Sophinisba Solis

Hey Merlin fans, remember back in 2010 when netgirl_y2k and lilian_cho and I ran a Merlin remix fest and a bunch of you participated and it was awesome? Well it's okay if you don't remember but anyway sapphirescribe and venivincere just started up a new round, and this time it's gonna be EVEN MORE AWESOME because besides fic there will be fanart!

So, a remix challenge gives you a chance to transform someone else's story by writing it another way, or by drawing your version of it, or to write or draw based on someone else's art! camelotremix/camelotremix is for fanworks about Merlin characters and actors!

Signups are open on LJ and Dreamwidth from now through Saturday and the works will be posted on the AO3 in March. Minimum wordcount on the fics is 500. YOU SHOULD ALL SIGN UP OMG!!!

So idk this is maybe not wise but I can't help it, I really want to sign up for merlin_holidays this year!


Sign-ups for merlin_holidays begin Sept 24 at 10 am Eastern

This is a mostly-Arthur/Merlin-but-other-pairings-are-okay-too fest in its third year and it is for fic, art, and vids. (I also plan to do the informal Twitter podfic exchange but have decided not to sign up for Yuletide and Festivids. I can do this. I am not out of control.) The comm is on LJ with fic and art posted on the AO3, and you can follow merlin_holidays_feed if you prefer to read on Dreamwidth.

Unfortunately I probably won't be able to be on LJ for about 9 hours after signups open tomorrow. Would anybody be free to do a proxy signup for me? I'd send you an email with my info and you could just drop it in an LJ comment tomorrow. (I have it all filled out except for the actual prompts.) ETA: Thanks, I am set! /ETA

Who else is playing?

three_weeks_for_dw is an annual thing to celebrate Dreamwidth, which opened up around this time three years ago, and add some fun content here. The person who set it up isn't around this year but it's nice to see the tradition continuing anyway. Here are three multifandom fests that I would especially like to pimp:

-Transfic Mini Fest 3, hosted by torachan, is accepting prompts and fills: "Prompts do not have to be "about" being trans. They can be something as simple as a pairing or a pairing + word/kink/lyrics. The point is simply to have more stories starring trans people."

-The Female Character Trope Fest 2, hosted by such_heights is now taking prompts and will open for fills on Wednesday.

We all like our thoughtful characters studies but let's also have some ridiculous fanworks about ladies huddling for warmth in Canadian shacks, undercover in a gay bar, or getting turned into cats.

-The 3rd Annual Femslash Mini Meta Fest! hosted at fem_thoughts. Post some short meta about femslash!

sqbr has kicked things off with a good post about some if the challenges of writing "happily ever after" femslash in historical fandoms like Pride and Prejudice: Lovers in a Dangerous Time.

And finally (not Dreamwidth- or fest-specific) here is a wonderful and uplifting post by fire_juggler: Meta: Confessions of a Podficcer with a (mostly) ex-speech impediment.

Podficcing!
The Awesome Ladies Podfic Anthology is coming along very well! So far people have listed 65 different podfics in...MANY different fandoms they're working on or have finished in our spreadsheet. This is not quite as many as klb managed to gather on her own last year, so if this year's team of four mods doesn't match that we will feel pretty bad about ourselves. However, there seem to be quite a few people who are planning or hoping to make something this weekend but haven't put their information in the spreadsheet yet, so I am almost certain we will beat last year's anthology.

I've made four pieces in four different fandoms so far and will probably do one or two more this weekend. Short podfics are so much fun, such a nice accomplishment from starting and finishing something within an hour or so.

I've talked to a few people who are making their first podfic for this project! Are you interested in doing that? Remember, you could read one of your own drabbles or something by someone who's given blanket permission. This is a nice project to be part of because a lot of people are likely to download it, whereas if you put out a two-minute podfic on your own you don't normally get as many listeners.

So if you are interested in joining us drop a comment at the amplificathon post and get your podfics uploaded by Sunday night. I should be around a fair amount this weekend if anybody needs help figuring out the basics on GarageBand, and other people are around for handholding on Audacity.

