PLEASE VOTE NOW in three tiebreaker votes for slayerstillness challenge 30! Don't forget to vote and press the button for each tiebreaker individually. Unlike Sister Red here. I make the mistakes so you don't have to. You're welcome. (Most creative is an interesting, um, conundrum for me. I'll explain all when the votin's over.)

LOOK AT THE PREZZIE I GOT!! "The Things You Find in Vending Machines" a season 4 ficlet with my beloved Buffy Summers and Tara Maclay (gen, set immediately post New Moon Rising) from the superb velvetwhip as, of all things, a surprise thank you for the banner I made her for her wonderous "Soft and Pink and Very Sad"!  THANK YOU so much. dear!  This one is on the humous side of Gabrielle's palette - Buffy and Tara have a brief, awkward conversation in the dorm hallway - but there's a wonderful complexity to it, as is true of Gabrielle's work.

As I've noted elsewhere on my journal and hereabouts in fandom, Tara's store of courage, strength and even self-confidence is overlooked and underplayed not just in fandom but on the series itself.  She pursued Willow in Hush, not the other way around, after all. I don't need the metaphor of monsters and Little Bads to recognize the courage that takes, and that it took for a young lesbian in the 1990's. (I know from experience.)  Of course, Buffy would recognize and respect that in Tara. And of course she would want the best for her beloved best friend Willow. Gabrielle NAILS all that right here in a very short scene. (And the last line, as you'd expect, is ACES.)

It also hints at something else as well: the stereotype cherished by some straight women and lesbians, that a lesbian relationship is inherently nicer than a hetereosexual one; that women together are kinder, sweeter, more understanding, etc. It's a pretty fantasy, and terribly untrue. But completely understandable that Buffy would view W/T through that lens. And Gabrielle doesn't make a deal of it, in fact you mightn't notice, but it's there, lying beneath the humor and that's the important thing.

THANK YOU so much Gabrielle, I'm truly honored!  (If I'd known the gift of a banner would lead to the gift of a fic I would have worked harder to learn how to make banners sooner!)

So here's the sequence of events (and there will be a pop quiz later, so pay attention please):

1) clockwork_hart1 asked for fic requests in order to occupy herself whilst in the hospital. I asked for a Buffy & Tara friendship fic. She responded with "Talk to Me (That's What Friends Are For)" . In case you missed my pimpage the other day it's a "missing scene" that takes the dross of one of the mind-bogglingly worst episodes in the series, "As You Were" and spins pure gold from it. Buffy goes to Tara after the credits roll and offer each other compassion, kindness, and gentle understanding, punctuated by tears and laughter. The story also makes explicit a point that, like every other connection between them, is underplayed and overlooked: Both Tara and Buffy have, at some point in the series, believed themselves to literally be "demons", to be "wrong" at their very being and been scarred by that belief. (And clockwork_hart1 wrote this while recovering in the hospital, people. R-E-S-P-E-C-T!)

2) comlodge read the story and created a gorgeous Buffy and Tara friendship banner for it. There's something in the delicate coloring that emphasizes the emotional fragility of the characters, even as the text from the Burt Bacharach/Carol Sager song assures us of the strength of their bond. She used one of the screencaps from that last scene in Dead Things of Buffy and Tara in Buffy's living room. (You know that scene, right? The one that smashes my heart into tiny pieces no matter how many times I watch it, and is one of the reasons Dead Things was the very first ep I had to watch when I finally got internet in my new apartment?) comlodge is known and loved mostly for her Spike fanart but every time she turns her attention to other characters in the 'verse she knocks it out of the park.

ETA: And she did another Buffy & Tara banner just before that I only just now saw - same scene, but the moment where Buffy's head is in Tara's lap, sobbing "Please don't forgive me." Very different tonal feel from one banner to the other; both of them equally gorgeous. It's not who she's sleeping with that is, at heart, the issue here IMO; it's her shame and guilt regarding her own behavior. (And has anyone else noticed that Joyce's photograph is next to Tara in that scene btw?) Imagine that she's sleeping with Xander; or random strangers off the street and the scene plays exactly the same way.

MORE, PLEASE. I have to say that all these "presents" and creativity, one idea leading to another, a work in one medium inspiring another and who knows what either one will inspire in turn? This is one of the finest aspects of fandom - of this fandom in particular.  Also of interest to me if nobody else: Thanks to clockwork_hart1 I have been a beta for the first time ever in Buffyverse fandom. That's a present (to me) in and of itself.

SO NOW I'M GOING TO MAKE ANOTHER REQUEST: A BUFFY and TARA FANVID. Something that emphasizes the parallels between them. Or one that focuses on Tara's role in the Buffyverse outside of W/T: sister, friend, mother-figure; the stranger who truly "sees" (Who are You); the bridge between Buffy's symbolic sisters (Willow and Tara) and her literal sister (Dawn), who replaces Faith as the "harbinger of Dawn" (Restless); the girls marked out as "different, demonic" and carry that shame within themselves; and so forth. I can provide the meta ideas, if need be.

