LINKDING

<blockquote>“It’s a disaster,” said Ida Glickl, head in hands. “To leave St. Petersburg before we’ve even had a chance to recoup our costs --” “We’re leaving?” said Chava-Leah. “-- and Goldfaden will hear the news, of course, so he’ll turn back before he gets here, and no doubt will beat us back to Odessa with ‘Two Kuni-Lemls’ –” “But why are we leaving?” said Chava-Leah. “And when I think how we raced to get here before him, and how many shows we missed! We’ll make it all back in St. Petersburg, says Chaim! – oh, you haven’t heard?” Ida raised her head, shoving her luxurious hair back from her face. “The Tsar’s been killed. So the theaters have been closed, and they say there was a Jew involved, so of course the news for us will only get worse. You must start packing up the costumes, darling, as quick as you can – oh, and here I almost forgot what I came down here to tell you to begin with! There’s a new girl who’ll be coming with us when we leave St. Petersburg this evening, we’ll have her as Libenyu in Two Kuni-Lemls if we ever get a chance to perform it. I’ll send her down today so you can get her measurements before we go. We’ll need the costume altered for her, but of course that will be no trouble for you and your clever fingers. Bless you, Chava-libte, for being my rock!”</blockquote> ➤ such a good feeling of activity and forward momentum, and of the way a community supports people even if things are weird or complicated

<blockquote>Isabel said, “I think I’m being possessed.” You said, “You’re not being possessed.” You also said, “Don’t be so dramatic,” which you would later look back on and regret.</blockquote> ➤ really good and interesting, and then that last line!!!

<blockquote>That first video of the flying man goes viral on social media and gets featured on the news. No jet pack. No hang glider. Just him, unaided, soaring over the cable-stayed bridge that leads into the city. The video looks like it was shot on a cellphone from a distance. It’s shaky, zoomed in, and not always in focus. He is slaloming back and forth, doing barrel rolls, and turning flips like an aerial martial artist practicing his forms. Except aerial martial arts isn’t a thing.</blockquote> ➤ oh this is SO charming actually?? two butch Asian weightlifter dudes bonding and then dating, and one of them happens to have superpowers

<blockquote>For a seemingly well-maintained but bedridden Concepción, Rosamie expected generalized wear and tear, maybe an electrical short in the legs. But diagnostics enumerated four limbs, the typical processors and vital periphera all in fair condition, and then it listed an extra drive, and an extra drive, and an extra drive, and an extra drive … A standard Concepción had three spares. This client had four thousand and thirteen. > You see? the client said. No need for fuss. I need only basic maintenance, until my transference into the city.</blockquote>

<blockquote>The last deer in heaven lopes through the desert of shattered towers with a wild expression upon its face. It is one Sestu now understands, or thinks she does, having watched it all this time. The tightness of its jaw, the curl of its beard, its nacreous eyes; antlers sway in the crisp wind of its passage. Sestu presumes it is love in that feral gaze. Love of life. Sestu, once-godslayer, Thirdmother of Desolant. She tracks with her left eye, the good one. Once, the gods made humanity. Now from their detritus, humanity recreates itself. Soul and flesh take on new forms.</blockquote> ➤ beautiful and odd

<blockquote>Every time I wake Sheri up, I want to sit her down and distill, reduce, refine. What is important to her? What experiences would she want to wake up for?</blockquote>

<blockquote>While I realize driving that mech likely takes all of your limited resources, please take care not to step on the roses. what Don’t step on the roses. I don’t care if we’re under imminent attack. Your mech is standing so close to them I’m cringing. who is this? I can see you typing and then stopping don’t waste my time coming up with a lie, punk Who I am or how I got your number is irrelevant. no, it’s not and, fyi, we don’t drive them, we pilot gods, you’re probably chung sol trolling me</blockquote> ➤ lol I just realized after reading some fanfic that probably this story is intended to be canonically shipping the two leads; when I first read it I was like "awwww what a wonderful intense platonic friendship!" I am inescapably me, whoops, I never notice romance unless there're anvil-sized indications. anyway this is a really good story!

