with the news of the new percy, i wanna take time to appreciate chris mccarrell, aka the man who played percy in the pjo musical. thanks for giving us the absolute gayest/most androgynous percy we're ever gonna get :)
Hey. I wanted to ask for your help or your followers to find a ff that u cant find. Its was the Marauders Era and Remus was keeping a box with things thag remind him of Sirius under his bed. He was rather anxious about comimg out. Sirius eventually found out (I think he found the box) and reacted rather badly, because of internalized homophobia. They had a big sad fight and James, Lily and Peter were also there I think. I mainly remember this big fight were Sirius said some really terrible things. I dont know much about the rest unfortunately. I hope you can help me find this fic. I can get this feeling of this fight out of my mind. I want to reread it so badly. :(
Hey, this one is a bit hard to find myself. Have any of my followers read this fic?
(I just finished my two thousandth re-read of @theprongsletthatlived‘s Chocolate Cake/Banana Split, can you tell?)
based on this song // Also inspired by that one time my best friend sent me a video of some random frat boy giving her a lap dance at a party and said - without an ounce of irony - “this is kinda romantic, right?”
CW: swearing, alcohol, partying, mentions of sexual content (nothing explicit), very brief mention of an STD, and some overall questionable drunken behaviors
(nothing too crazy though, all in good fun!)
********
“Hey James?” Sirius asked, frowning down at his phone, “If you saw a video of Lily giving some other guy a lap dance while an entire house full of people cheered them on…you would probably feel the need to cry, right? Or punch him in the face? Or track fucking Benjy Fenwick down at his pretentious little filming studio and hang him upside down out of a window until he promises to keep his grimy little hands off of my Remus?”
“You know, I’m not sure Lily even knows Benjy,” James said, before sighing and pulling Sirius’ phone from his clenched hands.
Sirius gritted his teeth as James pressed play, resisting the childish urge to close his eyes and plug his ears until it was all over.
If you just let me invade your space,
I’ll take the pleasure, take it with the pain
“Well, I guess this explains why I’ve been hearing this song through your bedroom wall on repeat for the last 6 hours,” James stared incredulously at the screen. “Christ, who even knew Remus could move like that?”
“I did,” Sirius said bitterly. “And now, apparently, so does the entire school.”
‘Cause if you want to keep me, you’ve gotta gotta gotta gotta got to love me harder, love me harder
And if you really need me—
Sirius had memorized the entire video by then, but he couldn’t resist peering over James’ shoulder to torture himself with it once more. Gideon Prewitt had filmed it - before forwarding it on to Sirius with a cheeky, this yours? - and the only thing that kept it from being completely unbearable to watch was the angle it was taken from.
Gideon was in Remus’ direct eye line from the first moment. Which meant that, because of the way Remus was positioned (straddling a pair of hips that were decidedly not Sirius’), Benjy’s face was never actually featured in the video. And by using his thumb to cover the blob of near-bleached blonde hair in the corner of the screen, Sirius could easily let himself pretend the show was all for him.
When I get you moaning, you know it’s real,
Can you feel the pressure between your hips?
And God, it was like he was looking right at Sirius. The way that Remus’ gaze stayed trained directly on the camera, as if making sure Gideon wasn’t missing a single moment of swaying and hip thrusting and grinding, it sort of did feel like it was all for Sirius. He just would’ve much preferred enjoying the view from up close.
i take back what i said about freddy being nothing like kaz. when the interviewers scared the cast, he just sat there completely unbothered and held amita’s hand, then laid back and said “so funny” as if the entire cast didn’t almost just pass tf out
im so glad you have your askbox open again!! :) do you know of any single-chaptered fics where sirius is trying to apologize for the prank and remus eventually forgives him?
I think these ones come pretty close to what you’re looking for; hope you like them! :)
In honour of my favourite genre, have a very personal, very subjective recommendations list!
- The Secret History (Donna Tartt)
The obvious choice, a classic. In my personal opinion, it’s not perfect and there are better dark academia books out there, but it has massively shaped the genre and therefore deserves recognition. Also, the aesthetic is on point! Read if you want to get a feel for the genre or if you’re simply curious.
- If We Were Villains (M. L. Rio)
Basically a newer, better The Secret History?? Plenty of similarities, minus certain problematic bits that were present in TSH. Amazing prose, incredible characters, absolutely worth the read. A prime example of dark academia! Read if you love Shakespeare and college settings and compelling characters and drama and just beautiful writing!
