I love editing anthologies because they’re a form of curation. I get to assemble an answer; pull together an informed opinion from the evidence available. I believe a good anthology is not only about the quality of the stories, but about the quality of the argument. It is a truism, but it should be more than the sum of its parts. And that sum should have something to say.

With The Big Book of Cyberpunk, one of my key theses was simple: cyberpunk ain’t dead. Much the reverse: it is overgrown. It escaped containment and infested other genres, forms of media, and (sadly) reality. If we recognise that cyberpunk actively permeates our world, then we can then use cyberpunk literature to understand and navigate that world.

There are some similarities between cyberpunk and dark academia. Both are digitally native, both are fixated on a fictionalised past, and both maintain a (tense, and often adversarial) relationship between their aesthetics and their philosophical underpinnings.

However, when it comes to the fundamentals of the two movements, dark academia is in a very different position. Cyberpunk began as a literary genre and rapidly exploded into a fully transmedia movement and, later, an aesthetic one. Dark academia started as an aesthetic movement, expanded through other cultural outputs, and is now establishing itself as a literary genre.

Unlike cyberpunk (presumed dead), dark academia is possessed of astounding and visible vitality. It is a really big thing, and it is a really big thing right now. We have witnessed it spring, Athena-like, from the head of the pandemic. Fully formed, incredibly potent, and ready to take the world by storm.

New genres and movements and trends start all the time: goblincore, atompunk, normcore, solarpunk, whatever. They begin, they take off, they earn a few ‘KIDS THESE DAYS: DRESSING LIKE POLAR BEARS!’ think pieces, and quietly expire. If they’re (un)lucky, they stagger around long enough for a fast food brand’s savvier intern to appropriate it as CONTENT, which generally serves as the cultural coup de grace.

That makes dark academia’s vitality all the more remarkable:

Whatever is happening here, dark academia’s rise feels shockingly authentic. It is something that has grown organically through a series of ever-expanding online communities, rather than being forced on culture by an external vector (be that Hollywood, Wendy’s or Russian bot farms).

Trends die all the time. Trends fail to live all the time. Dark academia is that tiniest tip of the pyramid; the trend that survives.

It hasn’t even been a decade, but I would argue that dark academia has embedded itself, and is making the transition from Fashion to Commerce. Dark academia ‘fans’ grew to want deeper, offline immersion in the movement: more experiences, more products, more content, more stuff. (And capitalism is only too ready to provide.)

There are numbers (huge ones) and various DATA POINTS behind this, but, as interesting as it is that dark academia is a capital-t-Thing, the more interesting part is why.

Why is dark academia the #trend that’s made it?

My argument is that the specific elements of dark academia have been around for a long time (as demonstrated through the table of contents, which ranges from E.A. Poe to M.L. Rio and Evelyn Waugh to Olivie Blake). But… dark academia itself didn’t exist until recently. So its success can’t only be about the discrete elements, nor even the compounds thereof: there must be something in our contemporary environment that made the chemistry happen. (I’m done with that metaphor now.)

Pursuing that line of thought, a few musings on ‘why now’?

Dark academia is undeniably nostalgic. The world is volatile and dangerous right now, and when we feel like we've lost control of the present, we tend to look backwards. We seek comfort in the past, or an idea thereof. This is, if anything, the most obvious explanation. The past is an undiscovered country / rose-tinted / your poetic quote of choice. But the past that we, personally, have never experienced is all the more mysterious and beautiful. To steal a quote from one of my favourite experts in audience insight, Steven Lacey: ‘the past makes people feel safe’. (In a way, there are further similarities with cyberpunk here: people that didn’t live through the 1980s finding escapism in a ‘dystopian’ depiction thereof…)

Dark academia loves and appreciates history — it celebrates not just the trappings of history, but the very study of it. It is about dressing and decorating in a (concatenation of) period way(s), and also engaging with history through reading, music, culture and study. It isn’t meta-historical, it is hyper-historical: a movement to behave like historical students of history. Being backwards-looking in a way that emphasises how ‘answers’ are even further in the past. Which leads to…

Dark academia is spiritual. It is about secrets under the surface; the idea that you can dig and discover and explore and learn, and, with that, be better equipped to handle the world. Knowledge is power, and forbidden knowledge is especially powerful. Like the nostalgia urge, the quest for understanding is also an entirely justifiable, reaction to the uncertainty of the world around us. We look for ways, however esoteric, to reclaim a sense of control. Spirituality in a time of uncertainty is a long-established trend. See, for example, the mainstreamed resurgance of witchcraft in 2016; a way of women to seek meaning, belonging and control, against the backdrop of rising populist misogyny.

Dark academia is accessible. If you’re following the COM-B model here, dark academia is full of ‘opportunity’ — it is easy to engage with in terms of geography, economics and simple availability. This is somewhat ironic: dark academia is, in some sense, about cosplaying membership in historically elitist institutions. Institutions that, traditionally, have made a feature out of excluding people for race, class, gender, sexuality, religion or wealth. Dark academia is therefore about (re)claiming their rituals and fashions and cultures; opening them up for everyone to enjoy. And anyone can take part. Dark academia is a look and a lifestyle that you can achieve on a budget. It rewards thrifting and craft; skill and effort. Dark academic cultural immersion can be achieved entirely through public domain works. Sure, if you're wealthy enough, you can absolutely 'buy' a dark academia look and a shelf of sexy first editions, but true dark academia is achieved through research and commitment. The very thematic premise of the movement is about the pursuit of knowledge instead of succumbing to more wordly, material desires.

Nostalgia, spirituality, accessibility: these are all things that people want (or even need) right now to assuage the perceived VUCA (volatility, uncertainty, complexity, ambiguity) of the world in which they live. As a movement, it provides certainty, understanding and a sense of control, and is financially and physically possible. It is, like most successful fantasies, a way of responding to, and adapting to, our reality.

I really enjoyed Ilona Andrews’ latest - This Kingdom Will Not Kill Me. Review at Reactor:

There’s a whole lot more I could’ve written about this book - and did, in earlier drafts! I think it deliberately engages and subverts the ‘Mary Sue’ trope. I think it deliberately engages and subverts the isekai trend, as well, as more broadly, the discourse around fandom. And I think it does all that while creating an incredibly fan-friendly work in and of itself. I found myself wildly theorising plot developments with friends, in a way that I hadn’t done since mid-series Harry Potter. So it is smart, it is a bit silly, and it is very, very fun.

London’s first Food in Print Magazine Fair! The organiser stocked my free, flammable newsletter for BBQ-side conversation — a special run of The Keanu Reeves Issue. I didn’t actually get to go, but look at this picture of the distinctly lo-fi Kindling, surrounded by all its glossy, amazing friends:

There’s a real joy that comes from making an old-fashioned physical product in our new-fangled digital world. (…which is also a very dark academic point of view.)

I went deep sea fishing (!) and caught several (presumably suicidal) rockfish and snapper. I also caught a freakin’ shark (a large dogfish, to be honest), which I got to hold (and then promptly throw back into the water). It was one of the coolest things that’s ever happened to me, and I will now answer to ‘JARED, MASTER OF SHARKS’.

Stay for a Spell is out!

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