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Fan Fiction by Other Authors

Brighid

The moment I finished “Beats a Cruel December”, I instantly did a search for more Buffyfic by this author. So far, no luck, which is a real shame. The story is very short, only barely over 1,500 words, but not one of them is superfluous. An action sequence, a sex scene, and that’s it. Unfair that something so brief should be so good, but it is. Brighid has done something relatively difficult — showing two known characters very different from the way we know them, and making the difference seem not only appropriate but almost inevitable — and done it with a stylistic grace that is at once brutal, lyrical, and sad. (Another little detail, how the protagonist could have become the Slayer, turns an improbability into a plausibility that further layers her emotional state.) I was, in fact, impressed with Brighid’s depiction of this person to the extent that I ‘borrowed’ it for my own use in “Each Proud Division”. Whether or not that can be decently considered as flattery, it was so intended. This is Buffyfic at an eerily effective level. This is writing. This is a pleasure.
Beats a Cruel December	Season: N/A (future)	Spoilers: “the Gift”