almost-awake

[almost-awake]

[almost-awake]

seeing straight men be disgusted by booktok smut recommenders has actually radicalized me to the side of booktok smut recommenders. girls your taste may be atrocious but i will never disparage you for exposing mainstream discourse to the concept of soaking through your underwear. spent my whole life listening to men talk about penises it’s about time they get jumpscared by women talking about pussy in crude detail on social media. go forth and goon my warriors

[almost-awake]

[almost-awake]

FAMOUS AUTHORS

Classic Bookshelf: This site has put classic novels online, from Charles Dickens to Charlotte Bronte.

The Online Books Page: The University of Pennsylvania hosts this book search and database.

Project Gutenberg: This famous site has over 27,000 free books online.

Page by Page Books: Find books by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle and H.G. Wells, as well as speeches from George W. Bush on this site.

Classic Book Library: Genres here include historical fiction, history, science fiction, mystery, romance and children’s literature, but they’re all classics.

Classic Reader: Here you can read Shakespeare, young adult fiction and more.

Read Print: From George Orwell to Alexandre Dumas to George Eliot to Charles Darwin, this online library is stocked with the best classics.

Planet eBook: Download free classic literature titles here, from Dostoevsky to D.H. Lawrence to Joseph Conrad.

The Spectator Project: Montclair State University’s project features full-text, online versions of The Spectator and The Tatler.

Bibliomania: This site has more than 2,000 classic texts, plus study guides and reference books.

Online Library of Literature: Find full and unabridged texts of classic literature, including the Bronte sisters, Mark Twain and more.

Bartleby: Bartleby has much more than just the classics, but its collection of anthologies and other important novels made it famous.

Fiction.us: Fiction.us has a huge selection of novels, including works by Lewis Carroll, Willa Cather, Sherwood Anderson, Flaubert, George Eliot, F. Scott Fitzgerald and others.

Free Classic Literature: Find British authors like Shakespeare and Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, plus other authors like Jules Verne, Mark Twain, and more.

TEXTBOOKS

Textbook Revolution: Find biology, business, engineering, mathematics and world history textbooks here.

Wikibooks: From cookbooks to the computing department, find instructional and educational materials here.

KnowThis Free Online Textbooks: Get directed to stats textbooks and more.

Online Medical Textbooks: Find books about plastic surgery, anatomy and more here.

Online Science and Math Textbooks: Access biochemistry, chemistry, aeronautics, medical manuals and other textbooks here.

MIT Open Courseware Supplemental Resources: Find free videos, textbooks and more on the subjects of mechanical engineering, mathematics, chemistry and more.

Flat World Knowledge: This innovative site has created an open college textbooks platform that will launch in January 2009.

Free Business Textbooks: Find free books to go along with accounting, economics and other business classes.

Light and Matter: Here you can access open source physics textbooks.

eMedicine: This project from WebMD is continuously updated and has articles and references on surgery, pediatrics and more.

MATH AND SCIENCE

FullBooks.com: This site has “thousands of full-text free books,” including a large amount of scientific essays and books.

Free online textbooks, lecture notes, tutorials and videos on mathematics: NYU links to several free resources for math students.

Online Mathematics Texts: Here you can find online textbooks likeElementary Linear Algebra and Complex Variables.

Science and Engineering Books for free download: These books range in topics from nanotechnology to compressible flow.

FreeScience.info: Find over 1800 math, engineering and science books here.

Free Tech Books: Computer programmers and computer science enthusiasts can find helpful books here.

CHILDREN’S BOOKS

byGosh: Find free illustrated children’s books and stories here.

Munseys: Munseys has nearly 2,000 children’s titles, plus books about religion, biographies and more.

International Children’s Digital Library: Find award-winning books and search by categories like age group, make believe books, true books or picture books.

Lookybook: Access children’s picture books here.

PHILOSOPHY AND RELIGION

Bored.com: Bored.com has music ebooks, cooking ebooks, and over 150 philosophy titles and over 1,000 religion titles.

