LINKDING

summary: The air conditioned chill of Wei Ying's office gave way to a wall of humid heat as soon as they left the building. The walk to the station was only a few blocks, but the back of Lan Zhan's shirt was damp with sweat by the time she went underground. "So what's the curse, exactly," Wei Ying said as they jammed themselves into a packed subway car. At lunchtime on a weekday during summer break. Lan Zhan steadied herself against the car door. "I believe it's bad luck." "Holy shit," Wei Ying said. "Did she curse you to step on a Lego?" ➤ modern au f/f mdzs wangxian fic ➤ lwj and wwx are academic colleagues; lwj comes to wwx for help dealing with a minor curse ➤ I love the glimpses into their broader world, the way cultivation is a part of modern life, the dynamics lwj has with her family, etc ➤ the way lwj being a poet affects the prose of the piece, and her point of view! ➤ and the dynamics between lwj and wwx are soooo good <3 ➤ 1.7k words in length

no summary ➤ huh, in the end I'm not entirely convinced I LIKE this novella but it's odd and compelling and interesting for sure ➤ about the academic study of history in a context where a very specific subset of people have access to a very specific subset of historical figures to ask them directly about what they remember ➤ asking questions about who's an insider vs an outsider in academic study, about the values of different approaches to history ➤ ultimately I think it turned too much into a story about the fantastical elements in the narrative and didn't engage as deeply with the themes as I thought it would at the beginning ➤ but it's still a very interesting and well done story and I'm glad I read it! ➤ 22k words in length

Summary: <blockquote>i don’t know, writing a paper with her could be… fun? i mean, what’s the worst that can happen? / From: leldiwanyby-uea.edu To: mwright21by-kcl.edu Subject: Re: Re: Re: Fuck you M– If you think we’re citing fucking Samuel Kline[...] [three paragraphs snipped – click to expand]</blockquote> ➤ fic about the made-up film Goncharov, by which I mean, fic about the made-up academics who study the real-in-their-world film Goncharov and have fights about it in academic journals, and also write fic about it ➤ told entirely via text messages, ao3 comments, academic paper abstracts, and emails ➤ yes obviously it's enemies-to-lovers ➤ it's completely delightful, I love everything about it ➤ 6k words in length

Summary: <blockquote>Hanh tried not to look at the greasy fingerprints marking the seams on James’ silicone skin. “How do you feel, James?” “Dizzy.” He swung his legs against the workbench in perfect imitation of the teen he resembled. “But not so much as before.” The IT guy mashed his hands in an oily towel. He had thick forearms and a purple skullcap. “I replaced the gyroscopic components, but that’s not the source of the problem. His balance processing’s all screwed up, and the gyros are getting banged around. Whatever I put in there’s going to wear out the same.” Hahn didn’t like the IT guy. “Can he learn to compensate?”</blockquote>

<blockquote>Elaine was what you might call an “experimental prototype,” a lovely chassis pre-loaded (courtesy of my code) with all the knowledge of Western art, history, and literature that any discerning mid-21st-century parent would expect of their child. There was no reason to make her a woman, other than some ancient Pygmalion-esque tech bro power fantasy. </blockquote>

<blockquote>Shen Yuan wakes the way he wakes every day, lately: with an odd sense of dislocation, and his hand reaching out to the other side of the bed, surprised and disoriented to wake with the sheets cold next to him. He pulls his hand back, flushing, even though there's no one here to see him—what? Reaching out for a dream lover? Ridiculous. The strange feeling follows him throughout his morning routine, as he plops a packet of oatmeal into the microwave to prepare his breakfast, some sense insisting that someone should be cooking for him. char- In which Shen Qingqiu and Shang Qinghua accidentally reset the universe, and Luo Binghe and Mobei-jun transmigrate after them. Also, Luo Binghe runs a food truck.</blockquote>

<blockquote>Shang Qinghua finally convinces Shen Qingqiu to get, and use, Tantan (China's IP-rip-off answer to Tinder). Luo Binghe is less than thrilled with this development.</blockquote>

<blockquote>lan jingyi needs a fucking break by-jingY33T getting a phd in 3 things at one time sounded like a great idea when i started out | tired but hella wired | 21+ he/they views my own Location: probably the microfiche archives Website: uni.edu/cartographicfolklore Joined: August 2012 324 Following 5,678 Followers ------------- lan jingyi needs a fucking break by-jingY33T 6/8/22 LISTEN UP YOU HISTORY-LOVING FUCKS HAVE I GOT A WILD FUCKING THEORY FOR YOU: THE YILING LAOZU PROBABLY ACTUALLY EXISTED AND MAY HAVE BEEN A HUUUUUUGE SAPPY ROMANTIC: a 🧵 [1/?]</blockquote>

<blockquote>In his recent article in Contemporary Theories of Cultivation, Lan (2019) sets out to study the correlation between instrument choice and outcomes in the liberation of spirits. While his main thesis appears sound, his decision to limit the study to the qin, dizi, xiao and pipa undermines his conclusions. This decision falls prey to the fallacy that tradition cannot be questioned. It ignores, too, the fact that many practising cultivators will encounter spirits that will have no exposure to such “expectations.” In a small study comparing the use of a dizi with a theremin—undoubtedly a non-traditional choice—the theremin produced optimal outcomes in liberating spirits where: time since death was less than 6 months; spirit was younger than 25 and older than 17 at time of death; or spirit motivation included aspects of revenge. The conclusions reached in Lan (2019), while providing a foundation for future study, are therefore as yet incomplete. Mo Xuanyu Cultivation Studies, Center for East Asian Studies, Stanford University Lan Wangji, Wei Wuxian, and musical cultivation: a love story, told through academic articles, emails, texts, and videos.</blockquote>

