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Iconic Challenge Fic, assignment #2 -- Rebecca Lizard
The lovely LaT issued this spiffy cool Isn't It Iconic? challenge last month (see here for the original challenge) and, having fallen into a bit of a monofannish rut after the "While We Tell of ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-community.gif)
yuletide Treasure" rareslash challenge, I decided an excuse to stretch my writing muscles would be a good thing.
I couldn't pick just two of my own icons to have a story written for, so I signed up to write two stories. (I'd say, foolishly, but I got them both done and they seem to have turned out all right.) Both my stories ran over the 750-word mark, but I did at least keep them under 1000.
Though I'm not certain of the origin of either of the icons![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
rliz asked to have written for the challenge, they both had a Buffy femslash feel to me. In the end, though, the story I wrote for Rebecca Lizard was influenced most by this icon:
Buffy the Vampire Slayer fandom, contains content some readers may find disturbing. PG-13 rating.
I had never written either BtVS or femslash before, so I got a real workout writing this. Thank-yous go out toadamlizz, fox1013, and pearl_o for soothing my nerves as I took new steps, and special acknowledgment to thete1 for advice that made the story work much better than it would have otherwise.
And here's the story. Same as the icon keyword, its title is:
Split
"I'm different with you," she said to Kennedy.
Kennedy smiled and leaned in to kiss her, so that some of the girls giggled and Andrew craned his neck and whined, "What? What's happening?" but by that time Kennedy had pulled back and was just smiling, sexy and seductive and pleased with herself.
Willow had hoped Kennedy would understand, but at that moment she finally realised -- finally accepted -- that she really didn't.
She looked at Kennedy, looked at the two of them together and feared that what little was left of her would be flensed away. She already wasn't herself anymore.
She'd become a mess of faults, cracked apart where important, irreplaceable parts of her had been cloven away against others. Sometimes *into* them, some fragment of her swallowed up in someone else's self like a stone dropped into the sea.. And like shifted fault lines in the earth, hers had resettled after each shakeup, leaving her inner landscape altered. She wondered sometimes how she'd kept as much of herself as she had.
Buffy, with her sharp white smile, was gone, but the marks of her passing remained, all over Willow. The brightness of Buffy's beauty had thrown into shadow the parts of Willow that her girl-self had once unconsciously, unselfconsciously believed pretty. Buffy had only looked better by contrast, while Willow's own sparkle had sloughed away, lost in the glare. Or maybe Buffy had faded her out, like a book left too long in sunlight. She'd regenerated a certain attractiveness, but it was like a lizard's regrown tail, functional but not quite right, not pristine. Not pretty.
Sometimes parts of her she thought she didn't want had wound up pruned away. Being around Faith had forced her to shed some of her shyness, the hesitation and uncertainty that had made her stay quiet, or stammer when she did speak up. What had blossomed in her after awhile was something that looked like courage, but Willow knew it for recklessness, and anger. Splinters of Faith that lodged in her, grew into her and became her flesh.
Faith must be missing parts of herself, too, she decided; but not those parts. Faith threw off anger and recklessness like porcupine quills, threatening or injuring anyone who came too close, and she seemed to have an unending supply.
Willow wished more of her weakness and fear had been honed away by Buffy, but that wasn't what had happened.
But Buffy wasn't to blame for most of the alterations in her, or even the earliest. By the time she'd first met Buffy, most of little-girl Willow's trust in the universe, in families, had long since atrophied away, malnourished by years of her mother's indifference to having any actual mother-daughter relationship. The substitute family she'd found herself in, the Scoobies... they were no more a healthy or whole family than Willow was a healthy or whole person.
The mother Willow might have been was another ragged-edged wound, a half-healed scab torn away by Buffy's return from the grave, and again by the distancing necessitated by Dawnie's crush on her, and her own power-drunk abuse of Dawn's trust, and finally by their separation after Sunnydale fell.
She felt sometimes like she might collapse in on herself like Sunnydale, leave nothing but a concavity and rubble and bones sticking out where they oughtn't. That probably wouldn't happen, though.
When Tara had died, Willow's heart and her guts had dissolved in her chest, or maybe dusted like a vampire, leaving her an empty husk, a vessel that filled with rage. She'd retreated so far from the fragile parts of herself that had been lost that she'd nearly lost the rest -- but she hadn't imploded.
Instead she had let the angry and violent parts of herself, the ones seeded by Faith, grow like brambles, like stinging nettles that she had finally cut back, burned out -- or so she hoped. She had found too much in herself that was frightening, threatening, but she didn't know how to get all of it to die. The dark, hungry her that had lain dormant while Amy was trapped in rat form, only to return like a creeping itch, a poorly-matched transplant, quietly festering, spurring Willow's own abandon; that, too, was now gone once more, cut out like a cancer she had to hope hadn't metastatised.
