Wrapping up Snowflake Challenge, Fandom Stocking, LJ-versary, icon meme
Welcome new friends from 
snowflake_challenge friending meme and new (and old, LOL!) friends from
fandom_stocking!
I have almost 3 weeks worth of RL stuff to catch up on, which should follow at some point (also the last couple of days of end-of-year memes, and photos from the summer... XP), but for now let me catch up on fannish / LJ things!
1) I keep forgetting to post about this, but, I got
eglantiere's holiday card in the mail, with fun-to-puzzle-out Bulgarian holiday greetings (and also, to my great relief, she got my Santa package, via the auspices of ikel89's Secret Santa Exchange, which I'd been ready to write off as lost at customs), and
ambyr's New Year card with cat and travel photos, and
krait's holiday card containing amazingly smelling tea in all kinds of intriguing flavors! So I've been very pleased with the mail's behavior.(Now I just need to figure out the boses to get my other packages sent... I boxed (dyswidt) myself into some weird shapes...)
2) Speaking of goodies,
fandom_stocking went live! (on time! it was amazing, but did mean that I didn't get a chance to finish up a few other things I'd wanted to do for folks). My stocking is full of wonderful things! Icons of sunflowers and rodents and favorite books and characters, picspam and jigsaw puzzles, and three fics in three different fandoms, all of them great :D
- The Great Wahoonie by
rain_sleet_snow (Discworld, PG, Esme Weatherwax/Mustrum Ridcully) --set during their youth, and really wonderful.
- Of Tea and Failure by
enemytosleep (AtLA, gen, Toph, Sokka, 500 words) -- cute and bantery ficlet set in the Jasmine Dragon post-canon.
- Ulishenathaän by
kaffyr (The Goblin Emperor, gen, Maia-centric, 3.4k) -- a lovely post-canon fic in which a portrait of Maia's mother is found in the palace, with neat original additions to the worldbuilding and true-to-canon depth and kindness.
Also, not quite a F_S gift but it did start out as one, so I should mention it here: Pictures of You by
sysann (Rivers of London, Peter/Nightingale, teen, 1.5k) -- in which Peter discovers an old-timey (and slightly morbid) hobby of Nightingale's; very sweet, with a neatly inventive headcanon addition which suits the story perfectly.
Meanwhile, I didn't write anything for
fandom_stocking this time (not every year can be a trig poetry year XP), but I did share some critter/nature photos and recs and made some icons (a few of which I'm even decently pleased with):
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(Art by Amoka)
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(Art is by Albaourora on deviantArt)
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(Art by Kasiopea Art)
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(Art by Tyler Walpole)
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(Art: the cartoony Molly is by Jade Boylan. All the other art is by AgarthanGuide on AO3)
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(Art by dachosmin (dark background Maia), LiberLibelula (orange Maia), shiftingpath (purple Maia), aethergeologist (Csethiro), alin_art (Great Avar))
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(Art is the All Systems Red cover; I might end up redoing these with a different image or a different font or a different something, though...)
And the super-minimalist holiday banner:
*
3) I completely missed it in all my most recent posts, but my 15-year LJ-versary was on January 4. What reminded me, actually, was reading the fandom meta discussion by
doctorsidrat and how DW today is different from LJ 15 years ago by
muccamukk, and seeing names I haven't seen in about a decade, and icons from the time of LJ's heyday.
4) This is a nice segue into the last two days of the Snowflake Challenge (I'd been unusually timely in posting with only a few days' delay if at all, and then last week happened and was crazy at work, and I fell way behind.
Day 14: In your own space, talk about what you think the future holds for fandom.
