Sophinisba Solis

I posted a wee fic last week, my first once since Voiceteam Mystery Box around New Year's:
-What my friends call me, MCU/Spider-Man, warm and fuzzy MJ & Peter & Ned with MJ/Peter and gender stuff, 696 words, general audiences.

( I am writing )

And I'm still making podfic! Yesterday I made this to celebrate Steve Rogers's birthday:
-steady to the shore, MCU/Captain America, Bucky/Steve/Sam, 25 minutes, explicit

I also made the following podfics for Voiceteam in May (and trailing into June), all less than twenty minutes:
-feel something when I see you, MCU/Falcon and the Winter Soldier, Bucky/Sam, explicit
-Nonsense, MCU/Captain America, Bucky/Sam with Bucky/bad guys noncon flashbacks, explicit
-Who Taught You How to Fall, Saving Face, Wil/Vivian, explicit (an old fic of mine!)
-She, Brokeback Mountain, Alma Jr./OFC, mature (an old poem of mine!)
-The Roommate (A Gentlemen's Arrangement Remix), Merlin, Merlin/Elyan, mature, featuring many Voiceteam participants
-Wherever You'll Be Someone, MCU/Falcon and the Winter Soldier, Bucky/Sam, general audiences
-Rogue Two: A Star Wars Story, Rogue One, Jyn-centric, general audiences
-a glitch on the television screen, MCU/WandaVision, Wanda/Vision, teen, edited by my teammate
-Another Country, MCU/Avengers, Steve/Tony, teen, with cover art by a teammate
-yes your wings are beautiful. yes they shimmer. god., MCU/Iron Man, Tony/Rhodey, general audiences
-Capes, Star Wars sequels, Finn/Poe, teen, with three other Voiceteam participants

( Voiceteam thoughts )

I also participated in a few other projects organized by other Voiceteam folks:
-for goodness' bake!, The Good Place ensemble, general audiences
-Furry Artists vs. Doctors, a dramatic reading of the (I guess classic?) Furry Artists vs. Doctors Tumblr post
-Until we rise with open eyes, Patrick O'Brian - Aubrey-Maturin Series, Aubrey and Maturin, general audiences
-A Seed of Song: Fives Hymns The Muses Sing of Hades and Persephone, Greek mythology/Vienna Teng's Aims, Hades/Persephone, teen

Oh hey I used all my journal's genre tags on this post: boyslash, femslash, gen, het, multi, other, and poetry!

One of the challenges at voiceteam this week is to create a commentary on an old podfic and, as I mentioned in my last post, it's been about ten years since I started making podfic. So here is a commentary on my first two podfics!

• Yes I'll Go with You, Merlin, Gwen/Morgana, written by sophinisba, one minute, general audiences, posted April 26, 2010


• Now, the Matter, The Little Mermaid, Ariel/Ursula noncon, written by Rubynye five minutes, explicit, posted June 16, 2010

These are pretty different fics and podfic productions but it tickles me (and did back then) that they are both mermaid femslash! I also associate both of them with my good old friends from hobbit fandom even though neither fic is about hobbits. It makes me happy to see the continuity between these first two podfics and the things I'm still making these days.

( Yes I'll Go With You )

( Now, the Matter )

Okay here is another post! Through sasha_feather I just found the comm thefridayfive, which posts five questions for you to answer in a post every week.

1. What would you do if you won the lottery?
So I read the article What should you do if you win the lottery? Start a foundation. on Vox last year and I know it's meant as criticism of the way foundations work in US tax law but to be honest I'd probably try to do that, but give myself a smaller salary than is suggested there.

I think I'd also try to keep a version of my current job but like, without the sucky parts of it? I don't want to go into the details in an unlocked post and idk it's possible but that's something I think about fairly often. A colleague of mine did that her last year before retiring: just the fun stuff. Just the stuff we thought this job would be when we got into it.