Fanlore!
Meanwhile, some of us will be making a Nimueh page at Fanlore this weekend to document how fandom has dealt with her character. I used to edit at Fanlore and I stopped because the lack of interaction made me lonely and anxious. HOWEVER, a small group of folks getting together for a concentrated effort can make a lot of improvements there and also be a lot fun. If you aren't into Fanlore or wiki editing but you have a link to (or even a vague recollection of) a good post about Nimueh or a vid you saw once, stop by the chatroom and say hello, drop a comment on the camelot_fleet post or add some a line to the google doc, and we will do the formatting and stuff for you.

Last weekend a few people put together a Percival page and this will probably be going on for a few more weeks. You can follow the project at the Fanlore challenge tag on camelot_fleet.

Recs!
I am in the middle of reading The Adventure of the Hopping Vampire by hradzka, a long, plotty fic starring Jenny and Vastra from Doctor Who (my icon on this Dreamwidth post). It has a nice light tough and a lovely Jenny POV, and I'm enjoying it a lot.

ETA: I re-listened to intransitive's reading of Give Me My Sin Again by viklikesfic the other day. Cate Blanchett/Miranda Otto D/s and leather fetish, an hour and 9 minutes, OMFG SO HOT. I was riding the bus and I was so turned on I thought I was going to combust. It was awesome

Happy birthday, baranduin! You are a good friend and a talented, thoughtful person. I feel lucky to know you and I'm so glad we'll get to hang out again in a few weeks, even if it's just a brief visit this time.

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I wrote another Lancelot ficlet!

Title: Perfect
Fandom: Merlin
Characters/Ships: Lancelot, Arthur/Gwen (IT CAN BE ARTHUR/GWEN/LANCELOT IF YOU WANT)
Rating: G + 1 swear word
Contains: n/a
Wordcount: 500 (five drabbles)
Notes: Part of my series of five 500-word Lancelot AUs (three finished so far) inspired by 5x09. This one less spoilery than the others, written for the "humiliation (in public)" square on my second kink_bingo card. My first G-rated kink-bingo fill! Thanks to claudia603 and bessyboo for their help. Dedicated to meri and also written out of great affection for baranduin though I know it's not your fandom so don't feel obligated to read it or anything.
Summary: Figure skater AU!

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I had kind of a rough day offline today, but I've been having a great time in fandom lately. Look at these awesome things my friend have made!

-So this weekend I asked yue_ix to look over the Arthur/Merlin ficlet I had written with five squares from my kink_bingo card, If I Cannot Be Your Queen. While we were chatting about it she started drawing a picture of Gwen, inspired by my story but using five kinks from her card and with ending up with a more kink-positive message than I had been using (I was expressing some of my angst about 4x09 and Yue was using kink to turn it into something less angsty). So yeah she came up with this beautiful picture where Gwen has sparkles in her hair!!! If I Can't Go To Your Dungeons by yue_ix, probably not safe for work Gwen art yay!

-Another thing that happened recently was that anatsuno and I were chatting and she said she wished there were more fic with top!Merlin and I said indeed it is a rare and beautiful thing, but that I also thought she would like some of lolafeist's fics where Merlin is such a strong sub that Arthur's kind of in awe of him. And sure enough anat went and podficced The One at a Sex Club where Merlin anon!fails because she liked it so much, and it was very sexy in anat's voice and I loved listening to it, as well as the Community/Doctor Who crossover podfic that is also at that link.

-Then another thing that happened was that I read this beautiful intense Gwaine/Merlin bdsm fic by leashy_bebes and I tweeted that it was great and might be of interest to other fans of top!Merlin, and that I'd love to listen to a podfic of it. So then meri decided to record both that and a lovely safeword fic set in the same universe for me!!! So the other day I got to listen to the very warm and lovely (Safe) Words and then this morning I got to listen to the sexy sexy A Force When We're Together. I feel so lucky!

-Okay and I didn't have anything to do with this thing getting made but it needs to be talked about because GUYS DID YOU SEE THAT dodificus MADE A PODFIC OF VOID AND THAT IT IS 9 HOURS OF SQUIRMERRIFIC TEENAGE DUBCON? If you were in Faculty fandom I'm sure you remember this. But even if you've never seen the movie or read another Faculty fic you can still understand and admire this one. Here is the podfic and here is the podbook and here is the text. ;skljd;flkjs ls

-Oh and hey, there is an informal podfic gift exchange going on right now and I hope the person assigned to me does not feel pressured to record kinky fic or porn if that's not what they're into. I really love all kinds of things including hurt/comfort and gen. This person is probably more organized than me and has already picked out and recorded something, but if they're feeling lost they might find the posts on my dear creator letter tag helpful. <3

Yesterday eruthros and thingswithwings posted the Round Four Prize Announcements, including the Arbitrary Mod Prizes. This works as an arbitrary recs list of some of the exciting things posted at kink_bingo this June-September, and I was thrilled to get a prize for Best Praxis for my essay about the kinkiness of podfic and my verbally humiliating Azula/Ty Lee podfic. Thank you mods! Look at the sexy banner eruthros made me under the cut!