I don't know... I agree with the consensus voiced on the posts above that 'you cant go home again', basically -- as nice as it is to see more people on DW as a result of Tumblr's implosion, that (or anything else) is unlikely to turn the clock back and return journal-based fandom to its heyday. Which is really too bad, as I loved LJ-based fandom 10-15 years ago. That was where/how I came out of lurkdom and forged the internet fandom connections which have in many cases turned into RL friendships. I loved having LJ as the hub of fandom life, where I could get all the fic and art and fannish news and meta and my sorting fixes and insight from canon authors -- or at least links to all these things -- without ever leaving the comfort of my own Friends page, not to mention satisfying my need to have 50-comment multi-tentacled rambles flowing from one fandom to another with RL digressions in between. I don't think that's ever coming back sadly. Present-day fandom will probably just continue to get more splintered as new platforms and types of platforms emerge -- fic on AO3, art and cosplays on... whatever comes after Tumblr, I guess, creator dialogue/inside scoops on Twitter and Patreon, vlogs and fan movies on YouTube, meta and discussion on podcasts, aggregation of shiny things on Pinterest, I guess? -- and hopefully the long-form, informal discussion I enjoy on LJ/DW still, in communities, if someone gets them to take off again, or at people's journals, salon-style. Or I guess it could continue on anonymemes, which I find frustrating because it's not all that useful for forging the human connections which are an important part of fandom for me, but better than nothing. I guess there's Discord, too? I haven't tried that out, and it feels a bit too spontaneous for my taste; I've done fannish chat and enjoyed it immensely, but as a supplement to LJ communities, i.e. hanging out with people I had already gotten to know in a different format.
Anyway, I'm not sure that anything fandom morphs to will be as ideally suited to me as the L fandom of 10-15 years ago, whether just because that was the fandom I came up in and got used to or genuinely because that is my ideal format in truth. But I do find that the friendships I made on LJ(/DW) are sort of continuing to function the same way in the post-LJ world, with LJ/DW people providing me with links to Tumblr posts and tweets and YouTube videos and whatnot, and presumably all I'll need to do to keep decently abreast of future fandom is continue making friends with fans less reactionary about new platforms than I am :P
Day 15: Talk about why you participated in Snowflake &/or what you got out of it.
Oh, I like doing this question as a wrap-up! In random order, I got:
- cool fannish content on my flist to look forward to every morning
- to share some recs for book series and fanworks with friends and strangers, and to chat about shared small fandoms
- recs for things I never would've discovered otherwise, most likely, like a B5 podcast and a stuffy-hospital Tumblr
- to read new-to-me fic, including fic in at least one canon for which I have not consumed fanworks before, to read brand new fic created for the challenge by other folks doing Snowflake,and to discover some vintage fic from old fandoms by new friends
- conversely, to introduce some new friends to the Fellowship of the Rodents
- the impetus to make a couple of icons I'd been thinking of for months and to get started on a sequence I'd been thinking of for even longer
- the impetus to fill some needy stockings at
fandom_stocking
- the impetus to watch some new TV I'd been hearing about for a while, and also to finally check the first season of Farscape out of the library
- the impetus to formalize some fannish goals for 2019
- a really fun conversation about "my favorite [canon] that I hate" books/movies
- a really fun sorting meme
- just general fun conversation with new folks, some of whom have since become new friends
*
5) To continue on from the Day 14 ramble, one thing that will always be a part of fandom for me because of my LJ roots is icons. Like, there's a rite of passage with a new fandom for me when it's gotten serious enough that I need an icon for it, and holding on to icons for old fandoms is a way of implying that those fandoms are still important to me. I first got my paid LJ account so I could have icons, and finally sprung for a paid DW mostly fr the same reason -- and having (most of) my icons with me finally makes DW feel more like home. (And next year, I'm getting a premium account; I certainly don't need 250 icons, and I don't fully use the ones I have on LJ, but but I'm finding it confusing to keep track of which ones I have where.
So I never can resist an icon meme, and here's the one going around:
1. Comment to this entry saying 'Ooo Shiney!' and I will pick 3 of your icons.
2. Make an entry in your own journal (or just reply if you prefer) and talk about the icons I picked!
oldtoadwoman picked these three:
-- this one's from a set of science-geeky icons by noldo_icons (and looks like it's the very first non-self-made icon I uploaded, not counting my default dancing hamster gif, which predates the creation of my LJ by several years and so shouldn't count; funny, I wouldn't have guessed that at all, if you askedme!) Anyway, there was an amazing set of science joke icons (all of which I loved, and also the second set), but I snagged this one. Less because I am particularly into the red shift/blue shift phenomenon (although I do think the Doppler effect is cool!), and more that I loved that it has a visual joke component, unlike the other jokes, which made it perfect for a visual medium like an icon. (Here's a bumper sticker with an explanation of the same idea, but a different color choice, heh.) The other funny thing for me in this is that the bumper sticker and this shirt are objects that can, in fact, move fast or slow towards the observer -- but an icon doesn't, so the "fast" in "reading too fast" is a nonsensical kind of speed in this context, which gives the icon joke a surreal edge. I do actually use this icon now and again when talking about high-concept SF, for example, or more theoretical science (along with this "chaotic system" icon that I also like a lot.)
