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: <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>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>

<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>“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>

<blockquote>King's wives; king's sons.</blockquote>

<blockquote>The Force isn't the only kind of power</blockquote> ➤ Leia-centric, post-movie. This fic leaves me wanting to swear at it, in the most complimentary kind of way. HDU give me all these feels, fic!

<blockquote>(Or, a pregnant Diana Maturin, nee Villiers, spends her confinement at Ashgrove Cottage, writes many letters, and sends one.)</blockquote>

<blockquote>SHIELD goes down. Pepper Potts deals with the aftermath.</blockquote>

<blockquote>A young Tybalt and Mercutio have an unexpected encounter at a brothel.</blockquote>

<blockquote>Tybalt grows up.</blockquote>

<blockquote> Jean Valjean realizes that there is yet more that Toulon could take from him. Note: This story contains some offscreen rape of OCs, perceived sexual threat from someone in authority, a brief mention of suicide, internalized homophobia, and the main character spends much of his time dissociated from his surroundings. There is no graphic onscreen rape.</blockquote>

<blockquote>Grantaire and Eponine get drunk and have sex while roleplaying as Marius and Enjolras, respectively.</blockquote> ➤ damn, how to tag pairings when the sex is one thing but the feelings are other things entirely?

<blockquote>And having just said all of that about Susan, upon having given the matter far too much thought, the real Problem of Susan, to my mind, had nothing to do with her family dying. It sucks a lot, but it happens and people can die without God Specifically Being Out To Get You. People cope with that and move on all the time, and we feel for them, but they do not get recorded as one of the Great Literary Injustices. No, what I started thinking was that I’m thirty-five. I love my life. I have work I care about and a man I am quite desperately in love with. And if I suddenly fell through a wardrobe and was eleven years old again, I would go so batshit insane that they would have to make up new words for how insane I had gone. I expect I might have a hard time playing nice with the god responsible. So, y’know. (I realize that half my short stories turn up as “Point of view of the woman in this otherwise well-known story” and beg forgiveness in advance.) This one may even qualify as fan-fic! I make you a gift of it, although if my plane goes down in the Atlantic, please remember me for Digger and the Little Red Riding Hood thing instead.</blockquote>

<blockquote>All hillmen are traitors, and you always knew this.</blockquote> ➤ Or: giving Alex charaterization and motivation and backstory and a sympathetic viewpoint

➤ short story set in the US in the world of the Small Change trilogy ➤ bleak vibes