So we made it to the flip side - Happy 2016, my friends!  May it be better than 2015.  (I say that every year. It never is better, but I always hope anyway.)

This was my "last hurrah" of 2015 (Good-bye old year, I won't miss you. At all.) and my first hurrah of 2016, for btvsats20in20 Round 15.
Plus a special treat for the Giles/Angel shippers in the house! (Anyone?)


Teasers:

10 Themes
Close Crop	Red + White	Pastel	Surprise	B&W + Quote
Provided Texture	Green	Hair	Light Texture	Peaceful
5 Category |SILVER & GOLD
Cat 1	Cat 2	Cat 3	Cat 4	Cat 5
5 Artist's Choice
AC 1	AC 2	AC 3	AC 4	AC 5

For the first time ever, I attempted "slashy" Giles/Angle icons. Actually, this would be my first ever m/m slash-y* icons, period.  I'm surprised that Giles/Angel isn't more of a "thing". Somewhere in the world I am sure there's a website filled with G/A fic of the two of them screwing each other senseless, but I haven't come across it. Not that I want to, tbh.  (This may be a sign of the End of Days. Remember to pack a toothbrush.)
Enjoy - I think?


1 - 6


7 - 11

12 - 13



* I actually hate the words "slash" and "femmeslash". I know where they originate in this context but I think it's time to retire them. And yet, saying "my first gay male icons" doesn't quite sound right either.

A Vague Disclaimer is No One's Friend:

~ DO NOT RE-POST TO OTHER SITES (INCL. FANPOP) OR LJ COMMUNITIES WITHOUT MY PERMISSION!

~ Take what  icons you like for personal use but please credit if used :)

~ No hotlinking!

~ Comments however are appreciated :)

~ All artwork by yours truly except where otherwise indicated.

Do I need an excuse for more fic recs, all wrapped in shiny birthday wishes? Oh of course I do...there's that vacuum cleaner in the corner that is calling my name and THAT JUST WON'T DO. So, without further ado:

spike_1790 : Master fic list here. Mostly m/m slash especially Spike/Xander and Spike/Angel but also Spike/Andrew, Spike/Jonathan and even one Spike/Riley. (Why aren't there more fics about that pairing circa S5? Riley making secret trips to Spike's crypt for a little - "guy talk"? About Buffy. Riiiiiight. And I can offer you zero % financing and low monthly payments on this gorgeous bridge in Brooklyn....) "Daises", a character study of Dawn between The Gift and Bargaining won Best Drabble in the 2013 Absence of Light Awards: "Only one thing made her feel guilt. A single theft amongst many."
"Drowning, Not Waving" (Willow, Spike, Buffy, Dawn) spins silk from the sow's ear "Wrecked" and Willow's magic addiction plotline via five drabbles from various perspectives: "Of course she hadn’t intended it to be this way- just a thrill, right? Just a little bit of danger in a boring life. Something to make the pain go away. She hadn’t counted on feeling this connection, this… electricity."
"Dust You Are And to Dust You Shall Return" was originally intended as Spike/Xander and ended with no named characters, which probably increases it's power as an original work: "Our lives may have depended on it. Someone's probably did. We couldn't hear."

Last week we finally got the gas stove (burners etc) in the new apartment fixed and approved for use, and I made the first dinner since the house fire that I was proud of: Chicken breasts rubbed with a little balsamic vinagrette dressing from a local restaurant  (to which I'd added a little more oil and maple sysauteed in the cast iron skillet in a slick of olive oil, with chopped leeks, mushrooms, garlic etc; seasoned lightly with salt, pepper, and then just a dash of balsamic vinagrette dressing from a local restaurant (to which I'd added maple syrup) poured in at the last minute or two. Making it felt like coming home on some small level: this is ME, this is who I am. It felt familiar, and "familiar" has suddenly become very precious to me.

And yes, I do know children are starving around the world and women have to walk ten miles to get water and I've never been raped and I'm not mutilated or dead so stop whining and be grateful. No, I'm not joking, this stuff really goes through my head. Although when my landlord pulled out the "at least you have a roof over your head" line I wanted to tell him to stuff it.

So it's been little things, grasping for the familiar comforts and rhythms, while being aware somehow that the "old normal" doesn't exist anymore and never will; that a new sense of "normal" is establishing itself, while the old patterns elbow their way in.  Or perhaps it's the other way around? Whether that "new normal" is comfortable or desirable is too soon to tell. The old normal was comfortable; but was it actually desirable?

So I can still light a fire in the Weber grill with wood I've gathered myself and grill a steak or burn documents without hesitation. The fire and smoke don't bother me because I've mastered this activity and it's "under control", safe and contained.

But I'm hyper-aware of fire truck sirens in the streets, and I startled at unfamiliar noises in this new apartment, the slight ones coming perhaps from outside on the stairwell, beneath the floor or through the walls; in fact I'm not sure where they come from most times. I freeze and wait for a second until they pass. Sounds, not sights or smells, seems to be the main sense in which my recent "trauma" (let's just call it PTSD, shall we?) expresses itself. It wasn't the mattress in flames that terrified me, or the smoke filling my eyes; it was the awful sound of my sweetheart's high-pitched, hysterical scream as she tried to fight the fire. Running up the stairs I thought for an awful moment I'd find her engulfed in flames, burning to death.

