Sophinisba Solis

Okay, so I participated in the Awesome Ladies Podfic Anthology II and it was (and continues to be) awesome!

Cover art by bessyboo

Awesome Ladies Podfic Anthology II

Those links go to the post on halfamoon, where you can see the list of readers and download a podbook or a zip file or browse by fandom and download individual MP3s. The total running time is over 7 and a half hours and there are 47 readers and 86 authors in 64 fandoms. Some of these readers are brand new to podfic and I believe this is the first podfic that's been made in some of the fandoms. I have been listening on my way to and from and around work and it's really a wonderful experience, to hear so many different voices and ways of reading. A lot of the fandoms are unfamiliar to me and some of the readers are people that I know on Twitter or whose names I've seen around, but I've never listened to them read before because I'm not into their regular fandoms. I love that there are pieces about motherhood and fighting and having sex and saving the world and all kinds of other things women do. It is making me very happy. fire_juggler has a really nice post about it and how listening to an anthology is different from listening to a long podfic.

I contributed seven pieces in seven different fandoms, several of which were new to me! They are each between 1 and 10 minutes long.

( seven short podfics: Avatar, Doctor Who, Merlin, Northern Exposure, Pan's Labyrinth, Torchwood, X-Men )

Another awesome thing that happened was that fitz_y made a podfic of I Ache Myself for More a piece of Gwen/Morgana noncon that I wrote last year. I believe it's the only noncon piece among the 104 podlets in the anthology and both fitz_y and I feel a bit self-conscious about that, but, well, Guinevere is still awesome even when bad things are happening to her. I loved hearing Fitzy read this as well as a very porny Gwen/Morgana fic of her own, and there are several other Merlin podfics in the collection. In conclusion, yay ladies!!!

Anthem for Doomed Youth by fahye is a really fantastic long X-Men fic, Raven-centric with Charles/Erik, taking place before and during the movie. Very much recommended if you wanted to see and understand more of Raven's feelings, and just in general because the writing is really beautiful and conveys so much emotion. Thanks to lolafeist for the rec!

I kinda want to ask about doing a podfic, because the language is so pretty and I think it would be fun to read because of that (plus there's not a ton of telepathy). On the other hand it is long so it would take a lot of work and not count for kink-bingo! So then I thought well what about using it as my project for ladiesbigbang, seeing as how I signed up and all! But despite it being Raven POV I am not really sure if it's lady-centric enough to be in the spirit of lbb, what with so much of it being about her relationships with Charles and Erik. So I don't know! (And it's possible the author wouldn't want a podfic anyway, or that someone else is already working on it, so it's sort of weird of me to be talking about this in a public post, but yeah.) What do you think?

Also here is a really interesting post of X-Men meta and history by gool_duck, about Israel and Holocaust survivors in the '50s and how that might affect Erik's story.

I rewatched Atonement the other night and I still love it a lot. Like, really really a lot. (I am sorry if that takes away from the strength of my recs for you - I guess some fans really hate this movie!)

Also rewatched the first X-Men movie a couple weeks ago, am now in the middle of watching the second one. I can't actually remember whether I've seen this one before. I find them kind of forgettable but fun, and I do like this second one a bit more than the first. It's nice to have most of the character introductions out of the way so they can focus on sexy stuff like mind control. Also, Erik and Charles are still in love, so there's that.

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In non-X-Men-related news, Why You Should Have Been Watching Treme Instead of The Killing has kind of a silly framing (it's not like Treme doesn't get talked about, and I don't agree that The Killing was that bad, and also it ignores the fact that lots of people would watch Treme if they could afford HBO...) but I like what it says about Treme being a show about creativity. There's been more violence in the second season (and I'm not happy about some of those stories), but

violence isn’t the show’s engine. The artist’s life is. There’s a meta-quality to many of the scenes of artists making art, since nearly all of them touch on debates about which types of creativity are authentic, political, pleasurable, meaningful, or lucrative, questions that clearly apply to the creation of the series itself. But rather [than] argue like an op-ed, Treme feels like poetry, and even better, it has begun to incorporate critiques of its own New Orleans exceptionalism, playfully showing the ways these attitudes can sour into pedantry, as they do on occasion with that Indian Chief, who is currently in New York driving his jazz musician son crazy with his passive-aggressive provincialism.

In general this person thinks the second season has been a lot less preachy than the first, and I guess I agree with that. I'm happy to see Annie and especially Antoine's stories getting more attention and direction, and like the reviewer am kind of amazed that I'm actually starting to care about Sonny.

I wasn't going to get into this fandom you guys I don't even know. I was just going to read some critiques but then last night I started reading fics, and tonight I read some more fics and then I went out and watched the movie again.

The best Charles/Erik fic I have read is You Told Me Again You Preferred Handsome Men, But For Me You Would Make an Exception by feverbeats, especially recommended if you were bothered by Charles' arrogance in the movie (which I wasn't especially but still, good fic).

Here are two lovely ensemble pieces also with Charles/Erik, more appealing if like me you were crushing on Charles:

Five Minds Charles Never Read (And One He Did) by Leyenn

Five Lessons Charles Taught (and One He Learned) by kaydeefalls

I may be running out of things I want to read on the AO3 and will have to start venturing into the kink memes soon. /o\ What I really want to read is all the hurt/comfort in the world, so if you have those recs I will take them.

I do not have any ideas for fics I want to write. That's pretty normal for me - I need to spend a lot of time reading in a fandom before I start writing, and in this case I probably won't, and that's okay. I was thinking I could do some podfic but pretty much every fic does this telepathy business where Charles hears Erik's thoughts and speaks in Erik's mind and, although several friends on Twitter suggested I could handle that in a podfic with filters (reverb etc.), I fear that would end up sounding really cheesy and I just don't want to do it. So for now I'm just reading okay!

( And I watched the movie again! )

In other news, I watched the movie Hanna and thought parts of it were really neat, and liked that there was no rape or threatened rape and that she got to keep her clothes on, but was not really satisfied by the story.

Today I bought Photoshop Elements and then realized that I should get the trial version before I opened the box and since then have spent many, many hours waiting for the trial version to finish downloading. At the moment it says it'll take another thirteen hours. :(

For the past month or so the trackpad on my Macbook hasn't been working properly. Sometimes it lets me select text (for copying and pasting, for instance) but often it doesn't. Same thing with trying to drag and drop anything, for instance regions when editing podfic. Argh.

Last week I friended summerpornathon and teamgreed but forgot to add them to the not-Dreamwidth filter, so I totally missed the challenge announcement on Sunday and get-to-know-you stuff for my team. :( However once I finally noticed on Tuesday I managed to write a ficlet without too much trouble. If I think about it in terms of competition or strategy I start to freak out, but if I think in terms of "First porn I have written since February!" I feel pretty good!