btvsats20in20 ROUND 6: WILLOW ROSENBERG

[red_satin_doll]

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

Many many thanks to 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 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.

Comments

[red-satin-doll.livejournal.com]

I love how you captured so many sides of Willow's personality!

Thank you! I was hoping you'd approve of this set so that means a lot to me. I wasn't sure if the icons were good when I finished them (not false modesty, I really wasn't sure - I made this set in about a week or so rather than my usual 3-4 weeks) but I had a sense that I had covered a lot of facets of her personality. This was the first time I made Dark Willow icons and didn't feel uncomfortable with it or dwell on the messed up aspects of the arc because I was able to see it as a part of her arc and also an expression of power and righteous rage.

I tried to make this just S1-2 Willow or limit it to one season or episode but the more I looked the more I realized how much I'd forgotten - like, how important all three of the Halloween episodes are to Willow's arc and what a key role she plays in each one.

Your favorites are all favorites of mine, btw - except that of the Category set my favorite might be #5 from Fear Itself. I wanted to contrast her comfort and confidence at that point with her discomfort in Halloween, and the fact that she's really sexy in that Joan of Arc armor because confidence is incredibly sexy - so "something sexy" is meant humorously but also sincerely.

Accessory was originally one of the alts with more glow in it, and Out of Character was going to be Alt #1 but I remade it at the last minute because it suddenly struck me as too fussy. I'm really super happy with the OOC one I did enter; it's probably my favorite this round. I mean, SO CUTE, why haven't I seen this image in like a thousand icons already?

Re-cast was one of the most difficult icons to make. I couldn't figure out who could possibly replace AH in the role; the only photos I found of Riff Regan were very poor quality; and the caps from Breakfast Club and War Games of Aly Sheedy weren't much better. That's the one entry I probably threw out the most rejects of.

Reason (I'm pro-Buffy/Willow)

Yay!



I've been working on some treats I think you'll like. :D

AC 1-5. I love the power of that statement!

Thank you! I love it too but I was a little worried that folks would think I was stealing Willow's thunder by having Buffy's quote there, but I saw it as an expression of how important Willow is to the story, to Buffy's story, and to the central themes of the show. So I'm very glad and relieved that came across to you!