armoredsuperheavy

LJ icons came up recently in conversation in another fannish space, which had me digging up the Tumblr post I made a few years ago about the shed freak icons, and I thought I'd preserve it here for posterity as well. 

A million years ago on the internet (or maybe circa 2003-2005) icons for your Livejournal account were a THING. You could have multiple icons for your account (how many varied, and at one point became a paid thing). There were whole conversations had by icon in the comments. In-jokes thrived and flourished. You could pack a whole lot in a 100x100 pixel square.

A million years ago off the internet, my lovely wife and our good friendzulu were critiquing stories for their writers’ group. And there was a story by a newbie writer with a whole lotta attitude that was just… bad. The kind of badness that verges on incomprehensible.

“What does this even mean, ‘don’t tell so-and-so, shed freak?’“ Barb said plaintively. “What’s a shed freak?”

It was, of course, just a case of a missing apostrophe. She’d freak, not shed freak. But by then, it was too late. Shed freak had become a Thing.

All this goes to explain why I have just found an entire folder of shed freak icons buried in the depths of my hard drive, in a microcosm of fandoms we were part of at the moment.

Hard Core Logo

Stargate: Atlantis

This Is Wonderland

X-Files

There’s a whole other series about the organ hat party, but that’s a story for another time.

*
And now, the organ hat story, as relayed on the fanbinding server a few nights ago.

It has the same genesis as Zulu's "Five Times The Big Game Hunters Were Really Gay" Boa vs Python fic, aka, something shouted and misheard from the kitchen to the living room in our small but inconveniently laid out apartment at the time. Only this time, it wasn't movie characters, and Big Gay Hunters for Big Game Hunters. No, it was more mundane, at least to start.

It was December, and we'd been invited to a holiday party by one of my (not yet) wife's coworkers. "What are you wearing to Barb and Pat's party?" I called out into the living room.

"... to what?"

"Tomorrow night? The Christmas party?"

"I thought you said ORGAN HAT party!"

Ridiculousness ensued, and Zulu and Barb riffed off each other until Barb was laughing so hard she couldn't breathe, and gasped out "I hurt my pancreas! Now what will I wear to the organ hat party?"

So we immortalized it in LJ icons. Which I wonder if I can find...

GUESS WHAT.

I found a folder. Labelled shed freaks and organ hats.







And that is the tale of the organ hats.