LINKDING

<blockquote>“And what exactly am I supposed to have done?” He sighed. “Oh, don’t make me say it,” he said, “it sounds so silly. And, like I just said, I can’t prove it. Sure, I can point out that in the last year, forty-six people, rich and famous and influential people, who’ve had their portraits painted by you have suffered catastrophic strokes, leaving them paralysed and catatonic. But you would then point out, equally truthfully, that sixty-seven equally rich, famous and influential people have also been painted by you and are as fit as fiddles. And then you’d challenge me to tell the jury exactly how you’re supposed to have done these dreadful things, and I’d just shrug and admit I don’t have a clue, beyond basic philosophical and theological theory.” He was looking past me, at the bookshelf; Pacatian, and Saloninus’s Existence and Reality. I winced. A bit like hanging the murder weapon on your wall, mounted on a little plaque.</blockquote>

<blockquote>Thom survives the Coronation Day attack. It's hard to say whether this causes more problems for him or Alanna.</blockquote>

<blockquote>(it's more likely than you think) Warlock "Lockie" Dowling summons a demon. Or, he buys a book off a suspiciously familiar bookseller and is convinced into demon summoning. It goes about as well as you'd expect.</blockquote> ➤ YESSSSSSSSSS

<blockquote>Normally an image arriving on Earth was cause for celebration, because it meant the crew was still alive, or at least the ship’s systems were still functioning. Such moments affirmed they were still following their route to a habitable planet that could save mankind. But Steward Mafokeng recoiled from her module, and the image recently downloaded from the Lion’s Mane. “You think we should retire the ship?” she asked her fellow steward. The other steward was on the lunar base, while she was on Earth buried twenty stories underground, protected against the torrential storms. Steward Hutchins nodded his head on her communication module. “Clear evidence of cannibalism. Look at the missing hand. It was intentionally severed.”</blockquote>

<blockquote>Rosetta knelt to look at the stump in the corner of her client’s bedroom. It had the likeness of a ten-year-old boy, four feet tall, dressed in an oversized shirt and suspenders, and its features were flawless, from the newsboy’s cap cocked on its tight curls, to its pupil-less eyes fringed with long eyelashes. The only oddity was that stump’s hands were unformed, shapeless blobs. It was easy to believe that a sculptor had chiseled a boy out of wood and had stepped away just before finishing its hands. Rosetta sucked in her breath through her cloth face mask. The SPC hadn’t told her that her first stump extermination would look like a child. </blockquote>

<blockquote>New York is notoriously protective of its superheroes.</blockquote>

<blockquote>Where Genly Ai went, after Winter. [Written for Yuletide 2010.]</blockquote> ➤ oh, wow. Very effective at grounding in setting such that it evokes a strong consistent feeling throughout. Plus excellent alien anthropology

<blockquote>The day I found out my Uncle Will was still alive, I had been out spraying the crops in a full crinkly hazmat suit. The Earthers I was working for were nice people, but they always whined about the suits. To me they seemed light and airy, hardly even an annoyance compared to a vacuum suit, so I was the one who would get sent out first with the sprayer when the blight warnings came in from the provincial capital in Edmonton. I didn’t mind. It was the tenth month of my indenture on Earth, and I had almost gotten used to the smell, but even so a little overlay of antifungal didn’t change it much.</blockquote> ➤ (I cried)

<blockquote>When the seeds rained down from deep space, it may have been the first stage of an alien invasion—or something else entirely. How much time do we have left, and do we even understand what timescale to use? As a slow apocalypse blooms across the Earth, planets and plants, animals and microbes, all live and die and evolve at different scales. Is one human life long enough to unravel the mystery?</blockquote>

<blockquote>Breq is a traitor, a rebel, and a captain a thousand years out of date. Mercy of Seivarden is drifting without a crew.</blockquote>

<blockquote>It is not an enviable position, being a bridge, particularly a bridge with visions. But sometimes, to build the future, that's what you need. Or: Harry and Corlath's daughter comes to Istan.</blockquote>

<blockquote>“Daerion was dangling upside-down from an apple tree when the King came for the first time to Minas Tirith.” Thorongil touched many lives when he served in Gondor, more than at first he knew. This is a story of Aragorn in Gondor, seen through the eyes of a young boy from Minas Tirith.</blockquote> ➤ Okay I ended up caring entirely to much about the pov oc character

<blockquote>Bilbo spent nineteen years in Rivendell, as both he and the world changed. This is those nineteen years charted in scenes between Bilbo and Aragorn, plus occasional letters that remained unsent.</blockquote> ➤ Oh no, I never expected to have such feelings about Bilbo!

