red_satin_doll

I wanted to get these out to y'all earlier in the week but sucky life circumstances drained the life out of me for a few days. I'm very grateful for the love and supportive I've gotten this week from my friends here who have offered virtual arms and shoulders to cry on, and let me rant about things various, be it my personal distress so I don't curl up in a fetal position in the corner, or why I prefer Barney Stinson's honest deceptions to Ted Mosby's self-absorbed, pretentious, pseudo-sensitive crap but could never articulate it before.

The lesson, kids, is that none of us is really, truly alone, that it takes courage to say "I hurt" aloud and trust someone to hear that because it's so hard to do. That I have wonderful friends so even if my life is in pieces, I'm not a "bad" person to be so loved. And - upside! - I'm using some downtime to learn new-to-me digital editing skilz. Because I WILL get good enough to make meta-picspams that don't embarrass me, and pretty prezzies for my friends.

*****

*** Voting for Round 1 of btvsats20in20 is open until midnight June 16th, if you haven't had the chance to vote already for Themes, Category (B/W), and Artist's Choice. Looking at the results so far is proof positive that I'm a pretty poor judge of my own stuff. Or other people's I guess because there are some really fantastic icons by folks who happen to not be me that are NOT getting the love they deserve. So says I. I'm not telling you to vote for my stuff, of course, or what stuff by other people to vote for. Really. That would be wrong. But if you chose to catch my mental wavelength and read my mind, then there's just nothing I can do about that, is there?

*** Challenge 26 at slayerstillness is "The Same But Different". starry_night kindly responded to suggestions from teragramm and myself for a challenge that allows multiple icons of the same image. "For this challenge there will also be a slight change to the rules in that I would like you to submit a full set of five (5) icons. Voting will also be different in that you will be voting for your favourite sets, as well as individual icons...For this challenge only (for now…) you can submit up to TWO (2) sets of five icons." The deadline is midnight Saturday June 21st at our own time zones.

*** otherworldlyric Challenge 175 is set to the song "Stay with Me" by Hoobastank, deadline midnight Friday June 20th. I've never heard of the band or the song but the lyrics are simple and lovely and I started making an icon or two or....about 10 or so at this point, and at least three different crops of the same cap. Hmmm... As Willow says to Kennedy in "Get it Done", it's how I work. Ten years ago I made Moulin Rouge icons just for myself - i didn't know about LJ, about icontests or any such thing, so I was just having fun and making multiple variations of any one icon came naturally to me. It's much harder for me participating in challenges and trying to force myself to make fewer icons. So far? It hasn't worked. 5-9x the number I need is pretty much average. (Yes, I did the math.)

If I could have, my entries in Round 1 of btvsats20in20 would have been almost entirely variants of The Chain icon. Speaking of which... my alts/extras for this round. (Did I mention voting ends June 16th?)

Here be teasers:

I know I've mentioned it before but it doesn't hurt to repeat: all credit to kwritten credit for introducing me to ipiccy and to clockwork_hart1 for giving me instructions in how to make a collage in that program. I'm not trying to affect anyone's votes btw, and some folks don't want to be bothered with the blah-de-blah (if I weren't me I'd tell me to STFU) so I've grouped the icons first, directors commentary track afterwards - your choice to read it or not.

Here be Icons:

(01-04)

(05-08)

(09-11)

(12-14)

(15-17)

(18-20)

(21-23)

(24-27)

(28-30)

( 31-35)

(36-38)

(39-42)

(43-45)

And here be Artist's Commentary Track:

#01 -08 This set was such fun and my favorites of all my entries. Making them was like discovering the key to a door I'd never been able to unlock before. #1-3 are basically the same icon, with the addition of the Photo Collage effect from ipiccy. IThe exact arrangement, number/size of the photos, size and color of frames, the color of background and color within the frames all had to be chosen separately. Then I took #2 back to PB and used the Splash function to remove all the color and repaint some of the squares. (#3) Great practice in hand-eye co-ordination, especially redrawing the blood on her cheek while leaving the rest of the square grey.

For both #4 and my Comics entry I had to go back to the original icon #1, and readjust the arrangement and number of photos within the image each time, chose the color within the frames and the background colors separately. #4 has smaller "photos" and thus less background showing; I also learned something very important - don't bisect key facial features (nose and lips) right down the center.

For my final Comics entry I recolored and reshuffled everything, then added a separate light leak effect, something I see in icons all the time and have wondered how it was done. (Every week now I find myself looking at an icon and saying "I know how that was done!" And every day I look at an icon and say "How the heck was that done?") Photo Collage is a tricky effect; it's easy to overdo, but it doesn't mesh well with very realistic photographs because it has a very cartoon-like "drawn" or fake quality. With an icon from a comic book illustration, it's a perfect marriage.

#09-11 My first successful attempts at "blending" - really collage; I didn't know how to blend images seamlessly. And by "successful" I mean, "nominally better than a sharp stick in the eye".The effect reminded me those graphic movie magazines I grew up with in the 1970's but really not satisfied with the quality of it. I tried using a light effect from ipiccy to cover up the dividing line. It didn't work, but it looks like a prompt for a nifty "Cave Buffy and newly resurrected Buffy are thrown into an alternative universe together" fic. Anyone want to take that up?

