LINKDING

<blockquote>Every good villain is the hero of her own story. On trial for the assassination of Chancellor Gorkon, Lieutenant Valeris tells hers.</blockquote>

<blockquote>Poe guesses he’s a little fucked-up now, more than before. He certainly has a lot of nightmares. He tries to take it in stride. It doesn’t really surprise him. What had he expected? (Dead, he thinks. You expected to be dead.)</blockquote>

<blockquote>Once there was a little girl who tried very hard not to be born. Her father the king and her mother the king’s wife had six children already – all sons. </blockquote>

<blockquote>Miss Wilhelmina Laurence never leaves Nottinghamshire, and certainly not in the winter of 1805. When the Reliant captures an exhausted Amitie on her way out of a storm, Miss Laurence is grimly preparing for a country ball. Usually a merry occasion even for a confirmed spinster, this particular event is soured by the presence of Bertram Woolvey, who is likely to make Miss Laurence’s particular friend and neighbor an offer and therefore deprive her of her most beloved company.  When the queer porcelain egg hatches, several weeks later, and the officers are gathered around with the reluctant sacrifice stepping forward nervously, the black dragonet ignores them all. It takes seven men to hold the creature down long enough to harness it, even though it is a newborn. The dragonet does not stay silent for long, protesting at its treatment quite vehemently in both English and French–but it pays no attention to any man in particular, and seems in fact to resent them all. The officers are relieved as well as unsettled. They do not name it, but make for Madeira with all speed. </blockquote>

➤ the one where Furiosa is Thor. UM YES PLEASE ➤ also on ao3 at http://archiveofourown.org/works/4061545

<blockquote>“The Pauper Prince and the Eucalyptus Jinn” by Usman T. Malik is a fantasy novella about a disenchanted young Pakistani professor who grew up and lives in the United States, but is haunted by the magical, mystical tales his grandfather told him of a princess and a Jinn who lived in Lahore when the grandfather was a boy.</blockquote>

<blockquote>A meeting at a ball on biopunk dystopia Verona.</blockquote>

<blockquote>How can a being composed of calculations be so guileless? Favourite wonders. Fantine is a robot. Favourite isn't.</blockquote> ➤ omg I wish I could read a million words of this

<blockquote>I’ll pretend I’m going blind if I have to: start fumbling my work, carving sloppy lines onto the dolls, squinting, tripping over nothing. Everything my mother did in her twenty-fifth year. Everything my aunt and uncle did. Now the three of them sit in the best positions by the fire; how honored they are, for giving their sight to feed us. How well-fed, while we labor carving more dolls for the pot. They’ll kill me for laziness if I don’t go blind in the next year.</blockquote>

<blockquote>Lucy looks around, wondering what makes the Professor's workshop so dangerous. At first glance, she can't see anything special: just a bunch of computers on a rack and a half-dozen monitors scattered about to no apparent plan, each surrounded by drifts of notepaper and graph paper. But then one monitor switches from its screensaver -- snow falling onto pine trees -- to a black screen with a single line of text. Lucy steps closer, curious. <Hello?> the computer says again. The cursor blinks in silent invitation.</blockquote>

<blockquote>Everyone thinks my brother is nice. He set up a rescue centre for birds, after the terraforming accident poisoned the lake. That's always the image of him, holding a bird covered in sludge. The birds are never the same after they're cleaned, but the gossips never talk about that. Cleaning birds is a safe way to make people notice you, and my brother likes safe. I jumped off a cliff once. He was all, "You'll die if you jump." I broke most of my bones, but I made it. It's worth trying for the feel of it. Not the bones part, but the rush of something new. It should have been something, falling and surviving. But the gossips only cared about how much it upset my brother.</blockquote>

<blockquote>Being a boring-ass attempt at an alternate Elizabethan history where the Mongol Empire kept expanding, written in the style of a Persian chronicle of some centuries earlier. </blockquote>

<blockquote>Bucky becomes Natasha. Natasha becomes the Winter Soldier.</blockquote> ➤ I AM SO HAPPY RIGHT NOW. THIS IS SO GOOOOOOOOOD

<blockquote>The state took Aphra away from Innsmouth. They took her history, her home, her family, her god. They tried to take the sea. Now, years later, when she is just beginning to rebuild a life, an agent of that government intrudes on her life again, with an offer she wishes she could refuse. “The Litany of Earth” is a dark fantasy story inspired by the Lovecraft mythos.</blockquote> ➤ a subversion of Lovecraft's Cthulhu mythos ➤ see also Ex Urbe's excellent review of this story: http://www.exurbe.com/?p=2951