<blockquote>"We should take the general on a mission," Rose said. "One that's useful and not fatal." “We have those?” Finn asked. “Probably not fatal if well-executed,” Rose amended. The surviving members of the Resistance decide the best way to help Leia is to take her on a recruiting mission to Rose's home world.</blockquote>

<blockquote>“It’s wastoures! They came through Newton and Blackhill and killed everything, and then they split into two big groups and one turned north, and the other’s coming here. I stay ahead of them and earn pennies by warning people.” Wastoures. Perhaps you have not heard of them, you people born a thousand years after Ada and Blanche and this runner—whose name is Hardourt, though his part in this story is nearly over: his name will not matter to you, though it matters to him. In your time they are gone, but in the twelfth century, every child knew of them, and adults as well. Wastoures: scarce larger than chickens but unfeathered and wingless, snake-necked and sharp-beaked and bright-clawed, with little arms ending in daggery talons. For long years there would be no wastoures (except in memory and dread), and then a population bloom, like duckweed choking an August pond, or locusts after a dry spring, or cicadas rising from the ground each seventeenth year. For reasons unknowable, they emerged in their scores of thousands from some unknown cave or forgotten Roman mine, and seethed like floodwater or plague across the land.</blockquote> ➤ I'm fascinated by the way the narrative continues to draw your attention to what might happen to the other characters Ada encounters throughout the story, and the structure of Story.

<blockquote>“Don’t get too comfortable,” Haakon said to me in a low tone. “What do you mean?” I said. Everyone exchanged a look. It was Namja who finally explained. “The third cargo capsule from the homeworld is going to land at Newton’s Eye in about 650 hours.” “But . . . ” I stopped when I saw they didn’t need me to tell them the problem. The timing couldn’t have been worse. Umbernight was just around the corner. Much as we needed that cargo, getting to it would be a gamble with death. I remember how my mother explained Umbernight to me as a child. “There’s a bad star in the sky, Michiko. We didn’t know it was there at first because there’s a shroud covering it. But sometimes, in winter, the shroud pulls back and we can see its light. Then we have to go inside, or we would die.”</blockquote> ➤ Good worldbuilding, evocative writing

<blockquote>“Anyway, you brought me a sun bird – or, very well-formed raw materials for one at any rate – which means I owe you a favor. Name your price.” “I thought you’d never ask! I met a boy at university–” “Hostie d’crisse, please no.” “Let me finish! It’s not what you think. I met a boy at university with the most peculiar malady. I’ve taken him to Maman’s, but I thought you might be able to help.” “Why didn’t you just take him to one of your posh English witches at school?” Dom’s starched shirt sighed over his shoulders as he shrugged. “This is more up your alley. It’s a beastly puzzle of a curse. You like untangling that sort of thing. Besides, it’s a Chinese curse.” Isabel tilted her head, intrigued despite herself. “A Chinese curse on an English schoolboy in Quebec, hmm? Curiouser and curiouser.” She dusted her hands on her apron. “Give me five minutes to put on something cleaner.”</blockquote>

<blockquote>When I finally went in she had cleared the table and pulled the carpetbag out from under the bed. It was grey with dust; even before Da died Mam and I weren’t supposed to touch it, though I used to open it when no one was looking. It’s the past, Da would say when I asked him about it. From when we thought we knew better than God. We came here to get away from that. The way Mam was laying things out, I knew I wasn’t the only one who had peeked inside. She didn’t even have to look, just put out the candles and the fancy drawings, and even the vials that I liked best. In your hand the stuff inside looked black, but when you held them up to the light you saw that it was really a dark, sweet red. Beside these Mam put a knife I had never seen before, with a thick handle and two round blades folded up like a flower. “I’ll show him,” she said. “I’ll show him my god-damned claim.”</blockquote> ➤ awful and ouchy and well-written and intense

<blockquote>Ms. Spain told us we’d been handpicked because we were smart, mature students. Then she told us about a special classmate who wasn’t in the room, who we’d meet tomorrow. “She looks different than you, or anyone you’ve ever met. She—” Ms. Spain trailed off, trying to find the right words. “I’ll be honest: You might find her frightening to look at. But it’s important you don’t stare. Treat her just like any other student. That’s what the earbuds are for. Your prompters will guide you.”</blockquote>

