LINKDING

summary: He Xuan has little money, no stable job, an eating disorder, and a great deal of resentment at the way their life has fallen apart. Shi Qingxuan, whom they met on an online eating disorder community, is also going through a challenging time. Perhaps it is good, then, that they have each other to depend on. ➜ beefleaf modern au ➜ sqx and hx, their respective struggles with eating disorders, and the relationship they have with each other ➜ told in a really cool non-traditional way, largely through the digital records hx keeps -- texts with sqx, web searches, youtube history, to do lists, notes to self, etc ➜ I love how the form allows this really great window into hx's state of mind, with a sort of spareness that packs a big punch ➜ and the translation to the modern context of the beefleaf relationship pre-black-water-arc is so good! ➜ what a good. I'm so impressed! ➜ 7k words long

summary: The air conditioned chill of Wei Ying's office gave way to a wall of humid heat as soon as they left the building. The walk to the station was only a few blocks, but the back of Lan Zhan's shirt was damp with sweat by the time she went underground. "So what's the curse, exactly," Wei Ying said as they jammed themselves into a packed subway car. At lunchtime on a weekday during summer break. Lan Zhan steadied herself against the car door. "I believe it's bad luck." "Holy shit," Wei Ying said. "Did she curse you to step on a Lego?" ➤ modern au f/f mdzs wangxian fic ➤ lwj and wwx are academic colleagues; lwj comes to wwx for help dealing with a minor curse ➤ I love the glimpses into their broader world, the way cultivation is a part of modern life, the dynamics lwj has with her family, etc ➤ the way lwj being a poet affects the prose of the piece, and her point of view! ➤ and the dynamics between lwj and wwx are soooo good <3 ➤ 1.7k words in length

Summary: Whenever Shen Yuan thought of Luo Binghe, she got a weird feeling in her stomach, like she was hungry, like she was about to fall. So she stopped thinking long enough to lay down on the sofa. Luo Binghe wasn’t like other women. She had a perfect body: strong, but also soft. She could pick Shen Yuan up, but she also made a good pillow. She was an excellent cook, but she hated to have help in the kitchen and would only let Shen Yuan sit on the counter and watch. She was highly intelligent, with a memory like a trap and a natural aptitude for learning. But she was cute, too—she liked to hold onto Shen Yuan during scary movies, and if Shen Yuan didn’t pat her on the head and tell her ‘good job’, she pouted. ➤ a cute little modern au f/f bingqiu get-together! ➤ lbh comes over to sy's apartment to cook for her on a rainy day ➤ binghe is SO good at working around her yuan-jie's heterosexual hangups 🥰 ➤ 2.5k words in length

Summary: Shang Qinghua is dropped without warning into an archaic alternate universe, ie. the Oxford University collegiate system. And, okay, there would have been a warning if she read the college brochure properly before she applied… ➤ modern AU f/f moshang where they meet as college roommates ➤ I appreciate that it's set in a specific college and the details about it are made use of to build out the sense of setting ➤ I love sqh's narrative pov, she's so funny! ➤ I also love the glimpses we get into the cumplane friendship and into the whole....situation sqq has going on with the harem of young men who are in love with him while sqq is oblivious to how gay everything is. ➤ and the moshang is super cute. mbj and sqh are both bad at communicating, in very different ways, and mbj is doing her best! ➤ 9k words in length

Summary: <blockquote>The most shocking thing about Ghost City was how modern it was. Billboards! Traffic lights! KFC! Xie Lian could never get over the demons taking pictures of street food. The first time she saw it happen, she pulled on Hua Cheng’s sleeve and whispered, “San Lang… why is that man photographing his dumplings?” Hua Cheng glanced at Xie Lian. “People post photos online. On Weibo, usually.” Xie Lian had the vague sense that Weibo was sort of like a public communication array. She wasn’t sure why anyone would share photos of their food there, but she didn’t know anyone who would be interested besides Hua Cheng. “Ah, I see.” “I’ll show you, jiejie.” Hua Cheng fished her phone out of her pocket. Her suit was so low-cut that Xie Lian could barely look at her; the fake fur trim ran down to the navel, exposing the soft curves of Hua Cheng’s breasts and the garish necklace suspended between them. “Here, look through this.”</blockquote> ➤ rule 63 modern au hualian ➤ it is so SOFT and suffused with care that I am all emotions!!!! ➤ also. the outfits. I die. ➤ 3k words in length

