4. staranise gave me that "explain five icons" meme. Here are the five icons she chose ( These may contain major spoilers for some of the small fandoms my icons are from. )

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!)

I had a very busy weekend, to the extent that this is the first time since before SciFi Fri that I've been online at all.

Part of that weekend involved being in a car for two hours with nothing to read but Tag & Bink Episode 2: Revenge of the Clone Menace, which is only the *best* Star Wars comic ever published (and that includes the ones with Plif the Hoojib.)

I say this completely disregarding the fact that tiny younglings Tag and Bink are the cutest litle Jedi possible to exist, even though they are. I want more little-tiny-Tag-and-Bink adventures, hurrah! Like the three years they spent hitchhiking home from Naboo and got all adolescent and scruffy!

Anyway, did I mention that as well as the awesome story, the art rocks? I managed seven icons before GIMP froze on me and dumped all my unsaved scans:

(If anyone by chance wants to snarf these, I don't care what you do with them. Although it'd be nice if you credit the art to the Tag & Bink team, Rubio & Marangon.)

(Strangely, last night I had a Jedi Apprentice dream featuring Xanatos, despite not yet having read Jedi Apprentice, and having read no fic for years. So apparently I have Padawans on the brain right now.)

And speaking of the other fandom that I need to do a comics-icons set for soon, one of the links I found several places when I caught up today was Henry Jenkins's comments on vidding. The vidding comments are interesting, but what caught my eye was his using a fandom term that I hadn't heard before, which is very unusual these days, language magpie that I am.

The word is "ose". A quick Google tells me that it originated in SF filk fandom circles, and comes from the phrase, applied to the mood of a song, "It was all ose, ose, and more ose." It seems to be largely pejorative there, and I think Jenkins is using it a bit differently, to refer not just to a "downer" mood, but to a mood where the angst is developed through distance rather than through loud emotionality.

I think this is a very useful word and I'm adopting it. I think many of the non-humor stories I write end up being ose. They're not emotive enough to be angst, and they aren't quite depressing enough to be more-ose, they're just ose. Ickle Aayla Secura in my new default icon? She's rather ose, I think.

It reminds me of the cold & prickly vs. warm & fuzzy thing that came up back in the day in SGA, which I still find myself using from time to time (Was that a year and a half ago already?). But since "ose" doesn't set up an opposition, just a description, and it invites explanation rather than argument, it may be more useful in casual discussion. And it's a fun punnish backformation in the old SF tradition. And getting it adopted to fanfic will be a subculture mixing of just the sort that Jenkins is discussing in his post, so it'll be all meta-meta-y!

It also (for me at least) calls to mind the River Ose from the Riddle of Stars trilogy, the river that Raederle and Lyra and Tristan sailed up on the spring melt, icy-cold and murky with the spring flood, but running fast and dangerous and every so often, things can be seen rising from the depths, for just a second, before they're washed away. Riddle of Stars is kind of ose, too, come to think of it.

I hereby adopt that word, and declare that I like stories that are ose. Now, you big fandom melting pot, it's up to you to finish defining the word for me!

(Speaking of Riddle of Stars, I really should send wickedwords the feedback I promised her for Unanswered Riddles before *this* year's yuletide rolls around, shouldn't I?)