-- ah, this icon! It was made by
copperbadge (like most of my House M.D. icons on LJ; this is one of two I decided to port over, since I haven't been actively in that fandom in ages, and in fact use it more often for Good Omens than for House itself). One neat thing about it is, I actually got into watching House *because*
copperbadge kept posting really fun icons of it, often with intriguing crossover ideas like this one. I don't remember for sure anymore, but this icon might've been the one that got me to tune into the show. I started watching House during season 2, and s3-s4 it was destination television for me -- and fortunately I had a number of flisters who were as into the show as I was. I petered out halfway through season 5, after learning about a spoiler which I knew would interfere with my enjoyment significantly -- and my interest in the show was waning anyway with the direction it was taking Cuddy at that point. But during the seasons when I was a fan, the relationship between House and Wilson (platonic or not; I was good either way, or as an OT3 with Cuddy) was the heart of the show for me, and so it's fitting that this is the primary House icon I'm keeping. (Back in the day I also had several Chase icons, and still have one on LJ; he was always my favorite Duckling.)
-- by
misstopia; this must have been the first icon I sangged from westerosorting/valyrian_forged, because the only earlier ASOIAF icon I've got is a self-made one. I have 46 ASOIAF icons on LJ (counting numerous crossovers), including 4 that are just straight-up inside jokes, and I'm never getting rid of them because westerosorting remains the most glorious fannish experience, and I want to remember every moment as much as I can. But it's a fandom I'm barely in anymore -- I don't watch the show, and I haven't been really keeping up with the Targ histories (just reading the books as I come across them via gifts), so I really couldn't justify too many ASOIAF icons on DW. I ended up with three real ASOIAF (2 Tyrell, 1 Lannister, reflecting my loyalties) and 2 crossover ones, which is still a fairly large percentage fora mostly inactive fandom, but sue me. Anyway, Olenna Tyrell, the Queen of Thorns, is one of my very favorite ASOIAF characters. I was stamped as her at the first westerosorting Character Meme, which is only right and just. And the quote in the icon is my favorite quote in the entire series, because it's such a great showcase for Olenna's old lady wit, and also is at Tywin's expense (Tywin being one of the few characters in ASOIAF whom I like even more than Olenna; in fact, I crackship the two of them). I adore the quote so much, I jumped at the chance to expand it into a poem/song. Back in the days of westerosorting, I used this one a lot, for talking about Olenna, and for general snark (and had two other Olenna icons, in addition to the crackship one linked already, one for community grouphugs (that's me having tea with Olenna, PowerPuff'd by the brilliant guad) and comm-wide mod business (by angerfish). These days none of these icons get a ton of use, unless I'm wallowing in westerosorting nostalgia. But Olenna is still boss.
krait picked these three:
-- this is one of _grayswandir_'s glorious set of author icons with their photos, handwriting, and signatures (I have matching Tolkien and Pratchett ones on LJ, too). This one doesn't get a ton of use, but Oscar Wilde is one of my favorite writers, and I went through a period in high school where I was every so slightly obsessed with him, to the point of staying up till 4 a.m. reading a biography about him, attempting to speak in Wildeanly quotable wit, and using the word "vermillion" absolutely everywhere. My summer in Oxford, I went to visit Magdalen and went up to his rooms (which had a printed paper sign on them saying "Oscar Wilde's rooms" but were occuppied by an actual person living in them, judging by the rustling coming from the inside) and interrupted my Lit teacher to scoop her with random Oscar Wilde facts, such as all of his middle names or what he quipped at whom. Also this is just a really beautiful icon.
