LINKDING

Summary: <blockquote>Maribel heard but did not see when the new pig-boy was named. She never went down into the village of San Rafael if she could help it. But she couldn’t miss the wailing lament of the village mothers echoing from the church courtyard, a wrenching sound, though traditional and expected. It made Maribel shiver despite the heat. It had only been a month, Only a month without a pig-boy. But she should have known that the new one would have to be named soon. The sun was retreating, the nights getting longer, and that meant the high season for pilgrims was coming.</blockquote> ➤ in a village where people possessed by demons are turned into javelinas, cared for by a pig-boy for the rest of their lives, what happens when the new pig-boy has a little too much empathy for his charges? ➤ excellent use of fantasy alternate world to engage with questions of the failures of the justice system and the penal system, and the ways people become complicit with the system ➤ really well done pov character ➤ 5k words in length

<blockquote>While travelling alone, Wei Wuxian finds a baby animal in need of rescue. If he'd realized in the moment what kind of animal it was, he probably wouldn't have picked it up... Or Wei Wuxian accidentally adopts a puppy and life instantly becomes a lot more complicated from there.</blockquote>

<blockquote>Liu Qingge finds himself unwillingly charmed by Shen Qingqiu's new pet tiger while Luo Binghe is mysteriously off peak. The two are, of course, completely unrelated.</blockquote>

<blockquote>So there was this jar, and it had so much peanut butter still in it, and when his fox nose scented it and didn’t catch any poison or spoilage, what was he supposed to do? Not avail himself of this gift? No. He shoved his delicate little snout right in there and got to licking, but, you know… Elegantly. Definitely not snarfing and making horrible little fox sounds and rolling around on the ground while he went ham on the jar. Sure, he had to work a little bit to get at the last of it, but anything good is worth working for, right? So finally, triumphant, no longer starving, and maybe a little thirsty now from eating half a cup of peanut butter in about two minutes, he’d tried to remove his head from the jar. Operative word tried. Or: Wei Ying gets stuck. Lan Zhan helps.</blockquote>

<blockquote>The mouse floated in the air in the middle of its cage. It was an ordinary lab mouse, with white fur, beady red eyes, and an adorable little pink nose. The left ear was tattooed with a constellation of dots that identified it uniquely from all its siblings and cousins. A small nick in its tail showed where I’d taken a tissue sample soon after it had been born. The fact that it was alive today, a fully grown thirty-one-gram adult, showed that it had passed that test: it carried a modification in CHRNB2, the cholinergic receptor nicotinic beta 2 subunit gene, which we hoped would positively affect its ability to socialize with and learn from its peers. The mouse looked at me. I looked back. It clutched a shiny blue marble in its front paws.</blockquote> ➤ the one with the experimental mice who help patch a leak on a space station

<blockquote>“Your curse runs deeper. Animal transformation is old, old magic, and on top of that she added the bit about love. We’ll have to lift it the old-fashioned way.” “The old-fashioned way?” Jaskier sputtered. “And what, pray tell, is that?” Geralt still wasn’t looking at him. “We find your true love.”</blockquote>

<blockquote>"Honestly, she’s only 90% sure that Nicky is the white guy and Joe is the Middle Eastern guy. She’s been waiting for somebody to drop a name to 100% confirm it, but Andy just calls them 'Joeandnicky', and they call each other a lot of stuff in a bunch of different languages that are probably pet names." --- Joe, Nicky, and Nile are on dogsitting duty.</blockquote>

<blockquote>My parents lived most of their lives in their other bodies, as loons, and they were reluctant participants in human affairs. When I began to spend time with Elena and her family, when I began to beg for books, for conversation, they were bewildered. They didn’t care for human culture or human food, not even ice cream, and neither were they particularly interested in human terrors, like war or bigotry. Instead, Collectors had been the reigning horror of my childhood. More frightening than raptors or oil spills or a fish with a hidden hook in its lip. Collectors paid money for our souls and put them in iron cages, and a soul behind iron could not change. “Never tell anyone where you keep your soul,” my parents repeated to me over and over. It was our one family rule, aside from the obvious: do not reveal yourself to true humans. </blockquote>

<blockquote>The bear wife took the cub to mommy and me yoga. She didn’t look much like a bear without her fur, but somehow the other mothers seemed to sense it; when she came in carrying the cub they shifted away, drifting on their yoga mats closer to the windows, to each other. She was left alone in the middle like a stone dropped into a lake, each woman a wave rippling outward. In tree pose she was a lightning-struck pine at the center of a clearing.</blockquote>

<blockquote>Aimee’s big trick is that she makes 26 monkeys vanish on stage.</blockquote> ➤ love the ending, reveals just enough to be satisfying while still leaving things mysterious

