Home » Transcript: Track 39: Demon Dean

Transcript: Track 39: Demon Dean

Episode 39 posted April 14, 2023
Links to all fics mentioned can be found on the main episode post.

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[Intro music]

Ellen: [00:00:10] Hi everyone, welcome to the 39th episode of Mixtape Book Club. My name is Ellen,

Mal: and my name is Mal.

Ellen: In each episode we take an in depth look at a different trope or sub genre in the huge variety of fanfiction dedicated to Destiel, and in this episode we’re going to talk about fics featuring Demon Dean.

Mal: One of my favorite tropes! To discuss her fic, where everybody knows, we’d like to welcome author, rupertgayes, also known as Jenn. Hi Jenn!

rupertgayes: This is also one of my favorite tropes so I’m so excited to be here

Ellen: Yay! welcome!

Mal: it’s such a good excuse to read all this fic

Ellen: Yes, I feel like we talked about a few of your fics before in different episodes but it’s nice to finally get you on here to talk about this one.

rupertgayes: I know I was you know very excited to be a guest but I remember thinking what are they going to talk about? You know you had an episode with time travel and alternate endings and body sharing or possession and I know I was on one of those so I’m like “What else is there?” and then you guys were like “Demon Dean?” And I’m like, “Of course. My beloved demon Dean.” Yeah.

Ellen: All right, well, as well as Jenn’s fic where everybody knows, we’re going to be speaking about help I’ve fallen and I can’t find my grace by jad, Where There is Love by bookkbaby and Fata Morgana by orange_crushed.

Mal: And as always, links to all of the fics we’re going to talk about today will be available in the episode’s post on mixtapebookclub.com. And included in our rapidly growing collection on ao3.

Ellen: And we have to say a big thank you to everyone who supports us on ko-fi.com. If you would like to also support us, you can get access to our Discord server and help us decide what we’re going to talk about in future episodes. And just, you know, share random stuff that’s going on in the fandom. It’s a fun time. You can find that at ko-fi.com/mixtapebookclub.

Okay, so demon Dean, I’ve just got a little bit of a blurb here about what happens, what goes on with demon Dean in in the actual canon of the show. We’ve got like, interestingly, we’ve got different eras that demon Dean is associated with in canon even. So sometimes like he had, he came as a demon to himself in a nightmare that he had in like season three, when they were under the influence of African dream root. Do you remember that? When he was yelling at himself and like, yeah.

rupertgayes: Ellen, I think about that every day of my life.

Ellen: (laughter) And then, of course, he actually became a demon after Metatron killed him at the end of season nine. When he gets the Mark of Cain.

Mal: Spoilers!

Ellen: (laughs) Spoilers for those of you who haven’t…

Mal: show’s been over a couple of years. I think people need to catch up if they don’t know that already.

Ellen: It was aired in 2014. So I think you know, it’s past spoiler territory now.

Mal: Ooh ouch, that hurt. That was that long ago? Oh, ow.

rupertgayes: Jesus, oh, my God.

Ellen: All right. We also have, we also have fics interestingly, and Jenn’s fic is one of these, where Dean, sort of an alternate canon where Dean was rescued too late and became a demon in hell, the first time he was there, you know, before season four. So, you know, when Cas came to rescue him, it was too late and he’d already become a demon. So that’s a different kind of AU version of… not au but a like… canon divergence that we’ve… there are a few fics about that. Yeah, and then there’s also just complete AUs that involve in as a demon but don’t actually have anything to do with canon. So yeah, lots of different types of fics in this trope.

rupertgayes: And they’re all amazing. And I love every single one of them. But I honestly though, I think that there are a lot of great things to love about those different varieties that you can get with demon Dean. I think it could be a very versatile character. There’s a lot of different aspects, you could take those stories, and almost all of them are rated explicit, which is also points for me when deciding what stories to read. So

Mal: Yeah, Demon Dean is one of my absolute favorite arcs in the show ever. Also one of the ones that frustrates me the most because I think we can all agree it was far too short. And we needed more Demon Dean. But it was still one of my most like, beloved and most rewatched ones.

Um, it was one of the very few that I watched live because I tend to be more of like a binge watcher and I also don’t have like cable TV and I never ever have. So I don’t tend to watch live, I watch later on and I’ll like binge a few episodes at a time but the demon Dean was one of the few where I was watching live each week. And so I don’t know, there’s something about that vibe of watching live as other people are watching live for the first time and seeing all the like screaming online. I remember how everybody just absolutely lost it at the season nine finale where Dean wakes back up.

rupertgayes: Yeah, yes, yeah.

Mal: one of my favorite finales I know like, critically speaking that was by no means one of the more popular finales for supernatural. A lot of people for various reasons, some of which some of which I agree with, or some of which I don’t really didn’t like that finale at all. But I think that last like scene just steals it for me. It could have been terrible up until those last few seconds they gave me those black eyes and I was done. I’m fine.

rupertgayes: I had stopped watching the show by season not like early season nine. But of course I was still on Tumblr. So when that gifts that like those gifsets were hitting the day after I was like, oh my god, this is incredible. I never actually like went back until 2020 and I still haven’t even watched you know any of the demon Dean episodes. But I’m like wow, I can’t believe they really did that good for them could have been longer but they did do it.

Mal: Yes, my only criticism could have been longer

Ellen: after all the lovely demon Dean you’ve written in these fics, and you haven’t even seen him in action? You should go do it!

rupertgayes: Yeah…. Meh.

Mal: A lot of tumblr gifsets though, right?

rupertgayes: Maybe one day? Sure.

Ellen: I feel like a lot because it was only three episodes that he was in as a demon, I think in some cases in in a lot of cases the fic is better than the reality.

rupertgayes: Well, there’s you know, there’s always gonna be constraints of the canon and everything. I mean, when I was first into supernatural that was like, around 2012 to 2013 I think 2014 Maybe so but I remember like finding demon Dean fic even that in a very quickly just really garnered my interest and I had to keep tracking ao3 or tracking fanfiction.net or tracking LiveJournal because I used all of them back then to see if there were any new demon Dean fics coming out because I just loved it.

Mal: Yeah, it’s just a solid trope. Even if it wasn’t something that had gone on to to happen in season 10, early season 10 It’s still I think, a trope that would have been a very strong one because it’s just such kind of an inversion of everything that Dean was supposed to be, being like the Sword of Michael and all that other stuff. I feel like there would have always been like low-key, some demon Dean fic out there. Especially since we did get that like, amazing clip in season three, where he’s like, “this is what you’ll become!” with black eyes. It’s amazing. Still one of my favorite like clips ever.

rupertgayes: Yeah, such a great scene,

Mal: like just that, by itself was enough to sail a whole, like armada of fic, of Demon Dean fic I think, but I maintain that as a trope, it probably would have existed even without the Mark of Cain arc. Because it’s just something that for Dean, like as fic readers, we love it when things have kind of flipped from what we see on screen sometimes. And so this whole, like, concept of Dean being the Michael sword of being a vessel for an angel, like somebody at some point would have gone okay, but what if he was a vessel for a demon instead? or what have you, blah, blah, blah, that 100% would have happened, I think. Plus, you know, it just, there’s something about Dean’s character where he like walks that kind of fine line sometimes. Or it’s very easy to say, Okay, well, what would happen if I just push him over the line a little bit?

