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staranise gave me that "explain five icons" meme. Here are the five icons she chose
Um. Most of my icons don't really get much use because I like the idea of sticking with a recognizable default icon, and I like my default icon, but these do get pulled out once in awhile, if I remember they exist.
This is Ael T'Rllaillieu of the Warbird Bloodwing of ch'Rihan, known in the UFP as Romulan. The Rihannsu novels were a set of Star Trek novels written by Diane Duane (of Young Wizards fame) which expanded on the background of the Star Trek: TOS Romulans before any of the later canon took them on. They are much better than any later Star Trek canon, and I am not the only person who considers them a fandom of their own.
Here is the short version of Ael's story, at least enough to explain the icon: Ael was the decorated and famed commander of a Romulan Warbird, until she discovered that the creeping corruption and dishonor in the Romulan government went much further than she had imagined, and decided than when your supposed friends fail you, it is time to turn to an honorable enemy for help. So she basically set up a complicated trap to lure the Enterprise into her area, and then convinced Captain Kirk to help her prevent a coup on Romulus. By, among other things, having Captain Kirk pretend to surrender Enterprise to her, and let her sit in his captain's chair to pilot it into Romulan space.
In the next book, she comes in just at the very end, having been contracted by Starfleet Intelligence to help extract a deep-cover Federation agent from Romulus. But her idea of "secret mission" is not anybody's, and in a Crowning Moment of Awesome, she lands her renegade Warbird on the roof of the Romulan statehouse, beams into the legislative chamber, and takes possession of the Sword in the Empty Chair - one of the most sacred artifacts on Romulus, dating back to their origins on Vulcan, - and broadcasts to the entire planet that she will take care of it for them until they have remembered the meaning of honor enough to be trusted with it.
This icon is from the cover of the third book, and the sword she is holding is the Sword from the Empty Chair. What she does with it I will leave for you to actually read the books. :D Ael is one of my favorite characters in the world, those are some of my favorite books, and more than anything they taught me how to write an awesome female character, and how to use her to fix the world rather than break it (although breaking a few things along the way is allowed. Like, say, James T. Kirk's brain. Repeatedly....I still want to know what Jim means in Rihannsu.)
I use this icon for Star Trek stuff, and for women who take no crap, and for Diane Duane fandoms, and for philosophy.
John Hodgman, who you may know from the Daily Show, the Mac/PC commercials, his collaborations with Jonathan Coulton, or my tendency to occasionally madly squee about him, is an American humorist. Among other things he wrote some books, starting with The Areas of My Expertise, that are basically almanacs from an alternate history of the US in which everything is slightly more surreal and slightly more awesome than in ours - sort of a version of the steampunk AU which concentrates on everything *but* the technology.
Areas of My Expertise includes a chart of Hobo Signs, pictographic symbols used in the golden age of American hoboes to secretly pass messages and give each other information about the reception they are likely to get in a town or household.
This is the scan of the sign that means "This house is bigger on the inside". In case there's *anyone* reading this journal who doesn't get that, it's a Dr. Who reference. And the blue background it had on the cover made it even more Tardis-y. I have it for Dr. Who posts, for Fake News and current events posts, for comedy rps posts, and for alternate history and Americana stuff.
This is a panel from a Spanish webcomic called "El Joven Lovecraft" ("Young Lovecraft") which is basically Charles Schulz crossed with Charles Addams, only sillier. I discovered it when my friend-who-works-in-the-industry gave me a review copy of the first printed tpb, in Spanish, and I adored it. (Partly because it was simple enough that my Spanish skills were up to it. Partly because it's adorable and funny and full of in-jokes about the emo literary subculture of the late 19th century.)
Anyway, partway through that volume, young Howie meets a Goth girl named Siouxsie who could be the far more annoying younger cousin of Death from Sandman, and she talks him into summoning a Shoggoth (an eldritch creature of the Elder Times, natch) and going on a pilgrimage to the grave of Edgar Allan Poe, in Baltimore. (I don't think the English website has gotten quite that far in the story yet.) This icon is her, as they're about to take off, saying "Hoorah! Baltimore, here we come!" (Or something like that. "juju*" is a bit of Spanish I've only encountered online, but it seems to be a fairly all-purpose ejaculation.) I like it because "Hoorah, Baltimore, here we come!" is something that people who have ever been to Baltimore are fairly unlikely to say unironically. And yet, if I have a city-of-my-heart, Baltimore is it.