Cave Buffy sort of skirts the edges of my claim (not really-real Buffy) but when I rewatched Beer Bad the second time after watching season 6, the visual parallels with Bargaining were one of those "once you see it you can't unsee it" things. Exhibit A in my "Beer Bad is aweseom and fandom doesn't give it respect" argument.

#12-17 First time with textures. #12 is the color version of my Cat #4 (black/white) entry and I think it works better with color. Poor Cat #4 - the only one of my entries not to draw any comment when I posted them and no surprise, it's my least favorite too. 14 is a combination of provided texture plus shine (rays of light) effect, which is where the yellow color comes from. These aren't pretty but they remind me of the artwork of William Blake and his friend and contemporary Henry Fuseli. Also, I apparently love to combine textures with the Shine effect because they both show up in three of my entries, separately or together. Should I be worried?

#17 was just sharpen, sharpen, lighten, blend the pixels, push the contrast, sharpen, blend one more time. I didn't realize how soft-focus the original cap is until I started playing with it. (If you are unaware of my feelings regarding Normal Again and Sarah's amazing performance in it, you must be new here. Welcome! Have a cookie!

#18-23 More provided texture plus shine effect, then pushing the color. I don't remember how I got those bands of purple in the Primeval icons (another applied texture maybe? I have no idea) and I couldn't have planned the way it goes directly into her eyeballs and curves around her chin. Happy accidents. These icons have a particular immediacy for me because I have epilepsy and a seizure is essentially an electrical surge in my brain that temporarily shorts everything out; I have no control over my own body. "What's the frequency, Kenneth?" And that's what I wanted to evoke visually - the sense of things gone haywire, the horror of losing control of one's own body.

#24-27 These icons from Amends and The Wish show how well some of the early season caps can be lightened without pixelating. I'm still surprised by how much detail I got - the pores on the skin, the makeup around her eye, the lines on her scar. The sadness on Wishverse!Buffy's face isn't noticeable in the original cap, which is very dark, but comes through when it's lightened ands took me by surprise. It's perfect - the lonely, wounded girl behind the tough exterior. She's not "Buffy as Faith" as some fans have said; Faith is full of piss and fire and would have emptied Giles' decanter and stolen another bottle for good measure. This girl, she's General Buffy, foreshadowed, but still very much Buffy. I really took the guideline "must show detail" to heart for the XCU - I was going to get every pore on her face if it killed me.

The softness and sheen of her hair and skin in the Amends icons is incredibly lovely in these and belies the horror of the moment. I turned the orientation of the cap to show off her expression better. She almost looks as if she is running very fast and shouting in alarm something in the distance, instead of lying in bed being killed/devoured by Angel in his dream. The man clings to her as his salvation, his second chance to be a good man; the demon would gleefully suck her dry. (Be careful what you wish for...)

#28-30 As with the Amends icon, I love the contrast of the warmth of this imagine and the context of the scene: "That's my guy." All these effects were done in ipiccy. I wanted the look of a drawing for 31-32 but I didn't like the Pencil Drawing effect in ipiccy, so I used the lines of one of the Light effects and removed the color. A lot of icon making for me is about trying to go around the back door to get what I want.

The First wearing Buffy's face is the (non-corporeal) manifestation of Buffy's fear of becoming a demon, inhuman, from "Nightmares" in S1 through S6, as well as soulless Spike's desires that she "try on my world for size". The fantastic, bitter irony of the formerly soulless vampire demon who once wanted her to be his companion, his lover, alone in the dark, needs the real Buffy - needs her humanity - more than ever to help him escape the darkness and evil he'd encouraged her to embrace. (Be careful what you wish for....)

#31-35 "La Belle Dame Sans Merci" series - the title of Keat's ballad is perfect for Faith's dream image of Buffy in TYG; the font is Princess Sophia in PB. I spent more time, and threw away more attempts, on this set than any other for the round. Beautiful images but the caps are so damn dark, and unlike the early season caps they don't emerge nicely when you brighten them, they just pixilate. I finally realized that when I downsize an image in ipiccy I get slightly better results in ipiccy than in PB because ipiccy seems to retain the quality of the image a bit better, but I still had to downsize and adjust in increments.

Tons of blending work - I bow low to the wisdom of comlodge's sage advice - especially on Sarah's nose, as well as on the background. Dear god, chasing that last little pixel at the tip of her nostril nearly drove me insane. I am well on my way to becoming the foremost expert on Sarah's nose - second to only her ENT doctor. (And look, Ma, I finally signed one of my icons! *lol*)

#36-42 From Nightmares - another reason you need to watch Season 1 if you haven't already. The seeds for the entire series are planted in S1, and Nightmares might just be the skeleton key to the psychology of Buffy Summers. (And it pays dividends down the line for Willow Rosenberg fans as well.) I hated losing that brick wall. Kicking myself for not paying better attention to the guidelines of that catagory. The NS+mono I entered with the shine effect has been getting almost the most votes of any of my entries but dear goodness me I loved the lines and texture of that brick wall. No special effects needed except brighten, sharpen and contrast. The "flames" of color revealed themselves. I painted in the silhouette with black to cover lighter pixels dotting her face and clothes.

