A Thorn Amidst The Roses, 1887, By James Sant (1820-1916)

“We mistook violence for passion, indolence for leisure, and thought recklessness was freedom.”

~ Toni Morrison (The Bluest Eye)

“You don’t love someone for their looks, or their clothes, or for their fancy car, but because they sing a song only you can hear.“

– Oscar Wilde

guide to being the dark academic you’ve always aspired to be

1. stand in the middle of a lake staring at the way the moonlight reflects off the blood on your hands

2. start using words with more syllables because it sounds smarter and you need everyone to know how smart you are so they won’t know you bribed your way into the gentleman’s club

3. cover your chin with a black scarf so people can’t see the scar you got from turning the pages of the encyclopaedia too quickly

4. clutter your room with things that you bought from old charity shops, so you can watch them collect dust (and so you won’t have to look at that mysterious red stain on the floor)

5. buy a coffin to sleep in (you can find one secondhand if it’s too expensive - don’t worry, that just adds to the mystique). 

6. string balls of cosy yarn across the floor, lest any intruders come. this way, you can catch them easily. 

7. spell your name wrong to prevent identity theft

8. cut all your hair off in an attempt to become someone else and then send the locks to your neighbours (don’t provide context)

9. dig yourself a grave four feet to the left of the nearest skyscraper

10. don’t look behind your shoulder or you’ll see her. donna. 

living in the old small town, wandering around with my dogs, having big house, wearing dark dresses, drinking lots of coffee, reading historical novels and collecting works of art

vintage astronomy

dark academia is:

the secrets of life hidden in the vastness of the universe

finding the special moments amongst the silence in the library and in the velvet pressed against your cheek

feel the blood course through your veins

carrying adrenaline with every turn of events

empty mugs of better black coffee

cutting their hair and painting angels during their free time

androgynous scholars with a fascination for the mystic and philosophers from ancient times

you don’t need to go to a prestigious university or an exclusive boarding school to get dark academia vibes. you can be a pretentious brooding scholar at your local public high school as well. leave books on renaissance paintings and ancient rituals open on library desks. write ominous notes in the margins of textbooks. quote byron on the bathroom stall door. wear an unmistakable scent of perfume, so when you enter a classroom, everyone knows that you’ve arrived. cut your hair in the sink of the science lab. slip roses into random lockers. surround yourself with a few number of close friends and form your own secret circle. gain a reputation. have whispers follow you down the hallways. I would, however, advise against murder.

hey guys!! my apologies because it’s been a while since i’ve made a masterpost, but i just finished school + i need to study shakespeare, so i’ve decided to compile a masterpost of links for studying shakespeare! hope you like it ✨ [especially you @lionmcmuffin​ 💞]

resources

my shakespeare tag

+ a more aesthetic shakespeare tag

the ultimate english masterpost

shakespeare in modern english [this is great!]

+ an app that is something like the latter

literature notes [shakespeare central]

watch shakespeare’s plays!! [i watched the othello one, it’s ace!]

some productions

check out these courses [i’m also taking one on othello if it isn’t apparent which tragedy i’m studying yet B-)]

litcharts shakespeare [fave!!!]

the complete works of william shakespeare

approaching shakespeare [podcasts]

bbc shakespeare

shakespeare timeline

videos

why shakespeare loved iambic pentameter

did shakespeare write his plays?

insults by shakespeare

shakespeare explained on thugnotes [these are quite entertaining!]

shakespeare: the animated tales

writing

critical essays on shakespeare’s tragedies

some suggestions [especially for undergraduates!]

how do you analyse a scene from a shakespeare play?

notes on comedies

all’s well that ends well

as you like it

comedy of errors

love’s labour’s lost

the merchant of venice

measure for measure

the merry wives of windsor

much ado about nothing

a midsummer night’s dream

the taming of the shrew

the tempest

twelfth night

two gentlemen of verona

the winter’s tale

notes on tragedies

antony and cleopatra

hamlet

julius caesar

king lear

macbeth

othello

romeo and juliet

notes on histories

henry v

king henry iv, part one

richard ii

richard iii

sonnets

sonnet basics

a list of his sonnets [i love sonnet 55]

notes on sonnets

teaching + other resources

teaching shakespeare

the shakespeare resource centre

more teaching resources

the royal shakespeare company

+ my masterposts

notes, studying, and self-study resources

self-study resources

supplies

igcse resources

improving your handwriting

how to studyblr

literature masterpost

organisation

aesthetically pleasing notes

annotating

studying a foreign language

really great apps

math

college + uni

motivation

biology

space!!!!

