Hi! I Was Hoping You Could Help Me Out. I’m Really Interested In The Dark Academia ‘lifestyle’

Concept idea

most dark academia books and film have one person is obsessed with an enigmatic society or group of people/friends. What about the reverse?

A group of friends that become obsessed with one ‘perfect’ person; a loner of sorts, yet are mutually respected by everyone and don’t seem the need to make friends. Yet the group forces themselves onto that person, hungry to finding out more and essentially almost becoming like them. So they obviously get lured in by a single, mysterious person that could shatter them in a second.

living the dark academia life

messy handwriting and even messier notebooks, doodles of skulls with sunflowers dangling from their eyes

burning the corners of pages, an older look given to them, the smell of ancient given to your room

wearing the cheapest, largest brown sweaters and the most comfortable, softest cream skirts

classical music softly bouncing on each one of the walls in your room, a list of your favorite composers pinned to your wall

a black ring on your finger, your hands wrapped around a warm cup of tea

your eyes closing softly from spending too much time reading, a candle to keep you company

the wet tip of your finger, the turning of yet another page

soft brown on your eyelids, gloss on your lips

long studying session in the library, you’re curled up on your chair, seven academic books are sitting next to your side, three articles are waiting to be read

stains around the edges of your nails, your skin painted with ink

a book in your bag, a pen used as a bookmark to annotate everything that makes your hands shake

a leather belt around your waist, your old grandpa’s sweatshirt tucked in has not gone to waste

standing right in the centre of a museum, sketching the outline of a sculture, scribbling down everything there is to know about a painting – in this, your hands are still stained

letting the rain softly caress your hair, carrying an umbrella to match your velvet trousers

a smile on your face when writing an essay, a yawn from your mouth when you finally go to sleep – after your eyelids are closed, psychedelic, dark and soft dreams are reaching your mind

Bacchanale, 1871, Lawrence Alma-Tadema

Medium: oil,canvas

Dark Academia Procrastination 

‣ watching the clouds pass by your window 

‣ completely changing your spotify playlists 

‣ reading up on long-dead philosophers and some new ones 

‣ boiling the kettle three separate times because you keep forgetting that you put it on already 

‣ painting your nails 

‣ listening to the trees and the birds within them 

‣ flipping through unread books hoping one will catch your attention 

‣ reading poetry and tasting it on the back of your tongue 

‣ dabbling in witchcraft 

‣ thinking about Oscar Wilde 

‣ experiencing intense nostalgia but letting it consume you instead of pushing it away like you usually do 

‣ getting too involved in the classical music you’re listening to and feeling the crescendo in your soul  

‣ fantasizing

You’re busy doubting yourself while so many people are intimidated by your potential

LITERATURE : WHERE TO START ? | MASTERPOST

New Renaissance by KOTY2

Dark Academia Lifestyle

Remain an enigma, talk less about yourself. In social situations, make it a game, even if you are a rather social person, to shroud yourself in mystery. If others show interest in you, answer vaguely. Disappear at specific times. Reveal little of your background. When you do speak, speak in riddles or quotes. That isn’t to say you should never speak up in class or in debates, have opinions and remain socially active; however, keep people guessing a lot of the time, and, if you’re really into it, only speak when spoken to.

Wear vintage clothes, elegant accessories, monochrome colors. Emphasize sharp features with purely dark or light colors and jewel tones. I usually find nice vintage clothes at random thrift stores. Keep an open mind.

Listen to jazz and classical music. Listening to older, more tasteful music brings a spark of elegance to your life. I, personally, like to hear the used jazz vinyls crackle. There are multiple types of dark academia; to me, jazz demonstrates the erratic artist spirit of revolutionaries, while classical music possesses me with the sophisticated spirit of a Classicist who has preparing tea down to a science.

Light candles. Doing things such as writing, reading, and getting ready for bed by candlelight makes it seem thrice as elegant and academic… going to sleep so late never looked so enticing. On the other hand, you could wake up before dawn, light some candles, and study or read. 

Stay ahead in school. Read your textbooks ahead of time, write essays about anything you’d like at all, just for practice. If you’re learning about something in science, devise experiments to illustrate the concepts to yourself and make them easy to remember. If you’re reading a book in English, read a handful of articles about the author beforehand to prepare, write down quotes from the book, make essay pitches, write to your heart’s content a critique of the book, an analysis of the book, of gender roles in the book. In history courses, find articles about the subject matter, annotate them, and write about them. If you’re taking a math class, devise applications of the concepts and solve problems of your own creation.

Go to libraries, museums, bookshops, and coffee shops. These are all really good places to sit in the corner and read for hours on end. Not only do you get Mysterious Points but you get an aesthetic environment and (hopefully) some peace in which to devour literature. I know that in the upcoming term, I’m going to be in the library from opening time to closing time every day.

Make Ancient Roman or Greek food. To be honest, the food was of so much better quality than it often is today, so I would suggest looking into some ancient cuisine archives to look for some recipes for your dinner party. Not only is it most of the time much better than modern food, but it’s also much more elegant. Not to mention it is fun and enlightening to try recipes which are perhaps completely foreign to  you.

Have routines. Perhaps your life is erratic, but you can feel some semblance of order and elegance by creating rituals for, perhaps, everything. You might start the day off with a walk around the neighborhood or a nearby pond. I start my writing sessions by 1) playing jazz 2)opening my windows 3)reading Belief and Technique for Modern Prose 4)chugging a whole glass of water really fast 5) breathing violently. Feel free to make up really weird Winding Down routines, like, I don’t know, closing all your windows, stripping down, and meditating for 20 minutes before you go to sleep. Literally anything. It doesn’t even have to be useful, it just has to be strange.

Hang stuff up on your walls. Postcards, paintings, drawings, poetry, snippets from books, moodboards, your routines, lists (places you want to go, people you want to meet, things you want to do), playlists. Make it yourself and make it chaotic and, most importantly, make it aesthetic.

READ. Read anything and everything educational. Do it. Just, don’t pick up your phone for 3 days because you’re reading, just ignore everything else. Good things to read would be: feminist literature, nonfiction, mystery novels, Rebecca by Daphne Du Maurier…

when sappho said “in the crooks of your body i find my religion” and when hozier said “the only heaven i’ll be sent to is when i’m alone with you”

idk who needs to hear this but when your english teacher asks you to explain why an author chose to use a specific metaphor or literary device, it’s not because you won’t be able to function in real-world society without the essential knowledge of gatsby’s green light or whatever, it’s because that process develops your abilities to parse a text for meaning and fill in gaps in information by yourself, and if you’re wondering what happens when you DON’T develop an adult level of reading comprehension, look no further than the dizzying array of examples right here on tumblr dot com