#43-45 What's a brick wall without a little graffiti, even in the Hellmouth? Especially in the Hellmouth? Buffy the Ad Exec Slayer - there has GOT to be a btvs-Mad Men crossover somewhere. The phrase "She Comes" is the result of me mis-remembering Lord Byron's poem "She Walks in Beauty" but for this context I prefer my version - it could be hopeful (Make way for the Queen!) or sinister (Run for your lives!).

ETA:

bangel_4e notified me that my original entries for NS+Mono and Artists Choice 1 were not qualified so I've switched them out. Let me know what you think.

My first-ever 20in20 entries for Round 1 of

btvsats20in20 were inspired by the Jo Chen's Cover art for "The Chain"; so I decided to claim Buffy Summers as my subject (no surprise) but with a twist: the "not really-real" versions that populate the Buffyverse: impersonators, dopplegangers, alt universe versions; Buffy reimagined in her own and in other people's dreams.

All icons made by me in ipiccy and Photobucket. Many thanks to

bangel_4e and

spikesredqueen for their patient and tireless hand-holding.

Teasers

10 Themes
Strong	Favorite Moment	NS+Monochrome	Comics	Blending

Earth Tones	Provided Texture	Ex.Close Crop	Smile	Focused

5 Category \|BLACK AND WHITE
Cat 1	Cat 2	Cat 3	Cat 4	Cat 5

5 Artist's Choice
AC 1	AC 2	AC 3	AC 4	AC 5

Alts and extras to be posted separately.

WANT? TAKE, HAVE, ENJOY! - But give proper credit always!
DO NOT alter, claim as your own or repost to other websites without my permission.
If you snag an icon, letting me know is always appreciated. Feedback feeds the savage fan artist.

Congratulations to rua1412 and kwritten for their winning icons in otherworldlyric challenge #171 ("Origins")! Two of the three winners were my personal vote-getters and I'm not saying which. (Unless you ask nicely and offer bribes.)

The deadline for the current otherworldlyric challenge #172 "Watching Me Fall" is Friday, May9th - which is tonight in my part of the world. With apologies for the very late reminder. But the folks who work best under tight deadlines will relish the challenge (right?)

Many thanks as always to my awesome beta-Muse, wickedbish for his sharp eye, gentle guidance and record-time response with my OWL entries. He picked out the top three of the lot and there was no quibble on my end. My entries:

1) 2) 3)

And here's some of the icons I made for the challenge but didn't submit. #4 probably would have been my fourth choice to submit. 5 and 8 don't have text; I never got to that point and decided they didn't need it.

4) 5) 6) 7) 8)

9) 10) 11) 12) 13) 14)

15) 16) 17) 18) 19)

Things I have learned in this round:

1) That there's not a lot of Tough Love icons out there.

2) That making TL icons was in some ways more painful or difficult for me emotionally than making Bargaining or After Life icons. Which is probably why there are not a lot of TL icons out there...."Oh Tara, baby..." *sobs*

3)...OTOH it's still easier to make TL icons of Willow than Villains icons. I. JUST. CAN'T.

4) The easiest way to do icons of Willow and WIllow/Tara? Do what I do with Buffy and focus on what I love in the characters - which is to say, focus on their capacity to love. (Which is not to be confused with "being nice and ladylike" or "getting it right".)

5) I thought about using the lyric "inquisitive mind" with an early seasons cap of Willow but am not familiar enough with S1-3 to think of something off the top of my head. Which I already knew. But it's harder to do caps of seasons you're not as passionate or knowledgeable about. (Ok, so I already knew that too. Moving on....)

6) I love the set of Aly's mouth in the cap I used for #1, her pale face and dark eyes, even the strange monkey-fur collar that implies "base" impulses, the hunter...she has an utterly fierce beauty here.

7) I have more screencaps of Willow than I remembered.

8) For all my capacity for snark and irony, I seem to have an internal "sensor" when I'm working on icons that tells me from time to time in no uncertain terms "That really isn't funny. Don't go there." Hence #14 & 15 - I was trying to deconstruct the lyrics of the song and the additional phrases popped into my head; Buffy is "made to live", "made to serve" as a Slayer. Then I made 15 and felt like I was making fun of her and that felt gross under the circumstances.

9) So I decided that the phrase more accurately fitted the Buffybot who is, as lanoyee has pointed out to me, a metaphor for the Slayers themselves, "manufactured" at the whim of the Shadowmen and the WC, used up and then discarded for a newer model (#19)....Which really isn't funny. At all. No matter how you slice it.

