Seven Icons I Misinterpret

[melannen]

Also, while I am posting silly short things, I have recently been making a collection of Icons I Always Misinterpret Amusingly, so here, for your pleasure, is the first batch. :)

(If one of these is yours, please understand, I am not trying to criticize your taste in icons! I am just trying to evilly put these images into your heads too, okay. ...also an object lesson in making good use of your icon description fields.)

- havocthecat uses this as default, and I see it a lot on network and femmslash discussions. I presume from style that the base is a pre-Raphaelite painting, and it's described as the Lady of Shalott. Said Lady is crouched over, just barely fitting in the icon frame, with her hands sort of pulled back along her sides. She has a kind of dark and disgruntled expression, with the caption "Half Sick of Shadows," and it really looks like she's holding something sharp and pointy in her right hand. I'm pretty sure it's just an illusion, since it's Shalott and not MacBeth, but still, every time I see this icon, my first thought is "somebody's gonna get stabbed."

- This is kerri's default, but I think there's at least one other person in fandom using a very similar base, so it must be from something fannish? I don't know who it really is, but for some reason (maybe the color palette?) in my head it's an adolescent Luke Skywalker sulking in a back corridor of Tosche Station. While not wearing any pants. Obviously.

- This one is marginaliana's. It is either a normal-sized dachsund carrying a large plush penis in its mouth, or a very small dachsund carrying a very large cigarette butt, I can't decide. The description just calls it his "toy", but, well, if I had a dachsund and a plush penis, it would absolutely end up as a dog toy, so that doesn't really solve anything.

- this one is simonejester's. It is a tiny cute toy robot attempting (and failing due to scale issues) to use an Xbox controller. However, Xbox controllers just aren't a major part of my personal iconography, and I always see it as either a tiny robot fry cook at a stove or a tiny robot DJ spinning tunes (mostly depending on how hungry I am.)

- snowynight is a another person I see around a lot but don't have friended. The given description of this icon is "an Asian doctor who's also Captain America" but for some reason, I see the shape in the background as the bottom half of a Star Trek logo, so to me it will always be an Asian doctor who's also Captain America who really wants to join Starfleet.

- starfish uses this one often, and labels it "Joe Dick Bleak Face". Presumably this is Joe Dick from Hard Core Logo? I always see it as Cameron Mitchell, because I am bad at actor faces at the best of times, and since it's just a partial profile, it seems to hit Vala's "Earth has a very limited gene pool" problem straight on...

- staranise has a glass teacup with some star anise floating in it as a default; reasonable enough. However, I frequently stare at it trying to figure out what the anise is floating in. It looks like lime Jello. Apparently it is mint tea and not actually lime Jello? It still looks like lime Jello to me.


...this list does not of course include the icons where I'm pretty sure the ambiguity is deliberate. Or the entire category of "I know what you look like in RL, and I doubt you intend that icon as an avatar anyway, but it will still always be my mental image of you", of which synecdochic's current default will always be the champion.

ETA: Also I strongly encourage the rest of you to share your accounts of the perils of icon interpretation! It is a fascinating subject, yes?

Comments

[starlady]

See, for me your default icon is the champion of that last category.

[melannen]

Sadly, my default icon is starting to fall into that category for me.

(Although she was picked to some extent as a personal avatar, so she doesn't quite fit the category; I am happy for people to visualize me as her! She matches my self-image in some ways even though they're not ways we normally think of as physical appearance - basically if I looked like Commander Valentine, that's what I would look like :P ...also my hair totally does that kind of thing on its own if I let it.)

[starfish]

Innnnteresting ... I just had to Google images of Ben Browder (oh, my life is SO HARD) but I didn't see any profile shots to compare. I will have to keep looking. ;)

(To tell the truth the reason I use it so often is that it's loaded up on LJ; as one of the few that don't express something silly or overly fannish it gets a workout on serious posts. (Also I can't deny that I think Hugh Dillon is darn good-looking.))

[melannen]

That actor who I can't tell apart from all the other handsome white guy actors really is good-looking, it's true! ;P

Really I don't know if he looks that much like Ben Browder other than the general handsome-white-actor-ness, I think maybe it's the pensive expression as much as anything? Browder's character on Stargate is genearlly an upbeat guy, but he does pensive well (and very prettily...), and there's something about the particular slant of the eyelids or something in that icon...