Like most of my icons, I made this one myself from a scan, and it's pretty obvious I did something awful to it in an attempt to make the words readable. Perhaps someday I will go back to the original scan and fix it. Meanwhile, this icon is mean to be used for a spirit of adventure, local interest things, creepiness and depression, cryptozoology and the paranormal, international-ness, and 19th century literature.
Ah, yes, this. This is my Mathnet dreamsheep. If you can't read the small text, it said "The names are made up, but the problems are real," which comes from Mathnet, which was a segment on Square One TV, a children's educational program from my childhood. It was a Dragnet parody in which two Mathnet officers were called out in emergency to solve math-related crimes, using math, and it was my favorite thing ever for awhile in elementary school. Yes, it was not very deep, but the characters (George Friday and several different female partners) actually had depth and humor to them.
The slogan is of course a rephrasing of the famous Dragnet line "The story you are about to hear is true. Only the names have been changed to protect the innocent." But the Mathnet version has always struck me as a very good summary of what online communities are about - our names are made up, but our problems are real - so when I decided to make myself a dreamsheep, I decided I wanted a Mathnet one. (The design on the sheep is the Mathnet logo.) Dreamsheep icons are for DW geeks; the sheep base was offered up for free use back during early beta and then various people modded it for fandoms. I use this as my support icon on the rare occasion I actually help out at support, but I never really liked how it came out, so I don't use it much.
Mathnet, alas, is very hard to find these days: there's a few episodes on youtube, and one I managed to torrent, and last I looked some very low-resolution episodes on someone's ancient webpage, but it's hard to find. Square One was never given a video or dvd distribution outside limited educational circles, though I have managed to get my hands on a few VHS tapes which I plan to digitize and share as soon as I figure out how to digitize VHS. (At which point I will also be posting my high school appearances on It's Academic. Fear.)
And finally, we have Commander Valentine! She appeared in back-up stories of the limited-run Tek Jansen and Alpha Squad Seven comics, which were a spin-off of the Tek Jansen animated shorts that appeared for awhile on the Colbert Report. She was the hard-bitten supervisor of Tek, Colbert's self-insert space hero, and the only female who wasn't utterly smitten with him. I loved the art, and I loved the character - basically and blatantly a female Nick Fury for space opera - and I especially loved the art of the character, and she appeared just about the same time I was looking for a default icon for myself, so lo, synchronicity! She doesn't look at all like me in RL though, except for being white, female, skinny, not-at-all femme, and having hair that does whatever it wants. There was a character sort of like her who eventually appeared in the animated series, but the animated version was far, far less awesome.
I think I have an icon of every piece of art of Commander Valentine that appeared in the comics. (And if you look at the icons, some of them I have twice, because they re-inked some of the pencils and used them repeatedly. Because that's the production values Tek Jansen is meant to have, dammit!)
This is my "angry" icon, but I don't use it very often, partly because I don't get angry very often, and partly because I have noticed that if I say something angry with this icon, people get hostile and defensive, whereas if I say something angry with the calm, contemplative version, they give me the benefit of the doubt.
If anybody want me to pick five icons for them, I suppose I could. :D
(look at me showing off my l33t new css skills, too!)
staranise gave me that "explain five icons" meme. Here are the five icons she chose Um. Most of my icons don't really get much use because I like the idea of sticking with a recognizable default icon, and I like my default icon, but these do get pulled out once in awhile, if I remember they exist.
Here is the short version of Ael's story, at least enough to explain the icon: Ael was the decorated and famed commander of a Romulan Warbird, until she discovered that the creeping corruption and dishonor in the Romulan government went much further than she had imagined, and decided than when your supposed friends fail you, it is time to turn to an honorable enemy for help. So she basically set up a complicated trap to lure the Enterprise into her area, and then convinced Captain Kirk to help her prevent a coup on Romulus. By, among other things, having Captain Kirk pretend to surrender Enterprise to her, and let her sit in his captain's chair to pilot it into Romulan space.
In the next book, she comes in just at the very end, having been contracted by Starfleet Intelligence to help extract a deep-cover Federation agent from Romulus. But her idea of "secret mission" is not anybody's, and in a Crowning Moment of Awesome, she lands her renegade Warbird on the roof of the Romulan statehouse, beams into the legislative chamber, and takes possession of the Sword in the Empty Chair - one of the most sacred artifacts on Romulus, dating back to their origins on Vulcan, - and broadcasts to the entire planet that she will take care of it for them until they have remembered the meaning of honor enough to be trusted with it.
