LINKDING

summary: <blockquote>“If you died,” Huaisang started, not knowing quite where he was going with this. “I mean, you did die, da-ge, but if someone had killed you… what would you want to happen next?” / In the wake of Nie Mingjue’s death, Nie Huaisang realises how much he’s been left in ignorance. How could the artsy little brother be left to run their ancestral asteroid-mining clan? What other secrets are hidden in his san-ge’s past? And how should he get revenge? Maybe having da-ge’s personality backed up on a server was supposed to help with all this. Maybe.</blockquote> ➤ mdzs space au about nie huaisang and his years-long project in avenging his da-ge ➤ a repeated theme throughout the fic is nhs visiting and talking to back-ups that had been taken of nmj's personality before death, and the way that this makes literal how HAUNTED nhs is by his brother's absence is just sooooooo good ➤ the worldbuilding is great, the things that are changed from canon due to this different context are great, the anguish and monofocus of nhs are great ➤ I AM ALL EMOTIONS ;_; ➤ 8k words in length

summary: <blockquote>“Tell you what,” said Yushi Huang. “I’ll make you a deal, Ling Wen Zhen Jun.” Almost no one used her title at all, even fewer with respect. She couldn’t quite read Yushi Huang’s tone. “If you can tell me exactly what this is,” she nodded to the creature curled in the corner, "and what it does, I will turn it in the moment we get back for tagging and proper categorization." Ling Wen raised an eyebrow. So the enigmatic Rain Master already knew the creature's properties. "And if I don't?" Yushi Huang smiled, infuriatingly gentle. "Admitting defeat so soon? How unlike you." Ling Wen drew herself up and inclined her head, knowing herself to be rising to bait but seeing no real reason to resist. "I accept your terms."</blockquote> ➤ tgcf space au featuring ling wen/yushi huang, HELLO ➤ yushi huang's deliberate mysteriousness, and the way she uses it to flirt and get the upper hand with ling wen! ➤ ling wen enjoying having something to research that's for FUN instead of for work! ➤ the interesting development of the setting, and ways the characters and backstories have been tweaked to fit! ➤ LOVED IT. ➤ 4k words in length

<blockquote>This is not the damsel in distress rescue you are looking for. It's something else entirely. Allura had designed him business cards as a joke once: "Keith Kogane - I don't do assassinations. Anything else, we'll talk," with the contact number for his business comm pad. The joke was on her, though. He'd ordered 500. He was really sick as heck of people wasting his time because there was some loser they wanted dead. It had upped the weirdness quotient of calls he got from people who didn't know where else to turn, but he didn't mind.</blockquote>

<blockquote>When he’s six years old, Lan Wangji loses his mother, and from that point on random objects begin to disappear around him. When he’s nineteen, he meets Wei Ying and falls in love. When he’s twenty-one, he— Wei Ying’s fingers curl, and without thought Lan Wangji curls his as well, their hands held in the middle of the table. He can already tell this will be a moment that will change the course of their lives. “If you’re interested in any anomaly—time, space, both, neither—then you should be interested in the Burial Mounds.”</blockquote>

<blockquote>Wei Wuxian has been left largely to his own devices on his planet's lighthouse, with only his trusty android friend W3N Qing for help. But a "surprise" site inspector is coming, probably to check if he's been breaking any intergalactic statutes in his work. And so he's preparing for the inspector's arrival. What he's not prepared for is Lan Wangji.</blockquote> ➤ space au with cultivation

<blockquote>Nie Mingjue opened his mouth, closed it again. He couldn't be sure, but he thought Lan Xichen might be smiling. Fascinating as that thought was, it was derailed by another, far more powerful realization: He understands. He's like me. He needs to explore. The drop changes both surveyor and navigator. What else can we expect, we who send them into darkness, to explore unknown worlds? - Lan Yi, from the introduction to Planetfall and Rise: An Exploration of the Surveyor-Navigator Bond.</blockquote>

<blockquote>As chief communications officer on board the Interstellar Alliance Fleet’s Star Ship Victory, Yuuri doesn’t have to think about who he actually is on his home planet. He just has to listen to his captain, do his job, and…not fall in love with his best friend, the ship’s science officer, Victor Nikiforov. Well. Two out of three’s not bad. Then his mother calls with the worst possible news: She, the Empress of New Nihon, has arranged Yuuri’s marriage. There’s only one thing Yuuri can do: Fake a boyfriend, and fake one fast. Who better/worse to play that role than the friend he wishes was more? What can go wrong? It’s not like Yuuri can fall more in love...</blockquote>

<blockquote>They called her a queen, though she was not one: but the circlet of light on her head and the ceremonial robes she wore gave her the semblance of one to the Terrans in the city of Zsa, the Terrans who had been carried away from Old Earth when it was conquered by the Psyn. She was not a queen, but the Terran Liaison to the Empress of the Psyn; and now she was no longer that.</blockquote> ➤ OH WOW

<blockquote>Gilgamesh, legendary space general and ruler of Uruk Prime, has an unexpected encounter with a pirate.</blockquote>

