red_satin_doll: (Prophecy Girl Willow vintage)
red_satin_doll ([personal profile] red_satin_doll) wrote2015-01-10 12:11 am

btvsats20in20 ROUND 6: WILLOW ROSENBERG

ETA 01/16/15: Round 6 Voting at [livejournal.com profile] btvsats20in20 open until Jan 18th. Thank you everyone who has voted and commented!

Many many thanks to [livejournal.com profile] velvetwhip for her boundless support and encouragement, for the brainstorming sessions and her absolutely invaluable Willow expertise!

This is the first time I've been comfortable enough to make Dark Willow icons; I've needed to tap into a little of that dark side apparently.


TEASERS:
     











10 Themes
Accessory Purple Quote Reason Profile
Out Of Character Soft Glow Bored Outfit Re-Cast**
5 Category |HOLIDAY TIMES
Cat 1 Cat 2 Cat 3 Cat 4 Cat 5
5 Artist's Choice
AC 1 AC 2 AC 3 AC 4 AC 5









* Reason: In 2014 I came out of the closet as a Buffy/Tara shipper. This year I'm coming out as a Buffy/Willow shipper...and by "ship" I mean "relationship" in the broadest sense.
I love Buffy. I love Willow. Their friendship was one of my favorite things about the show; it's not only central to btvs, it's absolutely essential - just as the friendships and love I've found in this fandom are likewise absolutely precious and essential to me. I want to celebrate and appreciate, not waste time mired in pointless and tone-deaf fandom wars.

** Aly Sheedy. (The Breakfast Club, War Games; she's adorable and quietly intense on this 1975 segment of the game show "To Tell The Truth", after her novel She Was Nice to Mice was published when she was all of 13 years old. It's a historical novel about Queen Elizabeth told from the POV of a mouse who lives at the castle. Which seems like a Willow Rosenberg type of project. Except that I suspect Willow would hide her manuscript away in a drawer because somebody laughed at it.)


Ironically Alyson Hannigan was already a "recast"  of Willow; Riff Regan played her in the unaired test pilot, but I couldn't find a decent photo of her to work with.



Alts/Extras:

  01-05
  I've never seen this image of Aly used in icons, and I have no idea why not; it's utterly adorable.


  06-07
The inspirations for my AC set. I wish both of these had come out better, and I couldn't find another theme to fit them in.


08
My alt Reason icon, and one of my favorite icons I've made this round. Buffy & Willow (or "Wiffy") fans unite!



09-12
13-14


  15-18

  19-22




23-26

23 was my alt Outfit icon; my entry version is a bit more visually arresting, and has a nice lesbian subtext (it could be an icon for an Impala/Willow shippy fic). But the alt version, with the mummy's withered face frozen in anguish, is sadder and more interesting on a meta level.  25 and 26 attempt to blend a quote from Reptile Boy with an image from Grave; it doesn't quite work because the context the image - a pile of burning books - is unclear.


27-28



This is the first round that I started by making the AC set; I've wanted to have an aesthetically coherent AC set ever since I saw [livejournal.com profile] spikesredqueen's pretty Cordelia AC set for Round 1.  So I collaged them together in a row as single images to apply text and effects to all the icons at a time. Then of course I proceded to make at least three more variations, and mixed and matched to come up with the final set of five.

As one does:

29-33


34-38


39-43


44-47

I used the "Oh my goddess" rather than the "White Willow" cap because I think the White Willow cap looks just plain silly.






[personal profile] kikimay 2015-01-19 11:47 am (UTC)(link)

I apologize for not answering you sooner, dear, because I was and still am STUNNED by your wonderful words, by the way you understand everything I'm trying to communicate with these, and see things I didn't even realize. THANK YOU so much for all of it, and your compliments!


My pleasure. :D

Reason is one of my favorites - my claim for next round is Buffy & Willow. Because for as central as their relationship is to the Buffyverse precious little attention is paid to it in fandom, in comparison with the "ships". What's worse though is that fandom factions seem to have been split into Buffy vs Willow camps. I say, Fuck that noise, you know what I mean?


Totally. I was rewatching Though Love the other day and let me tell you about my FEELS. Buffy and Willow bonding over the fact that they love Dawn and Tara and they will take care of them. S5 is the best and most wonderful season when it comes to family and women bonding. I love it so much!


Willow is very much Buffy's "sire" when she resurrects her. And I think it's important to emphasize that Willow may have gone about things the wrong way but she had the best intentions. She wanted to save her friend from eternity in Hell and risked her own life to do so.

Did I read or did I just imagine the other night a fanfic where Willow's reason for not including Dawn was that she didn't want Dawn's hopes crushed if the spell were a failure? Or is that just my head canon?


I personally think there's a mix of selfish and selfless motivations. I think that Willow was brave and strong and she really cared about Buffy, she wanted her back and she thought (or she tried to tell herself) that she was doing the best thing for her. I don't think there's only selfish/power craving motivations. I don't think that Willow is so manipulative. Of course, there's also a component of manipulation and Willow's sincere curiosity about her power, but WTF. People understand power when they actually USE IT. I think that Willow says, if I remember correctly, that she didn't want to tell Dawn and Giles because she was afraid of something going wrong. Which I think it's also true. Complex motivations, yeah.

I love the symbology of the icon and yes, I'm absolutely curious to see more Willow/Buffy icons.