Fading Coal

Call for help

2008-02-04T15:58:53Z

Somehow I managed to delete most of my User Info page. D'Oh! If you were one of my affiliates, and I haven't restored you yet, PLEASE let me know. I have serious memory suckage due to MS, middle-age, and my brain in general. Also if I had something of yours listed under Useful Icon Links, also please let me know. I'd be most appreciative.

National Coming Out Day

2007-10-11T20:11:02Z

In honor of National Coming Out Day, I have two icons to unveil. Granted, they're not my best, but I've had a bad week. No a bad month. Oh, never mind. MS sucks, but you knew that.

Oh, I thought I'd let y'all know that I'm a lesbian. Yep. Now don't be overcome with shock or anything, now. But if you happen to know any available (doesn't have to be monogamous; if possible, I wouldn't be) lesbians in a grown-up sort of age range who are into fandom, preferably the Whedonverse, and happen to be kinky and toppish, and have a burning desire to visit Chino, CA and play with naughty toys, just send her on over. :-)

As always, please credit to fading_coal or astarte59. Comments are groovy. :-) And Happy Coming Out Day!

And now they're back?

2007-08-21T04:26:59Z

And when I last looked, all the places where icons were supposed to be had small blue question marks. Like I said, for the past few months, I'd try to upload something new to weblogimages, and the direct link never worked, but everything that had already been there was there and working. I was thinking of switching to Photobucket anyway, on the assumption that I'll have some new icons to post one day. And then it looked like I'd have to rebuild this entire journal, and now I find my icons, resource preview images, etc. all back.

Color me confused . . .

Vanished icons

2007-08-20T19:05:01Z

Yes, I know all my images have vanished, except User Pics. Blame it all on weblogimages; they worked great for a couple of years and then direct links for new uploads stopped working and now nothing is working. So I'll be spending a lot of time w/ Photobucket. weblogimages never answered any of my reports to them of problems. I think it's basically been dying for a while, but I do wish I could do something painful to whoever's responsible.

Icon Meme

2007-08-05T03:53:29Z

Nicked from unmasked_icons

icon meme

Reply to this post, and I will tell you my favorite icon of yours. Then post this to your own journal using your own favorite icon.

x-posted at astarte59

Giles icons

2005-09-09T21:36:40Z

This is my third batch for icons100

Teasers:

21) Kiss 22) 23) Embrace 24) Why 25) Desire 26) My Drug 27) Companionship 28) I've Been Bad 29) Full of Regret 30)

Resources in my User Info, and each icon has individual credits here.

In #23 the dialog is from BTVS, "Tabula Rasa."

Take, use, enjoy, but please credit (and comments are cool too). :-)

BTVS Icons

2005-09-05T00:46:08Z

My first batch for the icons100 challenge.

Teasers:

1) Red 2) All That I Am 3) Kiss 4) Sunshine 5) Alone 6) Full of Regret 7) Mine 8) Secrets 9) Trouble in Paradise 10) Smile

Resources in my User Info, and each icon has individual credits here.

The lyric in #9 is from "I'll Never Tell," BTVS, "Once More With Feeling."

Take, use, enjoy, but please credit (and comments are cool too). :-)

Giles icons

2005-09-01T04:00:37Z

My second batch for icons100

Teasers:

11) Wicked 12) A Dreamer's Dream 13) 14) Misery 15) Magical 16) Hush 17) Snarky 18) All That I Am 19) 20) Ice

Resources in my User Info, and each icon has individual credits here.

Take, use, enjoy, but please credit (and comments are cool too). :-)

Icon textures

2005-08-29T04:22:53Z

Here's a set that actually has textures with subtle colors as well as bright ones. :-) The images are based on my own photographs as well as photos from stock.xchng. Take, use, enjoy, but please credit (and comments are cool too). :-)

Download here

Xena icons

2005-08-27T09:55:08Z

My last batch for the icons100 challenge!

Teasers:

91) 92) 93) 94) 95) 96) 97) 98) 99) 100)

Resources in my User Info, and each icon has individual credits here.

All previous icons in this journal as well as at my web page.

Take, use, enjoy, but please credit (and comments are cool too). :-)

Battlestar Galactica icons

2005-08-26T01:24:01Z

Teasers:

Be warned: One of the icons behind the cut is specifically spoilerly for Season 2, "Home, Part 1." Other icons contain vague spoilers for all of Season 1.

1) 2) 3) 4) 5) 6) 7) 8) 9) 10) 11) 12)

Resources in my User Info, and each icon has individual credits here.

I was in a definite Neil Gaiman mood when I made some of these. The quote in #1 is from The Sandman: Season of Mists, and the quotes in #2 and #12 are from The Sandman: The Kindly Ones.

Take, use, enjoy, but please credit (and comments are cool too). :-)

Giles icons

2005-08-23T05:27:16Z

This is my first batch of Giles icons for icons100.

