Latest Posts by razor-winged-butterfly - Page 8

Cultural Dark Academia

After my last post about the lack of representation in academia, I felt it neccessary to provide some examples of what I’m talking about. Obviously there are more countries in the world than I can list and provide books for, so for a quick list this is what I got. !! Keep researching !! If you have any more books by POC please reply them !! If a country isn’t listed, that doesn’t mean it’s not important, this is just what I could get together real quick. If I made any mistakes, please let me know, we’re all learning. We need to help each other end eurocentrism in academia, so value representation and educate yourselves 💓💓💓

Chinese:

The Art of War by Sun Tzu

The Dream of the Red Chamber

The Water Margin

Romance of the Three Kingdoms

The Journey to the West

The Scholars

The Peony Pavilion

Border Town by Congwen Shen

Half of Man is Woman by Zhang Xianliang

To Live by Yu Hua

Ten Years of Madness by agent Jicai

The Field of Life and Death & Tales of Hulan River by Xiao Hong

Japanese:

A Personal Matter by Kenzaburo Oë

Pakistani:

Moth Smoke by Mohsin Hamid

How to Get Filthy Rich in Rising Asia by Mohsin Hamid

Ghulam Bagh by Mirza Athar Baig

Masterpieces of Urdu Nazm by K. C. Kanda

Irani/Persian:

Rooftops of Tehran by Mahbod Seraji

Savushun by Simin Daneshvar

Anything by Rumi

The Book of Kings by Ferdowsi

The Rubiyat by Omar Khayyam

Shahnameh (translation by Dick Davis)

Afghan:

Earth and Ashes by Atiq Rahimi

A Thousand Splendid Suns by Khaled Hosseini

Indian:

The God of Small Things by Arundhati Roy

Aithihyamala, Garland of Legends by Kottarathil Sankunni

The Gameworld Trilogy by Samir Basu

Filipino:

Twice Blessed by Ninotchka Rosca

The Last Time I Saw Mother by Arlene J. Chai

Brazilian:

Night at the Tavern by Álvares de Azevedo

The Seven by André Vianco

Don Casmurro by Machado de Assis

Portuguese:

The Lusiads by Camões

Columbian:

Chronicle of a Death Foretold by Gabriel Garcia Marquez

Delirio by Laura Restrepo

¡Que viva la música! by Andrés Caicedo

The Sound of Things Falling by Jim Gabriel Vásquez

Mexican:

Bless Me, Ultima by Rudolf Anaya

Adonis Garcia/El Vampiro de la Colonia Roma by Luis Zapata

El Complot Mongol by Rafael Bernal

Egyptian:

The Cairo Trilogy by Nahuib Mahfouz

The Book of the Dead

Nigerian:

Rosewater by Tade Thompson

Things Fall Apart by Chinua Achebe

Malian:

The Epic of Sundiata

Senegalese:

Poetry of Senghor

Native American:

The Inconvenient Indian by Thomas King

Starlight by Richard Wagamese

Almanac of the Dead by L. Silko

Fools Crow by James Welch

Australian Aborigine:

Dark Emu by Bruce Pascoe

First Footprints by Scott Cane

My Place by Sally Morgan

American//Modern:

Real Life by Brandon Taylor

Namesake by Jhumpa Lahiri

The Hate U Give by Angie Thomas

The Poet X by Elizabeth Acevedo

Internment by Samir’s Ahmed

Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurtson

Rivers of London Series by Ben Aaronovitch

Dead Academia content even though I just found this aesthetic and don’t know what it contains:

• Solving your own murder with the help of your academic rivals!

• You hear ethereal, almost ghostly, singing from the auditorium that turns into shrieking from shredded vocal chords.

• Performing ancient rituals to the spirits to ensure you ace your exams (not demonic or evil, I’m Filipino spiritual don’t make this seem evil/from a colonizer lens).

• From your peripheral vision, you see that one portrait of the academy’s founder scowling— at you perhaps?

• You and your classmates’ research paper on unsolved murders has gone a bit too far— you grimace at the crimson dripping from your hands.

• You could’ve sworn that he was dead, face-down in the rose bushes outside the dormitory. Yet he’s here, eccentric and enthralling with honeyed words pouring from his lips. You stole his heart and now he’s here to take yours.

