LINKDING

Summary: Martin Pale learns from Catherine of Winchester, several centuries too late. ➜ a yuletide fic, for Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell ➜ About the tudor-era magician Martin Pale and his relationship with his tutor, Catherine of Winchester, from the golden age of magic ➜ gosh wow I am just -- so blown away by this?! it feels like it fits so perfectly into the interstices of canon. The undeniable weight of reality that the whole piece has, even as it is shot through with shards of the numinous....the characters all being people who are difficult, and real, and not altogether pleasant, but you love them for how real they are. ➜ Pale and Catherine are so different from each other, yet so connected, and though we get to hear much of Pale's life, Catherine remains as mysterious to us as she is to Pale. And yet we know her from who she is. ➜ idk, idk, I'm not sure how to explain this better! I just....really recommend reading this fic. it is so satisfying. ➜ 16k words

Summary: <blockquote>The Old Master thinks Chen-Chen is bored, and sends him on an interesting case . . .</blockquote> ➤ during the time when LC is working on healing mcs as much as can be done

Summary: <blockquote>The slow purpling of the evening sky makes their robes blend into their shadows, their shadows blend into the still water stretched out before them. Home, Jiang Cheng thinks, satisfied, and A-Ling exhales softly against him, and everything is good, and none of them move to leave.</blockquote>

<blockquote>“Do you know people die of tooth infections?” “Stupid way to die,” Wei Wuxian mumbles. “I agree,” Wen Qing says. “So: you’re going to the dentist.” / While on the run, Wen Qing drags Wei Wuxian to a free clinic where they are confronted with someone from their past lives, a root canal, and the devastating suggestion of how things could be different.</blockquote>

<blockquote>The second time he dies, it’s almost funny. He laughs—or well, he tries to. It catches on his broken ribs, comes out a rasping gasp instead. It’s funny. Really. The Flower Crowned Martial God, dying of a broken neck amidst the wildflowers.</blockquote> ➤ xl's many experiences of death over his hundreds of years

<blockquote>He’s twenty-nine when he gets out of the Kiln. He thinks. Time moves in its own eddies and swirls — in the streets, in the war, in death. He thinks he died when he was eighteen and he thinks there was about a year there before he wound up in Mount Tong’lu and by his best guess, it’s been ten years since he’s seen the world outside of this mountain. So the newest Supreme Ghost King, first since the White-Clothed Calamity, emerges from the fire and wreckage of Mount Tong’lu a year shy of thirty. He steps out of the fire and the ash with teeth bared, and below his feet, the world shakes. / The road from Wu Ming to Crimson Rain</blockquote> ➤ Hua Cheng's story during the 800 years he's looking for his god!

<blockquote>A company data analyst is assigned to find someone to blame for Murderbot going rogue. Doing so requires the company making connections between data points it had not previously made.</blockquote> ➤ yeah. YEAH.

<blockquote>Three makes some choices.</blockquote>

<blockquote>It’s too late for any of Hanguang-Jun’s rabbits to be awake -- one of the sundown chores for young disciples is to herd them back into their hutch -- but the rabbit field is as good a spot as any for quality sulking, so Lan Jingyi makes his way there. Someone has beat him to it. Lan Jingyi stares at Hanguang-Jun. Hanguang-Jun stares passively back. When Lan Sizhui is swept away with the Ghost General, off on a new adventure, Lan Jingyi is the one who returns to Cloud Recesses alone. </blockquote>

<blockquote>“Well, when I asked Wei-gongzi what you might want for your birthday, he asked me what I could give you that no one else could.” Lan Sizhui can’t help but smile. It’s so Wei-qianbei to answer a question with a question. “A-and I thought… if you wanted, I could…” The next words are so quiet, Lan Sizhui struggles to hear them. “I thought I could show you our family.” For Lan Sizhui's birthday, he receives a glimpse behind the curtain of all that was. </blockquote>

