red_satin_doll

1) You have until midnight tonight to choose amoung 15 great Fanged Four icons in

slayerstillness Challenge 36, "Ye Olde Vampyre Gang." None of them are mine btw, so I just get to vote, then kick back and enjoy the view.

FYI, I'm not going to admit that my favorite entries this round had me screaming with joy. Artistic - and literary - orgasms are SO a thing. (What else do you think keeps us coming back for more? It ain't the money, honey.) Because that would be impolite and unseemly. (Although given the fact that I just threw out the word "orgasms", maybe it's a little late to worry about being "impolite and unseemly"? Oh well....)

I do wonder if it's impolite and unseemly to show off the Drusilla icons I made recently that I didn't enter? There's a funny story here:

drusillaicon3_zps10450604

01-06

I've always wanted to make Drusilla icons and was finally inspired by the prologue of

kikimay's gorgeous Drusilla origin story, Dreams and Mirrors (Drusilla/Buffy). I was also inspired, I think, by the "antique" elegance of

tempertemper's Darla icon and

juliet316's Spike icon, both for SS Challenge 33. All made entirely in ipiccy. Then I posted links to these for Kiki's enjoyment on the convo thread at her journal one day before I saw Challenge 36 posted - which just happened to be a round that focuses on the Fanged Four in the historical flashbacks,18th-early 20th centuries.

My skills? Constantly improving, yay! My timing? Still sucks rotten ostrich eggs through a bendy-straw, darn it. The upside? I'm in love with Kiki's story and am working on new poster art and icons for her fic. Also, I'm learning how to achieve bright, richly saturated red tones.

Do go read Dreams and Mirrors and leave the author a little feedback. It's not only richly atmospheric, poetic and almost feverishly psychological, it mines some of my favorite territory: attention to the neglected women of the Buffyverse; prioritization of the victims rather than the perpetrators "pain"; the underexamined links and parallels between Drusilla and Buffy. It's rich territory and I'm astonished it has yet to be truly mined, which makes Kiki's story all the more exciting; I just finished Chapter 2 and can't wait for more.

2) But back to the icons, and only a few days late: Congratulations to the winners of Challenge 35

rua1412,

tempertemper,

teragramm, and

pickamix! Only 11 entries but every one of them choice. Kudos to

starry_night for her Mod's Choice award, because if she hadn't done it I would have had to have made a fuss over Megan's beautifully subtle Spike icon. I will make a fuss over

tempertemper's Cordy/Connon "NO NO NO" meta icon objecting to a horrible "gotcha / WTF?" storyline. Sing it, sister.

Speaking of

tempertemper I'm utterly verklempt over her banners for this round. Instead of the usual uniform background she chose to set the winning icons against rich textures specifically chosen to match/coordinate with each icon individually, with font and compostion being the common elements. Like I said, artistic orgasms are a thing, and I'm in serious lust with these banners.

3) Lastly, an early holiday gift from

starry_night: Challenge 37 is a free-for-all round in which - wait for it! - we can enter as many icons as we want. And we've got a little extra time to get cracking - the deadline is Tuesday Dec 16, midnight at our respective time zones.

Screw "you had me at hello" (what does that even mean?),

starry_night had me at "as many as you want"!