Sophinisba Solis

The latest round of summerpornathon wrapped up yesterday. It was shorter this year and I didn't make anything much for the bonus challenge, so I just have these five fics, all Merlin fandom and approximately 750 words each. Title links go to the fics on the AO3.

Title: Travel My Way, Take the Highway
Ships: Gwen/Morgana
Rating: R
Contains: references to racism and homophobia
Summary: Gwen and Morgana on the run in 1950s Texas and New Mexico.

Title: Early Results of Clinical Trials
Ships: Arthur/Merlin
Rating: NC-17
Contains: potentially disturbing metaphors and no happy ending
Summary: Pendragon Pharmaceuticals manufactures the drugs that allow carriers of magic to participate fully in society.

Title: Let's Be Rational About This
Ships: Arthur/Gwen
Rating: NC-17
Contains: Aliens Made Them Do It-style dubcon (but mostly consensual)
Summary: "You see, I've been doing a lot of research on their lifecycle so they... they've suggested a reciprocal arrangement – which is really only fair, in principle!"

Title: Better
Ships: Elena/Mithian
Rating: NC-17
Contains: mistress/slave relationship, orgasm denial, fic doesn't make clear how consensual it is
Summary: "I'm not angry at you, dear, it's only the way you were raised. But you admit it yourself, you have no self-control. Well, from now on you won't be able to disobey me. And won't that be better for both of us?"

Title: A Happy Arrangement for All
Ships: Merlin/Elyan, past Merlin/Gwen
Rating: R
Contains: n/a
Summary: Merlin returns to Camelot to find that Princess Guinevere has married another. Her brother, however, is still single.

( thoughts )

Just like last year pornathon leaves me wanting to write more Merlin fic and merlin_holidays is nicely timed. I will sign up again and really hope that more multishippers decide to join this year!

Well, summerpornathon ended a few weeks ago. Here are the fics I made for it this year.

( Previously linked here on my journal )

Also written for this year's pthon and posted on the AO3

Title: Live by the Sword
Ships: Annis/Gwen (other pairings mentioned)
Rating: NC-17
Contains: Reference to canon character deaths, grief, object insertion
Wordcount: 750
Summary: If ever there was a time to take a young ruler under her wing, it is now.

Title: Trading Day
Ships: Gwen/Morgana, offscreen Arthur/Gwen
Rating: NC-17
Contains: nonmonogamy, can be read as infidelity
Wordcount: 750
Summary: He can't begrudge her a kidnapping or two, not with so little else to stand out from the flatness of life on the colony. (FEMSLASH IN SPACE.)

Title: Build a Better Bicycle
Ships: Gwen/Morgana
Rating: R
Contains: slight dubcon due to mistress/servant power dynamic
Wordcount: 746
Summary: Morgana can trust Gwen to make the necessary adjustments.

Title: This Is a Recording
Ships: Arthur/Gwen/Merlin and subsets
Rating: NC-17
Contains: spanking and a teensy bit of D/s
Wordcount: 750
Summary: This is new for her, Merlin thinks. She only half believed him when he whispered that they were lovers first.

( Thoughts )

Ooh, I was just going to say I hope merlin_holidays runs again because I'd like to participate again, and it looks like signups open tomorrow! I need to think about what I want to request ack. Also gosh that deadline is going to come up quickly. But anyway yay Merlin!!!


Sign-ups for merlin_holidays begin Sept 22 at 10 am Eastern

At one point there were only five Arthur/Gwen/Merlin stories on the AO3 and three of them were by me. When I went back to look tonight it turns out we're still only up to 57, and somehow I've only written five of them? Let's get on that, self and fandom.


Title: Centered
Fandom: Merlin
Ships: Arthur/Gwen, Arthur/Gwen/Merlin
Rating: R
Contains: n/a
Wordcount: 750
Notes: Written for summerpornathon challenge 3, Trades & Professions
Summary: Arthur and Gwen go to a pottery class with her old friend Merlin.

Read it at the AO3!

