thank you ao3 for being an archive and not an algorithm. thank you for letting me like things without consequences, thank you for being free with no ads, thank you for having lawyers to defend our freedom of speech. thank you tag wranglers. thank you to all authors and thank you ao3
decentralize and clean up your life!!!
- EDIT: THIS IS A CARRD NOW! it's updated and organized!!
- use overdrive, libby, hoopla, cloudlibrary, and kanopy instead of amazon and audible.
- use firefox or librewolf (open-source fork of firefox) instead of chrome or opera (both are made with chromium, which blocks functionality for ad-blockers. firefox isn't based on chromium).
- use mega instead of google drive
- get rid of bloatware
- use libreoffice instead of microsoft office suite
- get free stuff with the help of r/FREEMEDIAHECKYEAH, r/piracy and r/roms
- use trakt (for shows and movies), letterboxd (just movies), or TMB instead of IMDB (owned by amazon).
- use storygraph instead of goodreads (owned by amazon).
- use darkpatterns to find mobile game with no ads or microtransactions
- use mediahuman or cobalt to download music, or support your favorite artists directly through bandcamp
- make youtube bearable by using mtube, newpipe, or the unhook extension on chrome, firefox, or microsoft edge
- use search for a cause, ecosia, or ocean hero to support the environment instead of google
- use thriftbooks to buy new or used books (they also have manga, textbooks, home goods, CDs, DVDs, and blurays)
- use flashpoint to play archived online flash games
- find books, movies, games, etc. on the internet archive! for starters, here's a bunch of David Attenborough documentaries and all of the Animorphs books
- burn your music onto cds
- use pdf24 (available online or as a desktop app) instead of adobe
- use thunderbird, mailfence, countermail, edison mail, or tuta instead of gmail
- remove bloatware on windows PC, macOS, and iOS X
- remove bloatware on samsung X
- use pixelfed instead of instagram or meta
- use project gutenberg for free public domain books, and librivox for public domain books and audiobooks
- use the seal app (android only) to download video and audio
- use ellipsus instead of microsoft word or google docs
- use mastodon instead of twitter
- use peertube to create a network of small video hosting providers (disclaimer: not a 1:1 alternative to youtube)
- use threema and signal for encrypted communication, on mobile and desktop
- use qwant and startpage for secure internet browsers
- use syncthing to securely transfer files between devices
- learn how to jailbreak your kindle/ereader if you have one (wiki and video walkthrough)
- use riseup’s email and VPN for secure communication (aimed towards activists)
- use cryptpad and collabora instead of the microsoft office suite
- use google takeout to export the data on your google account
- use library extension to look for books on online stores and find them at your library
- remove paywalls with removepaywalls
- install the open-source adblocker ublock origin
- install sponsorblock to skip sponsored segments on youtube videos
- use bookfinder to look for the cheapest available listings of books, including textbooks
- learn a language through mango (duolingo laid off some of its employees and now relies on AI translations) for free with a library card or through your school
- edit photos with photopea
- edit pdfs with foxit and sumatrapdf
- download music with doubledouble
- take notes offline and collaborate securely with obsidian
- for android tv, use smarttube and cloudstream (ad-free, open-source)
- change your OS to linux
Masterpost of Free Gothic Literature & Theory
Classics Vathek by William Beckford Wuthering Heights by Emily Brontë The Woman in White & The Moonstone by Wilkie Collins Carmilla by Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu The Turn of the Screw by Henry James The Monk by Matthew Lewis The Phantom of the Opera by Gaston Leroux Melmoth the Wanderer by Charles Maturin The Vampyre; a Tale by John Polidori Collected Works of Edgar Allan Poe Confessions of an English Opium-Eater by Thomas De Quincey The Mysteries of Udolpho by Ann Radcliffe The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde by Robert Louis Stevenson Dracula by Bram Stoker The Castle of Otranto by Horace Walpole The Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde Frankenstein; Or, The Modern Prometheus by Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley
Short Stories and Poems An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge by Ambrose Bierce Songs of Innocence & Songs of Experience by William Blake The Rime of the Ancient Mariner by Samuel Taylor Coleridge The King in Yellow by Robert W. Chambers The Legend of Sleepy Hollow by Washington Irving The Yellow Wallpaper by Charlotte Perkins Gilman
Pre-Gothic Beowulf The Divine Comedy by Dante Alighieri A Journal of the Plague Year by Daniel Defoe Faust by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe The Tragical History of Doctor Faustus by Christopher Marlowe Paradise Lost by John Milton Macbeth by William Shakespeare Oedipus, King of Thebes by Sophocles The Duchess of Malfi by John Webster
Gothic-Adjacent Northanger Abbey by Jane Austen The Wendigo by Algernon Blackwood Jane Eyre & Villette by Charlotte Brontë Lyrical Ballads, With a Few Other Poems by Coleridge and Wordsworth The Mystery of Edwin Drood by Charles Dickens The Idiot & Demons (The Possessed) by Fyodor Dostoyevsky The Man in the Iron Mask by Alexandre Dumas Moby-Dick by Herman Melville The Island of Doctor Moreau by H. G. Wells
Historical Theory and Background The French Revolution of 1789 by John S. C. Abbott Shakespearean Tragedy: Lectures on Hamlet, Othello, King Lear, Macbeth by A. C. Bradley The Tale of Terror: A Study of the Gothic Romance by Edith Birkhead On Heroes, Hero-Worship, and the Heroic in History by Thomas Carlyle Demonology and Devil-Lore by Moncure Daniel Conway Ancient Pagan and Modern Christian Symbolism by Inman and Newton On Liberty by John Stuart Mill The Social Contract & Discourses by Jean-Jacques Rousseau Feminism in Greek Literature from Homer to Aristotle by Frederick Wright
Academic Theory Introduction: Replicating Bodies in Nineteenth-Century Science and Culture by Will Abberley Viewpoint: Transatlantic Scholarship on Victorian Literature and Culture by Isobel Armstrong Theories of Space and the Nineteenth-Century Novel by Isobel Armstrong The Higher Spaces of the Late Nineteenth-Century Novel by Mark Blacklock The Shipwrecked salvation, metaphor of penance in the Catalan gothic by Marta Nuet Blanch Marching towards Destruction: the Crowd in Urban Gothic by Christophe Chambost Women, Power and Conflict: The Gothic heroine and “Chocolate-box Gothic” by Avril Horner Psychos’ Haunting Memories: A(n) (Un)common Literary Heritage by Maria Antónia Lima ‘Thrilled with Chilly Horror’: A Formulaic Pattern in Gothic Fiction by Aguirre Manuel The terms “Gothic” and “Neogothic” in the context of Literary History by O. V. Razumovskaja The Female Vampires and the Uncanny Childhood by Gabriele Scalessa Curating Gothic Nightmares by Heather Tilley Elizabeth Bowen, Modernism, and the Spectre of Anglo-Ireland by James F. Wurtz Hesitation, Projection and Desire: The Fictionalizing ‘as if…’ in Dostoevskii’s Early Works by Sarah J. Young Intermediality and polymorphism of narratives in the Gothic tradition by Ihina Zoia

