I Am Cryyyinnngg 😭😭😭

if you're trans / nonbinary / cisn't in some way rb this and put the first name you started going by when you figured it out

the astrophysics students

dreaming of discoveries yet to be made

wonder at the vastness of the cosmos

long equations scrawled across graph paper

jwst images as your phone lockscreen

solving complex orbital mechanics problems

debating the nature of dark matter

studying relativity and gravitational waves

mind-bending thought experiments that change your way of thinking

stargazing on a clear night

seeing supernovas and black holes in your mind's eye

discovering new stars and planets

a drive to understand the fundamentals of our universe

related: physics, astronomy

feel this anger, darling? preserve it. keep it. never let it go. give it a room inside your heart. make it part of your soul. bury it deep inside of yourself and never show it to anyone. it's your secret. It's what keeps you going. it's your dearest friend and your worst enemy. keep being angry. keep standing up for yourself. steal everyone's anger. it is yours now.

watching good omens for the first time:

rewatching good omens:

So, let me guess– you just started a new book, right? And you’re stumped. You have no idea how much an AK47 goes for nowadays. I get ya, cousin. Tough world we live in. A writer’s gotta know, but them NSA hounds are after ya 24/7. I know, cousin, I know. If there was only a way to find out all of this rather edgy information without getting yourself in trouble…

You’re in luck, cousin. I have just the thing for ya.

It’s called Havocscope. It’s got information and prices for all sorts of edgy information. Ever wondered how much cocaine costs by the gram, or how much a kidney sells for, or (worst of all) how much it costs to hire an assassin?

I got your back, cousin. Just head over to Havocscope.

((PS: In case you’re wondering, Havocscope is a database full of information regarding the criminal underworld. The information you will find there has been taken from newspapers and police reports. It’s perfectly legal, no need to worry about the NSA hounds, cousin ;p))

Want more writerly content? Follow maxkirin.tumblr.com!

and that's the proof 99% of writers prefer cats.

People writing about any sort of nonhuman character

who the fuck invented the tag hurt no comfort I just wanna have a little friendly chit-chat with them

here fam, hacking the simulation to give you a new brain and a hug🥺💖

My brain is melting and fucking same

An accurate description of the life of a 1st year astrophysics major:

going to class and your professor talking fondly about the "wonderful feeling after the elevator cable snaps while you're in it"

said professor then proceeding to play a rock song

on most days only expect 2-5 students in class even though we have 13

where did the others go?? nobody knows, maybe they were abducted by aliens

speaking of aliens

your other professor pausing class to talk about what would happen if we met them

and getting mildly upset that an asteroid is no longer headed towards earth

cats

just so many physics department cats

and celebrating their birthdays

nobody in the department sleeps

don't be alarmed when your professor goes to the group chat at 3am to talk about whatever

hating elon musk

somehow other majors don't think astrophysics majors actually attend school until they meet you

there are days where we only talk about why star trek wasn't safe (they never wore seatbelts for a long time!!)

we like frogs

and rocks

rock go brrrr

sometimes finding your professor's face photoshopped onto satellites

working for hours but having 0 progress

your prof. assuring you that this is normal even for professionals

random scifi talks and book recs

cats

everyone in the dept likes greek letters

getting back to your dorm at almost midnight

the hall is eerily quiet but nobody is asleep

crying over the moon is normal

so is crying over the mars rovers

crying in general is normal

your professor saying odd things like

"this is just some weird image of two people about to die- but anyway, spacetime"

the astronomers of the school are also the astrologers

setting up in the lounge reading people's birth charts and astro cards

having to sneak through the back of the building because our id cards never work

sitting in the observatory with the lights off waiting for the professor to get there

planning to bring your hallmates to the planetarium to impress them

did i mention the cats?

meow

why do we have things that glow?

and this????

idk might make a pt. 2 or not

holy fucking shit op this is raw emotion

Any suggestions/inspiration for a STEM-focused, dark academia aesthetic? I'm something of a reformed humanities student finishing an engineering degree this time around.

