LINKDING

Summary: <blockquote>A spirit has lain sleeping, unmoving, in the woods for longer than anyone can remember. For the girl by his side when he wakes, nothing will ever be the same, as she learns he is both kinder and far more terrible than anyone in her village imagined.</blockquote>

Summary: <blockquote>here were two out-of-towners gawking at Adalène’s window when she sat down alone at the table in her shop. She’d had a pair of seamstresses to work for her, once upon a time, to do all the fussier piecing and hand-sewing. Sacred seas, she’d had customers once, too. A hundred years’ sleep had changed those things and so many more besides. She frowned down at the piecework for the simple gown she’d laid out and fitted pale-pink thread to a needle. It felt silly, some days, to set to sewing. But her feet always carried her here, to the work table.</blockquote> ➤ about one of the common people also put to sleep in the sleeping beauty tale having to make her way in a changed world after they're all awakened

<blockquote>Of three parts is every story woven: the warp, the weft, and the fabric they make together. The warp is Constant Ivan, strong and steady. The weft is Clever Natalya, darting here and there. As for the fabric they make, listen and you shall hear.</blockquote> ➤ a satisfying fairy tale type of story

<blockquote>Clouds marred the sky that season, and sapped the earth. The roses did not bloom. He never crossed paths or matched wits with a green-kirtled girl, brash enough to lay claim to woods and heart, bright enough to be right on both counts. No, when teind-time came, there was no one to save him, save himself. So Tam Lin held tightly through the changes: he did not know if his “true self” was elf or mortal man, tree-eyed or true-eyed, bear or lion or burning coal; but he did not let go of his own hands, one clutched in the white-knuckled grip of a boy, one grasped firmly by a hazy, half-formed future. When he emerged from the water, he shrouded himself in green and said: I know you, I love you, I’m proud of you, you’re home.</blockquote>

<blockquote>When you needed a miracle in the old days, you would walk into the woods, or the sea, or the flat and windswept plains where reality was thin. If you had luck, charm, or raw and spiteful determination, something in the shape of a person would answer you. A bargain would be made. Eventually the thing in the shape of a person would come to collect. But the miracles remained—so long as the bargain was honored. Grey & Tender, LLP offered the classic condition: your heart’s desire in escrow, to be returned if you leave the firm. And of course, you would be given the continual opportunity to make partner, at which point the single miracle would become a drop in the bucket of all the miracles you could create for yourself. It was one of the fairer bargains. It was still a trap: to be transformed would be to become a thing that no longer needed a miracle.</blockquote>

<blockquote>When she came to the palace, the king had a wife. It's important to remember that. That when she came to the palace, the king was already wed.</blockquote> ➤ many good things about the fic but the last line was a crowning delight

<blockquote>Xie Lian held up the flyer, and squinted at it through the eye-holes of his mask. Beneath the words ‘Join the Selection! Be the Ghost King’s Bride!’ the sweeping eaves rendered in wobbly black ink matched the silhouette of the building in the distance. Paradise Manor. The Ghost King’s home. - ...The Princess and the Pea retelling? Set before the events of the novel. The Ghost King of Paradise Manor is selecting a bride. Xie Lian doesn't really know what he's doing there.</blockquote>

<blockquote>Here is a hard thing: adults' worlds are larger than children's. A place that feels next door to home for an adult can be a foreign land for a child.</blockquote>

<blockquote>Three sisters, one suitor. The stakes are life and death.</blockquote> ➤ A Fitcher's Bird retelling

<blockquote>“Help us,” my mother begged the rishi. “Pray to Sri Lakshmi, and ask her to take away this boon.” The old woman shook her head. “That might anger the goddess. You shouldn’t appear ungrateful.” After some discussion, the rishi devised a curse, one whose words I know by heart because my mother repeated them to me every night before I slept and every morning when I awoke: “If Rampalalakshmicharan turns an object into gold for another person, they must give him whatever he demands in return. If they don’t, the golden object will turn to ash and he will lose his ability forever.” It wouldn’t guarantee my safety, especially not while I was too young to understand the consequences of my actions, but it meant that no one could abuse my gift forever.</blockquote> ➤ retelling of Rumpelstiltskin from the Rumpelstiltskin character's pov, making him a sympathetic character

<blockquote>Dear child, I would like to tell you a story. I’d like to have one ready for you the moment you open your eyes. This is the gift I intend to prepare to welcome you to the world, for a story is a most elegant and efficient program. When human children are born, they are given fairy tales, which help them compose an identity out of the haphazard information that surrounds them. The story provides a structure. It gives the child a way to organize data, to choose—and choice is the foundation of consciousness.</blockquote>

<blockquote> Jiang Cheng ground his teeth together so hard Wei Wuxian winced in sympathy for his dentist. “Lan Wangji’s brother,” he bit out, “left him with you and asked you to try to break the curse, and you decided that meant you should go—go pimp him out to attractive women? Or, three fairy tales Wei Wuxian and Lan Wangji are absolutely not allowed to participate in. </blockquote> ➤ Snippets of fairy tale aus

<blockquote>Wei Ying first hears about the ball over dinner. "They're trying to marry off Second Prince," Fourth Uncle says, through a mouthful of stew. "There is going to be a ball, for all the gentry." "Everybody who's rich and titled, who's got a son or daughter the right age, will be invited. Second Prince will pick someone out." "He's probably very stuffy and full of himself!" Wei Ying snorts. "I pity whoever has to marry him!" (In which Wei Ying, a fugitive from justice, sneaks into the palace, steals from the imperial family, and eats his words. AKA, yet another Cinderella AU.)</blockquote>

<blockquote>“The gothic is at heart a romance between a girl and a house.” – Jo Walton</blockquote> ➤ a Beauty & the Beast story

<blockquote>Marcus stopped abruptly in the middle of the grass. A woman in a blue dress was already sitting on the Crisis Bench. He didn’t recognize the dress. She looked up from where she was sitting. “Sorry,” he said, holding up his hands. “I didn’t think anyone would be over here.” He didn’t think he remembered an introduction to anyone in that dress. It was a memorable sort of a dress. “I believe I ran into your mother inside?” he ventured, because he ran into so many mothers.</blockquote> ➤ the one where the prince in Cinderella is faceblind, which like, YES. Unfortunately ends at the point when they're separated post-ball, but their interactions at the ball are really cute.