Ellen: Yeah, it’s a very freeing kind of thing for him. It feels like his character, he’s always trying to look after Sam and save the world, save people from the monsters, whatever. But as a demon, he just doesn’t care. And that’s like, really? I don’t know, cathartic, I guess like, it’s just feels like he can do he can do whatever he wants for a change. And that’s, it’s good to see. Nice to see. Nice to read about.

Mal: Yeah, that’s 100% how, like, maybe 70% of fic writer brains work as well that like it feels like a natural question for us. Like, when he’s like, “Okay, well, I spent my whole life protecting people from the monsters” and we automatically just go “So what happens when you become the monster?” That’s just the way our brains work. Maybe I’m just telling on myself here. I don’t know. I think that’s pretty, pretty common.

rupertgayes: Yeah, I think so. I definitely have had that question. I mean, even in the narrative, especially the early seasons, it’s always like, Sam, he might be bad. He might go evil but no one’s ever looking at Dean like, “what? What about him? This guy?”

Mal: arguably lots of red flags around Dean.

rupertgayes: Love him. Lovable guy. But yeah, you know, he’s done some sus things. So what…

Ellen: Also a serial killer.

rupertgayes: Yeah.

Mal: They’re all lovable serial killers really.

where everybody knows [00:10:35]

Ellen: Shall we jump right into the first fic, then shall we start with where everybody knows?

rupertgayes: Sure. Maybe I’m biased.

Ellen: Jenn, would you like to read us the summary for this one?

rupertgayes: Sure. All righty.

When the surviving angel tasked with pulling the Michael Sword from Hell succeeds too late, a demonic Dean Winchester and weakened Castiel claw their way back to earth. Dean’s determined to stop the Apocalypse, for some grandiose-scale petty revenge if nothing else, and Castiel is determined to follow the Righteous Man, no matter what path that may put him on.

Ellen: Yes. So this is season four divergent, right? So Dean has been in hell and is now a demon. But Cas has still saved him. This was published back in 2021. Is that right? Yep. It’s 19,000 words, and it is explicit as well. And it’s lovely. I love this.

rupertgayes: Thank you.

Mal: It’s really fun. What pushes this fic over the edge for me from being just like a fic that I would have enjoyed to having something in it that made me absolutely love it is the parallels in this essentially between Cas and Dean’s relationship and then Sam and Ruby kind of happening in the background? Because it’s very much unhealthy, unhealthy relationship. You definitely have it in a tag here. Yeah, you’ve got “probably not as unhealthy as it could be. But like, yikes, dude.” It is true. Yeah. And I kind of love that. And there were so many kind of almost throwbacks to an almost… a much healthier Sam/Ruby dynamic, because at least Dean and Sam, I’m sorry, at least Dean and Cas aren’t lying to each other. But there are definitely some things that I which kind of, you know, there, but for the grace of God go they sort of thing, really,

Ellen: they still going on and try and prevent the seals from breaking, the 66 seals. So you are following along, kind of with the canon, what actually happened in canon as well, which is kind of I guess, kind of similar to your other heard from your mother series, which is like a season one rewrite. Right?

rupertgayes: Yeah. Seasons… Well, pretty Stanford era season one, season two. Yeah. And the last stretch will be season three, which will not be very much like canon at all by that point. But yeah,

Ellen: so yeah, you do that so well. You tie in what’s actually happening in canon I guess with the with what’s what these guys are up to. It’s a lot darker. I mean, they’re, they’re actually torturing Zachariah. They’re stealing grace from the angels and Cas is like, I guess I guess I’ll have to like I have no choice. I gotta do this.

rupertgayes: Oh, it’s so fun. I had such a blast writing this. I think I wrote this in like two weeks.

Ellen: Wow!

Mal: Who doesn’t want to torture Zachariah, though. Really?

rupertgayes: Yeah. I mean, you know, it is dark, for sure. I you know, and I won’t shy away from reading dark fics, but I think that there’s a spectrum with them. There’s definitely some dark fics where you might you need to take like a couple of days off after reading some dark fics where you’re like, that was really heavy. I need to sit with that. Oh, boy. And this fic, hopefully, I had a few comments that were kind of saying this for like, you know, it’s dark, but it’s like, you know, I’m still having a fun time. I’m not feeling like yes, and it’s clever. It’s you know, they’re taught like Dean and Cas are toxic, but it’s like the Britney Spears toxic. You know, it’s still fun.

Ellen: Yeah. And I mean, everyone wants to torture Zachariah anyway, so you know, it’s fine. It’s totally fine.

rupertgayes: Yeah. I mean, Dean may be manipulating Cas sure, but was he wrong with what he says technically not.

Mal: manipulating him with the truth. I’m just saying it’s a dynamic that I really enjoy and shows up a lot in these demon Dean fics, where they manipulate each other with the truth because the truth is enough, they don’t need to, like make up any lies necessarily, but just the way they present things. So it’s can be very manipulative, but they’re not necessarily lying.

rupertgayes: Yeah, I mean, it definitely was really fun to play up. I don’t know, sort of like an ambiguous angle, like you could read Dean as like, you know, he’s a demon. So of course, he’s going to be an asshole. But he really cares for Cas. But I think you could also interpret it as you know, Dean is very manipulative from the beginning. And maybe he does care about Cas. But, you know, there’s still that level of manipulation or caring about him for his own gain. And that was another thing like I liked putting that in, but then also keeping it like, does he care? Is it manipulation? Is it both? How do you want to interpret it? So that was also very fun. I don’t think I’ve really written another story that had that. Really in there.

Ellen: You’ve also got, I was poking through some of your comments, because you had some lovely comments in there. But one of them said that Dean in this one is is like, more mature than he is in canon in some ways, because he actually acts on his feelings and like, breaks his codependency with Sam kind of thing. Although maybe he starts a new codependency with Cas, because they can’t seem to get away from each other. But he actually just goes ahead and act on his feelings rather than just squashing them all down like he does in canon.

rupertgayes: Yeah, I think definitely writing this story. How I always conceptualize demon Dean to me, it was definitely more like, he doesn’t have these human emotions in the way. And without those, I imagine him being very pragmatic in a lot of the things that he does, right? So he’s not necessarily stopping the apocalypse because he remembers being a human and he loves everyone so much, and you know, he’s just like, “Dude, I fucking live here. And also, fuck hell, fuck Kevin, fuck these guys. You know, I’m not gonna give them the satisfaction.” And, you know, but like, through that, he’s like, Well, you know, things have changed, things have changed with Sam, you know, everyone else, he’s an adult, he can take care of himself. So you know, I’m going to tell him hanging out with Ruby’s not a good idea even though that is a bit of a pot calling the kettle black but other than that, he’s not really going to interfere.