Teasers:

1) Flower 2) Water 3) Fury 4) Laughter 5) All is Wrong 6) Sorrow 7) Green 8) Secrets 9) Alone 10)

Resources in my User Info, and each icon has individual credits here.

The quote in #2 is from T.S. Eliot's "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock." (Pretentious, much? :-) ) The lyrics in #10 are from The Who, "Behind Blue Eyes," Who's Next (MCA, 1971).

Take, use, enjoy, but please credit (and comments are cool too). :-)

Xena icons

2005-08-21T02:28:06Z

This is my ninth batch in the icons100 challenge.

Teasers:

81) 82) 83) 84) 85) 86) 87) 88) 89) 90)

Resources in my User Info, and each icon has individual credits here.

The quote in #83 is from XWP, "Amphipolis Under Siege."

Take, use, enjoy, but please credit (and comments are cool too). :-)

Xena icons

2005-08-16T02:51:34Z

This is my 8th batch of icons for the icons100 challenge.

Teasers:

71) 72) 73) 74) 75) 76) 77) 78) 79) 80)

Resources in my User Info, and each icon has individual credits here.

The lyrics in #74 are from Talking Heads, "People Like Us," True Stories (Sire Records Company, 1986), although I was thinking of John Goodman's performance of the song in the movie when I made the icon.

Take, use, enjoy, but please credit (and comments are cool too). :-)

Hercules and the male (???) gaze

2005-08-13T04:48:51Z

So just about exactly 30 years ago now, a film scholar named Laura Mulvey wrote an article called "Visual Pleasure and the Narrative Cinema," which defines "the erotic pleasure in film" in terms of voyeurism, sadism, and "the fetishistic representation of the female image." The male viewer, according to her thesis, identifies with the "omnipotence" of the male protagonist and the "active power of the erotic look." In a later essay, "Afterthoughts on 'Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema,'" she addresses the female spectator, arguing that she oscillates between a "transvestite" masculinization (in identifying with the male hero) and "passive femininity." She condemns scopophilia--which she defines as arising "from pleasure in using another person as an object of sexual stimulation through sight"--and her split between the "active/male" subject who gazes and "passive/female" object of the gaze. Well, there's certainly enough truth to her argument if you're looking at classic cinema, but at the same time, I found her approach binary and reductionist. I don't think she ever deals adequately with "the female gaze," and it never occurs to her to wonder about a "lesbian gaze." What happens when the hero is female? Where do the viewers' identifications lie? Her worst crime, in my humble opinion, was introducing the phrase "the male gaze" to the language, where it became ubiquitous and omnipresent in film criticism, literary criticism, art criticism, and probably architectural criticism for the next couple of decades.

What does this have to do with Hercules the Legendary Journeys, I hear you ask. One thing I've always liked about XWP and HTLJ was that the heroes of both series were equally heroic and equally babe-a-licious, although Hercules was a good deal more nurturing than Xena. What HTLJ did particularly well on occasion was not only present its hero as a sex object, but also include a kind of meta self-consciousness about doing so, including characters in the episode who are in awe of Herc's hunkiness, thereby standing in for the viewing audience. This type of play with the "gaze" tended to occur in episodes directed by Michael Hurst, who also played Hercules' sidekick Iolaus and the ambiguously gendered Widow Twanky (is MH playing a woman, is he playing a man in drag, or a transgendered woman?), an occasonal character who obviously lusts after her "hunky Herc." In a fifth season episode, "Greece is Burning," Twanky describes Hercules as "a sight for sore thighs" and strokes his biceps, exclaiming "I haven't felt anything that hard in a long time!" The episode title, of course, refers to Paris is Burning, the 1980 documentary about New York drag queens, further evoking a queer resonance. In Twanky's initial appearance in the episode titled, " . . . And Fancy Free," Twanky teaches Hercules to "dance" by evoking his ability to fight together with a partner, using the same moves that Hercules and Iolaus use in a typical fight.

So what does this have to do with icons, I hear you cry. In "Greece is Burning," there's a wonderful scene in which Hercules is pouring a bucket of water over himself, and the camera lingers lovingly on the drops of water making their way down his chest. Hurst, the director of the episode, certainly seems to be playing with the idea of the "gaze." The camera switches between Hercules and three viewers: a young man, a young woman, and the Widow Twanky, and there is, in fact, a lingering shot of the Widow Twanky's eye. So much for the male gaze and the passive female object. I've always loved that scene and have been wanting to make an icon representing it for some time now. So, I'll now shut up, to your sighs of relief, and let the picture do the talking. :-)

Resources are in my Resource Post, and each icon has individual credits here.