Ideology.us: Here you’ll find works by Rene Descartes, Sigmund Freud, Karl Marx, David Hume and others.

Free Books on Yoga, Religion and Philosophy: Recent uploads to this site include Practical Lessons in Yoga and Philosophy of Dreams.

The Sociology of Religion: Read this book by Max Weber, here.

Religion eBooks: Read books about the Bible, Christian books, and more.

PLAYS

ReadBookOnline.net: Here you can read plays by Chekhov, Thomas Hardy, Ben Jonson, Shakespeare, Edgar Allan Poe and others.

Plays: Read Pygmalion, Uncle Vanya or The Playboy of the Western World here.

The Complete Works of William Shakespeare: MIT has made available all of Shakespeare’s comedies, tragedies, and histories.

Plays Online: This site catalogs “all the plays [they] know about that are available in full text versions online for free.”

ProPlay: This site has children’s plays, comedies, dramas and musicals.

MODERN FICTION, FANTASY AND ROMANCE

Public Bookshelf: Find romance novels, mysteries and more.

The Internet Book Database of Fiction: This forum features fantasy and graphic novels, anime, J.K. Rowling and more.

Free Online Novels: Here you can find Christian novels, fantasy and graphic novels, adventure books, horror books and more.

Foxglove: This British site has free novels, satire and short stories.

Baen Free Library: Find books by Scott Gier, Keith Laumer and others.

The Road to Romance: This website has books by Patricia Cornwell and other romance novelists.

Get Free Ebooks: This site’s largest collection includes fiction books.

John T. Cullen: Read short stories from John T. Cullen here.

SF and Fantasy Books Online: Books here include Arabian Nights,Aesop’s Fables and more.

Free Novels Online and Free Online Cyber-Books: This list contains mostly fantasy books.

FOREIGN LANGUAGE

Project Laurens Jz Coster: Find Dutch literature here.

ATHENA Textes Francais: Search by author’s name, French books, or books written by other authors but translated into French.

Liber Liber: Download Italian books here. Browse by author, title, or subject.

Biblioteca romaneasca: Find Romanian books on this site.

Bibliolteca Virtual Miguel de Cervantes: Look up authors to find a catalog of their available works on this Spanish site.

KEIMENA: This page is entirely in Greek, but if you’re looking for modern Greek literature, this is the place to access books online.

Proyecto Cervantes: Texas A&M’s Proyecto Cervantes has cataloged Cervantes’ work online.

Corpus Scriptorum Latinorum: Access many Latin texts here.

Project Runeberg: Find Scandinavian literature online here.

Italian Women Writers: This site provides information about Italian women authors and features full-text titles too.

Biblioteca Valenciana: Register to use this database of Catalan and Valencian books.

Ketab Farsi: Access literature and publications in Farsi from this site.

Afghanistan Digital Library: Powered by NYU, the Afghanistan Digital Library has works published between 1870 and 1930.

CELT: CELT stands for “the Corpus of Electronic Texts” features important historical literature and documents.

Projekt Gutenberg-DE: This easy-to-use database of German language texts lets you search by genres and author.

HISTORY AND CULTURE

LibriVox: LibriVox has a good selection of historical fiction.

The Perseus Project: Tufts’ Perseus Digital Library features titles from Ancient Rome and Greece, published in English and original languages.

Access Genealogy: Find literature about Native American history, the Scotch-Irish immigration in the 19th and 20th centuries, and more.

Free History Books: This collection features U.S. history books, including works by Paul Jennings, Sarah Morgan Dawson, Josiah Quincy and others.

Most Popular History Books: Free titles include Seven Days and Seven Nights by Alexander Szegedy and Autobiography of a Female Slave by Martha G. Browne.

RARE BOOKS

Questia: Questia has 5,000 books available for free, including rare books and classics.

ARTS AND ENTERTAINMENT

Books-On-Line: This large collection includes movie scripts, newer works, cookbooks and more.