[busaikko]

This may be why I've been using the same default for ages: utter lack of ambiguity FTW! (I'll be checking back here because I... am really very curious about what that dachshund is carrying >.>

[marginaliana]

Ahem, here's the source for the dachsund (youtube).

[busaikko]

My face: *_____________* -> DDD: Bobo got BINNED ;_;

[busaikko]

Thank you for the link, by the way! *manners failure* He is a cutie... reminds me of my son's Nintendo Dogs game *g*

[melannen]

Yeah, I tried doing that "use lots of icons" thing for awhile, but it just didn't work for me, I had enough trouble figure out what other folks' icons meant, much less mine, so it's been this default for years now. Also I think a default icon, regardless of what it actually looks like, eventually mostly just starts meaning $person, which makes it simpler. I mean when I see Bobo I don't think "penis dog!" I think "Yay it's marginaliana! (and her adorable penis dog aww.)"

[sara]

synechdochic's default is why my son is always really confused about this idea that Denise is a she.

I am okay with icons but I was well into adulthood before I understood that the USPS logo is an eagle and not a man in a beret. I always wondered why you'd have a French guy on the U.S. Mail logo, but figured maybe he's French-Canadian or something. No, he's actually...an eagle.

[verity]

I seriously spent a good three minutes staring at the USPS logo before I saw the man with the beret. Your brain is CREATIVE.

[sara]

Nah, just extremely left-to-right oriented. It's why I'm shit at reading non-flipped manga.

[torachan]

I don't think I knew it was supposed to be an eagle, but I also can't see a man in a beret. It doesn't really look like anything to me!

[sara]

The wing is the pointy bit of the beret, the eagle's white head is his popped collar....

[melannen]

Oh, okay, I think I see it now! He's facing left, yes, and wearing a scarf too? I see the hat more as what I think of as a flat cap than a beret, but yeah. That makes a lot more sense than when I was trying to squint at the version of the logo that has only the eagle's head and neck! (He is clearly bundled up against the rain and snow and gloom of night.)

[sara]

Well, it's either a scarf or he's got really bad posture and is wearing a coat (I usually figured the latter, inasmuch as I thought about it.)

I dunno what the current version looks like. Maybe an eagle's head or something.

[torachan]

Oh, that logo. I was thinking of the current one, which is just the eagle's head.

[highlander_ii]

I don't have the issue so much on journaling services, b/c folks have *many* icons, but on message boards, when I used to frequent those and post a lot and converse w/ folks, if they changed their default icon, it always took me a long time to connect the new icon to the name. And lo, if they ever changed their name! /o\


However - I am still giggling at the 'robot frycook'... lol!


fun fact re me: my default icon has *never* been from the fandom my username comes from, which I just realized as I was typing this up. It's been Spike, Hugh Jackman and Hugh Laurie, but not once has it been Connor MacLeod... I may have to fix that some day. XD

[melannen]

I was on one forum where nearly everybody used a single default, and then some of the regulars started swapping their defaults around just for giggles, and I was confused for weeks. I have enough trouble with that on DW/LJ. (Especially reading LJ news post threads, where there will be a lot of fandom people I don't otherwise have contact with, and a fairly good chance a stranger will turn up using a somewhat familiar icon.)


...wait, Highlander II is a fandom? I thought there was never a 2nd Highlander movie, they just skipped to 3 for some reason!* I figured your lack of other Highlander references was an in-joke on that or something.


*note: I have only seen Highlander II in Spanish. With a snowed-out picture. And have never seen I or III. So I am not qualified to have opinions on it. (Also there was no fifth Highlander movie, either.)

[highlander_ii]

My username is, in actuality, the 'in joke'. All started w/ a college prof who picked up on ONE LINE in a paper I wrote that referenced the ozone-layer replacement shield from the 2nd movie. It kinda stuck.

There are 2 versions of the 2nd movie - one says all immies are from another planet, and thus are aliens that the X-Files might investigate; the other says they are from the v. distant past and were 'banished to the future' (which makes about as much sense, but WHATEVER). Personally, I rather like the 2nd movie, plot-wise, and I think old-man-Connor is adorkable.