- Black Chalk (Christopher J. Yates)
Also a fairly good example of the genre, but tragically underhyped. Darker than, for example, If We Were Villains. Set at Oxford! Will mess with your head. The characters are not necessarily likeable, but interesting. The writing is fairly complex. Read for a dark academia thriller which takes the unreliable narrator to an impressive new extreme (in a good way!)
- Truly Devious (Maureen Johnson)
A rare YA dark academia book! Read for murder and mystery and a beautiful boarding school setting as well as a really likeable main character! Due to its nature less dark and somewhat less mature than most of the other books on this list, but if you’re looking for more of a quick and fun dark academia read, this is the one for you!
In a similar vain: The Vanishing Stair (Maureen Johnson)
Cannot actually vouch for this as I haven’t read it yet, but it’s the sequel to Truly Devious and I have heard good things.
- The Secret Place (Tana French)
MASSIVELY underappreciated dark academia with (gasp) supernatural elements?! The most beautiful prose and funniest dialogue you will ever see. Incredible characters. Again, amazing boarding school setting and close group of female friends! (They will break your heart). Also murder. Also half of the story being told from a detective’s PoV. Read if you value good literature. Just. Read it.
- The Likeness (Tana French)
Actually, maybe I was kidding before, maybe this book is the most underappreciated dark academia book out there? Either way, it’s my favourite. Within dark academia and within ALL OF THE BOOKS. This is it. The perfect novel. Characters that own my hearts to this day. Writing so beautiful that it had me sobbing uncontrollably on several occasions. The university it is set in is Trinity College Dublin. (Cue me being bitter that I don’t go there every single day for the rest of my life.) Very intriguing mystery, too. Hilarious dialogue. All the emotions. All the heartbreak. Just… I love it so much, okay? <3
- The Lying Game (Ruth Ware)
Good, very good. Set in a boarding school near the ocean, but unfortunately, only the past tense story line is and we don’t get to see too much of it. Very interesting characters. Much heavier on the dark than the academia. Read if you’re looking for more of a classic murder mystery/thriller and are not too focussed on the academia. Also read for an interesting group of female friends.
- The Basic Eight (Daniel Handler)
Very promising, but wasn’t my cup of tea at all. The setting is an American High School on the West Coast. The murder isn’t that much of a mystery. I’m mentioning it here because I know that other people love this book, even though I really didn’t. I would say don’t read, but see for yourself, I suppose.
- The Lessons (Naomi Alderman)
Yes, okay, an interesting one. Set at Oxford, which was amazing. Interesting characters with interesting dynamics. I read it quickly and was quite entertained. But there were certain problematic bits (regarding LGBTQ+ representation and mental illness), so you’ve been warned. Not my fave, but I mostly enjoyed it while reading it.
There are a few more dark academia books on my shelves, which I unfortunately cannot include on this list, as I haven’t read them yet. One of them is “The Lake of Dead Languages” by Carol Goodman. Another is “Brideshead Revisited” by Evelyn Waugh. Might edit this post later to add these and more. xx
UPDATE!! (With slightly longer descriptions this time, because people are actually reading this? Reblogging even? Wow!)
- The Lake of Dead Languages (Carol Goodman)
THE ALL-FEMALE DARK ACADEMIA NOVEL WE ALL NEED AND DESERVE…?? The setting is A++. An all-female boarding school in the Adirondack Mountains in New York! There is a lake that features so heavily in the story, it basically counts as a main character. Told from the PoV of a teacher who used to go to the school. There are two close groups of female friends, one in the present timeline, one in the past. Both have dark, dark secrets and both fit the dark academia genre so well! Also, heavy focus on Latin rather than Ancient Greek, which I have all the love for. This one is a gem, so give it a chance!
- Brideshead Revisited (Evelyn Waugh)
An actual classic, as in… first published in 1945. And it reads like it. The beginning came with beautiful vibes! Our young boy Charles starting his time at Oxford, meeting a lot of pretentious people, including one Lord Sebastian Flyte, who Charles is suspiciously fascinated by. Sebastian is the biggest dork to ever dork, carries around with him an actual teddy bear named Aloysius, the absolute madmen?? But it’s all downhill from there, with alcoholism and war and depressing times… And Oxford only really features in the first half or less.
- People Like Us (Dana Mele)
Another rare YA dark academia!! Features a group of Mean Girls who one day, when out at night to go swimming, find one of their classmates floating dead in the lake. Which is an excellent dark academia set-up, let’s be honest. Also, sapphic girls, incredible sapphic girls with really complex relationships! Bi main character! A fun and quick read, much like “Truly Devious”. More descriptions of the beautiful boarding school buildings would have been welcome, but at least we got a few! Anyway, go forth and enjoy this little beauty.
