LINKDING

Summary: “It started with the ghost,” Horatio said after a moment, clearly coming to a decision. He looked upset, finally, but in a frustrated way, not in the way you would expect from someone who had just witnessed four people die, and one of them in his arms. “I got roped into it because of the ghost.” // Why Hamlet chose to put his trust in Horatio. ➜ yuletide fic - for Hamlet ➜ taking an interpretation that Horatio and Hamlet barely knew each other before the start of the play, and running with it from Horatio's pov ➜ I love the way this interpretation shapes the story! ➜ And Horatio's pov is so good. the way he feels helplessly drawn into the mess by Hamlet's charisma, never sure what he can do or what he should do, but unable to make himself step back and leave Hamlet alone ➜ because Hamlet IS so charismatic, and so visibly struggling at the same time! and there's so much depth there that Horatio simply cannot have the context to understand, but he wants to, he wants to be there for Hamlet ➜ but in the end, of course, all he can do is tell everyone what happened. ➜ I'm so emotions!!!! ➜ 9k words

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: Lan Wangji summons Wei Wuxian's spirit using Inquiry. ➤ flashfic about lwj successfully summoning wwx's spirit after death to ask questions ➤ OUCHHHHHHH YES IT'S SO GOOD ➤ 350 words in length

Summary: Pleasuring Wu Ming won’t break Xie Lian’s cultivation. But it will go against what has always been expected of him, and he feels a perverse sort of glee at the thought of doing something so uncharacteristic of his old self. A boot on that flower, grinding it further into the mud. He tilts his head at Wu Ming. “So?” he asks. “Did you lie? Will you run, now that you know what I want from you?” / Xie Lian pressures Wu Ming into giving him spiritual energy via a blowjob, with the goal of pushing him away before he leaves on his own. Wu Ming doesn’t want Xie Lian like this. ➤ ooh a compellingly painful fic about xie lian testing the limits of wu ming's devotion, leading to a sexual encounter that neither of them feel great about ➤ it's so very them for that period in their history: xie lian trying to push wu ming away because he thinks wu ming is better off elsewhere but doing it by being horrible to him, and wu ming feeling an awful mix of self-loathing and heady excitement for getting to be touched this way by dianxia ➤ 1k words in length

summary: <blockquote>“If you died,” Huaisang started, not knowing quite where he was going with this. “I mean, you did die, da-ge, but if someone had killed you… what would you want to happen next?” / In the wake of Nie Mingjue’s death, Nie Huaisang realises how much he’s been left in ignorance. How could the artsy little brother be left to run their ancestral asteroid-mining clan? What other secrets are hidden in his san-ge’s past? And how should he get revenge? Maybe having da-ge’s personality backed up on a server was supposed to help with all this. Maybe.</blockquote> ➤ mdzs space au about nie huaisang and his years-long project in avenging his da-ge ➤ a repeated theme throughout the fic is nhs visiting and talking to back-ups that had been taken of nmj's personality before death, and the way that this makes literal how HAUNTED nhs is by his brother's absence is just sooooooo good ➤ the worldbuilding is great, the things that are changed from canon due to this different context are great, the anguish and monofocus of nhs are great ➤ I AM ALL EMOTIONS ;_; ➤ 8k words in length

Summary: <blockquote>Juliet met an awesome guy at a big party her parents threw and fell instantly in love! With a meet-cute like that, what could go wrong? (Turns out: literally everything.)</blockquote> ➤ for the film Romeo+Juliet, and focuses on the Romeo/Juliet relationship ➤ set to the song "Parachute" which I previously knew from an extremely cute Leverage vid, so it was fascinating to see how this vid pulled out very different themes from the song and made a much darker, more painful vid, though cut through with moments of cuteness and levity, as the tension ramped upwards towards Romeo and Juliet's inevitable end ➤ it was so good! ➤ 2:52 in length. Music only, no added sounds/dialogue. No subtitles.

Summary: <blockquote>Shen Yuan has had a push-and-pull relationship with Shen Qingqiu for years. Shen Yuan knows that Shen Qingqiu is meant to be a villain, but he knows just as well that many of the things Shen Qingqiu was accused of in Proud Immortal Demon Way were just shitty misunderstandings, and over the years Shen Yuan has become reluctantly fond of the tsundere asshole that is his Shizun. Abusing Luo Binghe was not a misunderstanding, though, and Shen Yuan will do whatever he can to correct the fact that he wasn't there to protect Luo Binghe when it happened. / “Shizun, I already said that I like beasts best - if I can’t raise Luo Binghe to be my shidi, can’t I raise him as my pet instead?”</blockquote> ➤ this is a fic that really understands the fundamental problem with original sqq, which is that the child abuse is real but so is the tragic backstory. he contains multitudes! one feels complex and conflicting things about him! ➤ ok so the fic is a canon divergence fic where shen yuan is transmigrated in early as a disciple of og!sqq, and it's a bingqiu fic but also a fic about the master-disciple relationship between sy and sqq, and also about sy's relationship with his role as head disciple on the peak ➤ and it's so good at all of that! I love what it does, I love all the sides of sy you get to see and all the things he cares about and puts his energies into (... and what he doesn't), it's all so perfectly him ➤ and aughghhhhhh I have SO MANY FEELS ➤ I am very emotion. I highly recommend. I want to talk more about some of the stuff but I don't want to post spoilers. ➤ 36k words in length

