( Icons )

And since Rachel asked, my five worst books ever!

In no particular order:

RL Stine - I can't remember which book this is, since there are so many with increasingly implausible and silly deaths. But the book had a character dying via a piece of dough placed in his/her mouth. The dough rose and miraculously acquired enough force to suffocate the person or to cause death via dough in the brain. I swear, I am not making this up.

Barbara Hambly, the Dragonsbane sequels - I think I may have blocked out how truly terrible these were from my mind. This is particularly sad, because I love Dragonsbane, but the sequels reverse a key decision in the original book (I think) and then begin to incorporate incoherent dimension- and/or time-travel. Other elements that I may or may not be remembering correctly: squalid details about homeless, addicted people in an alternate dystopic earth and how John either saves them or becomes one of them. Mely notes that there is also demonic mother-son incest, which I managed to scrub out of my memory.

Emma Donoghue, Slammerkin - So, there's the "rocks fall, everyone dies" ending, and then there's Slammerkin, in which rocks (metaphorically) fall, everyone dies; you sell your virginity for a red ribbon, get gang raped, then thrown out of the house; you abort your misbegotten gang rape child with a stick; and your best prostitute friend freezes to death on the street and you briefly think of burying her and instead pry a bottle of gin from her cold, dead fingers. The best thing? This is just the first hundred pages! It gets worse (spoilers)!

Robin Schone, Awaken, My Love - I cannot believe I actually finished this. Here's the original post. First, there is the gratuitous detailing of historical squalor. If two people are going to have sex later, I really do not want to know about how unclean they are when they pee, nor do I want details about bad breath, bad teeth, greasy hair, and dirty clothing. I do not mind these things, but when paired with descriptions of bulging tumescences and yonis and chakras and other nonsense blindly taken from the Kama Sutra, they are ridiculously funny. Also, the heroine's husband has apparently never heard of sex, masturbation, or orgasms, and he is supposedly a perfectly normal guy.

The hero's wife is frigid, so he rapes her into submission! We get entirely too detailed descriptions on dryness and tearing, zero remorse from the hero, and no sympathy from the author. Clearly, the hero's wife deserved it for being frigid, for having one leg be shorter than the other, and for being raped by her uncle when she was a child.

I still cannot believe I finished this. All I have to say is that it was before I started throwing books at walls.

And now, I can't think of a fifth, as they were either so bad that I never finished them, or mind-numbingly mediocre. Instead, I list: Piers Anthony, especially the Adept series and its gratuitous virtual sex (IIRC); Robert Jordan, with his notions of how women act; Anne McCaffrey's Freedom series; Anne Bishop's penis-shaped breadsticks; and the Beatrice Small book I started and never finished because it was just that bad in every possible aspect.

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Feel free to snurch! Comments and credit highly appreciated. I can modify text on icons if you'd like. All icons for sharing unless modified for you.

Oh, and just in case, please no spoilers in the comments!

I think about two people will be even tempted to use any of these, given the number of people who have watched this, but that is ok. I love this show so much that I icon it anyway!

Also, it's just so pretty and watercolor-y and going through all the screencaps reminded me of the show again and made me feel all happy and warm and fuzzy inside.

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Feel free to take! Credit is highly appreciated, and I don't mind if you modify the bases or if you want me to put custom text on for you. All icons are for sharing, unless I custom-make something for you.

More icons! I seem to go through Photoshop phases...

Anyway, 2 Heroes icons, 9 Naruto, 3 Bleach, and 2 Saiyuki.

Please feel free to take as many as you like! Text is customizable; just drop me a note. All icons are for sharing unless it's customized.

Comments and credit is greatly appreciated ^_^.

And just to catch your eye... here's one of the ones below the cut:


( Icons )

Since I was (finally) making rachelmanija her Cracktastic Manga Fowl of DOOM icon, I decided to make some more as well! Also, I can now color in black-and-white manga images!

9 Bleach icons, 1 Samurai Champloo, and assorted manga/anime fowl of DOOM below the cut.

( Icons! )

A few more icons:

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Here are the other icons I made. I'm still doing customizations!

rilina has a round-up post of IBAR Week posts.

Welcome to International Blog Against Racism Week!

If you would like to participate, here's what to do:

1. Announce the week in your blog.

2. Switch your default icon to either an official IBAR icon, or one which you feel is appropriate. To get an official IBAR icon, you may modify one of yours yourself or ask someone to do so.

3. Post about race and/or racism: in media, in life, in the news, personal experiences, writing characters of a race that isn't yours, portrayals of race in fiction, review a book on the subject, etc.

Link round-up to Intl. Blog Against Racism Week posts

I made icons! (posts will be forthcoming)

I made a few icons for Intl. Speak Against Racism Week (or whatever it'll be called!). Sadly, my imagination seems to have run out quickly... any other suggestions would be very welcome! Also, if you'd like something specific, let me know (or provide a picture or something).

Needless to say, please take!

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ETA: Added link round-up

Apparently, it's International Saiyuki Week! Or is that International Saiyuki Fortnight?

Anyhow, I have a new default user icon for the week! And since I'm entirely too lazy to write up Saiyuki, I will simply make more icons.

