LINKDING

<blockquote>Four times Han definitely didn’t need anybody’s help, and one time maybe he did.</blockquote>

<blockquote>“Nah. We are one hundred percent shit-outta-luck,” she said, voice high and brittle as she leaned back from the computer. She gave a tight little laugh as she gestured at different possible trajectories, the different deflections achievable with nukes or booster rockets or heroic space missions. The wall of screens in front of us showed projected death tolls and ecological changes, with a lot of graphs that dropped sharply right at the end. “Earth is, uh … not to be melodramatic about it, but, absolutely doomed.”</blockquote> ➤ this is AMAZING

<blockquote>“You know,” Diana says as she strides back to you, “China’s really hot right now—with their new open-door policy, lots of people are (clamoring?) to invest there; I have people calling me all the time, asking if I have A-grade Mandarin.” She sets a brochure down on the desk and sits back in the executive chair across from you. “Have you considered selling your Mandarin?” You trace your hands over the brochure, feeling the embossed logo. China’s flag cascades down to a silhouette of Beijing’s skyline; you read the Simplified characters printed on the brochure, your eyes skimming over them so much more quickly than you skim over English. “How much?” you ask. Diana leans in. “A-grade Mandarin is going for as much as $800,000 these days.” Your heart skips a beat. That would be enough to cover Lillian’s college, with maybe a little bit left over—it’s a tantalizing number. But the thought of going without Mandarin gives you pause: it’s the language you think in, the language that’s close to your heart in the way English is not; it’s more integral to who you are than any foreign tongue. English you could go without—Lillian’s Mandarin is good enough to help you translate your way around what you need—but Mandarin?</blockquote>

<blockquote>The king had already enslaved two grinders for failing him. I didn’t want to be the third. Sitting in the best room of the grinders’ workshop, I rubbed the almost-finished hematite mirror over and over with a grindstone of fired clay, specially tempered for polishing. The king stood behind me, his gaze burning the back of my neck. Sweat beaded in my hair, between my elbows, under my knees. With a word, he could doom me to a lifetime of hard labor and rip me away from everyone I loved. I kept polishing.</blockquote> ➤ I really liked this one

<blockquote>A Staryk girl with a Jewish name</blockquote> ➤ YESSSSSSSS this is so good

<blockquote>When 19 year old Frederick Wentworth gets his heart broken by Anne Eliot, he conceals the fact from even his most intimate acquaintances. But his sister Sophia is not easily hoodwinked.</blockquote>

<blockquote>"If Vader captures you, if he threatens to torture or kill you, you tell him you're Padmé Amidala's daughter."</blockquote>

<blockquote>Fisherwoman Mika Sandrigal was lost at sea. She knew where she was in relation to the Candorrean coastline and how to navigate back to her home city, Maelstrom. She knew the time of day. She knew the season. She knew the phase of the moon and the pattern of the tide. She did not know the year.</blockquote>

<blockquote>Azelma looks forward to a pampered life in America, and resorts to fantasies as an escape from her life of abuse and neglect--but she finds that her father's plan to get rich through the slave-trade has implications she didn't consider.</blockquote>

<blockquote>When your father dies, say the Coruscanti, you are left clutching a star map for a different galaxy.   In this, as in many things, Leia is her fathers' daughter.</blockquote>

<blockquote>"Hello. Thank you. Breathe deep. My name is Thundertooth, of the line of Crookeye. Though, to be fair, you might know me better from some of my other roles." A TED tale from modern Dinotopia.</blockquote> ➤ authors' note: <blockquote>So my snapshot into a citizen of Dinotopia in a modern, global setting kind of maybe took a slight sidestep into an analogy on agency and representation in film, sort of, and oh god, I made myself sniffle for a T-Rex's homecoming.</blockquote>

<blockquote>Jade was the sort of backwoods girl who had a map of the countryside tattooed on her heart, and she could feel it in her bones when the pieces of her world shifted. So when the new family moved into the house across the road that late summer, she felt ripples of wrongness radiating out from them and their too-bright clothes, their bizarrely old-fashioned wood-paneled station wagon, and their rolling words that felt just a little to the left of normal. “Time travelers,” said Jade’s brother, watching them from the window the day they moved in. Jade stood nearby, not daring to move or breathe.</blockquote>

<blockquote>I tried the entire broad band to no effect. Another few Muspels straggled in from our race, and the little kids from the preteen course started to cluster theirs up with us, together, hanging in a constellation outside the station. Finally I heard a voice, but it was not a response, or at least not the kind of response I wanted. “Attention, incoming ships. This is the Chornohora Station auto-response system. The Station customs and immigration personnel are unable to process your ship at this time. Please proceed to another station for your trade and leisure needs. Chornohora Station is closed for quarantine. Please proceed to another station for your trade and leisure needs. Chornohora Station is closed for quarantine. Please proceed . . .”</blockquote>

