Indian Dark Academia - Delhi (mystery Academia)

look, i know i'll get through it because i've gotten this far already, but i don't want to. i don't want to continue to work hard, i don't want to push through, i don't even want any reassurance. i just want rest. let me rest. why is rest so hard to come by?

Me to my economics professor/advisor: Oh, btw here is my game theory paper on why divination is often a perfectly reasonable tool in decision-making… partly as an excuse to write extensively on the different forms of divination in Ancient Greece, featuring an unnecessarily detailed explanation of the history and practice of hepatoscopy + helpfully labelled pictures and diagrams of livers! 

Him: Have you considered graduate school?

Me: You just want the opportunity to shit-talk me in all my “recommendation” letters, don’t you?

Fuck productivity. Its cold, and I'm hibernating

Salma Deera, Letters from Medea

okay time to sit in the dark like a creature or else my brain will explode

Francisco Goya and Gustave Doré Gothic Hatchings

complicated relationships with your parents are like. you cut up fruit and bring it to my room without me asking. i can't remember the last time you told me that you were proud of me. you told me i wasn't good enough for you but i'm not even good enough for myself. your hugs feel like coming home. i can't tell you anything that happens in my life. i doubt myself every day because of something you said to me when i was eight. would you like to hear about my day? please don't ask me about my day. i miss you even though you're in the next room. i wish we didn't live together. i've never loved or resented anyone as much as i've loved and resented you. are you okay? are we okay? are we ever going to be okay?

“I may not have been sure about what really did interest me, but I was absolutely sure about what didn’t.”

— Albert Camus

mutuals i’d ominously stare at in a foggy gothic cemetery

I agree with you SO MUCH. The core value of the dark academia subculture is academics, hunger for knowledge, love for knowledge. It is disheartening to see people completely ignore that part, and focus on the 'aesthetic'. At this point it has just become a fashion trend.

I find it funny that it is widely believed that the dark academia phenomenon was born on tiktok. Maybe I’m too old now (even though I’m not) and I’m starting to think like bitter old people who observe the changes around them and stubbornly can’t accept them? I remember when dark academia reigned supreme on tumblr, when we used to read, watch, listen, take photos and share it all while getting deeper and deeper into the dark corridors. Years later, I get the strong impression that we were doing it tired of the world around us growing so fast - a reality that was slipping more and more out of our hands, that was harder and harder to keep up with. We were just kids on the internet sharing sad quotes and “aesthetic” photos on our blogs. Dark academia was some sort of universe to escape to after a hard day. Something along the lines of video games. Today, dark academia is a negation of everything it originally carried with it. Once again, tiktok has appropriated it as an online aesthetic and subculture to spend more money, to pressure others to spend more money; to make certain demands and set the bars. The moment dark academia went beyond tumblr, it automatically ceased to be this imaginary universe, created for fun, and became a capitalist game. 

I hate that I’m taking this tone, but it’s hard for me to stop myself. After all, tumblr has always been a place where you can be mad, sad, happy all you want, without the specter of being cancelled. Ok, we’re anonymous here, but most of us are also total individuals who didn’t care too much about this platform besides our own blog. So yeah, I’m disappointed that dark academia reigns supreme on tiktok, and stores are starting to have special “dark academia fashion” tabs. I guess the only positive aspect of this is that it only raises the discussion of eurocentrism and elitism in literature and filmography that is identified with dark academia. Now that it has gone out into the real world some of the items in the “dark academia syllabus” can have negative effects if approached uncritically. And we all know how critically one approaches things on tiktok….

I’ve always wanted to complain about it a little bit. Am I alone in this? Do I sound pathetic and oh god - like a boomer? I just hate tiktok SO MUCH. And I used to love dark academia, SO MUCH.