This icon is from the cover of the third book, and the sword she is holding is the Sword from the Empty Chair. What she does with it I will leave for you to actually read the books. :D Ael is one of my favorite characters in the world, those are some of my favorite books, and more than anything they taught me how to write an awesome female character, and how to use her to fix the world rather than break it (although breaking a few things along the way is allowed. Like, say, James T. Kirk's brain. Repeatedly....I still want to know what Jim means in Rihannsu.)
I use this icon for Star Trek stuff, and for women who take no crap, and for Diane Duane fandoms, and for philosophy.
Areas of My Expertise includes a chart of Hobo Signs, pictographic symbols used in the golden age of American hoboes to secretly pass messages and give each other information about the reception they are likely to get in a town or household.
This is the scan of the sign that means "This house is bigger on the inside". In case there's *anyone* reading this journal who doesn't get that, it's a Dr. Who reference. And the blue background it had on the cover made it even more Tardis-y. I have it for Dr. Who posts, for Fake News and current events posts, for comedy rps posts, and for alternate history and Americana stuff.
Anyway, partway through that volume, young Howie meets a Goth girl named Siouxsie who could be the far more annoying younger cousin of Death from Sandman, and she talks him into summoning a Shoggoth (an eldritch creature of the Elder Times, natch) and going on a pilgrimage to the grave of Edgar Allan Poe, in Baltimore. (I don't think the English website has gotten quite that far in the story yet.) This icon is her, as they're about to take off, saying "Hoorah! Baltimore, here we come!" (Or something like that. "juju*" is a bit of Spanish I've only encountered online, but it seems to be a fairly all-purpose ejaculation.) I like it because "Hoorah, Baltimore, here we come!" is something that people who have ever been to Baltimore are fairly unlikely to say unironically. And yet, if I have a city-of-my-heart, Baltimore is it.
Like most of my icons, I made this one myself from a scan, and it's pretty obvious I did something awful to it in an attempt to make the words readable. Perhaps someday I will go back to the original scan and fix it. Meanwhile, this icon is mean to be used for a spirit of adventure, local interest things, creepiness and depression, cryptozoology and the paranormal, international-ness, and 19th century literature.
The slogan is of course a rephrasing of the famous Dragnet line "The story you are about to hear is true. Only the names have been changed to protect the innocent." But the Mathnet version has always struck me as a very good summary of what online communities are about - our names are made up, but our problems are real - so when I decided to make myself a dreamsheep, I decided I wanted a Mathnet one. (The design on the sheep is the Mathnet logo.) Dreamsheep icons are for DW geeks; the sheep base was offered up for free use back during early beta and then various people modded it for fandoms. I use this as my support icon on the rare occasion I actually help out at support, but I never really liked how it came out, so I don't use it much.
Mathnet, alas, is very hard to find these days: there's a few episodes on youtube, and one I managed to torrent, and last I looked some very low-resolution episodes on someone's ancient webpage, but it's hard to find. Square One was never given a video or dvd distribution outside limited educational circles, though I have managed to get my hands on a few VHS tapes which I plan to digitize and share as soon as I figure out how to digitize VHS. (At which point I will also be posting my high school appearances on It's Academic. Fear.)
I think I have an icon of every piece of art of Commander Valentine that appeared in the comics. (And if you look at the icons, some of them I have twice, because they re-inked some of the pencils and used them repeatedly. Because that's the production values Tek Jansen is meant to have, dammit!)
This is my "angry" icon, but I don't use it very often, partly because I don't get angry very often, and partly because I have noticed that if I say something angry with this icon, people get hostile and defensive, whereas if I say something angry with the calm, contemplative version, they give me the benefit of the doubt.
If anybody want me to pick five icons for them, I suppose I could. :D
(look at me showing off my l33t new css skills, too!)
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...I really really want there to be fanworks set in Hodgmanverse. I am so tempted to run a challenge or something. But I fear it would not happen; the hoboes would be on to us, and prevent anyone from signing up.
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I...think I need to read John Hodgman?
Also, I won't say no to 5 icons. :-)
I say "Hurrah! Baltimore, here we come!" every year before Otakon.
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I say "Hurrah, Baltimore, here we come!" every month when
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:O How did I not notice the TARDIS reference before? That is amazing. I dearly adore the AU in Hodgman's books, "Steampunk without the tech" is a great way to describe them. My absolute favourite thing is Hohoq, which I wish I could steal and write stories about, but it's not related enough to fakenews to be fic and too copywrited to be original -_-
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And you should totally do it! It counts as Hodgman fanfic, and that is enough for me! Or you could write AUs of other fandoms set in his universe... (I actually have gotten permission from the
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Ahhhhhh well, that's good to know! In that case perhaps I'll think about it. If I ever actually get around to it, anyway.
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