Sophinisba Solis

Hi Dreamwidth, I hope you had a nice New Year's Eve and are having a good first day of the year, and for that matter last three months since that's how long it's been since I updated um.

Anyway, I went to check last night and it looks like I did well with the fannish resolutions I'd made for each of the last few years:

Make ten Dreamwidth posts, of which

• five are not fanworks posts, and
• five are not in January or December, and

Make ten fanworks, of which

• one is a fic, and
• one is a podfic of more than an hour

I was doing pretty well at posting regularly this summer and then my job got busy but also SO BORING, I didn't feel like I had time to update or anything interesting to say.

Looking at my AO3 works page, I posted about 29 fanworks, including four MCU ficlets and one podfic that was a little over an hour. The other 24 were short podfics, and in addition there a bunch of other podfics to which I contributed some voice parts.

The fests and exchanges I participated in were Voiceteam Mystery Box in December/January, Voiceteam classic in May, Summer Podfic Swap June-August, Chromatic Characters Podfic Anthology in September, Remix Revival September/October, and Voiceteam Mystery Box currently in progress. I also signed up for MCU Kink Bingo in... the summer maybe? but then didn't make anything for it.

I'm setting the same goals for 2022 and I'm confident I can make them. The slightly challenging parts are always the fic and the longer podfic, but have specific plans to finish and post a fic later this week, and to start recording a podfic that will probably come out to around six hours. I intend to participate in whatever future rounds of Voiceteam the mods are generous enough to host, and maybe some other podfic fests, but no writing exchanges because they're too stressful.

Also for 2021 I set the goal of answering all new AO3 comments as I received them, and I didn't get anywhere close. This is a very nice aspiration but I'm not setting it up as a goal this year.

Let's see, in December 2018/January 2019 I was on a fandom/Dreamwidth/Twitter hiatus, and in December 2019/January 2020 I made a couple year-end posts, one about fandom and one about everything else. Idk if I will make an rl post this year because so little has happened to me that didn't happen to almost everybody else. Like, I've spent a lot of time at home, working from home, not traveling, barely seeing anyone except for my partner. And I've been posting more regularly so it's not news, idk.

But I think I'll split the fandom review in two. Since Voiceteam Mystery Box is happening right now I'll probably make and post a few fanworks in the next few days so I can't count them yet or link to them. Not sure how much counting I will do tbh and I think I won't even bother to link them all because, what with Voiceteam, there are a lot of them, and because of all the Voiceteam collaborations I'm much less clear than ever before about which fanworks I "made" or are "mine" or whatever. Will I do math? Will I check kudos and hit counts? Will there be a new spreadsheet, perhaps even the return of GRAPHS? Perhaps, but these are questions that 2021 Sophie will answer.

This is a post about fannish New Year's Resolutions!

( 2020 review )

So yeah, take out the Tumblr business and I am setting the same modest goals for 2021:

• make ten Dreamwidth posts, of which
  • five are not fanworks posts, and
  • five are not in January or December
• make ten fanworks, of which
  • one is a fic, and
  • one is a podfic of more than an hour

I also have a new goal!

• Answer AO3 comments on my fanworks!

I'm so embarrassed that I don't always do this! I don't get a ton of comments! I'm grateful for the ones I get and enjoy answering them! But I am going to let myself let go of the past and just resolve to do it for new comments starting Friday! I won't worry about weird comments or comments on collabs that other people have led but I will do it for nice comments on my own stuff and that will feel good!

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.

I usually do a fic year in review meme around this time, but in 2015 I only wrote five ficlets and I already listed and reflected on them back in September. In order to have a graph to post I went ahead and added up the wordcounts for fics I'd posted in previous years and confirmed that, yes, this was the least I've written since I started in 2005.



I was definitely surprised by the big numbers back in 2006 and 2007. And there was even more LotR and Faculty podfic I wrote and posted back then but that doesn't show up here because I never finished them or posted them to the AO3. I was also surprised by how multifannish I was from the beginning -- I'm used to thinking I fell for the hobbits in the beginning, then sort of lost interest and wandered in the wilds of multifannishness for a while until I fell for Merlin. But there was Faculty and Firefly mixed in all along. And back in 2007 I would like, watch a movie or an episode of Lost and then write a fic -- it didn't matter that I wasn't *in* the fandom. I was also a little surprised to see that I was never as prolific in Merlin fandom as I had been earlier.

So anyway, I didn't write much fic at all this year but I was happy to have summerpornathon and team_gluttony bring me back to fandom and its joys for a few weeks. Alas, the excitement did not continue and when I got within a few days of the merlin_holidays deadline in November I realized there was no way I could write the fic I'd promised (even though I had an excellent assignment). I hope I'll write some more Merlin fic again at some point though I'd be too embarrassed to sign up for that challenge again. :(

I made eight short podfics this year. The last five haven't been posted here before:

• Fall of Princes, Merlin: Arthur/Gwen/Merlin, 16 minutes


• The Mechanic, Merlin: Gwen/everyone, 6 minutes


• Someone Special, Merlin: Arthur/Merlin, 26 minutes


• Ritual Madness, How to Get Away with Murder: Laurel/Michaela, 15 minutes (new!)


