and this is who we are
Apparently JKR thinks Dumbledore was gay. I... this makes me very pleased, you guys. In my gut kind of pleased. (It's not about the canon -- if it's not in the text, it's not my canon -- it's about the affirmation.)
In the meantime -- while I try to settle down from this unexpected good news -- fuschia asked about these seven icons:
Please tell me about these icons and your relationship(s) to them.
keywords: Claudia Black [cheese_munkey]
comment: women like her make me wish I were gay, etc.
discussion: As noted in the keywords, this icon was made by cheese_munkey, who was a very good friend of mine in undergrad -- I haven't heard from her in over two years and I miss her a lot.
The icon features Claudia Black, who played Aeryn Sun on Farscape and Vala Maldoran on Stargate: SG-1. I know her and lust after her mostly in the Aeryn incarnation. C.Black's the kind of actress who makes a habit of stealing women's straight, being very, very attractive and all. I don't have any particular attachment to her the way I do to, say, Allison Janney, whom I would cheerfully follow into a black hole she's so frelling PRETTY, but C.Black is one of the best actresses with which I'm familiar with -- she's phenomenal.
I use this icon when discussing actresses in general, female actresses in particular, the nature of fannish desire, and RPF that doesn't involve Joss Whedon or Ann M. Martin. I suppose it represents fannish mainstream desire, if I ever feel any.
keywords: Keith/Veronica kiss
comment: in a gen way, I swear!
discussion: This icon is made entirely of images from the Veronica Mars S1 finale, "Leave it to Beaver." The caps have not been altered in any substantial way (just slight adjustments to the lighting and coloring). That man? Is that woman's father. Of course this scene can be interpreted in a gen way, and I should know, since I've watched it approximately 2,000 times since the episode first aired. And screencapped it frame-by-frame. And used a certain screencap as a desktop background for a good two months. And made about seven variations on this icon. And watched them, mesmerized, for hours on end.
Um, you might say my relationship to this icon (and the scene it suggests) is kind of iddy. It was this scene that made me realize I'd really been shipping Keith and Veronica all along, and as I've discussed several times, that pairing played a really strange and powerful role in my life during the time that I was transitioning from college life to living at home again. It's much more powerful than just the age difference or the naughty transgressiveness; Keith/Veronica is my 'crawl inside their love and die' (tm raedbard) pairing, and it's hard for me to talk about it rationally except to say that it's my OTP and will always be.
As for the icon itself: I deleted all my questionable icons during strikethrough07 and reuploaded them, with this addition, when the journals were restored. (I've done nothing in lieu of boldthrough except render hidden a certain fic). I was so happy that me and my perviness weren't banninated on LJ that I uploaded this icon in celebration but... I'm kind of hesitant about using it except in the journals of my few vocal fellow Marscesters (fuschia, alixtii, jamie_dakin, hi. ♥) because I don't want to squick people and, um, it shows Veronica kissing Keith. Yes this is canon. But I know that it's pretty squicky. I do. No one's said anything to me about hey, this is pretty squicky, and I appreciate that a lot, but I would like to establish a safe sandbox for me and my friends without intruding the on anyone else's non-incestuous squee.
So basically I have an icon I don't feel comfortable using except in really rare cases.
But I do stare at it a lot. :)
keywords: Kaylee/Fred
discussion: For a brief period in the summer of 2005, Fred/Kaylee was my Lifetime OTP. It's tied with Willow/Giles for the Buffyverse pairing I've written the most often, and since Willow/Giles embodies my very own personal amazingly acute teacher/student kink, that's quite an accomplishment. I really, really adore this icon, which is quite impressive since I a) made it myself and b) am not exactly skilled at iconning. Especially since it involved blending which is very difficult. I even got the text to look nice! So yes, I'm very proud of me, and it's important that the icon is pretty since Kaylee is pretty. And Fred is pretty. And together they are very pretty.
The scene in "Shindig" from which Kaylee's smile and the text are taken is my favorite in all of Firefly (I have four icons with pictures of Kaylee in them. Three of those pictures are from "Shindig." Two are from this scene). That smile is everything that I love about Kaylee, and those shared smiles are what would make Kaylee and Fred perfect together. (I'm not entirely sure where the Fred cap is from, unfortunately. Possibly "Home".)
I use this icon when talking about Fred/Kaylee, or generally about my favorite Jossian characters, or about FireflyxBuffyverse crossovers (and Firefly/Buffyverse is kind of my OTP anyhow, so there's a lot of use, there.)
