LINKDING

<blockquote>AU, 1794. Enjolras and Combeferre, trying to navigate the turmoil of the French Revolution side-by-side, find themselves struggling to reconcile their views of the Terror. Any misstep in such a time could be fatal, and each feels the strain of conflicting ideas on their friendship.   "I do not want you to become one of those innocents who, despite the best efforts of the terror to remain just, are considered counterrevolutionary and pay the price.” Combeferre met his eyes. “Yet if my death is one of those which would bring about the future of the Republic?”</blockquote>

<blockquote>In the south of France, a group of young men once came together to teach, to learn, and to fight for the rights of all humankind.</blockquote>

<blockquote>Well, if you do card sharps of the old west, obviously you need to have, like, one be a Jew and one a Chinaman and maybe one of them crossdresses as a saloon girl</blockquote>

<blockquote>The Brick was popular with soldiers on both sides of the US Civil War - but the edition published in the Confederacy was slightly censored. In a moment of relative calm, a pair of fanboys from the opposing armies compare notes on what the work means to them.</blockquote>

➤ Explication of the allusions Victor Hugo makes when talking about the Enjolras-Grantaire relationship. Or should I say, the Enjolras/Grantaire relationship, because dude.

<blockquote>"Mirage," thought Rainsford. But it was no mirage, he found, when he opened the tall spiked iron gate. The stone steps were real enough; the massive door with a leering gargoyle for a knocker was real enough; yet above it all hung an air of unreality.</blockquote> ➤ or: big-game hunting a more challenging prey: one that can reason.

<blockquote>Thomas is manipulative, ambitious, and ruthless. He's also lonely as hell. And then the new gardener starts at Downton, and everything changes. (a slightly alternate look at season three, or: Thomas might be mean but he also needs a hug)</blockquote> ➤ oh wow so good. ➤ I know so little about Downton Abbey I couldn't have previously named a single character in it, and apparently this fic has now entirely determined how I am going to imagine Downton Abbey. ➤ Sshhhh, don't ruin my beautiful headcanon.

<blockquote>Five Alternate Universe versions of Mulan: canon AU, historical AUs, modern AU, sci-fi AU, with each highlighting a different aspect of the Mulan story.</blockquote>

<blockquote>An epistolary romance novella set in 1920s London among lesser specimens of the Bloomsbury genus. Young writer Jade Yeo is about to find out what a lot of trouble a negative review can cause.<blockquote>

➤ short story set in the US in the world of the Small Change trilogy ➤ bleak vibes

<blockquote>I am American. We are all Americans. The year is 1942. A Japanese-American girl’s life is turned upside down by Executive Order 9066, and she must cope with a life confined to the barbed wire of an internment camp in the Arizona desert. There, she struggles to weigh her continued loyalty to her country (which has betrayed and ostracized everyone she loves) against a closely guarded family secret that could change the course of history.</blockquote>

<blockquote>"Last I heard," interrupted Golovin, whose sweet smile softened what would otherwise have been a sharp profile, "the point of a free country is that you can buy your coffee and listen to your music where you please, and that you can sell that coffee and play that music for somebody without anybody interrogating anybody about political preferences first. Or are you fellows Soviets? Because if you are, I--" "Don't get cute," growled Sanders, who had a voice like thunder and had never, in the six years Les had worked under him, been afraid to use it. He pulled Brenner's sheet toward him and pointed to the top line. "November 8 of last year, three Negros with known communist sympathies were arrested coming out of your establishment--" "Is liking music while being colored a federal crime now?" Golovin folded his arms and looked smug. In another context, that might have gotten him at least a chuckle; here, no one was laughing.</blockquote>

<blockquote>In which it's 1964, Camelot is an advertising agency with a budget problem, Merlin is a copywriter who loves to twist, and Arthur is a junior partner who loves to shout. More or less.</blockquote>

<blockquote>It was the war's fault that she was there, in dungarees and with all her wavy red hair tied back in a kerchief, her hands grubby in the crevices of her knuckles and palms, holding pneumatic tools she hadn't known had existed two weeks before, wearing a gold locket with Tom's picture in it the way his letters promised he kept what few pictures he had of her wedged in the crevices of the metal that held his bunk to the wall. The war was responsible for how the nails she'd always kept so nice were ragged at the tips and cuticles, and rimmed around and beneath with heavy black-brown grease; the war was why she came home to an empty house and cooked supper for one and jumped in the middle of the night at every unexplained noise and sometimes stayed awake until dawn, hugging Tom's pillow to her chest and telling herself it was going to be all right.</blockquote> ➤ happy comfortable poly (V triad) during and after WWII ➤ and the art that goes with it is perfect

<blockquote>The patron saint of media piracy, of course, is St. Columba of Iona, who borrowed a psalter from St. Finnian, sometime in the 6th century CE, made a copy, and refused to give St. Finnian the copy when he returned the original. St. Finnian demanded the copy back, St. Columba declared it was his, and they appealed to King Diarmait of Ireland, who declared "every cow its calf, every book its copy," in favor of St. Finnian. This being 6th century Ireland, it ended in Columba raising his clan in rebellion against the king, and around 3,000 men died in the Battle of Cúl Dreimhne before Columba went into voluntary exile in Scotland to avoid excommunication. He took his copy of the psalter with him when he went, though!</blockquote>

<blockquote>In which Marcus is a historical novelist and almost all the characters are Roman-British historical reenactors; a romance in emails and bickering over historical details, with guest appearances by EVERYONE.</blockquote> ➤ modern au of the book The Eagle of the Ninth, where they're all in a historical reenactment group together ➤ it's a delightful fic, written by someone who Knows what historical reenactment groups are like. it's exquisitely well drawn and so funny ➤ written entirely in the format of emails on the group's listserv ➤ includes Marcus/Esca but is about the cast as a whole, really, and I love to see all the different characters making an appearance! ➤ 5k words in length

<blockquote>What's the point of it all, when you’re building a wall, and in front of your eyes, it disappears?</blockquote> ➤ Tetris as a metaphor for life, as the ao3 tag says.

➤ does what it says on the tin

➤ does what it says on the tin (also, oh, poor book!Marcus!)

➤ In which Methos is (or pretends to be) Dionysos.

➤ It's about...a greek temple to Diana? Or something? IDEK, but it's a beautiful poem anyways

William Caxton (c. the late 1400s he was the first man to bring a printing press to England) who struggled daily and amusingly to homogenize the many dialects and versions of English extant in his time. In one of his prefaces, he personally describes some of the difficulties he encountered when he came to print English for the first time:

<blockquote>It's this terribly feudal poem, which I was writing to explain the place in the middle of the feudal system to someone who understood the top and the bottom, and everything else followed from it.</blockquote>

➤ Technology and society's curmudgeonliness about it, all the way back to Socrates and the written word

➤ does what it says on the tin

➤ delightful shousetsu bangbang regency romance.

➤ brilliant like all of frostfire's stuff. The hittite fic.

➤ on her translation of Wulf And Eadwacer, and an academic citing her translation without notifying her.

➤ a fascinating Old English poem, translated with comments by Melannen.