LINKDING

<blockquote>She wore no jewels, only the short trousers of a ball player and an undecorated armguard that covered her from wrist to elbow, her hand curled into a fist to hold it in place. She wasn't jumping or crouching, only standing, her arms at her side, her head tilted just slightly, as though she were listening to a voice only she could hear.</blockquote> ➤ Politics and religious/political games ➤ part 2: http://strangehorizons.com/fiction/she-commands-me-and-i-obey-part-2-of-2/

<blockquote>Five Rejuvenations Kalique Abrasax Took And One She Didn't.</blockquote>

<blockquote>Upon waking in a dampened bed—and it had been a poor idea to sleep in the Summer Room, but that was the way of Summer, wasn’t it? to make you forget its weight—your thoughts got all sidetracked by the languid scent of lilacs, and thunderstorms, and berries so fresh they were still hot from the sun. The Summer Room simmered, with sweating flesh at sundown, cool drinks, lies told, and oh the heat-haze, hay-scented, lying naked, running fingertips down your skin.</blockquote> ➤ oh my god, deeply weird but really interesting and I love it and I kind of want fic about it now.

<blockquote>Mark thinks hanging out with Ivan at a pre-wedding ball will keep him out of trouble. Set toward the end of A Civil Campaign.</blockquote>

<blockquote>I’ll pretend I’m going blind if I have to: start fumbling my work, carving sloppy lines onto the dolls, squinting, tripping over nothing. Everything my mother did in her twenty-fifth year. Everything my aunt and uncle did. Now the three of them sit in the best positions by the fire; how honored they are, for giving their sight to feed us. How well-fed, while we labor carving more dolls for the pot. They’ll kill me for laziness if I don’t go blind in the next year.</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>Everyone thinks my brother is nice. He set up a rescue centre for birds, after the terraforming accident poisoned the lake. That's always the image of him, holding a bird covered in sludge. The birds are never the same after they're cleaned, but the gossips never talk about that. Cleaning birds is a safe way to make people notice you, and my brother likes safe. I jumped off a cliff once. He was all, "You'll die if you jump." I broke most of my bones, but I made it. It's worth trying for the feel of it. Not the bones part, but the rush of something new. It should have been something, falling and surviving. But the gossips only cared about how much it upset my brother.</blockquote>

<blockquote>I read Marguerite Yourcenar's "A Coin In Nine Hands" and thought it would be nifty to write a science fiction version of a story where a coin circulated through a society and gave a picture of that society. The society in question is a space station I'd developed earlier for something else.</blockquote>

<blockquote>OKNO OKNO can't tell at first which radio it's coming from. That's understandable; you've got twenty-six, all arranged on various shelves around your apartment. Twenty-five before you picked up the latest one, a little box from the thrift store, runs on two double-A batteries, not as useful in a catastrophe as the ones that you crank to life, but, well, you can't be cranking every minute of the day. And anyway, it's not a catastrophe. Yet.</blockquote> ➤ odd and I don't really understand everything but it's extremely compelling and well-written and it's totally worth reading.

<blockquote>Greed may have been what forced Marley to walk the earth for all eternity, but he felt more bound in life to never be able to love whom he wished.</blockquote>

<blockquote>A record of the sub-committee's interview of Maggie Farrell, Somnotician and candidate for the position of artist on the delegation which will shortly leave Earth to make first contact with the inhabitants of Toliman B.</blockquote> ➤ Again: AAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!

<blockquote>After fleeing east from war-torn Sarain, Buri and Thayet return triumphant to the K'miri clans with the Dominion Jewel. But while its powers protect them, the Jewel also makes them a target.</blockquote>

<blockquote>I didn’t take her voice for myself. I want to set the record straight on that, right up front. People got a lot of crazy notions in their heads, the way the story got around, and that was one of them.</blockquote>

<blockquote>When Carlos woke up, everything was backwards. (Even Cecil.)</blockquote>

<blockquote>slash of blood against snow and who would wish for a child "red as blood"—pretty words, but the daughter suffers. --Lightsey Darst, "[Snow White]" The Queen has her tale. The Court has another.</blockquote>

<blockquote>Greendale really is a psychiatric hospital, but Abed has a foolproof escape plan for him and all his friends. Shared delusion? Shared delusion? Shared delusion?</blockquote>

From Angua’s office, with the door cracked, being a captain wasn’t all that different from being a sergeant.

<blockquote>In a BDSM world, John meets Teyla at a secret underground vanilla club. Or: What does kink look like in a culture where what we'd call kink is standard practice?</blockquote>

<blockquote>There was a time when the woods near Duva ate girls…or so the story goes. But it’s just possible that the danger may be a little bit closer to home.</blockquote> ➤ The nature and identity of good and bad in this story is very interesting, and definitely commentary on traditional fairy tales

<blockquote>Child Ballad 32 is a loathly lady story. The only popular version I know of is Steeleye Span’s “King Henry,” on Below the Salt. I have had this album for well over a decade, and occasionally I found myself wondering about the monstrous lady in the story, and even more about King Henry, who agreed to kill his horse and hawk and hounds to feed her. I don’t know that I’d easily forgive someone who forced me to kill my dog. This had been kicking around in my head for the better part of a decade, and then I was privy to a very odd conversation in a bookstore about people with extreme forms of body dysmorphic disorder, and then I drank a lot of coffee and drove for about forty-five minutes and “King Henry” came on the CD player and I went home and wrote the story in one long jag, which probably explains a few things about it.</blockquote>

➤ Does what it says on the tin. A very alien and botanical look at Gaila. also on ao3 at http://archiveofourown.org/works/506879

➤ character study of Fraser as an ex-alcoholic, depressing but good

<blockquote>Atlantis reads the Great Books. . . of Pegasus.</blockquote> ➤ the one with "An Account of the Rape of Hilia and the Betrayal of Ptar"