LINKDING

Summary: It was easy to want what you couldn't have. Ever since her father had told her that she was destined for the royal harem, Jian Lan had been confident she'd make it to the rank of consort. But she'd also known that, in the meantime, she'd be having a passionate love affair with some unsuitable man around the palace. ➤ TGCF fic about the era after xianle falls to yong'an, when Jian Lan finds work in a brothel ➤ Jian Lan's perspective on her developing relationship with Feng Xin ➤ I love the sharpness, the awkwardness, the quiet ground-down miseries - and yet the grasping onto what hope and beauty and love that can be found in the midst of it all ➤ Jian Lan and Feng Xin are doing their best! I'm emotions ➤ and I love the gentle femdom that Jian Lan leans into when Feng Xin's women issues make it challenging for them to have sex <3 ➤ 5k words in length

summary: She'd never been anyone's favorite before he'd told her that, the lesser daughter of a prestigious family that had enough heirs and spares that she could be given away and the act called an honor. It was a scary but lovely thing to be the best, the most loved. When she'd heard those words she'd clutched them to her chest and hoped she'd never prove them false. That did not mean that she did not hate him, too. // OR: Ning Yingying loves her shizun; she loves Binghe, too. These things come into conflict, whether she wants them to or not. ➤ an svsss fic set in the original PIDW, about Ning Yingying ➤ and holy shit this fic is so good, so everything I didn't even know to hope for from a fic about pidw nyy, I am all emotions?! ➤ the complexity of nyy's relationships with sqq and lbh, the mix of love and hate, the way she doesn't feel able to do anything but to witness and to go along with how things are ➤ and seeing the awful things that happen through her eyes.....it's so powerful and bleak and believable ➤ I adore this fic, I'm just absolutely blown away by it ➤ 9k words

Summary: It holds its own hand in front of its face. Rotates it around. Examines through the darkness the sharp knuckles, the bony wrist, the unnatural pallor of its skin. This must be his body, it realizes. His body as it was before it was burned: starved, mad, and dead, but not rotten yet. / He Xuan is sent to prison. Later, he dies. He persists nonetheless. Over the centuries, two people are constants: one who knows nearly everything there is to know about him, and one who hardly knows him at all. ➤ the He Xuan magnum opus we don't deserve but are fortunate enough to get to read anyway ➤ following hx from the beginning until after the end, with theeeee most perfect narrative voice possible for hx ➤ I spent the entire fic internally shrieking with delight bc everything about it is so good!!! ➤ the hx characterisation, the beefleaf relationship complexities, the whatever it is they have of hx and hc....the tiny perfect xie lian cameos, even! it's all! so good!!!! ➤ READ IT READ IT READ IT ➤ 64k words in length

Summary: <blockquote>"I have regrets." - Lan Wangji</blockquote> ➤ wangxian fanvid set to "Hold On, I'm Coming" by Book featuring Ndidi O ➤ damn this vidder is so good at using the motion of clips with the music to create and build intensity! ➤ I love how clear the arc is of what the vid is doing, even with almost no words in the song ➤ thanks to lookitmychicken again for reccing this one!

Summary: <blockquote>The reality of things happening in order, one after another after another, is not at all like the Doctor imagined it would be.</blockquote> ➤ I left the doctor who era of my life behind in 2012 but when one of my beloved doctor who friends posted a new fic today inspired by the newest doctor who happenings, I had to read it ➤ and guess what I had SO many feelings! the doctor! and donna! and finding ways to rest and live a linear life on earth with people he cares about and learning how to find the mundane things worth paying attention to! ➤ 3k words in length

Summary: <blockquote>"Anne had thought herself quite finished with wanting, but this want, once stumbled upon, would not quietly lay itself down in the grave with the others." Eight years changes a person, but not beyond all recognition. Fred Wentworth and Anne Elliot, years after a final break, find that they are more alike, in some respects, than they thought before.</blockquote> ➤ a rewrite of Persuasion featuring butch 4 butch Anne/Frederick ➤ god it's so GOOD and I am so EMOTIONAL about it ➤ I love all the ways in which it is both the same and different, the ways their identities affect the things they do and the choices they make ➤ and I mentioned in an earlier post how meaningful it is to be able to see gender non-conforming people like me in historical fiction, living their lives, finding ways to be happy, finding their community. shaking hands with them across time. I see you and you see me. ➤ making Persuasion specifically be the story told is so perfect too because of how it's about getting to know yourself better when you've had time to grow up more ➤ also there's lots of excellently-researched historical content ➤ and lots of feels ➤ READ IT READ IT READ IT ➤ it's such a lovely ending and I nearly cried about it ➤ 47k words in length

Summary: <blockquote>Sometimes a man's old enough to know his own mind, even if his brother worries, even if his family are living in exile in a mass grave, even if the boy he's set on is an unstable necromancer who could kill them all. Even if he has a history of making dubious choices. A vignette.</blockquote>

