Mmmmm Cider And Pizza

Why we should stop comparing The Secret History and If We Were Villains

I've seen people putting the two books together as pillars of dark academia countless times, often trying to explain why their favourite one is the best and it is useless. The two books are incredibly different and you will inevitably be disappointed in one of the two if you read them with the same intentions.

The Secret History is a reversed mystery novel: from the very first lines, we know who died, how, and who killed him. The questions we are left with are "Why did they do that?", and "Will they get away with that?" The book is fundamentally psychological, it's a character-driven book, which explains why such a long part is dedicated to establishing them, their relationships, while the actual murder is surprisingly short.

If We Were Villains, on the other hand, is a more traditional detective novel, though it doesn't totally fit the standard. It's a whodunit, and when we start the book, we know who got arrested but the mystery throughout the novel follows four questions: "Who died?", "Who did it?", "Why did they do it?" and "Why did Oliver get arrested?" We are trying to solve the murder at the same time as the detective. It's a plot-driven novel, and although the characters are very important, they are all defined by one quality and one flaw during the first act (the characterisation in this book is amazing, I'm probably gonna make a post about it).

Obviously, if you read TSH and IWWV with the same expectations, one of them is going to bore you. However, if you consider their differences, they are both excellent books in their genre. If they do have some common elements (a group of students that's almost sectarian, and murder), saying that IWWV plagiarized TSH sounds pretty ridiculous to me. IWWV is a love letter to Shakespeare and the madness in his characters, TSH is a critic of elitism in academic spaces. And they both deserve praise, if only people would stop comparing them.

renaissance in the 21st century

“Aphrodite, the goddess of breathless romances, of honeyed breaths, of feverishly promised forevers.”

— Nikita Gill, from “Great Goddesses: Life Lessons from Myths & Monsters,”

The amount of time that the Ancient Egyptian civilisation lasted is just so mind boggling. It lasted over 3000 years. That's such an insane amount of time. It ended around 30BC meaning that it will only be extinct for as long as it existed in around 950 years. Cleopatra lived closer to the invention of bitcoin than the building of the pyramids of Giza. They were already ancient to her. What the fuck

uggggh my form tutor is getting in my nerves so much!

does he not realise that i’m doing 4 FOUR A-Levels??? not three and dropping one or just three, four! and learning to drive at the same time like fuck oooooff

any recommendations of cute kinda summer love aristotle and dante, call me by your name vibe books but wlw?? im starved pls help

can people pls stop starting conversations on dating apps with ‘hey youre gorgeous/beautiful’ bc how the fuck are you actually meant to reply to that ends in an actual conversation ???????

i’d do it even if circumstance deemed it not necessary

(for legal reasons, this is a joke)

i relate to henry winter a lot because i too am a chaotic bisexual who would murder a sexist homophobic asshole if the circumstances deemed it necessary.

I got The Heroine Who’s To Clever By Half and my MBTI type ENTJ

Also this test is chaotic

I just took this quiz to find out what Shakespeare archetype i am

I got “The girl who’s always disguising herself as a boy for some reason” and im LAUGHING so hard it’s so real

Gustav Janouch, Conversations with Kafka