-- look at me, getting a chance to be all highbrow, two icons in a row :P This icon (by beggar_always) is one of my bunch of poetry icons on LJ, and one of the five I decided I needed to import to DW. The words "the starry floor" are from Blake's Introduction to The Songs of Experience, which is one of my favorite Blake poems, and Blake is one of my favorite poets. (If you're interested inmy thoughts on the poem as a whole, and on Blake, you can read them here. It's also a great meta-poem, since it's about a poet addressing, well, the cosmos, because Blake was humble like that :P I guess between it and the MacLeish poem quote icon (can one even string 4 nouns together like that? I'm not sure XP), the "Ars Poetica" one is one I use more fortalking about the mechanics of poetry, and writing my own, and the Blake one for talking about poetry meta.
-- the icon and the story behind it both come from this LJ post (in Russian). The short version of the story is: there are letter blocks for Russian, manufactured in China, which have an assortment of hilarious inconsistencies, starting with letter/word mismatches and up through words which are not really words. This is my favorite of the block faces because it combines both of those failure modes and is in general delightfully random. Explaining the joke for non-Russian speakers: The word combo "ploskost' passazhira" means something like "the mathematical plane belonging to a passenger". What it was meant to be, of course, was "passenger plane" (actually in Russian: "samolet" or I guess "passazhirskij samolet", which nobody says, certainly not little kids learning their letters), and I suppose this is a case of early Google translate (or similar) failure (the blocks are from 2006). And the letter matched with this wonderful phrase not only isn't the first letter of any of those words or the real word in Russian, but does not even appear in any of them -- it may have been chosen at random? (It makes the sound of U in "union".) Also, it's a funny-looking letter (when O was learning to read, he referred to it as "the TIE fighter one" to help him remember it -- although I kept pointing out that it's only HALF a TIE fighter, really. I don't use this icon too much either, but it's my "translation fail" icon, as opposed to the more general "translation is hard" sentiment / bilingualism icon (which is my Lolita quote icon on LJ but which I didn't transfer over to DW, figuring a single Russian icon was enough.
This entry was originally posted at https://hamsterwoman.dreamwidth.org/1099543.html. Comment wherever you prefer (I prefer LJ).
snowflake_challenge friending meme and new (and old, LOL!) friends from
fandom_stocking!
I have almost 3 weeks worth of RL stuff to catch up on, which should follow at some point (also the last couple of days of end-of-year memes, and photos from the summer... XP), but for now let me catch up on fannish / LJ things!
1) I keep forgetting to post about this, but, I got
eglantiere's holiday card in the mail, with fun-to-puzzle-out Bulgarian holiday greetings (and also, to my great relief, she got my Santa package, via the auspices of ikel89's Secret Santa Exchange, which I'd been ready to write off as lost at customs), and
ambyr's New Year card with cat and travel photos, and
krait's holiday card containing amazingly smelling tea in all kinds of intriguing flavors! So I've been very pleased with the mail's behavior.(Now I just need to figure out the boses to get my other packages sent... I boxed (dyswidt) myself into some weird shapes...)
2) Speaking of goodies,
fandom_stocking went live! (on time! it was amazing, but did mean that I didn't get a chance to finish up a few other things I'd wanted to do for folks). My stocking is full of wonderful things! Icons of sunflowers and rodents and favorite books and characters, picspam and jigsaw puzzles, and three fics in three different fandoms, all of them great :D
- The Great Wahoonie by
rain_sleet_snow (Discworld, PG, Esme Weatherwax/Mustrum Ridcully) --set during their youth, and really wonderful.
- Of Tea and Failure by
enemytosleep (AtLA, gen, Toph, Sokka, 500 words) -- cute and bantery ficlet set in the Jasmine Dragon post-canon.
- Ulishenathaän by
kaffyr (The Goblin Emperor, gen, Maia-centric, 3.4k) -- a lovely post-canon fic in which a portrait of Maia's mother is found in the palace, with neat original additions to the worldbuilding and true-to-canon depth and kindness.
Also, not quite a F_S gift but it did start out as one, so I should mention it here: Pictures of You by
sysann (Rivers of London, Peter/Nightingale, teen, 1.5k) -- in which Peter discovers an old-timey (and slightly morbid) hobby of Nightingale's; very sweet, with a neatly inventive headcanon addition which suits the story perfectly.