<blockquote>"Even if I had the creds for a cloning unit… If I could ever have gotten the boys to make more than a partial stim download, it would be ten years at least before Mahlon and Kilion's clones would be adults and capable of," Naomi made a little gesture with her fingers, which was such pure Naomi that it made Ruth's heart ache. "It's just a thing we have to live with. Our boys are gone." Orpah started crying again. She'd barely stopped since Mahlon and Kilion died. She and Kilion had only been married two cycles and had just begun trying for a baby.</blockquote>

<blockquote>When Jeeves feels insecure about his cyborg status, Bertie must take drastic action to teach him his true value.</blockquote>

<blockquote>"No, see, we've all been trained a certain way. The training system is traditional; it's centuries old. Nobody taught you. You ballist like it's got nothing to do with war at all." A sleepy, extraordinary smile crawls over Victor's face. "Nobody else does it like that. That's why we're going to win."</blockquote> ➤ I don't know if it quite works for me as a YoI fic, but as an origfic it's GREAT, I adore the worldbuilding, I would read more set in this world! (and in fact can and have, the sequel is Gravity, ft. arranged marriage for Otabek and Yuri P.!)

<blockquote>A young scientist is lured away by a treacherous lover. (A Vorkosigan-influenced space AU.)</blockquote> ➤ space au of the Outlandish Knight ballad (the one where the girl drowns the man who had intended to kill her and had killed 7 girls before her)

<blockquote>Esca is a prisoner on Marcus Flavius Aquila's transport ship. What could go wrong?</blockquote> ➤ the space opera rewrite of the story! the fic tags itself as marcus/esca slash but there's a few bare hints that that might be where things are going and that's all. it's functionally totally gen.

<blockquote>In 19th century New Moscow, hearts are broken as a space colony prepares for war.</blockquote>

<blockquote>Tybalt hadn't asked Benvolio to drag him into the escape pod, to a planet with too much sky, with people he's pretty sure mostly hate him.</blockquote>

<blockquote>Jack and Stephen in space. No, really.</blockquote> ➤ I don't know how I managed to never notice this fic's existence before but it's SO DELIGHTFUL omg I'm so pleased that that amrev fic got me looking through astolat's archives again

<blockquote>“You'd better not be getting biohazards on my table.”</blockquote> ➤ more lunar base au

<blockquote>Moving to the Academy Campus was the also the first time Benvolio had ever left Verona, and it probably showed. He tried not to stare like the most bumbling of backwater planet hicks, but - everything was so big and bright, the buildings looked new, the sun was actually visible instead of being hidden being a curtain of orange fog, and many of the people hurrying past them didn’t even look humanoid. </blockquote>

<blockquote>Enjolras and Feuilly, on the moon as anywhere else, have certain preoccupations.</blockquote> ➤ lunar base au continues

<blockquote>Of martial arts both recreational and not, and of many kinds of roses.</blockquote> ➤ more lunar base au, in which Cosette learns la rose couverte!

<blockquote>Cosette lives in an asteroid with her Papa. The whole asteroid is theirs. She remembers, vaguely, when they first came there, that they were just living in one little dark cave with a rickety atmosphere plant, but every year they do something to make it better, and now she has gardens, and a domed balcony where she can see the sun, and a library, and oh! so much. They're mostly self-sufficient but every so often her papa has to take their little rock-hopper and go get the supplies they can't make themselves from Mars, and she's by herself for weeks.</blockquote>

<blockquote>A few hours before, Steve was Captain America, flying a plane into the ice to save his country, save everyone. There's no United States of America on Earth anymore, but there's one on Mars.</blockquote> ➤ I am so into this

<blockquote>A chance encounter on the Mare Cogitum.</blockquote> ➤ the latest in the lunar base au

<blockquote>GENNNNNNNN you named him Kevin and you made more moonbase and he is wearing antique space suit fashion and they have never seen fire and and and :DD CAN I HAVE SOME MORE PLZ MAAM</blockquote>

<blockquote>OH NO NOT A CHANCE TO WRITE MORE MOON BASE RIDICULOUSNESS, gosh, twist my arm, etc.  :D  Same universe as Unlocking The Orbit.</blockquote>

<blockquote>I'm only sorry that I didn't have the time to expand this into something vast and plotty and ridiculous, but I hope it's sufficiently ridiculous to amuse all the same!</blockquote>

<blockquote>Laurence and Temeraire, as requested, in space.</blockquote> ➤ or, in which Temeraire is a dragonship

<blockquote>Captain Baptistine and Engineer Magloire of the starship Myriel pick up an escape pod with a terrified refugee.</blockquote>

<blockquote>The hovercraft had never really been in tip-top shape; no matter how many times he’d sent it in to get fixed, it still sputtered, coughed up smoke, and trailed pollution through the Mars dome. So perhaps, Fauchelevant thought in a delirious haze, this was its revenge for all the times he’d kicked it and yelled at it and wished it was a newer model. Or perhaps, as the gallant Captain Madeleine shouldered his way through the wreckage and grasped Fauchelevent by the wrist and waist, this was its way of saying you deserve something better in your life. </blockquote> ➤ three-sentence fic so the bit I quoted is the entirety of it. DON'T I WISH THERE WERE MORE THOUGH