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.
