Cori Lannam

So here are a few shorter snippets:

* Spartacus! I mainlined the entire series of Spartacus in under two weeks, and fuck the gods, I am completely obsessed. Not just with Agron/Nasir (although, hello, awesome), but the entire show and everyone in it. It's always been on my to-watch list because I love anything set in the ancient world, but I also thought it was pretty much blood spatter and boobie porn. It is both of those things, but also much more. The historical accuracy is relatively impressive, the characters are complex and fascinating, and it raises a lot of fascinating questions about society, survival, and self-determination.

And peeking over the fourth wall, the cast and producers seem utterly delightful. Though I have to say, they all seem just a little too chipper on Twitter about the emotional devastation they're going to be wreaking upon their fans tonight with the finale.

The fandom seems very scattered, but I guess, what fandom isn't these days? I found a few good stories on AO3, but it seems depressingly sparse compared to the Merlin treasure trove I've been wallowing in for the last 5 years. Gratitude for recs you may have.

Also, it means I have to start actually paying attention to the flashback scenes on Arrow, since Manu Bennett is in them and I have developed quite a thing for him.

* Writing! My story for Paper Legends is plodding along very slowly. I have the plot all outlined, but I feel like the emotional storyline hasn't gelled yet. This has slowed me down to a crawl. On the brighter side, I just have to do some editing for Perverse Bang, and then my 20K gangbang will finally see the light of day, for better or worse.

* Torvill and Dean! Jayne Torvill and Christopher Dean, the legendary British ice dancers, were my fandom back when I was 17. Now they're on Twitter. Yes, they both use the same account. Yes, they tweet the most mundane things imaginable (the weather, workouts, pictures of lunch and coffee). Yes, Chris tweets much more than Jayne does. In short, they are exactly what you would expect them to be and I find it hilariously charming.

* Fake school! The last several months, I've started to pine to go back to school. I found a way to at least dip my toes back in with the recent rise of the MOOC (Massive Open Online Courses) from coursera.org and edx.org. Fake courses from real universities! Or maybe real courses for fake students? I dunno, but it's fun. I'm taking a bunch of random stuff like calculus, statistics, computer programming, and Greek history. Definitely overextending myself, which is a good lesson to learn before I try it for real.

* And everything else I had thought about posting is now either out of date or too boring to even interest me. How are you all doing?

Title: The Lonely King
Author: corilannam
Artist: ambelie
Pairings/characters: Arthur/Merlin (Gwaine/Vivian, Merlin/Freya, Arthur/Mithian, and other minor pairings)
Rating: NC-17
Word Count: ~57K
Content notes: Modern royal AU; bisexuality; death of a parent/grieving; societal/religious homophobia
Disclaimer: Neither of us have any legal claim on these BBC characters (or any others, for that matter). They are used here for fun, not profit.

Summary: The Prince of Wales at his school. Merlin was sure it was all just a very bad joke.

Author's notes: Thank you to the_muppet for once again running a near-flawless fest with astonishing patience, good humor, and really hard work! Another thank you to my wonderful artist ambelie for her beautiful work.

Enormous thanks go to anna_zee, who has been helping me figure out this story from the moment I started it almost two years ago all the way until the final edit at 1 o'clock this morning. This would be a giant mess without her, no lie. Huge thanks as well to chelseafrew for betaing and also putting up with my constant need to be scribbling at all times this summer. And a grateful shout out to stellarmeadow, lawgoddess, gwylliondream, and gilli_ann for the support and camaraderie.


Chapter 1 | Chapter 2 | Chapter 3 | Chapter 4 | Chapter 5 | Chapter 6 | Chapter 7
Read on AO3
Art Post

Continued from Chapter 5

( Chapter 6 )

Continued from Chapter 3

( Chapter 4 )

Continued from Chapter 1

( Chapter 2 )

Some stuff:

* Happy Hunger Games! I'm going to the midnight show tonight, even though I am much too old for that nonsense and will undoubtedly pay for it tomorrow. I'm wearing my District 11 China Glaze tie-in nail polish as my secret fannish costume.

