Sophinisba Solis

Back in 2006 I wrote two hobbit fics using songs by the band Hem as inspiration. Here are recordings of them!

Title: Torn from the Map
Author and reader sophinisba
Fandom: Lord of the Rings
Characters/Pairing: Frodo/Aragorn (background Merry/Pippin and Sam/Rosie)
Rating: light NC-17
Contains: sex, mild post-Quest angst
Notes: Written for the "Inside a Song" challenge at hobbit_smut, inspired by the Hem song "Half Acre" (included in this recording), dedicated to claudia603.
File info: mp3, 32 minutes
Download link: Torn from the Map at Audiofic (.zip)

Title: He Came to Meet Me
Author and reader sophinisba
Fandom: Lord of the Rings
Characters/Pairing: Pippin/Diamond
Rating: PG-13
Contains: kissing, mention of masturbation, discussion of political violence
Notes: Inspired by the Hem song "He Came to Meet Me" (included in this recording), dedicated to danachan.
File info: mp3, 17 minutes
Download link: He Came to Meet Me at Audiofic (.zip)

Here are some links to things you have probably seen already if you are interested in these kinds of things! Oh well, I will feel better if I also have them here!

-Fanart: Guinevere of Rohan by felix_aeternus!

-Make Something Good by sweetestdrain, the Gwen-centric OT3 (Arthur/Gwen/Merlin) vid we've been waiting for! Oh my lovely thoughtful people with their significant looks! ♥!!

-All We Have, a beautiful Treme vid by hersluck focusing on the show's main female characters. Also in comments heresluck linked to this article in The Nation, Katrina Is Not a Metaphor by Melissa Harris-Lacewell.

-Meta: Neoliberal Holmes, or, Everything I Know About Modern Life I Learned from Sherlock by magnetic_pole. I found this uncomfortable to read but very much worth reading through to the end.

-There's been some good discussion in the comments to heather's post linking to some of these same things about how the issues Maggie's talking about with Sherlock come up in Merlin and some other shows.

-I haven't felt up to watching sweetestdrain and sisabet's new multifandom torture vid On the Prowl yet, but giandujakiss has an interesting post comparing it to Women's Work and talking about some related issues of the meanings of men's pain versus women's pain in our media - more relevant comments on the LJ side than Dreamwidth, last time I checked. (Remember a couple months ago when we were talking here about female woobies?)

-Oh heck, have an MP3: This Is a Rebel Song by Sinéad O'Connor, from the LP Gospel Oak, 1997. It's not one of my favorite songs of hers but I've been listening to it and singing it a lot for the last couple days so I feel like sharing. ( cut for Feelings about Sherlock )

-The philosophy of squee by cherrybina. I feel a little bit funny about linking to these things together because Maggie and the folks at Heather's post are all, "Let's problematize these shows we want to love!" and Bina's talking about Merlin fandom being her happy place. But I love what Bina's saying about there being room in fandom for us to find what I ourselves and our people. I love seeing her squee about how hot Arthur and Merlin are on my f-list and I also love seeing someone like Maggie or zahrawithaz nail down just what that niggling feeling was when I was watching that last episode of Sherlock or Merlin or Doctor Who. (And also I'm with Bina about avoiding anon memes because eeep.)

Hey guys, what songs do you think of when you think of bound wrists?

baranduin wants to fill the "bondage (wrist/ankle restraints)" square on her kink_bingo with her first fanvid and is looking for music ideas. The subject would be Evgeni Plushenko, possibly paired with Johnny Weir, so I'd guess references to ice or cold or Russia would also be good, but the main thing is bondage. Please comment with your ideas!

Also, Merlin fans, please help me decide what to do with my "confined/caged" square! Poll on Dreamwidth only because crossposting them is too difficult. (Poll mentions noncon situations but only in a vague way.) ( ticky box )

Thank you!

Here's the favorite fic meme that's been going around.

Sometimes it's ok to pimp yourself out. Post a list of your top five fic-favorites you've written, regardless of fandom or the reason you love them. This isn't about the BEST things you've written, but what you LOVE most.

