Aadler’s Favorites —
Fan Fiction by Other Authors

Mikelesq

It isn’t easy being an aficionado of episodic fic (also called “gen”, for general), in an online world that seems dedicated to angst, slash, smut, noir, and ’shipper stories. Even the best writers tend to be really good at something I wouldn’t bother to read if it weren’t done superbly, and once you move outside the realm of the really good ones … well, let’s just say that a mediocre story in a genre you don’t like to begin with is like a background headache that doesn’t quite make you miserable but won’t go away, either. So, it is with some relief that I occasionally run across an author like Mikelesq, who tries to write Buffy more or less as it appears in canon. A respectable range of series characters is featured; the people are presented more or less as we know them, without any of those questionable extremes that excite admiration or annoyance depending on one’s preferences, and there is a variety of plotting approaches to avoid the  “same old, same old ” syndrome. There are currently well over a dozen stories by this author available for perusal, and every one of them is worth inspection. Probably the most imaginative and ambitious are “Six Slayers in Search of an Exit” and “the Host-Man Always Sings Twice”. (The latter can be compared to Yahtzee’s retelling of Casablanca in “As Time Goes By”, although of course it’s all too easy to come up short when being measured against Yahtzee.) Those two, and all the others known to me, can be found here at fanfiction.net. Try them on for size; I doubt you’ll be disappointed.
Six Slayers in Search of an Exit	Season: future	Spoilers: “Normal Again”
the Host-Man Always Sings Twice	Season: 5	Spoilers: between “Triangle” and “Crush”