LINKDING

Summary: Martin Pale learns from Catherine of Winchester, several centuries too late. ➜ a yuletide fic, for Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell ➜ About the tudor-era magician Martin Pale and his relationship with his tutor, Catherine of Winchester, from the golden age of magic ➜ gosh wow I am just -- so blown away by this?! it feels like it fits so perfectly into the interstices of canon. The undeniable weight of reality that the whole piece has, even as it is shot through with shards of the numinous....the characters all being people who are difficult, and real, and not altogether pleasant, but you love them for how real they are. ➜ Pale and Catherine are so different from each other, yet so connected, and though we get to hear much of Pale's life, Catherine remains as mysterious to us as she is to Pale. And yet we know her from who she is. ➜ idk, idk, I'm not sure how to explain this better! I just....really recommend reading this fic. it is so satisfying. ➜ 16k words

Summary: <blockquote>Ever since he was pushed into the Abyss, Luo Binghe has been dreaming of a strange world. In it, Luo Binghe's own face is everywhere, and his story is written out in humiliating detail for some stupid twink to read about. Luo Binghe hates the story, and he hates the dream realm, and he hates the godling within it - Shen Yuan - most of all. Unfortunately, Luo Binghe can't do anything about it - within these dreams, Luo Binghe is stuck within the body of a doll.</blockquote> ➤ it's always a good day when nyoomerr posts a new svsss fic! ➤ this one is about original lbh, beginning in his abyss years, visiting shen yuan in his dreams ➤ lbh can't move or act or speak in these dreams but he gets to hear/read about everything sy says about lbh ➤ over years lbh gets more and more obsessed with sy (obvs) ➤ I love watching lbh's growing realizations of the nature of his frustrations, mediated through getting to hear sy express things that are so different from what anyone in his waking life ever says ➤ I love how much he craves someone who SEES him like sy does, and yet sy can't see all of lbh because the parts of lbh's life he gets to see are all mediated through the nature of what a stallion novel will focus on! ➤ and the ENDING. it is perfect! I'm feral at the thought of what will happen next ➤ 17k words in length

Summary: <blockquote>The Old Master thinks Chen-Chen is bored, and sends him on an interesting case . . .</blockquote> ➤ during the time when LC is working on healing mcs as much as can be done

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>

<blockquote>“Do you know people die of tooth infections?” “Stupid way to die,” Wei Wuxian mumbles. “I agree,” Wen Qing says. “So: you’re going to the dentist.” / While on the run, Wen Qing drags Wei Wuxian to a free clinic where they are confronted with someone from their past lives, a root canal, and the devastating suggestion of how things could be different.</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>Nie Huaisang stole happiness from Lan Xichen. He stole peace. If he could just see him, and see for himself exactly what he’s done, and know—that will be enough. Then he’ll be able to paint again, and his hands won’t shake as he does it, and he’ll remember why he ever in his life bothered to put brush to ink to paper. After all, a man should have to live with his mistakes. There is no other way to learn from them. His brother believed that.</blockquote>

<blockquote>The second time he dies, it’s almost funny. He laughs—or well, he tries to. It catches on his broken ribs, comes out a rasping gasp instead. It’s funny. Really. The Flower Crowned Martial God, dying of a broken neck amidst the wildflowers.</blockquote> ➤ xl's many experiences of death over his hundreds of years

<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>100 days before the Fire / Lizzy was in the kitchen, chopping onions, when Nina walked in the front door to their apartment. “I’m in here,” she called, as though the rhythmic sound of her knife might not be enough to give her location away. Dinner would be simple tonight; Lizzy was too tired to spend much longer on her feet than she had already. She was looking forward to a weekend of doing nothing, catching up on sleep, maybe working on some of the million projects she always meant to get started and then never did. Nina appeared in the doorway a couple minutes later, leaning against the frame. Her curly hair was a little damp; the weather had been grey and rainy off and on all day. “So you remember I had that doctor’s appointment today,” Nina said softly. “Yeah?” Lizzy dropped the chopped bits of onion into the hot oil, where they started to hiss. “What’d he say?” “He said it’s time.”</blockquote> ➤ this is gorgeous

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

<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>Three makes some choices.</blockquote>

<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>Lan Zhan looks so sad. He holds out his hand and says "Help." "Aish, this man," Wei Wuxian sighs. "What's wrong?" Lan Zhan holds out his hand a little further, insistent, and Wei Wuxian sighs again and takes it. A costly mistake that results in getting pulled deeper into Lan Zhan's apartment, squawking protests about how he's still wearing his shoes that Lan Zhan ignores. He leads Wei Wuxian down the hallway to the bedroom at the end. Then he shoves at Wei Wuxian's shoulder until he loses his balance and sits on the edge of the bed. Then he climbs on after him. / Thirteen years after he dies on New Year's Eve, Wei Wuxian is reunited with Lan Wangji.</blockquote> ➤ an amazingly good sense of place as well as development of the mood created by the narrative in the reader

<blockquote>Dear child, I would like to tell you a story. I’d like to have one ready for you the moment you open your eyes. This is the gift I intend to prepare to welcome you to the world, for a story is a most elegant and efficient program. When human children are born, they are given fairy tales, which help them compose an identity out of the haphazard information that surrounds them. The story provides a structure. It gives the child a way to organize data, to choose—and choice is the foundation of consciousness.</blockquote>

<blockquote>Stephen took hold of Jack's face again, but not this time to cherish. He held him still—Jack making a mild complaining sound—and moved back far enough for the lantern-light to fall upon Jack and bring him into focus. There—there, on his jaw, where Stephen's hands had grabbed him—a faint smudge of the silvery dust. And on the side of his neck where the shirt lay loose, another trace of it, glittering like assassins' knives; Stephen remembered how he had combed all of his treacherous fingers through Jack's hair, stealthily savouring him. Contaminating him.</blockquote>

