PART 2 of 3: btvsats20in20 alts & extras, early-seasons Buffy, the Summers Women
Just what the title says - and don't forget to add your vote at all four parts of Round 5 of btvsats20in20 if you haven't done so already. The voting has stalled out at 22 voters - so on the one hand, go fandom! On the other - get the heck over there, fandom, what are you waiting for?
I've split the remainder of my alt/extra icons chronologically by season with slight exceptions to be explained. Any and all of these, with a few exceptions (3, 5, 15) were nearly entries in my Round 5 set; I am simply that indecisive. A huge inspiration for me this round was the 1992 Melissa Etheridge single "Dance Without Sleeping". My original plan was to make a set focused on OMWF and Buffy hairporn from that episode. (kikimay will understand) Even though my plan didn't eventuate the song is a perfect fit for the episode, for Buffy and the 'verse in general*
Thanks also to eilowyn's beta advice after Round 4; I tried to keep her thoughts in mind while making these especially in terms of use of textures and color.
001
002
003
004
005
006
007
008
009
010
011
012
013
014
015
016
017
018
019
020
021
022
Table generated using angelamaria's Icon Table Generator.
Icons by their own makers.
As ever all icons are made by me but for the taking with proper credit; feedback is lovely and much appreciated; stealing, failing to credit or archiving on another site without express persmission is not.
[Here be thinky-thoughts....]
1-18 are all season 1 or 2 icons; 19-22 skip to S5 & 6 - or rather, 19 merges seasons 2 & 5. (The only S3 icon I made was the Amends #16 icon of my final entries; I didn't make any S4 icons.) 1, 2, 3, 5 or 6, 17 - 18 were all in rotation as entries until the last minute; #1 & 5 especially. I like both of those but worried that the textures were distracting and not really adding anything to the image or saying anything. I likewise replaced 15 with the more distant crop at the last minute. 18 I excluded because it would have been the only icon to not have someone's face in it.
I've not done a lot of early-seasons Buffy; this round convinced me I want to do more. Focusing on the late seasons as I tend to, it's easy to fall into the same trap I see with fans who have only seen "certain" episodes or seasons of the tv canon series (or deny those seasons existed) and miss the whole story on either end. It's not that I missed anything but I've forgotten how young she was, how tender, but also how she walked into Sunnydale with a suitcase full of baggage that only got bigger and heavier with every day, every death, every Apocalypse and every trauma. In other words, I just wanted to take her up and hug her and make the hurt go away. I can't not feel for her. Buffy Summers brings out my Inner Mama Bear.
And of course there's the aesthetics of it, taking pleasure in her face - not because Sarah's the prettiest woman but there's just something very particular about her features, and her performance. (Making icons of Aly as Willow is the same sort of pleasure, and I think there are surprising points of similarity or at least congruity between them. They are not really similar but they are "not the prettiest" in similar ways.) Kristine Sutherland, Michelle and Amber OTOH are no less lovely or perhaps are more so but are somehow harder for me to grasp fully and do them justice.
15-22 all involve Joyce in some way, but mostly as an absence rather than a presence. After focusing on close ups of faces for so many icons, hands suddenly became very important here. I do love the richness of hand imagery in btvs, and the Summers women have such visceral ways of connecting.
I'm always going on about the absence of Joyce in the show, how I wanted more of her in it (and why aren't there more icons and fanfics about her?) And I admire debris4spike's Joyce icons and the attention she pays the lady but when I tried to make icons with her myself, I could only render her as an absence or at best a partial presence. And as much as I love their interrelationships and the moments when they do truly connect, 15-22 are all about the failure connect. The only ones we see Joyce's face in here are 20-21, as a dead husk; those icons are as much portraits of Dawn, whose face we don't see, only her hand. It was important to me to get the detail of her ring in the image, which made the hand more particularly her's. 22 reverses this a bit and we see Dawn's face and Buffy's hand. Unlike the Body icons they are physically connecting, but emotionallly disconnected; and in between them is Joyce's presence, again expressed as an absence or negation.
18 owes a debt to pickamix, who altered one of my Vamp Willow icons from Round 2 with permisson by removing a red soda cup in the frame. and I wanted to try the same to remove a red straw from the green cup here thanks to color matching tools in ipiccy.