Kennedy leant against her again, just to lay her head on Willow's shoulder, but Willow turned her head and bit at the point of her jaw. If Kennedy splintered from the constant contact, maybe some of the pieces would lodge in Willow, fill her back in. It wasn't a gentle bite, but Kennedy just groaned, too quietly for anyone else to hear, and moved into it.
Kennedy possessed a healthy, righteous anger, a wildness that only appeared reckless. It was probably rooted deep in her, though. Willow didn't know if she could get at enough of it to do her any good.
And she wasn't stupid; she tried not to think it, but she knew she'd never find what she sought in anyone else.
She just wondered where or when she'd ever find herself, or whether she would even recognise herself if she did.
"Love you," Kennedy breathed, so only she could hear.
"I love you, too," Willow whispered into her throat. "Every little bit of you."
rliz's original request at sign-up
more fanfic by the Jack
all icon-challenge stories submitted
yuletide Treasure" rareslash challenge, I decided an excuse to stretch my writing muscles would be a good thing.I couldn't pick just two of my own icons to have a story written for, so I signed up to write two stories. (I'd say, foolishly, but I got them both done and they seem to have turned out all right.) Both my stories ran over the 750-word mark, but I did at least keep them under 1000.
Though I'm not certain of the origin of either of the icons
rliz asked to have written for the challenge, they both had a Buffy femslash feel to me. In the end, though, the story I wrote for Rebecca Lizard was influenced most by this icon:Buffy the Vampire Slayer fandom, contains content some readers may find disturbing. PG-13 rating.
I had never written either BtVS or femslash before, so I got a real workout writing this. Thank-yous go out to
adamlizz, fox1013, and pearl_o for soothing my nerves as I took new steps, and special acknowledgment to thete1 for advice that made the story work much better than it would have otherwise.And here's the story. Same as the icon keyword, its title is:
Split
"I'm different with you," she said to Kennedy.
Kennedy smiled and leaned in to kiss her, so that some of the girls giggled and Andrew craned his neck and whined, "What? What's happening?" but by that time Kennedy had pulled back and was just smiling, sexy and seductive and pleased with herself.
Willow had hoped Kennedy would understand, but at that moment she finally realised -- finally accepted -- that she really didn't.
She looked at Kennedy, looked at the two of them together and feared that what little was left of her would be flensed away. She already wasn't herself anymore.
She'd become a mess of faults, cracked apart where important, irreplaceable parts of her had been cloven away against others. Sometimes *into* them, some fragment of her swallowed up in someone else's self like a stone dropped into the sea.. And like shifted fault lines in the earth, hers had resettled after each shakeup, leaving her inner landscape altered. She wondered sometimes how she'd kept as much of herself as she had.
Buffy, with her sharp white smile, was gone, but the marks of her passing remained, all over Willow. The brightness of Buffy's beauty had thrown into shadow the parts of Willow that her girl-self had once unconsciously, unselfconsciously believed pretty. Buffy had only looked better by contrast, while Willow's own sparkle had sloughed away, lost in the glare. Or maybe Buffy had faded her out, like a book left too long in sunlight. She'd regenerated a certain attractiveness, but it was like a lizard's regrown tail, functional but not quite right, not pristine. Not pretty.
Sometimes parts of her she thought she didn't want had wound up pruned away. Being around Faith had forced her to shed some of her shyness, the hesitation and uncertainty that had made her stay quiet, or stammer when she did speak up. What had blossomed in her after awhile was something that looked like courage, but Willow knew it for recklessness, and anger. Splinters of Faith that lodged in her, grew into her and became her flesh.
Faith must be missing parts of herself, too, she decided; but not those parts. Faith threw off anger and recklessness like porcupine quills, threatening or injuring anyone who came too close, and she seemed to have an unending supply.
Willow wished more of her weakness and fear had been honed away by Buffy, but that wasn't what had happened.
But Buffy wasn't to blame for most of the alterations in her, or even the earliest. By the time she'd first met Buffy, most of little-girl Willow's trust in the universe, in families, had long since atrophied away, malnourished by years of her mother's indifference to having any actual mother-daughter relationship. The substitute family she'd found herself in, the Scoobies... they were no more a healthy or whole family than Willow was a healthy or whole person.
The mother Willow might have been was another ragged-edged wound, a half-healed scab torn away by Buffy's return from the grave, and again by the distancing necessitated by Dawnie's crush on her, and her own power-drunk abuse of Dawn's trust, and finally by their separation after Sunnydale fell.
She felt sometimes like she might collapse in on herself like Sunnydale, leave nothing but a concavity and rubble and bones sticking out where they oughtn't. That probably wouldn't happen, though.
