Latest Posts by the-classymess - Page 6
lorde really wrote an album about being the kid that stayed home when people went out and had to keep a reputation of being nice and modest and polite but secretly wanting to go crazy and dance wildly and go running and bounding and sobbing but feeling as though your whole life hinges on other people giving you the opportunity to do it and so you feel as though you’re wasting your youth
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;
I started reading The Secret History because I fell into the trap that is dark academia (a very good trap indeed), but I had actually heard of the it before and only by seeing the cover of the book had I recalled one of the most poignant memories of my recent life.
Some moons ago, past midnight on a September evening, I was sitting on the floor in the bedroom of a boy I so greatly admired. He sat on the end of his bed with his head between his knees and a blanket wrapped around his shoulders. He was recovering from one too many drinks, as a few hours prior, my friend and I were helping him get home from a party and forcing him to drink water so he wouldn’t die from alcohol poisoning. She had already left, leaving the two of us alone, him sobering up. From his phone speakers, classical music played, and he spoke to me about songs I would like, as well as book recommendations. He then said something about the book he was reading at the time, and that I’d like it very much, but I couldn’t make out who the author nor the title from what he was saying as he had his head between his knees. Nor could I pay proper attention because although I don’t drink, I was in a drunken stupor of being alone in his presence.
It was some moments later that he shuffled over and made a gesture for me to sit next to him. And so I did, and he wrapped his blanket around the two of us and rested his head on my left shoulder. I don’t remember if either of us had said a word, but the music kept playing. Two pieces remain with me: Gymnopédie No. 1 by Erik Satie, and Song on the Beach by Arcade Fire. I almost cried because of how truly happy I felt.
Nothing more happened between us that night. He fell asleep on my shoulder, and I had to go home. But before leaving I noticed that the book he was talking about was on his nightstand. A book none other than The Secret History by Donna Tartt. “… [A] group of clever, eccentric misfits at an elite New England college discover a way of thinking and living that is a world away from the humdrum existence of their contemporaries … ”
He was right. I did enjoy the book. As for him and I, that’s another story that I won’t delve into. It’s one that pertains more to tragedy than comedy.
carry on moodboards — fem! watford snowbaz
↳ “sharing a room with the person you want most is like sharing a room with an open fire.”
do you ever see handwritten notes in a used/second hand book and you are like.. yes.. my dear anonymous lover who I never met.. I feel our bond through this piece of classic literature.. our two souls are merging into one.. or ist that just me?
a dark academia moodboard i made while i was busy being sleep deprived.
mood: reading gothic literature at night by lamplight, drinking black coffee sweetened with honey, watching shakespearean tragedies at the theatre, freshly cut roses, wearing the same delicate jewellery everyday, reading textbooks about the supernatural, burning candles on an autumn evening, writing letters to far away friends
Da Vinci (1503)
— HOGWARTS SEEKERS
Concept: I finish school. The job I work isn’t my dream job but I enjoy doing it greatly still. It pays enough to cover everything I might need. My bills are never overdue. Money is not a thought in my head. I have a place to live. So do my dogs. It is nice and warm, I have some plants, my bookshelves are full, my sheets are always clean. There is time to read at the end of a day. I read a lot. Thinking is a good thing. I meet up with friends regularly, old and new. They love me. We make memories. I have nothing to be ashamed of. I travel a few times a year, always different places. The places I see steal my breath away. The people I meet teach me of life. They are good. There is no war. The sea calls to me and pay visit. I am independent. I am content.
honestly i love the entire “woman falls for fearsome supernatural creature that truly loves her and treats her well instead of her intended human suitor who is only interested in the status marrying her will bring them and doesn’t care about her happiness” genre because it combines all of the things i look for in an ideal romantic partner: someone tall and strong, but tender and kind, who cares about my happiness, and fangs
Good Will Hunting (1997) dir. Gus Van Sant
Forehead Touch || The Goldfinch (2019)
dark academia is basically what happens when you combine the chaotic energy of slytherins and ravenclaws
Amy bossing Laurie around is basically the reason I made this gif set.
My freshmen year roommate was a complete fucking disaster but he would throw parties and everyone would pass out in our living room and every morning I left for class at 7am I would just get little choruses of “have fun at class, good luck” from hungover stoners and let me tell you, as someone who thrives off attention and positive reinforcement, this setup really worked for me
she is too fond of books, and it turned her brain
The idea that denim on denim is a fashion crime exists only because it looks working class and the worst thing you can do in a capitalist society is look like you perform manual labour.
How old are you and what do you do for work?
i am immortal and unemployed
I don’t have bookshelves so... it’s kind of a mess down here
ig: fourthepigram
I had a nice Saturday morning studying Latin.
I also finished my notes on ‘Caliban and the Witch’ and let me tell you, there’s nothing better than a good scoop of feminist Marxist theory to start the day.
47/100 • 11/05/2020 ❣️ this adorno chapter is taking me an eternity to read....its fascinating but such slow going. i’m also starting to burn out as the semester winds to a close. i still have the majority of my assessments to go, and cannot wait to be over the finish line.
Odysseus having to go to Skyros to find Achilles, a hero, a grown-ass man, hiding among women, dressed like princess to avoid going to the Trojan War:
Dead Poets Society (1989) dir. Peter Weir
Chaotic academics during quarantine: Reading until ungodly hours, sleeping in later than the world should allow, waking in a frantic haze anxiously staring at the clock and how the day ticked by during your deep slumber, anxiously thumbing through a book to catch up (when will you ever have this much time to read again?), staying in bed with a mound of half-read books at your side, a cup of black tea becoming cold as you forget it whilst inhaling Oscar Wilde and Edgar Allan Poe, reading The Yellow Wall Paper with trembling hands, muttering poetry under your breath, isolated.
i think as a society we should bring back fancy dinner parties where you listen to classical music and discuss the shakespearean sonnets and the romantics & philosophical debates held by literary societies full of dedicated students who are passionate about critical theory and aestheticism & poetry readings in jazz cafés that last well into the night and leave you with a sense of having shared an intimate experience with strangers because all of you have felt the same words echo in your soul
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.
secret history
stained wine glasses; a broken teacup lying on the floor; wool mittens; is that red wine or blood?; butterfly knives; whispers under trees; an out of tune piano; melted candles; quills; bowl of milk on the windowsill; cherries; secrets almost told; books stacked on every surface; knowing looks across the room; multilingual conversations, kisses on stairwells
dead poets society
dog eared books; bandaids on scraped knees; red bicycles; white coffee mugs; number 2 pencils; untied shoelaces; bits of moss and leaves in your hair; (does he like me?); dollar store snacks; mist; confessions of love carved on a school desk; would you rather games in moonlight; crinkled paper; books laid open on the bed; hugs so tight they hurt; Shakespearean insults; platonic (or maybe not) touches
kill your darlings
cracked spines of paperbacks; wire rimmed glasses; broken windows; sweaters; elbow patches; polaroids locked in a box; overdue library books; bitten nails; avoiding eye contact; grass stains on suits; splinters; touches under moonlight; bruises; withdrawal; crackling of fires; late night coffee runs; sweaty palms while talking to the one you love