Mal: I did actually kind of love that when it comes down to it, Dean’s motivations that you said this is different, different labels, you could give his motivations, especially as it goes on, he seems like he is more invested in I won’t even say you know, the best outcome for the world as a whole because I think he does come across as slightly too selfish to that he’s more you know, he’s he’s a demon. He’s more concerned about his place in things necessarily then the world as a whole. But I do love that at the beginning. It kind of seems like he’s mostly doing it just motivated by spite and pure pettiness. Like, all these things happened to me, because of you winged assholes. And now you’re going to come down here and try and have a have a rumble on my turf. Well, I’m not going to allow it.

rupertgayes: Yeah. No, definitely, definitely that. But you know, hey, listen, we all need a reason to get up in the morning and if your reason is petty revenge. That’s fine.

Mal: Yeah, I love it. And I think it really works for a character like demon Dean because I think he doesn’t need any more motivation than that. He is allowed to follow whatever whim he wants. And that’s what makes him such a fun character to write I think. And that’s a pretty substantial well reasoned whim when it comes down to it.

Ellen: Oh, yeah. There’s also some really lovely smut in this I will say.

rupertgayes: No, the smut was fun because I even dug up an old discord chat with a friend of mine and we were both just saying “there’s not enough demon Dean AUs!” because there could be 10,000 Demon Dean AUs and I would be like, I would like more please. And then I just very quickly said, Oh, season 4 AU. That would be you know, super fun. And then the entire concept of the story. I just typed out to her and then I started working on it. But I was also working on my really long, Supernatural rewrite at the time. And so she was basically like, if you make this another long epic and ignore this other fic, I am going to kill you. So she was like, cap it at 15k. Obviously, I couldn’t quite make it but it’s still under 20k. So the sex scenes probably could have been even longer or there could have been more stuff but I’m like, Okay, let’s just fucking condense all of season four into you know, however many pages But I’m proud of the sex scenes that did get in here.

Mal: Because we start off with an almost kind of very innocent scene in the first chapter where Dean is, is thinking about tempting Cas in in the bath. But he decides against it at that point. He’s like, No, I don’t think that he’s quite ready for that. But then juxtapose that to the scene later on, where without kind of spoiling the fun for everybody completely, you have a much more possessive version of Cas much later on. That Cas has definitely evolved. Yeah, by that point. I love that. I love that we can have all of that in one fic.

rupertgayes: Yeah. Oh, for sure. Definitely. That’s always how I’ve liked to write things. I’ve never been like, following a bottom Dean tag or a top Cas tag or reverse even, you know, in really long fics I’ve even pulled out a spreadsheet. I’m like, Alright, which one is it? This time, they gotta switch, they got to take their turn. They both have to do in this case, just weird stuff to each other. So that was very fun to write that last, last scene that they have. Yeah. Or that scene with Cas that you’re talking about, rather.

Mal: Yeah, I like it. And I accept. I’m also a fan of just switching things up a lot. Not even just position wise, though. That’s a big part of it. But like a, just in general, like attitudes, what they’re doing where they’re doing it, like just mix it up. Mix it up.

rupertgayes: Yeah. Oh, yeah, for sure.

Ellen: Well, I didn’t want to let this one go by without mentioning the fact that you have another demon Dean involved fic as well, which is called forgotten fruit, which I loved as well. It’s a lot shorter. It’s only…

Mal: just over 6000 words, I think. Yeah. 6300

rupertgayes: Yeah, that one was also very fun.

Mal: This was actually the first fic I read of yours, I think.

rupertgayes: Oh my god. Yeah, I’m honored. I’m also scared though. I mean, I like this fic. But also this one, I want to say wrote in like two hours. So I’m also like, oop

Mal: Oh, it doesn’t it does not read like that. So you’re fine.

rupertgayes: Well, we edited, we edited but you know, I like woke up one day and I’m like, I’m gonna write this. I have a plan. I have a song in my heart, or whatever. And we’re gonna write this today.

Ellen: Love it when fics grab you like that!

Mal: I love fics like that sometimes, though. Like, just yeah, just just go with whatever you feel like at the time. This fic actually technically has one of my favorite. It’s not even a trope. It’s just a question. Like an eternal question for me. Which is just “what the fuck, Daphne?” Like really. It’s just a weird man wandering naked man in the woods. So instead of, you know, calling social services, you marry the guy.

Ellen: And you name him. Give him a name.

Mal: Yeah, like he’s a pet. You just name him and keep him.

rupertgayes: I know. Oh, my God.

Ellen: It’s really weird when you say it like that. Dean just shows up and like, at a Daphne and Emanuel’s house, and just like you know, seduces him. Which is,

Mal: Let’s be honest, it doesn’t take much. like Dean’s not pulling out all the stops of working that hard here necessarily. Cas is very receptive.

rupertgayes: Yeah, yeah. I think Dean makes like a comment. He’s like, “you know, listen, have you ever wondered why like, your wife didn’t do it for you? Or like any other random person you met. But me?” Dean knows the power of Destiel. This Dean does for sure. So, um, but yeah, I know, this fic was super fun. I mean, I vaguely had the idea of it for a while I tried to find the tumblr post, I couldn’t find it.

But there was this user who they would make these little random concepts of these different versions of Dean and Cas together. You know, like, Oh, if Sam Smith and Dean are not, did I say Sam Smith? Dean Smith. And like, Endverse Cas got together. Right? Yeah. It would look like this. Or if it was, you know, season four Cas, and Stanford Dean, it would look like that. And you know, and they would just have a sentence or two. And then they had Emmanuel Cas and demon Dean. And I even made like a little tiktok about it because I thought that concept was so fun. And then, you know, six months later, or whatever, I’m like, Okay, we got to write it now. So

Mal: sometimes those little plot bunnies just get in your head and they sit there for a while and breed in the background. And then suddenly, they’re like, Okay, we need to get this out now.

rupertgayes: Yeah, I know. This one was like…

Ellen: you need to fuck it out.

rupertgayes: No, really, this this story specifically, I was like how I’m like, Okay, well, I can’t write for like weeks at a time I need to like finish this. So I’m like, how quickly can I get them to fuck? And then end the story? And this is my answer. This is as quickly as it can happen.

Ellen: Yeah, I mean, Demon Dean doesn’t have any hang ups about any of this. It’s just trying to convince Emmanuel then he’s into it. And then off they go!

rupertgayes: Yeah. So true.