<blockquote>Each night, her mother speaks to her out of the fire: come to me, my daughter. Come into the flames. And the Cinder Girl, the one they call Dirty Ella, even the housekeeper, even the kitchen maid, steps into the fireplace. </blockquote>

<blockquote>Il était une fois—there was a time when Ti-Jean was very old. His fiddle was long out of tune, and his brothers Cordon-Bleu and Cordon-Vert had moved away. He’d spent the gold the Devil put in his tuque, and the bones of the seven-headed dragon he’d killed were crumbled to dust. One day, he was sitting by the fire when • • • • “Wait,” Raccoon says. “Ti-Jean had brothers? There was a seven-headed dragon?” “Those are Ti-Jean’s other adventures,” I say. “Don’t you know any heritage?”</blockquote>

<blockquote>It was the middle of an autumn downpour when Tobias first met Henry Silver. Midsummer had come and gone, and the wood was quiet.</blockquote> ➤ oh my gosh this is so gooooooooood, a story about a folklorist and a wild man of the woods, and I love how beautifully balanced it is between the main romance and everything else that's important to the pov character

<blockquote>Fenella meets Queen Gold-tree on her wedding day, and meets the king at the same time. Gold-tree becomes a friend, and when she dies, Fenella and the king are left to pick up the pieces together.</blockquote>

<blockquote>A detective is called to a space station to solve the mystery of whether--and how--twelve astronauts are accessing the surface of a forbidden planet.</blockquote> ➤ oh gosh oh gosh oh gosh this is INCREDIBLE

<blockquote>When the carriage drives away without her, Ella doesn't cry. This Cinderella may not have a fairy godmother, but there are other ways to get to the balls.</blockquote> ➤ I kiiiiind of feel like the prince is only into her because he's not used to people saying no to him and it's novel, but otherwise I quite like this retelling

<blockquote>Tabitha walks, and thinks of shoes. She has been thinking about shoes for a very long time: the length of three and a half pairs, to be precise, though it’s hard to reckon in iron. Easier to reckon how many pairs are left: of the seven she set out with, three remain, strapped securely against the outside of the pack she carries, weighing it down. The seasons won’t keep still, slip past her with the landscape, so she can’t say for certain whether a year of walking wears out a sole, but it seems about right. She always means to count the steps, starting with the next pair, but it’s easy to get distracted. She thinks about shoes because she cannot move forward otherwise: each iron strap cuts, rubs, bruises, blisters, and her pain fuels their ability to cross rivers, mountains, airy breaches between cliffs. She must move forward, or the shoes will never be worn down. The shoes must be worn down.</blockquote> ➤ In which the heroines of two fairy tales help each other recognize how terribly she's been treated and run away together. Plausibly-deniable femslash, I think, though maybe the author meant it as gen

<blockquote>the evil stepmother was always evil, okay. say her abuse of her own daughters was different than that of cinderella’s - but it was still abuse. giving them impossible expectations, telling them they were never good enough, never pretty enough, never smart enough.</blockquote> ➤ in which the stepsisters actually act as sisters for cinderella

<blockquote>The sorceress keeps her magic on the hearth, under a big, iron cauldron where its red glow can mix in with the always-dying embers. --- Days of a nightingale & dreams of her lover</blockquote>

<blockquote>Not every child is born knowing their fate.</blockquote>

<blockquote>The witch nodded and drank her own coffee and motioned for Leah to drink hers (the orange peel turned out to be a long strip at the bottom of the cup). When it came to talking about her husband, how he’d been before she’d broken the curse, Leah found herself stumbling. “He was so beautiful,” she said. “Monsters are, often,” the witch agreed.</blockquote>

<blockquote>Another possible explanation of the green house in Narberth.</blockquote>

<blockquote>So the background to this is the Mabinogion story of Manawydan the son of Llyr, in which the heroes sit on a hill in Narbeth and everyone else in Wales disappears to fairyland, and (I'm leaving things out) the four of them have various adventures getting them back, which all concludes with an agreement that the fairies will never do it again as long as people don't paint their houses green -- and by and large, in West Wales, people don't. But I was in Narbeth today, and there's this one green house, and I was wondering about who lived there, and I realised it must be a fairy denialist.</blockquote>

<blockquote>is a dark fantasy about a kitchen girl obsessed with fairy tales, who upon discovering a ragged woman outside the castle during a storm, takes her in—certain she’s a princess in disguise.</blockquote> ➤ I think tor.com and I have different opinions on how dark a fairy-tale-inspired story needs to be before it counts as "dark". I mean yeah murder happens but like, that doesn't make this appreciably darker than plenty of fairy tales I've read in my life

<blockquote>When Princess Talia was fourteen, her eldest sister was placed in a tower. Princess Adina was eighteen by then, and so of a marriageable age. She had grown quite beautiful, though she was more willful than winsome, and she did not care for the notion of the tower very much at all. Their mother did her best to persuade her on the subject. After all, the queen herself had been eighteen when her own parents had sent her to live in that very same tower, to be safely tucked away until her husband could be chosen, and then ride out to claim her. A tradition going back ages and ages.</blockquote> ➤ Princesses in towers making their own ultimate choices about their fates, actively