Anyone want to take me up on it? 

dragonyphoenix is writing a "Giles as Big Bad" fic inspired by my post on the subject back in February, when I asked if any such beast existed; since then I still have not come across any such. I still don't understand why, because the bones of the idea are all over the series. Ethan Rayne will be part of it, of course, and the jist of it is at present: Eyghon has been able to influence and corrupt Rupert over the years. Rupert's plan, as he arrives at the Hellmouth and takes over as Buffy's Watcher, is to corrupt the Slayer line by calling Eyghon down into the Scythe.

Oh yes PLEASE. I love to draw parallels and comparisons across the buffyverse seasons so bringing together the early seasons, so that aspect alone is catnip. And Ethan? The Ripper backstory? All of it was so underused in the series. Yes, I know, aimed at a teenage audience blah blah....I want this so bad you have no idea.  No pressure or anything like that.  *shifty eyes*


In terms of bringing the Scythe into the Buffyverse in earlier seasons I'm slightly reminded of leni_ba's  Buffy/Angelus AU Courting Sin 'verse, in which Angelus gives Buffy the Scythe to make her more powerful, to continue to draw her to him and make her his newest "work of art". The Scythe was dropped into S7 to make the Buffyverse match up to Joss' Frayverse, so it's a deus ex machina and it's "myth"? Pure racist crap and totally up for grabs re: rewrites.

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.

1) "Untitled" (AU the Gift)" was voted Runner-Up in the Best Drabble category in Round Four of the Absence of Light Awards! THANK YOU to the judges and readers who voted for me, and an extra special THANK YOU to   brutti_ma_buoni and snowpuppies , whose stories provided the inspiration for mine.


The award button for it is really visually disturbing and may be a bit squicky/triggery for some folks (hey, this IS the AoLA we're talking about here) so I'm including it AFTER the cut.  You're welcome.







I didn't prepare an acceptance speech because I really did not expect that, at all.  This is not false modesty talking; if I had been a judge in that category I wouldn't have voted for my own story because there were so many fantastic ones to choose from.  The other award winners in the Drabble category include some of the best Buffyverse stories I've come across, each one gorgeous and orignal: "Daisies" by spike_1790 , a delicately-drawn and compassionate portrait of Dawn's "bad habit", tied as Winner with   "Stolen Screams" by Jane Davitt, a very original take on Angelus' torture of Giles through Spike's POV. "Le Petit Mort" by snogged , a hypnotic "prose-poem" about complicated connection between the First Slayer and an OC Slayer the First Evil, won Fan Fave in the Drabble category.


The entire winners list includes some of the finest writing and most accomplished writers in this fandom; Best Author alone reads like a Who's Who of Buffyverse writers.  Congratulations everybody!  (More hugs, cookies and cocoa!)  Special shout-out to folks on my flist, including( I'm afraid I'll miss somebody): snowpuppies , velvetwhip , beer_good_foamy , coalitiongirl , brutti_ma_buoni , aadler , naughtynyx88 , deird1, pickamix, quinara, lynnenne , angearia - and so on and so forth. Hugs, cookies, and hot cocoa with extra mashmallows for everybody!


2) More shameless self-pimpage: Speaking of angearia, her comments in 2maggie2 's episode analysis of "Ted" were the catalyst for my last post, the meta about the episode for the Jossverse Big Damn Love Fest (DW version, sans screencaps.) I'm dying to respond but I have to wait until tomorrow when I have the 'puter to myself all day.  I honestly wasn't sure about "putting myself out there" in that way - in fact, I was a bit terrified; I couldn't think of anyone I felt comfortable enough going to as a beta or even asking "Is this ok? Is it too personal? Am I going to create a shitstorm?" But the responses the post has gotten so far have been absolutely amazing. Thank you.  You've reminded me that sharing stories is important and necessary; that thinking we're alone and no one else could possibly understand is the part of The Lie that keeps us separated from one another and interferes with our self-acceptance (Hey, do I detect the theme of another Buffy meta here?)  You ROCK.  This fandom ROCKS, even when, like the Scoobies themselves, it drives me up one side the wall and down the other.


And it also confirms one simple fact: I LOVE Buffy Summers, even when (and maybe because) it's difficult for me to love myself - and I love her from the first moment we see her in SD to that final hard-won smile in the sunlight. NO FUCKING APOLOGIES.

A couple of weeks ago kerkevik surprised me with an early gift - dedicating one of his short stories "Gazalah" to me.  I have no idea what I did to inspire the gift, but on reading it I had to wonder, how the heck does he KNOW me so well?  We'd exchanged a few comments and conversations, but what did we know of each other, beyond the fact that I'm a lesbian and he's an honorary lesbian?  (I deem it so, therefore he is.)

The story borrows a character from the comics (Satsu) but goes entirely AU otherwise, pairing her with a wife, Gazalah; it has a rich, "barbaric" gorgeousness to it, like a fragment of an epic poem found on an ancient scroll, punctuated with modern references here and there. He captures the essence of love and relationships of all kinds - especially between women - so wonderfully well.  This isn't "slash" (oh how I despise that term btw), this is life, fully realized.