Nature

Nature is one of the places where Cottagegoth is easiest to over-simplify. Mushrooms and ravens have become visual shorthand, but the real subject is much larger: the life of hedges, old trees, winter gardens, insects after dark, fungi breaking things down, carrion birds, poisonous plants and the complicated relationship people have had with them.

This section treats those things as subjects first and motifs second.

Corvids are not interchangeable

Rooks, ravens, crows, jackdaws, magpies and jays are related, but they behave differently and have accumulated different associations in folklore. Learning to tell them apart is more interesting than treating "black bird" as a decorative category.

Decay is part of the system

Fungi, dead wood and leaf litter are not failures of nature. A darker nature aesthetic makes more sense when it remembers that decomposition is what allows the next thing to grow.