2. What era do you wish you had lived in?
I do not wish to have lived in a past era but like sasha_feather am interested in the future.

3. What kind of robot would you want?
I expressed a lot of my robot sex feelings my Morgana/Lancelot fic Reset, which feels a little weird to say because Morgana is in a really terrible place in that fic, but I guess that's part of it, I would have really mixed feelings about having a robot (especially if I were in love with Gwen and Gwen had left me for my brother). Also I would really like to have a robot that could kill bugs for me, like Morgana does in that fic.

4. What would you outsource if you could?
I would like it if someone else would kill bugs in my house and keep the floor clean. I can handle most of the other cleaning. There are parts of my job I wish I didn't have to do but I also can't really see giving them to anyone else, alas.

5. What superpower do you wish you had?
I do not wish to have any superpowers but I wish that my body worked and felt more like it did about 10 years ago. I would like to be less tired, and for my stomach and knees and toe not to hurt.

Here are two recent recordings of me reading things I wrote a long time ago!

Title: People gonna talk (whether you doing bad or good) (text, download, and streaming links at the AO3)
Author: sophinisba
Fandom: Merlin
Rating: NC-17
Ship(s): Freya/Merlin
Size: 12 MB, 22:21 minutes
Summary: Freya and Merlin have sex on the stairway to Arthur's cellar at his NYE party.
Notes: Written for New Year's Eve 2010, recorded for New Year's Eve 2017!

I also participated in the Podfication 2017 Live Performances event in October! The recording is a little less than two hours and my part is probably about seven minutes, to be honest it was really hard for me to stand up in front of everybody and I can't make myself listen now. But it was still a really cool evening and there is the link. There are a bunch of other cool performances too! The story I read was "The L Word", Luna Lovegood gen that I wrote for lgbtfest in 2009.

I posted last week that I hadn't made any fanworks in 2016, completely forgetting how much I'd struggled to eke out a fic for camelot_remix:

Title: tell me the story you'd like to hear (the picture's worth a thousand words remix)
Author: sophinisba
Fandom: Merlin
Starring: Elena/Mithian, secondary Gwen/Morgana and Vivian
Rating: PG
Summary: Mithian's watched other couples come together through fandom.
Content notes: N/A
Author's notes: A remix of tell me the story you'd like to hear by the fabulous growlery. I loved this original when it was first posted and I feel that my remix had potential that it didn't live up to, and in some ways regret the negative attitudes about fannish experiences that it contains. On the other hand, omg I finished a fic in 2016!

( hesitations and podfic talk )

So whatever, fannish resolutions 2017:

• post on Dreamwidth every month


• make a fanwork


• archive and post my old podfics at the AO3, five works every week until it's done

Currently feeling very optimistic that if I make it a regular thing most of them won't take nearly as long as last night's. If I stick to five per week I should get them all finished by halfway through the year and I could well finish much sooner.

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(Eh, I said I'd do a rec post every weekend in October and it may seem like I'm not sticking with that but I had this Monday and Tuesday off so it's still sort of the weekend for me, so yay! I will probably have more trouble next weekend but we'll cross that bridge when we come to it.)

Today I want to rec two super-long new/in progress Merlin fics that will take you back to season 1 in very different ways. I loved our characters from all five seasons and at times I missed some of them but I'm tickled by the energy and creativity that these authors have put in to building their own worlds and sets of characters starting from that other, smaller canon that first delighted so many of us.

Exiles by story_monger, Arthur/Gwen/Merlin/Morgana, 51178 words, mature
I found this browsing through the After Camlann Big Bang listings for pairings other than Arthur/Merlin and was surprised to see so few comments on an OT4 fic, especially once I dug in and realized the writing was excellent. I did see that there was a warning for noncon but that turned out not to be very explicit (and it's an OC bad guy so you don't have to worry about any beloved characters turning evil). In fact most of the fic reads a lot like gen, but with that delightful level of shippiness that season 1 canon gave us so much of. As I saw someone say on Tumblr a while back, it was that time when Merlin cared about other characters besides Arthur. REMEMBER? The strongest relationships here are Arthur/Merlin and Gwen/Morgana, but there is all kinds of flirting and caring and possibilities and it is just lovely. In some ways it didn't feel like a fanfic so much as a fantasy novel, the author just seemed so in command of the setting and the plotting and everything. (Sorry that is sort of phrased as if I didn't love fanfic. Obvs I do love fanfic.)

