A Little Gay Introduction to Goblincore

Recently, I’ve become obsessed with goblincore. 

I’ve always been something of a “crunchy gay." I love those little rocks you find in tiny red or purple velvet bags at museum gift shops; I love to hike; I am an archaeologist, and I love to dig; most days, I wear oversized corduroys or cargo pants and fill every pocket with little scraps and tchochkes (which I tell myself I might want to use in an art project); my dinosaur phase was not a phase; my closet is overwhelmingly earth tones/neutrals; and in the past week alone, I have compulsively doodled upwards of 30 mushrooms all over my class notes. Also, I’m a raging lesbian. 

Maybe it’s no surprise, then, that I’ve recently encountered (and fallen in love with) goblincore. What is goblincore, you ask? 

Why, dear reader, goblincore is an aesthetic revolution. It’s about curating a beautiful, all-consuming clutter—composed of bits and bobs, things and trinkets, gadgets and gizmos—as would a little goblin, beloved by the forest and all her creaturely inhabitants. 

This post is the first installment in a beginner’s guide to curating a little goblin hoard for your little goblin cabinet of little goblin curiosities in your college dorm or bedroom. 

Here is a list of examples of some things you, as a little forest goblin, may be interested in gathering:

• mushrooms and toadstools
• little rocks
• everything in the range of colors between green and brown
• scraps of tinfoil
• frogs 
• toads
• corduroy
• tiny bone fragments
• the hum of the birds, the babble of the brook, the song of the forest
• buttons
• moss
• those little glass pebbles people sometimes put in vases
• googly eyes (attached to something that should not have eyes or to nothing at all)
• plants, especially with visible roots and/or tubers
• Hozier
• pins 
• paperclips
• boots suitable for trudging through mud, dancing in a mossy clearing, or crossing a shallow creek
• suede
• those little plastic babies that you find in a rosca de reyes
• pins
• teeth
• bits of wood, especially petrified
• anything fossilized
• shells
• corks
• tools, utensils, and silverware (esp. if broken)

While these are some of the things I am most drawn to, I encourage you to allow your own little goblin instincts to guide you—no two goblin hoards are the same! 

Here’s a sample from my infinite collection of mushroom doodles.

Aside from being adorable, there are also some more theoretical and political reasons I think goblincore is unequivocally rad. 

For one, there is just something wonderfully queer about goblincore? I can’t seem to put my finger on it yet. Maybe it’ll emerge more clearly as I continue to write about it?

Perhaps more concretely, Goblincore offers a rejection of conventional (often deeply problematic + rooted in colonial violence) curatorial principles of museums and archives. In some ways, goblincore may even offer something like an anarchist curatorial model: each person or goblin is the head curator of their own hoard. Each person thus decides which objects are “worthy” or “interesting” or “important” enough to include. There is no centralized power deciding which objects are “trash” or “art” or “valuable” or “beautiful” or “ugly” or “important” or “insignificant”—one’s collection might include anything from old bent bottlecaps and plastic candy wrappers to precious stones or other artifacts.

Goblincore also offers a renewed focus on materiality and on objects as things that individual people interact with and value differently, as opposed to objects being defined primarily by some arbitrary economic value in systems of currency, trade, capital, etc. Goblins often love to collect old (often broken, bent, and/or rusty) coins, for example, not because of an arbitrary monetary value, but because they are drawn to a specific coin: perhaps it’s shiny, or it’s rusted in a particularly nice way, it has an interesting image printed on it, or it’s just the the right size and weight when you hold it in your hand. 

Goblins are extremely body positive! They told me themselves. Whoever you are and whatever your body type—the goblins think you’re super cute, and they’re right ;).

Did you hear that? I just said queer, anarchist, body-positive, anticolonial forest goblins rejecting capital as the primary determiner of things’ value. 

I, for one, am 1000% here for it.

Here is a little goblin I’ve drawn for you. I hope they inspire you to get into goblincore.

As I come across new things to add to my own collection, encounter others’ hoards, and continue to think a little too hard about goblincore, I will post updates. In the meantime, I would love to hear about what kinds of things you are drawn to! Seriously, reach out to me and we can talk about goblincore because I genuinely cannot stop doodling mushrooms and hoarding tiny scraps of everything and would love to have more friends of the goblincore persuasion. 

Images via Amanda Brynn '21