Meanwhile, I didn't write anything for
fandom_stocking this time (not every year can be a trig poetry year XP), but I did share some critter/nature photos and recs and made some icons (a few of which I'm even decently pleased with):
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(Art by Amoka)
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(Art is by Albaourora on deviantArt)
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(Art by Kasiopea Art)
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(Art by Tyler Walpole)
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(Art: the cartoony Molly is by Jade Boylan. All the other art is by AgarthanGuide on AO3)
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(Art by dachosmin (dark background Maia), LiberLibelula (orange Maia), shiftingpath (purple Maia), aethergeologist (Csethiro), alin_art (Great Avar))
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||
(Art is the All Systems Red cover; I might end up redoing these with a different image or a different font or a different something, though...)
And the super-minimalist holiday banner:
*
3) I completely missed it in all my most recent posts, but my 15-year LJ-versary was on January 4. What reminded me, actually, was reading the fandom meta discussion by
doctorsidrat and how DW today is different from LJ 15 years ago by
muccamukk, and seeing names I haven't seen in about a decade, and icons from the time of LJ's heyday.
4) This is a nice segue into the last two days of the Snowflake Challenge (I'd been unusually timely in posting with only a few days' delay if at all, and then last week happened and was crazy at work, and I fell way behind.
Day 14: In your own space, talk about what you think the future holds for fandom.
I don't know... I agree with the consensus voiced on the posts above that 'you cant go home again', basically -- as nice as it is to see more people on DW as a result of Tumblr's implosion, that (or anything else) is unlikely to turn the clock back and return journal-based fandom to its heyday. Which is really too bad, as I loved LJ-based fandom 10-15 years ago. That was where/how I came out of lurkdom and forged the internet fandom connections which have in many cases turned into RL friendships. I loved having LJ as the hub of fandom life, where I could get all the fic and art and fannish news and meta and my sorting fixes and insight from canon authors -- or at least links to all these things -- without ever leaving the comfort of my own Friends page, not to mention satisfying my need to have 50-comment multi-tentacled rambles flowing from one fandom to another with RL digressions in between. I don't think that's ever coming back sadly. Present-day fandom will probably just continue to get more splintered as new platforms and types of platforms emerge -- fic on AO3, art and cosplays on... whatever comes after Tumblr, I guess, creator dialogue/inside scoops on Twitter and Patreon, vlogs and fan movies on YouTube, meta and discussion on podcasts, aggregation of shiny things on Pinterest, I guess? -- and hopefully the long-form, informal discussion I enjoy on LJ/DW still, in communities, if someone gets them to take off again, or at people's journals, salon-style. Or I guess it could continue on anonymemes, which I find frustrating because it's not all that useful for forging the human connections which are an important part of fandom for me, but better than nothing. I guess there's Discord, too? I haven't tried that out, and it feels a bit too spontaneous for my taste; I've done fannish chat and enjoyed it immensely, but as a supplement to LJ communities, i.e. hanging out with people I had already gotten to know in a different format.
Anyway, I'm not sure that anything fandom morphs to will be as ideally suited to me as the L fandom of 10-15 years ago, whether just because that was the fandom I came up in and got used to or genuinely because that is my ideal format in truth. But I do find that the friendships I made on LJ(/DW) are sort of continuing to function the same way in the post-LJ world, with LJ/DW people providing me with links to Tumblr posts and tweets and YouTube videos and whatnot, and presumably all I'll need to do to keep decently abreast of future fandom is continue making friends with fans less reactionary about new platforms than I am :P
Day 15: Talk about why you participated in Snowflake &/or what you got out of it.
