Sophinisba Solis

klb has a great new post up at podficmeta proposing that instead of asking authors for permission each time we want to do an individual podfic, we could instead ask what their transformative works policy is (whether it's blanket yes, blanket no, or they want to be asked each time, or something else) and link to a post about what transformative works policies are and why they're important to us as podficcers. This seems like a wonderful idea to me and I commented to say that I've done something similar a few times (without the informative link) but I felt sort of pushy when I was doing it. But maybe it doesn't come across as pushy? After all, as klb pointed out, asking every time is, like, assuming that the author's policy is "ask me every time", and why should that be the assumption? And isn't it more respectful, and not less, to ask what the policy is instead?

So yeah, I recommend reading that post!

( Podfic feedback is the best; I am getting a new microphone. )

The podficbigbang project that I started working on in December is up at last! My main entry for it is backdated a bit for linking purposes:

Arcane Asylum, written by new_kate, read by me, cover art by lolafeist.
Arthur/Merlin, NC-17, 12 hours and 43 minutes!

In the last couple weeks four different people have made podfics of things I wrote!!!!!!!

flammablehat made her very first podfic with Drink His Kiss Down Dry (Merlin/Nimueh, 5 minutes). This is a porny D/s ficlet and she reads it in a matter-of-fact way that I think fits Nimueh very well. I helped show her how to edit so I listened to the raw file and was crazy jealous of how few mistakes she made while she was reading, so I figure she is a natural at this (not that one needs to be) and she and another friend and I have decided to go in on a 4-hour project together. Ha! Anyway, please welcome a new reader to the fold.

leish aka quintenttsy recorded falcon and a dove (Gwen/Merlin, 4 minutes). This is quite light and playful and everything I love about my secret OTP, really.

croissantkatie listened to leish's podfic and liked it so much that she decided to repod it! Now this is very exciting in itself because omg transformative works! I wrote that story inspired by yue_ix's artwork rosebud with a flush and to a lesser extent by a commentfic by isabear that was also inspired by yue's work. yue's drawing was in turn inspired by a lyric by John Boyle O’Reilly (and obvs by this show we watch) and it is just this whole universe of connections spinning around and making me very happy to be part of it.

But then also Katie was enjoying that so much that she read a bunch of my other fics and decided to make a whole little anthology of 5 Merlin podfics!!
-falcon and a dove (Gwen/Merlin, 4 minutes)
-Her Balm, Her Bane (Morgana/Morgause, 7 minutes)
-If I Cannot Be Your Queen (Gwen/Arthur, 5 minutes)
-The Opposite of Work (Gwen & Morgana friendship, 5 minutes)
-My Best Kept Secret (Freya/Merlin, 12 minutes)
These are all pretty small but there's also a huge range between them, including one of my first Merlin fics from three years ago as well as three that were dark enough to make me fear I'd lose friends when I posted them (rapist!Merlin wth). Katie takes different approaches to reading them, and some were very close to what I had in my head as a writer while others were very different. Listening to them was thus trippy and emotional and excellent.

cantarina wanted to help me celebrate something that happened offline last week so she asked me for something to podfic and I picked one of my last Lord of the Rings fics Little Illusions (post-quest RosieSamFrodo, 3 minutes). It is quite lovely and might be fun for some of my old friends to listen to even if you are normally not into podfic (there's a streaming link so you don't need to bother downloading).

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Also also, for Reverse Remix (which is still going and also has LotR people in it!), netgirl_y2k wrote Sparring Partners, (Forridel/Morgana, 880 words), a wonderful update on a comment fic I wrote during season 2. If you love Morgana you gotta love Netgirl.

♥ ♥ ♥ fandom.

You know how the other day I was saying there wasn't a lot of overlap between my popular fics and my favorite fics? One that comes pretty close to having that overlap is We'll Slide Down the Surface of Things, in which our characters love each other very much but being in a relationship is hard, and some people are queer and some people are straight and then really strange porn happens. It's at number 14 if you sort my fics by hitcount and I went ahead and tagged it as One of My Favorites last week.

Well THAT, my friends, is the fic that some fabulous person decided to remix for this year's Remix Redux! It is from Merlin's POV and instead of focusing only his feelings about Arthur and Gwen it goes and does the sex scene my fic only mentioned in a throwaway line: LANCELOT/MERLIN with Merlin temporarily having girl parts!!! Oh my god their relationship is imperfect and Lancelot is chivalrously concerned for Merlin's virtue and comfort but so so so hot for him and it's glorious.

We'll Sink to the Surface and Hold On. by anonymous, Lancelot/Merlin with Arthur/Gwen (+ unrequited Arthur/Merlin and Gwen/Lancelot), 2320 words, Explicit.

I always angst so much about Remix but it is still the best! I love remixing and being remixed so much. Like all of the fics at Remix2012 and Remix Madness 2012 (including the two I wrote, heh), this one could use a lot more love! There are 16 Merlin fics including several about our awesome ladies of Camelot (not only Gwen and Morgana but also Freya and Hunith) and hundreds of stories in other fandoms. Go read and be generous with your kudos and comments!