No one should have to hear that sound, although many people do, and worse. I know.

But written words can have an effect as well. I had to stop reading beer_good_foamy's recent post re: Night Vale when I read this quote from the podcasts: "The world is awful. And on fire. And beautiful." A month ago I would have loved the elegant and evocative language. Now I run away from it because I want to cry. And I am not liking this state of affairs one little bit. Not at all. But there it is. (Note to BGF if you're reading it: don't change the title of your journal on my account, ok? That is NOT what I'm saying at all.)

It is always unpredictable and never within my control. Perhaps that's what is really setting me off lately, and not the triggers themselves. That may explain why I have a hard time lately bearing my partner's moods when she arrives home. She might be exhausted, in pain, angry about work, hyper-focused on some obsession or project that must get done, throw herself into a frenzy of activity or barely be able to move. She's no different in fact than she's ever been but now it feels very heightened to me. The fact that she speaks aloud constantly, says everything she's thinking at every moment she's thinking it, or thinks and obsesses in patterns and circles, is nothing new. The fact that she wants me to "respond" to her, but automatically know when she's talking to me and when she's just thinking aloud isn't new either.  We've been together 17 years, she's always been that way.

It used to be irritating, frustrating; now it feels like nails scraping my skin to be in the same room sometimes. And other times, she leans into me and I stroke her soft hair and forget all that for a moment, until the next disagreement and we're off to the races again.

My primary solace, lately, or methods of trying to hold onto "normal" have included being here with my friends on LJ and chatting for hours while ignoring my must-do list and procrastinating like a champ; and carrying a notebook with me everywhere I go so I can write when inspiration strikes - again, always when I'm supposed to be doing something else "more important".

And lately I'm writing Buffyverse fanfic. After announcing a year ago I would NOT write fanfic because 1) my previous efforts in another fandom sucked which 2) made me decide I'm really a non-fiction writer plus 3) there are so many good writers in this fandom that I could never compete or say something really new and therefore, 4) I was going to write meta in this fandom instead of fic.

( I'm writing Buffyverse fanfic. Be very afraid.... )
In other news, my sweetie and I are going to the Cape tomorrow, to Truro, MA just south of Provincetown; she's taking a painting workshop that was planned and paid for back in May. We've been to the Cape just once before on a weekend trip and loved it. ("Off-season" is the way to go on a strip of land that has only one road going in and out.)  I don't know if I'll see the harbor seals this time, but I am taking the laptop along.

And my notebook. Much cheaper than therapy, with none of the nasty side-effects of antidepressants.

ETA 10/08/13: Dead Things screencap

Has anyone ever written a Buffyverse fic in which Giles, not Willow, becomes the Big Bad? The idea occurred to me not long after reading  the episode notes for WTTH  by 2maggie2

In the Bronze, Buffy sees Giles up on the balcony, and he calls her attention to the others out there dancing -- she’s separate from them, with a duty to protect them.  (The scene gets called back in season six in Dead Things when Spike adds another layer to Buffy’s fundamental separation from others – but it starts here in the very first episode).



Maggie is talking specifically within the context of how Buffy is separated from her friends/family as the Slayer from the very first episode, but her comments brought back the memory of one of my first visceral reactions to the series.  There was something astonishingly creepy about the way Giles is suddenly "there", beside her, an older man next to a 16-year-old girl (foreshadowing Bangel), and I didn't have a "bead" on his character yet. The idea that he would turn out to be a villain who betrays Buffy and isn't what he seems, was as likely a notion as anything else.  All of which turns out to be true and false at the same time: he doesn't turn out to be a villain but he does have a dark past as the Ripper (as does Angel), he does betray Buffy at times (Helpless, LMPTM), he kills a man behind Buffy's back knowing she wouldn't approve (The Gift).

And when I watched the balcony scene in Dead Things ("Alone in dark with me") my mind was racing back to the parallel scene in WTTH, giving both scenes greater emotional power - foreshadowing squared to th nth egree. The writers surely could not have imagined any of these events when this was written and shot, bu bless* them for knowingly or unknowingly providing the bones right from the start for everything that was to come.

So if I'd had to guess which of the Core Four was most likely to become a Big Bad down the road at the time I was watching S1, I probably would have said Giles.  So it got me wondering if "Giles as the Big Bad" has been done as a fanfiction.  I can't imagine someone in the last 15 years hasn't played with the concept.  If Willow as the Big Bad was fraught with emotional turmoil, the drama and angst of Giles in that role could make LMPTM look like a Sunday cake-walk.

So, gentle flisters - point me the way to one that's already been written, or let that little puppy play around in your head for a while until you come up with something grand. FYI : I've decided to adopt the term plot puppy because: it's still a small, cute animal that you can stroke and love and huggle, and it won't upset Anya needlessly. In this case, a puppy with very sharp teeth that isn't nearly as harmless as it looks.

ETA: beer_good_foamy  and I both ended up rec'ing the same story in the convo thread below,  "All Set Down" desoto_hia873 , an AU take on The Gift (and as you know I seem to have a kink for those.)  Giles is forced to perform a terrible but necessary act.  It doesn't quite fit the "Giles as Big Bad" criteria but it really is quite good.

** (Yes, I know Joss is an atheist. So am I. Or maybe agnostic. Let's go with "undecided".)

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