chemistry

physics

summary writing

the discursive/argumentative essay

the narrative essay + the descriptive essay

the ultimate english masterpost!!

stress relief

what i’ve learnt throughout my years of being a student

how to stay productive during holidays

bullet journals

melodic studying

philosophy

stay sated whilst you’re motivated

+ more

ps i also have a study instagram which you can follow right here!!!

that is all, my friends, good luck with studying shakespeare :] may you all be super successful ❣ ❣

A romantic is a person who believes in romanticism, which is like a philosophy on life. 

Romantics love nature, old things like castles and churches, love poetry and beauty, and have a tendency to get carried away by ideas. This can be both bad and good, as most of the original romantics stood up for their beliefs and greatly helped England, but also went to help people in revolutions and got killed. 

They also tend to get randomly depressed, but this is because the weather and colors and beatiful things make them act differently than others.

Any quotes which make you shudder?

GLAD YOU ASKED:

“I’m sorry about the blood in your mouth. I wish it was mine.” —Richard Siken from “Little Beast”“You happened to me. You were as deep down as I’ve ever been. You were inside me like my pulse.”—Marilyn Hacker from “Nearly a Valediction”“I don’t want to be around you. I don’t want to drink you in. I want to walk into the heart of you and never walk back out. “—Nico Alvarado from “Tim Riggins Speaks of Waterfalls”“Take me to your trees. Take me to your breakfasts, your sunsets, your bad dreams, your shoes, your nouns. Take me to your fingers.”—Margaret Atwood from “The Good Bones”“When I don’t touch you it’s a mistake in any life, in each place and forever.”—Bob Hicok from “Other Lives and Dimensions and Finally a Love Poem”“When I haven’t been kissed in a long time, I create civil disturbances, then insult the cops who show up, till one of them grabs me by the collar and hurls me up against the squad car, so I can remember, at least for a moment, what it’s like to be touched.”—Jeffrey McDaniel, “When a Man Hasn’t Been Kissed”“Kiss the mouth which tells you, here,here is the world. This mouth. This laughter. These temple bones.”—Galway Kinnell from “Little Sleep’s Head Sprouting Hair in the Moonlight”“I will love you forever; whatever happens. Until I die and after I die, and when I find my way out of the land of the dead, I’ll drift about forever, all my atoms, until I find you again.”—Phillip Pullman from “The Amber Spyglass”“I wanted to write ‘stay’ on your sides,surround your bed with oceans of salt.I hope he folds you into a fox, loves you like a splintered arrow, brandishes the kill of your lips. May the bouquet of your hips wither. May the wolves forget your name.”—J. Bradley“I love you. If you hadn’t existed I would have had to invent you.”–Elaine Dundy from “The Dud Avocado”“And I’d choose you; in a hundred different lifetimes, in a hundred worlds, in any version of reality, I’d find you and I’d choose you.”—Kiersten White“The first time I asked you on a date, after you hung up, I held the air between our phones against my ear and whispered, ‘You will fall in love with me. Then, just months later, you will fall out. I will pretend the entire time that I don’t know it’s coming.’”—Miles Walser “I will come back from the dead for you.”—Richard Siken from “You Are Jeff”“Do you want it? Do you want anything I have? Will you throw me to the ground like you mean it, reach inside and wrestle it out with your bare hands? If you love me, Henry, you don’t love me in a way I understand.”—Richard Siken from “Wishbone”“Here we are, at the place where I get to beg for it. Where I get to say ‘Please,for just one night, will you lay down next to me? We can leave our clothes on,we can stay all buttoned up?’ But we both know how it goes–– I say I want you inside me and you hold my head underwater. I say I want you inside me and you split me open with a knife.”—Richard Siken from “Wishbone”“Even when I’m dead, I’ll swim through the Earth like a mermaid of the soil, just to be next to your bones.”—Jeffrey McDaniel