LINKDING

Summary: It was easy to want what you couldn't have. Ever since her father had told her that she was destined for the royal harem, Jian Lan had been confident she'd make it to the rank of consort. But she'd also known that, in the meantime, she'd be having a passionate love affair with some unsuitable man around the palace. ➤ TGCF fic about the era after xianle falls to yong'an, when Jian Lan finds work in a brothel ➤ Jian Lan's perspective on her developing relationship with Feng Xin ➤ I love the sharpness, the awkwardness, the quiet ground-down miseries - and yet the grasping onto what hope and beauty and love that can be found in the midst of it all ➤ Jian Lan and Feng Xin are doing their best! I'm emotions ➤ and I love the gentle femdom that Jian Lan leans into when Feng Xin's women issues make it challenging for them to have sex <3 ➤ 5k words in length

summary: She'd never been anyone's favorite before he'd told her that, the lesser daughter of a prestigious family that had enough heirs and spares that she could be given away and the act called an honor. It was a scary but lovely thing to be the best, the most loved. When she'd heard those words she'd clutched them to her chest and hoped she'd never prove them false. That did not mean that she did not hate him, too. // OR: Ning Yingying loves her shizun; she loves Binghe, too. These things come into conflict, whether she wants them to or not. ➤ an svsss fic set in the original PIDW, about Ning Yingying ➤ and holy shit this fic is so good, so everything I didn't even know to hope for from a fic about pidw nyy, I am all emotions?! ➤ the complexity of nyy's relationships with sqq and lbh, the mix of love and hate, the way she doesn't feel able to do anything but to witness and to go along with how things are ➤ and seeing the awful things that happen through her eyes.....it's so powerful and bleak and believable ➤ I adore this fic, I'm just absolutely blown away by it ➤ 9k words

Summary: It holds its own hand in front of its face. Rotates it around. Examines through the darkness the sharp knuckles, the bony wrist, the unnatural pallor of its skin. This must be his body, it realizes. His body as it was before it was burned: starved, mad, and dead, but not rotten yet. / He Xuan is sent to prison. Later, he dies. He persists nonetheless. Over the centuries, two people are constants: one who knows nearly everything there is to know about him, and one who hardly knows him at all. ➤ the He Xuan magnum opus we don't deserve but are fortunate enough to get to read anyway ➤ following hx from the beginning until after the end, with theeeee most perfect narrative voice possible for hx ➤ I spent the entire fic internally shrieking with delight bc everything about it is so good!!! ➤ the hx characterisation, the beefleaf relationship complexities, the whatever it is they have of hx and hc....the tiny perfect xie lian cameos, even! it's all! so good!!!! ➤ READ IT READ IT READ IT ➤ 64k words in length

Summary: <blockquote>The reality of things happening in order, one after another after another, is not at all like the Doctor imagined it would be.</blockquote> ➤ I left the doctor who era of my life behind in 2012 but when one of my beloved doctor who friends posted a new fic today inspired by the newest doctor who happenings, I had to read it ➤ and guess what I had SO many feelings! the doctor! and donna! and finding ways to rest and live a linear life on earth with people he cares about and learning how to find the mundane things worth paying attention to! ➤ 3k words in length

Summary: <blockquote>"Anne had thought herself quite finished with wanting, but this want, once stumbled upon, would not quietly lay itself down in the grave with the others." Eight years changes a person, but not beyond all recognition. Fred Wentworth and Anne Elliot, years after a final break, find that they are more alike, in some respects, than they thought before.</blockquote> ➤ a rewrite of Persuasion featuring butch 4 butch Anne/Frederick ➤ god it's so GOOD and I am so EMOTIONAL about it ➤ I love all the ways in which it is both the same and different, the ways their identities affect the things they do and the choices they make ➤ and I mentioned in an earlier post how meaningful it is to be able to see gender non-conforming people like me in historical fiction, living their lives, finding ways to be happy, finding their community. shaking hands with them across time. I see you and you see me. ➤ making Persuasion specifically be the story told is so perfect too because of how it's about getting to know yourself better when you've had time to grow up more ➤ also there's lots of excellently-researched historical content ➤ and lots of feels ➤ READ IT READ IT READ IT ➤ it's such a lovely ending and I nearly cried about it ➤ 47k words in length

Summary: <blockquote>There's a demonic cultivator in Lu'an. Jiang Cheng goes to investigate. So does Wei Wuxian.</blockquote> ➤ yunmeng shuangjie reconciliation plus good oc's

Summary: <blockquote>Sometimes a man's old enough to know his own mind, even if his brother worries, even if his family are living in exile in a mass grave, even if the boy he's set on is an unstable necromancer who could kill them all. Even if he has a history of making dubious choices. A vignette.</blockquote>

