Some of the commands tried:
mkfontdir
fc-cache
xset fp rehash
xfs this and that (am I even using xfs? Do I need to be using xfs?)

Fluxbox, IceWM - a font won't display. Running aterm with the -fn option pops up the font just fine. Running xfontsel pops up the font just fine. I've tried the full specification of the font in the themes; the alias of the font; variations of the font name. Nothing.

I can't say anything intelligible because I don't even know what the frigging issues are. It's broke. It does not work. It malfunctions.

-- Actually, I should have posted this in Slackware. It works just frigging fine on Gentoo. So maybe something of a distro issue.

*bumpitty bump*

Well, I ripped out pre7 and compiled pre9 sticking on configure options at random in the hopes that more stuff would work than break and copied a new piece of theme config (that seems to have been added in pre8 that was in one file and no others) to several files and the font shows up now. What I don't get is that several applications pick up all the fonts I added but ice seems to need special handholding. Some xft issues is what it seems to amount to.

Now something's gone squirelly with my cursors in certain apps - it's possible that they're all GTK apps but I haven't really been paying attention. I think I had this problem way back sometime and fixed it one way or another, so I'll probably figure that out again eventually. I really hate *hands* for cursors and my 'normal' cursor looks like the Asteroids spaceship.