Phoebe Bridgers/ Celia Lowenthal/ Holly Warburton/ Hyowon Park/ Xuan Loc Xuan/ Richard Siken / Jd Salinger

Oscar Wilde saying his favourite poetess was Sappho was gay/lesbian solidarity

Mary Oliver, Wild Geese

we made comparisons between joe exotic and trimalchio from petronius’s satyricon in my latin class today after my professor went off on a tangent about binging the show when he should have been grading our tests. and i never thought my netflix binging and niche interests would overlap like that

“Sometimes I think of you, Medusa. Inside your temple, mournful, surrounded by a hundred stone statues. The men who came to kill you and never left were named lost heroes, warriors, demigods whilst you were called monster, gorgon, terror. (Because the stories were always written by men) But this was never a story about a monster. It was always about a woman burned for a Sea God’s sin, a pawn in an ancient game the fates would never let her win. You did not desecrate that which is sacred, it was him. (But your story was always written by men) You begged him not to visit you, you pleaded with every God. But the Gods turned away when you needed them. You did not want to be remembered this way. And then one day, whilst you slept, a son of Zeus came. And killed you before you could even look his way. (And he too was named hero because the stories were always written by men) Someone once said, words cut deeper than a knife. That history is told by the victors. That he who tells the story is the one who controls the world. Women did not get to write your story, Medusa. Because if we did, a very different tale would be told. (And in our tale, you would not be Monster. But Priestess. Goddess. A maiden who once had a heart of gold.)”

— Nikita Gill, Excerpt from Maidens, Myths and Monsters

Saint Sebastian Tended by Saint Irene (c.1625)   by Nicolas Régnier (1591–1667)

Not to sound Romantic or anything, but I too have a striking fascination with the irrational, the demonic and the grotesque.

my playlists (+ descriptions)

asparagus is in season: character playlist for francis abernathy from the secret history

dark academia but it’s girls: imagine the secret history, dead poets society, and if we were villains but all the male characters are replaced with female counterparts

donna tartt’s walkman: some music donna tartt probably listened to from her bennington days into her secret history days; also evokative of a sexually ambiguous classics student from a homoerotic dark academia novel

the holy trinity: florence, mitski, and hozier

prep school nostalgia: best of my effy stonem phase

scary girl fall: inspired by the gory girls from suspiria, midsommar, the vvitch, the moth diaries, and ginger snaps

turtleneck season: 'tis the season to become the pretentious protagonist of a modern greek tragedy (dark academia but it’s girls pt. 2)

slavic androgynous bette davis and the incongruous meathead: playlist for the goldfinch starring russian vampire and erudite sad boy

ode to the 2010s: music that shaped me in my formative years

art museum dates are so underrated. I want to take dumb pictures in front of Roman statues and watch her stare in awe of the little ways the sculptor made the stone look as soft as skin. maybe she would pull me over to a painting that reminded her of me and I would get to listen to the way her voice twinkles as she explains her argument, and a glowing smile as I reluctantly agree with her. maybe we could pretend to have a museum heist and almost get kicked out, ending with the both of us in heaps of laughter, falling just a little bit deeper in love. and when I'm asked about which piece of art was my favorite today? darling, you already know the answer.

i just want to work in a small museum in italy where i translate latin manuscripts and talk to college kids about the ancient world before walking to my little apartment by the sea to drink tea and watch the sunset while chopin plays in the background. is that too much to ask?