Mal: There is also a brilliant podfic of this. That was done for you by our lovely friend Dusty, NerdyNerdenstien, who did a podfic for this one. So you can listen to it. Listen to him seduce him as well.

rupertgayes:

Yeah, that podfic is absolutely fantastic. They did an amazing job with it.

Ellen: I need to catch up on the podfics on Making it Up As We Go. I’ve listened to them when I’ve been walking around their neighborhood lately, but I haven’t got up to this one yet. So

Mal: I’ve had way too many people bothering me at work recently, because it means I can’t just put my smutty podcasts. I have to be paying some kind of vague attention to what’s going on around me. So I’ve got quite a backlog of podcasts to get to.

rupertgayes: You see, this is a true problem with capitalism, you know?

Mal: right? It just gets in the way of my Destiel and podfics and true crime. That’s what happens. So

Ellen: maybe I shouldn’t admit that I’ve been walking around the neighborhood listening to smutty podcasts.

Mal: No, I love that. Just smiling quietly at the neighbors.

rupertgayes: Yeah ,I mean, well now and I clearly listen to true crime. So what’s you know what’s worse and horrific, gruesome real crime? Or some fictional whatever?

Mal: The crazy thing is the only thing that gets me. Yeah, the only thing that gets me is the fluff though. I can listen to the smut walking around the neighborhood with a completely straight face. I can listen to the true crime. They could be just that like, “and then he chopped off her head. And then he did” and I would just be walking along completely straight faced. But yet you give me like some truth floating fluff. And I will literally like, just my body does something and I have to get up, walk in a circle before I can continue?

rupertgayes: Like overstimulated by the good feelings and you just don’t know what to do.

Mal: Like, I’m not used to these feelings. What is happening? Must must do something.

Ellen: All right. Shall we continue?

Mal: Yes, that’s it, but forgotten fruit. Small but delicious. Please do. Please do read that one.

rupertgayes: Thanks.

Mal: Yes. It’s a great gateway rupertgayes fic. I can vouch for that!

Help I’ve fallen and I can’t find my grace

Ellen: Absolutely. All right. Should we do the long one next, then?

Mal: Yes.

rupertgayes: Yeah, actually, speaking of like fluff that really makes you just like need to get up or like kick your little feet, you know, in the air while you’re reading in bed. I feel like this one definitely had some passages like that.

Mal: Yes, that this fic has some moments.

Ellen: All right, let me let me introduce it. Help I’ve fallen and I can’t find my grace is by Jad. It was actually for DCBB in 2017. I don’t know how long DCBB has been going for, but I feel like that’s quite an old one in terms of DCBBs? But anyway, it’s it’s a bit longer. It’s 111,000 words. It’s explicit as well, and it’s got some art in there by sevenspirals. And the summary goes like this.

If there’s one thing Dean’s good at it’s killing, and now, with the Mark of Cain hungry on his forearm, the First Blade in his hand, and no qualms when it comes to the intricacies of right and wrong, he can showcase his talents as much as he wants. And he wants.

Crowley is quick to sink in his hooks and get a Winchester on his side. Sam is determined to get his brother back, to save him no matter the cost, but Castiel isn’t sure Dean wants to be saved.

Weakened by failing grace and running out of time, Castiel has to make the hard choice: kill the man he’s given everything for, or sacrifice everything he stands for to bring him back.

So this is like a season 10 canon divergence. Yeah, we’ve got the Mark of Cain. We’ve got you know, Crowley trying to get his agenda forward. Cas is dying because he’s got… his grace has been stolen. It’s yeah. It’s rough. It’s rough for a while.

Mal: That that whole rough cannon era that was happening.

rupertgayes: I mean, the first three chapters those hit me hard they were probably my favorite. Just I love the beginning, was so captured by it.

Ellen: It’s really how it should have been And I reckon in the show like they could have hit it so much harder in terms of like, just fucking Dean up. Because he doesn’t he doesn’t know what’s going on, he’s just suddenly come back to life. He’s got no idea. It takes him a while to kind of remember what’s happened. And yeah.

Mal: no, it, it’s really well written as well. Like it really just pulls you into it. And even though we know, like I was about to say, we’ve seen it happen in the [00:29:00] episode, but I guess not all of us have! But in theory you know, we, we know what happened and a scene that, you know, they barely paid lip service to with just Dean walking up and disappearing, going with Crowley, et cetera.

We get so much more of it in this fic and it’s so much better. This is just one of those many examples I think of like taking something that canon did and maybe didn’t do the best with. So, I’m sure the writers did the best that they were able to at the time with the constraints that they have, but we don’t have those constraints at all.

So we can just do whatever we wanted. And this is one of those things, or many times I think, where a writer has done something that maybe they’re only just recreating a scene from canon, but they’ve done it in such a way that it’s so much better. Just love it.

rupertgayes: in the additional elements too that are added, I think are just fantastic choices by the author.

Mal: Yes. A hundred percent.

rupertgayes: So, especially some characters that we see, some of them totally [00:30:00] new, some of them maybe not.

Ellen: I mean, maybe we could… There is an archive warning for graphic depictions of violence for a reason. It is, it is pretty graphic in some bits, especially… I don’t know. I’ll give you very mild spoiler, but just to, to give a warning that Krissy and her friends are in this and they do get hurt in some really nasty ways. So just be aware, it’s in the first few chapters even. I sort of got up to that bit and went, oh my God, what is going on here? I’m like reading with like my hand, my fingers over my eyes, like, what’s going on?

rupertgayes: Yeah. I was not expecting it to go in that direction. I feel like a few times the author really took this in a direction I was not anticipating, but that’s so awesome that they could do that.

Ellen: And it does have a, a happy ending, even though the beginning of it is very dark and, and violent. It does turn out okay in the [00:31:00] end for almost everyone. There’s still some people who, who don’t quite make it, but you know, there’s no major character deaths in it.

rupertgayes: Yeah. Yeah. But no, I mean, I, was really blown away by this. Honestly. One of the things. At least from the beginning, just because that’s not too spoiler heavy. It’s right in the beginning. But I always love to see how authors will, you know, us human people will describe maybe like a non-human entity or a non-human experience, right?

And so Dean being this demon, you know, what does that look like and how does this author describe it? And that was really unique I thought, and very cool how they did that.

Mal: Yeah, so one thing I think that this fic handles really well on that front is really going into how different and what it means for Dean to be a demon as opposed to a regular demon that they would find out during a hunt.

You know, this isn’t just somebody riding in [00:32:00] somebody else’s body. This is Dean in his own body that belongs to him. And the differences that makes in the power that he has and how easy or not he is to handle from a hunting point of view. And I think they really delved into that and made it like interesting.

Like they made it a key thing in this fic that Cas and Sam have to deal with cuz they can’t just exorcise him to get rid of it. Though Sam, Sam does try, mm-hmm. But it does not go well. Does does not happen. There are definitely some things in this, like it touches on some things that I’ve kind of always wondered.