<blockquote>Three months after the two men had pushed a needle into his thigh, Sheru learned something new about being sad. It happened just after the last of the strange dreams. They were not the kind of dreams that you’d expect a dog to have. The dreams he’d had before the men came had been doggy dreams. The dreams he had after they grabbed him, though, these dreams were entirely new. He had never seen anything like them.</blockquote>

<blockquote>Paseia takes care to observe her supplicants before every consultation; a successful interpreter must read and accommodate any mood. Fortunately, Lady Ouridia Diphan and Lady Biota Leanax descend from their shuttle in high spirits, which gain altitude as Paseia leads their ladyships to the appointed room. They are a pair in their early thirties, fiancées, both of them pretty as puddings straight from the mold. Though tall Lady Biota wears spectacles, and though Lady Ouridia has neglected to powder her freckles, their styles of dress and speech are otherwise nigh identical not only to each other, but to every other wealthy woman whom Paseia has served. Their gowns bell from this or that season’s new waist-line; their hats perch upon the inevitable curls; their lips shape each syllable with gushing precision. The oracles, oh, just look at them! Paseia, too, could rhapsodize about the parrots, but she will not subject their ladyships to the interpreters’ orisons, most of which are fond insults and complaints.</blockquote>

<blockquote>- Benton Fraser has a dog. (Or wolf. Or wolf-dog.) - Benton Fraser’s dog is Diefenbaker. He’s deaf (sometimes), and freakishly smart, and maybe-probably-doesn’t-but-maybe talks back. - That’s Fraser. That’s who Fraser is. He’s the guy with the wolf (dog). And that hasn't changed since 1981.</blockquote> ➤ HOLY FUCK

<blockquote>The humans use Arecibo to look for extraterrestrial intelligence. Their desire to make a connection is so strong that they’ve created an ear capable of hearing across the universe. But I and my fellow parrots are right here. Why aren’t they interested in listening to our voices?</blockquote>

<blockquote>This fic contains Old Men and squirrels. ...nope, that's basically it. That's the fic. Old men and squirrels.</blockquote>

<blockquote>Face squirrel Seine rescue. I don't know what else to say.</blockquote>

<blockquote>Prompt is: "Courfeyrac adopts seabird!Marius"</blockquote> ➤ or: Actual Booby Marius Pontmercy

<blockquote>In which Cosette encounters a booby in the Ménagerie of the Jardin des Plantes, and Valjean is relieved. (Knowledge of Aubrey-Maturin canon not required.)</blockquote>

<blockquote>"Grantaire," he says slowly. "What do you have in that box?" Grantaire looks up at Enjolras, his eyes very blue even with the glaze of drunkenness at the edges. "A favor," he says.</blockquote>

<blockquote>Absolute and utter crack, also Hugo pastiche flash-fic. My apologies to the Quartier de Picpus, though as one folk etymology of the name is pique-puce (flea-bite) I feel octopi are an improvement.</blockquote>

<blockquote>Gymont waits for Javert to come back from the Seine.</blockquote> ➤ Gymont being Javert's horse

<blockquote>Hilarion decides to take Alexios's measure, by means of biological warfare (which is to say "ferrets"). Faintly pre-slashy.</blockquote>

<blockquote>"Okay, whoops," John said, just after Rodney turned into a dolphin. At least, he was pretty sure that the dolphin was Rodney: it was better than thinking that Rodney and the dolphin had unexpectedly switched places, and Rodney had been transported to the middle of the ocean somewhere.</blockquote> ➤ That's weird that I never bookmarked this before; I've totally read it!

<blockquote>Bericus was minded of his wolf often.</blockquote>

<blockquote>it isn’t until eames shoots the first mate of the fisher in the chest with a harpoon gun that he wonders how this will affect his chance at tenure.</blockquote> ➤ eames fell into being a prof (ornithology), arthur is cobb's ta, and there are illegal whalers in the bay they want to infiltrate and take down

<blockquote>He was an intelligent, intuitive pet, but he wasn’t going to start sniffing out ZPMs or hidden Ancient weaponry or detailed instructions on how to kill a Wraith with a common household item. A pen, for instance.</blockquote> ➤ http://archiveofourown.org/works/483010

<blockquote>Stephen is briefly indisposed (viz., a penguin), but things change remarkably little.</blockquote>

<blockquote>It is a well-established fact in marine biology that the octopus is the drunk texter of the cephalopod family.</blockquote>

<blockquote>Abelard and Bernard are pomeranians and they have been bad.</blockquote> ➤ theological disagreements in a cute-fluffy-animal au!

<blockquote>The part of her that was still Loki was astonished, after the long months of clumsy, heavy pregnancy, at how quickly the birth occurred. She should, of course, have remembered that: mares in the royal stable tended to foal at night, preferred no one to be watching, and by the time the two princes arrived in the morning, still in their night clothes, to admire the new foal, it was generally up, dry, and wobbling about.</blockquote> ➤ http://archiveofourown.org/works/334096