Megan's Banners for btvsats20in20 Round 5 by starry_night
Thank you very much starry_night for making these gorgeous banners, and thank you Lenore for the brilliant suggestion of the memorial banner #2 honoring Megan's participation in Round 5 of btvsats20in20. Megan's original post on pickamix journal with the entire set can be seen here.
01-02)
I think Megan would have been well and truly pleased with these banners. She took very meticulous care with her work and this set in particular, although she could be astonishingly modest. She would have approved of the care that's been taken with these banners to set off her icons, by the richness of color, by the mysterious and sensual quality of the patterns in the Best of banner.[More after the cut....]
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I've mentioned before that Megan asked me to be a beta for this set, and it working with her was a pleasure because she was serious about improving her work and was open to concrit. I looked forward to more such working "collaborations" with her, as well as many more icons and artworks. It still seems strange that there won't be any more - more collaborations, more artworks, more chances to pick her brain for information which she shared so freely.
And it seems quite unfair that she's not here to enjoy the banners herself - and just as likely, grumble a little about her showing this round whilst already preparing for next round. Modest about her work she may have been but she was also damn proud of it. and genuinely competitive.She wasn't in it to "crush the competiton" but simply to do the best she could, be the best artist possible despite tremendous challenges.
It's up to those of us left behind to enjoy and appreciate the artwork on her behalf, which we certainly can and shall do.
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Lenore has added these two banners to Megan's fandom awards collage as displayed on her profile page; the collage also includes the Mod's Choice and Second Place awards for the last two rounds of slayerstillness and otherworldlyric that she entered.
Click for full size
All of her fic awards are here too but you'll notice the top layer is almost entirely icontest or manip awards: she won first place in her very first icontest, Round 161 of otherworldlyric back in February of this year. Sometime this past year I urged her to enter SS and told her "You'll knock it out of the park". In fact she knocked it ouf the park repeatedly all year long, taking home awards from OWL, SS, and btvs_hush the majority of times she entered. She was also awarded a Judge's Choice award for Best Manip at the wicked_awards. And while her Buffyverse banners and posters tended to focus on Willow, Spike and Wesley, her icons covered a range of Buffyverse characters including Angel, Fred, Oz, Illyria, Faith, Joyce, Lilah and surprisingly enough, Buffy herself. Her 20in20 set is the ultimate example of this.
The first time I spotted a banner I'd made on this collage, I was utterly thrilled and told her I hoped to add many more. And I did, in a very short period of time; I'm honored to have had the opportunity. I'm trying to accept the fact that there won't be any more from now on.
The lyrics of the OWL icons in this collage seem eerie now: "I didn't want this"; "Make it ok?"; "Giving the world everything";"Hard to breathe", "silent hearts". "Where is the sound?" was funny and witty then but prescient now.
She'd probably tell me I was reading too much into it and get over myself. She would probably be right.