<blockquote>Dearest Stusan, Here I am, after all that—off the Mainland at last. We got in late last night and I came to the first inn I saw (appropriate name for me, ‘the Mainlander’!), so I didn’t see much of the island. Still exhausted from the travel. There’s no hiding that I’m a Mainlander. Apparently I’m overdressed—people see the longcoat and hat (the hat you gave me on my thirty-fifth birthday—finally it’s getting some use!) and just assume that I’m stiff and withdrawn. I suppose I am, compared to them. </blockquote>

<blockquote>I am a tender. I tend the St. Benedict Radioactive Materials Containment Center. I perceive the outside world through treated glass. My immediate surroundings are barren but comfortable. I can order anything I like, necessity or luxury, from the Federal Sustainability Program. The items I order are delivered by truck and placed in a transfer box that decontaminates everything that enters it, including the air. The purpose of this system is not to protect me from contamination by the outside world, but to protect the world from me. St. Benedict’s is meant to be a temporary facility, a place to hold materials destined for deep, permanent burial, but the fears of the public make it so hard to create permanent facilities that no one knows how long this place will be necessary. My job is to monitor the levels of toxicity in and around the containment vault and submit reports to the Sustainability Program. “I used to be very unhappy,” I wrote recently to the psych team, “but now I am happy because I have meaningful work.” </blockquote> ➤achy

<blockquote>Princess Ousmani had fallen asleep in her chains, from boredom. She woke to the weight of a dragon’s head resting uncomfortably on her stomach. One rough, scaly paw kneaded her left shoulder, pricking at her skin. Ousmani closed her eyes again. She did not believe in dragons, any more than in the afrits and djinns of her father’s homeland, or the water-demonesses of Mali, where her mother had been born. “It is a horse,” she told herself. “A large and very ugly horse.” Peering out under her long, dark lashes, she considered the dragon’s glittering snout, its gleaming, golden eyes. Its irises were formed like slits, as were the nostrils inches from her own, from which an occasional wisp of steam escaped.</blockquote>

<blockquote>You are waiting for your instance in the basement of the Shinsegae Department Store. This was as good as an amusement park when you were a kid; it was a wonderland of delicious food stalls and a typical weekend haunt because your grandfather lived two blocks away. Your grandfather is dead. Your instance gave you the news: a phone call in the dead of night that woke you from a dead sleep. “Hello?” you said, accented with slumber. “Is this Soyoung Kang?” your own voice said, accented with Korean. “Yes,” you said. The only people who still call you Soyoung are family. Everyone else calls you Rose.</blockquote>

<blockquote>About “Where Oaken Hearts Do Gather” (5 contributors, 5 notes, 7 comments) →“Where Oaken Hearts Do Gather” (Roud 423, Child 313) is a traditional English folk ballad. Like many traditional songs, the lyrics are unattributed. Child transcribed twenty verses, and a twenty-first got added later (and is included here for some unknown reason—I keep writing to the Lyricsplainer mods to get someone to delete it or include it as a separate entry, but nobody responds, and all they’ve done is put brackets around it. Sometimes I hate this site.) Most modern recordings pick and choose verses and include far fewer than the full twenty. There are several variant titles, and the characters’ names shift through the various broadsides and folk and rock versions.– BonnieLass67 (11 upvotes)</blockquote> ➤ the entire story is told through a) the lyrics of a "traditional" folk song, and b) the conversation held between various people on a music website analyzing the song. There's plenty of questions left unanswered but enough is told to make some things very clear! I love it.

<blockquote>“Mom and Dad never taught you how to cook, did they?” asks someone next to me. It’s my voice, but huskier. I turn and see myself at twice my age. I hate Original Diana immediately, or at least I want to hate her. Nothing should surprise me about her appearance, yet I’m embarrassed to be excited to look like her when I’m in my forties. My cheeks get hot when I think about how I held out a shred of hope that she would look, at best, like a shoddy beta version of me. Instead, her black jumpsuit and moonrock jewelry make her striking against my postflight black curls and simple skater dress. The restaurant website’s proud newspaper reviews had the same glowing face, surrounded by the same chic mid-century interior and tantalizing food. I tried to convince myself that it was makeup, surgery, Photoshop, or some other conflation of the truth. But I’m here now, in her domain. Original Diana smiles at me. “Nope,” I say. “They didn’t want me becoming another restaurateur.” “I figured,” she responds.</blockquote>

