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.

[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.))

[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 >.>

[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.

[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

[lian]

ROBOT KITCHEN

!!1

[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!)

[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.

[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. :)

[staranise]

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

[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.