Like I, this is gonna be a bit of a spoiler. It’s a mild spoiler. Skip ahead 10 seconds if you’re really, really bothered about spoilers. One of my other favorite tropes is, is the possession tropes. So anything where, for, for whatever reason Cas and Dean are sharing even momentarily, like one body. Yes. So the fact that Cas weaponizes that in this [00:33:00] for a second there just, I absolutely loved that, that like opened up a million different plot bunnies in my brain when I was reading it. And I love it when fic does that, so, okay. Spoiler warning over. It’s all good.

rupertgayes: No, I love that too. When I read that, I was like I, I wanna say, I think what I was writing where everybody knows there’s, you know, maybe a bit of that at the end there as well.

And originally I was like, dude, Dean Cas, like, what do you know? So it was super cool to see like another author, like take that on and how they did it.

Ellen: The, the other thing that is a bit of a spoiler that I found really interesting is that towards the end, and skip ahead, if you don’t wanna hear the spoilers again.

They revealed that Crowley was an angel, a fallen like he fell, or he let the snake into the garden or there was some a like a heaven thing going on with Crowley.

Mal: Yes. are we doing full spoilers? Cause I was just gonna be like, he’s the snake!

rupertgayes: Yeah. Okay. But like, [00:34:00] I, I thought that was also very cool because season eight, my favorite season of the seasons that I’ve seen, there was a whole, I remember this, people were asking questions on Tumblr because Crowley had this line to Naomi about, I think it was like, “oh, you remember Mesopotamia?”

You know, and then like the next season it’s like, wait, Crowley’s not… Crowley, like, you know, died like a couple centuries ago. Why would he mention that? And so, obviously it’s because these writers are not nearly as organized as, say, Avatar, the last Airbender writers who have a whole Bible that they follow religiously.

These guys are just, I dunno, they don’t keep track of this stuff.

Ellen: It’s a throwaway line.

Mal: They’re just winging it.

rupergayes: It’s a throwaway line. But clearly this author also had some questions, so I really enjoyed that too.

Ellen: I wondered actually if there was some Tumblr lore around that that the someone had come up with.

rupertgayes: Oh there was.

Ellen: I’ll have to have another look for it.

rupertgayes: I mean, I was fully expecting there to be a whole, like when there was like a thing in the [00:35:00] actual show with like Crowley and them buying their his bones, I was fully expecting there to be a twist of that caliber because I’m like, “no, they had that throwaway line. That’s clearly foreshadowing!” Joke’s on me.

Mal: Yeah. Don’t, don’t expect too much now.

Ellen: You can’t trust those writers.

rupertgayes: Yeah. Mal’s like you should go back and watch this. Yeah. Sure!

Mal: Nah, don’t spoil it for yourself (laughs)

rupertgayes: Let’s watch the show that always let me down.

Mal: That’s what fanfic’s for.

rupertgayes: Well, there you go. That’s why I’m reading.

Ellen: There is also a sort of meta plot to this with a… an overarching plot with trying to prevent the, the apocalypse from restarting kind of thing. There’s problems with the cage and they don’t want Lucifer and Michael to get out. So they end up having to all work together, I guess, to prevent it.

Mal: I really like that with this fic it doesn’t immediately end with, okay, [00:36:00] we saved the world and Dean’s human now. Yay. But they gave us that period after of like, okay, all right, they’re, they’re curing Dean, but he’s still gonna be pretty messed up.

Like he’s still did all those things. And he remembers them. And I, I’m, maybe I’m just an asshole, but I love, fics that, explore that, like, please torture my boy. Make it bad. I want to read about the pain and the angst! Just make it better at the end, but let me get the angst in first.

rupertgayes: Yeah. As long as it’s a good ending, that’s the most important part.

Mal: Yeah. Yeah. If I’ve got my happy ending. I can get through almost anything if I’m guaranteed a happy ending.

rupertgayes: So true.

Ellen: He does work through a lot of trauma before the happiness comes at the end.

Mal: Yeah, he does. And I don’t, I like the fact that they didn’t kind of decide not to write that part because arguably, you know, a big chunk of their actual plot was wrapped up by that point, and they could have written the ending quite differently and not given us that.

But I’m very glad that they did [00:37:00] because it, it just feels like a very nice kind of closing act for the fic and, and for Dean as a, as a character. Not that he’s like magically better by the end, but it definitely getting more of a, a sense of progress for him by the end. And it means that we get more like Dean and Cas stuff by the time they’re no longer just hunting each other across the country, which I quite like. I do like to get, you know, some Destiel payoff after I’ve invested all of that in them, you know,

rupertgayes: and there’s some good payoff. I really enjoyed the payoff.

Mal: Yes, yes. Very good payoff. And there’s some amazing, I have to mention the amazing art for the, some of the, the payoff as well, where there there’s some really nice art that we already mentioned was, is done by sevenspirals because this was a DCBB.

But there’s some great art of Cas in the shower at the bunker with his wings out. So you need no more details. Go find it. It’s, it’s, it’s just very pretty. I am a [00:38:00] sucker for anything where Cas has his wings out or true form or any of that kind of stuff. It’s, it’s well documented on this podcast, my feelings about that kind of stuff, so, yeah.

Ellen: Yep. I love how this is… One of the tags for this is “platonic married couple syndrome”. I don’t know, that’s just like a perfect description of Dean and Cas in the actual show.

Mal: Yeah. They both suffer from it badly. I loved some of the side characters that we got in this. Crowley is one of my favorite characters anyway, and I think he was very well-written in this, like he felt very canon Crowley to me in this.

I also loved all the Jody we got in this fic. I feel like she doesn’t show up as much in fic unless it’s case fic sometimes. But I really enjoyed her in this. I thought she was great. She was. Very, I won’t say patient with them, but very exasperated at the same time. Like she’s, she’s getting, she’s [00:39:00] getting the run around from Sam a lot in this fic in that he’s not really explaining anything, but she’s helping them anyway because that’s who she is.

And I just, I, I loved it when she just would lose her temper and, and they would bicker over it. Really enjoyed those and I really liked Bela in this fic.

rupertgayes: yes. Loved her.

Mal: Yeah, we’ve got to talk about Bella. I think

rupertgayes: she has a motorcycle. She slays so hard!

Mal: Yes. A triumph. I like it.

Ellen: Yeah, it’s interesting though.

We’ve got two different fics that have Bela as a demon in it. I don’t know. I, I don’t know if I’ve read any, not for a while anyway, that have her as an actual demon, but yeah, she’s great.

rupertgayes: She’s a perfect choice. It’s such a good choice. I’m still sad that we did not get to see that in canon. You know, she, similar to Crowley, just like having a sort of like affably evil sense to her, you know, in season three she wasn’t necessarily evil, but if she comes back as a demon, then you’re probably a little bit more evil at least.

[00:40:00] But yeah, just having that having that character there was an amazing choice and it was so fun to read. Especially because Dean was just not happy at all to see her again.