• Her Lady's Favour (collaboration with teprometo and analise010), Merlin: Gwen/Morgana and Gwen/Arthur, 6 minutes (new!)


• Home, Merlin: Gwen/Morgana, 5 minutes (new!)


• Wings, The Eagle: Marcus & Esca, 13 minutes (new!)


• Learn to Fly, The Eagle: Marcus/Esca, 10 minutes (new!)

I can't do a graph comparing this to previous years because I haven't finished (or gotten anywhere close to finishing) archiving my old podfics at the AO3 so the numbers aren't handy. (I used to do a lot more but whatever.) I like that podfic lets me continue to be multifannish, that I stay in touch with other podficcers through Twitter, and that I can contribute to the community in small, sporadic ways like recording a five-minute thing for the the Awesome Ladies Podfic Anthology ("The Mechanic") or the Informal Twitter Podfic Exchange ("Wings" and "Learn to Fly"). I did have a horrible time with technical issues "Someone Special" but have since acquired a nicer microphone and gotten a little more practice with the latest version of GarageBand so I'd like to make more podfic in 2016, perhaps a few more substantial things for Femslash February.

I'm not going to make any fannish resolutions for this year because I don't want to feel bad about failing at them like I did last year.

I made so few fanworks in 2013 that it doesn't make sense to do the questions meme, as much as I normally enjoy that, but I can't resist making a list and a graph.

( a list and a graph )

So, you know, just my least productive year in fandom ever, but what are you gonna do. I would like to say some positive things:
-Lots of ladies!
-I like making sets of things! I think my kink_bingo blackout with 25 different femslash ships for 25 different kinks is really, and so is my set of podfics in space.
-I had fun with that Amy/Rosa podfic last week, and it's made me want to get back into podficcing again. Conveniently, I expect to have a little more time alone at home over the next few months than I did the last few months.
-I know I will make at least one vid in 2014, because I'm signed up for festivids and they are due in... ah ha ha less than two weeks! No, but it's cool, I have clipped and I have a song. I will manage something.
-Having just made a bunch of links, I think I will update my podfic index today, and maybe even post to amplificathon

For December 15th, fitz_y asked me to name my top five femslash ships in any fandom, ever, and this caused me to reflect that I don't have much experience with what I think of as the big femslash ships. I like femslash and I think a lot of people see me as a femslasher, but I don't have the really strong feelings about any femslash pairings that I have more often had for boyslash pairings.

( I mean other than Gwen/Morgana )

So idk trying to answer this sort of made me feel like a bad femslasher. :( I really do like all kinds of ships! Just not usually in an epic way.

via_ostiense asked me about my favorite flavor of ice cream. If I had to choose one I'd probably say coffee, but I also appreciate strawberry, cookies and cream, and some other flavors. I used to go to Dairy Queen and get mud pie Blizzards, or peanut butter cup ones, those are awesome. But there aren't a lot of Dairy Queens near where I live now and I guess I haven't missed it much. Frozen yogurt is bigger around here and I've always thought fro-yo tasted kind of weird.

I'm not really into ice cream in general these days. I used to buy cartons and then it would stay in the freezer for months and months and get gross. B buys it and I'll have a little dish from time to time. I also used to really like gelato from certain fancy gelato places, but on the other hand never really got excited about the fancy local ice cream places that B and other friends of mine love. One of the flavors my friends get excited about is salted caramel and I can't stand that stuff, ugh.

And since it's a Wednesday let's do a quick reading meme. I finished Flight Behavior by Barbara Kingsolver, continued to like but not love it. I read a pretty good chunk of Purple Hibiscus this week and just a little bit of Claire of the Sea Light, still haven't really gotten into that one. Then last night the ebook of Gillian Flynn's Dark Places became available through my library, so I expect to be reading that and nothing else for the next few days. Right now I'm about a quarter of the way through and pretty well engrossed, though so far I'm not enjoying it nearly as much as I did Gone Girl, which kinda ate up my life when I read it last year.

Oh, and I skimmed a library book called 10,001 Ways to Live Large on a Small Budget which I'm pretty sure is just a compilation of blog posts from Wise Bread. It's pretty repetitive and silly but, you know, nice for glancing through, lots of lists of little tips for saving money on groceries, gifts, etc.

OMG the fic year in review meme!

( list of fics )

( Numbers and graphs! )

( questions )

( bonus vidding section )

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. :)

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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.

Let's have some memage! First here's the one with favorite shows and stuff. ( Your main fandom... )

I figure I'll do the one about fics I wrote next week, even though I didn't write much this year, and then I should also do one for the podfics I made, though I don't know of a template for that. Podficcers, what do you think of this?
( podfic meme template )

Oh wait, dude, I totally did a podfic year in review meme already last year! Here's the template:
<b>Stats:</b> <b>What was the best podfic you made this year?</b> <b>Most popular?</b> <b>Most underappreciated?</b> <b>Personal favorite, for whatever reason?</b> <b>Most difficult to make?</b> <b>Most "ah ha ha I can't believe I'm doing this"?</b> <b>Most fun to make?</b> <b>Was there one that didn't turn out the way you wanted?</b> <b>Biggest learning experience?</b> <b>What's next? Do you have any podfic goals for next year?</b>
Ha ha I feel like a dork now. Well, use whatever version you like, of course. I hope a lot of people will do it!