( prize banner )

I am also getting ready to run a podfic for beginners workshop at the pornspiration comm on LJ next week. I was thinking a series of posts over the course of the week. Let me know if you have suggestions or would like to help out (or make a promo banner)! Anyone over 18 can join the comm, they just keep posts locked for the sake of teambuilding and all.

( some pro-Dreamwidth anti-LJ grumbling )

La la la. Oh hey speaking of user interfaces, how about the new gmail? I'm keeping my sophinisba account the same for now (cherry blossoms!) but on my other account I switched to the new look and the Oceans theme. It's so pretty! I love the bit of translucency and the way the modules sometimes seem to be floating over the background - I find it very soothing (even though I don't like being on boats etc. in real life).

Okay so back to podfic talk! The reason I want to do that workshop next week is that it'll overlap with pod_aware/pod_aware! Mod paraka and friends have been working on some podfic meta podcasts that will be posted then, and I'm looking forward to hearing how those turn out. (I will tell you a secret: I spend a lot more time listening to non-fandom podcasts these days than podfics. I find the conversation style easier to follow when I'm riding the bus or whatever than a fic. There are times when I listen to a lot of podfic but I am not doing that now.) paraka would also like to emphasize that you don't have to be a podfic maker to participate in this. You might be someone who likes to listen to podfic, or an author who is okay with people making podfics of their work. As far as I understand it, all you have to do is post something during the week (the something could be a fic or a picspam and doesn't need to be podfic-related) and include a little blurb and a link to a post at the comm. It should be fun and will help us out.

( podfic and fic I'm working or not working on )

I got my kink_bingo card! Here it is below the cut, not entirely safe for work:

( kink-bingo card )

( kink-bingo thoughts )

In case you missed it, bironic has an excellent essay On Noncon and Noncon Play in Fanfic posted as part of the ramp-up for kink_bingo. Lots of stuff there that I identify with and it felt really affirming to read it and have other people articulating things I feel in comments; I also think it could also be really illuminating for people who don't share or understand that kink. As a reminder, I'd ask you to avoid commenting to my posts to say "I can't stand noncon" or "I'm not reading/downloading this because..." Obviously everybody's free to consume what they want and skip things they're not into, but I'd just as soon you not tell me about your dislike/squick for what I'm doing, especially on a fanwork post where I probably feel exposed and squirmy enough already. :)

( summerpornathon thoughts )

ETA Signed up for summerpornathon, woot!

Running Hot: A multi-fandom fever fic comment meme. The only prescription is more fic

So far this meme has lots of prompts for Hawaii 5-0, Supernatural, and White Collar, and just a few for Merlin. NEEDS MOAR HOBBITS.

In related news multikinkmeme now has a meme for Lord of the Rings and Lotrips and another one for Merlin and Merlin RPF. Neither one's really active yet but they are full of possibility.

BUT SERIOUSLY YOU GUYS, FEVERISHNESS IS MY FAVORITE. LET'S GO.

I AM REALLY EXCITED ABOUT amplificathon!! Like, way more excited than I have any right to be considering other things happening in my life idek. I want to record all the fics! I want to get all the points! Ahhhhh!

I love the way this challenge is set up to encourage variety and diversity, so you get more points if you're new to podficcing or if you're doing a fandom or a ship or a LANGUAGE that isn't represented in the Audiofic archive yet. But I also love that even if you are posting your one hundredth John/Rodney fic, YOU STILL GET POINTS! <3 <3 ETA: You get points for doing a podfic at all and you get points for yourself and you get points for SGA and you get points for John and Rodney's love. Yay! /ETA

So like to get into the spirit of things I feel like I should be doing some super rare thing (and hey I am a fan of rare fandoms, I have podficced some rare fandoms before) but instead I recorded a new Merlin fic yesterday and I have plans to do others, even though Merlin is one of the three most popular fandoms in the archive and therefore gets the least points. I am doing Gwen/Merlin though so I think it is in the spirit of things and I will get extra pairing points and also oh man I <3 those kids so much. Damn.