Oh, and I think I'm pretty guessable but if you guess what I wrote I will podfic a fic of your choosing if I ever finish Arcane Asylum, or if that's not what you're into I will just tell you you're great.

Hey all, if you are participating in Remix Redux please note that the deadline is midnight Eastern time TONIGHT (four hours from now as I'm making this post), not tomorrow night as some of us sort of thought when we looked at how it was written.

Whether or not you're participating in the main challenge, you can leave a comment at the Remix Madness post on LJ if you want to participate in an informal remix free-for-all (no assignments and no minimum wordcount). Then comment here to let me know that you're in!

Hey, do you love podfic? So do I! Lots of people do, but not enough of that love makes its way back to the people who create podfic. There are lots of different reasons that contribute to this, but one of them is just habit. Like a lot of people, I sometimes listen when I'm away from the computer, have lots of feelings, and then don't make my way back to the reader's journal to share those feelings with them.

But the truth is, as dodificus reminded me the other day, it's not all that hard! It is the kind of habit that I'm capable of changing.

So next month I'll be helping dodificus out with welovepodfic, a podfic feedback challenge.

Challenge yourself to leave some kind of feedback for every podfic that you listen to during April and hopefully you'll be inspired by the mini challenges that pop up through the month to stretch your feedbacking skills even further.

If you already listen to a lot of podfics and comment on them all then you are in good competitive shape for our challenge. And if you listen some but don't always comment, then you have more to gain by participating. (If you don't like listening to podfic we still love you and hope you have a great April too!) Also there will be prizes!

LAST DAY TO SIGN UP FOR REMIX REDUX X!!!

ALSO I DON'T KNOW HOW THE SCHEDULE WORKS BUT IT IS VERY IMPORTANT THAT YOU VOTE FOR ABED AND KALINDA AT THE FANDOM STEEL CAGE MATCH with your main LJ account.



Kalinda is currently losing to some dude who is not Kalinda, but it's not too late to turn it around. Abed is in the lead but it's way closer than it should be, considering that he is Abed. THEY NEED YOUR HELP!!!

First of all let's talk about some podfic things!

( podfic links, mostly Merlin podfic recs )

Here are a few fics I've enjoyed reading recently!

( Arthur/Merlin, Gwaine/Merlin, Arthur/Gwen )

And here are links to some other things!

-month_of_meta is a new comm encouraging people to post meta during March. I really enjoyed lunabee34's post Fannish Trajectories: Isolation, a Sense of Disconnection from Fandom, and How We Deal and saw a lot of parallels with my own experience, though she and I are in pretty different places now.

-eruthros made an epic picspam of famous people and animals (mostly dogs and cats) that is sure to brighten your day, evening, etc. There are more pictures of cute animals and other happy-making things in the comments to thingswithwings's post sick: send help.

-The March mini-challenge at kink_bingo is to try new things, ideally "A character/pairing I've never worked on before, from a fandom I've never worked on before, doing a kink I've never done in my fanworks before, in a medium (painting/fic/vidding/podfic/etc) I've never tried to do before." This idea makes me happy! I realized there are not a lot of fandoms that I like but have never podficced in, but my current plan is to write a song for a pairing I've never worked on in a fandom I've only made a couple podfics for (never written in), and a kink where I've so far only written a drabble. I think that should be a good challenge!

Hey, so, I unsubscribed from some people on Dreamwidth last night because there have been too many posts for me to keep track of lately. It wasn't because anyone did anything to upset me or anything! I'm sure I will see you guys around.

Okay, that is still awkward even if you stop using the word "friend".

Oh my gosh I need to make a real post about the Awesome Ladies Podfic Anthology because it is huge and full of variety and women's voices and seriously awesome! But that post will take formatting and coding and probably thinking, so I'm putting it off. But just trust me that it is awesome, and go and download and listen to it! (Or do that with some of the pieces if you don't want/don't have room on your computer or mp3 player for all seven and a half hours.) I have listened to about a third of it so far and it is bringing me a lot of joy.

I have also been listening to Sinéad O'Connor's new album streaming on the NPR website a lot over the last few days, and I like it very much. My favorite tracks are "Queen of Denmark" and "V.I.P.".

The next camelot_fleet Fanlore project is to build up the page for Gwaine. There is a very short page there now but he has become such an important character in fandom, there's all kinds of material we can add. If you can't make it for the editing party tomorrow maybe you can drop a comment at the Fleet post or a link in the Google doc that's linked there. We did a lot of good work on the Merlin pages at Fanlore in March of 2010 but obviously the show and the fandom have changed a lot since then, so it's good to document that.

Hey and speaking of Gwaine, leish aka quintenttsy aka...omg I cannot even say my newest comrade from Team Merlin Femslash Podfic because there are so many fabulous new people now with the anthology and all... Anyway, Leishy left a ton of Gwaine recs and some Elyan recs in comments to one of my posts from last weekend, so check those out if you are a fan of Gwaine and/or Elyan!

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