LINKDING

quote: Andrew was convinced the writer had been trans. By this point his friends were tired of hearing about it, but he had no one else to tell besides the internet, and he was too smart for that. That would be asking for it. ➤ short story about a trans man who's obsessed with the m/m novels of a dead historical novelist who he's convinced was trans ➤ and about the dreams he has where he meets her and talks with her ➤ it's a story that feels unsatisfying but like, in a satisfying way? ➤ idk how to explain! it makes me want to reread it 3 more times and think about the way one's relationship with oneself is mediated through the stories one reads and loves ➤ it's really good ➤ 6k words in length

<blockquote>When you needed a miracle in the old days, you would walk into the woods, or the sea, or the flat and windswept plains where reality was thin. If you had luck, charm, or raw and spiteful determination, something in the shape of a person would answer you. A bargain would be made. Eventually the thing in the shape of a person would come to collect. But the miracles remained—so long as the bargain was honored. Grey & Tender, LLP offered the classic condition: your heart’s desire in escrow, to be returned if you leave the firm. And of course, you would be given the continual opportunity to make partner, at which point the single miracle would become a drop in the bucket of all the miracles you could create for yourself. It was one of the fairer bargains. It was still a trap: to be transformed would be to become a thing that no longer needed a miracle.</blockquote>

<blockquote>Hi, we were both in Central Square on Friday, around 9:30 PM. I’m a tall trans lady with brown hair and glasses. You were standing in front of Sonia with some people. You were looking at your phone and then you looked up at me. Our eyes met for—I’m sorry, I’ve deleted and retyped this a couple times. Our eyes probably met for like a second, from your perspective. Several years ago I stayed at this inn where the innkeeper was this wizened old woman (I know that sounds dopey, but if you saw her you’d be like, “no she’s totally wizened”—serious crone hours in that inn), and I can’t really tell if I upset the old woman or if I did her some kind of favor? She was very hard to understand. Anyway, I have this curse now.</blockquote> ➤ beautiful and interesting

<blockquote>When the elitist institution of Ozymandias Academy and its headmaster, Vamon Kinctuarin, can’t find a solution to the city’s worsening drought, 2 self-taught magicians, Noah and his partner Manny, take it upon themselves to find a solution to the crisis.</blockquote>

<blockquote>People in our neighborhood are always saying what a pity it is that two such fine-looking people as my cousin Bluma and her husband have no children yet. I don’t see that they’re so fine-looking as all that. Still, I’ve often thought that if Bluma had a little bit more business of her own to worry about, she might have less time to waste getting into mine.</blockquote> ➤ It's the sequel to "Further Arguments in Support of Yudah Cohen’s Proposal to Bluma Zilberman"! Which has been sitting in my notes waiting for me to bookmark it for an unconscionable number of years! It's great! I lovvvvve the outside perspective on Yudah and Bluma, and Shaina's narration is a delight

<blockquote>My dearest Pippa, Today I walked past the flat you lived in when I first knew you, on my way to the only glassmaker in the city still working. The earthworkers were having a protest outside in the street. One of them had the long, uneven haircut you wore then. I think I would have joined their march even without seeing that eager youth, but—really, what else could I do. So I went a mile out of my way to march outside the Directorate and sing angry songs, and I nearly missed picking up my flasks before the glassmaker closed, but I knew you would approve. I love you.</blockquote> ➤ I've tagged this $other because although it's clear one of the characters is trans it's never actually clear what gender either of them is? So I can't exactly tag the gender formation of this relationship.

<blockquote>Fuckos in this stupid town think nobody notices how when the tide just keeps coming in without going out again that "some" neighborhoods get sunk forever as an "unfortunate side effect of coastal flooding" while others become the sexy hip cool new "seafloor village." I'd cackle every time some bullshit golden-brick seawall crumbles and takes another mansion with it, but now there's straight-up UNDERWATER house tours for a zillion dollars a ticket, the same way they used to show off their giant Christmas trees and shit but even more pretentious cause now I guess they host in designer scuba gear. "Oh, this old thing? Blub blub, there's sand in my butt, no wait it's diamonds, ha ha!" (That's how they talk probably.) MEANWHILE where MY shitty old apartment used to be is now an undersea God-damned HOTEL AND CASINO.</blockquote> I don't think I've ever read something like this before? VERY strong sense of voice, and I liked the validation of anger in the face of ➤ injustice and oppression.

