red_satin_doll

comlodge "aka the Other Janice" (there's only the two of us in fandom, surely?)

LJ's notification system has been painfully on-again, off-again, hence my recent resolution to send birthday greetings directly by PM's, but it seems to be "on again" for the time being and I couldn't resist sending a little Spuffy love to the lady who has gifted me many hours of interesting, intelligent and funny conversations and so many lovely artworks, including Winged Buffy and "The One with Wings"; "Like Mother, Like Daughter" (Joyce and Buffy); "One Girl to Save the World"; "Prophecy Girl"; Buffy and Tara friendship banners "The Hurt Inside" and "Talk to Me" for

clockwork_hart1's equally lovely fic of the same name; and that's not even touching the surface of all her Spike and Spuffy artworks, Spike/Dru, her astonishing Illyria banners, her Photoshop tutorials and....well, if you're reading this you probably know her and her work quite well already. But there's always something I miss. Every one reminding me of the importance of perfect practice makes perfect, as she said to me recently. Talent and skill don't fall out of the sky like magic; they have to be worked at and earned.

(Oh, and she's a marvelous writer too, as it happens.)

Recently I made some Spuffy icons from After Life with

comlodge in mind for a

slayerstillness challenge focusing on negative space. I didn't submit them and have been squirreling them away for "the right moment". There's no time better.

1)

Snaggable as always, give proper credit please.

These were some of my first experiments with the "splash" function in Photobucket. (My personal favorite is probably #3.) #1 was meant to focus on the "negative space" by keeping ther color on the rug in the background, then eventually I reversed the color. It whispers "Joyce" to me, for surely Joyce picked it out and bought it, and the negative space in Buffy's life when she lost her mother. It links the two of them together, not just because they shared strong bonds with their mothers and Spike's friendships with the Summers women; but also in the way Buffy's loss was echoed by negative space in Spike's life created when Buffy died. Buffy is back in body, but still a "ghost", still more absence than presence; and Joyce can never return except in memory. There is still much work to do to fill the negative spaces, and in the end, maybe the holes can never be refilled in quite the same way. They can be ignored or acknowledged; we try to set everything back the way it was, or we can acknowledge that growth and new life can come from the damage of freshly-turned soil.

Which perhaps is why I reversed the coloring back to Buffy and Spike in the end rather than the rug - their hands and faces - focusing on life rather than death, on the flowers rather than the soil. Or maybe I'm enough of a romantic, after all. It's a moment of care and astonishing tenderness, and Joyce's presence is everywhere. Spike is at his best when he's most connected to Mater, the Mother Principle, never more so than here and in Touched; he goes wrong when he loses touch with that and tries to be the demon, the patriarch, tries to become what Angel taught him to be and what William never was. In this scene and in later in Touched, I dare say that he is doing what Joyce would have wanted, taking care of her brave but damaged little girl, keeping a promise to a lady.

We can write ten thousand h/c fics and I doubt they could hold as much power as this single image of two fascinating characters, played by two incredible actors with amazing chemistry at the top of their game.

Happy Birthday, Janice.