spring, when young people's hearts turn to thoughts of new lj icons

[melannen]

So. I renewed my paid account. And now I plan to spend the evening doing a long-overdue cleaning up of my lj: finish the mood theme at long last, new layout, fix links, look over icons, etcetera, etcetera. And while I'm at it, it's been awhile since I did a comment-whoring post, so I saw this meme in somebody's journal, and hey, why not?

Which of your icons best matches your mental image?

The icon that best matches my image of melannen is . It's Princess Leia, from the pre-ESB, psychedelically illustrated Star Wars picture book The Mystery of the Rebellious Robot. Leia is Skeptical! Probably of whatever nonsense Luke is spouting off, the text doesn't really make it clear why she's rolling her eyes. Man, I could make a whole iconset just from that book, but this was the image that spoke to me loudest.

And here's my friend-of list, in roughly alphabetical order, leaving out only people who don't post enough for me to have a mental image:


My, you're a colorful bunch, you lot. So, tell me which icon I should have picked for you! Tell me which icon I should have picked for me! Ask why I think you are *that* icon, of all things!

Some of you were far harder than others. Actually, having looked at all those userpic pages, a) I wanna bunch of new icons! and b) there seem to be two philosophies of userpic-picking: icons that are meant to actually represent a person, and icons that are just things they like to look at. Often it's mixed, of course, but it's usually pretty easy to see which philosophy dominates.

Okay! Now, back to staring at Snoopys!

Comments

[siegeofangels.livejournal.com]

*cracks up*
*is glad she never did make the John Sheppard "Math class is hard!" icon*

I always see you as your sitting-hugging-your-knees icon. Although I hardly ever have graphics turned on anymore, so.

[melannen.livejournal.com]

That icon would be hilarious! You should! (It still wouldn't be quite as 'you' as flying monkeys, though.)

Ooh, that's one of the paper-doll icons. That's the one that's actually *supposed* to look like me! No fair, cheating! I need to make her a new outfit. With the new haircut, and a cooler hat. I wonder if I have the template still somewhere on this computer.

Huh, no graphics? Are you on a slow connection, or just sick of them? I didn't realize.

[antiscian.livejournal.com]

No, I identify with the Dumpling Man the most!

But seriously though, if I was forced to choose only one of my icons to represent me forevermore on Livejournal, I'd probably pick the smoking girl too. So over-the-top decadent, and therefore amusing. And the fact that it's from a cover of a lesbian novel about the "depravity of the bohemian lifestyle" is just the icing on the cake.

[melannen.livejournal.com]

Oh, darnit, you have no idea how close I came to picking that one! (Have you actually eaten there? It sounds ... interesting.)

I honestly can't remember whether or not I ever met you in person on campus. If I did, Smoking Girl has totally overridden whatever image of you I had from that.

[melsmarsh.livejournal.com]

I think Mike (my default) is pretty close to how I see myself.

[stellar-dust.livejournal.com]

That's definitely the one I'd have picked for me. If not that one, this one. I really wish I knew who made it. Sigh.

For you, of course it's your paper dolls, especially the one in the green skirt. Second choice, naked lily-pad fairy. ;D

[zodiaccat.livejournal.com]

For myself, I'd probably have gone for either the Goomba or Zot.

For you, well jeez! Indian-style paper doll with the green cloak, definitely! (The Leia one comes pretty close, solely for the facial expression.)

For clarification of the meme, you take a look at each of your flists' icons, pick an appropriate one for each, and display?

[melannen.livejournal.com]

This one with the green cloak, or the actual doll one with the green cloak? This one's a watercolor I did; it's still my keenspot avatar, I think - it feels pretty close to me, most of the time. The indian-style doll with the cloak I don't really like that much, actually; I think I made it when I was depressed.

I was very close to picking Zot for you. Also the elefun, or cry, or Daria.

It's not really a meme; I just stole the idea from a random non-flist person. Improvise however you feel like it - I did!

[antiscian.livejournal.com]

Sadly, I've never been there. I just googled "dumplings" one sunny afternoon, and it was in the first three results. The rest is history.

And no, I don't believe we ever met. Too bad. :(

And although everyone else seems to identify you with the paper-doll icons, I'm going to go with that "pensive" one, although if you keep using that Leia icon on a regular basis, it'd probably replace "pensive" in a few months. My El-jay friend perception is all mutable and whatnot.

