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>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>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>

<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>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>“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>