Let's Go Masquerading

[roadrunnertwice]

There's interesting talk about userpics going on; I caught it at damned_colonial's "Icons as representation of self" post. (And she from isis: mini meta fest: userpics.)

Userpics are one of the things I've come to find most interesting about the Dreamwidth/Livejournal format over time. What a strange and wondrous convention! As near as I can tell, they were introduced as a rich feature with a poor schema, so they've been free to develop into... well, hell, all kinds of stuff. So anyway, I started trying to classify my own shit, and isis and damned_colonial's schemae didn't really seem useful for what I'd accreted, and since I'd built up my icon habits in a fairly animistic and ad-hoc way, I didn't have any sort of key ready to hand and had to actually think about it for a few minutes. Here's the best I was able to come up with:

Self-representation (literal and metaphorical)

When I use these, the person in the icon is meant to represent me. (At that particular moment in time. Prices may vary. See anima for details.) Male:female count: 4:4. Actual self count: 2. (And I'm not ultra happy with either one, but I don't have many interesting portraits sitting around. ANYWAY.)

Hexdrivers

More or less single-purpose tools, with varying usefulness. These illustrate some process, a specific (as opposed to pervasive) emotion, or some other transitory internal or external state. Or they just make a joke or cuss some.

Lamps

The most versatile and abstract tranche. More like Tarot cards than anything else, these tend to reflect some less-than-effable gestalt.



And through the whole thing, of course, there's a sort of system of references that identifies my tribe and standing, but at the moment I'm finding strategy less interesting than tactics. Anyway, what'cha all got?

Comments

[roadrunnertwice]

Wow, the distribution of visual noise there is really kind of striking. I hadn't noticed that until I posted it.

[chronographia]

EEiiiiiinterestinkk. I will have to do some thinking about this, because my long history of icons has been sort of a Venn diagram of your categories. Quite a lot of overlap in certain areas. (i.e. My Fandom Talks To Rocks is as much representational of me being lecture-y and misanthropic as well as relevant to general science fiction/artificial intelligence/space clothing™/gratuitous use of hexagons.) After having my icons become more and more condensed on LJ, I don't think I have many metric hexdriver type icons anymore.

::runs off to make Venn diagram::

[nightswatch.livejournal.com]

I'm pretty sure that is the first time Hagrid has ever been referred to as part of "some less-than-effable gestalt."

[gyladia.livejournal.com]

I think I picked up on the self representation thing, and I totally thought Hagrid was part of that.