elysianmuses
writer ⸝⸝ safe space ⸝⸝ she/her ⸝⸝ richard papen syndrome
58 posts
Latest Posts by elysianmuses
Women, they have minds, and they have souls, as well as just hearts. And they've got ambition, and they've got talent, as well as just beauty. I'm so sick of people saying that love is just all a woman is fit for. I'm so sick of it.
[Almost crying]
But I'm so lonely...
Jo March little women
The urge to learn every language and play every instrument and travel the world and live through every historical time period and be a writer and a poet and an actor and
when the Donna Tartt; dark sweaters and short skirts; lace tights and mary jane’s; ink stained fingertips and scribbled notes in the margins; Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein and M.L. Rio’s If We Were Villians; writing in a spiraled notebook; lectures on Rome and Religion; starts to resurface in your psyche
“It hurts to be something / it’s worse to be nothing with you.” - Promise, Laufey
"spam liking will get you blocked" spam liking will get you a kiss on the mouth
oh to live in one’s own apartment surrounded by antique furniture and books…
“I crave intimacy but I don’t want temporary people touching my mind, body, or soul.”
-unknown
“Oh to be loved by a writer…written about endlessly, ardently, passionately…”
“…Are you, are you, comin’ to the tree? / Where a dead man called out, for his love to flee, / Strange things did happen here, no stranger would it be / If we met at midnight in the hanging tree…”
deciding which book on my mountainous TBR to read next is a very specific kind of torture
cancelling Shadow and Bone right before they were going to do the Ice Court Heist and with a WHOLE SEASON of Six of Crows fucking WRITTEN AND READY TO GO is evil incarnate netflix you deserve to go out of business forever
"I'll tell them put me back in it/ Darling, I would do it again/ If I could hold you for a minute/ Darling, I'd go through it again," -Francesca, Hozier
“Maybe in a perfect world. But the world wasn’t perfect it was cruel. And maybe that’s why he left; someone so perfect can’t survive in a cruel world.”
- my novel
“It’s complicated.”
“Perfect. I love complicated.”
- Kill Your Darlings, 2013
i watched the phantom of the opera (2004) for the first time and i don’t think i’ll mentally be okay for the next week—
“Forget thus the nature of men, for love makes fools of the hands it holds/ Think not the torment that comes from kissing the thorns/ For a rose is often scornful before it is adored.”
- the play i’m currently writing <3
“If I am the Phantom, it is because man’s hatred has made me so.”
- Phantom of the Opera, Gaston Leroux
i just saw kill your darlings and it changed my fucking life. now, what am i supposed to do with that
oh to live in a victorian styled home with orange tinted lamps that flicker in the evening as paintings of obscure aesthetic origins line the walls of the hallway where i can pretend to be sherlock holmes pacing before the bookshelves and scattered papers trying to uncover the truth behind the age old murder of the old owner…
“O Captain! My Captain!” -A poem by Walt Whitman, A mantra from John Keating
Hello my dears, today I've been called a "pretentious fuck" for liking classic lit.
“These violent delights have violents ends. And in their triumph die, like fire and powder, Which, as they kiss, consume.”
- Shakespeare, Romeo and Juliet
Personally I believe we should bring back balls and galas, like whatever happened to having a pride and prejudice moment? a little women moment??
Frankenstein but it’s just Victor being depressed because he realizes his entire life is his fault:
- William Shakespeare, Hamlet
The Ultimate Dark Academia Book Recommendation Guide Ever
The title of this post is clickbait. I, unfortunately, have not read every book ever. Not all of these books are particularly “dark” either. However, these are my recommendations for your dark academia fix. The quality of each of these books varies. I have limited this list to books that are directly linked to the world of academia and/or which have a vaguely academic setting.
Dark Academia staples:
The Secret History by Donna Tartt
If We Were Villains by M.L. Rio
Dead Poets Society by Nancy H. Kleinbaum
Vita Nostra by Maryna Dyachenko
Dark academia litfic or contemporary:
Bunny by Mona Awad
The Idiot by Elif Batuman
These Violent Delights by Micah Nemerever
White Ivy by Susie Yang
The Cloisters by Katy Hays
Never Let Me Go by Kazuo Ishiguro
The Lake of Dead Languages by Carol Goodman
A Separate Peace by John Knowles
Black Chalk by Christopher J. Yates
Attribution by Linda Moore
Dark academia thrillers or horror:
In My Dreams I Hold a Knife by Ashley Winstead
The Maidens by Alex Michaelides
Ghosts of Harvard by Francesca Serritella
Catherine House by Elisabeth Thomas
Plain Bad Heroines by Emily M. Danforth
They Never Learn by Layne Fargo
The It Girl by Ruth Ware
Never Saw Me Coming by Vera Kurian
Dark academia fantasy/sci-fi:
Babel: An Arcane History by R.F. Kuang
The Atlas Six by Olivie Blake
Ninth House by Leigh Bardugo
A Lesson in Vengeance by Victoria Lee
The Starless Sea by Erin Morgenstern
Vicious by V.E. Schwab
A Discovery of Witches by Deborah Harkness
The Betrayals by Bridget Collins
Dark academia romance:
Gothikana by RuNyx
Alone With You in the Ether by Olivie Blake
Dark academia YA or MG:
Truly Devious by Maureen Johnson
A Deadly Education by Naomi Novik
Ace of Spades by Faridah Àbíké-Íyímídé
The Raven Boys by Maggie Stiefvater
Legendborn by Tracy Deonn
Crave by Tracy Wolff
Wilder Girls by Rory Power
The Harry Potter series by J.K. Rowling
Dark academia miscellaneous:
My Dark Vanessa by Kate Elizabeth Russell
Disorientation by Elaine Hsieh Chou
Alphabet of Thorn by Patricia A. McKillip