<blockquote>Dear child, I would like to tell you a story. I’d like to have one ready for you the moment you open your eyes. This is the gift I intend to prepare to welcome you to the world, for a story is a most elegant and efficient program. When human children are born, they are given fairy tales, which help them compose an identity out of the haphazard information that surrounds them. The story provides a structure. It gives the child a way to organize data, to choose—and choice is the foundation of consciousness.</blockquote>

<blockquote>Head disciples Shen Qingqiu and Liu Qingge are caught by slavers and locked in a woodshed. It’s a rat trap meant for rat boys, and Liu Qingge isn’t one. Shen Qingqiu would’ve been pleased at his humiliation, if he wasn’t certain that this—either the trap or Liu Qingge himself—would utterly destroy him. Somehow, they make it out as friends.</blockquote>

<blockquote>Wei Wuxian braces himself for what might come next, the story of how this man died by the Yiling Patriarch's hand—at Nightless City, at the Burial Mounds, as the rest of the sects tried to bring that great villain to account. "What was his name?" Uncle Gan sits back, twiddles his thumbs as he thinks. "Well, it'd be Wei something, of course." "Wei Changze, wasn't it?" chimes in a new person, and if anyone agrees or disagrees, Wei Wuxian does not hear them. His wine bowl slips from his grip and the sudden clatter of it barely registers over the unexpected sounds of his father's name. Wei Changze, slipping so careless from a stranger's mouth here in small Taozi, here of all places under the open sky. Wei Changze. - Wei Wuxian meets his grandmother. No, not the immortal one. The other one.</blockquote>

<blockquote>To someone who knows how to look, Gusu Lan is watching and waiting, one eye on the horizon. When Wei Wuxian fails to return to Cloud Recesses on time, Lan Sizhui takes matters into his own hands. </blockquote> ➤ fic from sizhui's pov, but lots about how/why it makes sense for wwx to keep traveling post canon

<blockquote>‘You think me selfish,’ Lan Xichen says, still avoiding his eyes. In the following pause Nie Huaisang seriously wonders whether Lan Xichen is about to snap, grab Shuòyuè and take his head clean off. He gets to his feet, and braces himself. Lan Xichen opens the doors. The effort seems to pain him, like he has aged, or the doors are heavy. ‘You are right.’ It’s barely a whisper, strained so thin it has holes in it. Nie Huaisang thinks he might have misheard — overwhelmed by the loud, furious beating of his own heart — until Lan Xichen repeats, ‘You are right.’</blockquote> ➤ slash-flavoured gen, lxc & nhs talk post-canon about their unresolved issues

<blockquote>Lan Xichen closes his eyes and holds the rules in his chest. He is a pond, slow-moving and lined with cattails, bending around rocks and honoring dams. He knows a limit of grass and beach and stone, knows how far he can lap over their edges. He does not dry up, he does not flood. He takes rain and spills, branches, gravel--he glints sunlight at his surface, and pulls ugly things down below the coating of his silt. / A study of Lan Xichen's year in seclusion.</blockquote> ➤ internal screaming

<blockquote>Beside her, the second clarinet shifted in his seat and grumbled, “I thought there was going to be a new conductor. What’s the point of holding rehearsal without a conductor?” The complaint lit the first clarinet’s seething anger. He should shut his mouth and tune his clarinet. Yes, the new conductor was late, but the ensemble had all gathered, when, for too long, they hadn’t known if they would ever gather again. Two weeks at home, with nothing but shrieking children and her mother and sister-in-laws’ chorus of laments—oh our menfolk, oh the senate, oh the drought—was enough. She needed this. Didn’t they all, right now? They would have an ordinary rehearsal if she had to drag each one through it by their nose.</blockquote> ➤ Oh wow this is gorgeous, intense and beautiful and real, and the slow careful building towards the perfect end

<blockquote>His father in white plays the song late into the night, and when A-Yuan wakes up confused and afraid, the guqin lulls him back to sleep. Lan Sizhui hears his father play the same song every night for his whole life, and never, ever get an answer.</blockquote> ➤ this is incredible, I didn't expect to love it as much as I did but I really did!