I signed up for summerpornathon! I didn't do it last year but am really looking forward to going back. You know, a few months back flammablehat and I tried setting up a weekly writing challenge but it didn't really come to anything, and I had a few other fannish disappointments around that time (February/March), well, you know how it is, it's hard when you're away from a fandom for a while and you feel like when you come back it'll be exciting but it turns out in the meantime your friends also left so it just ends up being extra lonely. But whatever this is pthon and it will be awesome.

Maybe you would like to join too! Signups are open through July 10th.

It's funny to me that it's starting so late because I've had a pretty long and enjoyable summer that's pretty much over at this point, but I'll talk about that more in another post.

I was thinking that since I'm going to be hanging around here in fandom more for the next couple months I should do a general update about what I've been up to, but then thinking about all the different things started to feel overwhelming, so I think I'll make a series of shorter posts with topics such as:
-work
-volunteering
-the World Cup!
-other TV?

And so on, and most of those will be f-locked.

I don't have much more to say in this post about fandom because, you know, I haven't been fannish! It's funny, I don't know if it was two years ago or three years ago at pornathon, but as I getting to know the other people on my team I just boggled at how many said oh yeah, I haven't really been in fandom in the last year and I don't read my flist, I just come back for pornathon. Like, at the time (whenever it was) I could not even imagine not keeping up with my LJ and Dreamwidth friends. But here we are, I've been away and I'm back for pornathon, but who knows maybe it will lead to me being more social and creative in general, at least for a while.

Hey all, thank you for your sweet birthday wishes last wee. My day off was not too awesome but I had nice days before and after and a lovely, fannishly productive weekend. I finished my first bingo for this round of kink_bingo! And I feel pretty confident that I can finish two more (top row and middle row) before the end of October. I have ideas for all the squares I need to fill except for:
-temperature play featuring a trans or genderqueer character, or
-sex toys (non-penetrating) featuring a character of color. Suggestions welcome!

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It's been a rough week for many people in podfic fandom. And even for folks who are doing well otherwise, it's always nice to have some extra love! Thus:

Podficcers Love Meme: ON DW | ON LJ
Here is my thread. ♥ ♥ ♥

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fitz_y got me signed up within an hour after merlin_holidays opened yesterday! As often happens when I decide to go be social in mainstream Merlin fandom I felt very out of place at first, but I did see some more friendly names and signups later on. It looks like there are still five spots left for writers and unlimited spaces for artists and vidders with signups closing Thursdays. And it will probably turn out to be a lot of fun in the end, just like summerpornathon was even though signups freaked me out both years. :)

---

Today I watched the second-to-last episode of the first season of Teen Wolf and stuff happened that either
-I'd been really frustrated hadn't earlier before because come on, people, or
-I'd heard vague things about before and was glad to finally see what the fuss is about,
so that was nice. I enjoyed it.

Title: Delight
Fandom: Merlin (/Chronicles of Narnia)
Ship: Morgana/Morgause
Rating: R
Contains: A bit of a dubcon/underage vibe, although Morgana's an adult
Wordcount: 749
Notes: Written for the "Crossovers/Fusions" challenge at summerpornathon and for the "food" square on my kink_bingo card. This would not have been written without themadlurker - I had a vague idea of doing a Narnia fusion but with Morgana in Susan's role, and she was the one who pointed out the fit between Morgana and Edmund. She also betaed! Thanks a lot, mad!
Summary: Morgause invites Morgana to sit with her in her sledge.
Links: alone at the AO3 | with 65 others at the AO3

( She'd only meant to follow Merlin for a bit, since she didn't like him skulking around in her wardrobe and every other nook and cranny in the castle. )

Gosh, I like Twitter and my friends there a lot, but I think I need to step away from it for a bit. I just feel like it eats up too much of my day. I like Tumblr a lot too but I use it pretty inconsistently - I haven't been on much lately because I've had inconsistent or slow Internet. So yeah, I think I'm gonna try not checking either of those for a week (starting tomorrow) and see how that goes. I'm also gonna cut back on how much time I spend in chat.

Maybe I will get better at communicating here on LJ and Dreamwidth! I used to be a lot more conscientious about answering every comment I got, and I'd like to get back into that habit.

Maybe I will get a ton of work done!

Or maybe I will just feel lonely and bored!

