Sophinisba Solis

I mentioned in a post from two weeks ago that I hadn't made podfic in a few months. However, I did have a podfic that I'd made in May go public last week, hooray!

Back at the end of the Voiceteam challenge in May my team started a game of Podfic Broken Telephone, which is where one person records a podfic and passes it on to one other person, who records a podfic inspired by the first one, then passes it on to a third person and so on. My teammate blackglass recorded a soft dad feelings Mandalorian podfic and then I recorded a soft dad feelings Tony Stark podfic and then there were some different family feelings then it veered around to courting and marriage, passing through six different fandoms! There were some delays along the way but we did wrap it up and then make everything public last week and then I forward-dated mine in hopes people would see it, though really it doesn't make much difference because who listens to podfic. But anyway here is the collection:
-WhispeRED Out Loud: A Podfic Broken Telephone Challenge
-and my contribution Improvement, written by laireshi, Tony & Morgan, 9 minutes

That was a nice bit of Voiceteam nostalgia, though I hadn't really seen that it was happening because I hadn't been on Discord.

Then a couple hours ago the Voieceteam mods announced that they would run a shorter challenge around the end of the year, and you could sign up as a group or sign up individually and have the mods assign you. Since then thirteen people have signed up: one mod, five people signing up as individuals, and SEVEN MEMBERS OF TEAM RED OUT LOUD. I love us, yay!

Anyway, you should consider signing up, as voiceteam is very newbie friendly and a nice way of meeting new people and trying new things.

Meanwhile I have asked for and been granted permission to record a few things in the last two weeks. Tonight I started recording one of them and to be honest it's been rough going. Just hard to get sentences out! And some noises in my house and my neighborhood. But still fun to be giving it a try again, and I'm really looking forward to Voiceteam Mystery Box.

One of the challenges at voiceteam this week is to create a commentary on an old podfic and, as I mentioned in my last post, it's been about ten years since I started making podfic. So here is a commentary on my first two podfics!

• Yes I'll Go with You, Merlin, Gwen/Morgana, written by sophinisba, one minute, general audiences, posted April 26, 2010


• Now, the Matter, The Little Mermaid, Ariel/Ursula noncon, written by Rubynye five minutes, explicit, posted June 16, 2010

These are pretty different fics and podfic productions but it tickles me (and did back then) that they are both mermaid femslash! I also associate both of them with my good old friends from hobbit fandom even though neither fic is about hobbits. It makes me happy to see the continuity between these first two podfics and the things I'm still making these days.

( Yes I'll Go With You )

( Now, the Matter )

Here are some thoughts I've been meaning to write up about content notes, podfic, and kink negotiation since making a podfic of thingswithwings's story "monster" earlier this summer. This post has spoilers for that fic and, in a separate paragraph that I've marked off, talks obliquely about the end of Avengers: Endgame.

Since this post is pretty rambly and personal let me start off with a summary: I think content notes sometimes work a lot like kink negotiation, which I love, and I found that to be especially powerful as I was making this podfic.

( Posting meta on Dreamwidth aw yeah! )

I was more fannish in 2017 than in 2016, though it was the first year since I got into fandom in 2005 that I didn't write any fic. Three significant things I did this year were:

• finishing archiving my old podfics


• attending podfication


• getting interested in Star Wars

( 2017 in review )

So! Fannish resolutions for 2018:

• make ten Dreamwidth or Tumblr 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

( plans for 2018 )

I posted last week that I hadn't made any fanworks in 2016, completely forgetting how much I'd struggled to eke out a fic for camelot_remix:

Title: tell me the story you'd like to hear (the picture's worth a thousand words remix)
Author: sophinisba
Fandom: Merlin
Starring: Elena/Mithian, secondary Gwen/Morgana and Vivian
Rating: PG
Summary: Mithian's watched other couples come together through fandom.
Content notes: N/A
Author's notes: A remix of tell me the story you'd like to hear by the fabulous growlery. I loved this original when it was first posted and I feel that my remix had potential that it didn't live up to, and in some ways regret the negative attitudes about fannish experiences that it contains. On the other hand, omg I finished a fic in 2016!

( hesitations and podfic talk )

So whatever, fannish resolutions 2017:

• post on Dreamwidth every month


• make a fanwork


• archive and post my old podfics at the AO3, five works every week until it's done

Currently feeling very optimistic that if I make it a regular thing most of them won't take nearly as long as last night's. If I stick to five per week I should get them all finished by halfway through the year and I could well finish much sooner.

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.

banner by capitu

Okay, so I guess a bunch of people are doing recs this month. Yay recs! I said I would do a recs post every weekend and here we are at the end of the weekend so here goes!

A couple months ago I wrote a little ficlet of a modern AU where magic is regulated by the government and drug companies, and I was reflecting that I love these kinds of AUs with a passion and wish they would get written more. Most Merlin fics are either canon-era with magic banned or modern AUs without magic, and of course there are many other variations but DAMN, MODERN AUS WITH MAGIC ARE THE BEST.*

My all-time favorite, as many of you could probably guess, is the 2010 classic 125K fic Arcane Asylum by new_kate. It starts with Arthur, who's been framed for a magical crime, going into a prison for magic users that's mostly been taken over by the inmates and especially by the most powerful wizard among them, Merlin. There is some threatened non-con early on and then there is an epic Arthur/Merlin love affair and adventure. This fic, as they say, gives me all the feelings. To be honest my favorite parts are not the main plot of the story but the flashbacks to Merlin's childhood and the way his mother tried to protect him, then to his youth on the run before he got caught. It seems to me that these parts of a very strong "magic as metaphor for gayness" feel and that has always been one of my favorite things about this fandom and I love it. Then also much later in the fic there's the amazing Arthur/Sophia noncon flashback. The podfic I made of it in 2012 is by far the longest podfic I've ever made -- it sort of took me six months -- and I imagine you can sort of hear my voice flagging in the second half and then picking up again when Sophia shows up. Anyway, the whole thing is glorious really and if you came in later or just somehow never got around to this I recommend it most highly. As an anon once commented on my podfic, "this is such a satisfying fic! it is the thanksgiving meal of fanfiction."