These are not in order. I really suck at picking favorites, actually! But these are five fics of mine for which I have some special affection. ( fic links )

And while I'm talking about my own fics, here are five songs I've quoted in them, which you can download if you'd like (at least for the next week). I've shared a couple of these before. ( music and fic links )

I've now had my new iPod Nano for a week and I totally love it! It is so delightfully small but it holds all the songs I have in my iTunes so far. (There are still a lot of CDs I haven’t saved yet but whatever.) It is blue and really very pretty. I’ve never had an iPod before and I’m just so pleased.

I've taken it to the gym for walking and (a wee bit of) running on a treadmill a couple times and found that works pretty well but not perfectly. I have this armband that is designed to carry a classic iPod so it was a little big for the Nano but mostly okay. More of a problem is that it's always slipping down on my arm, sometimes even wanting to slip past the elbow, which makes me want to bend my elbows more, which is not great when you're trying to relax your arms and save your energy for the running and all. Plus it’s in a bit of an inconvenient place as far as adjusting the volume and skipping songs. I don't think it would work to just hold it in one hand because I'm always having to press buttons on the treadmill and I'm scared I'll get confuzzled and fall off (as I once did years ago while holding a Discman – not fun!). Anybody have advice or ideas for this?

Speaking of music and technology, I've also been having some fun with the website Pandora.com. The way it works, you tell it the name of a song or an artist that you like, and it makes a "radio station" with similar music. You can add more songs or artists as "seeds" to influence what kind of station it is, and for every song that they play you say whether you like it or not, so it keeps refining as you go, and meanwhile you're usually listening to a lot of music that you like, some of it familiar and some new. If you like a song you haven't heard before you can get more information about the artist really quickly and there are always links for you to buy the song from Amazon or iTunes.

I’ve found that it works especially well for finding artists that match other artists, not quite as well for the feel of a particular song. The variety is not as big as it would be with an actual radio station but sometimes that's okay. The most pleasant surprise for me has been how quickly it figured out my tastes for my Latin American rock station, and after that I was disappointed with how little African and Arabic music they seemed to have.

The other thing I've been doing for music lately is borrowing CDs from the public library and copying them to my iTunes. I know this is not especially ethical but it's just so easy I don't really want to stop.

Here's a link to a happy-making Doctor Who fanvid: Shine by futuresoon, music by Carbon Leaf and images from all four seasons of New Who (so, you know, spoilery to some extent). It has a lot of the Doctor and companions hugging and kissing and smiling and good stuff like that. You can tell futuresoon how much you liked it on this post.

I really like Coldplay's new album, Viva la Vida. I think I like it as a whole album better than A Rush of Blood and X and Y even though those have some songs that I like better than any of the new songs. Most of the new songs don't really stick out to me but I like the way they fit together. I think Parachutes is still my favorite but I've only had the new one for a week so it's hard to say.

Sometimes I'm embarrassed by how much I love Coldplay (and U2), like if I were really cool I'd be into some indie bands nobody else had ever heard of. ( Read more... )

A Hard Day's Night of the Living Dead



John! George! Paul! Ringo! Zombies! Screaming girls!

Title: Torn from the Map
Word Count: 5180
Rating: R
Pairing/s: Frodo/Aragorn (Merry/Pippin, Sam/Rosie)
Summary: Post-quest AU, Frodo says goodbye to the Shire and goes to meet Aragorn.
Notes: Inspired by the song "Half Acre" by Hem, a band that is (still) on tour in the US right now. Lyrics here. Download here, streaming here (third song down).
Written for the hobbit_smut "Inside a Song" Challenge and dedicated to claudia603
Thanks to danachan for beta and encouragement.
Still more notes.

( Torn from the Map )

I gacked this quizzy meme from baranduin and was a little surprised at the result I got, since I'd never thought to describe my beliefs as Humanist, but I did like the little description that came with it. It reminds me of a Phil Ochs song that I like, so I'm pasting the lyrics in underneath the meme.

( Humanist )
( Phil Ochs - When I'm Gone )