind up in a major coastal city you failed to make it, but for some people getting out of their home town and making it in the city means moving to Cleveland.
Fam, this was great. Seriously, I go to readings by the fiction and poetry students at the local college, and this would be politely applauded. One point of order tho:
afaik most goth scenes are pretty welcoming to “original generation” people. I think this is also true about punk scenes. I don’t know much about emo but I read that it’s having a bit of a revival, i.e. clubs are having nostalgia “emo nights”. So I don’t think she would age out as you describe. What’s more likely is that as her peers move away or drop out of the scene, she’d become bitter and/or gatekeepy and/or passive-aggressive so people would just start to be emotionally distant around her. Hmm… come to think of it, yeah, her social circle would shrink. But it wouldn’t be directly related to age.
Yeah, also medium sized Midwestern cities remain a hub of those countercultures, not because people never bothered leaving, but because they remain trapped, or maybe because thats where they managed to leave to. It’s easy to think that if you don’t wind up in a major coastal city you failed to make it, but for some people getting out of their home town and making it in the city means moving to Cleveland.