When Tara had died, Willow's heart and her guts had dissolved in her chest, or maybe dusted like a vampire, leaving her an empty husk, a vessel that filled with rage. She'd retreated so far from the fragile parts of herself that had been lost that she'd nearly lost the rest -- but she hadn't imploded.
Instead she had let the angry and violent parts of herself, the ones seeded by Faith, grow like brambles, like stinging nettles that she had finally cut back, burned out -- or so she hoped. She had found too much in herself that was frightening, threatening, but she didn't know how to get all of it to die. The dark, hungry her that had lain dormant while Amy was trapped in rat form, only to return like a creeping itch, a poorly-matched transplant, quietly festering, spurring Willow's own abandon; that, too, was now gone once more, cut out like a cancer she had to hope hadn't metastatised.
Kennedy leant against her again, just to lay her head on Willow's shoulder, but Willow turned her head and bit at the point of her jaw. If Kennedy splintered from the constant contact, maybe some of the pieces would lodge in Willow, fill her back in. It wasn't a gentle bite, but Kennedy just groaned, too quietly for anyone else to hear, and moved into it.
Kennedy possessed a healthy, righteous anger, a wildness that only appeared reckless. It was probably rooted deep in her, though. Willow didn't know if she could get at enough of it to do her any good.
And she wasn't stupid; she tried not to think it, but she knew she'd never find what she sought in anyone else.
She just wondered where or when she'd ever find herself, or whether she would even recognise herself if she did.
"Love you," Kennedy breathed, so only she could hear.
"I love you, too," Willow whispered into her throat. "Every little bit of you."
rliz's original request at sign-upmore fanfic by the Jack
all icon-challenge stories submitted
no subject
The other icon is indeed from Alyson Hannigan's most recent FHM photoshoot, but the "split" one is from Cindy Sherman's photograph "Untitled 305", a kind-of-blurry version of which you can see here (http://www.lilithgallery.com/articles/unt305.jpg).
no subject
Ooh. That's... really intriguing. I almost wish I'd seen it before I wrote your story, though I think if I *had* seen the whole image I might have gone Batfemslash (Batgirl/Spoiler, aka Cass/Steph), what with the mask-looking faces and the cut around the right-hand figure's mouth.
Then again, there was that other icon, too. It amuses me greatly that I apparently recognise Alyson Hannigan's cleavage.
And I'm very pleased that you liked it! It really was a challenge, but the kind that leaves you feeling accomplished rather than wasted.
Jackfic! Whee!!
Oh, so back to the fic comment. Well, I liked it (duh). Though, there could (should?) be *more*. Heh. ;) Methinks Willow's been hanging around Vampires Of All Sorts for a bit too long. She may no longer be stealing magic, but she's still a leech. Poor hellmouthbaby; doomed the lot of em.
The only flinchy part of this (for me) was the lack of Xander. I'd sorta felt she would have thought of him alongside the others. Though not one of her lovers or anything, he certainly made an impact. She *must* have gotten bits of him as well. Hm...
Great now I'm *thinking* about this. AAA! Jack, you're the devil.
Re: Jackfic! Whee!!
Ooh, good words. And heh, "flensed" is not a common word -- I had to look it up the first time I encountered it, too (Greg Bear shout-out!) which isn't something I need to do often, either. It's good to stretch the old vocabulary now and again.
there could (should?) be *more*.
Heh, no. The length guidelines for the challenge were 250-750 words, though, bless LaT, they were flexible, so it wasn't a major crisis that this ran almost 900 words.
And hm, this Willow as semi-vampiric, feeding on personalities rather than blood? Interesting. Not anything I'd done consciously, but... hmmm.
As for Xander -- well, I had that length restriction to deal with, for one thing.
More than that, though... you'll notice that besides Xander, there's no mention of Oz, nor Giles, Spike, Angel, Warren... Andrew appears briefly, but doesn't enter into Willow's mullings. This is a story about how the *women* in Willow's life have shaped who she is. Partly that's because it's a femslash story, but even more it's to do with women defining themselves by their relationships with other women, rather than their relationships with men. I'd think Willow, particularly this post-season-seven Willow, would have just that sort of gynocentric perspective.
...You've got me thinking deep thoughts about this story now, too. Yay fic analysis! (I'm not the Devil, I assure you. He's much better-looking, with a strong resemblance to John Glover...)
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Ouch. And yet, so very Willow. Just a little lost, still searching for someone to fulfill her, even though she *knows* it can't happen. Just... ouch.
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I still feel like a newcomer to Buffy fandom, not having started watching until most of the way through season 5, so I really appreciate hearing that the characterisation worked for you. Thanks.
And I meant the story to be painful, but I still feel like I ought to apologise for your ouches...
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(Anonymous) 2004-06-16 08:09 pm (UTC)(link)stumbled upon your lj through the willow/kennedy community, and i find this piece of work.
whoa.
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