And I suppose it's also a metacomment, much like the C.Black icon, about fannish desire and What It Is We Do Here ('cos I may say "look" at the pretties, but in fact I look and point and icon and write and write and write. And look. Because pretty.)
keywords: Anne/Diana (by erinmiran), kiddie lit, Matilda, Sam/Cassie, teachercrush
comment: no longer actually by erinmiran
discussion: So. I used to have an Anne/Diana icon. It showed them holding hands or something, it was pretty. Romantic friendship and best-friends-become-lovers and the blurry line between friendship and romance are some of my favorite themes in lesbian and pre-lesbian literature. I've shipped Anne/Diana since I was about 10. It's a very important pairing to me in a lot of ways.
This is my favorite icon.
Obdisclaimer, right now, subject to change, etc., but. This is my favorite icon.
I usually reference it with 'teachercrush,' very rarely 'Matilda.' When I do talk about Matilda (or other kidlit), of course I use it, but mostly, it's my teachercrush icon.
Much as the Keith/Veronica kiss gives me visceral joyful pain of longing, this image fills me with joy and happiness. It's the scene from the very end of the novel when Miss Honey has adopted Matilda and they are living happily ever after. And Miss Honey is both teacher and mother, and she's holding Matilda tight and safe, and Matilda will never fall and never outgrow Miss Honey's arms. And they lived happily ever after.
Looking at the icon itself (simply cropped, no coloration, no text, just the scan from the book), I realized that I didn't know what this icon looked like (unlike the Kaylee/Fred icon, say, which I'm proud of visually, or the Keith/Veronica icon, which is physically mesmerizing). I thought Miss Honey was smiling, and that Matilda's smile was more obvious, and I've never really examined the placement of hands or tried to figure out um... Quenten Blake?... sorry!...'s art -- this icon is all about what it symbolizes, not really the novel, nor the film, nor any actual or fictional six-year-old girls and their kindergarten teachers, but my response to texts like Matilda and their relationship to my fantasies and desires.
keywords: masquerade, silly/sexy/foot fetish
comment: life is a costume party
discussion: This is me in my Halloween costume, 2006. I'm kind of proud of this one as visual art, too -- the lighting, the coloring, the crop. I couldn't make text work for me, so I use the text as keyword and comment. Some of the more obsessive of you might recall that last year I was all in a dither because the kidlet and her classmates weren't allowed to wear "costumes of any kind" to middle school on Halloween; I spent a very many minutes talking very loudly about how middle schoolers dress in "costume" all the time, how they very consciously perform identities as emo or goth or punk or whatever they're calling the subgroups these days, and several other tl;dr digressions on costuming. This icon summarizes those arguments -- because it is silly (and a bit sexy, admit it. :p) (the "foot fetish" is leftover from a previous icon, one of my first. I didn't know you could separate keywords with commas. Now I am stuck with silly/sexy/foot fetish FOREVER). It's me masquerading, unsuccessfully, as a devil -- if you know how I usually present in meatspace, the idea of devil!me is laughable, adorable, reinscribes the monk!me illusion -- and at the same time, at least for me, it underscores the way that monk!me (which I'm using as shorthand for all sorts of ways -- silent, even-tempered, shy, happy, serene, efficient, saintly, pious -- that I present more or less regularly) is also a performance. Multiple costumes, multiple masks, and that's not even including the way that icons themselves function as costumes, or that wisdomeagle is a costume party.
On a practical level, I use this icon when commenting to signify that I'm being silly, snarky, or sarcastic. It's also my flirty, gay minstrel show icon.
keyword: Alan Turing
comment: I love my dead gay fandom.
discussion: The icon itself isn't terribly awesome, which is why I rarely use it just for fun -- black and white, meh text, and I don't find Turing all that physically/visually interesting.
Um. I fell in love with a fictionalized version of Alan Turing when I read Neal Stephenson's Cryptonomicon. Then I read part of his biography, Enigma, and fell even deeper in love -- Turing was in love with a slightly older boy in his school days, unrequitedly and very deeply, and the boy died very young. Alan's whole life is marked by this tragedy, and by the pain of being closeted. He was very shy and socially awkward. He was also a brilliant mathematician and crytographer? But that is so not relevant.
Like I said, I rarely use this icon, and when I do it's usually to post about Cryptonomicon -- there's a reason my journal's subtitle is "daft obsessions des jours." Alan was then, this is like, five minutes later. Still, he's kind of my hero.
keyword: Fred/Giles
comment: noelia_g
discussion: So Noelia and I have this great system going where she requests fic, I write fic, she likes fic, and she makes gorgeous icons based on said fic. I say, MORE SHINY FOR ME. I like Fred/Giles, have written it twice and enjoyed it quite a lot, would write again for crack, but I don't have the visceral attachment to it that I do to, um, Keith/Veronica or Miss Honey/Matilda, probably because what usually sells me on pairings of any kind, and especially with cross-gen, it's the particular scenarios of devotion and (in)dependence that make me fall in love. Which is hard when they never met in canon.
