LINKDING

<blockquote>In Prohibition New York, Tebaldo Cappallett struggles with his feelings—for his cousin Julie, who's bobbed her hair and is suddenly far too grown-up, and for a boy he met a long time ago and tried to forget. This time, nobody dies. But it's close.</blockquote>

<blockquote>Kidnapped from their everyday lives, Victoria and Zoë have been sent to Regency England to seek out the Doctor. How will they cope with a world of genteel manners, balls, elopements, and the threat of imminent fiery destruction?</blockquote>

<blockquote>Trying to settle on Yuletide requests (!!!) AND convince other people to sign up, and somehow that led to me squinting at the jpeg of Elizabeth Parker's Sampler at the V&A Museum and transcribing the whole thing because it's so difficult to read and the only text version I could find online had a ton of mistakes. (It's probably somewhere really obvious but NEVER MIND it's done now!) Probably don't read this unless you're in the mood to be horribly depressed (also: gigantic wall of unpunctuated text). TW: abuse, attempted suicide, religious guilt.</blockquote>

<blockquote>Wakulla Springs, in the Florida panhandle, is the deepest submerged freshwater cave system in the world. “Wakulla Springs” is a novella by Andy Duncan and Ellen Klages, which we hope will surprise and delight you as much as it surprised and delighted us.</blockquote> ➤ Very good as historical fiction, but the final paragraph of the story that seems to be making it something sff just felt entirely out of place and also not well foreshadowed or anything. ➤ And anyways the first two parts of the story felt so fully realized and interesting and complicated, and then the latter two were so insubstantial and almost pointless-feeling coming after the first two parts. They didn't feel like they actually CONCLUDED the story that was begun in the first two parts. ➤ I suppose that sff ending paragraph might be about the minor running theme of believing things? But that theme was NOT important enough to be anything like a strong note to end on. ➤ At any rate - super definitely totally worth reading for the first two sections, which come to around ~28k of the total ~34k of the story as a whole. And the final two sections do have some good stuff too, they're just a lot less interesting or immersive.

<blockquote>“Burning Girls” by Veronica Schanoes is a fascinating dark fantasy novella about a Jewish girl educated by her grandmother as a healer and witch growing up in an increasingly hostile environment in Poland in the late nineteenth century. In addition to the natural danger of destruction by Cossacks, she must deal with a demon plaguing her family.</blockquote> ➤ WOW THIS WAS REALLY GOOD

<blockquote>Presenting a new original science fiction story, “A Clean Sweep With All the Trimmings,” by author James Alan Gardner, a Damon Runyon-esque tale of courteous guys, bulletproof dolls, and the fedora-clad spacemen that bring them together.</blockquote> ➤ This is a fun story but I feel rather bad for Kitty. I want to know more of her story. And I want her to have a future where she manages to live for herself. :(

<blockquote>History is a thing we make—in more senses than one. And from more directions.</blockquote> ➤ OH DUDE. This story starts off a bit slow but it is totally worth the read

<blockquote>Okay, madame-madeleine, deeply questionable historicity ahoy and let’s not even talk about Roman names or my total lack of knowledge of this (vague but definitely Republican BC) period of Roman history. Also let us not question why Tybalt let himself get dragged to a questionably historical bacchanal in the first place. Um. Also this turned into a fic about Tybalt having a seizure, so…content warning for epilepsy, and as always I tried to be a bit vague about the exact nature of his illness, since canon is so stage-y to start with. ALSO IT’S SUPER DEPRESSING, SORRY. Rómeó és Júlia, Tybalt & Mercutio, T/PG.</blockquote>

<blockquote>Epponina resents and envies her family's new slave girl. (A tiny snippet of Roman Gaul AU.)</blockquote>

<blockquote>November, 1943: Three years after the Germans marched into Paris, Grantaire is surviving the Occupation by drinking black market alcohol and trying to stay out of trouble, but his life is turned upside-down when he becomes entangled with a group of young Resistance members, including a laughing girl who jumps out of windows and a man whose blazing eyes convince him to do things he might not live to regret.</blockquote> ➤ wip through chapter 2 as of bookmarking

<blockquote>"Euphrasia ate like someone who never had enough food—Valyanos recognized it, with an inward shudder, from his time in the mines, before the arena and his wooden sword—methodically scooping soup into her mouth with the bread and cleaning the bowl with the crust until not a single chickpea remained, nibbling the apple down to the barest core." Valjean and Cosette in Roman Gaul, 38 B.C.E.</blockquote>

<blockquote>Eponine is having a lousy night working the crowd at her usual speakeasy when in wanders a wide-eyed little rich girl, who promptly gets herself in a spot of trouble. Even the devil has to do a good deed sometimes. (1920s Chicago AU/slight crossover with Some Like It Hot, but you don’t need to know the fandom.)</blockquote>

<blockquote>Bahorel and Bahorel's Laughing Mistress: the Cold War Spy AU.</blockquote>

<blockquote>"It's only a story, Xury," said Téo gently. "I know it is a story, " Xury replied with wounded dignity. "I am fifteen, not five. But do you see why she is so important to us? She never quit. No matter what was flung at her, she kept on. And eventually she won. There are worse stories, Téo. Like the story that sings loudly, 'You are alone, enslaved, helpless and without hope, and thus it shall be forever.' That is a terrible story to believe in."</blockquote> ➤ AAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!!!!!

<blockquote>In Ancient Rome, Les Amis -- or rather, I suppose, the amici -- are supporters of Catiline in the conspiracy of 63 BC. Events progress about as well as you would think.</blockquote>

➤does what it says on the tin

<blockquote>War looms on the horizon as Marcus' homeland of Etruria is faced with the unreasoning demands of the Gauls, a vicious, deadly foe. Young and lonely, Marcus begins a tentative friendship -- a friendship that could become something more -- with Esca, a prince of the Gauls. But the differences of the two nations cannot be ignored, and both Marcus and Esca must choose between the needs of their peoples and the desires of their hearts.</blockquote>

<blockquote>There is a new sun shining over the desert. Though most of us were pretty fond of the old one. Welcome to Night Vale, an atomic community.</blockquote>

<blockquote>The first time I kissed Frank was the night Joe Cornish died.</blockquote> ➤ Or to quote the author's notes: <blockquote>I credit this story's genesis largely to Ann Cvetkovich's An Archive of Feeling, which is a book about what lesbians have done and still do to memorialize their traumas from and contributions to activism in the early years of AIDS. In the midst of a larger discussion about the power of rallying around ACT UP's identity, some of the lesbian members told stories about how they were having affairs with gay men back then -- and could tell nobody, for fear that their other gay-rights-involved friends would completely shun them.</blockquote> ➤ It's weird to be tagging this history when its events begin only 30 years ago, but that IS ancient history when it comes to this stuff.

<blockquote>(Who will not be slaves again!) In other words, the Amis as 1960s Freedom Riders, based on the Nashville college students who sang so many protest songs in jail that, apparently out of annoyance, the Birmingham police drove them back to Tennessee. For the Les Mis Across History ficathon.</blockquote> ➤ defs have "Calypso Freedom" as sung by Sweet Honey In The Rock stuck in my head now.

<blockquote>A brief submission for the Les Mis Across History fest, and a tiny sliver of a possible pre-Civil War AU. Jean Valjean and Cosette settle in Cass County, Michigan, which was so well known for harboring runaway slaves that it helped prompt the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850.</blockquote>

<blockquote>This is it, my first ever fic. Written for Les Mis Across History, set in the Western front of World War I, also a kind of “apology” for sending the E/C zeppelin into angst-land.</blockquote> ➤ the Christmas Truce of 1914

<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.