Actually it was weird for me to see that Merlin was one of the three biggest fandoms in the archive, along with SGA and SPN. I was surprised, though I shouldn't be, and then yesterday I mentioned it to a friend and she was surprised but then sort of said well, yeah, that makes sense. I mean we do have a comm that's just for merlinpodfic and that gets pretty regular traffic, and we have some really prolific podficcers putting in a ton of effort to do the big Arthur/Merlin epics. That is pretty awesome!

I mean, as excited as I am about amplificathon and all the rare pairing and ship stuff it's going to generate, damn, those of us who are fans of podfic and of Arthur/Merlin are really lucky that we have so much good stuff to listen to. Sometimes it's exciting because it's a refreshing new take on the pairing and sometimes it's exciting because it's just so damn OLD SCHOOL and perfect.

For example:

This weekend I listened to such_heights's recording of The History of Two Conversations (On Paper). Now this is a classic, as Merlin fics go. It is from January of 2009. (2009!) But I had never read it and didn't realize it was from back then. I was just listening and feeling, "This is just right! I will never get sick of the Magical Reveal omg!" The fic is clever and funny and angsty and hot but what I liked best about it was how familiar it was. Also such_heights's accent is easy for me to understand and her voice is familiar to me because I've listened to other podfics of hers and watched video of her talking and read lots of her posts and think of her as a friend. All this added to my enjoyment of the podfic.

But then also! Right now I'm in the middle of listening to nu_breed's recording of What Looks Like Crazy (actually I am listening to the podbook) and it's totally different and also great. It's an Arthur/Merlin modern AU where Merlin is HIV-positive. It's another one I haven't read and it's a reader I've never listened to before. It took me a little while to get used to their voice and way of reading but by a few minutes in I was really loving it. I love the way they laugh while reading dialogue. When I'm reading I only ever do that when the narrative says to and I always struggle to get it right and I have to record a whole bunch of takes, but nu_breed does it a lot and it just sounds very natural and intimate somehow, and reminds me a little bit of baranduin's way of talking, even though their accents are very different. So it is like being with a friend even though it's somebody I don't know at all, and that is pretty awesome too. (Plus also the story is great - recommended especially if you like LONGING, and stories about people who haven't been in a relationship in a long time and are scared to open themselves up to getting hurt ahhhhhh.)

In conclusion, yay podfic!

You guys, I am so happy with what I've gotten for Purimgifts! Three Avatar ficlets and three graphics with so many of my favorite things, including both thoughtful character-focused genfic and an explicit kinky threesome!
-The Moon and the Ocean, Katara and Yue gen
-An Ounce of Blood, gen about wee!Mai and her uncle the Warden
-'Bending, Katara/Mai/Zuko!!!

There is also moar Avatar fic!

Here are a few other fics I've enjoyed:

-The Jewish!Lestrade series - Sherlock (BBC): Sherlock/Lestrade with Jewish!Lestrade! Smart and funny and nicely achy in parts.

-Ten to One, part 1, part 2, and part 3 - Doctor Who: the Doctor/Queen Elizabeth I with Liz Ten! So clever and fun but also with some angst! I love the character voices in this.

-Tickle Me Ink - Harry Potter: Hermione/Luna with writing on the body.

There are also about a hundred other fandoms, with a few more fics going up soon! Please post recs if you got 'em. I've had some trouble navigating the collection on the AO3 so I'd really appreciate extra pointers.

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Speaking of cool collections on the AO3, a friend recently pointed out hetnotstraight and I was happy because I was able to add several stories that fit, that is, het fics where at least one of the characters is not straight. I have also bookmarked a few to read.

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havocthecat is thinking about running a multifandom femslash challenge, either mini-big bang or a remix! What would I like more than a femslash remix? Not very many things! I told her that I have already twice remixed non-femslash fics into femslash remixes, I've needed this so much in my life. Go vote for the remix in the poll at girlgay and give her your thoughts!

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ETA: Look at frigg's new Gwen/Merlin art, Rosebud with a flush! Winged messengers omg! His suit!