Summary: <blockquote>all I really want is some peace, man</blockquote> ➤ author's note: "doomed best friends who understand each other so deeply" ➤ an Untamed vid about Wei Wuxian & Wen Qing ➤ ahhhhhh I have SO MANY feels about them and this vid GETS them ➤ ouchy in the best way ➤ audio is solely the music ➤ no subtitles ➤ 4:41 in length ➤ thanks to lesbianwangyibo for the rec!

Summary: <blockquote>Jingyu is quiet. He’s been quiet ever since the news came back about Chiyan army’s betrayal and subsequent slaughter at the hands of Xie Yu. Since the death of his uncle and cousin and aunt.</blockquote>

Summary: <blockquote>Wei Wuxian & Jin Guangyao as narrative mirrors.</blockquote> ➤ the bit it says about how people often talk about how lwj and lxc both put all their love and trust into one man, and only one of them was right to - but actually before his resurrection wwx ALSO causes a lot of death and harm to loved ones

Summary: <blockquote>Luo Binghe forces a smile, but it’s too painful to look at, and you have to glance away. “Shizun surely knows that this disciple's bloodline is— Heavenly Demon blood possesses remarkable properties. This disciple has been reviewing historical accounts of feats that those with Heavenly Demon blood achieved using dual—” His voice wobbles and breaks. He takes an unsteady breath and as you turn back to him, you see him close his eyes. “Using methods unworthy of Shizun's ears. Shizun is free to punish this disciple however he likes. Whatever he pleases. Just as long as Shizun wakes up, that’s all.”</blockquote>

Summary: <blockquote>Over the course of his life, Xie Lian learned that there were some fates worse than death, that death could be a mercy—far too benevolent for those of Yong'an. They stripped him of his entire life: his friends, his family, his crown, his kingdom, his godhood. Xie Lian lost everything and he was being forced to live with it, so no, he would not be so kind as to gift his enemies with that which he craved most. They deserved one of those fates far worse than death, and he knew exactly how to give it to them. / Or: Darkness hangs heavy over Xie Lian. Wu Ming looks after him.</blockquote>

Summary: <blockquote>“Your highness,” White No-Face sighs. He sounds like a disappointed parent. “You’re harming your cultivation, to go around like this. Your cultivation demands purity.” “Fuck off,” Xie Lian says. (A very drunk Xie Lian is instructed by White No-Face to keep his cultivation vows. He decides to do the opposite.)</blockquote>

Summary: <blockquote>The slow purpling of the evening sky makes their robes blend into their shadows, their shadows blend into the still water stretched out before them. Home, Jiang Cheng thinks, satisfied, and A-Ling exhales softly against him, and everything is good, and none of them move to leave.</blockquote>

excerpt: <blockquote>When the call comes, be calm. Say to your wife, "My brother is dying. I have to fly to California." Try not to be shocked that he already looks like a cadaver. Say to the young man sitting by your brother's side, "I'm his brother," Try not to be shocked when the young man says, "I'm his lover. Thanks for coming."</blockquote>

<blockquote>When Yue Qi rushes away to save her Xiao Jiu, it is not a cultivation sect that finds her, but rather a nun. Meanwhile, when Shen Jiu decides enough is enough and escapes the life of a slave, her skills enable her to work at the Warm Red Pavilion. Both think the other dead, but when their paths cross once more, they cannot help but be drawn to each other. Yue Qingyuan, wracked with guilt, offers herself in penance. Shen Qingqiu, she says, may punish and hurt her as she likes. And what is Shen Qingqiu going to do, except take the chance to corrupt that immaculate nun as best she can, and pull her away from the heavens, so that they might go to Hell together, hand in hand? In other words, a Tang Dynasty historical au, featuring far too many footnotes.</blockquote> ➤ author's tag: #meta-textually exploring the way fandom conceives of guilt and punishment

<blockquote>Luo Binghe rehearses all the different ways his reunion with Shizun might go.</blockquote>

<blockquote>“Who are you?” Wei Wuxian asks finally. Sizhui takes a deep breath. This is it. He isn’t ready. But he is. Er-ge said so. He lets his eyes fill with tears and spill down his cheeks. Wei Wuxian leans away, probably unconsciously. Good, Sizhui thinks, a little viciously. He never promised Er-ge to tell Wei Wuxian the truth, but he has never had a better weapon at hand than exactly this. “My name is Nie Sizhui,” Sizhui says. “I’m the master of the Unclean Realm, now.”</blockquote>

