Finally Using My Desk To Study. I Plan To Research On Trauma Theory In Literature And Finish My Essay

TSH Moodboard: Henry & Richard

‘Henry?’ I said at last, my voice scarcely more than a whisper. He let the cigarette fall from his fingers and took a step towards me. It really was him - damp, ruddy cheeks, snow on the shoulders of his overcoat. ‘Good God, Richard,’ he said, ‘what’s happened to you?’ It was as much surprise as I ever saw him show. I stood where I was, staring, unbalanced. Things had got too bright. I reached for the door frame, and the next thing I knew I was falling, and Henry jumped forward to catch me. He eased me onto the floor and took off his coat and spread it over me like a blanket. ‘Where did you come from?’ I said. ‘I left Italy early.’ He was brushing the hair back from my forehead, trying to get a better look at my cut. I saw blood on his fingertips.

subjects as dark academia aesthetics

english: knit turtlenecks, corduroy pants. going to stationery stores and buying ink. writing notes and penning stories in leather-bound notebooks. critiquing your friend’s essay as you walk hurriedly through a grove of oak trees in the rain on your way to class.

math: perpetually foggy glasses. biting your pencil eraser to focus when you’re stuck on a particularly difficult problem. taking notes and putting them into a worn binder, bursting with variegated papers. late night study sessions fueled by multiple cups of black tea.

chemistry: heavy old textbooks covered in post-it notes. empty beakers sitting in the windowsill, reflecting random patterns of light onto the classroom walls. a cozy striped sweater peeking out from underneath a pristine white lab coat. coffee from the local cafe, filled just to the brim with creamer - very precisely, a skill learned from hours spent measuring chemicals.

history: dark woolen coats, long socks hidden under plaid pants. old maps from all across the glove hung around the room. analyzing (and admiring!) prolific writing and pieces of art that have survived the test of time. long walks on cobblestone streets, stopping to read on the steps of a museum.

latin: sturdy leather backpacks with straps. stopping to explain the meaning of words and their roots, followed by looks of intrigue. writing latin sayings into tea-stained planners. sitting in a cafe, eating a macaron in a window booth and watching people walk by.

art: hair pulled back into a low bun, random strands poking out. hands always stained with paint, charcoal - the medium changes daily. sketching under a sycamore tree, its leaves slowly browning. standing in front of a painting in a museum, becoming lost in it, slowly pulled back in time into its story.

— Oscar Wilde, from The Picture Of Dorian Gray

Slytherclaw Book Recommendations

because I’m basic. But also because I keep getting Sytherin and then Ravenclaw and then Slytherin on house quizzes. If Slytherin and Ravenclaw were a venn diagram, I would want whatever falls in the sliver where the two circles overlap. Books that are a beautiful mix of ambition aided by unprecedented wit, calculated cunning abetted by strange wisdom. So here goes. (Also, goes without saying, but fuck J.K. Rowling)

The Ballad Of Songbirds and Snakes: Suzanne Collins- prequel to the Hunger Games the protagonist of which is Snow. A lot of people hate this book and I think thats really invalid. It is the PERFECT slytherclaw book. It examines power, control and authority, and the route of wit, charm and intelligence that the mind can take to get to those ideals. Just an overall great work on the nature of the State, fascism, nationalism, dissent and its cost, brutality and human nature.

Macbeth: William Shakespeare- it is Shakespeare’s shortest play, so its a breeze to read but also is just so clever in the way it is written! I don’t need to point that out about Shakespeare but my god if the writing and structure and meter isn’t something to make a ravenclaw absolutely lose their minds over it. For the consideration of your more slytherin side, it has a hot lady villain. No but seriously, Lady Macbeth is such a fierce character not to mention, the whole play is fuelled by her ambition for power through her husband. So try it.

Silence of the Lambs: Thomas Harris. Yes this is that cannibal novel on which that cannibal movie was based and that other homoerotic show with the really handsome dudes. Anyways, its about two people who are intrigued with each other’s psyches but are also trying to outsmart each other. I enjoyed the book more than the movie actually.

If We Were Villains by M.L Rio: Dark Academia tumblr ate this shit up. Its a bunch of friends in an elite arts college/Shakespeare conservatory thing. It has Shakespeare and murder. The things that we really do love here on tumblr dot come. Its just really beautifully written and over time I’ve come to appreciate it more than The Secret History so.