I should say that it starts out with an OC POV and that may have turned a few people off, but that's really just a framing story and almost all the fic is spent with the main characters.

But, um, somehow when I started reading I saw the noncon warning but missed the major character death warning, and there is MAJOR CHARACTER DEATH. It happened and I was like, okay, these things happen in fanfic sometimes but there is magic etc and there is going to be a way to work this out and have a happy ending, but then I read and read and read and got to the end of the 51K words and it was to be continued. So, you have to be okay with living with some angst and uncertainty because I have no idea when the author plans on writing the next part (it would be a major undertaking -- maybe for next year's big bang challenge?) BUT I personally found it to be totally worth it, I'm super glad I read this and highly recommend it!

Falconry by versaphile, Arthur/Merlin with I guess eventual Gwen/Morgana, 492,451 words and counting, explicit

Okay, so then I'd enjoyed a couple of big bangs so much I was browsing through the Gwen/Morgana tag on the AO3 and came across a 260K WIP called A Bird of Paradise and thought hey why not. I started reading late at night and I was like hey Arthur/Merlin after a magic reveal it doesn't get any better than this! And I was so tired and distracted I didn't realize until the next day when I was several chapters in that this was actually the fourth huge story in an epic series. (Yes, this is the recs post of me not reading AO3 tags very carefully.) I was a little reluctant to go back because, you know, what's better than a magic reveal? Who wants to go read the hundreds of thousands of words leading up to the magic reveal? But it turns out I do! Sadly the first three parts don't have any Gwen/Morgana to speak of, and really this is a very different kind of season 1 vibe from Exiles, like something to get into if what you miss about season 1 is the Arthur/Merlin without other ships getting in the way.

But it's really good! I especially loved part 2 because there was SO MUCH SMUT and plus it's this old-fashioned OTP smut where Arthur's really toppy and Merlin's all yes I would give my life for you and I belong to you and so on. Super hot!! Right now I'm in the middle of part 3, which is plottier and involves a lot of fighting and some magic. To me it is a little weird to read about all these adventures with Arthur's knights who are not the knights we know and love but hey, that is what we did after season 1, and it was great! This series actually takes its turn after the first episode of season 2 and it's just hugely impressive how much the author has developed their own world. Also there are regular updates! I almost feel silly reccing it because I guess it's hugely well known but hey, I had to stumble into it so maybe you haven't read it either and maybe you will love it too.

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Okay, so I guess a bunch of people are doing recs this month. Yay recs! I said I would do a recs post every weekend and here we are at the end of the weekend so here goes!

A couple months ago I wrote a little ficlet of a modern AU where magic is regulated by the government and drug companies, and I was reflecting that I love these kinds of AUs with a passion and wish they would get written more. Most Merlin fics are either canon-era with magic banned or modern AUs without magic, and of course there are many other variations but DAMN, MODERN AUS WITH MAGIC ARE THE BEST.*