<blockquote>Hua Cheng dreams of a dark coffin.</blockquote> ➤ perfect remix of "this slumber that creeps to me"

<blockquote>In the three-layered coffin in Yong'An, Xie Lian dreams.</blockquote>

<blockquote>It’s always dark in a coffin. The dead don’t need light or air. They don’t need space, either, because the reality of the coffin is a world in and of itself: a small one, separated from the three realms by layer upon layer of pain turned grief turned obscurity until not even that remains, washed away by waves of existence flowing around it. All that’s left is the heavy weight of being forgotten. Time measures it with life growing in the soil above. Xie Lian knows it intimately. After all, he was once nailed with a wooden dowel to the bottom of a coffin, and buried in it. / Or: Hualian in the coffin in chapter 121, but make it traumatic rather than horny.</blockquote>

<blockquote>Raleigh “Rally” King was Axial Conglomerate’s sweetheart. Redrender’s knight in shining armor. You’d watched him sweat in high definition all through season twenty-seven’s desert sequence, his sword gleaming in the sunlight. You’d watched him cry too—big tears rolling down his cheeks whenever someone died and he couldn’t save them. At the time, you’d rolled your eyes. Audiences love sentiment, so of course Rally would cry. The drones are always watching-cutting-streaming the tastiest morsels of Redrender for everyone at home. He’s faking it. It’s acting. You know better now, after eight seasons as a cast member on Redrender. The show gets inside your head. You can think you’re going to treat it like a game all through the psychological profiling and the camera tests. You can tell yourself it’s just reality television while signing away the rights to your DNA samples and signing the contract that agrees that termination is at the studio’s discretion. You can pretend it’s all fake until you’re shipping down to Redrender and then it’s not a game anymore. It’s your life.</blockquote> ➤ it's about an intense and important relationship of trust (platonic or not? not relevant) where they can't actually know each other in any real way because they're always having to play for the cameras! ambiguous ending but good

<blockquote>“It was like this behind the Iron Curtain.” The woman in the grocery line was wearing a cowboy hat and had the leathery skin of someone who’d spent their entire life in the sun. Smoker skin, Payne’s mother had called it. She always loved finding ways to blame people for their misfortunes. Payne thought about ignoring the woman, pretending not to hear. Instead, she tapped her headset, shutting off her podcast. “Pardon?” “In school, studying communism. Hours of lineups to buy bread and butter. Hear the teachers tell it, you’d get to the front of the line just as they ran out. Wasn’t supposed to happen in the so-called free world.” “In the free world, your shelves are fully stocked and having to wait for a cashier is a violation of human rights.” Payne’s lips were numb. Hadn’t Butch said this, last night? Smoker Skin tipped her hat. “You know during Stalin, every house over there was haunted?” Yeah. This was why she didn’t talk to the living anymore.</blockquote> ➤ unnerving but in a good way

<blockquote>When Yue Qingyuan has a bright idea, Shen Jiu takes what he can get.</blockquote> ➤ holy shit

<blockquote>[All of the Wens die and the world calls it justice. The Yiling Patriarch dies and the world rejoices. His soul responds to neither summoning nor Inquiry. A shattered soul, not enough to linger. The war is finally over—history rewritten. And Lan Huan wants to retch as he watches the ghost of a Wen boy follow his brother into the Cloud Recesses.] Or: A-Yuan in the Cloud Recesses for thirteen years as a ghost.</blockquote>

<blockquote>She took the coffee-hot chocolate mix, grinned at the misshapen white marshmallow lump that Doris had fabricated for her coffee, and came to a stand next to the forward window to look out upon the expanse of Venusian clouds that roiled pleasingly in front of the blimp lab, aglow with the sunset that would deepen over the next few weeks. She used to stand here with Jorn, her husband. What was it now … six … seven months ago? He’d made it all of three weeks after Earth went silent, the poor emotional, beautiful wreck of a man, weeping nonstop for days.</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>Yue Qingyuan knows he is seen as an able negotiator, a skilled leader, someone who accomplishes any task set before him, no matter how impossible. He does not feel it now, as his two greatest failures sit before him.</blockquote>

<blockquote>“I know what you’re thinking,” he insisted, “and you’re a fucking idiot. You think it’s not fair that I have a core and you don’t. You think your life has been hard. You think the worst possible thing has happened to you.” He knew it was true, because he remembered thinking that. He’d lain in bed for days like a fool, believing that nothing could be worse than losing every hope of cultivation. “You hate seeing me because I have something that you don’t, and I —” he choked on the words. “You have no fucking idea.” The other Jiang Cheng’s face grew more and more contemptuous as he talked. “You’re wrong,” he said icily. “I don’t want a single thing you have. Not at the price you paid.” --- Jiang Cheng and Wei Wuxian find themselves in a world where things went differently.</blockquote>

<blockquote>Tenzing Tharkay, trying to find William Laurence during the invasion of Britain, in more than one sense, must reconcile the man he knows with the massacres he is committing.</blockquote>