10) In fact the more I think about the Buffybot, the more disturbing the entire situation becomes. Including the fact that "she" looks to be in pain, by whatever metric you want to measure that for a robot, in the cap from Intervention. (3, 16-18)

11) But as it happens anyway, the rules of otherworldlyric specifically state that you can ONLY use words that are contained within the song. Which meant 14-18 were a no-go as entries, but made for some interesting contemplation. It also meant that #3 didn't have quite the same impact/irony as I'd intended. (The plain and rather shitty looking font in #3 didn't help matters; HOW did I let that pass that way? What was I thinking?)

12) Wrapping text around an object is possible in Photobucket is only truly possible by making a new text box for every letter and manipulating each one of them individually - position/spacing, angle, size, etc. (#2, 9-10). Wrangling 18 individual text boxes at 100 or 200 pixels square is a bitch. Not really worth the work. That said....

13) If you are going to do something so foolish as to wrangle 18 individual letters ~~around Buffy's bloodied hands~~ within an image, it's easier to do it in a single continuous line or flow, even if one of the words needs to be read backwords than place some words left to right at the top, then start again with the rest of lyric from left to right at the bottom. (#19, Kendra icon) Trust me on this one.

14) Sometimes fancy effects in pixlr-whathaveyou or piccy-yaddayadda (11, 16, 17) aren't really superior to "Brighten", "Contrast" and "Saturation" in Photobucket (everything else) in terms of final results. It's the user, not the tool, that matters. BUT - they're a helluva lot of fun to play with.

15) Every once in a while, I care less about "legibility of text" than I think I do. See # 7 - I was going to remake it with a different font, then realized it didn't bother me the way it was.

16) I do wish however that I'd save images before putting the text in more often because I do wish I had a version of #7 without.

17) Something I actually learned working on Spuffy icons recently is the importance of a point of physical contact to connect two characters in an icon whether or not they are looking at one another. I made #6 before #4-5, but the image is stronger emotionally and compositionally with WIllow's arm and hand visible in the frame, curling around Tara, clutching her jacket.

And FINALLY the most important thing I learned this round:

18) NONATTACHMENT! Do not, under any circumstances, think for even one fraction of a second, "Well, mine aren't the greatest, but I could possibly win something because...." THIS WAY LIES MADNESS AND BADNESS - or at least a momentary sense of irrational disappointment! ~~SYSTEMS ABORT!~~ DETACH! FIND THE ZEN!

Just trust me on this one.

I really can't say this enough: Thank you to everyone who voted for my entries in OWL's Challenge #165!

Congratulations to the other winners

xclaire_delunex and

kwritten - to be considered anywhere near the same distinguished company is amazing.

Thank you again to

wickedbish (Ryan) for your time and opinions - and for being a better judge of my own work than I am. BETAS DO NOT GET ENOUGH LOVE. There needs to be a national "Hug A Beta!" holiday. (I'm just throwin' it out there, plantin' a seed....)

Thank you to

dragonydreams for banners that makes my icon look better than it did before. (The careful color-matching you did for each of the banners? Gorgeous.) And for all the time, dedication and work of running

otherworldlyric because I'm having way too much fun with it. Sarah McLaughlin's "World on Fire" was a terrific choice for a song prompt; any fragment of the lyrics is applicable to BtVS in about a million directions. Coming up with ideas this time around wasn't the problem; the problem this time was having far too many ideas. Most of them never came to fruition but I want to return to those projects later.

And by "fun" I mean "a helluva lotta pain and angst and lady-love for both the Summers Sisters and oh Willow no come back to the light and OMG their faces! Their expressions! Their courage and love and effed-up-ness I can't even!" **sobs and makes 40+ icons** In other words, my kind of fun. If I can't "crack out an axe" (to steal a phrase from

clockwork_hart1 ) in defense of my beloved characters, at least I can crack out some icons:

THE SUBMISSIONS: And now I will show off ALL my babies and TALK about them! A lot! You have been warned!

1) I was really surprised when Ryan singled out #1 of the 40+ I sent him for consideration. This was the first time I almost argued with his choices; it's still not my favorite of this set by a long shot. All I can see is the flaws. The image isn't sharp enough to my liking; the font is one I've done too many times before. It doesn't have the emotional punch for me personally that the other two entries do. I wanted the moment in Grave that got more of Dawn and Buffy equally in the frame, holding their swords back to back, but didn't have the right cap for it. Et cetera

That moment may be corny and make no sense but screw logic and sense; it's one of the (very) few moments in the last three episodes I remotely even liked. I freaking cheered when Dawn picked up the sword, not that her courage was any surprise whatsoever (Listening to Fear, The Gift, Bargaining...etc). Watching the late seasons I wanted to watch more of that, of those sisters and warriors fighting and growing up side by side, the same and yet very different people than they were in S5. I hoped that Season 7 would focus more on the two of them. I wanted more Summers sisters interaction as intensely as I wanted more mother-daughter interaction S1-5. And for a little while it seemed like S7 was going that way....and then....it didn't; just as S5 delighted me with Joyce's increased presence...and then she was killed off. *le sigh*

2) I actually like the Dawn-Buffybot one to a terrible degree, even though it's the simplest and least "artistic". Dawn's face kills me - that moment is so sad and understandable and yet a bit creepy. Her mother and sister are dead, her "real" father is absent and her symbolic father figure is lost in his own grief? She has no one to cuddle up to but a freakin' robot? Break my heart NOW. And maybe it's just my sick brain but there's almost something slightly incestuous about the image, if you don't know that's the Buffybot? Or is it just me?