Summary: <blockquote>"Really, Xie Lian, you don't even jerk it??" Shi Qingxuan insists. "I mean it's none of my business and you can tell me to fuck off, but holy shit, lady." Xie Lian laughs, feeling her cheeks color, and shrugs again. "I don't know, something about the mechanics of it just never made sense to me," she admits. "And anyway that's time I should be spending studying." / It comes out that Xie Lian's never had an orgasm. She goes to Hua Cheng for help. • theyre lesbians</blockquote> ➤ modern au where hualian are lesbians ➤ xie lian has never had an orgasm, and hua cheng offers to help by loaning her a toy ➤ obviously the help ends up going further than that ➤ it's just so cute and sweet how much xl and hc love each other and take care of each other and are clearly SUPER into each other! ➤ and how good they are about each other's weird hangups about sex! ➤ 19k words in length

Summary: <blockquote>“What do you think about,” Wei Ying said aloud, before she could stop herself, before she could even think twice about the repercussions. “When you.” She finally found Lan Zhan’s eyes, molten in the low light, and swallowed in a tiny, audible gulp. “You know.” On Wei Ying, Lan Zhan’s gaze didn’t waver even a fraction. “Giving head,” she said. Wei Ying was certain she’d misheard. “Getting head?” “No,” said Lan Zhan. / After a surprise party gone awry, Wei Ying surprises herself.</blockquote> ➤ i loved the unusual detail of them being swimmers/divers, and all the water stuff worked into the prose

Summary: <blockquote>Thinking about wlw Wei Ying wearing skimpier and skimpier outfits to do her early morning workouts in the living room of the apartment she shares with Lan Zhan. She’s never worked out so much before, but Lan Zhan looks so good with delicately flushed ears and a flat startled look.</blockquote>

Summary: <blockquote>No matter how she tries to word it, the question is going to sound terribly awkward. Even if San Niang is the most trustworthy person Xie Lian knows, she might decide to simply hang up and go back to sleep. “I wondered… I mean, since then I have been wondering if maybe what Shi Qingxuan was suggesting might not be entirely out of the realm of possibility,” she rushes through this as quickly as possible, squeezing her eyes closed as she speaks. “I don’t really know how to judge what I’m, um, supposed to feel.” “About… women?” San Niang says, posing the question tentatively. “Yes,” Xie Lian says, breathing it out. “Oh,” San Niang says, just as softly. “Okay. Um.”</blockquote>

Summary: <blockquote>“She doesn’t like you like that,” comes Luo Binghe’s voice, so irritating that Liu Qingge’s face sours up like they’ve bitten a lemon. They direct a wintry glare at Luo Binghe, whose chair has been scooted as close to Shen Yuan’s empty one as possible in her momentary absence. Luo Binghe smiles beatifically at them, drawing her finger slowly in a circle around the rim of Shen Yuan’s finished drink- then raising it to her mouth and sucking the lingering wetness off her finger, pulling it out with a graphic pop.</blockquote>

Summary: <blockquote>If Lang Qianqiu thinks back, she can vaguely remember her instincts screeching at her to bolt. She isn’t here by accident. She has no idea if Qi Rong set out to woo her with her hair-filled shower drain and fridge full of condiments. That Lang Qianqiu was wooed is her own baggage to unpack.</blockquote> ➤ OKAY FINE I guess I just enjoyed a qi rong ship!!

<blockquote>Outside, San Niang has long finished the quota of charity Xie Lian allotted her. She's drinking something from the bakery on the corner—probably one of their dreadful, bitter coffees. The wind is making a mess of her hair. Yearning plants a seed in Xie Lian's heart.</blockquote>

<blockquote>"You've never had an orgasm?!" Both Wen Qing and Mianmian are watching Wei Ying with huge eyes, straws slipping out of their mouths. Wei Ying squirms in place, biting on her own straw. "It's not that big a deal, is it?"</blockquote>

