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 friend @zulufic 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.
Due South
Grey’s Anatomy
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.