<blockquote>She is a gift to Lord Vader from the Emperor. Her name is Padme Skywalker.</blockquote>

<blockquote>If it was anybody’s fault, it was that loser Starscream.</blockquote> ➤ in which the war is stopped via dance parties

<blockquote>It was a large, magnificent room with intricate patterns of ivy branches on the tiles, and a large mirror above a marble fireplace, the mantlepiece crammed with curios from delicate silver bowls to Chinese blue-and-white porcelain figures: a clear statement of casual power, to leave so many riches where everyone could grab them. Or rather, it would have been, if the porcelain hadn’t been cut-rate—the same bad quality the Chinese had foisted on the Indochinese court in Annam—the mirror tarnished, with mould growing in one corner, spread down far enough that it blurred features, and the tiling cracked and chipped in numerous places—repaired, but not well enough that Thuan couldn’t feel the imperfections under his feet, each one of them a little spike in the khi currents of magic around the room.</blockquote>

<blockquote>On the second day of Vordarian's Pretendership, Count Vorhalas has an unwelcome visitor.</blockquote> ➤ Love the ending, honorable enemies

<blockquote>“Botheration.” He tied off the thread in the fine blue leather of the gloves he was stitching and snipped it with the little pair of silver shears he’d snuck out of the master’s shop. Be his hide if he were caught taking them home, but worse if he bit the thread off instead of snipping it neat. No telling what his saliva would do when the guild brownie added the beauty spell to it.</blockquote>

<blockquote>Weeks after finding a dragon egg in the Amitie’s hold William Laurence reluctantly turns away and lets the Corps take Temeraire - but he doesn’t return to the Navy. He’s not an aviator, but somehow Laurence still ends up going down in history as the instigator behind the Great Dragon Rebellion of ‘06.</blockquote>

<blockquote>"Mindelan, it may be that the best thing said of my tenure is that you were my student. Should that be the case, I am the wrong man for this post. I did all I could to get rid of you. Your probation was wrong. You know that, I know it. I was harder on you than any lad. Thank Mithros I remembered my honor and let you stay when you met the conditions—but it was a near thing. Next time, I might not heed the voice of honor." -- Wyldon of Cavall (Squire)</blockquote> ➤ The AU where Wyldon kicks her out after her probationary year but she sticks around to keep learning anyway

<blockquote>Maui’s not sure he remembers the last time he felt like he was actually part of society, rather than something to be revered from afar or commanded from above. Moana’s not sure she ever let it sink in that her best friend is also a legendary demigod that some people might actually pray to. Together they stumble around trying to navigate these Feelings. Alternatively, Moana and Maui’s First Hongi, Followed by Their Second, More Awkward Hongi.</blockquote>

<blockquote>Mr. Abraham Lincoln Smithsonian Institution National Museum of American History 1400 Connecticut Avenue, NW Washington D.C. 20004 United States of America 12 February 2168 Dear Sir, I hope you will forgive the impropriety of this personal letter sent without the benefit of previous acquaintance, but I feel compelled to write you in order that I might, indeed, introduce myself, and also so I might render to you my personal wishes for your hale and happy birthday. And, as I am scheduled to go on display in just a few days’ time, I would additionally like to express my genuine and incalculable pride that I am soon to be joining your illustrious ranks. I do not know what, if anything, you have heard of me in the media—I myself am never exposed to such things and know not what they say—but I have led a quiet life thus far, one much devoted to the study of my impending duties and, to better acquaint myself with my peers, of the other personalities currently on display.</blockquote>

<blockquote>If you were a certain kind of person with a certain kind of schedule in the early sixties, you probably saw a show that some friends of mine and I worked on called Acres of Perhaps. By “certain kind of person,” I mean insomniac or alcoholic; by “certain kind of schedule,” I mean awake at 11:30 at night with only your flickering gray-eyed television for company. With any luck, it left you feeling that however weird your life was, it could always be weirder. Or at least more ironic. We would have settled for that in those earnest days.</blockquote> ➤ I dunno, I was weirdly into this story even though it doesn't seem like the kind of story I'd expect to enjoy

<blockquote>While traveling in Faerie, Strange and Norrell encounter Henry Lascelles. He is half-conscious, ill, and murderous, and he has made a powerful enemy.</blockquote>