Oh, I like doing this question as a wrap-up! In random order, I got:
- cool fannish content on my flist to look forward to every morning
- to share some recs for book series and fanworks with friends and strangers, and to chat about shared small fandoms
- recs for things I never would've discovered otherwise, most likely, like a B5 podcast and a stuffy-hospital Tumblr
- to read new-to-me fic, including fic in at least one canon for which I have not consumed fanworks before, to read brand new fic created for the challenge by other folks doing Snowflake,and to discover some vintage fic from old fandoms by new friends
- conversely, to introduce some new friends to the Fellowship of the Rodents
- the impetus to make a couple of icons I'd been thinking of for months and to get started on a sequence I'd been thinking of for even longer
- the impetus to fill some needy stockings at
fandom_stocking
- the impetus to watch some new TV I'd been hearing about for a while, and also to finally check the first season of Farscape out of the library
- the impetus to formalize some fannish goals for 2019
- a really fun conversation about "my favorite [canon] that I hate" books/movies
- a really fun sorting meme
- just general fun conversation with new folks, some of whom have since become new friends
*
5) To continue on from the Day 14 ramble, one thing that will always be a part of fandom for me because of my LJ roots is icons. Like, there's a rite of passage with a new fandom for me when it's gotten serious enough that I need an icon for it, and holding on to icons for old fandoms is a way of implying that those fandoms are still important to me. I first got my paid LJ account so I could have icons, and finally sprung for a paid DW mostly fr the same reason -- and having (most of) my icons with me finally makes DW feel more like home. (And next year, I'm getting a premium account; I certainly don't need 250 icons, and I don't fully use the ones I have on LJ, but but I'm finding it confusing to keep track of which ones I have where.
So I never can resist an icon meme, and here's the one going around:
1. Comment to this entry saying 'Ooo Shiney!' and I will pick 3 of your icons.
2. Make an entry in your own journal (or just reply if you prefer) and talk about the icons I picked!
oldtoadwoman picked these three:
-- this one's from a set of science-geeky icons by noldo_icons (and looks like it's the very first non-self-made icon I uploaded, not counting my default dancing hamster gif, which predates the creation of my LJ by several years and so shouldn't count; funny, I wouldn't have guessed that at all, if you askedme!) Anyway, there was an amazing set of science joke icons (all of which I loved, and also the second set), but I snagged this one. Less because I am particularly into the red shift/blue shift phenomenon (although I do think the Doppler effect is cool!), and more that I loved that it has a visual joke component, unlike the other jokes, which made it perfect for a visual medium like an icon. (Here's a bumper sticker with an explanation of the same idea, but a different color choice, heh.) The other funny thing for me in this is that the bumper sticker and this shirt are objects that can, in fact, move fast or slow towards the observer -- but an icon doesn't, so the "fast" in "reading too fast" is a nonsensical kind of speed in this context, which gives the icon joke a surreal edge. I do actually use this icon now and again when talking about high-concept SF, for example, or more theoretical science (along with this "chaotic system" icon that I also like a lot.)
-- ah, this icon! It was made by
copperbadge (like most of my House M.D. icons on LJ; this is one of two I decided to port over, since I haven't been actively in that fandom in ages, and in fact use it more often for Good Omens than for House itself). One neat thing about it is, I actually got into watching House *because*
copperbadge kept posting really fun icons of it, often with intriguing crossover ideas like this one. I don't remember for sure anymore, but this icon might've been the one that got me to tune into the show. I started watching House during season 2, and s3-s4 it was destination television for me -- and fortunately I had a number of flisters who were as into the show as I was. I petered out halfway through season 5, after learning about a spoiler which I knew would interfere with my enjoyment significantly -- and my interest in the show was waning anyway with the direction it was taking Cuddy at that point. But during the seasons when I was a fan, the relationship between House and Wilson (platonic or not; I was good either way, or as an OT3 with Cuddy) was the heart of the show for me, and so it's fitting that this is the primary House icon I'm keeping. (Back in the day I also had several Chase icons, and still have one on LJ; he was always my favorite Duckling.)