In hindsight though I wish I'd submitted #4 above instead of #2: Dawn standing on Glory's tower in Bargaining, trying to prevent her sister from committing suicide (again). Season 6 ends with Xander "talking Willow down" and that moment gets all sorts of fandom love. But it starts with Dawn talking Buffy down and WHERE is the love for that moment? For the de facto orphan, a 15(16?) year old girl who has NO "special powers", no training or experience, and is armed only with determination, courage and fierce love? Anything less than absolute RESPECT for this incredible girl in that flawless moment will not do here.

But as far as the icon itself goes, this time I wasn't happy with the placement of the text. I'm sorry I didn't make a version without text because the moment doesn't really need it. #5 is completely "meh" by comparison. I feel nothing. I can't tell you why I just know it doesn't work.

3) My favorite of the three entries is Buffy on the stairs in After Life. I like the way the cropping, frame and the text work together to close in around her, echoing her gesture. She's out of that coffin physically but psychologically is another matter altogether. I think the red on her knuckles is just enough, not overplayed. I did an entire series of this scene and oddly enough her hand looks more realistic, like raw meat, in the sized-down icons than it did on the tv screen or the larger caps.

I have a crazy stupid amount of love for Bargaining/Afterlife, which I tend to think of as a single unit (just as I lump the last three eps of S6 together - except with loads of seething hate.) The expression of shame on her face - not guilt, there is a degree of difference - her awkward posture and gestures, her silence, her bloodied knuckles, everything about her in that moment wrenches my heart no matter how many times I see it. I can barely even look at her then. So of course I made multiple versions of it. (Below)

This moment, and the scene before it with Dawn tenderly cleaning and dressing her in the bathroom, calls back to pre-Sunnydale "bitty Buffy" in Passions. She's standing before a mirror, listening to her parents argue in another room with a similar expression of shame - shame for who or what she inherently is, as opposed to "guilt" for something she has done. That's an emotion I know only too well. Once it slithers inside of you, it becomes such a constant that half the time you don't even recognize it; or you try to fight it, to make it go away; you indulge in excesses, you take actions that you feel guilty about afterwards, and thus more ashamed, so you do something else you feel guilty and ashamed about until the two are insparably intertwined with one another.

What must she think, what can she be thinking, in Bargaining and After Life? She's lived one of her greatest fears for the second time in the series (Nightmares, S1), crawling out of her own grave like the demons she has to kill, in this war she was drafted into as the lone soldier. Is she therefore unclean, monstrous? Was she rejected by Heaven, spat out from it because she was unworthy of it? Even after she knows the truth, might she ever wonder if the spell worked because Heaven let her go because she didn't deserve to be there after all?

10)

11)

12)

13)

14)

I wish I had more icon space in my userpics for one of these. I submitted #3 because Ryan picked out, but I could have submitted any other instead in a heartbeat, with the exception of the last two. #14 has the same problem as #5 - my ability to manipulate text within and around an object in Photobucket is extremely limited. Or maybe I'm just lousy at it and/or the concept sucked to begin with. Your thoughts, Gentle Reader?

************

But I really didn't go into this intending to do Buffy or Dawn icons. No, really, I swear to you. I wanted to stretch myself a bit and work with Willow. I had plans for images from Bargaining, Smashed, Anne, New Moon Rising and Wild at Heart; Willow by herself, with Tara and Oz...LOTSA ideas. Few came to fruition.

I really appreciate it when someone in fandom who doesn't particularly love Buffy nevertheless focuses on her in art or fic and gets her right, for all her wonderful and not-so-great qualities. (Likewise, I appreciate it when someone who considers themselves a "Bangel" or a "Spuffy" is nonetheless able to give the other guy and her relationship with them it's due, without feeling the need to deny or diminish one at the expense of the other.)

And I want to be able to do the same myself for other characters. Willow was the first character I identified with in the series, although I never felt in love with her the way I did with Buffy. That I identified more with Willow in the early seasons, when her self-esteem is lowest (barring S7) and more with Buffy in the late season when her self-confidence declines, probably says something about me I'm reluctant to fully contemplate. But I want to find that appreciation for Willow again. And there's a lot of folks on my flist who are Willow fans who help me remember the good and even great things about her character. But I didn't get excited by the images of Willow, even though I had the ideas, the way I did with Buffy and Dawn.

I really wish the Willow set had come out better. Maybe it's easier for me to work with a subject I have a lot of passion and emotional connection to. Give me time.

kwritten captured exactly what I wanted and more with her entry #5. Check out her flawless post for her analysis of her Willow icon along with the rest of her icons for this challenge. (Then check out

spikesredqueen's post with her entire set of beauties for this challenge including the second-place winner. So many choices and this is part of my pain, don'cha see?)