Chest of Books: This site has a wide range of free books, including gardening and cooking books, home improvement books, craft and hobby books, art books and more.

Free e-Books: Find titles related to beauty and fashion, games, health, drama and more.

2020ok: Categories here include art, graphic design, performing arts, ethnic and national, careers, business and a lot more.

Free Art Books: Find artist books and art books in PDF format here.

Free Web design books: OnlineComputerBooks.com directs you to free web design books.

Free Music Books: Find sheet music, lyrics and books about music here.

Free Fashion Books: Costume and fashion books are linked to the Google Books page.

MYSTERY

MysteryNet: Read free short mystery stories on this site.

TopMystery.com: Read books by Edgar Allan Poe, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, GK Chesterton and other mystery writers here.

Mystery Books: Read books by Sue Grafton and others.

POETRY

The Literature Network: This site features forums, a copy of The King James Bible, and over 3,000 short stories and poems.

Poetry: This list includes “The Raven,” “O Captain! My Captain!” and “The Ballad of Bonnie and Clyde.”

Poem Hunter: Find free poems, lyrics and quotations on this site.

Famous Poetry Online: Read limericks, love poetry, and poems by Robert Browning, Emily Dickinson, John Donne, Lord Byron and others.

Google Poetry: Google Books has a large selection of poetry, fromThe Canterbury Tales to Beowulf to Walt Whitman.

QuotesandPoem.com: Read poems by Maya Angelou, William Blake, Sylvia Plath and more.

CompleteClassics.com: Rudyard Kipling, Allen Ginsberg and Alfred Lord Tennyson are all featured here.

PinkPoem.com: On this site, you can download free poetry ebooks.

MISC

Banned Books: Here you can follow links of banned books to their full text online.

World eBook Library: This monstrous collection includes classics, encyclopedias, children’s books and a lot more.

DailyLit: DailyLit has everything from Moby Dick to the recent phenomenon, Skinny Bitch.

A Celebration of Women Writers: The University of Pennsylvania’s page for women writers includes Newbery winners.

Free Online Novels: These novels are fully online and range from romance to religious fiction to historical fiction.

ManyBooks.net: Download mysteries and other books for your iPhone or eBook reader here.

Authorama: Books here are pulled from Google Books and more. You’ll find history books, novels and more.

Prize-winning books online: Use this directory to connect to full-text copies of Newbery winners, Nobel Prize winners and Pulitzer winners.

[almost-awake]

website

[almost-awake]

Alright ya'll, here me out....

[almost-awake]

Season 1 Jayvik: ohoHOHOHO look at these delightful silly science bitches! I want them to kiss sloppy style on the mouth and be goofy in the lab! They like each other so much! Oh noo Viktor is dying and getting corrupted by dark magic and we gotta mentally prepare for the divorce arc that leads to them being rivals in the game :( that's gonna be so sad :(((((

Season 2 Jayvik: these science bitches have types of codependency you can't even conceive of. They're dooming themselves and each other just to keep existing together. Their divorce goes through multiple allegory arcs. They had 1 fight and it was just a little phase they had to work through but hundreds of lives were lost. Love saves them and destroys them. They got mutually assured creation and destruction. They're knowingly changing timelines to make sure their fates are tangled together across the multiverse even if entwining their fate sets them and the world on a path towards calamity. That twink made himself the sluttiest cunty drone walking around on the balls of its feet and then climbed Jayce like a tree with it while all but shoving it's fingers in his mouth what the fuck was that???? Jesus fucking christ is he still wearing that blanket as a robot god on the astral plane????

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Analysis: Why Jayce broke up with Mel in Arcane 2.08

Since the finale episodes of Arcane dropped this morning, I've been going back and re-watching some of my favorite scenes, and I was struck by Jayce breaking up with Mel.

First of all, yeah, he clearly does break up with her, though I missed how formally he does so on my first watch-through. He does it in the Council chamber, just before Viktor attacks. But since they get interrupted, he finishes breaking up with her (after checking in with her) on the balcony later.

