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

@nightingale-keats

hey so um I have a bill for $18 and some change coming out on monday((tomorrow))

I am -$1.34 rn in my account and could use some help to pay the $18 something tomorrow.

if you can help me get to $19 I would really appreciate it

im still applying to jobs, interviewing, and then getting turned down. #strugglin'

venmo: GraveyardStench84

cashapp: $graveyardstench

paypal: graveyardstench

I identify the most with the woman who has a green velvet ribbon around her neck and keeps being like "DONT untie my neck ribbon or something really bad will happen" and then her husband unties the ribbon and her head falls off. this is extremely real to me. spent my whole life like "please don't do this thing to me or really bad stuff will happen" and everyone around me being like "that sounds fake" and doing it anyway. and then my head fell off!

this is why folklore shifts are so fascinating

the earliest known version of the story is "the Adventure of the German Student," (1824) which is set in the 1780s and involves a young man who happens to meet a beautiful Frenchwoman with a diamond choker around her neck. he takes her to his lodgings where they make love, but in the morning he finds her dead in his bed when he awakens- dead, and seemingly dead for over a day. he runs for help, and the men who respond exclaim that she's a noblewoman who was guillotined early the day before. insert choker removal and expected result here

the most common version currently circulating, published in the children's book In A Dark, Dark Room (1984) adds the green ribbon most English-speaking adults are now familiar with...but involves the girl/woman growing old happily with her husband and finally giving him PERMISSION to remove the ribbon as she's dying

based on the notes, it looks like the idea of someone hounding the woman to remove the ribbon- and similar symbolism to OP's post -comes from "the Husband Stitch" (2014) a feminist short story that uses folktale and urban legend imagery

it grows and develops over time, as people bring new emotional baggage to the tale. we take the stories we grew up with and infuse them with meaning from our own lives. we shift and stretch them to communicate our experiences

Short version: I'm making my short stories free/pwyw again because reality sucks

Long version: Things are hard irl right now and I think they're going to get worse before they get better. I'm okay for now, much as someone in my condition can be. Others, maybe even you, are suffering, and more will suffer as the month drags on. If I were in better shape, I'd join the people on bluesky trading books for donations to food banks. But I'm not. So, I'm doing the next best thing, and making my stories free/pay-what-you-want again. At least on Kofi and Payhip, I don't know if you can do that through Draft2Digital...

Enjoy the scares. Hope you stick around for more of them.

ITS NOT HOPELESS ITS JUST JANUARY.

Another super easy and fulfilling way to give back imo is to make yourself available to elderly people in your community for cleaning, yard work, and grocery/medication deliveries. I told a friend of my grandparents’ who has cancer to please tell me if she needed help with anything. And she’s been giving out my number to more of her friends. Today I’m going to clean the condo of a woman who is recovering from surgery and can’t leave the house. These people often have no one they feel like they can ask for help. Make it known that they can ask you! <3

hey it’s ok if you lost your ai virginity back when you were uneducated. a lot of posts go like “reblog if you have never ever used generative ai and never ever will!!!” but it’s ok if you have used gen ai before and it’s even ok if you used to think it was cool, back before you understood what it really was and how it worked, either because no one had taught you about it and you discovered it on your own or because the only education you had received about it was from the tech bros. you’re not a burger with a bite out of it for having used ai. ok

It is 100 percent okay to stop using it today and join the "boo AI" club.

This isn't a purity thing. This is a "everyone stand with us against destroying the environment and giving asthma to poor people" thing.

Did you know that when one community says no to an AI data center, they specifically search out communities with fewer resources? Communities that can't defend themselves? And the pollution 100 percent affects their health and wellbeing, in addition to burning through our already scarce drinking water.

You can stop using character.ai today. You can say "I listened to the facts and stopped." And another thing: don't you think it's a bit more impactful to have used it, stopped, and then you're in a position to say how little it helped? How doing things for yourself improved your life?

also posts in the spirit of "if you've used AI even ONCE your soul is tainted!!!!" can't be great to those with OCD

Ten Ways To Support Indie Authors

1. Share their posts! Did you guys know I get twice as much views on my instagram posts just from one person adding them to their story? This helps more people see my work and gives us a better shot against the algorithm!

2. Interact with them! Leaving a comment on a post or sending them a message is a simple way to brighten their day and show them they are seen and appreciated! Tell them what you love about what they do!

3. Tell your friends! Sometimes it takes a dozen posts from an author to get a reader to even consider reading their book, but all it takes is one message that starts with "BESTIE YOU'VE GOTTA CHECK THIS OUT!"