15)

16)

17)

18)

19)

20)

21)

I nearly submitted #15 or 16, and I still like them both quite a bit. The ironic contrast of "fire" with the water from the shower, a llteral and symbolic "waterhose" in this image from Smashed is more interesting than my original plan to use a cap from Willow in Rack's den. If Buffy "wants the fire back" then Willow, by contrast, tries to control a conflagration that threatens to burn her up from the inside.

#17 - 21 OTOH are "meh" for me. I kind of like the composition of #17 in theory but this is a very important "point of no return" in Willow's arc - and I focus on her bosom? What am I, ~~a lezzie~~ or something? (Oh. wait...) 19 & 20 are interesting mostly as bookends in terms of comparison with one another, with how much Willow has changed in three years, rather than interesting in and of themselves. The difference between Willow in Anne and Bargaining is enormous: the distance between "playacting" the role of a confident Slayer, putting on a "role" instead of a costume; and actually taking on the responsibility (and headaches) of leadership. The power is now "her's alone to wield" but it's still an impossible position for any one person regardless of who wields it.

I had to give up on the Willow idea because it just wasn't working. I felt like I was "dissing" her in some way, and that wasn't what I wanted. What I wanted to depict was how hard she was trying, how much she was trying to bring to the fight with almost zero guidance, how she was bringing everything she had to bear "to the table". I absolutely believe that she thought she was doing the right thing when she resurrected Buffy; she had no reason to think Buffy wasn't in Hell, suffering endless centuries of torment the way Angel had after Buffy killed him. (I'm not arguing right or wrong here, and I don't deny other motivations but as much as I want to throttle Willow sometimes, I can't get into the Willow-hate any more than I can the Dawn/Buffy/Joyce/Kennedy/misc female character hate. But I can't get into the Glory-hate either, so take that as you will.)

And is it a surprise that it all goes awry, that her moral compass doesn't point true north? No. Look at her parents, at their benign neglect, at the way they encourage her intelligence and achievement but discourage her from asking too many questions: live up to your potential but don't go beyond it. And by "parents" I don't just mean Sheila and Ira Rosenberg. Rupert Giles had decades of history and experience with the demon world and magic (if we ignore the Witch in S1). He could have steered Willow to mentors to groom her, train her; he certainly could have payed more attention to her - to all the SG, for that matter. How much Xander might have blossomed from the encouragement of an interested adult male role model, which he so very desperately needed, we can only speculate.

In both Anne and Bargaining we see the one parental figure of the group - Giles - absorbed in his pain, his guilt and grief, and in both episodes the SG - young children from dysfunctional homes, every one of them - are more or less left to their own devices. He doesn't abandon Buffy and Dawn only in S6; he abandons all of his "children" - but then again he'd always been "blind" all along, perhaps willfully so. Willow's accusations in Something Blue and Grave are not without merit - and will be echoed by Spike in Touched.

Before you think I hate Giles (which I don't), I'm also aware of that his upbringing was perhaps not at all unlike Willow's, or Buffy and Dawn's for that matter. He came from an educated family that took care of his physical needs to the exclusion of his emotional ones. They attempted to control him and raised him to be a Watcher as his father was, without regard for the boy's own needs or desires. We learn very little about his family but what we do hear from him, and his own personality, suggest a detachment or distance from his parents, as with Willow to her own. It's not the physical abuse we associate with the Harris or Maclay families but rather an emotional rather than physical "abandonment". (Let's set aside for a moment the fact that the show stereotypically assigns certain types of abuse or neglect to certain socio-economic strata.) And so the abandoned child abandons their own children who abandons their children in turn and so on...until someone finally breaks the cycle.

So it's also no suprise, IMO, that Willow is uttery unprepared for what she "unearths" when she resurrects Buffy; she is not prepared to play the part of "sire" to her "childe", who is left to her own defenses. And the cycle continues.....

Speaking of:

22)

23)

Another disappointing failure IMO. Ryan liked the first one more than I did; I think Willow looks like an elf - maybe a missing character from LoTR? Everyone has feelings about this scene in All The Way and it's aftermath, and so do I. One of which is that this arguement, like many others in this series, are so much more incredibly believable as actual arguements than what I've seen on most tv shows. And holy cheese on a cracker do I know arguements, inside and out: the sudden snap of rage, the irrationality, everything spiralling out of control and all parties bunkering down in their positions, everyone talking and nobody listening.

Two girls from abusive and/or controlling families who have never seen or experienced anything resembling a happy, healthy functional love relationship between partners (children learn what they are modeled); both with pedantic or conservative streaks in them, by nature and nuture - it's no wonder things start to "fall apart" rather rapidily between them, not once but twice in the series. Especially when initial haze of infatuation and romance or, in S6, the "second honeymoon", wears off and the real power struggles begin. You cannot have two people occupying the same position of power within a relationship at all times or, if it's possible, I've yet to see it.