Ellen: No. And she, she kept following him around and he kept like, trying to get rid of her.

rupertgayes: Yeah.

Mal: Yeah. She, she ends up tied up in the trunk at one point, which… Yeah. I just loved her. She was so well done. Just one of those people that, you know, you, you kind of love to hate, so. She was brilliant.

rupertgayes:

Ellen: I actually fully expected at one point that Sam and Jody were gonna hook up. I don’t know why. I thought I, I thought they were going to at one point, and then I, I checked the tags and I’m like, oh, no, it’s not tagged, but like they’ve, and then,

Mal: I’d have been down with it, I ship Sam with anybody, Sam slash Happiness.

rupertgayes: I mean, yeah, Sam’s attracted to Milfs. You know, milfs are attracted to Sam. So, [00:41:00]

Mal: yeah, I can see that. I also have to give a shout out to not only the excellent… Now is this a spoiler? I think this might be full spoiler, because I think they chose not to tag it. So definitely skip ahead 30 seconds if you don’t want full spoilers.

But the Gabriel in this fic is written exceptionally well.

rupertgayes: Oh, Yeah, yeah, yeah. He, and that’s hard to do

Mal: for sure. Yes, because I, I felt like he’s, he’s great fun to play with in AUs because you can lean more into that kind of silliness and stuff like that. He’s a lot harder to get right in canon, I think, because he’s actually quite a complex character in a lot of ways.

Mm-hmm. Yeah. But they do it really, really well. And I also want to just shout out the brilliant foreshadowing of his character arriving, which you can pick up on, like Yes. Several chapters before if you are looking for it, I think I’m probably just like hyper, hyper aware of Gabriel foreshadowing at this point, because between him and Crowley, those are my favorite characters in fics.[00:42:00]

rupertgayes: No, I remember reading that passage and being like, oh, that’s an interesting choice. And then like, you know, but then you have that very fun moment of when, you know, when Gabriel shows up, you’re like, that’s why, oh my God, you know, I love foreshadowing, so

Mal: I do, I do too. And it was done so well here. There was a great moment with the radio and there was a great moment with candy wrappers and stuff too, and I was just like, yep. Loved it. So well done. So gotta shout out that foreshadowing.

rupertgayes: Mal’s reading this, like “I’m connecting the dots. Oh my God.”

Mal: I was, I was that meme and then I just shrieked when I was right. So,

Ellen: well, we need, we need more badass angels in canon if you ask me. Mm-hmm. hey, they kind of got a bit. A bit kind of watered down in later seasons. So yes, always love to see them being a badass in general.

Mal: Yeah. And they definitely are in this, they don’t shy away from how powerful the angels are in this fic, which is another one of my favorite things. [00:43:00] Like, make them raze a field to the ground because they can.

I dunno how much more of this we, we want to get into, just cuz I feel like we, we’ve spoiled key parts of it, but there’s still, there’s still plenty worth reading out there. Like, I, I love the interactions between demon Dean when he’s still very much demon Dean and Cas in this one and just Cas’s determination. Even though it kind of hurts to read like Cas’s determination. Dean probably can’t be saved because he’s not wrong. Like you’re, you’re reading it and, and you’re seeing things from Dean’s point of view and you’re like, but Cas is, is right, like Sam is determined to save Dean and Cas is the ones kind of being a bit more practical about it really. Like he by no means, wants to have to kill Dean. It’s clearly like tearing him apart that he would have to, but he’s much more practical about it than Sam is. And I love, again, I kind of love watching him [00:44:00] torture himself over that.

Like, he, he’s clearly not happy with the choice, but thinks that is the only choice. So yes. Love the angst.

Ellen: Yep.

Mal: All right. But yeah, unless anybody wants to add anything else, I think I’ve squeed over all the different parts I wanna squee over.

rupertgayes: Yeah, no, I mean there’s really, it’s, it’s densely written, not in a way that you’re like, oh God, you know, it’s very well written.

It’s very fun to read, but there’s a lot of cool stuff packed in there. And obviously over a hundred k that, that was hard for me. I usually cap it at 10 K these days. But there’s definitely enough in there for people who do like longer fics. You can get through this very quickly and have an absolute blast.

And there’s probably a bunch of stuff that we couldn’t even talk about when describing this story.

Ellen: Oh yeah. There’s some stuff in there that will surprise you.

Mal: Yeah. I do have some minor shout outs, one of which is, I love any fic where they [00:45:00] give me, and should have said this one about the one earlier as well, but where they give me a peek at Cas pulling Dean out of hell.

I love like all the different ways that fic writers can represent that because it’s one of those things like, we know it happens, but we, we never got to see it. So other than like some like Dean hanging on some hooks and some flashing lights, that was all we got. So I just love the fact that, you know, different fic writers tackle this, maybe not in a, a whole fic by itself, though I have read some of those as well and those are great, but just like little flashbacks all scenes for context. And this fic actually starts with that and it’s so well written that it’s one of those scenes where even though you know exactly how it ends and what happens, I was still gripped by it. Like I couldn’t skip past it. Like I was very invested in what was going on in that one.

And my other thing is just that I love any fic where they reference like song titles and things in the chapter names and stuff like that. I’m such a nerd for that kind of stuff. And I like this one as well. So [00:46:00] like chapter, there’s someone to love.

So there you go. “In My Time of Dying” as well, one of the, like most the songs I associate with Supernatural the most was, was right there in chapter one. So there we go. They had me at that point.

Ellen: Excellent. Yes. I’m, I do enjoy the, I mean, we never really got to see much of it, like you said about the, the structure of hell and how different it is between like maybe what Dean went through and then later the endless lines that Crowley makes everyone stand in.

But we can talk about that more in when we’re talking about Fata Morgana, because that has some really brilliant… I think maybe we can move onto that right now. Maybe we can just neatly segue into that.

Fata Morgana

rupertgayes: Is it time? Oh boy.

Mal: It’s time!

Ellen: you’re so excited!

rupertgayes: A one shot!

Mal: It’s such a good one shot, though. We all adored this one.

rupertgayes: No, I see that. Like, I’m [00:47:00] always on the hunt for like prime Supernatural one shots. I’m like that I can’t read long stories anymore, you know, so I’m always just like, okay, what’s the best story under 10,000 words? I need to find it. And this, this one might be a contender I think.

Mal: this one is just very unique and I loved it.

Because there’s, there’s so much story it’s not telling. But is implied. Okay. We should probably read the summary first. Let people know what we’re talking about. We’re, we’re, we’re getting so excited. We’re getting ahead of ourselves with this one.

Ellen: All right. So Fata Morgana was written by orange_crushed. It was written back in 2014, so it’s a, a bit of an older one.

But the summary goes:

The endless asphalt and broken road, the empty land and piles of human garbage, the unwanted ends of life, the cracked toys and broken screens and burning cars and gravel. Dean Winchester is the king of hell.