On a practical level? I frequently use this icon when talking about librarians (since Fred and Giles both are them), and by extension cataloging, and by extension tagging posts on LiveJournal, which means that it's kind of defaulted to the Ari+Elizabeth Show Icon.
In the meantime -- while I try to settle down from this unexpected good news -- fuschia asked about these seven icons:
Please tell me about these icons and your relationship(s) to them.
keywords: Claudia Black [cheese_munkey]
comment: women like her make me wish I were gay, etc.
discussion: As noted in the keywords, this icon was made by cheese_munkey, who was a very good friend of mine in undergrad -- I haven't heard from her in over two years and I miss her a lot.
The icon features Claudia Black, who played Aeryn Sun on Farscape and Vala Maldoran on Stargate: SG-1. I know her and lust after her mostly in the Aeryn incarnation. C.Black's the kind of actress who makes a habit of stealing women's straight, being very, very attractive and all. I don't have any particular attachment to her the way I do to, say, Allison Janney, whom I would cheerfully follow into a black hole she's so frelling PRETTY, but C.Black is one of the best actresses with which I'm familiar with -- she's phenomenal.
I use this icon when discussing actresses in general, female actresses in particular, the nature of fannish desire, and RPF that doesn't involve Joss Whedon or Ann M. Martin. I suppose it represents fannish mainstream desire, if I ever feel any.
keywords: Keith/Veronica kiss
comment: in a gen way, I swear!
discussion: This icon is made entirely of images from the Veronica Mars S1 finale, "Leave it to Beaver." The caps have not been altered in any substantial way (just slight adjustments to the lighting and coloring). That man? Is that woman's father. Of course this scene can be interpreted in a gen way, and I should know, since I've watched it approximately 2,000 times since the episode first aired. And screencapped it frame-by-frame. And used a certain screencap as a desktop background for a good two months. And made about seven variations on this icon. And watched them, mesmerized, for hours on end.
Um, you might say my relationship to this icon (and the scene it suggests) is kind of iddy. It was this scene that made me realize I'd really been shipping Keith and Veronica all along, and as I've discussed several times, that pairing played a really strange and powerful role in my life during the time that I was transitioning from college life to living at home again. It's much more powerful than just the age difference or the naughty transgressiveness; Keith/Veronica is my 'crawl inside their love and die' (tm raedbard) pairing, and it's hard for me to talk about it rationally except to say that it's my OTP and will always be.
As for the icon itself: I deleted all my questionable icons during strikethrough07 and reuploaded them, with this addition, when the journals were restored. (I've done nothing in lieu of boldthrough except render hidden a certain fic). I was so happy that me and my perviness weren't banninated on LJ that I uploaded this icon in celebration but... I'm kind of hesitant about using it except in the journals of my few vocal fellow Marscesters (fuschia, alixtii, jamie_dakin, hi. ♥) because I don't want to squick people and, um, it shows Veronica kissing Keith. Yes this is canon. But I know that it's pretty squicky. I do. No one's said anything to me about hey, this is pretty squicky, and I appreciate that a lot, but I would like to establish a safe sandbox for me and my friends without intruding the on anyone else's non-incestuous squee.
So basically I have an icon I don't feel comfortable using except in really rare cases.
But I do stare at it a lot. :)
keywords: Kaylee/Fred
discussion: For a brief period in the summer of 2005, Fred/Kaylee was my Lifetime OTP. It's tied with Willow/Giles for the Buffyverse pairing I've written the most often, and since Willow/Giles embodies my very own personal amazingly acute teacher/student kink, that's quite an accomplishment. I really, really adore this icon, which is quite impressive since I a) made it myself and b) am not exactly skilled at iconning. Especially since it involved blending which is very difficult. I even got the text to look nice! So yes, I'm very proud of me, and it's important that the icon is pretty since Kaylee is pretty. And Fred is pretty. And together they are very pretty.
The scene in "Shindig" from which Kaylee's smile and the text are taken is my favorite in all of Firefly (I have four icons with pictures of Kaylee in them. Three of those pictures are from "Shindig." Two are from this scene). That smile is everything that I love about Kaylee, and those shared smiles are what would make Kaylee and Fred perfect together. (I'm not entirely sure where the Fred cap is from, unfortunately. Possibly "Home".)
I use this icon when talking about Fred/Kaylee, or generally about my favorite Jossian characters, or about FireflyxBuffyverse crossovers (and Firefly/Buffyverse is kind of my OTP anyhow, so there's a lot of use, there.)
And I suppose it's also a metacomment, much like the C.Black icon, about fannish desire and What It Is We Do Here ('cos I may say "look" at the pretties, but in fact I look and point and icon and write and write and write. And look. Because pretty.)
keywords: Anne/Diana (by erinmiran), kiddie lit, Matilda, Sam/Cassie, teachercrush
comment: no longer actually by erinmiran
discussion: So. I used to have an Anne/Diana icon. It showed them holding hands or something, it was pretty. Romantic friendship and best-friends-become-lovers and the blurry line between friendship and romance are some of my favorite themes in lesbian and pre-lesbian literature. I've shipped Anne/Diana since I was about 10. It's a very important pairing to me in a lot of ways.