But what really struck me about the breakup wasn't in those scenes, but actually back in 2.07, when Jayce is alone in cavern in the darkest timeline. I definitely didn't catch on the first viewing that this is where he chose to break up with her.

In the background, you can hear Jayce in the depths of his despair and solitude starts going over in his mind all the steps that led him to where he is.

Here are some of the quotes he hears:

"I never asked for this!" - Himself to Viktor, trying to justify his actions up to that point just before Viktor leaves him.

"This research is everything, my whole life," a quote from one of his first conversations with Viktor but, more importantly, it establishes Jayce's entire raison d'etre up to that point. Hextech research was his life.

"He was my mentor, Mel, and I betrayed him," obviously is Jayce discussing the coup d'etat against Heimerdinger he orchestrated to save Viktor, but it was with Mel's assistance and urging.

"You must destroy it. It corrupts. Consumes." A quote from Heimerdinger, warning against Hextech. Which must feel especially prescient now that Jayce is stuff in the evil bombed-out future where Hextech destroyed the world.

"I was trying to create magic." Jayce to the Council to defend his Hextech research and save himself from banishment, but, he only mentioned magic at Mel's goading, which I would guess he's beginning to recognize now for what it was in retrospect.

"It's your time now, Jayce." Mel, part of her goading of Jayce into advancing Hextech research and his political career.

"Perhaps it's time for the era of magic." Mel's words on the night she saw Hextech for the first time, after helping Jayce and Viktor break into Heimerdinger's lab.

"You must destroy it." Heimerdinger about the Hexcore, again, probably feeling pretty prescient right now with Jayce literally in the pit of despair in a the evil Hextech future.

Finally, while looking out over the fire while clearly going nearly insane from the isolation, Jayce begins to hallucinate seeing Mel. But then, her image in the fire gives way to Viktor's.

The decision has been made there. It's not just Jayce reflecting on his two closest loved ones (as I thought the first time), rather, it is the moment Jayce makes his decision: he is picking Viktor over Mel. He has decided that the reason he is here in this terrible place is because of Mel, not Viktor. He is choosing his partner, going back to what they had before she became involved in their life. His new course is set.

Now, I want to preface the next part by saying I love Mel, she's a fascinating character, and though I ship Jayvik I also ship/shipped MelJayVik, so this isn't coming from a place of bias. I'm just analyzing the material when I say these flashbacks were Jayce rearranging the narrative in his head and realizing Mel's been manipulating and goading him in his pursuit of Hextech.

Given where he is when this is happening: starving, freezing, in pain, alone for weeks if not months in a stone box, slowly going insane, surrounded by the burnt corpses of people destroyed by Hextech, I'd say... yeah. His need for someone to blame is pretty understandable. He even starts whispering, "No!" in a panic at the memories in response to what she says in his mind.

So when we get to the Council chamber in the main timeline in 2.08, I'd argue that Jayce is spoiling for a fight. He's had months of agony to decide things are over with Mel and that he's angry at her. He wants to blame her for what happened to Viktor, for what happened to him, and he's in pain and he wants to lash out. The relationship is definitely over.

But then Mel is in pain too. And Viktor shows up, with his own autonomy, showing that they all had their shitty parts to play in this drama.

The attack by Viktor adds another element, Jayce was probably also mourning that he had to shoot Viktor at that point, another thing that was painful and made him want to lash out and blame others for this horrible place he's in emotionally and the horrific place he's been in physically until recently.

It's only after Viktor's attack though that Jayce realizes that this situation is complex, it's not all Mel's fault. It would be easier to just pin all the blame on Mel and make Jayce and Viktor her victims, but Viktor shows to him that he has his own agency and Jayce needs to be clear-eyed going forward about who he is saving, because it's not "Mel's victim". Viktor is his own person.