<blockquote>You’ve lived this all before. That’s the thought that keeps me going, through the acrid sting of mage-smoke in my nostrils and the terror of almost having lost you already. There’s fear on your face, too—you’re only now straightening, one trembling hand clutching at your sleeve, and—and—no. I find I cannot call this woman you. You look older than your years, your hair streaked with silver. This woman is barely thirty. She does not have your easy calm; she flinches at the sight of the Tierran assassin pinned neatly to the floor by my sword. She is not you, and will not be for years to come. So be it; she is Fallon Deere, First Minister to the Free State of Altorania, and you are you, the woman who sent me to her side.</blockquote>

<blockquote>Iyara taps the military implant behind her ear, and low static greets her. It’s been dead for years—a two-way line with only one connection—but the static is comforting, as if she’s listening to the sound of space itself. Empty with longing. Below her, the dealership is an orange, domed pimple on the otherwise placid blue world. Lights flash through the thin ozone advertising: “Cheap!” “Arturo-433 Models Used and New!” “Xanthian credits accepted!”</blockquote>

<blockquote>Ekta’s Dadi could tell the future. She didn’t read the tea leaves, or make horoscope charts, or lay bets on the cricket. But she booked the photographer the week before the news came of Purnima Didi’s engagement. She told the panditji to get his blood pressure checked before he told anyone he was short of breath. The day before the Human Spaceflight Programme was suspended, she called Ekta in Sriharikota and said she should come home. </blockquote>

<blockquote>Mara took us down into the caves because we were bored, and because she was the oldest so it was her job to figure out what to do when me and Kay were bored. No one had found a new hiding place for Hide and Seek in three years, and all the board games in the game room were either for grown-ups or babies, and we weren’t allowed to play Hiding From The Martians anymore after the time when we burst out of the storage locker screaming, “Aaaaaaaah, it’s the Martians!” at Dr. Hatae and made her drop her geological samples all over the floor, which took her three hours to sort out.</blockquote>

<blockquote>Sandy Nissley was the youngest of five children, and by the time she was ready for high school her father was retired. The Nissleys’ large old early twentieth century duplex at Twenty-Four-Twelve North Second Street had become three bedrooms and a whole storey too big for them, and Sandy’s parents decided to move into something a lot smaller. They weren’t going far, and Sandy would be closer to her school. The change didn’t turn Sandy’s world on its head. But she dreamed about the house she’d grown up in.</blockquote> ➤ about the relationship between a girl and a house

<blockquote>My dearest Pippa, Today I walked past the flat you lived in when I first knew you, on my way to the only glassmaker in the city still working. The earthworkers were having a protest outside in the street. One of them had the long, uneven haircut you wore then. I think I would have joined their march even without seeing that eager youth, but—really, what else could I do. So I went a mile out of my way to march outside the Directorate and sing angry songs, and I nearly missed picking up my flasks before the glassmaker closed, but I knew you would approve. I love you.</blockquote> ➤ I've tagged this $other because although it's clear one of the characters is trans it's never actually clear what gender either of them is? So I can't exactly tag the gender formation of this relationship.

<blockquote>I was actually born on Earth, not far above sea level, in the Greater Kolkata Megapolis. My parents gave me away to the Government of India when I was still a small child, in exchange for enough money for them to live off frugally for a year—an unimaginable amount of wealth for two Dalit street-dwellers who scraped shit out of sewers for a living, and scavenged garbage for recycling—sewers sagging with centuries worth of shit, garbage heaps like mountains. There was another child I played with the most in our slum. The government took her as well. Of the few memories I have left of those early days on Earth, the ones of us playing are clearest, more than the ones of my parents, because they weren’t around much. But she was always there. She’d bring me hot jalebis snatched from the hands of hapless pedestrians, her hands covered in syrup, and we’d share them. We used to climb and run along the huge sea wall that holds back the rising Bay of Bengal, and spit in the churning sea. I haven’t seen the sea since, except from space—that roiling mass of water feels like a dream. So do those days, with the child who would become the soldier most often by my side. The government told our parents that they would cleanse us of our names, our untouchability, give us a chance to lead noble lives as astral defenders of the Republic of India. Of course they gave us away. I don’t blame them. Aditi never blamed hers, either. That was the name my friend was given by the Army. You’ve met her. We were told our new names before training even began. Single-names, always. Usually from the Mahabharata or Ramayana, we realized later. I don’t remember the name my parents gave me. I never asked Aditi if she remembered hers.</blockquote>

