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(Eh, I said I'd do a rec post every weekend in October and it may seem like I'm not sticking with that but I had this Monday and Tuesday off so it's still sort of the weekend for me, so yay! I will probably have more trouble next weekend but we'll cross that bridge when we come to it.)

Today I want to rec two super-long new/in progress Merlin fics that will take you back to season 1 in very different ways. I loved our characters from all five seasons and at times I missed some of them but I'm tickled by the energy and creativity that these authors have put in to building their own worlds and sets of characters starting from that other, smaller canon that first delighted so many of us.

Exiles by story_monger, Arthur/Gwen/Merlin/Morgana, 51178 words, mature
I found this browsing through the After Camlann Big Bang listings for pairings other than Arthur/Merlin and was surprised to see so few comments on an OT4 fic, especially once I dug in and realized the writing was excellent. I did see that there was a warning for noncon but that turned out not to be very explicit (and it's an OC bad guy so you don't have to worry about any beloved characters turning evil). In fact most of the fic reads a lot like gen, but with that delightful level of shippiness that season 1 canon gave us so much of. As I saw someone say on Tumblr a while back, it was that time when Merlin cared about other characters besides Arthur. REMEMBER? The strongest relationships here are Arthur/Merlin and Gwen/Morgana, but there is all kinds of flirting and caring and possibilities and it is just lovely. In some ways it didn't feel like a fanfic so much as a fantasy novel, the author just seemed so in command of the setting and the plotting and everything. (Sorry that is sort of phrased as if I didn't love fanfic. Obvs I do love fanfic.)

I should say that it starts out with an OC POV and that may have turned a few people off, but that's really just a framing story and almost all the fic is spent with the main characters.

But, um, somehow when I started reading I saw the noncon warning but missed the major character death warning, and there is MAJOR CHARACTER DEATH. It happened and I was like, okay, these things happen in fanfic sometimes but there is magic etc and there is going to be a way to work this out and have a happy ending, but then I read and read and read and got to the end of the 51K words and it was to be continued. So, you have to be okay with living with some angst and uncertainty because I have no idea when the author plans on writing the next part (it would be a major undertaking -- maybe for next year's big bang challenge?) BUT I personally found it to be totally worth it, I'm super glad I read this and highly recommend it!

Falconry by versaphile, Arthur/Merlin with I guess eventual Gwen/Morgana, 492,451 words and counting, explicit

Okay, so then I'd enjoyed a couple of big bangs so much I was browsing through the Gwen/Morgana tag on the AO3 and came across a 260K WIP called A Bird of Paradise and thought hey why not. I started reading late at night and I was like hey Arthur/Merlin after a magic reveal it doesn't get any better than this! And I was so tired and distracted I didn't realize until the next day when I was several chapters in that this was actually the fourth huge story in an epic series. (Yes, this is the recs post of me not reading AO3 tags very carefully.) I was a little reluctant to go back because, you know, what's better than a magic reveal? Who wants to go read the hundreds of thousands of words leading up to the magic reveal? But it turns out I do! Sadly the first three parts don't have any Gwen/Morgana to speak of, and really this is a very different kind of season 1 vibe from Exiles, like something to get into if what you miss about season 1 is the Arthur/Merlin without other ships getting in the way.

But it's really good! I especially loved part 2 because there was SO MUCH SMUT and plus it's this old-fashioned OTP smut where Arthur's really toppy and Merlin's all yes I would give my life for you and I belong to you and so on. Super hot!! Right now I'm in the middle of part 3, which is plottier and involves a lot of fighting and some magic. To me it is a little weird to read about all these adventures with Arthur's knights who are not the knights we know and love but hey, that is what we did after season 1, and it was great! This series actually takes its turn after the first episode of season 2 and it's just hugely impressive how much the author has developed their own world. Also there are regular updates! I almost feel silly reccing it because I guess it's hugely well known but hey, I had to stumble into it so maybe you haven't read it either and maybe you will love it too.

One of my first Merlin fics, written a little while after I watched season one, was about Gwen figuring out that Merlin was gay and telling him she was fine with that. I'm so pleased that my camelotremix remixer decided to write another version of that, with lots of Lancelot being a dear and Morgana being fabulous and warm season one feelings. It is called My Friends, They Are So Beautiful (the Belle Epoque remix), and it is awesome.

The last remixes went up last Saturday and the authors' names will be revealed this coming weekend. Some others that I enjoyed a lot are Be Thy Mercies Known (Send Her Victorious remix), which takes a fun Arthur/Merlin + friends party fic and remixes it into something super sad, Danger Zone (The Being Safe is Overrated Remix), a longish Arthur/Merlin high school AU (with magic!) that just has a really nice deft touch, and Falconress (the wind beneath your wings remix), a lovely short post-canon fic about Hunith and Merlin. But I'm sorry to say I've only read or looked at a small fraction of them. What are your favorites?