“Oh,” says Bela.

That changes certain things.

So there you go. That’s all of it. Like, that’s pretty much it.

I had to, I went and looked up what the, what “Fata Morgana” actually means, because I figured it was like an actual saying or, but it’s a, it’s literally like Morgana Pendragon, like not Pendragon, but whatever she’s called in the real Arthurian legend. And it’s the name given to mirages that happen like at sea, if you can, you, you think you see land over there, but it’s not really there. That kind of mirage, that’s called Fata Morgana. It was really interesting

rupertgayes:  yeah, some of those images too are really, really crazy. Like, because I looked this up earlier today too. I had the same thing. I was like, what does this mean?

But some of those images too are almost like these, these weird super imposed, you know, so you have like these two versions of something. So it can be fun to overanalyze and be like, oh, it’s like this new [00:49:00] version of Dean or this new version of hell

Mal: And this is very much Dean’s version of hell, but we are seeing it through some different eyes in this one, so we need to jump straight in with our beloved Bela again, a very different version of Bela, but again, a very unique and very good version of Bela. I think, so this f is actually from her point of view, so this is one of those stories that is definitely a Destiel story but is told from an outside perspective, which every now and again, I really enjoy one of those.

I think it’s, it’s a lot of fun to kind of see how ridiculous they look to other people sometimes.

Ellen: Yeah. And this one was written on… it was posted like immediately after that season nine finale.

rupertgayes: They were ready.

Ellen: So obviously this, this person just went, like, watched the finale and just went, right, [00:50:00] I, I need to write this. And yeah. Amazing.

rupertgayes: So iconic of them, to be honest. Yeah, they are definitely fics that. You know, you have a particular ship that you’re talking about, and then it’s a character from outside that dynamic looking in, doing other things, interacting with the ship, whatever. And some of them are, like you guys were saying, so unique, the unique way to depict what’s going on.

You know, I mean, I think it’s fair to say Destiel isn’t the only thing this story is focusing on. We even have, you know, some interactions between Bela and Cas, which were very cool to see. Yeah. And you know, again, I, I really don’t think I’ve read anything else that was like this. So when I did run across it like years ago I was struck by it and I think I’d forgotten about it.

And then I was reminded again when I was back in the fandom and I was like, oh my goodness, this is wild. So,

Ellen: Well, we should probably give a bit of a description [00:51:00] of what is going on here. So Dean has become the king of hell. And Cas is in hell trying to find him and, and trying to convince him to come back to Earth, and Bela ends up helping him in a roundabout way.

They help each other, I guess, but yeah, it, so it’s the concept of hell remodeling itself based on whoever’s in charge of it. So, yeah. So it’s all broken. You know, wasteland.

rupertgayes: Yeah, this Americana wasteland. Mm-hmm.

Ellen: Yeah, it’s really interesting.

Mal: I really like all the implications of that, that like, maybe hell itself is, I won’t say sentient, but has some kind of, I don’t know, maybe, maybe I do mean sentient.

Like there’s a lot of implications with that, that I just think are fascinating.

rupertgayes: Yeah. Oh my gosh. It’s like Silent Hill, any Silent Hill fans or horror fans out there? you know.

Mal: [00:52:00] Yes. No, that makes, yeah,

rupertgayes: yeah. But having that, that ability that it’s almost psychically linked to whoever is in charge.

And so these things… and even that I thought was so interesting, like, you know, way back in season six, having Crowley have these long lines of people and that’s, you know, their torture, right? I mean, on one level, that’s funny. But it was also kind of genius that that’s how they wanted to depict it, because it was so different from like the glimpse we get at the end of season three, or, you know, these later depictions that we get further down the line.

So them being able to play with that is just very cool.

Mal: I’m a sucker. A powerful first line in fic, not even just in fic, just like books in general. And I love like a short, snappy one that immediately draws me in. So this one I particularly liked because it just starts with “There is an angel in hell.”

So that immediately just knowing, knowing already just from reading the tags that this is after “Do you believe in miracles”, which was [00:53:00] the season nine finale? It already tells you that okay, shit’s gone down since that episode. Like things, things have happened, clearly. And you can make the assumption just from that line, just because we know these characters.

You’re like, okay, well that means Dean is already down here. Otherwise Cas wouldn’t be like all these kinds of assumptions that you can make just from that one line.

rupertgayes: Yeah. Yeah, definitely. I feel like we can’t say too much just because it is so short. But you know, you even get like these very cool twists in a way wrapped up in this really spectacular ending as well. So,

Mal: yes, I love the ending to this one.

Ellen: I don’t know if I said at the start that this one is actually rated Teen. So even though it’s got like a tagged angst and mild gore and violence it doesn’t actually have any archive warnings, but there’s no smut in this one

Mal: I was gonna say the things we consider to be Teen in this fandom,

Ellen: this was written a long time ago that, [00:54:00] that the you know, rating kind of things have changed since then. But,

Mal: Yeah, I also just think it’s the show itself. Like the things that happen on screen in the show, I’m always just like, well, that’s normal here. Do I even need to tag for that? That’s just Supernatural.

Ellen: Yeah. I don’t wanna say anything else to…

Mal: Yeah. Don’t want to tell you what happens.

rupertgayes: Just read it!

Ellen: It’s so good.

rupertgayes: It’ll take you like 20 minutes and you’ll be glad you did it. Go read it and then at me on Twitter.

Mal: Yeah. Short but powerful, I think this fic.

Ellen: They packed so much delicious tension into this 6,000 words.

Mal: Yes. Yeah. There’s so much backstory. I love it when a fic that, even though it’s short, it can imply so much has already happened without having to spell it out on the page for you.

And the, the different relationships that we see here, not even just Dean and Cas, but the interactions between different characters that we see here do imply so much is happening, which is, you know, it’s, it’s slowly kind of trickled in and makes more sense as you go along. But I love that when people [00:55:00] can pack so much into a small fic without making it feel, you know, rushed or just like a big dump of information.

Very well done.

Where There is Love

Mal: All right. Should we move on to…

rupertgayes: all right. Nice.

Mal: The last one? All right. So I think the last bit that we’re going to cover in depth today is Where There is Love by bookkbaby. Which is another shorter one. Though with, I would say quite a different tone to the other one. So this is 4,700 words.

This is from 2015 and is a complete AU. So this is one of those fics we’re talking about where you can use Demon Dean in such a variety of ways. And this is one of the ones where he is definitely a demon. But we have a whole AU set up with Cas as a priest in this one. Oh, yes. Okay. This is the one that arguably has, is it tagged for this?

Yes, it is. Okay. So it has a Cas that is somewhere on the asexuality spectrum. It’s not said explicitly [00:56:00] where he falls on that. You can definitely make some inferences if you want to from the text, but I don’t think it matters necessarily. But he’s definitely somewhere on that spectrum as it is in the text.