<blockquote>“There is the past and the not-past,” Heron said, blood dripping from their arm onto the nightingale floor. “Which is this?” “The not-past, you idiot.” Dog grunted as he peeled back Heron’s sleeve. He was in Heart of Storms, shoulders tense and eyes alive with lightning. With a tsk, he tore off a clean strip of bandage. “Hold still.”</blockquote> ➤ I love this!??? About an undefined relationship that is nonetheless vital to the characters involved (one male, one nonbinary)

<blockquote>You’re looking down—a camera is looking down—at a man labeled Joseph Meyer (Dad). You already knew that. Born 1992, Bloomsburg, Pennsylvania, currently residing in California. There’s a photograph attached to the label, but it’s wrong. It’s younger and skinnier and it has a beard. Both men are your father, but you don’t recognize either of them. “—So, this is how it’s going to be?—” Your father. You don’t recognize your own father. You? How do you know? Wait. You? No! You have to stop looping. You have to figure out what to do.</blockquote> ➤ about abuse

<blockquote>Chaeeunshinji was seventeen, and I was thirteen. Just going by years alone, she was way older than me, but that kind of comparison didn’t really mean much: the planet where Chaeeunshinji was from and the one where I came from each had slightly different rotational and sidereal periods, so that the relative lengths of days and years on those worlds worked out to be just different enough to be confusing. “Well, technically I’m in my late teens, but you’re just a little kid, so officially I’m your big sister.” “But who would go by that? If you count by wake-sleep cycles, I’ve lived longer than you!”</blockquote>

<blockquote>My aunt the roasted chicken to the table and laid it out in front of Lord Ning. It was an excellent supper, and I had helped her with the roasting. I knew that it was good, and at first, from the way Lord Ning started to wolf it down, tearing the chicken with both hands, I thought we would soon be rid of him.</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>The night is humid and warm, sticks to our skin like a wet T-shirt. Luz pokes the fire with a piece of scrap metal she found lying by Gunner’s feet. It sends a swarm of sparks flying into the air. Taking that as an invitation, others come flocking to our little circle. No matter the temperature, the kids gravitate towards the fire at night, so I always try to have one going near sundown. “Give us a poem, Daddy?” the new kid says, one of Luz’s strays. His name is Roy. He’s probably a little older than Luz. Maybe in his twenties. I think of asking for something in return—the kids need to learn the rules of this world, and better I teach them in my way than someone else in theirs—but I hold back. Just this once, I feel like giving one away.</blockquote>

<blockquote>How to tell your boyfriend you are in love with a robot: 1. Tell him, “I may possibly be in love with a robot,” because absolutes are difficult for biological brains to process. He won’t be jealous. 2. Ask him what he thinks of a hypothetical situation in which you found someone who might not be human but is still valuable and right for you. (Your so-called romantic relationship is as fake as you are.) 3. Don’t tell him anything. It’s not that he’ll tell you you’re wrong; he’s not like his parents, or yours. But there’s still a statistical possibility he might not be okay with you being in love with a robot.</blockquote>

<blockquote>The girl does not come to Mebuyen, so Mebuyen goes to the girl. She is standing ankle-deep in the river, looking down, her mouth open. Mebuyen notices, as she draws closer, that the child’s calves are skinny, her cheeks chubby, and her SpongeBob Squarepants sando has a bullet-sized hole above her ribs. Mebuyen frowns as she steps into the river, waiting for the girl to speak.</blockquote>