This seems like a good time to experiment though because I'll be somewhat busy with work stuff this next week.

---

In other news, I've started reading the new Crossovers/Fusions challenge at summerpornathon and I'm enjoying that a lot - way more than I expected to! I had thought there would be a ton of Teen Wolf and Avengers crossovers and a bunch of other canons I didn't know and that I'd either be resentful or just confused with reading most of them. But there's a ton of variety and most of them are just fun, even for the fandoms I don't care for or am not familiar with. And that makes sense, I mean, of course most people are going to try to write something with broad appeal. Anyway, I recommend checking those out, and I'm looking forward to working my way through the rest of them.

---

I'm still getting over this sore throat and related feeling-generally-awful, but today I managed to record a couple short podfics, so I'm looking forward to editing those and crossing off another two bingo squares! Right now I'm feeling pretty confident about being able to get a blackout done during the regular round, and also hopeful about including five or so different Achievements within that. :)

I never ever spell the word Achievements right on the first try. :(

Title: No, Seriously, How Many Times?
Fandom: Merlin
Ships: Arthur/Gwen, Arthur/Gwen/knights, Arthur/Gwen/Merlin
Wordcount: 1219
Rating: R/NC-17
Contains: married Pendragons, silliness
Notes: Written for the "Texts from Last Night" bonus challenge at summerpornathon and for the "double penetration" square on my kink_bingo card. Inspired by the following text: (709): How many times a week can a couple have a threesome with the same guy before it becomes some sort of 3-way relationship?
Summary: The first orgy on the Round Table was the first time she ever had sex with more than one person at once, and when she decided that two at a time was her favourite way to get off.
Links: at the AO3 | in LJ comments at the 'thon

( There had been orgies before the wedding )

Tomorrow, July 14th, is International Day of Femslash! I am not going to give you a bunch of links because I am sick and very tired, but you can look them up! :D

Sometimes events like this can be weird. Some people do mostly femslash all year round and they don't see the point in doing something extra for one day. Some people have already come to the conclusion that they don't care for femslash, and trying it out for a day also seems silly. But there are also a lot of folks who maybe have some female characters that they like but just haven't gone out of their way to look for fanworks about them. There's so much boyslash on one's flist and one already has one's tastes, so why go looking for more heartache? But this can be a nice chance for all-year femslash fans to celebrate with each other as well as getting in everybody else's faces for a bit.

That's about where I was a few years ago when I first heard of IDF, and signing up for a femslash feedback challenge made a big difference for me. I gave myself something like 2 weeks to comment on something like 20 femslash fanworks, and it was great. It was one of the first times I'd sought out femslash and it started to give me a good idea of the pairings and patterns I like. If you are not normally a femslash reader or listener or looker-at of art etc., maybe you just want to make a point of commenting on one or two or five femslash works this weekend.

If you're participating in summerpornathon, you know that there was some great femslash entries as part of the minor characters challenge this past week. I would guess that a few Merlin fans were writing femslash for the very first time and could use some extra encouragement. It could be fun to make a point of calling out some of those femslash fics in the reveals post tomorrow (along with the fabulous het and boyslash, of course!).

You could also post some recs, or say something about why you like your favorite f/f ship, even if you don't have any particular fanworks in mind. Maybe your flist can help you find those fanworks! Maybe you'd like to post a graphic on Tumblr or tell somebody you know how much you appreciate their enthusiasm for a ship. (Sunday the 15th is also Appreciation Day!) You could host a meme or make a fanmix or a podfic or a drabble or a doodle!

Or do whatever else you'd like to do with your Saturday!

Title: Let Them See Me Low
Fandom: Merlin
Starring: Arthur/Merlin
Wordcount: 746
Rating: R
Contains: Dubious consent, slavery AU
Notes: Written for the "Give Some Fucks (or Die)" challenge at summerpornathon. One of my three secret goals for this year's pthon was to write an Arthur/Merlin fic, and I'm happy with how this one turned out! Thanks to themadlurker for talking and looking it over for me.
Summary: A gratuitous "pretending to be master and slave" ficlet.
Links: alone at the AO3, with 72 others at the AO3

( Would it kill you to make little more effort? )