I started with a bunch of S6 icons then made the one of Buffy in PG, then Nikki (I also made some of Xin Rong); making those was the first time I've done an icon/visual art project in a fandom that almost made me cry.

I was thinking about how cold and lonely, how terrifying, Buffy's death in PG is - but Nikki's and Xin Rong's are no less so, and by extension the thousands of girls we never see, girls who have been drafted into a war they never sought, who know they die young, but fight anyway.

It's upsetting and it should be. If I'm able to cry over Buffy's death but ignore Nikki or Xin Rong's, then there is something very wrong with that.

The phrase "who died and made you king" has a several layers of meaning in that context: a girl dies so that a vampire earns bragging rights, a feather in their cap; one girl dies and another one, a stranger, will be called. A girl dies, alone and unknown, in a fruitless struggle to keep the rest of us safe while we sleep in innocently in our beds.

I almost used the words "Who died?" by itself.