LINKDING

<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>Poe guesses he’s a little fucked-up now, more than before. He certainly has a lot of nightmares. He tries to take it in stride. It doesn’t really surprise him. What had he expected? (Dead, he thinks. You expected to be dead.)</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>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>Lucy looks around, wondering what makes the Professor's workshop so dangerous. At first glance, she can't see anything special: just a bunch of computers on a rack and a half-dozen monitors scattered about to no apparent plan, each surrounded by drifts of notepaper and graph paper. But then one monitor switches from its screensaver -- snow falling onto pine trees -- to a black screen with a single line of text. Lucy steps closer, curious. <Hello?> the computer says again. The cursor blinks in silent invitation.</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>Bucky becomes Natasha. Natasha becomes the Winter Soldier.</blockquote> ➤ I AM SO HAPPY RIGHT NOW. THIS IS SO GOOOOOOOOOD

<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>The lesson here, Susie thinks, is that tricking Death is tricky business. How do you outwit the personification of oblivion? Chess, obviously, won’t be the answer. Or: Susie plays Calvinball with Death.</blockquote> ➤ SUSIE PLAYS CALVINBALL WITH DEATH. I was so there from the summary, and the fic does not disappoint.

<blockquote>One is a beginning; two, opposition; three, instability; four, death. But five is justice, six is unexpected, and seven makes things complete again. Seven days of Kalasin's life.</blockquote>

<blockquote>Scenes from a Valdemar that never was. (Or: the one where the Companions are evil.)</blockquote>

<blockquote>"When he finally registered the presence of a tail, Montparnasse knew with a sickening finality that it was too late." Or, Montparnasse screws something up beyond repair.</blockquote>

<blockquote>The thing about being young is that it happens to most everyone.</blockquote>

<blockquote>We, the People: a thirty-year retrospective and an examination of the role of the Nation in world history, for Earth Atlantic, 7 December 2035, excerpt.</blockquote> ➤ this is one of those stories where I'm not quite sure I understand everything, but it's wonderful anyways

<blockquote>Five Alternate Universe versions of Mulan: canon AU, historical AUs, modern AU, sci-fi AU, with each highlighting a different aspect of the Mulan story.</blockquote>

<blockquote>In the final days of Earth as we knew it, Chang E won the moon lottery. For Earthlings who were neither rich nor well-connected, the lottery was the only way to get on the Lunar Habitation Programme. (This was the Earthlings' name for it. The moon people said: "those fucking immigrants".) Chang E sold everything she had: the car, the family heirloom enamel hairpin collection, her external brain. Humans were so much less intelligent than Moonites anyway. The extra brain would have made little difference.</blockquote>

➤ Sequel to "Scars". ➤ In which Vecchio as Langoustini encounters Victoria ➤ the sequel to this is Slush

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>