[melannen.livejournal.com]

That one's also very you, but it looks more like my image of high-school you than now-you, so Scully won out, yay.

It's not a lily-pad! It's a venus's flytrap! It eats other fairies and slowly digests them over a thousand ... hours. It's vicious and capricious and you better Watch Out!

[melannen.livejournal.com]

I was seeing that icon in sister's journal long before I knew anything else about you. I don't think any other icon could make a dent in my image of you.

[stellar-dust.livejournal.com]

I think you confused me by titling it "lily" for years and years and years. Plus with the being all green and things.

[melannen.livejournal.com]

The 'pensive' one is what I *wish* I was like: a mysterious unsigned, unframed chromolithograph found in my grandfather's attic. *grin*. I was using it as my default around the time you friended me, I think, so that makes sense. (And it's still up as my default on my recent-entries page, until I get around to switching my layout.)

[melannen.livejournal.com]

I probably also confused you because a trap usually isn't horizontal like that. (I didn't bother to look in a botany book until I'd already inked the foreground. Oops! The fairy's weight in pushing it over. yes.)

[frey-at-last.livejournal.com]

Interesting, interesting! Are my icons more "representative" or "pretty"? I've always pegged them as the latter - but, to be fair, I usually try to get as close as possible to "iconic representations" of the things I *like*. So huhm.

For me, you are definitely the green fairy, the "basic me doll," or the mathnet one. I can't choose!

[frey-at-last.livejournal.com]

I also vote Scully - but, mostly because she's had it longer.

[melannen.livejournal.com]

Yours are definitely 'pretty' - which is to say, they're about things you like, not about you. You've no idea how close you came to being , just for lack of anything that felt like 'you'.

Then my eye caught the Prydain one, and somehow, yeah, that's what comes to mind as an image of you, really.

Mathnet? Really?

[melannen.livejournal.com]

See, the first few times I saw the bibliophiliac icon, I actually thought it *was* a manipped image of her from high school - that's how much it looks like she did then!

The Scully one is more her these days though.

[frey-at-last.livejournal.com]

Plus, she's totally geeked out in front of a clunky old laptop! Classic.

[frey-at-last.livejournal.com]

Yeah, I agree - I'm not even sure how to go *about* finding or making or using an icon that's about me. Which is sort of ironic, since I consider my journal itself much more a personal journal than a fandomy one; and for the most part, I think that's how my posts go. I definitely use icons more for commenting than posting, most of the time.

Well, I'm mixing my "image" of you/your LJ and my strongest icon-associations with you-the-commenter. Like, if someone walked up to me on the street and asked me to name some of your icons, "the names are made up, but the problems are real" would definitely be one of them.

[zodiaccat.livejournal.com]

I did mean the indian-style cloak doll, mainly because I didn't look closely enough at angel's shoulders, and thought it was just sitting on a green pillow (goes off to change his update).

I actually got compared to Daria several times in school, years ago. XD

[melannen.livejournal.com]

I actually go just about half-and-half - in fact, I counted, and leaving out all the doll-icons that are just different outfits, 32/66 icons are ones that I think of as avatars of me, the others are just cool stuff I wanted to show off. I don't know - I see a picture, and I think, whoa, that could be me, or I wish that were me, and I make an icon of it.

And yeah, the mathnet icon is probably one of my 'signature images' - it's just not one of the ones I think of as representing 'me'.

... are you even old enough to remember Mathnet? q-:

[frey-at-last.livejournal.com]

I've barely even *heard* of Mathnet. :P Not to mention we didn't have cable until around 1996, or extended cable until around 2000.

[melannen.livejournal.com]

Don't go changing it just 'cause I said I didn't like it! It's supposed to be about how I seem to you, not how I like my icons! I was using this for a long time when I was too depressed to make anything else, hence the gloomy colors and dumpiness, and now that I've cheered up a bit it makes me sad, that's all. But I definitely see it as me sometimes, too.

[melannen.livejournal.com]

Mathnet isn't a cable show! It was part of Square One, which was made by the same people as Sesame Street, and it showed on PBS in the early evenings... when you were about four.