HAMLET????

Here, a cheater course on caring for natural fibers!

1. Wool. Treat it like it has the delicate constitution of a Victorian lady and the conviction that baths are evil of a 17th century noble. (If I get in WATER my PORES will OPEN and I will CATCH ILL AND DIE.)

2. Cotton; easygoing. Will shrink a bit if washed and dried hot.

3. Silk; people think it’s like wool and has the constitution of a fashionably dying of consumption Victorian lady, but actually it’s quite tough. Can be washed in an ordinary washer, and either tumbled dry without heat or hung to dry.

4. Linen; it doesn’t give a shit. Beat the hell out of it. Historically was laundered by dousing it in lye and beating the shit out of it with wooden paddles, which only makes it look better. The masochist of the natural fiber world. Beat the fuck out of it linen doesn’t care. Considerably stronger than cotton. Linen sheet sets can last literal decades in more or less pristine shape because of that strength.The most likely natural fiber to own a ball gag.

in my ‘dramatic love’ era rn

but in all seriousness

im kinda seeing someone rn and im so deliriously happy to even just message them

i havent actually liked someone this much in a long time or ever really

its just so easy to be around them and i feel comfortable around them which doesnt happen to me often and i dont mind being more openly affectionate with them either which is crazy bc i never thought id feel like i could do that with someone

i have finally fallen back in love with reading again after like a 2 year reading drought

nvm he messaged me back <3

i hate time

it only moves slow when i actually want something to happen

its been less than 20 minutes since i messaged this guy and it feels like its been half an hour wtf

Gustav Janouch, Conversations with Kafka

Why we should stop comparing The Secret History and If We Were Villains

I've seen people putting the two books together as pillars of dark academia countless times, often trying to explain why their favourite one is the best and it is useless. The two books are incredibly different and you will inevitably be disappointed in one of the two if you read them with the same intentions.

The Secret History is a reversed mystery novel: from the very first lines, we know who died, how, and who killed him. The questions we are left with are "Why did they do that?", and "Will they get away with that?" The book is fundamentally psychological, it's a character-driven book, which explains why such a long part is dedicated to establishing them, their relationships, while the actual murder is surprisingly short.

If We Were Villains, on the other hand, is a more traditional detective novel, though it doesn't totally fit the standard. It's a whodunit, and when we start the book, we know who got arrested but the mystery throughout the novel follows four questions: "Who died?", "Who did it?", "Why did they do it?" and "Why did Oliver get arrested?" We are trying to solve the murder at the same time as the detective. It's a plot-driven novel, and although the characters are very important, they are all defined by one quality and one flaw during the first act (the characterisation in this book is amazing, I'm probably gonna make a post about it).

Obviously, if you read TSH and IWWV with the same expectations, one of them is going to bore you. However, if you consider their differences, they are both excellent books in their genre. If they do have some common elements (a group of students that's almost sectarian, and murder), saying that IWWV plagiarized TSH sounds pretty ridiculous to me. IWWV is a love letter to Shakespeare and the madness in his characters, TSH is a critic of elitism in academic spaces. And they both deserve praise, if only people would stop comparing them.

uggggh my form tutor is getting in my nerves so much!

does he not realise that i’m doing 4 FOUR A-Levels??? not three and dropping one or just three, four! and learning to drive at the same time like fuck oooooff

i used to think that icarus’ death was just a tragic accident—the kind so prevalent in greek mythology, where the hero survives the most dangerous part but tragedy befalls in the most unexpected/preventable way as a result of hubris/arrogance/carelessness. but icarus’ fate was no accident. tragic, yes, but also beautiful in its inevitability: a tribute to the inexorable entanglement between love and death, desire and destruction, intimacy and decay — all of which are ultimately just forms of want and loss. after all, everything has a price, an equal and opposite reaction.

desire is synonymous with fire. it’s something i think mortals are only capable of experiencing in tiny doses: little fires in our guts, live wires down our spine, warm flushes across our cheeks. like taking very small sips of too-hot tea, desire must be drawn out over a lifetime of intimacy—lest it burn us up completely. but apollo feels things with all his immortal intensity: he is pure fire and light and heat. i am not sure there exists a purer form of love than that of the sun.

this is why icarus’ fate is no accident, nor another allegory on the dangers of hubris. it was inevitable from the start. the same way achilles’ virility and vitality was paid for with his death at such a young age, the heat from apollo’s fleeting, fatal moment of desire for icarus is the same as a lifetime’s worth of slow-burning love between two mortals.

i like to believe that icarus didn’t lose his life—not exactly. he just lived it all at once in a single, blazing moment of intimacy with the sun.

i didn’t realise how much i would love sixth form at a college especially at one where i didn’t think i would ever go.

i also didn’t think english literature would overtake history as my favourite but it has and i am loving it so much! my english teacher is like one from the films! she just wants us to explore everything we can in poems it doesn’t matter what it is she just wants us to really get them! i’m just letting all of weird ideas about them go and she’s like “amazing! i love it!” aaaggh

why didn’t anyone tell me how good english teachers could be ????

(also it’s my 17th birthday today!)

favorite art genre: turning up in the woods with my girls

hold some hands, do a little dance, go off the shits among the trees