- Party Girls Die in Pearls (Plum Sykes)
Umm… I barely even comprehend this book’s existence? Has a prime dark academia set-up with a murdered girl in Oxford, but I still somehow DNF’d it after about 20 pages?! The main character’s name is Ursula Flowerbutton, and if you think that’s quirky and funny… good for you, you might actually enjoy this book. But you’ll also have to endure descriptions of clothes, oh, so many descriptions of clothes! And for anything unique to Oxford that might make the book fun because only those who know will know… you’ll get a footnote. So actually, everyone will know, with zero effort. Definitely not for me, but if you want to read a glossy magazine style dark academia, knock yourself out, friend!
- The Night Climbers (Ivo Stourton)
Breath-taking! A piece of beauty! Set at Cambridge (and the campus features heavily!), a main character reminiscent of Richard Papen, an intriguing group of new friends that he would do anything to belong with. Including… climbing the buildings of Cambridge at night? Without proper equipment, just with his hands and feet?? Honestly, out of the books on this list, this one is the closest in style and maturity and characterisation to The Secret History! The writing is absolutely gorgeous, the plot fascinating. And it’s dark academia that features a non-violent crime, which works surprisingly well. All in all: A STUNNER THAT FANS OF THE SECRET HISTORY SHOULD CHECK OUT!!
- As I Descended (Robyn Talley)
A queer, sapphic Macbeth retelling?? Also a rare YA dark academia with strong supernatural elements?! The representation is on point, with two hispanic main characters, wlw, mlm and one of the girls in the main couple being disabled! The boarding school setting is also on point (and uniquely different as the school building is actually a former plantation in Virginia). This book is so different and so spooky! It wasn’t perfect and some say the retelling didn’t work 100% (I, personally, felt that the plot slowed down a bit), but the atmosphere is amazing and the characters are pretty cool, too!
Not to worry, my quest to find and read as many DA books as possible isn’t over. So this list might be updates again some time in the future! :)
This new direction is definitely better. It ties together better. It keeps the [redacted spoiler] subplot rolling through the not directly related bits. It gives me more Ella-centric scenes and I love her a lot.
It helps with the pacing problem where "stuff happens" and then "the ending takes 70 000 words" problem that the earlier structure had. The tension builds through the parts that are just because I want to write them like: "now the girls are going dress hunting because I want to write it" or "Tessa and the warlock crew" scenes.
The earlier draft hit the proposal and was finished in a narrative sense. I set a problem and solved it. The tension and the story broke at that point and it felt like it was the end but then I had all this other stuff I wanted to write about but it felt off because of the tension break.
The new direction is better. I am rolling on this story again and I am happy about it.
But it means I lose my original proposal scene because now that whole plot movement is utterly different. I'm like 10 000 words into "they're not in York any more" and I'm still sitting on this old proposal scene.
So. Here it is.
I love it even if I cut it.
Will found her in the training room. She wasn't training. She was sitting on the floor in her poorly fitting set of training gear that she had taken out of storage years before. Her quiver sat in her lap and she was going over each arrow, meticulously checking the fletching. She was going to have to repair some of them but not many. It was busy work that required attention but not precision. It kept her thoughts quiet.
Will slid down the wall beside her and just sat there. She glanced at him but he was staring straight ahead, he was wearing the trousers from a set of gear and the sleeves of his shirt were rolled up past his elbows leaving the crisscross of runes and scars clearly visible. She only looked at him for a moment and when he said nothing, she went back to her task.
“You missed dinner,” she said.
“Had an errand.”
Tessa looked at him a little more closely. He was rumpled and discontent. Jem had been just as off kilter earlier.
"What do you want?" he asked.
"Want?"
"Yeah."
"A new set of feathers so I can repair these properly," she said.
"I was thinking less in the immediate sense and more in the cosmic sense. When you imagine your life, what do you imagine?"
Tessa went still. She held an arrow in one hand and had her fingers on the fletching. The feather under her fingers were cut short and stiff and the wood was polished smooth. She stared down at it. At the brown and white of the feather, the silver of the polished point, the dark brown of the wood. The answer was nothing she wanted to say aloud. She closed her eyes and put the arrow back down.