<blockquote>He's shivering as he emerges from the pod. No surprise, he was frozen for like a billion years. I do all the stuff on the script, all the "Fear Not! You are a welcomed citizen of our Utopia!" stuff while I'm toweling him off. Apparently he's about as good as I am with awkward silence 'cause it's not three seconds before he starts making small talk. "So, how'd you get to be a. . ." He waves his hand. "A Tour Guide To The Future?!" "Yeah." The guy smiles gratefully at me. "I imagine you had a lot of training. . . ?" "None whatsoever!" I chirp. He looks confused. "Allocator chose me because I incidentally have the exact skills and qualifications necessary for this task, and because I had one of the highest enthusiasm scores!"</blockquote> ➤ this story is weird and incredible and I was very surprised to be having feelings by the end given how much I was giggling through most of the story. I love it.

<blockquote>A year after Sai's disappearance, Hikaru returns to Innoshima. And gets possessed once more by a Go-playing ghost – this time, Honinbou Shuusaku. Except Shuusaku doesn't want to play Go, and frankly, Hikaru doesn't know what to do with that.</blockquote>

<blockquote>The yarn baby lasted a good month, emitting dry, cotton-soft gurgles and pooping little balls of lint, before Ogechi snagged its thigh on a nail and it unravelled as she continued walking, mistaking its little huffs for the beginnings of hunger, not the cries of an infant being undone. By the time she noticed, it was too late, the leg a tangle of fibre, and she pulled the string the rest of the way to end it, rather than have the infant grow up maimed. If she was to mother a child, to mute and subdue and fold away parts of herself, the child had to be perfect.</blockquote>

<blockquote>Food and love have a lot in common. Leia learns how to cook. This takes some time.</blockquote> ➤ three times Leia cooks with someone else

<blockquote>Cosette begins to learn about her mother's past. Post-canon. (Sequel to Sub Rosa)</blockquote>

<blockquote>a story about systems of power, also bread. (Also, generally speaking, don’t name your first settlement on a new planet after the personification of long habit, social stasis, and rightful order. That’s asking for trouble.)</blockquote> ➤ about video games and vr, about settling new planets, about the prison industrial complex, and more

<blockquote>The Jewel of Athat was mainly a cargo ship, and most spaces were narrow and cramped. Like the Outer Station, where it was docked, it was austere, its decks and bulkheads scuffed and dingy with age. Inarakhat Kels, armed, and properly masked, had already turned away one passenger, and now he stood in the passageway that led from the station to the ship, awaiting the next.</blockquote>

<blockquote>.subroutine:2/monitor//ongoing .interrupt/anomaly/ The first despairing sob of Helen’s cracked voice registers, matches waveforms, and executes number 88 out of my 2,102 hanging subroutines. .subroutine:88/pre-dawn-comfort//execute The subroutine has been perfected by 812 iterations over three years:</blockquote> ➤ okay this is the second profic story with basically this exact same plot and premise that I've read but I don't care they're both good and I had feelings

<blockquote>A little girl who missed the sun suffered a terrible act of cruelty. This is what happened to Margot, after.</blockquote> ➤ this is based on a short story I've never read, but it's perfectly possible to follow this fic without being familiar with the source material

<blockquote>Sometimes the effects of head-injuries are not always readily apparent.</blockquote> ➤ okay I think this one might be worse than the one where Temeraire died

<blockquote>Rey accidentally time-travels, and realizes that Jedi are even more weird than she had ever imagined.</blockquote> ➤ temporary meditation-induced time travel

<blockquote>Leia’s to-do list consisted of just one task: defeat the First Order and reclaim liberty and justice for the galaxy. She had no intention of becoming anyone’s mother, and given how well her previous attempt at parenting had gone, that was probably a good thing.</blockquote> ➤ ugh found family feeeeelings

<blockquote>Telimezh has devoted himself to the Emperor's service, but he has always kept something back- a secret that he fears, if exposed, would strip him of every honour.</blockquote>

<blockquote>In the weeks after Mustafar, Vader must come to terms with his new body and the remnants of his past. In the process, he has a few conversations that he does not expect.</blockquote> ➤ renovating the jedi temple post-RotS, and encountering a lot of ghosts

<blockquote>“For you,” she mumbles, cheeks going pink, and shoves something into his hand. “Oh, hey, you don’t have to give me anything —“ he starts, looking down, then blinks a few times at his open palm. “It’s a rock,” she adds unnecessarily.</blockquote> ➤ I love how much of this fic consists of Rey having weird reactions to things because her life on Jakku has taught her very different things.

<blockquote>Dono and Byerly, just after the Council of Counts vote in A Civil Campaign.</blockquote>

<blockquote>I care more for that long age which I shall never see than for the little of Time that I hold // Padmé Amidala is forgotten, not gone.</blockquote> ➤ the two "ghost story" sections I don't like as much, but everything else is fabulous