* Happy Vernal Equinox! Er, a couple days late. Although I really can't complain about how the winter has treated us here in the Mid-Atlantic, I never fail to be thrilled to get officially past it. Being a born-and-raised desert girl, I always feel like the mere existence of winter is holding me hostage somehow. On one particularly mild and pleasant February day, I was trying to explain to the BFF that this was how winter was all the time back home. I did have to go out and buy a new fan, though, since my apartment complex won't turn the a/c on until sometime in May and my place is already getting a bit stuffy.

* Happy Big Bang Check-in! Er, a day early. I was going to be able (with some difficulty) to meet the 10K suggested minimum, until last night when I had a MAJOR BREAKTHROUGH on the plot while chatting with flammablehat. Well, not the plot so much as the structure. So I had to delete all but 2,000 words, but on the bright side, I can now actually see the beginning, middle, and end as opposed to just a random sequence of scenes I wanted to write.

* Happy Start of Merlin S5 Shooting! Ah, the anticipation. The occasional tidbit of information that we snap up like a school of starving piranhas. The glimpses of our lovely cast. The utter terror of what the Js are going to spout off about next. I'm neither actively seeking out spoilers nor actively avoiding them, so don't worry about mentioning them to me (but don't assume that I know about them, either). Before too many leak out, I think I'm going to work on my S5 wishlist.

Can I just say that Bradley James on Twitter has singlehandedly restored my seriously flagging Merlin squee? That silly boy makes me giggle like nothing else.

***

I still have a couple of The Eagle mini-posters left, so if you want one (or didn't give me your address after the last post), PM or email me (corilannam at gmail.com) or catch me on gtalk.

***

I really need to start working on my big bang. But it keeps staring at me with ill-concealed malice. What to do?

So it looks like I temporarily lost my mind and signed up for paperlegends again. Whoops?

I'm going to try again on the gladiator!Arthur story I was writing for the big bang 2 years ago and never finished. Never actually got that far, actually, and most of that has to be ripped out and trashed now. Fortunately, I think S3 actually solved a few of the problems I was having, so making it (...more or less...) canon compliant won't be so bad.

I see a lot of you offering people the option of being on a filter for big bang talk. HA! You are all on my filter, suckers. You think you get a choice?

(Well, technically, you do have a choice, since you can always unfriend or filter me or just skip my posts. But I kind of figure that if you don't want to hear about my writing neuroses, you've probably done one of those things by now.)

I just finished reading everyone else's summaries, too, and I have to admit, I'm salivating rather heavily. I'm tempted to abandon mine in favor of going to all of your houses and just sitting there to scare encourage you until you finish. It would just break my heart if I didn't get to read any of those stories!

So, er... crap. Now I actually have to try to write this thing. Again.

Continued from Chapter 2

( Chapter 3 )

Title: The Tournament of All Magicks
Author: Cori Lannam (corilannam)
Pairings/characters: Arthur/Merlin, Gaius, Morgause
Rating: NC-17
Word Count: 41,321
Warnings/Spoilers: Highlight to read: Contains an element of sexual assault. If you need more details to know whether you can safely read, please PM or email me! Spoilers for all of S1 and S2, and some of my own speculation of what might happen in S3 based on the rumors (but no specific spoilers).
Summary: Merlin is invited to compete in a tournament of magic. Sure, he'd like to become the champion of all Albion, but first he has to get past giant creatures, a seductive sorceress, and the crown prince of Camelot.

Author's notes: Thanks as always to: chelseafrew and anna_zee for large quantities of handholding and beta work (larger than usual!); to my faboo vidding artist mamoru22 for her patience and the awesome trailer she did for the story (see below! leave her lots of feedback so I can talk her into doing another vid for the story!); to the great mods and support community that made this challenge happen; and to the United States Department of Defense.

All comments and concrit are welcome. I would love to hear anything you liked or didn't like about the story!

Art link: http://mamoru.dreamwidth.org/105203.html

Disclaimer: This particular incarnation of the Arthurian myth is the legal property of the BBC. I get paid only in comments.

( The scrap of parchment came into being in a slow, smoky curl on Gaius's work table )