LINKDING

<blockquote>Fenella meets Queen Gold-tree on her wedding day, and meets the king at the same time. Gold-tree becomes a friend, and when she dies, Fenella and the king are left to pick up the pieces together.</blockquote>

<blockquote>A detective is called to a space station to solve the mystery of whether--and how--twelve astronauts are accessing the surface of a forbidden planet.</blockquote> ➤ oh gosh oh gosh oh gosh this is INCREDIBLE

<blockquote>The sorceress keeps her magic on the hearth, under a big, iron cauldron where its red glow can mix in with the always-dying embers. --- Days of a nightingale & dreams of her lover</blockquote>

<blockquote>Not every child is born knowing their fate.</blockquote>

<blockquote>Another possible explanation of the green house in Narberth.</blockquote>

<blockquote>So the background to this is the Mabinogion story of Manawydan the son of Llyr, in which the heroes sit on a hill in Narbeth and everyone else in Wales disappears to fairyland, and (I'm leaving things out) the four of them have various adventures getting them back, which all concludes with an agreement that the fairies will never do it again as long as people don't paint their houses green -- and by and large, in West Wales, people don't. But I was in Narbeth today, and there's this one green house, and I was wondering about who lived there, and I realised it must be a fairy denialist.</blockquote>

<blockquote>Snow White and Rose Red live peacefully in the forest with their mother, but their earliest memories are of a different life: a blighted homeworld and a journey through the stars. A winter visitor and a falling star lead them on a journey to discover the truth about their home and about their own mysterious powers.</blockquote> ➤ what an interesting and great scifi reimagining of snow white & rose red, that actually makes some sense of the weirdness of the story

<blockquote>There was a witch who lived up in the mountains, and I never heard but that she was a good one.</blockquote> ➤ apparently it's based on a folk story called "Raw Head and Bloody Bones" which I'd never heard of before! ➤ This is the story of a witch and her razorback hog familiar, and what happens after an unscrupulous man kills her hog. It's really good!

<blockquote>The twelve dancing princesses aren't going to a castle with princes. They have an entirely different destination.</blockquote> ➤ charming ➤ the bhangra au.

<blockquote>Do you know what it is like, she would say, to be twenty-nine years old and trapped in your childhood room? No, the curse came before and after the dancing, not during. The curse was a locked door every night; the curse was a father who would sell his daughters for an answer; the curse was a choice between strange men’s lives and our own freedom. The curse was a soldier who would barter a stolen secret for a kingdom, for my body in his marriage-bed.</blockquote> ➤ the stories of each of the 12 dancing princesses. WHAT A GOOD

<blockquote>On her wedding night to King Henry VIII, Katherine Parr discovers that a strange curse has been laid on all the queens of England...</blockquote> ➤ crossover of history with 12 dancing princesses - where there's a curse that all the queens of england will dance in hell until henry's line is ended. And it works so well! It's great seeing all these queens interacting with each other

<blockquote>Behind close doors, a mother confides a secret to her daughter.</blockquote> ➤ 12 dancing princesses: a monologue from the youngest princess to her daughter, much later in life. (in this version it's the youngest who married the suitor)

<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>There are kings who live underneath the sea as well as above it. Kings have daughters there too, in the manner of kings everywhere, and fathers there must find something to do with them as well as we do. There is no place so remote that no man can settle and own it. There was a king once, who owned the sea and lived in it, and he filled it with his daughters, and he owned them too.</blockquote>

<blockquote>Mineappolis writer Abra Staffin-Wiebe brings us a new take on an old Russian fairy tale: the quest for a blessing from the elusive firebird. In this iteration, young Ekaterina celebrates her fourteenth birthday, and a rare firebird sighting sets in motion a chain of events that will change her life forever.</blockquote>

➤ extremely excellent short retelling of the fairy tale

<blockquote>Terri Windling posted recently about the old fairy tale of frogs falling from a girl's lips, and I started thinking about what I'd do if that happened to me. </blockquote>

<blockquote>There's a kinship between people whose fates are determined by the sea.</blockquote>

<blockquote>Death meets a poor woodcutter who's looking for a just man to be a godfather to his son. The new kid in Susan's class says he's going to be a great physician. The Death of Rats is just trying to do his job.</blockquote>

➤ does what it says on the tin ➤ ...in other news apparently in absence of other information I interpret any given personification of death as being sparkly and blue and played by Szabo P Szilveszter

<blockquote>In which the robber girl encounters a dysfunctional royal family and makes the most of it.</blockquote>

<blockquote>Slightly crack!fic in which the princesses, post-fairy-tale, mix and mingle and sort out their lives. Slight hating on Rapunzel (who is actually a favourite fairy tale character, but in this version she's a little bit of a mess).</blockquote>

<blockquote>However you tell the tale of Bluebeard, he always dies. Sometimes it just takes a little longer to kill him.</blockquote>

<blockquote>"Our tsar has three sons. Handsome lads, if one appreciates such things. None are married...yet." The old woman snorts. "That's why you're here, though, isn't it?" "I'm to return the arrow to its archer. I know nothing beyond that. Other than it's," Vasilissa's mouth twists, "fate." "So you find it cruel?" The hut closes around her, the air warm and heavy. It's thick with the sent of rosemary and sage from the bundles of herbs hanging from the beams above them. The bones of previous suppers (hares and chickens and maybe even men) rattle in a hauntingly soothing melody. "I'd rather find it kind. But at the moment, I miss my shop." She shakes her head, and some of the syrupy warmth tugging at her mind fades. "It's childish of me, I know." "And you're no child."</blockquote>

<blockquote>A loose re-telling of 'King Thrushbeard' in which the princess has more issues with marriage than with pride and in which a king truly must watch what he says -- or everyone will face the consequences.</blockquote>

<blockquote>about a reverse little mermaid, in which the prince’s sister has always dreamed of life under the sea, and then they are in a shipwreck, and as she hangs onto a piece of driftwood, she sees her brother rescued from drowning by a mermaid. Everybody thinks she’s mad, later, after she’s been rescued. But her brother did turn up alive and unharmed on the beach, and she knows what she saw: a girl, beautiful as the dawn, with a fish’s tail, keeping her brother safe above the waves. She grows sick with longing.</blockquote> ➤ lovely and dark

➤ In which Morwen's garden has some unexpected visitors.

<blockquote>Private detective Marie Slade is landed with a strange case that just keeps getting stranger. Will she be able to solve the mystery before it's too late?</blockquote> ➤ a 12 Dancing Princesses noir au. not a happily ever after.

<blockquote>A retelling of the Prince Lindwurm fairy tale, Brother Prince Snake is a story of love, sibling rivalry, and how a monster became King.</blockquote> ➤ not quite sure what I think of this one

<blockquote>Now that she is Queen, she finds it hard to put away the blade.</blockquote>