So it was pointed out to me by ashlultum while I was in my state of raptured squealing that yes, you can make pimping posts on dates not the tenth (which, I had considered before for other things, but you all will have to wait another 24 days for those). So here we go! I saw one thing by this girl on deviantart and looked up her gallery, and then had to call my roomie over in order to have someone to fangirl to about this.

( They look delicious, but you can't eat them )

I've been planning another post for, like, two months now, but it's a bit long and it just isn't happening. So I give you: art! In multiple forms.

( Giant image heavy post will eat your computer )

I...could not resist putting these up, as I am inordinately proud of how I manipulated the colors and OMG TRICIA HELFER *ahem* rewatching the miniseries.

Please credit, comment, no hotlinking, and yes you can alter.

Contents:

Battlestar Galactica miniseries and series

( Sooo many hot women...and yes, the cylons are cute. )

Sooooo there's this gal gabzillaz who I watch on Deviantart, and she uploaded this really awesome fanart of Firefly, and I asked her if I could icon it, and she said yes, and aren't my stories just great? Anyway, here are the results of an evening watching Battlestar Galactica while iconing.

Please comment, credit, no hotlinking, and no altering in this case.

Contents:
Firefly fanart by gabzillaz

( Yeah, totally should have been doing homework. Woops! )

Because I can never find icons of this movie (I sense a theme with this), I decided to make some of my own.

Please comment, credit, no hotlinking, and yes to altering but I would like to see the result.

Contents:
Paprika

( Very pretty movie from a pretty darned good director. )

I actually didn't even think about the date until two days ago when somebody said "Hey, isn't the tenth coming up?", so yesterday I threw together a sort of mishmash of various sites I have bookmarked for some reason or another.

( Theme? What theme? )

The 110 banned books meme, taken from ashlultum . Bold the titles of the books you've read; italicize the ones you've skimmed/skipped around in.

( Lots of books I've never read )

So decided for this tenth to go with webcomics. I used to be a huge webcomic whore, but I've weeded it down to a manageable twenty or so now. Okay, so I don't actually check on them mor than once a year, but hey, at least they're still in my bookmarks, right? Right?

Anyway, first of the offerings is a webcomic called Shrub Monkeys. It's done by a girl called Kt Shy (who has a deviantart where she puts art and links to updates, for those who care: ktshy devart), and she chronicles her silly adventures with friends and family. What's that? You want plot? What do you think this is, a literary work? Nah, it's all just silly fun, and her drawing style is such that she spares no one, herself included. Check her comic out here:

Shrub Monkeys, and she had no idea about the dictionary definition when she named it.


My second webcomic, called Catharsis, is one dear to my heart solely for the cute. That should be sufficient warning for most of those who know me. It features a woman who has a pet dragon, and gains a squirrel and fluffballs from under the couch along the way (yeah, this was my crack for a while, see why yet?). It's very cute, the art evolves (and gets better) as you move through the years, and she also makes some bitchin' little sculptures as you get nearer the present. (Note: I haven't looked at this one in quite a while, but best I can do is suggest you start at the beginning and work your way up. It's fun.)

I don't know about the rest of you, but I would totally want a pet dragon and squirrel and for the fluffs under my bed to come to life.

That'll do for now; I have more, but they're slightly more catered to specific tastes, and I wanted to go for as broad an audience as possible. Hope everyone enjoys!

A small icon post. I saw the most adorable picture of whales on Deviantart and couldn't resist asking to icon them.

Please credit; comment; no hotlinking; feel free to alter the LitW ones, but the whales aren't mine, so no to them.

Contents:

Lady in the Water (caps for first two by edele, third cap by inadream_caps
whales picture by JackPot-84

ETA: Link to the original whale picture: whales!

( Adorable whales under cut )

So it was a slow process, but I am finally writing about the Spain trip. (Apologies to those for whom this is a repeat, it's exactly the same as the email.)

( Fun tiemz )

So I was entirely unprepared for this date, but luckily stormantia's post reminded me, and I pulled a few websites from my bookmarks list. This month's theme is reviewers.