<blockquote>Some parts of the past, you don't tell people about, even if it's relevant to later behavior. Not until it gets thrown in everyone's faces. A Xie Lian in a very bad headspace who wears no shackles and a Wu Ming with a fancier saber have no idea what is happening. A very different sort of Amnesia Extra</blockquote>

<blockquote>After Guanyin Temple, Lan Wangji has to adjust to the fact that Wei Ying is here to stay...albeit in a body that's still unfamiliar to them both.</blockquote>

<blockquote>After Shen Qingqiu married Luo Binghe, Yue Qingyuan thought his role in the man’s life was over. However, as he carried the child-sized lord of Qing Jing Peak in his arms, he was grateful for this unexpected opportunity to bond with the person he cherished most. Shen Yuan, meanwhile, wondered desperately where the hell he was.</blockquote> ➤ I enjoy the ways it reconciles the three of them to what they can be to each other in this version of the world

<blockquote>Shen Qingqiu had been on Qing Jing for four years when he found out the truth.</blockquote>

<blockquote>He’s twenty-nine when he gets out of the Kiln. He thinks. Time moves in its own eddies and swirls — in the streets, in the war, in death. He thinks he died when he was eighteen and he thinks there was about a year there before he wound up in Mount Tong’lu and by his best guess, it’s been ten years since he’s seen the world outside of this mountain. So the newest Supreme Ghost King, first since the White-Clothed Calamity, emerges from the fire and wreckage of Mount Tong’lu a year shy of thirty. He steps out of the fire and the ash with teeth bared, and below his feet, the world shakes. / The road from Wu Ming to Crimson Rain</blockquote> ➤ Hua Cheng's story during the 800 years he's looking for his god!

<blockquote>"Gege," San Lang calls, his voice oddly strained. He isn't looking at Xie Lian's face, his eyes instead fixed pointedly over his shoulder. "You remember me?" Xie Lian takes a few tentative steps closer. "Of course," he says cautiously. "How could I forget San Lang so easily?" "But you said," he croaks, and then stops to clear his throat. He shakes his head, and then quickly walks over to meet Xie Lian halfway. "Gege," he whispers. "You said it wasn't happening to you." "I said what wasn't happening?" he asks, matching San Lang's volume. "Today," San Lang says, finally meeting his eyes. "Haven't you lived it before?" Featuring: a thrice-sealed coffin, an extravagant parade, and too many osmanthus cakes.</blockquote>

<blockquote>When the former Madam Lan hears that the new Sect Leader Lan married a criminal who is kept in the same house where she once lived, she has only one choice. She has to return to Cloud Recesses to rescue Wei Wuxian!</blockquote> ➤ first chapter is what's in the summary, second is lxc's response to his mother's return

<blockquote>A company data analyst is assigned to find someone to blame for Murderbot going rogue. Doing so requires the company making connections between data points it had not previously made.</blockquote> ➤ yeah. YEAH.

<blockquote>The original Shen Qingqiu suffers a severe deviation that unsettles his daemon, transforming them into a childish and inconstant creature, too curious and without any memories of the life that has made him so bitter. His soul is now unrecognizable to him and everyone can see his humiliation. Shen Yuan isn't exactly happy to have transmigrated into Proud Immortal Demon Way at all, much less as this doomed scum villain's daemon. A His Dark Materials Fusion AU. Knowledge of HDM not required.</blockquote> ➤ enjoyed this more than the average daemon au, I think because both the daemon and human are characters I care about, and so I cared about their relationship. genius idea to make sy sj's daemon!

<blockquote>Over a year after Shen Qingqiu's death, Luo Binghe consults his servant's servant, concurrently his disgraced martial uncle, for a way to bring the love of his life back. Shang Qinghua sends him in the direction of a certain time-traveling artifact, which supposedly brings one to the day they first met their soulmate. Odd, though, that the artifact ends up missing the destination by just a few years… A story in which post-Abyss Luo Binghe relives his disciple days, while juggling his secrets, traumas, and some unexpected revelations about the man he loves on top of that.</blockquote> ➤ they both keep on going over and over the same things, binghe trying to convince his shizun that he understands and will forgive him if sqq must push lbh into the abyss, and sqq trying to convince lbh to not torture and murder him after sqq's betrayal, because sqq is incapable of truly hearing and believing. And like. YEAH.

