LINKDING

<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>

<blockquote>A loose re-telling of 'King Thrushbeard' in which the princess has more issues with marriage than with pride and in which a king truly must watch what he says -- or everyone will face the consequences.</blockquote>

<blockquote>A Mongol woman warrior, a Chinese princess who overthrew the Emperor, a cross-dressing French writer and an Egyptian inventor-mathematician help a city of quasi-Roman lesbians to outwit and defeat a host of aliens who treat humans as toys to be tested to destruction. Also features clockpunk attack robots, lesbian kissage, assorted dinosaurs and a telepathic pteranodon.</blockquote>

<blockquote>Paul Simon may have taken a few liberties with the events, but here's what REALLY happened down by the schoolyard. In addition to our narrator, it features Mama, Papa, the radical priest (and some of his less savory brethren), a reporter for Newsweek, assorted members of the law enforcement and legal professions, Rosie the queen of Corona and, of course, Julio.</blockquote>

➤ Death comes for Sophie. (Elisabeth's daughter, not Elisabeth's mother in law)

<blockquote>After Kjartan gets back from Norway, things go a little differently at the first feast in Laugar.</blockquote>

<blockquote>The charming and delightful tale of the Ingalls family’s extraordinary life as they do their best to survive after an onslaught of unspeakable undead horror.</blockquote> ➤ okay so apparently what I need to be able to enjoy zombie fic is for it to be written in the extremely straightforward and optimistic tone of the Little House books???? ➤ also at https://archiveofourown.org/works/424713

<blockquote>Mayhem is coming, spreading chaos and destruction in his wake.</blockquote> ➤ or: turning those weird Allstate TV ads into a creepy creepy thing

<blockquote>Private detective Marie Slade is landed with a strange case that just keeps getting stranger. Will she be able to solve the mystery before it's too late?</blockquote> ➤ a 12 Dancing Princesses noir au. not a happily ever after.

<blockquote>I know Rochester's actions in this part of the novel are often read as calculated, manipulative, or seductive. Certainly he's trying to manipulate - his motives are not entirely pure. But as far as what he does - guys, I think he's flailing. He's got no fucking idea. He's feeling things for this girl that his education and life have not prepared him for - he wants her, but not like that. He wants to be friends with her, and have her love him, but not with falseness or servility. And there is no script available to him for that sort of thing. PPL HOW U LOVE THEM? Jane is not a conventional love object; he can't go about wooing her by the conventional means he's applied in every other romantic/sexual relationship he's ever been in. So instead he ... dresses up like a gypsy and gets engaged to another girl that he doesn't even really like. It's farcical, a cross-gendered Emma, but the stakes are frighteningly high and the players are just frightened.</blockquote>

<blockquote>Hobbes turned over in bed and poked Calvin with his tail. “Maybe you live on a different plane of existence. That somehow we both occupy the same space and that’s why we can see each other and others can’t.”</blockquote>

<blockquote>Child Ballad 32 is a loathly lady story. The only popular version I know of is Steeleye Span’s “King Henry,” on Below the Salt. I have had this album for well over a decade, and occasionally I found myself wondering about the monstrous lady in the story, and even more about King Henry, who agreed to kill his horse and hawk and hounds to feed her. I don’t know that I’d easily forgive someone who forced me to kill my dog. This had been kicking around in my head for the better part of a decade, and then I was privy to a very odd conversation in a bookstore about people with extreme forms of body dysmorphic disorder, and then I drank a lot of coffee and drove for about forty-five minutes and “King Henry” came on the CD player and I went home and wrote the story in one long jag, which probably explains a few things about it.</blockquote>

<blockquote>You don't remember what happened before you went to live in the Hundred Acre Wood. (That's a lie. If you didn't remember, you wouldn't cry at the little things that feel like home. A Baltimore Orioles cap - like Bobby's, Bobby loved baseball. A whiff of gardenia perfume - Mom, getting ready for work one morning, lesson plans spread over the counter. A brown leather briefcase - Dad keeps it beside his chair, you used to slide it out when he wasn't home and snap and unsnap the locks.)</blockquote>

<blockquote>The wolf stalks her, and she hardens. The wolf eats her grandmother, and she hardens. The huntsman saves her, cuts her free, and Scarlett watches the old woman she loves so well beat him with a nearby walking stick, furious beyond the telling of it that they didn’t just let her go. She hardens. She grows up. She is not little anymore, though she will always be Red. She was born screaming. There are worse things in the forest than wolves.</blockquote>

➤ Racebending challenge, with Mary Poppins reimagined as an Indian ayah. ➤ as a commenter says: <blockquote>'It is a familiar arrogance she encounters; this certainty that they must be the heroes and पुरुषोत्तमs of their story.' The reason the sentence hit me so hard is that by the time I got here I was reeling with how powerful it was that This Story Is Not for Me. Which is one of those stupid points of privilege, you know? Why char-shouldchar- it be for me? And then I got to this line and it was so powerful.</blockquote>

<blockquote>In the capital, where our Queen lives, there are two universities.</blockquote>