-- by
misstopia; this must have been the first icon I sangged from westerosorting/valyrian_forged, because the only earlier ASOIAF icon I've got is a self-made one. I have 46 ASOIAF icons on LJ (counting numerous crossovers), including 4 that are just straight-up inside jokes, and I'm never getting rid of them because westerosorting remains the most glorious fannish experience, and I want to remember every moment as much as I can. But it's a fandom I'm barely in anymore -- I don't watch the show, and I haven't been really keeping up with the Targ histories (just reading the books as I come across them via gifts), so I really couldn't justify too many ASOIAF icons on DW. I ended up with three real ASOIAF (2 Tyrell, 1 Lannister, reflecting my loyalties) and 2 crossover ones, which is still a fairly large percentage fora mostly inactive fandom, but sue me. Anyway, Olenna Tyrell, the Queen of Thorns, is one of my very favorite ASOIAF characters. I was stamped as her at the first westerosorting Character Meme, which is only right and just. And the quote in the icon is my favorite quote in the entire series, because it's such a great showcase for Olenna's old lady wit, and also is at Tywin's expense (Tywin being one of the few characters in ASOIAF whom I like even more than Olenna; in fact, I crackship the two of them). I adore the quote so much, I jumped at the chance to expand it into a poem/song. Back in the days of westerosorting, I used this one a lot, for talking about Olenna, and for general snark (and had two other Olenna icons, in addition to the crackship one linked already, one for community grouphugs (that's me having tea with Olenna, PowerPuff'd by the brilliant guad) and comm-wide mod business (by angerfish). These days none of these icons get a ton of use, unless I'm wallowing in westerosorting nostalgia. But Olenna is still boss.
krait picked these three:
-- this is one of _grayswandir_'s glorious set of author icons with their photos, handwriting, and signatures (I have matching Tolkien and Pratchett ones on LJ, too). This one doesn't get a ton of use, but Oscar Wilde is one of my favorite writers, and I went through a period in high school where I was every so slightly obsessed with him, to the point of staying up till 4 a.m. reading a biography about him, attempting to speak in Wildeanly quotable wit, and using the word "vermillion" absolutely everywhere. My summer in Oxford, I went to visit Magdalen and went up to his rooms (which had a printed paper sign on them saying "Oscar Wilde's rooms" but were occuppied by an actual person living in them, judging by the rustling coming from the inside) and interrupted my Lit teacher to scoop her with random Oscar Wilde facts, such as all of his middle names or what he quipped at whom. Also this is just a really beautiful icon.
-- look at me, getting a chance to be all highbrow, two icons in a row :P This icon (by beggar_always) is one of my bunch of poetry icons on LJ, and one of the five I decided I needed to import to DW. The words "the starry floor" are from Blake's Introduction to The Songs of Experience, which is one of my favorite Blake poems, and Blake is one of my favorite poets. (If you're interested inmy thoughts on the poem as a whole, and on Blake, you can read them here. It's also a great meta-poem, since it's about a poet addressing, well, the cosmos, because Blake was humble like that :P I guess between it and the MacLeish poem quote icon (can one even string 4 nouns together like that? I'm not sure XP), the "Ars Poetica" one is one I use more fortalking about the mechanics of poetry, and writing my own, and the Blake one for talking about poetry meta.
-- the icon and the story behind it both come from this LJ post (in Russian). The short version of the story is: there are letter blocks for Russian, manufactured in China, which have an assortment of hilarious inconsistencies, starting with letter/word mismatches and up through words which are not really words. This is my favorite of the block faces because it combines both of those failure modes and is in general delightfully random. Explaining the joke for non-Russian speakers: The word combo "ploskost' passazhira" means something like "the mathematical plane belonging to a passenger". What it was meant to be, of course, was "passenger plane" (actually in Russian: "samolet" or I guess "passazhirskij samolet", which nobody says, certainly not little kids learning their letters), and I suppose this is a case of early Google translate (or similar) failure (the blocks are from 2006). And the letter matched with this wonderful phrase not only isn't the first letter of any of those words or the real word in Russian, but does not even appear in any of them -- it may have been chosen at random? (It makes the sound of U in "union".) Also, it's a funny-looking letter (when O was learning to read, he referred to it as "the TIE fighter one" to help him remember it -- although I kept pointing out that it's only HALF a TIE fighter, really. I don't use this icon too much either, but it's my "translation fail" icon, as opposed to the more general "translation is hard" sentiment / bilingualism icon (which is my Lolita quote icon on LJ but which I didn't transfer over to DW, figuring a single Russian icon was enough.
This entry was originally posted at https://hamsterwoman.dreamwidth.org/1099543.html. Comment wherever you prefer (I prefer LJ).