<blockquote>Head disciples Shen Qingqiu and Liu Qingge are caught by slavers and locked in a woodshed. It’s a rat trap meant for rat boys, and Liu Qingge isn’t one. Shen Qingqiu would’ve been pleased at his humiliation, if he wasn’t certain that this—either the trap or Liu Qingge himself—would utterly destroy him. Somehow, they make it out as friends.</blockquote>

<blockquote>Wei Wuxian braces himself for what might come next, the story of how this man died by the Yiling Patriarch's hand—at Nightless City, at the Burial Mounds, as the rest of the sects tried to bring that great villain to account. "What was his name?" Uncle Gan sits back, twiddles his thumbs as he thinks. "Well, it'd be Wei something, of course." "Wei Changze, wasn't it?" chimes in a new person, and if anyone agrees or disagrees, Wei Wuxian does not hear them. His wine bowl slips from his grip and the sudden clatter of it barely registers over the unexpected sounds of his father's name. Wei Changze, slipping so careless from a stranger's mouth here in small Taozi, here of all places under the open sky. Wei Changze. - Wei Wuxian meets his grandmother. No, not the immortal one. The other one.</blockquote>

<blockquote>To someone who knows how to look, Gusu Lan is watching and waiting, one eye on the horizon. When Wei Wuxian fails to return to Cloud Recesses on time, Lan Sizhui takes matters into his own hands. </blockquote> ➤ fic from sizhui's pov, but lots about how/why it makes sense for wwx to keep traveling post canon

<blockquote>For a lifetime of bad choices, Yue Qingyuan decides to bet everything on this one: to keep Shen Jiu by his side, or die trying.</blockquote> ➤ Full of hurt people hurting each other because they don't know how to care for each other and it's very yes

<blockquote>‘You think me selfish,’ Lan Xichen says, still avoiding his eyes. In the following pause Nie Huaisang seriously wonders whether Lan Xichen is about to snap, grab Shuòyuè and take his head clean off. He gets to his feet, and braces himself. Lan Xichen opens the doors. The effort seems to pain him, like he has aged, or the doors are heavy. ‘You are right.’ It’s barely a whisper, strained so thin it has holes in it. Nie Huaisang thinks he might have misheard — overwhelmed by the loud, furious beating of his own heart — until Lan Xichen repeats, ‘You are right.’</blockquote> ➤ slash-flavoured gen, lxc & nhs talk post-canon about their unresolved issues

<blockquote>Lan Xichen closes his eyes and holds the rules in his chest. He is a pond, slow-moving and lined with cattails, bending around rocks and honoring dams. He knows a limit of grass and beach and stone, knows how far he can lap over their edges. He does not dry up, he does not flood. He takes rain and spills, branches, gravel--he glints sunlight at his surface, and pulls ugly things down below the coating of his silt. / A study of Lan Xichen's year in seclusion.</blockquote> ➤ internal screaming

<blockquote>Beside her, the second clarinet shifted in his seat and grumbled, “I thought there was going to be a new conductor. What’s the point of holding rehearsal without a conductor?” The complaint lit the first clarinet’s seething anger. He should shut his mouth and tune his clarinet. Yes, the new conductor was late, but the ensemble had all gathered, when, for too long, they hadn’t known if they would ever gather again. Two weeks at home, with nothing but shrieking children and her mother and sister-in-laws’ chorus of laments—oh our menfolk, oh the senate, oh the drought—was enough. She needed this. Didn’t they all, right now? They would have an ordinary rehearsal if she had to drag each one through it by their nose.</blockquote> ➤ Oh wow this is gorgeous, intense and beautiful and real, and the slow careful building towards the perfect end

<blockquote>"Perhaps most tragic of all is the absence of Andy Burgess outside of Scranton history. We know that she was brave and determined based on her actions during the Scranton Flood. We know that she loved and was loved in return, that her final thoughts on the day of her death were about Nile. But who she was outside of that has been lost to the pages of history. Though many people have shown up over the years claiming to be her family, there has been no actual proven familial link to this day. In many ways, Andy Burgess exists because of Nile's letters, her words doing more to immortalize the Hero of Scranton's human existence than any biographical text to date...And perhaps, at the end of the day, this was the greatest demonstration of Nile's love for Andy Burgess: to keep her alive long after she was gone." - Smith, A. (2079). The missing link: A study of the absence of women in early twenty-first century queer studies. Queer Studies, 2(22).</blockquote> ➤ the one where andy died

<blockquote>Later, when he’s older, it’s this that A-Yuan will remember most: the stretch of silence, the two of them both dirty and shaking with fever, as he looked at Brother Rich, and Brother Rich looked back at him.</blockquote> ➤ does an incredible job of evoking a tone and mood, and the quiet delicate complexities of emotions

<blockquote>It was the first time James had seen Y’suf in nearly two Turns, since his best Harper – for intelligence as much as song – had gone to a Hatching at Ista Weyr and never come back, suddenly thrust into a new life as a brown dragonrider.</blockquote> ➤ a pern au where the characters are working on fixing all the oogy gender and sexuality stuff that goes on in the canon! beautiful ➤ so far: A Queen Weyr Flying Free Out Of The Blue Piece By Fragile Piece

<blockquote>A boy is going to die. The only question is: what is Huaisang going to do about it?</blockquote> ➤ Oh holy heck this is INCREDIBLE, I was riveted throughout, and I love how it portrays the complicated mix of emotions and motivations that Nie Huaisang and Mo Xuanyu have, and the way everything leads inexorably to this horrible and perfect end.