<blockquote>The play proceeds as it has every night. At first, Lucheni had simply told the story, a dry progression of the facts as he knew them, without emotion or argument. He had made his argument already, with a needle file at the dock and later in the memoirs they took from him in prison, in smuggled paper and sooty ink and moonlit nights.</blockquote>

<blockquote>OKNO OKNO can't tell at first which radio it's coming from. That's understandable; you've got twenty-six, all arranged on various shelves around your apartment. Twenty-five before you picked up the latest one, a little box from the thrift store, runs on two double-A batteries, not as useful in a catastrophe as the ones that you crank to life, but, well, you can't be cranking every minute of the day. And anyway, it's not a catastrophe. Yet.</blockquote> ➤ odd and I don't really understand everything but it's extremely compelling and well-written and it's totally worth reading.

<blockquote>You're going to die in your best friend's arms. And you play along because it's funny, because it's written down, you've memorized it, it's all you know. - "Planet of Love," Richard Siken What if Mercutio sees the future? (Based on the 2013 Italian musical version, Romeo e Giulietta - Ama e Cambia il Mondo.)</blockquote>

<blockquote>A Halál/der Tod because what happens when death kisses death oooo (I'm so sorry)</blockquote> ➤ a three-sentence kiss fic that is longer than three sentences

<blockquote>The lesson here, Susie thinks, is that tricking Death is tricky business. How do you outwit the personification of oblivion? Chess, obviously, won’t be the answer. Or: Susie plays Calvinball with Death.</blockquote> ➤ SUSIE PLAYS CALVINBALL WITH DEATH. I was so there from the summary, and the fic does not disappoint.

<blockquote>One is a beginning; two, opposition; three, instability; four, death. But five is justice, six is unexpected, and seven makes things complete again. Seven days of Kalasin's life.</blockquote>

<blockquote>Scenes from a Valdemar that never was. (Or: the one where the Companions are evil.)</blockquote>

<blockquote>"Our tsar has three sons. Handsome lads, if one appreciates such things. None are married...yet." The old woman snorts. "That's why you're here, though, isn't it?" "I'm to return the arrow to its archer. I know nothing beyond that. Other than it's," Vasilissa's mouth twists, "fate." "So you find it cruel?" The hut closes around her, the air warm and heavy. It's thick with the sent of rosemary and sage from the bundles of herbs hanging from the beams above them. The bones of previous suppers (hares and chickens and maybe even men) rattle in a hauntingly soothing melody. "I'd rather find it kind. But at the moment, I miss my shop." She shakes her head, and some of the syrupy warmth tugging at her mind fades. "It's childish of me, I know." "And you're no child."</blockquote>

➤does what it says on the tin

<blockquote>Google politely tells her there are no poisonous spiders in Manhattan. Judging by her symptoms -- fever, superstrength, newfound desire to shove herself into small dark spaces, and sudden reputation as a masked vigilante -- Gwen would beg to differ. [AU.]</blockquote> ➤recognizes and integrates into the story stuff about racism and sexism and so forth! also Gwen is awesome ➤also on ao3 at http://archiveofourown.org/works/1416808

<blockquote>Esca has always been able to see Death.</blockquote>

<blockquote>Hamlet in space, starring sensible and heroic Ophelia, genderswapped Claudius, clones Rosencrantz and Guilderstern and alien Fortinbras. (Alas, there are no sharks in space riding motorcycles, nor is there a time machine.)</blockquote> ➤ HOLY CRAP THIS IS AMAZING

<blockquote>What if Snow White was a cool character who knew what she wanted and how to get it?</blockquote>

<blockquote>Cecil is the child of and prophet for this impossible town (and he might have been for thousands of years, though he can’t remember and neither can anyone else, but sometimes he dreams about sitting beside a smoky fire wrapped in furs and telling stories that were old even then—other times he looks at the cave paintings and remembers putting them there—who were his parents again? such nice, bland people, but where did they live, what did they do, when did they leave—) (shhhh, Night Vale tells him. shhhhh)</blockquote>

<blockquote>Lonely and unable to sleep, Elisabeth's daughter finds she's not the only one wandering the corridors...</blockquote> ➤ (not Szabo!Death)

<blockquote>"When he finally registered the presence of a tail, Montparnasse knew with a sickening finality that it was too late." Or, Montparnasse screws something up beyond repair.</blockquote>