Sophinisba Solis

For the Informal Twitter Podfic Exchange, quintenttsy aka leish recorded one of my favorite fics published this year, Tangled by thingswithwings. This is a long Community fic (the podfic is more than three hours) with Annie and Troy and Abed learning how to have relationships while living together and learning how to knit. It is just the kind of story I love, about young people growing up and figuring out their own sexual identity and how to help each other and make each other happy. quintenttsy is also dear to me as a podfic reader and as a person, and it's been delightful for me to be walking around with her voice in my ears this holiday, including a half hour when I had to get away from my family on Tuesday. Thank you so much, Leisha, I love it. Here is the podfic of Tangled and here are the zillion other #itpe podfics!

I am also thrilled and amazed by the fic an anonymous author wrote for me as part of merlin_holidays. I requested several rare ships, of which perhaps the rarest was Freya/Gwen, and my author wrote more than 23,000 words of a historical AU set in Glastonbury in 1905, starring Freya as the head of an orphanage for magical children and Gwen as the genderqueer shoemaker she falls in love with. YOU GUYS. There is fascinating stuff about the secret magical community and there is porn with magic and homemade sex toys and there are interesting parts for Merlin and Morgana and Mary the barmaid and it is basically everything I love and what I wish fandom would be like all the time. It is called The Shoemaker and you should go read it!

Here are two other Merlin fics I've enjoyed recently:

-With Half-Shut Eyes by anonymous at merlin_holidays, Arthur/Merlin, 32K, explicit. This is a great Merlin-POV coffeeshop AU and I wish it were easier to make that sound exciting. :P The Arthur/Merlin is hot and interesting and I also really loved Merlin's group of friends, including Gwen, Elyan, Hunith, and Lancelot. <3 <3 Mind the content notes and be aware that the conflict involves MISUNDERSTANDING but anyway I recommend this fic like whoa.

-My Density Has Brought Me To You by ingberry, Arthur/Merlin, 18K, explicit. This was part of the uni_merlin fest, which I somehow wasn't aware of at all even though a bunch of my friends participated in it? I'm sorry you guys! Anyway Mordred as the roommate from hell who freaks Merlin out by screaming at his videogames in the middle of the night is so inspired I can't even deal. This is another Merlin-POV fic full of warmth and humor as well as Arthur/Merlin hotness. I might make a podfic!

I haven't had much alone time or reading time this holiday and I'd appreciate any recs you have to give me, especially for merlin_holidays. A lot of the fics are super long and it all feels rather overwhelming to me, but Merlin fic is really what I want to be reading right now, especially with all the feels this finale has given me.

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

Okay so! Thank you for all the lovely birthday wishes, friends! I'm sorry I haven't responded to all of them yet! Still, here are some links to some things!

-claudia603 made me a Gwen/Morgana drabble!

-oconel probably didn't realize it was my birthday, but she made me a Merlin/Morgana modern AU ficlet IN SPANISH at the camelot_fleet party this weekend! Gwen siempre tiene razón (rated G, no spoilers).

[-I am writing some Merlin/Morgana fic (in English) myself! It's up to 950 words now but I don't really know how much it needs. It's episode-related so I hope I can finish it before the next one airs on Saturday!]

-There is a new comm for people who want to read and write in Spanish on Dreamwidth, en_espanol!

-livrelibre wrote a fine Zoe/River (Firefly) fic for femslash10, Still Flying True. Thanks to zulu for the rec!

-Since Sunday I've really been enjoying following the discussion at happydork's post Why am I not writing the stories I say I want to read? (about the challenges of breaking out of the habit of writing about pretty young cis white dudes - for people who already want to do so!) and today she followed it up with a practical strategies post How I can write more of the stories I say I want to read. I hope that one generates a lot of discussion too (and eventually, you know, a lot of fic).

-ETA: glass_icarus just wrote me Wil and Viv from Saving Face BABYSITTING <3 <3 desperate "housewives".

rubynye, your card arrived yesterday, thank you so much. I love that you put so much creativity and care into your gifts. ♥

I went to see the new Disney movie The Princess and the Frog on Tuesday! I'm not usually a big fan of kids' movies or cartoons but I enjoyed this. The heroine is Tiana, a black woman in 1920s New Orleans who dreams of owning her own restaurant. She is tough and hardworking and smart and loves her family. She reminded me a little of Monica, one of my favorite Heroes characters, who unfortunately never got to be a protagonist like Tiana is. I liked her and most of the other characters a lot. The songs literally had me tapping my feet and some of the jokes made me laugh out loud. Maybe next year I'll request Tiana/Charlotte for Yuletide!

kialio posted a great review at deadbrowalking aimed at people of color (and other people who like to avoid racist movies) with minor spoilers and a few bigger ones you have to highlight to read. ( A complaint about the middle of the movie, not spoilery for the end )

ETA: Nnedi Okorafor's review is a lot more spoilery but also interesting and insightful. It's just the kind of review I like to read after watching a good movie.

Thank you all for the lovely wishes and pictures and gifts yesterday. I've enjoyed my birthdays a lot more since I came into online fandom than I ever did before, and I always thought I had an especially good birthday since it's so close to Frodo and Bilbo's (so I could pretend all the hobbit fic getting posted around that time was really for ME), and then this year I got the season premiere of Merlin as a present. I had a good day offline too but I guess I will talk about that in a friends-locked post. Here in public though I want to point to some of the wonderful things people made for me:

-julchen11 wrote Questions and answers about Zeke and Casey.

