LINKDING

excerpt: We drove out to Joshua Tree for the star party—a gathering of amateur astronomers under a clear, dark sky. It was Holly’s idea, an impromptu adventure on a Friday after work: “Hey, Lou, do you want to go look at the moon tonight?” Holly had the best ideas and the worst ideas, and in the daylight, it was hard to tell them apart at first glance. I took a gamble. I said yes. And I meant it—I wanted nothing more than to lay down under the Milky Way with my hand in hers and gaze into forever. For a long time, our love was the biggest thing I knew how to believe in. ➤ an sff novelette about family dynamics, religion, queerness, trauma, and the beauty of the night sky ➤ it's a horrifying story even as it's also beautiful, exploring its ideas in ways that leave me not quite sure what to think about any of it, but in a way that's clearly done with purpose and care ➤ content note for explicit child murder. I am serious about the horrifying aspects of the story! but if it's something you feel able to read, it's definitely worth it imo ➤ 9k words in length

Summary: <blockquote>"...Before, the angel’s identity and mission had always been simple. For that matter, its identity and its mission had always been one and the same. It had been Study, or it had been Mincha, or it had been Comfort. Whatever it was, it was, wholly. In every moment it had known that it was exactly what it was meant to be. Like a single pure note sounding. Lately it felt like a whole chord – maybe several instruments at once, some of which might be dissonant – and it couldn’t be sure which way the chord would resolve. Every moment seemed to bring a new revelation of who and what it had become..."</blockquote> ➤ a lovely post-canon fic about Uriel after When The Angels Left the Old Country, as its relationship with Ash evolves but remains the cornerstone of its life ➤ also full of Jewish geekery (as the tags of the fic say too!) which feels so right for fic of this book! ➤ 3k words in length

<blockquote>When Yue Qi rushes away to save her Xiao Jiu, it is not a cultivation sect that finds her, but rather a nun. Meanwhile, when Shen Jiu decides enough is enough and escapes the life of a slave, her skills enable her to work at the Warm Red Pavilion. Both think the other dead, but when their paths cross once more, they cannot help but be drawn to each other. Yue Qingyuan, wracked with guilt, offers herself in penance. Shen Qingqiu, she says, may punish and hurt her as she likes. And what is Shen Qingqiu going to do, except take the chance to corrupt that immaculate nun as best she can, and pull her away from the heavens, so that they might go to Hell together, hand in hand? In other words, a Tang Dynasty historical au, featuring far too many footnotes.</blockquote> ➤ author's tag: #meta-textually exploring the way fandom conceives of guilt and punishment

<blockquote>A triptych on the theme of half-belonging.</blockquote>

<blockquote>Students were marching that day through the center of the city, protesting a new law for the housing of prisoners’ souls. The young person who organized the march had written a very earnest note imploring Sor Ana to join them and speak against the proposal. Naturally, she had refused. A holy sister who had renounced the world outside the cloister could not very well turn around and play figurehead to a secular political movement. But politics was one thing, and personal opinion another, and so on the day of the march she left the Holiest House to go out to the city and watch the protesters pass by; it seemed the very least she could do.</blockquote> ➤ "it's about the irreconcilable differences between your past self and your present self, and also about robot nuns"

<blockquote>Before she touched it, Leora closed her eyes and whispered a small truth to the golem: "I googled my foot pain thing, and I think I might be developing bunions?" It was a tiny truth -- nothing like enough to breathe a golem to life -- but it was still important to be respectful. She might not come from a long line of golemkraft practitioners, but some traditions were there for a reason.</blockquote>

<blockquote>Besides, I wanted to give Rebekah another lesson in numbers. And now that he had suggested it, I wanted to teach her alef-beit, too. Perhaps I would paint her first page of letters with honey, to teach her that learning what she does not yet know is sweet.</blockquote>

<blockquote>The first forgery Booker ever made was a new identity for himself as a gentile. Wherein Booker loses his family, reconnects with his heritage, and maybe finds something a little like faith.</blockquote>

<blockquote>My god gazes at me, His eyes intense and unreadable. In one fluid motion, He closes the space between us, pulls the scarf from my head, and pushes His face into my hair. “What are you doing?” I cry, stumbling back. For fifteen years I have been a devotee, cloistered from the company of men, but my god’s expression is unmistakable. He regards me with hunger, as if He wants to devour me whole. I scream and run from the chapel.</blockquote> ➤ I read the mc as being ace

<blockquote>“Do you remember, Sam, how Bilbo used to start the holiday at Bag End?” Inexplicably Jewish hobbits talk about celebrating Pesach, and of course someone has to sing Chad Gadya.</blockquote>

<blockquote>The Archprelate finds a chaplain for Maia.</blockquote>

<blockquote>Fuckos in this stupid town think nobody notices how when the tide just keeps coming in without going out again that "some" neighborhoods get sunk forever as an "unfortunate side effect of coastal flooding" while others become the sexy hip cool new "seafloor village." I'd cackle every time some bullshit golden-brick seawall crumbles and takes another mansion with it, but now there's straight-up UNDERWATER house tours for a zillion dollars a ticket, the same way they used to show off their giant Christmas trees and shit but even more pretentious cause now I guess they host in designer scuba gear. "Oh, this old thing? Blub blub, there's sand in my butt, no wait it's diamonds, ha ha!" (That's how they talk probably.) MEANWHILE where MY shitty old apartment used to be is now an undersea God-damned HOTEL AND CASINO.</blockquote> I don't think I've ever read something like this before? VERY strong sense of voice, and I liked the validation of anger in the face of ➤ injustice and oppression.