I'll start with an Australian reviewer I watch who does video games. He's a very funny man, although he does like his curses, and he seems to be a bit of a people hater. But, his videos are fun to watch, they come out on a weekly basis, and who doesn't want to see a four minute review called Zero Punctuation because he talks so fast there's no time for punctuation?

website: Zero Punctuation


The other site I'll link is another reviewing site, although of a different sort. I'm actually only linking one reviewer on it, because the rest of them I consider mediocre to boring (but don't take my word for it; perhaps my tastes are simply not of the right sort to appreciate the rest) (also, for those curious, I do like The Dudette's Nostalgia Chick reviews, and Linkara's AT4W, just not as much as the Nostalgia Critic stuff). His name is That Guy With The Glasses, and he has a few different ways of reviewing, but my favorite is his Nostalgia Critic reviews; generally these go for older TV shows/movies/stuff that would be considered stereotypically "geeky" (for example: Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles). They also have a 50/50 chance of being terrible movies/shows/etc., which means the bounds of my incredulity as to what can actually be created and marketed to the masses have been broken.

website: That Guy With The Glasses

And thus concludes the first 10th of Awesome post.

Urgh, I am so tired right now...Erin, I said to myself, why not finish all those icons you have pictures for? It'll only take you until 1 in the morning! And then copy-pasting them into Photobucket and then into Bauble, that can't take too long! Anyway...At eibheall's request, lots of Sandman icons.

Contents:

Sandman, assorted characters in no particular order.

Comment; credit; no hotlink; feel free to alter.


( And it's not even my bedtime yet. )

More icons, because I like Toph. About the first eleven are redoes of ones from my first post; the rest are new. And, I'm still open to requests or suggestions; can't promise I'll do it, but it'll be taken into consideration.

( The work is never finished. )

Got a meme from eibheall; you shout 'WORDS!' at me, then I reply with five words that I think are related to you somehow. You then have to post those words and an explanation of why I might have said them about you. My words from her (which are all too easy to explain):

( Words behind cut )

During the past school year, as some of you may know, I read the book The Count of Monte Cristo. About a week ago, I watched the movie by the same name, and just half an hour ago I finished the anime Gankutsuou: The Count of Monte Cristo. See a pattern? Well, after going to all that work, I've decided I'm going to do something I rarely do: review. I'll go in order of what I consider worst to best, and there will be spoilers within this post, so read at your own risk. I'll try to identify the really big ones.

( On to my ramblings. )

spiderstars (who also wrote a post on this) recently sent me this link: http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2009/05/manga-porn/
To summarize it, there's a guy who bought manga (Japanese comics) that evidently had what the government deemed representations of children in sexual situations in them. Because of a law that says that representations of children having sex are now illegal, this guy is facing up to fifteen years in jail.

What?

This is bad censorship. Any time there is a situation in which you are telling someone that they cannot read something (excepting the protection of children from mature content, which does not apply here as this guy was most definitely over 21), it is bad. You should have the right to read what you want, even if it might not be to others' tastes.

Additionally, I have beefs with the law beyond the violation of rights it represents. The law says (http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/18/1466A.html) that the media, in order to violate the law, must "lack serious literary, artistic, political, or scientific value." I'm sorry, but what exactly is "serious literary, artistic, political, or scientific value?" How does one determine/rate that? What scale are we using, and who created it? Under these rules, one could make a case that Lolita, which is considered to be an excellently written (if disturbing) and highly lauded book about the relationship between a thirteen year old girl and an older man, could be considered illegal. Or you could make the case that it would be legal judging by its "serious literary" value. The law's guidelines are such that a case could be made for virtually anything either way. (Now I'm not saying that the case would be particularly good for a lot of publications, but it could still be made)

And, as told in the article, "the Protect Act narrows the prohibition to cover only depictions that the defendant’s community would consider “obscene.”" WHAT community!? WHICH community!? The one in which he physically lives? The one from whom he got his comics? The 'community' of his peers, aka the jury? And the prosecutors could, in theory, handpick whatever 'community' they wanted (except the jury one) so that yes, it would be considered obscene.

