icon meme responses

[thedarlingone]

brin_bellway asked: "dalek tipping", "gandalf ops room", "promises to keep", "umbrella stand". Also, that "things in my pocket" icon used in this very post, because it is extremely relatable.





Dalek tipping: by everloyal, who doesn't appear to have posted since 2010. The caption is a reference to the supposed rural pastime of cow-tipping. I don't have any particular intended use for this icon; it just amuses me, both the caption and the screenshot. (I have no memory of which Third Doctor serial it's from, but I like to imagine that the very visible plywood ramp there has no in-story explanation and is literally just there for the Dalek to be trundled down. A non-diegetic plywood ramp, if you will, or whatever the equivalent would be when dealing with props instead of music. I'm similarly entertained by Three's wellies, although they're not really visible in the icon.)



Gandalf ops room: by catwalksalone, from a set of Diana Wynne Jones icons they did shortly after DWJ's death. I have quite a few of those, including "All power corrupts, but we need electricity", which may be my favorite. This one is a quote from Deep Secret, the first of the two Magids books, which is set largely at a sci-fi/fantasy convention; a subset of the people helping to run the con are referred to as "hobbits", because SFF nerds. So, like so many of the best quote icons, the mental image it conjures in context is not quite the same as the one you get from the quote without context, but the mental image from the quote without context is entertaining as hell. ^_^ Also, because DS9 was the first context where I regularly heard a location referred to as "Ops", I'm picturing a gaggle of hobbits and Sir Ian McKellen's Gandalf flooding onto DS9's bridge equivalent, and Kira and Jadzia and the rest being very perplexed (among other emotions).



promises to keep: by sallymn. The quote, of course, is from Robert Frost's "Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening", "But I have promises to keep / And miles to go before I sleep". The icon itself reminds me in both coloration and font of the early part of the "Fellowship of the Ring" movie, around the point where the first Black Rider showed up. It's got sort of a wistful feeling to me - it reminds me of a couple of the poems in the book around that point, "The Road Goes Ever On" and "Upon the Hearth the Fire is Red", but not so much even the poems themselves or the text of them so much as the feeling that surrounds them, the contrast between the homey hobbit-songs ("Upon the Hearth" especially is about returning to a warm fire and supper after a day's wanderings) and the sense that one has chosen to begin a journey that may not be lightly concluded. And with the lighting and the way it draws the eye, it's one of those pictures that leads somewhere, past the edge of the picture and deeper into a hidden world. ...I apparently have a lot of feelings once I get started putting them into words.



umbrella stand: by thisbluespirit. I don't remember exactly what it's a quote from, but it's from some British TV show which was making gentle fun of the slow pacing of old British TV serials. It's definitely not actually from the Look & Read serial "Dark Towers", but that's one of the things it reminds me of. Sapphire & Steel is another, of course. (Great, now I'm imagining an S&S fic where an umbrella stand is an important plot point. Not in enough detail to write it, but you know it could be written. ^_^) I actually asked her specifically if she still had this one around, because it entertains me. The dramatic horror-esque font really adds to the effect, too, I think.



things in my pocket: also by thisbluespiritfrom a quote by GK Chesterton. I believe it was from a love letter he wrote his then-fiancee, quoted in the definitive biography written by a friend of the family a few years after his death. (It probably tells you a lot about GK Chesterton that he once wrote a love letter consisting mainly of listing out and rhapsodizing about the clutter in his pockets. I don't remember the rest of the letter in enough detail to quote most of it anymore, but it had sort of the same appeal I find in Ursula Vernon, that I have no idea what this person will say or create next but it will definitely reflect their unique and distinctive perspective on the world. Romantic love is of course a mystery to me - I have no idea why Frances Blogg married GK Chesterton, although I do hold very firmly that she ought to be canonized a saint for the amount of work she put into keeping his life functioning around him while he was writing with his head constantly in the clouds, but at least she knew approximately what she was getting into.)

(Yeah, I have opinions about the movement to canonize GKC. Yes, he was a genius who wrote a lot of very sound Catholic theology and was impressively entertaining about it, but we have literally thousands of genius saints who wrote a lot while somebody else did the housework. I'd think a lot better of Catholicism if anyone was agitating for a patron saint of the people who keep shit running. All we've got is Martha, of Martha and Mary, whose outstanding moment in the Gospels is being told that "Mary has chosen the better part", that sitting and listening to Jesus preach is objectively better than putting food on the table for Jesus and twelve hungry apostles. Which really says a lot about Christianity from its origins; canon Jesus is miles better than fanon Jesus, but he definitely has his issues. I wonder if it's even possible to have a religion that prioritizes "the sons of Martha", as Kipling puts it, or is religion too inherently about thinking and praying? I feel like there have to have been attempts at that kind of thing, but I can't remember anything specific.)

...that may have gotten long. ^_^ I was talking about the icon, wasn't I? As I think I meant to say, this is my go-to example for how thisbluespirit can just cram so much text onto an icon and still make it not just legible but easy to read.

Also, it is indeed A Mood, even though I neither carry much in my pockets nor do much in the way of accidentally writing epics. (Mostly. the_dour_one does tend to bring out my latent wordiness...)

Comments

[contrarianarchon]

... It sounds like you have a nice collection of quotes. Want to share favorite quotes, rather than icons?

[thedarlingone]

*head-tilty* I'm not quite sure I follow? *ponders for a few moments* ...oh! I think I see. I don't actually have a collection of quotes, per se. Not written-down ones. What I have is a near-photographic memory for words and about fifteen years' experience memorizing poetry for homeschool recitation nights. So I have lots of assortments of words I like, but getting them to be quotes I can share would require sort of detaching them from their surroundings.

I used to share poems for National Poetry Month (April). I was never very good at remembering to post daily, or at choosing poems to post, but I bet I could do that again, if more intermittently. Or books I like with sample quotes from them, although that would be even more difficult, both choosing something that made sense out of context, and not just doing silly quotes like 'She opened her eyes with the mad smile of Lady Macbeth. "And two cups of RAISINS!"'

...that was probably not what you were looking for, I'm sorry. :-) But if you gave me a prompt or a way to narrow things down a bit, I could probably produce some good quotes?

[contrarianarchon]

That's fair. I ... have a 30k line long .txt file full of every non-poem block of text no longer than a couple of paragraphs that I've found and wanted to keep in the last ... fivish years?

Sharing poems sounds wonderful! I don't read enough poetry, basically because I don't get recommended it and I get recommended lots of other stuff to read. something something infinite reading list something something.

(I might think on a prompt for specific poems, but I don't have one right now)

[thisbluespirit]

I don't remember exactly what it's a quote from, but it's from some British TV show which was making gentle fun of the slow pacing of old British TV serials.

It is, although more specifically the 70s soap Crossroads (set in a hotel and notoriously cheap and badly made), and it's from Victoria Wood - As Seen On TV - her ongoing Acorn Antiques sketch. :-D