There may be slightly more substantial stuff on Saiyuki coming this week, depending on how bummy I feel.

I made Saiyuki icons yesterday of the Sanzo-ikkou being ikkou-like, and absolutely had to do Gaiden. Sadly, there aren't that many pictures of the Gaiden-ikkou =(.

Anyway, I love it when people use my icons! So do take (commenting is lovely). They're all for sharing, unless you want something special. I do customizations if you ask.

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ETA: reposting because apparently LJ is mucking around with timestamps again.

Aka, I cannot resist the sheer prettiness of Minekura's assorted artbooks. I mostly wanted to do group icons of the Sanzo-ikkou, because while I love them all individually and as barely subtextual couples, I love them best as a group.

I can do modifications and add text or whatnot if anyone wants. Other than that, all these are for sharing.

I'd be really, really, really excited if you just leave a comment if you take one.

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I swear, I'll stop spamming LJ soon. But I made icons!

( Nana, Gokinjo Monogatari, Tenshi Nanka Janai, Utena )

( Spiderbread house )

( Rat spam! )

I couldn't help it. fannishly's fork is just too awesome.



Feel free to snurch!

So tired. Not really physically tired, although I (still) need to try to do that sleeping at a normal hour thing. Mostly my brain hurts -- too many faces! Too much information! And being me, I am basically paralyzed with the fear of making a mistake. To give you some idea of my neuroses, one of the people on my team asked me to scout around and look for some sites with interesting/good design to brainstorm about a new site template, and I am scared that he now thinks I'm stupid because the sites I picked are stupid.

Yes, I know I'm neurotic, but unfortunately it doesn't make me any less nervous. Really, ibanking was the worst possible job to throw me into as a job introduction... mix a nervous perfectionist with a job that is extremely high pressure which places no priority on one's personal life and you get a nervous perfectionist on the verge of a breakdown because she's scared nothing she does is good enough. I just really don't want to screw up, and because I don't know what any of the standards or protocols or the like are, I feel like I'm stepping on eggshells every single second.

It really is just me too, because everyone I've talked to there is super nice and helpful. I was assigned a buddy, who is nice, the group I work with is really small, the overall department meeting I went to today was actually fun because the fifty-some people in the department and the VP were all joking and laughing and the like. So it is a good environment once I get used to it and know what I'm doing. But meanwhile, it's completely stressing me out because I worry about everything... going home at 5:30 (will they think I am a slacker? But I have nothing due... but other people are still here....), writing emails, everything. Ugh. I know the going home stress is from ibanking -- when you feel guilty about going home at 2 in the morning because everyone else is staying till 4, you know there's some problem.

I just really don't want to screw up.

Weird thing... during the dept. meeting, the VP was introducing the new people (hires and contractors), and the guy sitting behind me looked really familiar and had a familiar-sounding name. Turns out he is a fairly regular trader at the bookstore! So that was really strange talking to him, clash of my two worlds. I still miss the bookstore. How does everyone manage to check their LJs and post and the like from their jobs?

And now, that icon meme that was going around a while back...
( Meme )

Random thoughts:

Listening to "It Sucks to Be Me" along with "Schadenfreude" makes me giggle at the irony.

I guess iconning goes along in trends like everything else does. It's weird because a lot of the ones I've seen lately in communities and whatnot are all this sort of monotonish color, very faded. It's a trend that drives me absolutely crazy (sort of like the low-low-waist pants). I think it's because I like bright colors and clear images, and it's really annoying when I have to squint at the icon for several seconds just to figure out who's in it, much less what they're doing or what the text is. Plus, as mentioned, I like colors and sharp images. The boy is perpetually amused whenever I walk through Target and see bright colors and go ooooooo. Particularly if they are plaid or polka dotted. I fear my aesthetic sensibilities are straight from the fifties, heh. Er. That was my random observation of the day.

Instead of doing useful stuff today, I went through my LJ memories and compiled a giant Excel list of books I have read this year. Never let it be said that I am not a total dork ;). Apparently, I've read a grand total of 97 so far, and yet I haven't even made a dent in the list of Books-To-Read. I rather like my list though -- I find myself sort of ogling at its lovely alphabetical-order-ness. It's very much like that satisfaction I get when I have an organized bookshelf with everything in the right place. The best part is the manga section of the store (which I am doing now, whoo), because the giant series all look the same and when they are organized, it is a quite satisfactory wall of books, all about the same size too.

Hrm. Maybe I was a librarian in a past life or something.

Because I think they're pretty...

Images from Dark Garden.

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As usual, have fun, please share, feel free to modify.

Because the stills were gorgeous.

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Made some Hero icons, because the movie is just too gorgeous.

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( More here )

Tags: icons, movies

Current Mood: pleased

Alias icons below (all Lauren):

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Actually, it's all Lauren/Melissa George icons, because I like her a lot.

Two have some nudity. Screencaps from wisteria_, Alias official site, and the official Melissa George fansite.

( Icons )

Don't think I've ever made that many icons at once before. The official fansite just had waaaay too many pretty pictures of MG. As always, want, take, have. Feel free to customize, or if you want, feel free to ask me to add text for you. Enjoy!

Below are some more fun Connor icons, and a few Alias ones.

( Icons )

( Connor icons )