The Queen’s Thief Series: Megan Whalen Turner: this book series has possibily the most slytherclaw protagonist I have ever witnessed in literature. Saying anything about this book series is too much. It needs to be jumped into blind so allow me to give you a synopsis that justifies it being on this list and gives you an idea of what it is about. I can’t. Suffice it to say, its a series based around political intrigue, court politics, war. It is funny, witty and cunning. Amazing foreshadowing. Amazing worldbuilding. Morally grey characters making morally grey choices. Just………*chef’s kiss*. Pick it up on a whim it will not let you down.

That was that. Also, fuck J.K Rowling✌🏽✌🏽✌🏽

〰 Intense Stares (3rd version).

Hand details (comparatives) Henry Cabot Lodge, John Singer Sargent | Zwei Hände Mit Stock, Wilhelm Leibl

So I’ve been really into the Academic Life™ lately and started to notice a few little things that strikes me as dark academia, so here’s a list: 

1. Always wearing my family rings. The women in my family are problematic as hell and definitely have a part on the outcome monstrosity that I am today, so I’ve decided to embrace my biggest fear of becoming one of them in the future by always wearing my grandmother’s ring (that was passed down to her by her mother), my mother’s ring and my aunt’s ring. They’re all on the same hand and constantly haunt me with the reminder of the bad blood that runs through my veins. 

2. Random numbers on the palm of my left hand in black ink. My University’s library is organized in codes and it’s really hard to find a specific book between thousands of others in the archive. Whenever I need a book, I look up its code and write it on my hand before my scavenger hunt - so by the end of the day I have about five or six lines of numbers and letters on my left hand, and nobody outside University knows why. 

3. Walking with the Cryptid™ around campus at weird hours. I love my classical literature teacher, or as we call him, The Myth, but sometimes I feel obligated to grab a coffee with him and just sit on the bandstand to discuss Homer so I can argue with him about his interpretation of the Iliad. Wanna grab a coffee and smoke near the pool so I can tell you why Helen of Troy and Helen of Sparta have different meanings? Oh, you’re at the library and you just found this Longino copy about the Sublime and you want to know if I’m interested in joining you despite being dark already? Hell yeah. 

4. Made up traditions with my friends. C’mon, we’re lit students! We have to be at least a bit pretentious. Drinking mead and absinthe on a horn that the biology students gave us? Speaking in latin with each other when walking on hallways and having other student’s eyes on us? The whole group gathering at this one person’s house every Tuesday for dinner and always wearing all black or all white? Yes. 

5. Explaining concepts to myself (and ghosts) at unholy hours in my room under the shitty yellow light I have for a lamp while smoking a cigarette and drinking reheated coffee. I learn faster when explaining things. I’m not even sorry. 

6. Carrying an umbrella with me every day. It hardly rains in my city and people are always looking at me with a confused expression whenever they see the big pointy black umbrella in my hands. This is actually because I walk to (and back from) Uni every day, so I don’t feel so powerless on the streets. You’ll really try to take my purse? Bring it on, punk.

7. Adding dead words to our vocabulary. My friends and I teamed up to buy this dead words dictionary and now we’re addicted to it. Walking around the corridors and using an old as time vocabulary really makes people curious and whenever the senior teachers hear us they look so intrigued! 

8. So, okay, this one is probably my favorite. We bought a star. Yes. We gathered money to buy a start, named it after our group, and now we frequently go to the physics department observatory to look for it. We even have matching pendants with the location of our start and it’s name.

Extras that are responsible for making this semester look specially dark academia for me: the smell of warm grass that hits me when I’m crossing the campus; me and my friends using Homeric epithets; the feeling of warm shoes when I get home after a long day of walking around campus; constantly handing each other different books that we personally love (and making our group a big book club); the empty perfume bottles and black ballpoint pens at the end of the semester; small and quiet kisses on the knuckles and temple me and my friends got used to give each other whenever we’re close enough to touch; the unfinished chess game I started with my friend still on top of my book pile; honoring Donna Tartt and asking my friend ‘cubitum eamus?’ in front of my latin teacher and having him giggle; the weight of an old, dusty and almost in pieces book about the decline and fall of the roman empire that we particularly love; books that we pick up so often that it’s location is already memorized; sitting in the warm sunlight on the bandstand when changing classes, smoking and drinking way too sugary coffee; ditching linguistics classes to attend a Russian literature lecture on the other side of campus; forgotten pennies on my coat pockets that once were coffee change; my friend who keeps constantly changing languages and speaking in french mid-conversation with us;