LINKDING

<blockquote>Rosetta knelt to look at the stump in the corner of her client’s bedroom. It had the likeness of a ten-year-old boy, four feet tall, dressed in an oversized shirt and suspenders, and its features were flawless, from the newsboy’s cap cocked on its tight curls, to its pupil-less eyes fringed with long eyelashes. The only oddity was that stump’s hands were unformed, shapeless blobs. It was easy to believe that a sculptor had chiseled a boy out of wood and had stepped away just before finishing its hands. Rosetta sucked in her breath through her cloth face mask. The SPC hadn’t told her that her first stump extermination would look like a child. </blockquote>

<blockquote>Starving artists will do anything to achieve greatness.</blockquote>

<blockquote>John Argentine, magician, is doctor to dead princes, Trained, like the best, in Padua, his fine Italian hand Kept in a silver box, it writes in delicate italics Copying his magic texts and shaking on the sand.</blockquote> ➤ author's note: <blockquote>(If I say it's all true, you won't believe me. But -- well, I was reading Frank Klaasen's The Transformation of Magic, and John Argentine was discussed, and there was a summary of his career -- Padua, Princes in Tower, Prince Arthur, Provost of King's College Cambridge -- and then in the next paragraph it said he had a fine Italian hand. It's more than anyone could bear not to write a poem about a fine Italian hand!)</blockquote>

<blockquote>Where are the eagles and trumpets? Where are the thighs of Corinna? These Geats(1) are all hairy and warlike And drink while demanding their dinner!</blockquote>

<blockquote>In a world where men may be gifted with powers from the gods, Hannibal finds that some men are luckier than others.</blockquote>

<blockquote>One man looking for a friend versus all the terrors of the underworld: who do you think will come out on top?</blockquote> ➤ based on the Pompeii graffiti: "We two dear men, friends forever, were here. If you want to know our names, they are Gaius and Aulus."

<blockquote>“I will not take a husband unless he can best me in wrestling,” she announces. Khutulun, her suitors, and 10,000 horses.</blockquote>

<blockquote>Saladin visits Richard's sickbed with fruit, and a question in his eyes.</blockquote>

<blockquote>Tell Nanni: Ea-Nasir sends the following message: You owe more to me than one trifling mina of silver. / The world's first known customer service complaint turns into a different sort of first.</blockquote> ➤ a scholar finds some ancient clay tablets in an eccentric gentleman's attic

<blockquote>Five undiscovered texts pertaining to the life of Ea-Nasir.</blockquote> ➤ I love this structure for the story, and how it allows to build out the whole world and culture around Ea-Nasir

<blockquote>Two playwrights walk into a tavern.</blockquote> ➤ author's note: <blockquote>If you've been following the early modern news circuit (and if you're reading this fic, odds are you do), you might have heard about the newly fashionable theory that the three parts of Henry VI were the collaborative effort of Shakespeare and Marlowe. My main issue with this theory hinges on the definition of the word 'collaboration', which we as fan authors know can mean so many different things.</blockquote>

<blockquote>Shangguan Wan-er could think of no reason for the Empress to summon a palace slave to her presence. No good reason. It would be the first meeting of two of the most powerful women of Chinese history.</blockquote>

<blockquote>As old men, Scipio and Hannibal have an opportunity they longed for at Ephesus.</blockquote> ➤ written in rhyming iambic pentameter

<blockquote>Paul Verlaine and Arthur Rimbaud spend a romantic winter in London together. The screamy, stabby, drunken sort of romantic. “Do it then!” Rimbaud yelled, tearing at his undershirt, baring his chest. “Stop it!” Paul screamed back. “Why cannot you understand? Selfish little fucking…I should stab you through the heart, if you had one.” “If I had one? What do you have in place of one, you pathetic drunk? An empty gin bottle?” Rimbaud started to laugh.</blockquote> ➤ prior to today I knew nothing about these horrible disasters of human beings but I was riveted by this fic about them being horrible with each other