See, I can see all the things that go wrong in their relationship, and all that is wrong in Buffy and Spike's, in S6, I can see it all and not condone the worst of it - but I understand every bit of it. It's painful to watch it all play out and it should be. It was painful to watch as a child in my family, and painful to live it now. Because on some level I see myself, my mom and her husbands, and my own relationship with my partner* in all four of those characters and both those relationships although the dynamics differ in each case. I honestly wish I didn't understand. So what, then, do I do with it? "Keep trying" is the only answer I've got.

(That said - Tara and WIllow are very different dynamics than Buffy and Spike. Please do not tell me they are exactly the same, or that Tara is somehow partly responsible for Willow's actions in S6. I have a lot of tolerance for diverse opinions but that's a line in the sand for me and I will take away the tea and cookies. So just don't go there, okay? Great. Thank you. Have a cookie?)

THE ALSO-RANS: Some of the other icons I almost submitted - I really like all of these, but again I have an emotional attachment so YMMV.

24)

25)

26)

27)

I don't even know what to say here, actually, especially about #24. Do I NEED to? (And at this point you are no doubt screaming "NO! STOP THE MADNESS!" Sorry, too late.) Basically, what I said above about the After Life set? All that. I'm especially pleased by the emotional impact of #24-25 as well as the final result. #25 is one of my favorite icons of any I've ever made. I even made a version of it without the text and it works just as well. I really bumped up the saturation brightness and toned down the saturation for a very different look from the original cap. #26 OTOH I only had to manipulate slightly - I believe the scene is of the demons and a chained-up Buffybot from Buffy's distorted POV. I think if you squint hard enough you might still be able to see Buffybot just left of center.

Also what I said about Willow being unprepared to look after her "childe" applies here - and not that she possibly could be, given her upbringing and her distant parents! No one was prepared. Not even my beloved "perfect, saintly" Tara; the person who saw that Faith wasn't Buffy in Season 4 without having met either one of them, never notices that anything is amiss in S6 until she's all but smacked in the face with it, twice (OAFA, Dead Things.) But I hurt so much for Buffy anyway. Watching her scream and cry, then claw her way out of her own coffin - an experience she's already lived through once - is one of the most horrifying things I've ever seen in any tv show or movie, bar none.

28)

29)

Yes, I did a Spuffy icon. Permission to scoop your jaws off the floor granted. (Sexual or romantic "shipping" really isn't the primary lens by which I view this series, just one many.) I hate that episode but oh god that scene - and again, her face! So raw, so painful...things can't possibly continue the way they have and she knows it; deep inside she knows. Another one I almost submitted, and am really happy with the result.

I enjoy manipulating photographs until they look like drawings, paintings, or perhaps book illustrations/covers from the first half of the 20th century. The best way to achieve that look in Photobucket, I find, is to continually push saturation, light and contrast to eliminate some of the fine details and focus on outlines. I didn't realize the framing device overlapped the bottom of "we become" until after I finished them, but I'm not terribly bothered by it because it suits the idea of being diminished by one's own actions. (And oh god my heart is twisting again. Those beautiful, foolish children dragging themselves and one another to Hell. Ugh.)

FINALLY, THE "MEH" GROUP, aka "They were never contenders".

30)

31)

33)

Ryan said #30 didn't quite work. He was not wrong. Although my reasons for thinking that probably differ from his - thematically for him, aesthetically for me. Sarah looks gorgeous in the original screencap, from Flooded; her profile reminds me portrait paintings of Italian women from the 15th century, such as Domenico Ghirlandaio's Giovanna degli Albizzi Tornabuoni, c. 1488. When I sized it down her face just looked odd to me (esp around the mouth and cheeks) and the outline of her face is pixelated. Too bad.

32)

34)

35)

36)

#36 is Dawn leading Buffybot around at the school fair in Bargaining. In that episode I'm really struck by the fact that Buffybot essentially "extends" S5's theme of illness, incapacity, and how the burdens of caretaking in families fall disproportionately to women. Earlier in the episode Willow has to prevent Buffybot from walking into a wall because her "circuitry" is damaged, which is a very interesting metaphor for someone who is mentally or neurologically incapacitated, such as someone suffering from Alzheimer's or brain damage - the role Tara took on in S5. This is obvious in the original cap but the meaning was lost when I cropped the image.

Also, #32? Just to be clear, I don't "ship" Buffy/Giles. (You know that, right?) To me (and, um, a little thing called "canon") they are absolutely father-daughter....and speaking of, have you read

il_mio_capitano's harsh, tender, stunning re-write of Tabula Rasa, "Holding On"? If not, you simply must. It's probably one of my all-time favorite BtVS fanfics.

37)

38)

Whenever I do an icon from Anne it's always a nod to

norwie2010 - and this shot of Buffy in Anne has already been "done" a hundred times before. But I love it anyway - just as I love that entire episode; it's one of my favorites to play with image-wise. I brightened the cap quite a lot, bumped up saturation and the colors emerged beautifully, as did the light framing Buffy's hair and arm. The passivity implied by the lyrics, however, contradicts the action in the image.