"I grew up with Melody. I joined that family when I was six. My mother had died so they sent me to Idris to live with the only branch of the family that had a young child. She is only a year older than me. She always had all these plans. All these dreams. A husband, children, a house. She had picked out the neighbourhood where she would live when she was ten years old. I find it hard to imagine those sorts of dreams."
"Try and imagine it."
"My best option if I remain in the Clave is to move to Idris an get a position in service. Academy washouts get positions as tutors or governesses. Perhaps I could do that. I won't stay here. I won't die in this house. I would rather leave for good,leave the Clave and go live among the mundanes before I let myself grow old and bitter in this house."
He nodded.
"What do you imagine?" she asked.
"Everything I imagined is in ruins. I don't know what is left to salvage," he said.
Tessa looked over at him. He was within arms reach. She could stretch out a hand and put it on his shoulder and say something kind. There was a note in his voice of sorrow or grief. His eyes were closed and his hair was messy. She usually saw him when he was brushed and dressed up. The only glimpse of the real William Herondale that she had seen had been that first night in this room and that had been only a glimpse.
She hadn't thought about it. She had thought about it in terms of her family, of Melody, of herself. She hadn't stopped to think about it from his point of view. He was beautiful, well loved, wealthy, with the weight of a name that rang like royalty in the halls of the Clave. He should have had a prince's future and a world of choices to go with that pedigree. Instead he was being pushed into a romantic connection and a commitment with someone with whom he could barely tolerate dinner conversation. He was a bit sharp and occasionally sarcastic but most of his emotion was hidden by impeccable manners.
"You lost someone," she said.
"I fell in love with someone I cannot be in love with," he said.
Tessa nodded.
"It is a scandal, more than a scandal, worse, and I don't want to talk about it. It's impossible and it is over and I hate everything about that. I didn't really have a future. It was always impossible but now," he trailed off with a shrug.
"Now, your father has replaced an impossible future of your own choosing with an intolerable future of his choosing," she said.
He turned and looked at her. She held his gaze and he looked away first with a little laugh. "Yeah, that's him. Making choices for everyone else."
"My great-grandfather is the same. He chose someone for me to marry about six months ago. Simply as a foregone conclusion. I cannot remember what he said exactly but it was presented with all the ceremony of someone picking up a bit of ribbon at the market. I found you something. If you don't wear it to dinner, I will be offended."
"You got out of that one."
"I'm very stubborn."
Will laughed. Soft but with enough depth that made her smile back. Those deep blue eyes were wide with emotion but no tears. She was going to miss Ella and Jem when they were gone back to London and their own lives. She hadn't thought that she would miss Will. Will had spent the last few days making her nervous unless one of the other two was there to ease him into conversation. Now that he was sad but laughing with his hair falling forward and his clothes a little less perfect, she could see the person he truly was under that Nephilim Prince act that he cultivated so carefully. She was going to miss him too. They were quiet for a little while before he spoke again.
"What would you want in a marriage?" he asked.
"It doesn't matter."
"It does."
"Why?"
He ran his fingers through his hair with both hands and shook it out again so the curls cascaded down around his face. He was beautiful and it made her heart ache.
"If I do as my father would prefer and marry some girl from a family with an important name, I will ruin her life. I would ruin Melody's life. Her father might see nothing but opportunity right now but she wouldn't like the reality. I cannot ask her to marry me. It would be a cruelty.”
He stopped and took a slow breath in, “But you. You and I, that’s different. I thought that you and I might make an arrangement but I don't want to ruin your life either."
"Why would you ruin my life?" she asked in a voice that came out surprisingly even. Her emotions were not even. Her heart was rattling around in her chest.
"Because I will never love you," he said with a sad smile. "I gave my heart away. I gave it away and it doesn't matter what happens to me from here on out. I will never get it back. I don't want it back. It belongs to someone else and always will. There will be no love story. This is not a romance."
Tessa's heart hammered so loudly she was sure he would hear it.
"I hadn't considered the possibility of ma- of making a match with a friend before I met you. You and I could be friends, Miss Starkweather. The kind of friends who can talk about books and training regimens and ideas and work through their troubles as partners," he hesitated and closed his eyes, tilting his head back so it rested again the wall behind them. He was quiet and Tessa couldn't remember how to form words nor did she have any idea what she would say if she regained the ability.
"I like the idea," his voice was soft. "You and I. I like the idea of that future more than I had imagined I could like the idea of any future arising from this train wreck. If we were to come to an agreement, to make an arrangement about this, I need to know what you want."