* (I did not however watch the original video on repeat - perhaps if I had the results would have been more light-hearted. Unironic lesbian interpretive dance? Complete with fog, overexposed blue lighting and that damn belt buckle? Sorry Melissa, you're no Ellen.)
I've split the remainder of my alt/extra icons chronologically by season with slight exceptions to be explained. Any and all of these, with a few exceptions (3, 5, 15) were nearly entries in my Round 5 set; I am simply that indecisive. A huge inspiration for me this round was the 1992 Melissa Etheridge single "Dance Without Sleeping". My original plan was to make a set focused on OMWF and Buffy hairporn from that episode. (kikimay will understand) Even though my plan didn't eventuate the song is a perfect fit for the episode, for Buffy and the 'verse in general*
Thanks also to eilowyn's beta advice after Round 4; I tried to keep her thoughts in mind while making these especially in terms of use of textures and color.
001
002
003
004
005
006
007
008
009
010
011
012
013
014
015
016
017
018
019
020
021
022
Table generated using angelamaria's Icon Table Generator.
Icons by their own makers.
As ever all icons are made by me but for the taking with proper credit; feedback is lovely and much appreciated; stealing, failing to credit or archiving on another site without express persmission is not.
[Here be thinky-thoughts....]
1-18 are all season 1 or 2 icons; 19-22 skip to S5 & 6 - or rather, 19 merges seasons 2 & 5. (The only S3 icon I made was the Amends #16 icon of my final entries; I didn't make any S4 icons.) 1, 2, 3, 5 or 6, 17 - 18 were all in rotation as entries until the last minute; #1 & 5 especially. I like both of those but worried that the textures were distracting and not really adding anything to the image or saying anything. I likewise replaced 15 with the more distant crop at the last minute. 18 I excluded because it would have been the only icon to not have someone's face in it.
I've not done a lot of early-seasons Buffy; this round convinced me I want to do more. Focusing on the late seasons as I tend to, it's easy to fall into the same trap I see with fans who have only seen "certain" episodes or seasons of the tv canon series (or deny those seasons existed) and miss the whole story on either end. It's not that I missed anything but I've forgotten how young she was, how tender, but also how she walked into Sunnydale with a suitcase full of baggage that only got bigger and heavier with every day, every death, every Apocalypse and every trauma. In other words, I just wanted to take her up and hug her and make the hurt go away. I can't not feel for her. Buffy Summers brings out my Inner Mama Bear.
And of course there's the aesthetics of it, taking pleasure in her face - not because Sarah's the prettiest woman but there's just something very particular about her features, and her performance. (Making icons of Aly as Willow is the same sort of pleasure, and I think there are surprising points of similarity or at least congruity between them. They are not really similar but they are "not the prettiest" in similar ways.) Kristine Sutherland, Michelle and Amber OTOH are no less lovely or perhaps are more so but are somehow harder for me to grasp fully and do them justice.
15-22 all involve Joyce in some way, but mostly as an absence rather than a presence. After focusing on close ups of faces for so many icons, hands suddenly became very important here. I do love the richness of hand imagery in btvs, and the Summers women have such visceral ways of connecting.
I'm always going on about the absence of Joyce in the show, how I wanted more of her in it (and why aren't there more icons and fanfics about her?) And I admire debris4spike's Joyce icons and the attention she pays the lady but when I tried to make icons with her myself, I could only render her as an absence or at best a partial presence. And as much as I love their interrelationships and the moments when they do truly connect, 15-22 are all about the failure connect. The only ones we see Joyce's face in here are 20-21, as a dead husk; those icons are as much portraits of Dawn, whose face we don't see, only her hand. It was important to me to get the detail of her ring in the image, which made the hand more particularly her's. 22 reverses this a bit and we see Dawn's face and Buffy's hand. Unlike the Body icons they are physically connecting, but emotionallly disconnected; and in between them is Joyce's presence, again expressed as an absence or negation.
18 owes a debt to pickamix, who altered one of my Vamp Willow icons from Round 2 with permisson by removing a red soda cup in the frame. and I wanted to try the same to remove a red straw from the green cup here thanks to color matching tools in ipiccy.
* (I did not however watch the original video on repeat - perhaps if I had the results would have been more light-hearted. Unironic lesbian interpretive dance? Complete with fog, overexposed blue lighting and that damn belt buckle? Sorry Melissa, you're no Ellen.)