<blockquote>“Do you—” Quan Yizhen started, and then on the other side of the room Pei Ming started up his jackhammer, so he waited, bouncing on the balls of his feet, and then said all in a rush, “doyouknowHuaCheng?” Xie Lian blinked. “You know—him?” she asked, in case 'San Lang' was some kind of private name, a secret code just for her. She liked the thought of that. Quan Yizhen shook his head vigorously, his curls bouncing. “No!” he said. “But Yin-ge said you were with him at Home Depot and you left together!” Xie Lian stared at him. One of the employees that had helped her a few weeks ago had been called Yin something, she was pretty sure, but that’s about as far as she could follow what was happening here. “Yizhen, if you don’t know Hua Cheng, why is this… notable?” “He’s famous. Or like. The bad one. Infamous. I thought—” His eyes gleamed. “I thought maybe you fought him.” / Retired (read: disgraced) famous boxer Xie Lian meets a helpful stranger while at Home Depot attempting to fix her collapsing roof.</blockquote> ➤ the mafia element is very minor

<blockquote>Wang Ningmei has had a fair amount of sex, in her day. Most of it she’d even call good, some of it with people she'd really liked, even loved, some of it both of those things at the same time. But there was something about the simultaneous ease and tension in the room right now, familiarity and newness combining into a heady cocktail that meant every touch and laugh and motion was unexpected but never truly a surprise. She knows these women. She's talked with them, laughed with them, built a thousand stories with them for years. They're hers, in a way she's never conceived of til now, and she's theirs. But she doesn't know them here, like this, slick laughing lips and cracking laughs and the glorious slide of flesh on flesh, and every little thing she learns is like a light turning on inside her, filling her with warmth and want.</blockquote> ➤ epilogue to the forums au

<blockquote>“She gave you weed?” She asks, and then, scowling, “you’re not suggesting we—” Feng Xin makes a face at her. “No, are you kidding? With my baby in the room? You really think a lot of my parenting skills, huh.” “Sorry,” Mu Qing mutters, because Feng Xin is a good dad, for the most part, once she stopped being stupid about leaving dangerous shit around her apartment. “I thought,” says Feng Xin slowly. “I thought you might want it?” “I don’t even drink,” Mu Qing says incredulously, “and you think I might want the shitty weed you got from the potential cannibal you went on a bad date with?” “Weed is different from booze,” Feng Xin argues. “Maybe it’ll help you, like. Relax, a little.” “Who the fuck says I need to relax,” Mu Qing snaps. “Fuck,” says Cuocuo, gummily but unmistakably. Mu Qing stares at Feng Xin, who stares right back. “Please tell me that wasn’t his first word.” </blockquote>

<blockquote>"I've read about this somewhere," Shang Qinghua said, tapping her chin. "You wrote it," Peerless Cucumber snapped. "Chapter 258, remember?" "Haha," Shang Qinghua said. "No." She thought for a moment. "This isn't one of the curses we'd have to get married to break, right?"</blockquote>

<blockquote>Sha Hualing considers that somehow, she might have been the only person on Luo Binghe's top ten contacts who hadn't figured out that he was gay before now. She throws her phone at the fridge so hard that the screen cracks.</blockquote>

<blockquote>Wei Ying hires Lan Zhan to landscape her third wedding. </blockquote>

<blockquote>Shen Yuan hates Shang Qinghua's sex scenes. Or so she claims.</blockquote>

<blockquote>"Have you heard of Wei Wuxian?" someone bellows. It's a teenager with a microphone, the speakers loud and obnoxious above his head. "Come join the Yiling Wei sect and earn the opportunity for her to teach you personally!" He has a stall and everything. There's another teenage boy with him, handing out leaflets. Wei Ying pulls her hair down to cover the sides of her face and walks up. "Hey! Are you interested in demonic cultivation?" asks the kid brightly. He grabs a leaflet off the stall and thrusts it at her. "Uh, I don't really know a lot about it," Wei Ying says, "but you said Wei Wuxian could personally teach me?" / Aka the casefic where someone is impersonating Wei Wuxian and has founded a sect, or possibly a cult, or possibly a multi-level marketing scheme, in her name. Aka the wlw mlm fic.</blockquote> ➤ the one where xy founds the yiling Wei sect pretending to be wwx

