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It’s a truth universally acknowledged that a student will form a crush on a teacher at least once in their life, if not twice. It feels inevitable, and that’s what makes it both so appealing in a novel, but also sometimes extremely icky.
A student and teacher/mentor dynamic is one that shows up in all guises in dark academia and for this special episode of Summer School, we did a deep dive into a trope that is both loved by us, and also sometimes hated. It’s all about balance.
And yet can there be a balance with a trope that we both love so very much? We’ll let you be the judges of that.
We pay a visit to the Goddess Athena and Pygmalion in Ancient Greece for the origins of the mentor and rather questionable student/teacher or creator/creation relationships that echo throughout dark academia and many other genres, but particularly those that sit within the Gothic or the wider campus novel.
There can’t be a discussion about these kind of relationships without also touching on the darker side, or as I worded it in the episode, the ones that give me the ick. There’s a vast ocean between the mentor and mentee duos that are upheld and revered, and those that are predatory, manipulative or abuse the power imbalance in these settings.
Even though we’re aware of the potential for grossness in this dynamic, it’s generally still a favourite, though it’s one that needs to be explored carefully and responsibly in fiction.
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