<blockquote>Most boys in my position—or rather, most newly-minted young men—choose to discourse upon a familiar subject, such as the origin of our sacred holidays. But as many of you know, my mother is Lady Trent, the dragon naturalist. As such, I find myself drawn instead to a passage from the Book of Priests, on the impurity of dragon-kind.</blockquote>

➤ 19th century short story with an aro-ace main character. EXTREMELY bad OCR but this is the only copy of it I can find online

<blockquote>Novice Theo was not supposed to hate. He was expected to feel some negativity, of course, but he was not supposed to. Purging that was part of his novitiate training, burning away everything but love for and devotion to the Great Tetratheon that blessed their land. He had been with the Brothers for ten years now, and he had entered freely, wanting nothing but the serenity and discipline that a life of godly service promised to bring him. He wanted to be pure of heart and spirit. He yearned for that inner peace, earned through deep contemplation, which he could then reflect outwardly to better the entire world. But oh, he hated Novice Clarence.</blockquote>

<blockquote>"If God did not exist, it would have been necessary for man to invent one." A man, a girl, a wombat, and a demon pray, or try praying, to four different gods.</blockquote>

<blockquote>He had lived in secrecy for so long that he had forgotten what it was like to see the open plain in the daylight. When the one-eyed girl had found him, he had been hiding in a ger, squeezed into a stifling gap between the inner and outer walls. The herdsmen who he was visiting had put him there because they thought the approaching rider was an Imperial spy. They shouted at her, “Go away, mountain girl, go! There are no priests here.” But when he heard her say: “I have come from Kou,” he had wriggled out of the secret space and showed himself. Only something very dire could have brought her here to find him, a hundred miles away from the mountains of her home. And because she came from Kou, he had known at once that the saint must be in danger.</blockquote>

<blockquote>But you’re saying to yourself, I didn’t come for dust storms, I didn’t come for conversation. I came to find out what happened to the Jews of the galaxy when they all gathered on Venus. Why should this shmendrick, this Milchik the TV man, have anything special to tell me about such a big event? Is he a special wise man, is he a scholar, is he a prophet among his people?</blockquote>

<blockquote>Ahmed is a doctor working in a far flung outpost of humanity. His way was paid for by the leaders of his faith and his atheism is a guarded secret. His encounters with the “kite people” will cause him to doubt his whole worldview however when the aliens start dying and escalating tensions between religious extremists threatens to destroy the colony’s peace. “When Stars Are Scattered” is a moving story about alien contact, religious intolerance, and the redemptive power of the divine channeled through the spirit. Whether that spirit is human or alien.</blockquote>

<blockquote>To the Jews of Ganymede on the question of the permissibility of selling chometz to Immortals.</blockquote>

<blockquote>A zine from under the asexual umbrella about experiences with(in) modern Christianity</blockquote> ➤ a collection of personal stories from ace people about their experience of church.

<blockquote>Dear Bluma, I heard that Hershel Schmulewitz, that blockhead, has also presumed to ask for your hand in marriage, which gives you two proposals to consider. Now, you needn’t worry that this will be a sentimental or a wheedling sort of letter. You already know how I feel, and I suppose Hershel’s not so much of a blockhead that he doesn’t feel the same way. I’m simply writing to lay out the reasons, plainly and concisely, why it would certainly be more to your benefit to marry me.</blockquote>

<blockquote>When he saw the nine lights burning at the ends of their silver lamps, it reflected something inside him that he had no words for.</blockquote>

<blockquote>There are five New Years: the first for kings, the second for cattle, the third for calendars, the fourth for trees, and the fifth for golems.</blockquote>

<blockquote>A Jewish man disconnected from his upbringing re-finds meaning in traditions. "Eventually, his parents had talked Lemuel down to only two Transformers figures, and those he would carry in his pockets instead of his hands. Asher had not been there for the negotiations, but Lemuel recounted them in great detail in the car, several times over. "My pockets, not my hands, Uncle Asher," Lemuel said for about the twenty millionth time."</blockquote>

<blockquote>This is the custom of Narnia.</blockquote>

<blockquote>It is good for a man to find his basheret. How long may he search for her?</blockquote> ➤ or: the Jewish soulmate au, omg, this is amazing

<blockquote>The Holy Family flew economy, of course, Every seat taken, after the holidays,</blockquote>

<blockquote>“Burning Girls” by Veronica Schanoes is a fascinating dark fantasy novella about a Jewish girl educated by her grandmother as a healer and witch growing up in an increasingly hostile environment in Poland in the late nineteenth century. In addition to the natural danger of destruction by Cossacks, she must deal with a demon plaguing her family.</blockquote> ➤ WOW THIS WAS REALLY GOOD

<blockquote>In 2009, I started a doctoral program in American Studies at the University of Kansas, with a plan to study what, on a good day, I call “the conflicts around sexual diversity in the Mennonite church,” and what, on a bad day, I call, “Mennonites and their fchar-#ked-up sex problems.” I have also resorted to the fast and efficient descriptor “LGBTQ issues in the Mennonite church,” because the phrase “sexual diversity,” outside of LGBTQ and academic circles, often leads to a “come again?” But increasingly I feel allergic to the word “issues.” Mennonites use that word like a armored shield against people whose actual bodies they’re afraid of. The further I get into this, the more “fchar-#ked-up sex problems” seems like the way to go.</blockquote> ➤ I love Pink Menno so much