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?