<blockquote>Snow and Whitehead bring back miasma theory, and not before time.</blockquote> ➤ John Snow of the cholera epidemic, in an apocalyptic future, discovers the miasma (radiation) from the leavings of the Old Ones is what is causing illness

<blockquote>When Andrei Razumovsky befriends the strange and lonely Crown Prince as a child, he does not realise the effect it will have on his life. Though the Empress Catherine hates their friendship and tries to seperate them, Andrei and Paul only grow closer - until Paul's marriage must be arranged.</blockquote> ➤ I know nothing about the actual history this is based on but the fic is good. (though needs a comma beta) ➤ (the Catherine mentioned is Catherine the Great. Paul is her son.)

<blockquote>Once, he could make a faun As easily as laughing, As believing that skill and stone would bear him up.</blockquote>

➤ a letter from Jane Austen to her sister Cassandra goes awry and goes to the Cassandra famously of Troy

<blockquote>Adolphe invented the saxophone, but is that any reason to want a guy dead?</blockquote>

<blockquote>Anne and Robert decide to compare the fashions of the day. In Richard's bedchamber. In private.</blockquote>

<blockquote>It's not uncommon for young 18th/19th century Englishmen, fresh out of Cambridge, to go on a tour of the continent. It is pretty unusual for one of them to eventually get an epic poem out of the experience. Of course, Lord Byron got a lot more out of his travels than poetry alone (if you know what I mean), but what his buddy John Cam Hobhouse got out of it was another matter...</blockquote> ➤ notes: <blockquote>I figured there was already a large body of fanfic about Byron and the Shelleys (and occasionally Polidori), so I decided to write something set a bit earlier--1809, to be precise. Byron had yet to "wake up and find himself famous", but the work that really sparked his fame--Childe Harold's Pilgrimage--was begun while he was on this particular epic road trip.</blockquote> ➤ one of the tags is "byron being byron" and...yup

<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>All the awkwardness of seeking a volunteer for an attempt, which every soldier was convinced was as good as asking a man to cast away his life to no purpose, naturally recommended Colonel Hamilton's offer; in any case, Washington allow'd himself to be persuaded, and the operation was carried out an hour later, in a deserted and fallow field some half a mile from the encampment.</blockquote> ➤ TOO INTO THIS OMG ➤ (though the attempt at historical apostrophes in place of the e in "ed" words was kind of a fail. Occasionally there was even an apostrophe in a word where the "ed" is DEFINITELY PRONOUNCED. How am I supposed to pronounce "frustrat'd", please? Oh well, I'm willing to overlook this for a brilliant magician au)

<blockquote>Strychnine is bitter, but the most pleasant to work with.</blockquote>

<blockquote>Before I tell you the story he told me about his encounter with Count Stanislas August Poniatowski, the last King of Poland, I need to explain a thing or two about my father.</blockquote> ➤ I really enjoyed the vast majority of the story, but I think the ending is supposed to be heartwarming and I didn't find it so. If you have the power to maybe stop wwii from happening, isn't that more important than the fact that in the new world created from altering history, your daughter won't exist?

<blockquote>The greatest treat of all was sitting on his father’s lap to add his signature to the bottom of a letter to Atticus while his father corrected his spelling: kappa iota kappa epsilon, the pen slipping in his chubby hand, rho omega nu. Cicero the younger sends his greetings to Titus the Athenian.</blockquote> ➤ political and personal all mixed up in each other: awww yeah ➤ but now I get to figure out how to tag roman names. goddamnit what do I call people.

<blockquote>Cleopatra calculates the odds.</blockquote>

<blockquote>In a crumbling Pagan empire, two little boys meet each other for the first time.</blockquote> ➤ Lithuanian history

<blockquote>The king of Bithynia is not what he expected, and young Caesar finds it is perhaps not quite so simple to separate personal pleasure from political expediency as he first thought.</blockquote>

<blockquote>Really, it's bad enough that you have to deal with these sorts of people in the cooler months. In summer I wish they'd just take themselves off to the provinces and all be disagreeable at each other, and leave us alone.</blockquote>