I think STEM in Dark Academia is an underappreciated aesthetic. The humanities seek to understand what it is to be human, and this is a complex venture indeed. But studying STEM means you seek to understand the world around you. And my God, are there mysteries to be uncovered. Let’s go down the list together, shall we?

SCIENCE.

Latin words fall from your lips as easily as a prayer, and isn’t there piety in this? Devotion, worship? There must be, for you to be able to dig your hands into the breathing body of the world around you and have it speak back. Messily scrawled chemical equations are practically tattooed onto your arms and hands, and sometimes you wake with the molecular structure of a human red blood cell drawn carefully on your heart with no memory of putting it there, but it moves with the pulse of your heart. Bubbling beakers and plumes of emerald, cobalt, violet flame. Faded lab coats. Hair cut short or pulled back neatly, not a single tendril hanging down. Dirt under fingernails, sleeves rolled up and out of the way. You know poisons, toxins, you know the pump of blood through arteries, you know how close we are to death, and you know how it feels to hold the hand of human long dead, still cold from the cooler. Death hates you, because you are helping humanity evade it.

TECHNOLOGY.

Lines and lines of code stare back at you from the over-bright screen of your monitor. You know, you know that we could be more, that the future is a few keystrokes away if only you can organize your tumbling thoughts and the wall of symbols in front of you. You like the way robots move; tiny, carefully planned, yet oh so jerky motions that can’t help but remind you of when a baby deer takes its first quivering steps. You think humans were like this once, in the beginning. You think the movement in a motor resembles the inner workings of a human heart. You imagine the veins that pump blood through your body as wires on a circuit board delivering electricity from one place to another. Leather shoes laced as tightly as possible, tiny blueprints doodled on the soles. Bronze bells hanging from a bedroom window, a crumbled silk shirt. How far can you push at the boundaries of what is possible before something breaks? Will it be you or reality that gives first?

ENGINEERING.

What is it about the smoothing of clay into shapes that makes humanity stop and say, “This must be what it feels like to be God”? How much more can you feel it, with the power in your fingertips and in the corners of your mind to make things humans could never do? To push civilization past its breaking point and remake it anew, better, stronger, more than God ever did? What is the difference between man and machine, and should you even care in the first place? You are like God alright, you are participating in something divine, something holy. You double check every equation and think about what it means to be alive. You decide that, in the ever moving cogs of this great clock, you will be the first piece that moves, the one that pushes the others to succeed. Pencils stabbed into messy buns, lipstick stains on pale coffee cup rims. Your eyes are sharp and focused, but your thoughts are ever moving and desperate with desire to create, to bound forward into the future you are oh so carefully envisioning, every piece laid out and pinned down within an inch of its life. Children are starving, the world is burning, and you can do something, you can fix this, because if you don't, who else can? Who else will?

MATHEMATICS.

What is math? A meaningless formal game. Above the door at Plato’s Academy were inscribed the words, “Let no one enter here who is ignorant of geometry.” How can it be that both are true? A secret language exists that no one is born into, but is available to all willing to learn. Astronomy, the constant ever cycling of the universe around us, our own home a puzzle piece in a cosmic dance. Meandering lines of equations that are beautiful, beautiful, because you know what they mean and they speak to you, they sing. You write them with calligraphy pens and hang them above your desk, they are as much an expression of the human condition as a Picasso; show our creativity more than a Monet. Hands dirty from dragging them over cramped pages of numbers and graphite dust, equations traced into the foggy glass of your favorite coffee shop, messy hair and bitten down nails, math pun t-shirts under tweed blazers, the theory of relativity scrawled sloppily on your knee, the world around you the sum of shapes and numbers and you can see it, you can hear it.

STEM in Dark Academia is nonstop in its restlessness. There is always more to be discovered, further to push, limits that can and will be broken. There is a darkness to that beauty, a madness that permeates the cracks of every field. A historian could have told you not to make the atom bomb. A scientist can’t help themself from seeing how much destruction is possible.