<blockquote>Pop-star uber-sensation Jaim Janan rockets off to promote their third album atop a SpaceX Dragon VII capsule today, where they will stream a live musical performance from orbit, some 350 kilometers above the Earth. Before today’s launch, when asked if they were feeling nervous about the trip, the young pop star coolly responded, “Truth is like the sun. You can shut it out for a time, but it ain’t goin’ away.” It’s not clear how many of Jaim’s obsessive fans, or “Janatics” as they are sometimes known, recognized the star was quoting twentieth-century pop legend Elvis Presley [click for bio]. But by mid-afternoon #TruthIsLikeTheSun was the most popular hashtag on Twitter. —Naydeen Johnson for The Washington Post</blockquote>

<blockquote>The night is humid and warm, sticks to our skin like a wet T-shirt. Luz pokes the fire with a piece of scrap metal she found lying by Gunner’s feet. It sends a swarm of sparks flying into the air. Taking that as an invitation, others come flocking to our little circle. No matter the temperature, the kids gravitate towards the fire at night, so I always try to have one going near sundown. “Give us a poem, Daddy?” the new kid says, one of Luz’s strays. His name is Roy. He’s probably a little older than Luz. Maybe in his twenties. I think of asking for something in return—the kids need to learn the rules of this world, and better I teach them in my way than someone else in theirs—but I hold back. Just this once, I feel like giving one away.</blockquote>

<blockquote>Jade was the sort of backwoods girl who had a map of the countryside tattooed on her heart, and she could feel it in her bones when the pieces of her world shifted. So when the new family moved into the house across the road that late summer, she felt ripples of wrongness radiating out from them and their too-bright clothes, their bizarrely old-fashioned wood-paneled station wagon, and their rolling words that felt just a little to the left of normal. “Time travelers,” said Jade’s brother, watching them from the window the day they moved in. Jade stood nearby, not daring to move or breathe.</blockquote>

<blockquote>Avi Cantor Has Six Months To Live Avi comes across these foreboding words scrawled on the bathroom mirror, but what do they mean? Is this a curse, a prediction, or a threat from Avi’s emboldened bullies? And how to they know his real name when he hasn’t even told his mother yet?</blockquote>

<blockquote>The reality I was born in ceased to exist when I was three years old. So Mama and I moved to a different reality. We moved a lot, actually.</blockquote>

<blockquote>Grandmother kept her cloth of winds in the orange room, a storage chamber painted in fire and lit to a translucent glow by dozens of floating candlebulbs created by the older women’s magic. As a small child, I remember hiding between the legs of a polished pearwood commode, safe and stuffy-warm behind the ancient embroidered material that draped it, hiding—just to be sure—also behind the veil of my hair. Grandmother-nai-Leylit would come in always just before the afternoon meal, and her smell—saffron and skin and millet dough—spread through the room like perfume. Her shuffling steps rang for me a music more exalted and mysterious than the holy sounds of the dawnsong that drifted each morning from behind the white walls of the men’s inner quarter.</blockquote> ➤ interesting gender-related and relationship-style worldbuilding. Contains a trans character and an autistic character, though neither are the main character. ➤ I really enjoyed it, and cared about the characters. But I feel like the ending isn't quite enough of the ending; I kind of wanted to read a novel about this!

<blockquote>Dear Bluma, I heard that Hershel Schmulewitz, that blockhead, has also presumed to ask for your hand in marriage, which gives you two proposals to consider. Now, you needn’t worry that this will be a sentimental or a wheedling sort of letter. You already know how I feel, and I suppose Hershel’s not so much of a blockhead that he doesn’t feel the same way. I’m simply writing to lay out the reasons, plainly and concisely, why it would certainly be more to your benefit to marry me.</blockquote>

<blockquote>Once, I dreamed that I had a son named Sheldon, and my grief tore a hole in the fabric of the world.</blockquote> ➤ In which Sarah finds connections to an alternate universe where she was born a cis woman (Sarah's a trans woman) and has a kid. Sarah is ultimately happy with the universe she's in because she has her partner Janet

➤ someone reblogged my 10 captivating stories rec list with this one as an additional rec and I think it's one of my fave additions I've gotten yet. Described as a "latina lesbian werewolf witch" story in counterpoint to the canadian lesbian werewolf baby story I'd recced

<blockquote>Hannah and Melanie: sisters, apart and together. Weather workers. Time benders. When two people so determined have opposing desires, it’s hard to say who will win—or even what victory might look like. This stunning, haunting short story from rising star Alyssa Wong explores the depth and fierceness of love and the trauma of family.</blockquote> ➤ Timeloop, basically, though it doesn't follow fandom's rules about how they're supposed to go. Which is fine, just disconcerting at first because I've had genre expectations trained into me! ➤ Also: Melanie is super definitely trans, and I love the deft way it's shown without ever saying the word or making a huge deal out of it.

<blockquote>When I was twelve, my hada madrina came to visit. My fairy godmother hadn't come to see us since my baptism, so I didn't even know her except from the stories, like the one about cousin Tomasita and the goat who could play futbol.</blockquote>

<blockquote>Mineappolis writer Abra Staffin-Wiebe brings us a new take on an old Russian fairy tale: the quest for a blessing from the elusive firebird. In this iteration, young Ekaterina celebrates her fourteenth birthday, and a rare firebird sighting sets in motion a chain of events that will change her life forever.</blockquote>