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Fan Fiction by Other Authors

Kate Bolin

Kate Bolin is a name already well-known in Buffyfic. I’ve never profiled her before because, though she’s quite talented, the stuff she does generally doesn’t appeal to me. (Come on, you’ve never read a story, or heard a song, that you knew was really good but you still didn’t like it?) With “Electra”, however, she has produced something that is clearly consistent with her earlier style and yet touches that persnickety little part of me that allows me to enjoy a story as well as recognize the talent there. This is absolutely the shortest piece I’ve ever reviewed, and freely meets the standard I follow in judging really short fiction: every word is a tiny, precise scalpel stroke, cutting to bone with ruthless economy. “Electra” isn’t even a story, exactly, just an awful snapshot of two people in pain and responding to it in a mindless, destructive fashion that has all the queasy fascination of a car crash. Given the events of Season Six, it can hardly be claimed with confidence that the characters would never act this way; we can only be grateful they didn’t.
Electra	Season: 5	Spoilers: “the Body”