Take, use, enjoy, but please credit (and comments are cool too). :-)

Icon Textures

2005-08-11T18:40:08Z

Here's my 4th set of icon textures. They're very colorful--subtlety is apparently not my strong point. Most of the textures are based on images from stock.xchng, except for the very bright picture of a sunset and the variations of it. That image came from the Xena Warrior Princess episode, "Daughter of Pomira," and I got the screencap at Mike's Images. Both are included in my Resource list in my User Info.

Download here

Previous sets can be found in the Memories.

Xena icons

2005-08-10T01:25:18Z

This is my 7th batch of icons for the icons100 marathon. All themes completed!

Teasers:

61) Fury 62) Hush 63) 64) Love 65) 66) 67) 68) 69) 70)

Resources in my User Info, and each icon has individual credits here.

The lyric in #63 is from Nine Inch Nails, "hurt," The Downward Spiral (Nothing TVT/Interscope, 1994). The dialog in #64 is from XWP, "One Against an Army."

Take, use, enjoy, but please credit (and comments are cool too). :-)

Celebrity icons

2005-08-09T00:51:42Z

A while back there was a meme involving posting pictures of the 10 celebrities you find most attractive. At the time, I made an idle comment about making icons of the pictures I posted, and I finally finished them. :-) Although Sigourney Weaver is always one of the top two on my list (the other being Patrick Stewart), I didn't make an icon for her, b/c dragonladych had made me two lovely SW icons recently, one of which you see here. I also mentioned James Marsters, but mostly *as Spike*, and his new icon is included in my previous post of BTVS icons. So you get 8 celebs here, plus a bonus icon of Patrick Stewart. :-)

Teasers:
1) 2)

3) 4) 5) 6) 7) 8) 9)

Resources in my User Info, and each icon has individual credits here. But I must make special mention of pekeana's lovely borders, which allowed me to make some very nice icons with very little work, esp. #2, #4, and #8.

Take, use, enjoy, but please credit (and comments are cool too). :-)

BTVS and ATS icons

2005-08-08T08:27:01Z

Teasers:

1) 2)

3) 4) 5) 6) 7) 8) 9) 10)

Resources in my User Info, and each icon has individual credits here.

"Love is Blindness" is the title of a song from U2's Achtung Baby (Island Records, 1991). The quote in #6 is from BTVS, "Reptile Boy." The quote in #7 is from Neil Gaiman, The Sandman: The Doll's House. The quote in #9 is from BTVS, "Out of Mind, Out of Sight," and I was waxing rhapsodic about it in my personal LJ here, then decided I had to make it into an icon. :-)

Take, use, enjoy, but please credit (and comments are cool too). :-)

Xena icons

2005-08-05T04:02:14Z

Here's the sixth batch of icons for icons100.

Teasers:

51) Kiss 52) 53) Brightness 54) From Now On 55) Joy 56) Hope 57) Colorful 58) 59) All is Right 60) Reminisce

Resources in my User Info, and each icon has individual credits here.

#58 was created using the Mini-Mizer at Reasonably Clever with some touching up added in PS7. I also have a Mini Spike here.

Take, use, enjoy, but please credit (and comments are cool too). :-)

Xena icons

2005-07-31T03:09:06Z

This is my fifth batch for the icons100 marathon. Halfway there!

Teasers:

41) So Close Yet So Far Away 42) Alone 43) Fire 44) Green 45) Why 46) Trouble in Paradise 47) Sunshine 48) 49) Mine 50) Rain

Resources in my User Info, and each icon has individual credits here.

Take, use, enjoy, but please credit (and comments are cool too). :-)

Texture Set #3

2005-07-28T23:27:52Z

This is a set of 30 textures that was kind of an experiment--how many textures could I make using one image as the base? The image was cropped from a photograph of a sunrise from stock.xchng (http://www.sxc.hu/), and using Photoshop's filters I was able to create a set of colored and grayscale abstract textures, many of which bear no resemblance to the original photograph. It was a lot of fun to do, and I hope you find the textures useful in icon creation.

Download here

Icon Textures

2005-07-25T04:56:53Z

Abstract icon textures based on images of fire, sunsets, and trees, and three original images. Many are variations of the same in different colors or desaturated for flexibility. Please credit to astarte59 if you use.

Download here

Xena icons

2005-07-25T00:10:04Z

This is my fourth batch of icons for the icons100 marathon.

Teasers:

31) Time 32) Blue 33) Tears 34) Glory 35) I've Been Bad 36) Smile 37) Forgotten 38) 39) 10) Embrace

Resources in my User Info, and each icon has individual credits here.

Take, use, enjoy, but please credit (and comments are cool too). :-)

Xena icons

2005-07-20T05:21:31Z

This is my third batch of icons for the icons100 marathon.

Teasers:

21) Desire 22) 23) 24) Full of Regret 25) Sorrow 26) Flowers 27) 28) Ice 29) Magical 30) Beautiful

Resources in my User Info, and each icon has individual credits here.

Take, use, enjoy, but please credit (and comments are cool too). :-)