<blockquote>It is not an enviable position, being a bridge, particularly a bridge with visions. But sometimes, to build the future, that's what you need. Or: Harry and Corlath's daughter comes to Istan.</blockquote>

<blockquote>Alys, Kou and baby Ivan flee Vordarian. A missing subplot from Barrayar</blockquote>

<blockquote>Even the sweetest pup will bite if handled roughly, and Regan is no innocent. The making of a girl who embraced her demons and turned them to her purpose.</blockquote>

<blockquote>The state took Aphra away from Innsmouth. They took her history, her home, her family, her god. They tried to take the sea. Now, years later, when she is just beginning to rebuild a life, an agent of that government intrudes on her life again, with an offer she wishes she could refuse. “The Litany of Earth” is a dark fantasy story inspired by the Lovecraft mythos.</blockquote> ➤ a subversion of Lovecraft's Cthulhu mythos ➤ see also Ex Urbe's excellent review of this story: http://www.exurbe.com/?p=2951

<blockquote>In the two weeks following the events of Star Trek Into Darkness, a Starfleet officer tries to put Starfleet back together again. As a friend pointed out, anyone looking for a fic with plot and subtlety should probably not read this fic. It might work whether you liked the movie or not, but I wrote it in order to address multiple aspects of fail. It should probably be titled, Why I Love Starfleet.</blockquote> ➤ I cannot even with how perfect and right this fic is.

<blockquote>Feuilly joins the Amis and objects to everything , Joly and Combeferre try not to objectify patients, Enjolras cannot help but objectify the People, Courfeyrac is an object of merriment and Jehan makes Combeferre into an object of the sublime.</blockquote> ➤ aw fuckin hell, here's all my TEEEAAAAM feels back in yet another fandom. Only what do I call it here? Not "team" or "pack" or anything like that..... ➤ ANYWAYS THIS IS DELIGHTFUL IN ALL THE WAYS ➤ (I tag it as les amis; the viewpoint one is Joly)

<blockquote>To the city of York, in the year of our Lord 1780, there came a young man who had fallen upon hard times.</blockquote> ➤ or, how Childermass came to work for Norrell. ➤ An interesting story, and somewhat unsettling and stick-in-your-head in the way that any good fic about the magic of JS&MN ought to. ➤ It's -- oh, I'm describing it wrong. But this fic is extremely effective at feeling utterly like a part of the world of JS&MN.

<blockquote>Simon has no children of his own. But he has an honorary nephew.</blockquote>

<blockquote>Christopher Pike and the Kirks have been circling each other for twenty-five years.</blockquote> ➤ tags include: starfleet as a real paramilitary organization, Pike as hero and historian, winona kirk is the starfleet madonna

<blockquote>While visiting a place from Ronon's past, Sheppard and Ronon are attacked by snipers, but there's something there that's more dangerous and deadly than any human enemy.</blockquote> https://web.archive.org/web/20160506211429/http://rhymer.org.uk/sga/sureanchor.htm

<blockquote>AU. Like the ‘Lost Colony’ of Roanoke, the mystery surrounding the disappearance of the Atlantis expedition has captivated the imagination of generations, and there has been much speculation about their fate...</blockquote> https://www.fanfiction.net/s/5009619/1/The-Lost-Expedition

<blockquote>She knew what was happening, but it was impossible. Like suddenly knowing, The sun won't rise in the morning. Gravity doesn't work. The Wraith don't mean any harm... Something had happened to the translators. She couldn't wrap her head around it, but she knew it must be true. The translators were such a fact of life: like the Ancestors' rings, like the Wraith. So omnipresent that even as a sensible adult you forgot sometimes that these things were not permanent, that they too could be damaged. </blockquote> ➤ I really love everything about this, except for the decision to render english-that-non-english-speakers-can't-understand in German. I understand why the decision was made, but it threw off the feel of things for me and was jut a constantly-cropping-up false note in an otherwise really thoughtful story. https://web.archive.org/web/20110827110146/http://trinityofone.unrealwords.com:80/athosian.html 11k