Julian Morrow Is Just Lord Henry If Lord Henry Were Somehow More Of A Coward, Change My Mind

Whether or not the author is dead, the book is a dead thing.

Mortimer J. Adler, How To Read A Book

In 2021 I will not be Richard-Papening myself over mysterious and sexy snobs I will BECOME the mysterious and sexy snob

What are you studying? Which year are you in?

Thank you for the ask! I am studying physics for school, and I am at approximately third year standing.

My favourite used bookstore is opening again and I am hyped. Really want to read The Brothers Karamazov this winter, because winter is Dostoyevsky season apparently, but I refuse to buy it new when I might find a lovely old edition for a third of the price.

all I want is for someone to be incredibly, obnoxiously pretentious at me about the classics so that I can judge them for being so elitist but secretly be swept up and captivated by their passion

Hi!

we all think we’re camilla macaulay when we’re really judy poovey

Who has a ‘morbid longing for the picturesque at all costs’? Couldn’t be me, a person who started a dark academia blog.

You know what. I’m starting a new aesthetic, population me.

Romantic Science, AKA Dark Academia for STEM people.

Thrifting a lab coat and embroidering it with your initials and a little insignia, whose significance is known to you and your lab partner only

Watching The Theory of Everything and The Imitation Game and Hidden Figures and basically every movie about historical scientists and mathematicians you can find

Decorating your desk with old slide rules and vintage lab equipment. Your prize possession is a set of vintage lenses you found at a thrift store

Wanting an articulated human skeleton far, far too much

Getting a set of (brand new, NOT thrifted, be safe ppl) beakers to drink from, and putting them directly onto your stovetop to boil water for tea or coffee, because borosilicate glass can survive anything.

Secretly relating far too much to Henry Jekyll and Victor Frankenstein, because you too want to do a gay little science experiment that challenges god.

Thunderstorms and late nights in the lab, the light of the Bunsen burner glistening off of your flasks and scribbled chalkboard equations

Papering your walls with vintage scientific diagrams; even if you know that our understanding of the world has evolved since they were made, looking back at scientific history is amazing

Writing code late at night and feeling, in some metaphysical way, as though Ada Lovelace herself is with you in spirit

Being far, FAR too obsessed with the concept of emergent ai sentience and how it has the potential to be Frankenstein irl

Looking through a telescope on clear nights, whispering the names of the constellations and stars, painting a star chart on your ceiling in a burst of creative inspiration

Collecting and mounting samples from everywhere you can think of to pore over in an antique microscope

Bringing a field journal wherever you go, learning how to draw and label botanical samples, preserving plants and flowers for study later

Dreaming of what undiscovered mysteries lie in the deepest depths of the sea, feeling the thrill of discovery whenever you learn about a new species and one day hoping to discover one yourself

Just. Romanticise STEM.

I can’t help but wonder what The Secret History would have been like to read had I not immediately lost all respect for Julian Morrow as soon as it was mentioned that he had a drawer full of Montblancs. (bc... come on that’s about the tackiest thing I’ve ever heard of)