By Suffix/Family

By Suffix

Suffix	Explanation
Core Suffix	The word "core" comes from the French word "coeur", meaning heart. However, the use of core as a suffix comes from the phrase "hardcore," a word from the 1930s meaning "an irreducible nucleus or residuum; also a stubborn or unyielding minority." In those aesthetics that end in -core, the suffix means that the main word is the theme of the entirety of the aesthetic. i.e. all of the images in Lovecore relate to love.
Punk Suffix	Even though the word punk means 'related to punk music', the punk suffix is also used in dystopian and alternate reality aesthetics such as Cyberpunk and Steampunk. The punk suffix can be used in activist aesthetics such as Forestpunk, which is revolved around fighting for the preservation of nature and the environment.
Wave Suffix	The wave suffix represents surreal imagery and imagination for aesthetics. These aesthetics usually have bright neon colors and/or show fantastical images that were created through digital illustration and editing. (e.g. Vaporwave and Synthwave)
Kei	Kei (系) is a suffix from Japan that means "type" and is used for the purpose of categorization by style or genre. In the context of this Wiki, it usually refers to a "type" of Japanese fashion. These fashion types tend to be alternative, with people in these fashions socializing with each other and creating a very specific aesthetic that deviates from the mainstream, most often with specific brands catering to (and often being the creators of) the certain look.

By Family

This section is under construction. Suggestions for other aesthetic families are welcome.

An aesthetic family is the term for the wiki to group together aesthetics that shared a tag or search term. These aesthetics often have common motifs or philosophies despite them being different in subject, time of creation, mode of expression etc. They often originate from a single aesthetic and evolved into its different variations.

Family	Explanation
Goth Variations	The goth suffix comes from the subculture of the same name that originated in the United Kingdom during the early 1980s: the name itself was derived directly from the musical genre of Gothic rock, whose fans made up the subculture. Its imagery and cultural proclivities indicate influences from 19th-century literature of the same name and horror films. The aesthetic then evolved, with these aesthetics being variations or spin-offs from the original Goth culture, which is still popular.
Academia	Academia is a term referring to a group of aesthetics that romanticizes learning, particularly through study, research, and reading. The aesthetics all originated as variations from Dark Academia, with the other aesthetics developed through text posts that described the blogger's ideas on the variations.
Coquette	Coquette is a broad tag/search term that includes hyper-feminine aesthetics enjoyed by teenaged girls deviating from the more lighthearted and innocent mainstream. The aesthetic evolved since the mid-2010s on tumblr, where the term originated from a community based on pursuing the persona of the coquette/nymphet- a sexually precocious minor. But because of mass-tagging and the ubiquity of the nymphet community on that site, many photos unrelated to the novel and film were tagged under coquette. It is a mostly tumblr phenomenon that depicts teenaged girls engaged with darker/mature themes, such as mental illness, drugs/alcohol, sexual desire, etc.
Regional Gothic	Regional Gothic is a Tumblr trend in the mid-2010s wherein users would write bullet-pointed lists of eerie moments related to the region in which they are familiar with or describing seemingly benign moments in life, such as in college. These texts convey this tone by presenting ominous information and not elaborating on it. Visually, this developed into depicting the darker aspects of a region, often with motifs of religion, folklore, untamed nature, liminal spaces, and treacherous characters.