Neil Gaiman, author of the Sandman series (which is one of my favorites of all time), has put his two cents in on the issue, weighing in on the side of Christopher Handley (the accused). (Read more here, or keep reading for some highlights: http://splashpage.mtv.com/2008/11/24/neil-gaiman-on-the-obscenity-of-manga-collector-christopher-handleys-trial/ ) Neil's hooked up with Black Phoenix Alchemy Labs to create a perfume line based on his books in order to raise money for Handley's defense. Additionally, he's gone on record (as the interview says) defending Handley's right to his books, and even saying that he himself could be considered to be breaking the law with his books (see what I mean about really general judging rules?). Gaiman supported another comic collector a while back when on Free Comics Day, comic shop owner Gordon Lee's employee accidentally gave a minor a comic with *gasp!* depictions of buttocks in it. The kid's mom protested, Lee was sued, and the charges were finally dropped after hundreds of thousands of dollars were spent over an accident. (Link to article: http://www.mtv.com/movies/news/articles/1585974/story.jhtml ) Now, Gaiman said something I find rather interesting in this article:
"It's cost the fund $100,000," Gaiman said, "and I think it was starting to edge into the millions for the city of Atlanta. The reason why this was so ridiculous, so iniquitous and should be stopped is that you're in a world where someone like Gordon would just be driven out of business. A comic book shop does not have the financial resources of a state that has decided its intention or function is to put you into jail or drive you out of business."
He's got a good point. The people who are prosecuting for these "crimes" have lots and ltos of money to back them. The comic collectors and shop owners? Not so much, which is why the Comic Book Legal Defense Fund is such a lovely organization (I won't get into that now, but the short version is that they paid and are paying for the defenses of both men mentioned in this post). Now I'm sorry, but I didn't realize that comic book collectors were such an evil lot.

Several points I'd like to make before I wrap up this (rambling) post, one of which probably some of you have seen in spiderstars's post. Even if you want to say that these comics depicting children having sex has no "serious literary, artistic, political, or scientific value" (god, that makes me angry every time I write it), it can serve a purpose. I've heard the argument used for (consensual of-age) porn before that it can be used as a safety valve; should you have a person who has the urge to go out and rape or perform other morally reprehensible acts, and they are able to curb the impulse to perform those acts by watching porn, then you'd say that porn would be a very good thing, right? Now let's extend that to drawn depictions of kids having sex. If that's what it takes to keep a guy (or girl) from becoming a pedophile/rapist, then I'd say that that comic is performing a good function. Maybe that wasn't why Handley bought this stuff, but that doesn't make the argument any less valid. Additionally, the term "minor" encompasses a lot of ground. We'll say you're no longer a minor at 18. Well, let's also say that you went through puberty at age 13. That makes five years in which you can be sexually active and have PLENTY of hormones racing through your system. Ever read a book from the teen fiction section that included two characters having sex (even the "fade to black" type)? Well, there's a good chance they were minors. Kids who have not yet gone through puberty are a rather different case (at least in my mind) than some group of teenaged high schoolers, although whatever the comics this guy had, this whole prosectution situation, and the law itself, are wrong.

Ugh, that turned into a monster. If I've missed any points, then feel free to give 'em to me. Hell, feel free to argue with me.

Short one today. These are all from the movie The Fall, an excellent and very pretty movie for those of you who have time and opportunity. Highly recommend it.

Contents:

The Fall

Please comment with what you take; credit; no hotlinking; and feel free to alter, but I'd like to see what it ends up as.

( Beautiful movie. Go watch it. )

And another batch now that my paper's done. And you're all going to have to deal with my way of identifying the different Fantasia sequences. They make sense (mostly).

Contents:

Fantasia 2000
- whales
- butterflies
- nutcracker
- jazztown
- spring

Fantasia
- goldfish

Runaways
- Molly
- Chase
- Gert
- Karolina

Please comment; credit; no hotlinking; and you're welcome to alter, but I'd love to see the final product.

( Gotta have time for a little fun, right? )

Finally able to upload this batch. More variety this time. I apologize for the quality of some, especially the Sandman ones; I couldn't find too many decent pictures, so I just took what I could get.

Contents:

The Sandman, by Neil Gaiman
The Incredibles (Edna Mode)
Mulan
Fantasia 2000 (Spring)
Lena Fujii
Nozomi Sasaki

Please let me know what you take and credit; no hotlinking; and if you want alter, you're quite welcome to, but I would like to see the end result.

( Variety, the spice of life )