Maybe two months ago B and I watched Top of the Lake, a six-episode series starring Elisabeth Moss (Peggy on Madmen) as a detective in a small town in New Zealand, on Netflix streaming. It was really good! Instead of having a case every episode it was all about trying to find one missing girl, and I know some people complained about pacing issues but we thought it was awesome.

So then B heard about another show, The Fall, starring Gillian Anderson as a tough detective in Belfast, and we thought yay, we would enjoy it the way we did Top of the Lake. It is about the same size, also following a single case (with some side stories), and sexism within the police force, and has a bunch of great actors and good production values and all that. In the first episode, besides GA we got to see John Lynch, who played Balinor on Merlin, and Laura Donnelly, who played Freya. Between that and the accents/setting I kept expecting to have Colin Morgan turn up as well. :) From the second episode on we also get Archie Panjabi (Kalinda on The Good Wife) and a bunch of the other people who are also great.

But after the first episode B said she couldn't take it (even though she's the big Gillian Anderson fan!) and I had to watch the rest by myself. Or you know, I could have not watched it, but I wanted to find out what happened! Turns out those five episodes were just the first season though, so nothing much got resolved in the episodes I watched.

( Also (spoilers through the start of the second episode) )

In other news, samyazaz wrote a really lovely little Gwaine/Freya space AU for the apocalypse/fuck or die challenge at pornathon last week and I was super pleased to see that it took first place in its group: The Stars Look Very Different Today. I also really liked the Gwen/Merlin AMTDI that was #71 in the same challenge; does anyone know who wrote it? I tried looking in the results post but I was overcome by the collapsed comments.

Hello friends,

I could use some help finding stories to podfic for kink_bingo. In particular, I'm looking for something for my pervertibles square (using things for sex and kink that weren't designed for that) that feature a moresome or poly relationship. I feel like there ought to be some Avengers something! With Thor's hammer or some scientific instruments or whatever? Or Inception or Sherlock or maybe even Teen Wolf... You know, those live-action English language fandoms, I'm familiar with a lot of them, but Avengers is supposed to be all about the poly, right? ETA: I have looked through poly and threesome and other tags on the AO3 and will surely do so again as I work through this bingo, but what I'd especially appreciate from you is links to any individual stories you know of! /ETA ETA2: Found one, yay! /ETA2

I would also appreciate poly/moresome recs for historical roleplay and objectification kink!

And! A story featuring a trans or genderqueer character and either temperature play or sleepiness!

And many other things ha ha. I no longer have much hope of getting a blackout done during the main round. :( My new goal is to finish one bingo (the bottom row) during the round and still go for the blackout during amnesty. Maybe not all the achievements will work out so if you know of good stories for these kinks that don't feature moresomes or trans/genderqueer characters please let me know about those too.

Thanks!

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.

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

I've been trying to figure out what to record for podficbigbang and remembering that I just don't read all that much long fic. Do you have any recs for me?

Merlin fans, what are you favorite fics of, say, between 30,000 and 70,000 words? Anything you've read that especially made you think it would be great to have a podfic of it?

Readers, what are you favorite fics of over 10,000 words with women in the lead (any fandom)?

Some things I especially like:
-queer people (in the story, not necessarily/only in the main pairing)
-kink in relationships
-hurt/comfort
-captivity, exile
-world-building
-well developed secondary characters
-fics that have not been podficced before
-authors who give blanket permission

Some things I would like to avoid
-typos, spelling and grammar mistakes
-sentences with way more words and clauses than they need
-sexism, racism, etc.
-words and names I don't know how to pronounce :D

Thank you for your card, rubynye, and thank you for your present, baranduin! I have hung them both up to decorate the new place. ♥ ♥

Thanks to folks who commented on my previous post to let me know that Parks and Rec gets better. I just have one more episode to go in the first season and am looking forward to more positivity and teaminess. Since I haven't wanted to pay too much attention to the season 1 episodes I've also gotten some weightlifting done while it was on. Yay multitasking and tingly muscles! *flexes*

While looking around on Netflix the other night I discovered that Sports Night is also available on instant streaming. I've never seen that show and I've heard lots of good things, so maybe I'll try it after I finish Parks and Rec.

I really enjoyed reading wanderhomeagain's big bang fic What You Mean to Me (Right Now), a lovely 38K Arthur/Merlin romance. The characters in this were a couple years older than the students I'm more used to seeing in modern AUs and they felt very real and familiar to me. And the way they dealt with their problems, including Arthur having an amputated leg, also seemed very believable and not over-the-top as sometimes happens. It's also nice, after reading so many short PWPs over the summer, to read a few of these long fics where the relationships really have time to develop and the porn feels very...well earned, I guess, by the time you get there. :)

Really I am barely dipping my toes in the paperlegends fics. There's just so much and I'm not especially in a reading phase right now. :/ But I am really impressed with how much the authors have accomplished, and I am grateful to the folks who are posting recs.