LINKDING

Summary: <blockquote>Eyes first. If I can get the eyes open, I’m good. If not, the meat’s too far gone, which means I have to try again, and I hate fucking trying again. This time’s okay, though. Eyelids roll up surprisingly easy, even if it takes the eyes themselves a minute. That’s fine, though; everybody’s eyes are different, even if nobody but me knows it, because how many eyes do you get to see through in your life? Me, I’ve lost count. The soft jelly settles, the focal centers slowly pull themselves into place. I can hear the pupils contract against the light. Eyes blink once, twice. We’re in business.</blockquote> ➤ content notes for ummmmmmm body horror? body grossness definitely. also, murder, plus sex with weird consent stuff going on. drug use. probably other stuff too. ➤ but it's not, like, horrifying and depressing about any of that! it's remarkably sweet! ➤ an absolutely incredible piece of original fiction about bodyswap/bodysharing that really makes its home in exploring the weirdness of the situation from the inside. What Is Embodiment. How to have a relationship with the body you're in. Bodies have a lot going on! The brain is part of the body. ➤ probably this story isn't for everyone, but if it is for you then you are in for a TREAT. I adored it. ➤ 14k words

Summary: <blockquote>Meng Yao rescues the first Jade of Lan and takes him into his home, becoming far more involved than ever anticipated. / The guards are getting closer; the man, likely Lan Xichen, tries not to curl in on himself. Meng Yao gives himself five seconds to consider the implications of getting involved before he swings his work bag off his shoulder and drops it rudely in the First Jade of Lan's lap. "I told you not to slouch," he says, a firm note of displeasure in his voice. / Stands alone from the prequel fic.</blockquote>

<blockquote>Generations after the events of the novel, Lan Xichen and Jin Guangyao come out of retirement to investigate a series of mysterious fires targeting the watchtowers.</blockquote> ➤ the fic works well as is but I am still desperate to know what the solution might be that will honor yao-guniang's ambitions and keep her safe from yao-zongzhu at the same time!

<blockquote>Every good villain is the hero of her own story. On trial for the assassination of Chancellor Gorkon, Lieutenant Valeris tells hers.</blockquote>

<blockquote>Once there was a little girl who tried very hard not to be born. Her father the king and her mother the king’s wife had six children already – all sons. </blockquote>

<blockquote>“The Pauper Prince and the Eucalyptus Jinn” by Usman T. Malik is a fantasy novella about a disenchanted young Pakistani professor who grew up and lives in the United States, but is haunted by the magical, mystical tales his grandfather told him of a princess and a Jinn who lived in Lahore when the grandfather was a boy.</blockquote>

<blockquote>I’ll pretend I’m going blind if I have to: start fumbling my work, carving sloppy lines onto the dolls, squinting, tripping over nothing. Everything my mother did in her twenty-fifth year. Everything my aunt and uncle did. Now the three of them sit in the best positions by the fire; how honored they are, for giving their sight to feed us. How well-fed, while we labor carving more dolls for the pot. They’ll kill me for laziness if I don’t go blind in the next year.</blockquote>

<blockquote>Everyone thinks my brother is nice. He set up a rescue centre for birds, after the terraforming accident poisoned the lake. That's always the image of him, holding a bird covered in sludge. The birds are never the same after they're cleaned, but the gossips never talk about that. Cleaning birds is a safe way to make people notice you, and my brother likes safe. I jumped off a cliff once. He was all, "You'll die if you jump." I broke most of my bones, but I made it. It's worth trying for the feel of it. Not the bones part, but the rush of something new. It should have been something, falling and surviving. But the gossips only cared about how much it upset my brother.</blockquote>

<blockquote>The state took Aphra away from Innsmouth. They took her history, her home, her family, her god. They tried to take the sea. Now, years later, when she is just beginning to rebuild a life, an agent of that government intrudes on her life again, with an offer she wishes she could refuse. “The Litany of Earth” is a dark fantasy story inspired by the Lovecraft mythos.</blockquote> ➤ a subversion of Lovecraft's Cthulhu mythos ➤ see also Ex Urbe's excellent review of this story: http://www.exurbe.com/?p=2951

<blockquote>The play proceeds as it has every night. At first, Lucheni had simply told the story, a dry progression of the facts as he knew them, without emotion or argument. He had made his argument already, with a needle file at the dock and later in the memoirs they took from him in prison, in smuggled paper and sooty ink and moonlit nights.</blockquote>

<blockquote>OKNO OKNO can't tell at first which radio it's coming from. That's understandable; you've got twenty-six, all arranged on various shelves around your apartment. Twenty-five before you picked up the latest one, a little box from the thrift store, runs on two double-A batteries, not as useful in a catastrophe as the ones that you crank to life, but, well, you can't be cranking every minute of the day. And anyway, it's not a catastrophe. Yet.</blockquote> ➤ odd and I don't really understand everything but it's extremely compelling and well-written and it's totally worth reading.

<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>Hamlet in space, starring sensible and heroic Ophelia, genderswapped Claudius, clones Rosencrantz and Guilderstern and alien Fortinbras. (Alas, there are no sharks in space riding motorcycles, nor is there a time machine.)</blockquote> ➤ HOLY CRAP THIS IS AMAZING

<blockquote>What if Snow White was a cool character who knew what she wanted and how to get it?</blockquote>

<blockquote>To the city of York, in the year of our Lord 1780, there came a young man who had fallen upon hard times.</blockquote> ➤ or, how Childermass came to work for Norrell. ➤ An interesting story, and somewhat unsettling and stick-in-your-head in the way that any good fic about the magic of JS&MN ought to. ➤ It's -- oh, I'm describing it wrong. But this fic is extremely effective at feeling utterly like a part of the world of JS&MN.

<blockquote>Now, I read The Prince in school, and remembered ideas including the stock “It is better to be feared than loved,” and “The ends justify the means,” but I also remember having no idea then why Machiavelli was a big name.  I’m pretty sure my teacher didn’t really know either.  In fact, most introductions to the works of Machiavelli that I’ve read didn’t even manage to make it clear.  After ten years as a specialist in the Renaissance, I think I can finally explain why. (the fundamental mistake most introductions to Machaivelli make is that they start by talking about Machiavelli. Context is everything.)</blockquote> ➤ THIS IS SO INTERESTING. First of an amaaaaaaaazing series of five posts about Machiavelli (links to the next at the bottom of each)

<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>

available on the wayback machine <blockquote>Nell Gabrielli: They tell me I’ve saved nearly two hundred people’s lives already, and helped almost five hundred more. (Pauses.) That’s important. That’s real important. Richard Forrest, Medical Ethicist: Ms. Gabrielli is a prisoner of the medical system, plain and simple. What’s been done to her is a travesty. And the fact that she was convinced to consent to it only makes it worse.</blockquote>