New Faith/Fuffy icon - it was time (in which I blather, excessively)

[red_satin_doll]

When I realized that:
1) Buffy, Faith and/or Buffy/Faith (I can go either way) was starting to take up major real estate in my brain, my fanfic and in my
    fandom conversations;
2) I can't decide from one day to the next which Summers sister I 'ship with Faith (I can go either way)
3) Buffy+Dawn+Faith+Tara = One True Family could totally be a thing in fandom;

...then it was way past time to get a new icon.

A.) Somewhere on the internet I saw an icon of Faith in Buffy's body in Who Are You, stroking Buffy's leg (now her own) in the bathtub with the text "Tell me again why Fuffy isn't canon?" (eleusis_walks's meta on Faith and Buffy describes the "masturbatory" nature of that scene. Tell us again why Fuffy isn't canon, Mr Whedon?) ETA: Mystery solved : it's beer_good_foamy's. Of course.



I haven't found that icon again but I came across a trove of Buffy/Faith icons on the "Fuffy fanclub"  at Fanpop.com. All of them were posted by a member named AcidBanter by the source is only given as "LiveJournal"; so I suspect that AB isn't the original artist.

My apologies therefore and if anyone here does know, please let me know so I can give proper credit.

I wanted to go with #2, "WIll fuck with your sexual orientation" or one of the funny ones with text to start, but my template shrinks the icons too much and I have this bizarre kink about legibility. It's a thing.(#3 's "subtext" is just barely legible in this template.) I may end up rotating all of these anyway, thanks to elisi's instructions on how to do that by using the exact same keywords for the new icon as the one it replaces.

1.)  2.) 3.) 4.) 5.)

BTW, I haven't rewatched S3 in over a year btw so I'd forgotten how pretty Eliza was that season - and can anyone tell me what the what is going on in #8 below?

6.) 7.) 8.) 9.) 10.)

B.) Now this is the sad part: Because I'm limited to 15 icons, someone else had to get booted off the island. And y'all know I love my babies something fierce. *sniffle* This is where I needed to be strong and decisive. Most of my icons were DO NOT TOUCH just TRY to pry them out of my hot little hands and behold the meaning the word "fierce". That left four candidates:

I've used this one to represent: Lesbianism, friendship and/or solidarity, proof on Willow-centric journals that I don't hate Willow; and that moment is one of my favorite moments in the entire series. CHILLS UP MY SPINE every time I watch it.
BTW - the W/T "spiritual handfasting" will be echoed by B/S in Chosen, and perverted by Glory in Tough Love. Speaking of which, check out clockwork_hart1 tribute fic to Tara's bravery and sacrifice in TL, "Shadows and Light". (Read it now and thank me later.)

Extremely useful for obvious reasons, and cute besides. Everyone needs a "huh"? or WTF? icon.

Do I really need another image from "Showtime"? Probably not. But it's useful for "fierce and determined" (as opposed to "extremely pissed off"). Buffy's the hand: when she sets out to get something done, shit gets done.
Also useful for "I have a lot of love for S7 despite the flaws";  "I actually do sorta-kinda think her wounds are a little sexy even if I'm too chicken-shit to admit it"; And of course: "Buffy is my Hero damn it! And she's the protagonist of the Buffyverse! Ergo it is my sworn duty to remind fandom of this fact every once in a while." (Believe me now and thank me later.)

Which leaves me with:

I know, sweetie, I know - it hurts me too. *sobs quietly* But it's the icon I probably use the least, and comlodge 's original artwork will always have pride of place on my Welcome post. (Don't mind me, I'll be all righ...*curls up in fetal position and sobs loudly*)

Comments

[stormwreath.livejournal.com]

Oh, Joss...was his attention already wandering to other projects?

In Buffy S3? It was wandering to 'Angel' the series. :) But to be fair to him, I think any creator would feel the same way when fans give an interpretation to the story you didn't put there yourself.

Thought experiment: imagine you write a story where Tara meets Spike, and they banter with each other and compare notes on Willow and Buffy, and it's a nice fluffy friendship fic. Then one of your readers leaves a comment saying, "Wow, that was so incredibly hot! I've never read Spike/Tara before, but the sexual subtext in your fic really turned me on (literally!) to that pairing! Please please write a sequel where they actually get it on together!

Would you be pleased? Or horrified? Would you stare blankly at your fic thinking, "How on earth did they see hetero subtext in this?" :)



I am NOT saying it's meant to be homophobic or done intentionally.

I do think one of the themes that runs through BtVS, that a lot of people in present-day fandom find objectionable, is the idea that "wild uncontrolled casual sex is kind of a bad thing, you know?" It's perhaps understandable in a show started in the 1990s for a US broadcast TV network aimed at teenagers, but it doesn't really fit with a modern sex-positive ideology.

So yes, in 'Bad Girls' we see Buffy flirting with Faith, and Buffy flirting with a bunch of strange guys on the dancefloor in the Bronze, and Buffy leaping on Angel and wrapping her legs around him in public, and I do think we're meant to think this is a bad thing - whereas most people in fandom are probably cheering her on! I don't think it's specifically meant to be homophobic in particular, since after all it's Angel who is shown to be made uncomfortable by her behaviour towards him, not Faith.



I don't tend to think in numbers on a scale because to me it's a continuum, a sliding scale, but Kinsey

To me, the Kinsey Scale is just a convenient shorthand. There's no reason it can't represent a continuum, with Buffy being a 0.9, Faith being a 3.4 and Willow being a 4.9 on the scale! :)

[red-satin-doll.livejournal.com]

imagine you write a story where Tara meets Spike, and they banter with each other and compare notes on Willow and Buffy, and it's a nice fluffy friendship fic.

Of course you would pick the combo I loathe with the burning passion of a thousand white-hot suns, sweetie. NEVER would I write those two together. EVER. But I do get your point in general, and of course I'm all about interpretation of the text within reason.

it doesn't really fit with a modern sex-positive ideology.

Right, it does fit with the theme of "Buffy's bad sex life" - which also demonstrates that Joss is thoroughly of his own time and a product of his upbringing, and not necessarily as "subversive" as he likes to think or as his fans claim he is (which came first, the chicken or the egg?) Is making Faith "go bad" right at the same time as the subtext comes very close to text accidental? Probably. Was it necessary? Maybe not. But it's there nonetheless, and I'd be untrue to myself and everyone if I pretended I don't notice this stuff. I also noticed what a great job he did with complex characters, etc.

whereas most people in fandom are probably cheering her on!

To do what? Get down with Faith or with Angel? I know I found her jumping on Angel like that like a little girl kind of gross, but Angel's reaction is genuinely funny and actually appropriate to the situation. She's almost behaving like someone who's slightly high or inebriated and her self-censoring mechanism is lowered.

To me, the Kinsey Scale is just a convenient shorthand. There's no reason it can't represent a continuum, with Buffy being a 0.9, Faith being a 3.4 and Willow being a 4.9 on the scale! :)

*giggles*

:) srlsly, that sounds a bit like the butch-femme scale - I was in a lesbian group in the '90's and it was a 1-10 thing, 1 being very femme, 5 being perfectly androgynous, and EVERYBODY wanted to be as close to that as possible like it was some holdover of the perfect lesbian-feminist ideal of gender erasure; I was a little disappointed that I was rated a 2 or 3 - and I knew damn well I'm quite femme. I wore skirts and long hair! (Adding combat boots did not make me more "butch". It's something you are or are not.)