This is my favorite icon.
Obdisclaimer, right now, subject to change, etc., but. This is my favorite icon.
I usually reference it with 'teachercrush,' very rarely 'Matilda.' When I do talk about Matilda (or other kidlit), of course I use it, but mostly, it's my teachercrush icon.
Much as the Keith/Veronica kiss gives me visceral joyful pain of longing, this image fills me with joy and happiness. It's the scene from the very end of the novel when Miss Honey has adopted Matilda and they are living happily ever after. And Miss Honey is both teacher and mother, and she's holding Matilda tight and safe, and Matilda will never fall and never outgrow Miss Honey's arms. And they lived happily ever after.
Looking at the icon itself (simply cropped, no coloration, no text, just the scan from the book), I realized that I didn't know what this icon looked like (unlike the Kaylee/Fred icon, say, which I'm proud of visually, or the Keith/Veronica icon, which is physically mesmerizing). I thought Miss Honey was smiling, and that Matilda's smile was more obvious, and I've never really examined the placement of hands or tried to figure out um... Quenten Blake?... sorry!...'s art -- this icon is all about what it symbolizes, not really the novel, nor the film, nor any actual or fictional six-year-old girls and their kindergarten teachers, but my response to texts like Matilda and their relationship to my fantasies and desires.
keywords: masquerade, silly/sexy/foot fetish
comment: life is a costume party
discussion: This is me in my Halloween costume, 2006. I'm kind of proud of this one as visual art, too -- the lighting, the coloring, the crop. I couldn't make text work for me, so I use the text as keyword and comment. Some of the more obsessive of you might recall that last year I was all in a dither because the kidlet and her classmates weren't allowed to wear "costumes of any kind" to middle school on Halloween; I spent a very many minutes talking very loudly about how middle schoolers dress in "costume" all the time, how they very consciously perform identities as emo or goth or punk or whatever they're calling the subgroups these days, and several other tl;dr digressions on costuming. This icon summarizes those arguments -- because it is silly (and a bit sexy, admit it. :p) (the "foot fetish" is leftover from a previous icon, one of my first. I didn't know you could separate keywords with commas. Now I am stuck with silly/sexy/foot fetish FOREVER). It's me masquerading, unsuccessfully, as a devil -- if you know how I usually present in meatspace, the idea of devil!me is laughable, adorable, reinscribes the monk!me illusion -- and at the same time, at least for me, it underscores the way that monk!me (which I'm using as shorthand for all sorts of ways -- silent, even-tempered, shy, happy, serene, efficient, saintly, pious -- that I present more or less regularly) is also a performance. Multiple costumes, multiple masks, and that's not even including the way that icons themselves function as costumes, or that wisdomeagle is a costume party.
On a practical level, I use this icon when commenting to signify that I'm being silly, snarky, or sarcastic. It's also my flirty, gay minstrel show icon.
keyword: Alan Turing
comment: I love my dead gay fandom.
discussion: The icon itself isn't terribly awesome, which is why I rarely use it just for fun -- black and white, meh text, and I don't find Turing all that physically/visually interesting.
Um. I fell in love with a fictionalized version of Alan Turing when I read Neal Stephenson's Cryptonomicon. Then I read part of his biography, Enigma, and fell even deeper in love -- Turing was in love with a slightly older boy in his school days, unrequitedly and very deeply, and the boy died very young. Alan's whole life is marked by this tragedy, and by the pain of being closeted. He was very shy and socially awkward. He was also a brilliant mathematician and crytographer? But that is so not relevant.
Like I said, I rarely use this icon, and when I do it's usually to post about Cryptonomicon -- there's a reason my journal's subtitle is "daft obsessions des jours." Alan was then, this is like, five minutes later. Still, he's kind of my hero.
keyword: Fred/Giles
comment: noelia_g
discussion: So Noelia and I have this great system going where she requests fic, I write fic, she likes fic, and she makes gorgeous icons based on said fic. I say, MORE SHINY FOR ME. I like Fred/Giles, have written it twice and enjoyed it quite a lot, would write again for crack, but I don't have the visceral attachment to it that I do to, um, Keith/Veronica or Miss Honey/Matilda, probably because what usually sells me on pairings of any kind, and especially with cross-gen, it's the particular scenarios of devotion and (in)dependence that make me fall in love. Which is hard when they never met in canon.
On a practical level? I frequently use this icon when talking about librarians (since Fred and Giles both are them), and by extension cataloging, and by extension tagging posts on LiveJournal, which means that it's kind of defaulted to the Ari+Elizabeth Show Icon.