HL:III is a horrid re-telling of HL:I and, aside from the parts w/ Mario van Peebles, the movie is dreadful. HL:IV & HL:V DO. NOT. EXIST. in my canon. CONNOR IS NOT A COWARD AND WOULD NOT HIDE FROM ANYONE! *ahem*

But, my default icon hasn't ever been from Highlander canon in general. No idea why, actually. Now I might have to keep it that way just for consistency and lolz. =)

[staranise]

When I change my default, I post to let people know, like:

= staranise =

[highlander_ii]

=)

Mine usually changes when I change the layout for my journal... which I haven't done in forever....

[lian]

ROBOT KITCHEN

!!1

[melannen]

Now I kind of want an Xbox controller just so I can use it as tiny robot furniture!

[marginaliana]

Hahaha! I think for mine, the source (youtube) makes it clear that it is a large plush dachsund toy and not a penis, but now I'm not going to be able to un-see that.

(Wow, that commercial was 5 years ago!)

[melannen]

OH HEY. I even see the ears in your icon now! That commercial is indeed adorable, and I've known too many grouchy Dachsunds to easily see them as adorable. :)

...still looks like a penis though.

[holyschist]

Or the entire category of "I know what you look like in RL, and I doubt you intend that icon as an avatar anyway, but it will still always be my mental image of you"

This is my favorite category of icon.

...do you imagine me as a man-eating medieval crocodile? :D :D I hear many people do.

[melannen]

Sort of, but not really? Usually I only do this with icons that depict humanoid beings, I have to say, unless I have a particular reason to visualize them as something else. In other cases I usually visualize the person as existing just off-screen from the icon, with the image part of their environment. So staranise isn't a teacup of green jello, she's just sitting next to it, being in the vicinity of teacups. (tbh, "in the vicinity of teacups" is about as good a physical description as you'll get from me half the time, I am not a visually-oriented person.)

Which is to say I imagine you as a medieval illuminator who has just drawn a picture of a man-eating crocodile, but gotten really bored on the long hot afternoon in the scriptorium, and given the crocodile your face. (presumably the feet belong to whoever it was who commissioned you to illustrate yet *another* bloody bestiary.)

[holyschist]

Hee! That's even better. That is going to be my headcanon for how that illustration came to be now.

[staranise]

You are being eaten by a medieval crocodile.

[holyschist]

I often feel that way.

[lady_ganesh]

Yes. Yes I do.

[lannamichaels]

Oh, yeah, by their default icons shall ye know them! ALL THE TIME, and a lot of times wondering what/who on earth something/someone is (thank you, people who put comments and descriptions in). I assume you look like your default. ;) I always end up hating my default icon because I see it so much, and I *should* probably change my default, which is a photo shoot pic of Hugh Grant looking like a vampire, and so looks very weird when it's irrelevant. Maybe go back to this old default one, which is cool and Olympicy. :)

[melannen]

I would never in a million years have guessed that was Hugh Grant! (Of course I only barely have any idea what Hugh Grant looks like, so...) I think I had been assuming it was somebody from one of those old cult vampire fandoms that I've never seen, like Forever Knight or Dark Shadows or Lost Boys.

[lannamichaels]

It's totally Hugh Grant and it's not even from a vampire flick, which makes it awesome. When I saw that photo shoot, I squeed SO SO HARD. I think the only change I made is colorization on the eyes, and even then, that might be in the original. Of all my vampire icons, I think this and Gerry Butler as Dracula are the only ones that aren't paint-shop-proed to look like vampires.

I, uh, have a thing for vampires. And Hugh Grant was an RPG pup, which is why I have a ton of Hugh icons. Although, come to think of it, I'm not sure I ever *finished* any the vampire AUs for him. Huh. *ponders*

[lannamichaels]

Oh, there's this one, which is from Moonlight, an obscure cancelled TV show from a few years back.

[staranise]

That's the way I see my default icon too, really. *g*

[melannen]

In that case, I dare you to change the description. :P

[lady_ganesh]

I have had so many pretty blonds as my defaults that many of my flisters think of me as blonde. (Which I have never, ever been.)

[zlabya]

This post has been such fun! I misread "Half Sick of Shadows" as "Half Stick..." Maybe she's sticking that half stick up her butt.

I wouldn't mind if people think of me as my main icon--though my hair has not been as long as Zlabya's since 1990, and I'm not as dark-skinned and nowhere near as slim in the waist. And My Lord Ivan Vorcatril looks *much* better than the scrawny cat in my icon.