<blockquote>“I do not ‘have a go’ at you,” Nicky said, with a frankly offensive degree of dignity for someone who had once called Joe both arrogant and lazy within the space of five minutes; that Joe had used the term ‘self-righteous bastard’ shortly prior was beside the point.</blockquote>

<blockquote>Joe’s going to get over his break-up blues by sleeping with the most attractive person he knows who he’d happily never speak to again. And it works like a charm! The cursed kind.</blockquote>

<blockquote>Who really wrote the works of Voltaire? In a highly controversial panel, three major candidates emerge.</blockquote>

<blockquote>In order to prevent “frivolous disputations unbefitting the history of our institution” (read: “some kid getting way in over their head, dying, and us getting sued,”) you couldn’t just walk in and demand to fight a snake.</blockquote> ➤ you can tell the author is familiar with academia and it's great

<blockquote>Some days you find yourself having sex with your academic nemesis in a storage closet and that’s just how it is.</blockquote> ➤ series consists of: Explaining Is Losing A Brief Report On Being In Love (diGenova, 2019)

<blockquote>It is thus with great surprise that I read the recent article by Sleazebaggano [9] that argues that Falleen are "reptomammalians" descended from reptiles that acquired mammalian reproductive strategies—including gestation and bearing of live young and production of a nutritious substance from pectoral mammary glands to feed those offspring—via hybridogenesis, i.e., ancestral mating and subsequent hybridization with a mammalian species. (An academic fight about whether Falleen are reptiles or mammals, because I wanted to write fic in the style of a snarky reply letter.)</blockquote>

<blockquote>“I think this is the one,” Emily said, just as she had said last time, and the time before, and the time before. (The last time she’d announced that she had the song, it was a treacly Edith Piaf-style torch song about Genghis Khan’s threesome with the Lady of the Lake and Spock from Star Trek, and their adventures conquering the land of glitter cheese.)</blockquote>

<blockquote>It feels like ghost stories should mean something, but it’s not at all clear what. I managed to get about a hundred pages out of the question, “What do these mean, anyway?” when I wrote my doctoral dissertation to get my PhD in Folklore, all without reaching an actual conclusion. My mother helpfully pointed that out when she read the manuscript. “If I give them a real answer, they’ll just complain about it,” I said. “So just tell me, Leah,” she said. “What do you think ghost stories mean?” “I think they’re the manifestation of people’s desire for answers about death and eternity,” I said. “But I could be totally wrong, especially since there’s a whole category of ghost stories that don’t seem to have anything to do with identifiable dead people.”</blockquote>

<blockquote>Victor makes it his goal to get Katsuki Yuuri, figure skater, to the first page of Google results. There is no way he could let such a brilliant skater be overshadowed by Katsuki Yuuri, winner of some stuffy academic medal, who is probably 50 and balding. Or: Yuuri has made a name for himself outside of figure skating, and athletes are slow on the uptake.</blockquote>

<blockquote>Graduate student Krrra, a member of a spacefaring tentacled race of methane breathers, attends an academic debate on the authorship of the famous play, Rmrreo and Jlljeet, which surely could not have been written by the human refugee Benvolio. Things get a little out of tentacle. Any resemblances to actual anti-Stratfordians, living or dead, may or may not be coincidental, because I'm lazy.</blockquote>

<blockquote>translation help (codex lucis) FROM: Cara Falco <msadventurerby-yahoo.com> 21/11/2013 15:03 TO: Stephen Greenwood <s.t.greenwoodby-chr.ox.ac.uk> hi we have a page of the codex lucis & need it translated asap. it’s the missing prophecy so there isn’t anything online. can u help? thanks cara</blockquote> ➤ I love the juxtaposition of the very different concerns of the various academics and of Cara

<blockquote>ABSTRACT: This article seeks to find the ways people remember Darth Vader and the forces that shaped those impressions and memories. Using a combination of Imperial propoganda and personal accounts from those who had personal interactions with Vader, the author analyzes widespread impressions of Vader and how they remain 30 years after the fall of the Empire. Originally published in the New Alderaan Journal Of Public History.</blockquote>

<blockquote>THE DARK FREUDIAN ACADEMIC OBI-WAN/QUI-GON AU</blockquote>

<blockquote>'The epic popularly known as The Lord Of The Rings is at heart a simple adventure story and has no real historical relevance.' Do you agree? Discuss with reference to Cox et al. (Essay set for first year undergraduates at the University of New Bree, F.A. 3011)</blockquote>

<blockquote>Tolkien (1964) remarked in an essay on fiction writing that any storyteller's "sub-created" world should have the "inner consistency of reality" according to its own rules (p. 47); it is the primary purpose of this paper to show, by geological analysis of the two major mountain ranges - Misty and White - featured in The Lord of the Rings, that Professor Tolkien's own creation certainly achieves this goal in the area of geology. The Misty Mountains will be considered first, with special reference to the underground tunnel-kingdom of Moria which provides a cross-section of their roots at a middle latitude; then the more complex geology of the White Mountains, including the travertine caves of Helm's Deep and the exposed pluton around which the city of Minas Tirith is built, will be considered and a tentative theory of their orogeny proposed.</blockquote> ➤ access-locked

<blockquote>Submitted for publication in the Journal for Xenocoital Studies. Abstract: I present the first study of sexual relations between Vulcan and Human males, from a study of 100 sexual encounters with a single Human male. The time taken for the Human to achieve orgasm was measured under four types of contact: manual stimulation of the penis, oral stimulation of the penis, oral stimulation combined with digital contact with the anus, and anal penetration. The optimum parameters for producing orgasm are identified, and empirical relations are presented between the time taken to orgasm and the pressure of manual or oral stimulation or frequency of anal thrusts.</blockquote>