LINKDING

<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>Lan Zhan looks so sad. He holds out his hand and says "Help." "Aish, this man," Wei Wuxian sighs. "What's wrong?" Lan Zhan holds out his hand a little further, insistent, and Wei Wuxian sighs again and takes it. A costly mistake that results in getting pulled deeper into Lan Zhan's apartment, squawking protests about how he's still wearing his shoes that Lan Zhan ignores. He leads Wei Wuxian down the hallway to the bedroom at the end. Then he shoves at Wei Wuxian's shoulder until he loses his balance and sits on the edge of the bed. Then he climbs on after him. / Thirteen years after he dies on New Year's Eve, Wei Wuxian is reunited with Lan Wangji.</blockquote> ➤ an amazingly good sense of place as well as development of the mood created by the narrative in the reader

<blockquote>Seven Necessities. Seven Tenths Full. What makes a meal, and what makes a family.</blockquote> ➤ A story told through encounters with food. Suffused with deep feelings, both the pleasure and the pain and the longing (both for what cannot be and for what, in the end, can be). It's beautiful.

<blockquote>One of the first things Wei Wuxian’s new co-star said to him was “this show isn’t a gay love story.” Vignettes of Lan Wangji and Wei Wuxian performing Matthew Bourne’s Swan Lake, not in order</blockquote>

<blockquote>“It’s okay that you miss him,” said Lan Wangji, a familiar litany to them both by now. “Do you feel sad?” “I feel sad,” A-Yuan repeated, shoulders hitching with tiny hiccuping sniffs. “When is he coming back?” “I don’t know. I am not sure where he is.” But this seemed to frustrate A-Yuan. “Xian-gege! I miss him! Please, baba?” He looked up at him with wet cheeks and a wide, quivering frown. “Please baba can you ask him? I really miss him!” He sobbed again, heartbreakingly. It stabbed straight through him, cracking open the reservoir of loss and helplessness that was all his own. His child’s grief did that, sometimes. It always took him by surprise. He caught his breath sharply and gathered A-Yuan into his arms, holding him tight until the pain ebbed. “I will try,” he said softly into A-Yuan’s hair, when he could speak again. He never made uncertain promises and tried not even to raise uncertain hopes, but his son was hurting. His son believed he could make it better. He couldn’t not try. Wen Qing might at least know who this “Xian-gege” was. He would text her in the morning. It would be a start.</blockquote>