And the Anne was is - "not my best work" is an understatement. But her expression of disbelief is fantastic, and she's a great "minor" character - what an arc! She starts out dependent on her boyfriend, constantly redefining her identity according to what other people want, and makes the transition to confident, powerful person in her own right in a way that poor Anya never does, IMO. Another idea to return to later.

kwritten also did an Anne icon (not submitted to the challenge) that's a 1000 times better than this - But I want to return to the idea because she has an amazing arc, and the way she more than lives up to Buffy's confidence in her is a key moment in the series long theme of "sharing power".

And that's it, kids! If you got this far, congratulate yourselves - I do! - have some more cookies and stretch your legs a bit, and join me again for the next episode of RedSatinDoll Blathers Incessantly. Stay tuned!

*****************************************************************

*Oh, one more thing: Just to be absolutely 100% clear: In terms of my sweetie and myself, there is NO physical violence or violation, nothing on the level of what happened to my mom or happens in Season 6. None whatsoever. It's a lot of arguements, harsh words and anger that we apologize for later; a dull grey haze of mutual mediocrity and power struggles some days, brightened and punctuated by moments of mutual love, respect and moments of deep love. Seesawing back and forth between resentment and affection in equal intensity.

Now that that's settled: Have some cake?

Buffyverse Top 5 is OPEN today through January 19th for recs of any fan-created Buffyverse works either started or continued during the past year. (Check out the posting guidelines here.)

As I'm still kicking myself for missing the October Classic round, I'm determined to participate in this round with some meta and vid lists, especially as most rec lists consist entirely of fanfics. I'd also love to do an artwork rec list, or at least hoping other folks will be similarly inspired to do so as fanart. Meta , videos and artwork need love too! That said, I'll probably rec some of my favorite female-centric stories as well, because this has been a rich year IMO.

ETA:

petzipellepingo just posted a top five meta recs list! BLESS.

Searching for vids and meta from 2013, I noticed that fannish activity is scattered or diffuse: fiction on LJ as well as ff.net and AO3: gifsets/animations and artwork on tumbler: meta (nonfiction) of all types including rewatches, analysis, love letters to the Buffyverse & et cetera scattered on Blogger, Wordpress, and various websites scattered hither and yon. This fandom isn't "dying" by any means, IMNSHO - it's alive and well and living on the internet.

And now for something completely different: my first (visual) love letters to the women of the Buffyverse for 2014. For the longest time I couldn't figure out how to make text that was actually legible in iconson the Photobucket editing suite. I played around a bit and finally came up with a few things today I'm halfway pleased with, although I'm still not satisfied with the sharpness of some of these. Feel free to take any you like but give proper credit as always. ADVICE, FEEDBACK & CONCRIT IS WELCOMED AND ENCOURAGED.

10)

The first two of these I think of as "mini-metas" in icon form:
#1 from Band Candy: I'm intrigued by how much of the Summer sisters' personalities come from their parents, especially Joyce - including a proclivity for kinky sex and bondage games. Just sayin'. The Summers women like sex; it's unfortunate that Joss and the writers' hang-ups prevent a truly empowering sex-positive message for women. *le sigh*

#2 came about when I realized a few months ago that the destruction of the Buffybot in "Bargaining Pt 2" called back to Spike's promise to Dru in "School Hard"; but I couldn't bring myself to use the image of the actual moment the 'bot was pulled apart by the demon gang. I also realized that there are some intriguing parallels between Dru and Buffy as "madwomen", "seers", symbolic mother figures, and as Angel and Willow's "masterpieces" that I think deserves further exploration.

And of course #10 because there aren't enough Tara icons and I love that image, that moment from Bargaining. Like Buffy, Tara is a woman who overcomes the fear and shame of believing she's a "demon", finds astonishing layers of strength, is a protector at heart and "filled with love".

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Page Summary

I promised you alts and extras, alts and extras you shall have....BUT FIRST a word from our sponsors
My entries for Round 1 of btvsats20in20, plus extras: (The not really-real) Buffy Summers
Made to Order: WInners of the Otherworldlyric challenge 171 and my entries
Reaching Out & Holding In - My Icons for Otherworld Lyrics Challenge #165 (All 38 of Them)
I AM, THEREFORE I PROCRASTINATE: BUFFYVERSE TOP 5 NOW OPEN + MY FIRST BUFFYVERSE ICONS FOR 2014

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Style: Ivory Alcea for Mobility by branchandroot
Resources: Mitsuba Aoi

Page generated May. 25th, 2025 11:46 pm

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Entries tagged with char: buffybot

I promised you alts and extras, alts and extras you shall have....BUT FIRST a word from our sponsors

My entries for Round 1 of btvsats20in20, plus extras: (The not really-real) Buffy Summers

Made to Order: WInners of the Otherworldlyric challenge 171 and my entries

Reaching Out & Holding In - My Icons for Otherworld Lyrics Challenge #165 (All 38 of Them)

I AM, THEREFORE I PROCRASTINATE: BUFFYVERSE TOP 5 NOW OPEN + MY FIRST BUFFYVERSE ICONS FOR 2014