Please befriend me ♡

Reblog if it's okay to befriend you, ask questions, ask for advice, rant, vent, let something off your chest, or just have a nice chat.

please, please and please.

hey btw if ur transphobic don’t interact with my blog. we support trans people here

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?

“Go out and do something. It isn’t your room that’s a prison, it’s yourself.” - Sylvia Plath

"You're so hard to please." Uhhh books??? Flowers???Books with pressed flowers??? Handwritten love letters??? Coffee??? Scented candles??? Hold my hand??? Forehead kisses???

I am, as the novelists say, in need of seaside air

And also when Edgar Allan Poe said— "Tell me every terrible thing you did, and let me love you anyway."

My favourite character: smokes, drinks, reads greek and other dead languages, keeps a latin diary, kills someone by punching their collarbone, weaves an intricate web of lies and plot to escape jail, kisses his unrequited love and then shoots himself.

Me: now I know what Wilde meant when he said 'You will always be fond of me. I represent to you all the sins you never had the courage to commit.'

Erica Jong, Sappho's Leap; from 'Talking to Aphrodite'

Fernando Pessoa, The Book of Disquiet

Kostel svatého Jiří (St. George’s Church) also known as "ghost church" in Luková, Czech Republic

"Forgive me, for all the things I did but mostly for the ones that I did not.” (ouch)

The secret history by Donna Tart

If We Were Villains by M. L. Rio

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. 

This close 🤏 to walking into a mysterious fog and never coming back

Booklist for all the Dark Academics:

[Dark Academia book recs of all the different kinds I could think of. It's a long journey. Buckle up.]

The Classic Dark Academic :

Jane Eyre by Charlotte Brontë

Wuthering Heights by Emily Brontë

Anything by the Brontë sisters

Frankenstein by Mary Shelley

The Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde (this book birthed Dark Academia)

Rebecca by Daphne du Maurier

The Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad

Short stories by Edgar Allan Poe

Bram Stokers Dracula

Carmilla by Sheridan Le Fanu

Maurice by EM Forster

Madam Bovary by Gustav Flaubert

Crime and Punishment by Fyodor Dostoevsky

A Good Man is Hard to Find

To the Lighthouse by Virginia Woolf

Macbeth by Shakespeare

Othello by Shakespeare

Les Miserables by Victor Hugo

The Poetry-lover Academic:

Poetry of Baudelaire

Odes of Keats (ALL OF THEM ARE A MUST READ)

Poetry of Edgar Allan Poe (especially The Raven)

Shelley's Alastor, Prometheus Unbound, Masque of Anarchy

Kubla Khan by Coleridge

T.S Elliott's Wasteland

all Emily Dickinson poetry but especially 'I felt a funeral in my brain', 'Because I could not stop for death' (read them a thousand times already)

Pablo Neruda's Nothing but Death

Langston Hughes

Tennyson's Lotos eater (underrated gem)

Sylvia Plath poems but special mentions to Lady Lazarus and the Bell jar

Paradise Lost by Milton (if you want to include something about the Devil in your list)

Poems by Sappho

The Contemporary Dark Academic:

A Lesson in Vengeance by Victoria Lee

The Secret History by Donna Tartt (the origin of Dark Academia)

My Dark Vanessa by Kate Elizabeth Russell

Ace of Spades by Amanda Foody (could recommend it a hundred times)

The Maidens by Alex Michaelides

If We Were Villains by ML Rio

Ninth House by Leigh Bardugo

The Shadow Lines by Amitav Ghosh

The Goldfinch by Donna Tartt

The Temple House Vanishing by Rachel Donohue

The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie by Muriel Spark

The Girls are all so nice here by Laurie Elizabeth Flynn

Heaven by Mieko Kawakami

Wilder Girls by Rory Power

The Likeness by Tana French

Never let me go by Kazuo Ishiguro

One of us is lying by Karen Mcmanus

Bunny by Mona Awad

The Plot by Jean Hanff

The Starless Sea by Erin Morgenstern

The Lessons by Naomi Alderman

A Discovery of Witches by Deborah Harkness

Conversion by Katherine Howe

Plain Bad Heroines by Emily M. Danforth

Love is a Dog from Hell by Charles Bukowski

A Little Life by Hanya Yanagihara

A Quaint and Curious Volume

We, the Drowned by Carsten Jensen

The Little Friend by Donna Tartt

The Rules of Attraction by Bret Easton Ellis

Walden by Henry David Thoreau

Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell by Susanna Clarke

The Lying Games by Ruth Ware

Black Chalk by Christopher J Yates

The Lake of Dead Languages by Carol Goodman

The Furies by Fernanda Eberstadt

The Catherine House by Elisabeth Thomas

Bad Habits by Charleigh Rose

Good Girls Lie by JT Ellison

Queer Dark Academic:

THE PICTURE OF DORIAN GRAY (yes, yes, yes it's the gay shit)

Notes on a Scandal (What was she thinking?) by Zoë Heller

Hex by Rebecca Dinerstein Knight

Carmilla by Sheridan Le Fanu (lesbian vampire, hell yeah!)

The Starless Sea by Erin Morgenstern

Maurice by EM Forster

Christabel by Coleridge

Poems by Sappho

Plain Bad Heroines by Emily M Danforth

They Never Learn by Layne Fargo

Ace of Spades by Amanda Foody

The Dark Romantic Academic:

Plain Bad Heroines by Emily M Danforth

The Lessons by Naomi Alderman

Jane Eyre by Charlotte Brontë

Wuthering Heights by Emily Brontë

Never let me go by Kazuo Ishiguro

The Likeness by Tana French

The Temple House by Rachel Donohue

The Marriage Plot by Jeffrey Eugenides

Ninth House by Leigh Bardugo

A Discovery of Witches by Deborah Harkness

Mythological Dark Academic:

(pardon me for my cluelessness)

I have not really read much about mythology but if Norse mythology is the area of your interest, Neil Gaiman is the God of it. (aka not only Good Omens and American Gods, but also the book 'Norse Mythology')

The Furies by Fernanda Eberstadt

The Song of Achilles by Madeline Miller

Circe by Madeline Miller

[Remember: Some of these books have dark academia as their major aspect but most of them have dark academia as their minor aspect, and many of them have been put into the list because I got a dark academia kind of vibe from them. Moreover these books have a lot more to offer than just Dark Academia, even if we ignore that aspect, these books are just great pieces of literature. This list is entirely created out of my own reading researches, friendly recommendations, and book recs from reddit, pinterest and the internet in general. If I have gone wrong somewhere or if you want me to add something new, feel free to drop an ask.]

My favourite character: smokes, drinks, reads greek and other dead languages, keeps a latin diary, kills someone by punching their collarbone, weaves an intricate web of lies and plot to escape jail, kisses his unrequited love and then shoots himself.

Me: now I know what Wilde meant when he said 'You will always be fond of me. I represent to you all the sins you never had the courage to commit.'

Dark academia is 90% introverts who resort to murder when exposed to society.

lovers

fuck hiding your femininity in stem. your sharp eyeliner is a taste of how steady your hands are in lab. your fire outfit demonstrates your attention to detail. normalize being hot and smart

Sapere aude

I am indeed a woman in STEM

Women in STEM (Smut, Trauma, Enemies to lovers, Masquerade balls)

It was desperate magic he tried it / Soaked his deranged heart

Ted Hughes, Capriccio; from 'Systole Diastole'

you’re in his dms, the thought of me haunts him to death

Fuck productivity. Its cold, and I'm hibernating

“I can’t hold enough of you in my hands.”

— Franz Kafka

Brother

TW: CSA

Tell me how does darkness feeds on an unsullied soul;

Am I the one to be blamed for your viciousness?

Or was it the gratuity of my parents' sins?

Or was it the ode of innocence that tempted you?

An ode you consumed.

You shredded me to ribbons so that you could use them

to tie the knots of your selfish yearnings;

Morphed me into an infernal machine in the pursuit

of your eternal fantasy.

Unbloomed; I was cradled in the soft bed of childhood

Yet, you stripped me away from that delectation;

And impelled me into the wretched abyss of unholiness.

Suffocated I was, as you took advantage of a frail heart,

and ruptured it from its hollow.

Yet I am the one they blame, I blame.

For being tainted, ruined.

Abhorrence filled in their gazes.

But, if to taint me is to ruin me, then let the gods be blamed for bestowing such wickedness on my existence,

For I was nothing but a child,

Slaughtered because of vulnerability and pestering naivety.

Tell me why does darkness feed on an unsullied soul, brother?

dark science academia ♡

— fuck soulmates, be my academic rival

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

— Albert Camus