User Icons - Where I Find Mine and How I Credit

Recently, I've had several people ask me the source of one or another of my user icons. I'm really pleased that people enjoy my icons; I had a lot of fun finding them and I've done my best to make information about them available, but I've realized that you have to know where to look to find that information. Most of my icons, by the way, have come from one of two sources: lecollage or the fan art icon page at No Rest for the Wicked, a few are from random sources, a few (like my Vorkosigan icons) I've gotten from other users, and a few I've created (with permission!) based on an LJ user's posted art.

I've credited all my icons in two ways. The first way is the more normal way, in the comments for the icon itself; the second way is in my galleries.

Every time we upload an icon to LiveJournal, we have the option of entering a comment. I've used this option to give a short version of any credits for each icon I've uploaded. This information can be viewed by clicking the Profile link that appears when you hover over an icon, then clicking the View all userpics link located under my primary userpic on my profile page. (You can do the same thing for anyone else's icon, too. Crediting is always recommended, although in my experience, not always done.)

I've also got galleries (aka scrapbooks) dedicated to my user pics, where I credit and try to give as much information as possible about the icon, where I got it (or who created the icon), who the original artist is, and the artist's webpage(s), if I have that information. You're welcome to visit my galleries and take a look around; in addition to the galleries dedicated to my icons, I've also got galleries for family photos, some of my travels, some art from my journal (which I've sadly neglected of late), and even an icon I created for LiveJournal users to use on their webpages. (I'll post about that image separately.)

LJ "Widget" Now Available

Not quite a month ago, I went looking for a LiveJournal widget, by which I meant an image I could post on my website, which would link back to my journal. I've got similar widgets for the other venues in which I appear on the web, which are listed on my user profile. The closest I found to what I wanted were the banners listed at http://www.livejournal.com/site/banners.bml. These banners advertise LJ, but they don't link back to an individual journal, and they're all a bit bigger and, uhm, well, less attractive than I wanted. So, I put a notice up on the suggestions board. azurelunatic noticed and helped me to get in contact with an LJ staff member, marta, who told me "Yes, for things like that, you are completely welcome to use the logo."

Having recieved official permission to use the LJ logo, I posted an update and said I'd let everyone know when I had the image ready, After much fiddling around working on other things, and a bit of fiddling around to get the image I wanted, I have finally produced an image which met my standards:



So, until LJ creates an official widget, or changes its collective mind about giving me permission to use their logo, you have my permission to copy this image to your computer, upload it to your website, and use it to link to your journal.

The basic HTML code to link to your journal is:

<a href="h t t p : / / username.livejournal.com/"><img src="path/LJ_widget.png" border="0"></a>

Note 1: You will need to delete the spaces from the code above (which were needed to keep LJ from automatically creating a link), substitute your username for the word "username," and substitute the actual location of your copy of the image for the word "path."

Note 2: Please, don't link back to the image in my galleries. I don't know for sure that it would be a problem, but I'd rather not have to apologize to LJ for bringing down a server.

When Genre Fiction Goes Literary

I knew there was a reason, beyond simple pique, that I disliked seeing genre fiction being marketed as mainstream or literary fiction. Now Kit Whitfield, discussing Saki and Angela Carter's writings about werewolves, in her article "The Story of the Werewolf" in the farewell issue of The Journal of Mythic Arts explains why this is a bad thing for genre fiction.

Saki and Carter are too good to fiddle around with — they stand alone, and elaborating on them seems rather pointless. Besides this, they have both managed the trick we sometimes witness in non–mainstream writing: an author writes a story, in a certain genre, and produces something so well–crafted and intelligent that people end up not thinking of it as a member of that genre at all, but rather as a literary work, which happens to include elements of a particular genre but, as it were, rises above them. Write a good enough genre story, and it doesn't get considered genre. It's a self–perpetuating trend, because if all the best works get officially sublimated out of, say, the horror category, then what's left are the less advanced works, and any author who writes another good horror story will be likewise sublimated out of a kind of critical courtesy, so as not to confound him with the works that have officially failed to transcend their genre and remain just plain horror, romance, or whatever. With all the best examples labelled [sic] as something else, a genre's reputation sinks, ambitious and innovative writers start to avoid it, and it remains publicly perceived as trashy, even when there's no artistic reason why it should be.

What do you think? Is it bad for genre fiction when all the best works are labeled something else? Or does it help the status of the genre to have works that might otherwise be categorized as genre fiction be labeled as literary fiction?