Here is another old favorite: Seasons by wangler who used to go by another name though I'm not sure we're supposed to connect them. This is another long (40K) Arthur/Merlin fic with some other pairings mixed in. It is really good for crying though at times it will cut away when you are wanting to see more. Besides loving this fic in a way that makes me feel like a mess all over the floor I really admire it for the way the author shows us little pieces of the universe through tiny details, like Nimueh telling the paramedics that Merlin is Class Four even though his driver's license says two. That is just fabulous. For a while I thought I would make a multi-voice podfic of this and I even recorded the Merlin parts years ago so if you want to do Arthur let me know and I'll see if I can salvage those files. *sigh*

Okay so then later this summer a few weeks after I wrote that ficlet we were leaving prompts for each other on Team Gluttony and lady_ragnell wrote me this gorgeous little piece of Hunith and Freya gen with background Freya/Merlin, Forget the World. And I thought wow, Hunith and Freya and modern AU with illegal magic my life cannot get any better, and then...

A few days later I got the notification that my new friend polomonkey had posted a new fic called In Spite of Everything, the Stars and oh it was just 82249 words of Arthur/Merlin tagged Kidnapping and Hurt/Comfort and Alternate Universe - Modern With Magic. On top of the fantastic story this has really gorgeous artwork by mushroomtale and I just got to sink into a really long fic and read all weekend in a way that I have not done with a Merlin fic probably in years. Part of what was so fun was squeeing about it on Twitter and realizing that other people who barely read Merlin fic anymore were just as excited and it was so satisfying and good.

(*omg if you are my merlin_holidays writer or artist and you are freaking out because you already started making something for one of my other requests please don't worry, when I say "the best" here I really just mean "awesome" but I also feel that magic reveals are the best and gen is the best and kink exploration is the best and so on.)

Anyway yay recs! If you would like to feel responsible for doing a certain number of recs posts this month you can go tell birdsofshore or else you can just start making some recs posts!

I made more fic in 2014 than the year before! That is not to say that I made a lot or that I feel like I'm on the upswing, creativity-wise, but hey it's a new year, let's have a list and some graphs and commentary! I'm not doing a separate meme for podfic or vids this year because I made very little of them.

( List of previously posted fanworks, January through September )

NOT PREVIOUSLY POSTED ON THIS JOURNAL

October
-Pets (The Remix As Nature Intended), Merlin fic with many pairings
-Her Masterpiece Is the Mess Inside You, Arthur/Gwen and Gwen/Morgana podfic

November
nothing

December
-Dragons Aren't Extinct, Arthur and Morgana gen fic

I'm not going to answer the old meme questions about which ones I like best and all that, because there aren't really that many to choose from, and because I'm kind of tired of thinking about those questions. Basically I liked everything I made but didn't feel like I broke through any big boundaries with things I hadn't done before, and nothing I did was popular. Anyway here are some more graphs and thoughts.

( statistics!! )

So idk, feelings are weird? I kind of don't want to write fic ever again? Or make podfic? But also I want to do both more often? I've been sketching a bit for the last couple weeks and would like to learn to draw fannish characters, and I have some leftover Merlin vid ideas. Also this spring it will be 10 years since I started participating in fandom and I think it would be a shame to stop now.

So here are some resolutions that are more about staying in touch than anything else. For every month in 2015:
-make another journal post that is not a fanwork
-comment on a journal post by someone else that is not a fanwork
-post a fanwork that I made
-comment on a fanwork by someone else
-answer all new comments on my fanworks!
-repost my old podfics on the webspace generously provided by paraka and create pages at the AO3, 20 per month until I'm caught up

I'm not sure I've ever had a year where I posted a fanwork every month but I mean, I can always make time for a five-minute podfic, can't I? And, if I'm going to, my best chance to record something this month is probably going to be today. Hmm.

(Okay I'm still not really here but)

Today I read some pieces of a recent discussion over at podficmeta and was impressed by how articulate and levelheaded most people were. Nice job hosting and moderating, klb! Nice job respecting differences of opinion, podfic community! ♥ ♥

It got me thinking that, as much as I've advocated for authors being explicit about their desires and expectations in their blanket permission statements or transformative works policies, I've never written the kind of "Dear Author" letter that paraka and others have been advocating for years. I've always kind of thought, "Well, most people in fandom have some idea of what podfic is, and if they have questions they can ask!" But that's silly! That's like not having a transformative works policy because, "Well, I doubt anyone would want to record anything of mine, and if they do they can ask!" Why make each individual person ask when I could go ahead and put it out there? So here's an attempt to do that.

( Hey, can I make a podfic of this? )

Okay, well, I'm still hoping to write and vid a little more before the end of the year but I'm pretty sure I'm done podficcing, so here's the Year in Podfic meme! Previous editions are on my meme: year in review tag.

( list )

( stats (and graphs!) )

( questions )

Would you like to do this meme? Here are the questions I used. Obvs you can adapt them however you like!
<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>