-claudia603 shared a Gwen/Morgana ficlet from her Mermaid AU.

-mews1945 did a great happy-making picspam.

-baranduin made me a beautiful Gwen/Morgana/flowers birthday card.

-The BBC made a new episode of this show I might have mentioned that I like. :D

-briar_pipe made a comment thread for me at the camelot_fleet party, and just before I went to bed miarrow posted A Promise To Return - The Cylon Side of Things, a new Cylon!Merlin continuation of her Merlin/BSG fusion.

Thank you, lovelies. I had a great time!

browngirl, thank you for your postcard! It had just the intended effect!

Also, today is a beautiful day outside in real life. I went out for a short walk earlier but I should go for another. I've spent most of the day inside with my computer, partly because a new BSG disc came in the mail (yay!) but mostly occupied with mod business.

I started posting fics at remixthedrabble today! One post for Dresden Files, Good Omens, Harry Potter, Lord of the Rings, and Twilight and one for Horation Hornblower, Master and Commander, and Pirates of the Caribbean! Each remix exactly 100 words (unless someone counted wrong)! ( remixthedrabble and remixredux09 talk )

A note to my Yuletide Goat(s): ( traveling )

Thank you to baranduin for making me laugh so much tonight with her very historically accurate and Mary-Renault-canon-faithful Happy First Everest Summit card and other holiday cards she's been posting. Thanks also to all of you who've sent me cards in the last few days: trianne, claudia603, frolijah_fan_54, westmoon, hyel (who also made me laugh), and rubynye (your Santa Lucia card warms my Swedish-American heart!). I didn't respond to a lot of address-collecting posts this year since I'm not sending cards myself, but it has been nice to receive them and I appreciate the time and effort and postage you put into them. :) If I have forgotten anyone I apologize! Am a bit scatterbrained between Yuletide Madness and getting ready to leave town for a few days.

Merry Christmas, my dear friends! Thank you all for being a part of my life. I hope you have a wonderful holiday.

Hey you guys! benebu posted her French translation of my Patil twins fic, Et que jamais personne…!! I have not tried to read the whole thing yet but I'm happy that I know enough French to read the comments and see that the people who read it both liked the story and thought it was a great translation! (The first person said it read like it had been written in French and not like a translation.) That is so cool! Thank you, benebu!!

Thanks also to mews1945 and slightlytookish for the holiday cards you sent me, that is so sweet of you. ♥

And now, a book meme, gacked from cesare on IJ (almostnever):

What we have here is the top 106 books most often marked as "unread" by LibraryThing’s users. As in, they sit on the shelf to make you look smart or well-rounded. Bold the ones you've read, underline the ones you read for school, italicize the ones you started but didn't finish.

( books! )

I've reposted my Yuletide fics and updated my fic index with everything I could find (even the haikus omg), plus a little reorganizing that I think is helpful. I've also been messing around with my journal's tags, though there's still a lot more to be done there (especially fixing those dumb links that I put in fic entries).

I signed up for remixredux08 earlier tonight and I'm hoping that when my remixer gets here they'll have an easy time finding things. If you were thinking about participating, remember that sign-ups close tomorrow night! More info here.

I've also just edited my LJ profile a wee bit – went in there to fix the tag links but ended up adding a few interests and other things. I like that it's now possible to choose who can see your birthday and your location. I've never had a problem with sharing that stuff with other people in fandom, but I didn't like the idea that someone who knows me from RL being able to recognize me just by glancing at my profile. So I've set that info to friends-only.

Speaking of LJ, I'm letting my paid account run out at the end of the month. I'm a little bummed about giving up the extra userpics, but otherwise it shouldn't be a big deal. I decided last summer that I wasn't comfortable giving LiveJournal money anymore, and since their policies haven't improved I don't want to go back on that now. Likewise, I'd feel silly and hypocritical having my friends giving them money on my behalf, so please, no gifts to this account, though I appreciate the thought and am thankful for the LJ gifts some of you have given me in the past.

I probably won't be around until Monday. I'm planning to see the movie Definitely, Maybe tomorrow and very much looking forward to watching the Oscars Sunday night. I hope you all have a lovely weekend.

Thank you, friends, for helping make yesterday such a great birthday for me!

( off lj )

I am delighted with the ficlets people wrote for me. mews1945 got at my sentimental side with Bath Time, a lovely, tender fic about wee Frodo and Merry; honeyandvinegar and lilybaggins got at my kinky side with Casey/Zeke haikus and a Frodo/Aragorn drabble; and claudia603 got at my kinkily sentimental side with a drabble in which Merry pays attention to Frodo's scars (it is G-rated gen omg but still). I also had a good chat with danachan and she sent me a draft a beautiful fic that continues our shared Saga of Celandine and Periwinkle. It made me feel all warm and happy to read.

What really kept me feeling happy and loved all day (eh, starting Tuesday night and continuing into today) was the steady stream of good wishes from so many of my friends in posts, comments, v-gifts (from alchemilla, layne67, and hanarobi) and e-mails. Thank you all so very much. I'm really grateful that you're part of my life.