Jayce also remembers some of the care he once had for Mel when he catches her before she falls (in a tender moment I mistook for a full reconciliation between them the first time but no, it's just him remembering he cares for her wellbeing). Jayce can't trust her anymore, after realizing just how adept she was at manipulating him without his realizing, but he does still care for her as a person. And he's cooled off enough to address the pain she is clearly carrying.

(I admit, I do love this moment of him calling himself an ass, because I adore Jayce but it's a lovely beat of self awareness and really shows his growth as a person that he can say this to someone that just hours before he was squaring up to fight against and blame for all his misfortunes.)

But anyway, the moments you really see that it's over between Mel and Jayce:

When he doesn't explain to her what happened to him. That's not for her to know anymore. He's decided that they're not together or intimate anymore. And he's probably still hurting from realizing how she's used what he told her in the past to encourage/manipulate him to her own ends and therefore wary of sharing. This is also a reason for the breakup: he can't share the immense pain he's been in because he can't trust her anymore, and he knows it. It's over.

In the scene on the balcony when he turns away from her instead of towards her before offering his advice. Jayce is very touchy-feely, he always offers physical comfort to his loved ones. But there, he deliberately turns away instead of taking her in his arms and comforting her. Again: it's over between them. But he still respects her. So he reminds her of how indomitable she is, along with offering the slight backhanded compliment born of his distrust for her: she's never the passenger, she is always the one in control. He knows, because he's realized she used to control him.

I've mentioned in other meta that this season deals in a lot of comeuppance for events in S1, and this is arguably Mel's. She'll be ok, she's got magical sun powers and she's the head of a powerful house now. But she doesn't get to keep Jayce in her life as her lover anymore after what she did, because she did manipulate him, even if she had good intentions mixed with the self-interested ones.

The trust is simply gone now. But he cares for her and wishes her well, so, I'd argue they parted on as good of terms as could be done.

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Has anyone ever written anything better on Wuthering Heights than this essay by Andrea Dworkin? It entirely changed the way I saw the novel. You can find it in her collection Letters from a War Zone— I’d urge anyone interested to read the whole thing. It’s a masterpiece of literary criticism.

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That's your problem, Louis, always has been. You're arrogant. "Everyone's fawning over Picasso, but not me, not Louis du Lac."

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DEVIL'S MINION (insp. by this post from @toyboy-molloy )

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Assad Zaman in Interview with the Vampire season 2 episode 6 (2024) dir. Emma Freeman

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#dubai trio in season 2 (insp: ½+½)

+ the old man in question:

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humbled and excited to see that the very first Armand/Daniel fic I wrote, time is a mouth as bloody as any other, has received 10,000 hits!

I know AO3 stats are not necessarily an indication of anything, really, but I do want to thank everyone who’s read my silly little fic. ♥️ It’s a nice lil’ personal milestone to have reached, and I felt it was worth celebrating. None of you owe us fic writers anything so just know that I appreciate y’all so much! And I’m SO happy to see the surge in folks who are discovering and loving this pairing. DM nation unite 🙏🏽

Now, to be a little more overtly self-promotional… I thought I’d take the opportunity to plug some of my other Armand/Daniel fics! 😄

🩸 as long as I find you interesting (I won't kill you) [4/4]

🩸 the talisman [1/1]

🩸 he makes the sun rise on the evil and the good [1/1]

🩸 faultlines [1/1]

… & feel free to drop your fave Armandaniel fics in the comments! 😄💕

[almost-awake]

"You fear Armand, you should fear the other one."

Broke: "Armand may be older and more powerful but Louis is a loose fucking canon who can not be brought under heel"

Woke: "We know everything about what you and Armand got up to in the 70s and 80s. He's so in love with you. He'd never let Louis hurt you. Yeah, we all ship it here at the Talamasca. We have Fanfiction Fridays- Yeah Real Rashid is the current champion and beat 74 others for the chance to do field work on this. No, I can't give you his AO3 tag you'll have to ask him yourself.

[almost-awake]

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To Wong Foo Thanks for Everything, Julie Newmar (1995)

Dir. Beeban Kidron