<blockquote>It isn't that Xie Lian isn't afraid of his body, of whether it will do what he wants it to do, feel what he wants it to feel. But he's much more afraid of taking slow careful steps into the unknown than he is of leaping. Or: Xie Lian can, in fact, get it up, often and enthusiastically. Getting off is a little trickier.</blockquote>

<blockquote>AIs don't always feel emotions the same way humans do. They don't always express those emotions in the same way, either. That makes living and working together a challenge, but one that the crew of the experimental advanced research transport The Perihelion are more than willing to rise to.</blockquote>

<blockquote>It’s not one of his finer moments of inter-sect diplomacy. Lan Jingyi lunges and they both go spilling onto the thankfully padded rug. Jin Ling flails and manages to slap him across the face, but eventually Lan Jingyi gets him pinned to the floor, knees on either side of Jin Ling’s torso, each of his wrists held down by his head. “Hello, Sect Leader Jin,” Lan Jingyi pants, trying to catch his breath as Jin Ling struggles like a weak kitten. “This humble one is grateful to be welcomed to Jinlintai. Now, if you’d kindly tell me what the fuck is going on.” / When Lan Jingyi receives two cryptic messages from Jinlintai, a conversation many years in the making starts to unfold.</blockquote> ➤ BABIES

<blockquote>“Should we not have taught them to avoid our own mistakes?” Hyeong-seol says, calmly, “What mistake?”   After witnessing his son's indiscretion with the king, Jung Seuk-jo is forced into a confrontation with an old friend.</blockquote>

<blockquote>“It is possible,” Hua Cheng began slowly, for once looking like a real person and not a god who had meticulously chosen a human suit in which to travel this petty and boring mortal world, “I may have lied a little, to my cohort. I may have told them, a few of them, not many, I was married.” “Okay,” Xie Lian said, assuming he was talking about his special someone. “To you.” “WHAT.” Or: After a meltdown goes viral and ruins his acting career, Xie Lian moves to LA. Unable to find work, he slips into a severe depression, until Shi Qingxuan hooks him up with a new roommate, an art student who has apparently been telling everyone they're married.</blockquote>

<blockquote>Luo Binghe has it all: the respect of the cultivation world, the home he always wanted, and Shizun's love. There's just one problem: if Shizun ever finds out he's a demon, it's going to ruin everything.</blockquote> ➤ I feel like the ending needed a little more emotional settling time after how very long lbh had been angsting about this stuff; it felt a little too abrupt for him to be making jokes about sqq liking him being a monster, for example. but overall a really delightful fic

<blockquote>(Or, Shen Jiu isn’t quite sure whose body he has stolen, but he knows for certain he isn’t going to give it back without a fight.)</blockquote> ➤ hopeful ending

<blockquote>One morning, Shen Qingqiu woke up a changed man. Yue Qingyuan is left trying to figure out what happened to make him so relaxed and affectionate.</blockquote> ➤ love getting to see a time loop from the pov of someone outside the loop

<blockquote>It’s too late for any of Hanguang-Jun’s rabbits to be awake -- one of the sundown chores for young disciples is to herd them back into their hutch -- but the rabbit field is as good a spot as any for quality sulking, so Lan Jingyi makes his way there. Someone has beat him to it. Lan Jingyi stares at Hanguang-Jun. Hanguang-Jun stares passively back. When Lan Sizhui is swept away with the Ghost General, off on a new adventure, Lan Jingyi is the one who returns to Cloud Recesses alone. </blockquote>

<blockquote>“Well, when I asked Wei-gongzi what you might want for your birthday, he asked me what I could give you that no one else could.” Lan Sizhui can’t help but smile. It’s so Wei-qianbei to answer a question with a question. “A-and I thought… if you wanted, I could…” The next words are so quiet, Lan Sizhui struggles to hear them. “I thought I could show you our family.” For Lan Sizhui's birthday, he receives a glimpse behind the curtain of all that was. </blockquote>

<blockquote>Sometimes Lan Zhan doesn’t work through lunch. Sometimes he makes conversation with coworkers in the halls. Sometimes he goes home instead of spending the last hour trawling through Grindr. But mostly, that’s exactly what he does. The sameness is comforting. His life spools out in easily measured increments: capsule collections, yards of hand dyed textiles, ninety day lead times, sell through figures, cost of goods sold. Every date in manufacturing can be calculated backwards and forward from a single horizon point: the date that the goods must arrive into the country where they'll be sold. Other than that, nothing else really matters.</blockquote> ➤ well this is devastatingly good

<blockquote>Murderbot is at a party. This is not a normal state of affairs for SecUnits. Neither is the comfy clothes or the sitting or the way the humans keep smiling in its general direction. The smiling, it suspects, will stop, if/when they realise their SecUnit has suffered some sort of catastrophic glitch and has no idea where it is or the specifics of its current assignment. So it's not going to let them find out.</blockquote> ➤ yessss

<blockquote>Liu Qingge and Shen Qingqiu have a bit of trouble with a succubus nest. This becomes Mu Qingfang's problem in a big way. OR Life as a medical professional in a world riddled with aphrodisiacs is hard, especially when you're half in love with a patient.</blockquote> ➤ the sex pollen stuff is just one small ordinary part of the world they live in, and the series as a whole is about the complexities of mqf & lqg's relationship over the whole course of their knowing each other, and it's all GREAT. So far it goes up to the five years of sqq being dead. ➤ series consists of: Oral History Objects of Affection