recs and links

Beautiful, heartbreaking, weaving between past and present as Remus remembers what is and what was. Some great insights into Remus, into Sirius, into the whole MWPP dynamic.

Oolong tea is so uncommon in the West we don't even have an English word for it, and that's a shame, because when it comes to tea, no category offers more diversity of flavor, complexity, and body than oolongs. And no style better shows what carefully manipulated processing can do to a tea leaf.

Dan/Natalie is such a rare pair and this is a great story for them.

Lightbulbs. Penguins. Velcro. Claymation. The moon made out of cheese. Tap dancing. Yoga. Twizzlers. Mountain Dew. Jello. Colors she can eat with her eyes. Methamphetamine. Bud Lite. T-shirts. Thin and soft, they pass from person to person, men to women, each owner slipping into a team—Yankees, Warriors—and out again with no bloodshed, no thought to… Continue reading Shit Cassandra Saw That She Didn’t Tell the Trojans Because at that Point Fuck Them Anyway

This is really adorable Hermione/Cho.

Bruce is diagnosed with a brain tumor. the family pulls together to face it. Oh my heart. This has so many great moments between Bruce and his kids, between the kids themselves, with Alfred, with Clark, with Selina. Excellent Batfamily drama with a happy ending. #i'm not crying you're crying

“Do you trust him?” Jim asked. “Yes,” said Batman, unhesitating. He didn’t know if he would ever like Red Hood. He didn’t know if he would ever be able to like working with him. He wanted to arrest the man. But if Batman trusted him, that would have to be enough for Jim. Jim Gordon's evolving perspective on Red Hood. Oh this is so good. The last section is like a punch to the heart.

Jason plays a long game and gets his revenge in a most unexpected way.

You can’t turn the cop brain off just because you’ve clocked out for the day, though, and he zeroes in on the outlier almost at once. The only man sitting alone at the bar is young. He really is. Jim would be surprised if the kid’s seen twenty-five. He’s young, but if you’re in the habit of reading people by posture and movement, more than physical details like smooth skin and muscles that have just finished filling in, you don’t notice that right away. Because he takes up space like a tiger just recently out of a cage, and his back is bowed over the bar like he’s a hundred years’ worth of tired. Jim has a drink with Jason. *sobs*

“I know what you’re going to say, Batman,” Damian said, shrugging the hand off his shoulder. “You’re going to tell me that Nightwing is dead, and that people don’t come back from the dead. Well, clearly you are wrong, seeing that you were dead and I was dead and Red Hood was dead and even Superman was once dead-” “My parents are dead,” Father interrupted. “Nightwing’s parents are dead. There have been a few notable exceptions in extenuating circumstances, Robin, but the rule stands. Everyone can die.” OR Damian meets a 10-year-old Dick Grayson, and they become best friends. Exactly what it says on the tin. *sobs* #we were the best richard

In the wake of Rogue One surviving the Battle of Scarif, Baze finds his waterbending - if not his faith - returning.

Anakin and Obi-Wan have a fistfight in the Chancellor's office and it...well, it doesn't save the galaxy but it does save Anakin from falling. (Only, no mention of Ahsoka at all? That made me sad.)

Excellent fusion placing the Rogue One crew in the Avatar-verse, with Chirrut as the avatar.

4 stories about how Peter Parker's death affected 4 Spider-people. GROSS SOBBING. #precious spiderbabies

Sweet Anakin/Ahsoka featuring comfort during nightmares and having to share a bed.

"Let's pause," he said, tugging gently on her arm. "They can wait two minutes. If we stop behind this rock they can't see us." "Aunt Kirrith has eyes in the back of her head," Lirael said darkly. "But not on the other side of this rock! It'll be fine." Lirael gave him one of those smiles that suggested he'd cheered her up and she wasn't sure what to think about it, and sat down next to him in the shelter of the rock. This is adorable!

After the events of the movie, Jeff decides to implement Operation Support Miles - he doesn't expect to add Operation: Support Spider-Man to the mix, even before he knows the new Spidey is his son. Oh heart. (some tense issues, could use a good beta.)

Jeff tries to understand this new Spider-Man, but kids today are baffling.

When his dad finds out about him being Spider-Man, it's not in any way that Miles has hoped it would happen. Short, but packs a wallop. *sobs*

“I know who you are, Anakin,” she said. Her voice had dropped almost to a whisper, either because she couldn’t speak any louder at the moment or because she was afraid of being overheard, he wasn’t sure. “And I know the things you’ve done. I’ve been part of the Rebellion since nearly the beginning. I’ve spent most of the last year researching you specifically. I know who you are, and I know what you’ve become, and I’m not pretending otherwise. But I haven’t given up on you. I’m not going to.” He didn’t, couldn’t, say anything to that. Instead he whirled around and stalked out of the cell, closing the door hurriedly behind him, though not quite fast enough to hide one last glimpse of her watching him go. AU where Ahsoka and Vader are trapped in the collapsed temple on Malachor and have to work together to get out, and it starts Vader on a path to redemption.

Han wakes up as a Force ghost, and decides to go and have a few words with his son. He's not the only Force ghost with that idea. I LOVE cranky Force ghost Han and I LOVE when he haunts the shit out of his dumbass son.

AU where Penthe escapes the Place with Ged and Tenar, just like I always hoped she would. Oh Penthe.

Y’all thought Captain Marvel was gonna save the avengers but it’s gonna be Ant Man crawling up Thanos bootyhole and expanding. Book it. Five responses to how Scott Lang and the Avengers defeated Thanos and saved the universe, or: five ways of looking at a buttsplosion. Hilarious! Sadly, I don't think Endgame will be this great.

"Look, I'm sorry," Luke interrupted himself, not bothering to get up from where he was still sprawled in the ancient dust. "I made some mistakes, and they hurt a lot of people. Especially you. I can't--" "What?" Han said. "Oh, that stuff. Whatever, kid. Your choices were your choices. We all made ours, too, and those weren't your fault. I'm over it. I've been over it. No, I'm mad about this!" He waved his hands over himself. "What the Sith is this! I was supposed to be dead, that was the point, I'm not some kind of spooky space wizard! This isn't how the Force works!" The Force isn't done with Luke - or Han - just yet. Hilarious!

‘It’s nothing,’ he said, which was a blatant lie if ever I’d heard one. ‘In a minute -’ ‘With all due respect, sir,’ I said, ‘no chance in hell.’ Nightingale is sick and refuses to admit it. Exactly what it says on the tin, with a really good post-Lies Sleeping Peter POV.

Indy and Henry have a continuing conversation about education over the years. Hee!

Now, so many years later, Ged could look back on that boy's distress and feel pity for him, and at the same time he also found that he could see the errors that had been present even in the proper and genuine feelings of guilt that had eaten his child-self. Looking back, he saw both the lesson learned and the lesson failed: in order to reconcile with the gebbeth and vanquish the power of its shadow, it had been required of him that he relinquish his bitter resentment of the boy Jasper; and he had done it, coming sincerely to regret his stupidity and arrogance, his false instinct and easy assumption; but although he had felt shame then for his excessive display of force, it had taken him longer to understand the full measure of the wrong he'd done to Morred's lady, when he had called up her incandescent soul as a staging-ground for his foolish schoolboy pissing games. Ged figures some stuff out about being a person in the world.

Aziraphale and Crowley deal with the aftermath of a brief body-swapping incident. Lovely.

Ostensibly this is about Bruce realizing that Cass and Steph are into each other and helping Cass out (he has many concerns about Gotham public school sex education) but mostly it's about Bruce trying to be a good batdad to his batkids and sometimes getting it awkwardly, hilariously right.