Moody, Broody, and Tropey
May 12, 2025 • No Comments
The title does not refer to yet another remake of Snow White. I’m pondering the genre referred to as Dark Academia. I’ll say off the bat that I’ve found more references to clothing and décor than literature, and that some of it looks a bit like All Creatures Great and Small had a love child with The Munsters. All the same, I get (and adore) the overall preponderance of antiques, leather-bound books, mugs of tea, autumn rain, and resplendent classic fashion. Add a little string quartet music in the background and one is ready to think deep thoughts and get all moody and Byronic.
But, material trappings aside, what tropes define the literature? This isn’t the “high school for vampires” academy stories. This skews older and generally unhappier. Romance may or may not be the central theme. My favorite entry in the genre has so far been Leigh Bardugo’s Ninth House series, which has paranormal elements, but many Dark Academia books do not.
So what’s common to most of the genre? To start with the obvious, a school. Preferably an old one with appropriate brick-and-ivy trappings. It should have a Classics department or an arts focus, definitely a lot of quotable literature about the place. Astronomy would be acceptable, but modern technology—y’know collider thingies or genetic whatsits—would require special handling. Mad botanists is one thing, but leather elbow patches just look odd on lab coats.
The characters are important. There’s usually a mentor figure—the resident Dumbledore—and close-knit friends. The protagonist is often an outsider, whether a newcomer to an elite group, or a super-brilliant person in an elite group, or an elite person with deep dark secrets in an elite group or—did I mention that there is an element of elitism here? Probably because those are the only social strata who can afford tuition at one of those old schools.
And secrets. Always secrets, and the unveiling of guilt, and squishy emo everywhere. Sometimes that means murder, corruption, and the explosion of the friend group. The protagonist—typically a young adult—learns that the world is a cruel place and their innocent little heart just got stomped. But fashionably, and with excellent black coffee, and while quoting Jacobean poetry.
I love this stuff. It’s aspirational and ridiculous in equal measure. Best of all, it slides into my steampunk world with ease. Olivia attends the University of Londria, so creating a Dark Academia adventure for her—complete with murder mystery—was a perfect fit in Queen’s Tide. I’m having a ball. Watch out for the sea monsters.