My all-time favorite, as many of you could probably guess, is the 2010 classic 125K fic Arcane Asylum by new_kate. It starts with Arthur, who's been framed for a magical crime, going into a prison for magic users that's mostly been taken over by the inmates and especially by the most powerful wizard among them, Merlin. There is some threatened non-con early on and then there is an epic Arthur/Merlin love affair and adventure. This fic, as they say, gives me all the feelings. To be honest my favorite parts are not the main plot of the story but the flashbacks to Merlin's childhood and the way his mother tried to protect him, then to his youth on the run before he got caught. It seems to me that these parts of a very strong "magic as metaphor for gayness" feel and that has always been one of my favorite things about this fandom and I love it. Then also much later in the fic there's the amazing Arthur/Sophia noncon flashback. The podfic I made of it in 2012 is by far the longest podfic I've ever made -- it sort of took me six months -- and I imagine you can sort of hear my voice flagging in the second half and then picking up again when Sophia shows up. Anyway, the whole thing is glorious really and if you came in later or just somehow never got around to this I recommend it most highly. As an anon once commented on my podfic, "this is such a satisfying fic! it is the thanksgiving meal of fanfiction."

Here is another old favorite: Seasons by wangler who used to go by another name though I'm not sure we're supposed to connect them. This is another long (40K) Arthur/Merlin fic with some other pairings mixed in. It is really good for crying though at times it will cut away when you are wanting to see more. Besides loving this fic in a way that makes me feel like a mess all over the floor I really admire it for the way the author shows us little pieces of the universe through tiny details, like Nimueh telling the paramedics that Merlin is Class Four even though his driver's license says two. That is just fabulous. For a while I thought I would make a multi-voice podfic of this and I even recorded the Merlin parts years ago so if you want to do Arthur let me know and I'll see if I can salvage those files. *sigh*

Okay so then later this summer a few weeks after I wrote that ficlet we were leaving prompts for each other on Team Gluttony and lady_ragnell wrote me this gorgeous little piece of Hunith and Freya gen with background Freya/Merlin, Forget the World. And I thought wow, Hunith and Freya and modern AU with illegal magic my life cannot get any better, and then...

A few days later I got the notification that my new friend polomonkey had posted a new fic called In Spite of Everything, the Stars and oh it was just 82249 words of Arthur/Merlin tagged Kidnapping and Hurt/Comfort and Alternate Universe - Modern With Magic. On top of the fantastic story this has really gorgeous artwork by mushroomtale and I just got to sink into a really long fic and read all weekend in a way that I have not done with a Merlin fic probably in years. Part of what was so fun was squeeing about it on Twitter and realizing that other people who barely read Merlin fic anymore were just as excited and it was so satisfying and good.

(*omg if you are my merlin_holidays writer or artist and you are freaking out because you already started making something for one of my other requests please don't worry, when I say "the best" here I really just mean "awesome" but I also feel that magic reveals are the best and gen is the best and kink exploration is the best and so on.)

Anyway yay recs! If you would like to feel responsible for doing a certain number of recs posts this month you can go tell birdsofshore or else you can just start making some recs posts!

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 it's a good thing I made a New Year's resolution to post a fanwork each month, or I wouldn't have edited this last night and posted it this morning:

Title: Fall of Princes
Author: kaizoku
Fandom: Merlin
Rating: NC-17
Ships: Arthur/Gwen, Gwen/Merlin, Arthur/Gwen/Merlin
Summary: Arthur wants to see Gwen with another man.
Notes: OMG you guys this story is so hot.
Links: Text, download, and streaming links at the AO3

Another one of my resolutions was to repost twenty of my old podfics to the AO3 each month until it's done. Well, work has been busy and I've been putting it off so I didn't really try until today, and so far I've done three. Lots more uploaded to the webspace paraka's giving me, but it will take a long time to fill everything in, especially with some authors having left fandom and/or taken down their fics, and with the files on my own computer being way more disorganized than I'd realized.

Anyway, here are my works tagged podfic on the AO3. It will be gradual. I'm using a posting skin that eosrose made and shared at podfic_tips a while back, with the colors tweaked by fire_juggler and I really like how it looks. I sure regret not doing this years ago.

The Awesome Ladies Podfic Anthology is happening again this year with submissions due by February 8th. This is a fun thing to participate in even if you haven't made podfic before. I am happy to have a deadline to motivate me to make something in February.

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