<blockquote>After Guanyin Temple, Lan Wangji has to adjust to the fact that Wei Ying is here to stay...albeit in a body that's still unfamiliar to them both.</blockquote>

<blockquote>It isn't that Xie Lian isn't afraid of his body, of whether it will do what he wants it to do, feel what he wants it to feel. But he's much more afraid of taking slow careful steps into the unknown than he is of leaping. Or: Xie Lian can, in fact, get it up, often and enthusiastically. Getting off is a little trickier.</blockquote>

<blockquote>“Should we not have taught them to avoid our own mistakes?” Hyeong-seol says, calmly, “What mistake?”   After witnessing his son's indiscretion with the king, Jung Seuk-jo is forced into a confrontation with an old friend.</blockquote>

<blockquote>Luo Binghe has it all: the respect of the cultivation world, the home he always wanted, and Shizun's love. There's just one problem: if Shizun ever finds out he's a demon, it's going to ruin everything.</blockquote> ➤ I feel like the ending needed a little more emotional settling time after how very long lbh had been angsting about this stuff; it felt a little too abrupt for him to be making jokes about sqq liking him being a monster, for example. but overall a really delightful fic

<blockquote>Sometimes Lan Zhan doesn’t work through lunch. Sometimes he makes conversation with coworkers in the halls. Sometimes he goes home instead of spending the last hour trawling through Grindr. But mostly, that’s exactly what he does. The sameness is comforting. His life spools out in easily measured increments: capsule collections, yards of hand dyed textiles, ninety day lead times, sell through figures, cost of goods sold. Every date in manufacturing can be calculated backwards and forward from a single horizon point: the date that the goods must arrive into the country where they'll be sold. Other than that, nothing else really matters.</blockquote> ➤ well this is devastatingly good

<blockquote>Murderbot is at a party. This is not a normal state of affairs for SecUnits. Neither is the comfy clothes or the sitting or the way the humans keep smiling in its general direction. The smiling, it suspects, will stop, if/when they realise their SecUnit has suffered some sort of catastrophic glitch and has no idea where it is or the specifics of its current assignment. So it's not going to let them find out.</blockquote> ➤ yessss

<blockquote>Liu Qingge and Shen Qingqiu have a bit of trouble with a succubus nest. This becomes Mu Qingfang's problem in a big way. OR Life as a medical professional in a world riddled with aphrodisiacs is hard, especially when you're half in love with a patient.</blockquote> ➤ the sex pollen stuff is just one small ordinary part of the world they live in, and the series as a whole is about the complexities of mqf & lqg's relationship over the whole course of their knowing each other, and it's all GREAT. So far it goes up to the five years of sqq being dead. ➤ series consists of: Oral History Objects of Affection

<blockquote>In a rare oasis in the endless abyss, Luo Binghe tries to masturbate while thinking about anything besides Shen Qingqiu. You can guess how well that goes for him.</blockquote> ➤ a sadhorny moment of respite for binghe in the abyss. lovely scene-setting, great feels

<blockquote>“I won’t leave you alone, Lord Estraven,” Genly said. “I’m afraid you’re stuck with me. In exile or at home. On the Ice or at the hearth.”</blockquote> ➤ just the right vibe to fit the book

<blockquote>“Can you sing?” Zev asked Lee at the same time that Amy turned to Tony and said, “Can he sing?” Tony shrugged. “I don’t know! How would I know?” “You’re sleeping with him!” “Yeah, but he doesn’t serenade me, while we’re doing it.”</blockquote>

<blockquote>“Stephen, use your spectacles, tell me if I don’t mistake what I read.” Maturin took the paper from across the table. “Your eyes do not deceive you, dear. You are made full Admiral, Admiral of the Blue, effective this week. I give you joy of it.” “Admiral of the Blue,” repeated Jack, wonderingly. “Can it really be so. It seems just yesterday…” And here he gazed off, thinking, as Stephen was, of the very moment he had first raised a blue pennant at his mizzen-mast.</blockquote>

<blockquote>One day in Lanling, a little blind beggar picks Nie Huaisang’s pocket, which is the most interesting thing to happen to him in months. (AKA the one where Nie Huaisang adopts A-Qing.)</blockquote>

<blockquote>"All men dream: but not equally. Those who dream by night in the dusty recesses of their minds wake in the day to find that it was vanity: but the dreamers of the day are dangerous men, for they may act their dreams with open eyes, to make it possible." -- T.E. Lawrence</blockquote> ➤ I WAS WEAK, I watched this while only halfway through the movie, and already this vid gave me a lot of feels. I bet it'll be even more so once I have seen the whole movie. ➤ (though it's too bad there's no subtitles for this vid, because the the singer does not articulate clearly enough for me to understand more than a few words here and there. Lyrics can be found here: http://www.azlyrics.com/lyrics/blackangels/youngmendead.html)