<blockquote>“Zhan-jie,” Wei Ying whines, and Lan Zhan is appalled to realize that the sound sends a shiver down her spine. She wants to shut Wei Ying’s stupid mouth. She wants to tie Wei Ying’s hands behind her back and tell her exactly what she is and is not allowed to do. She. Hm. “Explain,” Lan Zhan commands her, voice going dark and heavy, and the startled look that Wei Ying gives her sends another zip through each and every one of Lan Zhan’s nerve endings. Hm, Lan Zhan thinks, again. “Well,” Wei Ying mumbles, darting glances at Lan Zhan, “well, the thing is, Baby sort of — it’s not her fault, but she, when she ran away, she sort of. She, uh. Well, she had a passenger.” “A passenger.” “The dinosaur took my nephew,” Wei Ying says, and Lan Zhan lays her forehead against the wheel and ignores the horn as it sounds. - OR: Lan Zhan, sensible museum curator and paleontologist, gets robbed, gets arrested, gets a headache, gets a wife.</blockquote>

<blockquote>"I'm so tired," Wei Ying complains, tossing his hand down instead of Going Fish for the sixteenth time this game alone. "I can't even remember who's said what and now I'm losing, like, the easiest card game in existence." He looks tired, too. The spaces under his eyes are sunken, a bruised purple under skin that looks thin and stretched-out to the touch. Fragile. He's looked exhausted for days now, but even when they're curled up on the couch together, Wei Ying's head in Jiang Yanli's lap, humming an unrecognizable tune softly as she strokes his hair, he doesn't sleep.</blockquote> ➤ wwx going to his sister for a safe place when he's in a bad place with depression

<blockquote>Wei Ying abandons her suitcase to investigate the sleeping situation, already coming up with a hundred reasons not to inconvenience Lan Zhan by stealing half of her fucking bed, and then gets a better look at it. It’s huge. Wei Ying has seen a king bed before, and this is bigger than that. Is that a California King? Is that what those huge-ass orgy beds are called? There are parking spaces smaller than this bed. Wei Ying has lived in apartments smaller than this bed. “You know,” Wei Ying says thoughtfully, “I’ll level with you. I was gonna volunteer to sleep on the couch, or steal some pillows and blankets and sleep in the bathtub, but then I saw this monstrosity. Lan Zhan, look at this fucking bed.” Lan Zhan rests her hands on the room divider, her face softly amused. “I am looking.” “We could tend a whole herd of sheep on this bed,” Wei Ying says, warming to her subject. “We could cross the Pacific Ocean and weather any storm on this bed. Fuck, Lan Zhan, I could stage an entire community theatre production of Chicago on this bed.” Or: There was only one bed, but that part's fine, actually.</blockquote>

<blockquote>Sha Hualing has always wanted to have a rival.</blockquote>

<blockquote>How to sate your demonic orgasm sword in six easy steps!</blockquote>

Summary: <blockquote>“What’s a stone butch and why aren’t they real?” Jiang Cheng asks, too buzzed to care too much about not being up on lesbian culture. Huaisang pats Jiang Cheng on the no-man’s-land between her boobs and her shoulder. “You’re so useless, Jiang Cheng. A stone butch is a fictional hottie who doesn’t make you do any work at all, just wants to give head and fuck you stupid on her strap.” “Fictional?” Jiang Cheng echoes, having - not a moment, per se, but sort of a problem where her thoughts are going too fast for her poor drunken brain to keep up with. “Nobody actually wants to fuck a chick who’s too lazy to eat you out after,” Huaisang mumbles. / After leaving Wei Ying and Lan Zhan’s bachelorette party, Jiang Cheng and Nie Huaisang decide to experiment with some outdated stereotypical lesbian sex roles.</blockquote>

<blockquote>Wen Qing is pretty sure that she and Jiang Yanli are just friends, but there's a chance they might be dating. The only way to find out is to escalate.</blockquote>

<blockquote>A fic based lightly on a reddit post— "I (21f) have a crush on my roommate (20f). I can't figure out if she actually likes me back or not or is just being friendly. She cooks for me and knows all my favorite foods, and brings me lunch. She buys me anything I want, and her family all joke about our wedding. I once fell asleep on her lap and when I woke up she was stroking my hair and I almost had a stroke. I can't figure out if she's flirting with me or not. Help!"</blockquote> ➤ do I know anything about any of these characters? No. Was I charmed anyway? absolutely

<blockquote>Fantine is watching Cosette in the playground when someone she seems to know approaches her...</blockquote>