Tessa sat up straight. She took a moment and rearranged her arrows, sliding them back into the quiver and fussing just a little before she lay them to the side and turned to face him. He looked at her but didn't turn to match her posture, his head was still leaned back against the wall but his attention was on her. She set her jaw and took in a long slow breath before she started to talk. She still didn't know what she was going to say but the words were there again, ready to escape and she let them go.
"I want respect," she said.
He gave her the tiniest frown.
"I am not your first choice but I will not leave one life of silent rooms and attics for another. I will not be hidden away. If you marry me, you will introduce me as your wife and you will offer me that respect in public spaces. You needn't give me your heart but I do expect your respect."
"I can do that."
"I want freedom. My own accounts, my own schedule, the right to take the carriage or invite a friend to tea."
"Me too," he said.
Tessa smiled in surprise before coming back to her theme, "I never want to set foot in this building ever again. I am never coming back to the York Institute even if it is on official Shadowhunter business. Short of the coming apocalypse, I will not come back here."
"Done. Good riddance to this entire place."
Tessa laughed again.
“London is going to be a horror show for the rest of the season. There will be talk and people will be awful to you until they get over the shock of it all. There will be insinuations that you’re my mistress and I got you pregnant out of wedlock. There will be little sniping comments about how I could have done better because they - whoever they are - wanted me to marry someone else. It will be bad.”
“You’ll stand by me?”
“Bring on the gossipmongers. They’ll get over it.”
Tessa said. "It must be a hell of a scandal."
He stared at her and her chest locked up. A tiny frown line between his eyes. Expression blank. She had offended him. He was on the brink of offering a golden ticket out of York and her entire horrendous family and she had destroyed it with a joke. Then he started to laugh. He rubbed his face with both hands and finally turned so he was facing her, both of them sitting with their feet crossed on the dusty floor of the training room. He was still smiling.
"It was. It is. Trust me."
"I do."
Another laugh. He was so beautiful.
It hit her. The topic of this conversation wasn't hypothetical. This wasn't Ella she was joking around with.
This was Will.
Will who watched her with those dark blue eyes and his hair still falling into his face. He was waiting for her to pry and demand answers. She wanted to know the details of his story. She wanted to know everything. Wanting something and asking for it were very different. He didn't owe her the story of his broken heart.
"I have secrets that I'm not ready to talk about," she said. "I won't press for yours if you don't press for mine."
He held out a hand.
Tessa's thoughts roared in her head until they drowned each other out and she just put her hand in his without asking a thousand more questions. This was the golden ticket.
A beautiful boy promising the kind of respect no one had ever offered her, thousands of miles between her and her family, a library of books and someone to discuss them with, the chance to train with Nephilim who had been to the Academy, Ella and Jem and London and the mountains of Canada.
Tessa was never going to be the girl who got to live the fairy tale ending. She was born to a different genre. Tessa hadn't ever expected a love story. She didn't need a love story. She needed a ticket out.
"Theresa Starkweather," he started.
“I can’t have children and I can’t bear runes. Before you get to far into this charade, you should know that.”
“It’s not a charade. It was supposed to be a marriage proposal and now you’ve made a mess of it.”
He sat up straight and turned to her. They should have gotten off the floor. Marriage proposals weren’t really meant to be done while sitting cross legged on the dusty floor of a poorly stocked training room. They also weren’t supposed to happen between a boy desperate to bury a scandal and a girl desperate for an escape from her home town.
“And you can call me Tessa,” she said.
“That annoys your uncle,” he said.
“Good.”
“Tessa,” he said. “Tess, you must allow me to tell you how ardently-”
She smacked him and he slid away from her laughing like a little kid. It broke the tension. They both needed the tension broken and the laughter was just a touch hysterical.
“She told him no when he tried saying that.”
“I think that was all the insults to her family.”
“Which you have also tried. You’re not very good at this.”
Will made a face at her at her and stopped to think.
“Can you make a little place in your heart for old Fritz?”
“I think perhaps dying in this building might be preferable to this literary tour,” Tessa said.
“Deny thy father and refuse thy name. Or, if thou wilt not, be but sworn my love,” Will was laughing now and she swatted him with her handful of arrows again.
“That’s her line,” Tessa said.
“You’ll have to excuse me. I am running out of literary proposals committed to memory,” Will said.
Tessa shook her head at him but his smile was contagious.
Just finished. You guys. We've been scorned so many times with book adaptations. Not this time. The Shadow and Bone Netflix series
writing was amazing, the world crafting was jaw dropping, the acting superb! (Kit stole every scene!) Leigh, Eric, you deserve it all! THANK YOU.
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