4. Request their books at the library! Yes, you can get your favorite indie author's book to a wider audience and support your local library at the same time! Win-win!

5. Make fan content! Seeing fanart, playlists, edits, and other creations based on your creations is always encouraging. As an author, I would be honored if people loved my characters enough to make fanworks of them.

6. Leave a review! Reviews help show the author people are actually reading their book, let others know why they should read it too, and help boost visibility and community!

7. Buy their books! Obviously, the best way to support an author is to buy their books! If you already have a copy, consider purchasing one to gift to a friend, library, youth center, or little free library!

8. Participate in online giveaways & events. Authors spend a lot of time setting up giveaway events to help build hype and boost community, and by participating, you can help them and maybe claim some goodies for yourself!

9. Merch! If an author sells promo items realated to their book, it helps more than just financially! When other people see your swag, you get to spread the hype! If the author doesn't have merch maybe you can offer to help them design some!!

10. Attend events! Seeing people physically in front of you excited about your book is so encouraging, and enthusiastic fans encourage others' curiousity!

I just want everyone to know that next week's episode of Roselin Rants: Grey is going to be a LONG one, because we refuse to break it up since E. L. James didn't. The thumbnail title for this chapter is "Fifty Pages of Grey" because this chapter is FIFTY PAGES LONG. We've had two recording sessions for it, totaling nearly two and a half hours, and we aren't done yet.

PLEASE get in on this series now because we are putting our all into it, lol.

As more and more people are being forced to switch to Windows 11, Microsoft's most AI-malware-ridden OS yet, I've been putting together articles and links for how to undo the damage and save your battery, your RAM, your disk space, your privacy, and your sanity from this bullshit.

FIRST:

The easiest way to get rid of the majority of the bullshit that Windows is forcing on us, as of October 2025, is this one-stop-one-click debloat solution from a modern day hero:

It's very easy, even if you're not tech savvy or get scared of pop up windows saying "ARE YOU SURE?" Yes, you are sure, I promise. This program takes maybe two minutes and will save you SO MUCH pain, time, and money (and exploitation).

Now that you've done that, here's the cleanup, to catch the little shit that the debloat might have missed (most of this will already be done by debloat, but hey, it's good to double check).

Even just reading about some of these features makes me angry. Fucking Copilot and "Discover" AI scrapers are in Notepad. NOTEPAD. And then there's this uncanny valley garbage:

No uncanny valley video calls for me, thanks! (Also, what else is it doing while it scans your face and listens to your calls? What else, microsoft? Because there was a lot of memory being assigned to this program for a simple "smooths your skin" add on).

The truly insane number of places they have stuck ads on your own home computer is sickening. Become Unmarketable.

Bonus:

Some background programs you probably don't need that are taking up space and how to remove them (Microsoft forums, 2024)

Your Samsung Galaxy Phone comes with 22 apps you don't need (Android Police, 2025)

How to disable the AI in firefox (still the only browser that lets you do this permanently) (Windows Report, 2025)

historical european fantasy author you don’t have to make that Muslim/Jewish/North African/Central Asian character a ‘shady trader of foreign goods’ or a militaristic tyrant …. historical european fantasy author the scholars and intellectuals from those demographics were incredibly influential in middle ages Europe through their contributions in the field of Mathematics, Astrology, Philosophy, and basically all early groundwork for modern science…. historical european fantasy author if you’re writing a ‘scholar’ or monk type character whose only interactions are with other european texts and worldviews you’re being ahistorical… historical european fantasy author Edward Said already went over this

i will never complain about a book seeming like a fanfic with the serial numbers filed off because that means the author had the invaluable ability to tell when their au had diverged enough that these were just straight-up different characters now

even as we speak there is probably someone out there writing a delightful 100k+ word gay romance novel about a genderqueer bisexual single parent who lives in a beach town and fixes classic cars and falls in love with the sexy tentacle monster mermaid that saved their life, and that writer could probably make pretty good money self-publishing it, but they won't because that would mean admitting that they aren't really writing destiel anymore

love that despite not being in the fandom i hit the middle of the venn diagram of 'characters that the average person would never in a million years recognize as dean winchester' and 'characters that a certain subset of fans would immediately think are dean winchester' so perfectly that i've since been told i described multiple popular fics

chat reminder to just write whatever the fuck you want. write that overused trope. write that obscure shit that no one will have heard of. just. do it. your writing is yours stop depriving it of that.

honestly in the era of AI slop it is more important than ever for you to write or draw that incredibly niche/strange/unpalatable thing you want to make. the world needs the unique weirdness of people more than ever