"Brave New World" by FayJay (PG)

[casapazzo.livejournal.com]

Fandom: Buffy the Vampire Slayer
Pairing: none
Author's website: spreading the Yay, one Ho at a time
pandarus

Why this must be read:
Back to the character-study stories. On Buffy, Wesley Wyndam-Pryce was primarily a comic-relief character; he executed pratfalls, screamed like a girl, and was regularly ignored or ridiculed by the main characters when he tried to assert himself. And yet when he moved over to Angel, the writers were able to convincingly develop him into a stronger, surer, more capable man, making a real Watcher out of someone the Council had discarded.

So how did he go from point A to point B? FayJay steps back to Wesley as he first comes to Sunnydale and puts us in his head as he goes through culture shock, meeting his predecessor, and his two Slayer charges. She captures him perfectly - very much the scholar, always observing and making notes, so full of optimistic pride. And this time we don't laugh at him when he falls, or scorn him when he fails, because we know this time what he's feeling, and it hurts.

Brave New World