And priest Cas and Dean basically kind of going undercover in his church as like a drifter with the pure intention of… “pure intention,” impure intention of just seducing the, the, the priest. He wants to corrupt the priest.

rupertgayes: My favorite,

Mal: yeah, but he doesn’t, yeah, it doesn’t necessarily quite go to plan.

rupertgayes: He falls in love, oh my god. You know, after reading another 10,000 Destiel fics where it’s like, oh my God, he fell in love. He did it again.

Mal: He fell in love again.

Ellen: You can never get tired of that.

rupertgayes: Yeah. Honestly, though, I will never, ever, ever get tired of Demon Dean and Priest Cas going at it. It is my favorite like sub-genre of this [00:57:00] sub-genre.

Yes. It never gets old.

Mal: No, I love it.

Ellen: I need to read a few more of them. I think. I don’t know if I’ve seen that many of them.

Mal: There are some really good ones out there.

rupertgayes: Yeah. But there aren’t enough…there aren’t enough. There needs to be so many more in my mind.

Ellen: Yeah. The, the lovely thing about this is that you know, Dean’s done things in the community to help people, and Cas can see that he’s a good man.

He’s like, no, I’m not really, I’m not like, we can’t do this. I’m gonna send you to hell. And Cas is like, I don’t care.

rupertgayes: Like whatever. Yeah. Alright, bud, let’s go.

Ellen: And they resist for so long. But, and then Dean’s like, I’m gonna… I wrote down this quote because I loved it, and he said he was gonna, even if he does dam him to, to go to hell, he’ll “create a heaven for him in the bowels of the pit.”

So yes, he’s gonna protect Cas no matter…

Mal: that was very sweet,

rupertgayes: cry. Yeah

Ellen: [00:58:00] Yep. But yes, they do get it on in a most satisfying way still

Mal: very satisfying. Wonderfully well done. We do approve. (laughing)

rupertgayes: No, it’s so fun. And obviously the point for this was more like a smut fic, but one of the other aspects of anytime someone wants to write a demon is like, okay, well what’s like the sliding scale? You know? Are you automatically evil when you’re a demon? How does that work? You’re just, you know, if you’re a different entity altogether, how does that point of view you know, affect things. And so I love the, the introduction of any sort of like demonic character. Could be Dean, it could be anyone in supernatural fic where it’s like yeah, I’m a demonn, but like, hmm, maybe, but…

Mal: like how bad are you talking?

rupertgayes: you know, I’m not just like flat out evil for no reason. I have like other things going on. Yeah.

Ellen: I could do nice things as well as nasty things.

rupertgayes: Yeah. You know, like the Good Omens school of thought, you know? [00:59:00] big fan.

Ellen: Yeah. Or even like Dean in canon really? Cuz he goes and does stuff. Like he, he kills that guy who’s cheating on his wife and, you know, he does things that are probably morally very gray, but yeah. They’re not all evil…

Mal: gray areas, not that killing anyone’s ever a gray area. Yeah. Let me just put that out there.

rupertgayes: I forget what, I forget what good deeds this Cas like talks about Dean doing, but I’m like, I absolutely do need to see season 10 dean like killing some guy, but then also being at a gardening club, helping an old lady walk, you know, across the street and he’s like, I’m a murderer, but I’m not a dick. I don’t know.

Mal: I love that at the beginning of this fic, the implication is very much that they can’t do this because Dean’s touch will corrupt Cas, essentially. And, and that it ends up like that, that’s completely inverted by the end, which I really like. I don’t feel like we can really not spoiler this fic because it is just, you know, [01:00:00] very short and mostly smut, but, so there’s not a lot to spoil here.

But there’s definitely the implication that, you know, Dean had been assuming that he would corrupt Cas when maybe it’s actually that Cas can have an effect on him instead of the other way around. And it was beautiful. I loved it.

Ellen: Yeah.

rupertgayes: Yeah. It was so sweet. It was just, it was such a fun read. I know I’d read this like again ages ago, whenever it came out.

But yeah, going back to it for this, I was like, “ah, I forgot how much I love this.” What a fun, you know, look through this tag to be honest.

Mal: That’s one of the really fun things about doing this podcast honestly, is just like digging through the tag when we’re first trying to pick which fics to feature.

Cuz there are always so many and we try not to automatically just go for like, the big one that everyone knows for a certain trope or something like that. We really try to kind of vary it up in terms of length, in terms of the, the particular [01:01:00] take on the trope that we’re doing. You know, we, we could find a fic that only has like three kudos, but if it’s one that fits the trope and we think is a really good fit and we enjoy it, then we’re just as likely to feature that as one that’s got you know, like 10,000.

So that’s really part of the fun for me, is just digging through the tag and finding all these gems that I’d forgotten about. ‘Cause there are so many things that I had read, and it’s not that I like forgotten them because they weren’t memorable or weren’t good in any way. That there’s just so much Dean Cas in my brain that like that never gonna stay.

rupertgayes: So, no, no, it’s so true. I, I started going back through like, really old bookmarks on LiveJournal because a lot of them made it over to ao3, but not all of them. And I’m like, oh, I have like these vivid memories of like, way back in high school and like, ah, this one like blew my mind and trying to find them or finding like other things that those authors had written.

It, it’s kind of like a two-edged sword because there’s so many amazing things that you can’t find all of the stuff that you really want to read. But then on the other hand, you can [01:02:00] so, so often just like, like you were saying, go through this tag or go through this pairing, and then you’re like, oh my God.

The most amazing fic ever from like six years ago. But it’s life changing, you know? And no one else has heard of it.

Mal: Yes. That makes me mourn for all of the, the like lost fics that I know that I read back on like fanfic.net or like even just on Tumblr, like when people, I mean people still do, but even when people just used to post fic on Tumblr and they would just read the whole thing in like one long ass Tumblr post.

And it, it’s just like they’re lost fics now. Like I cannot find them. The accounts don’t exist anymore. There’s like broken links on review sites to them and stuff like that.

rupertgayes: Can you imagine just trying to do this in the nineties? Thank God. At least we live now,

Mal: right? I know.

rupertgayes: Like it’s already hard now!

Mal: there were so many good fics. Oh my gosh, so many good fics that have just been lost to time, cuz I know, I remember reading like bunches of even like gen Supernatural fics, like back, [01:03:00] like before, before Destiel is what it is now. And was just kind of becoming a thing and becoming this, this epic pairing that we now have. And I remember reading so many good fics around like the birth of the ship.

And you just can’t find them now. And it just makes me mourn for those, those long lost fics.

Ellen: Well at least we’re, we’re not slowing down too much in producing new ones, so  

Mal: Definitely not.

rupertgayes: Oh my God. What’re we on? Yeah,

Ellen: we’re getting up towards 105,000.

Mal: Yeah. Oh yeah. Speaking of which, do you have anything that you are working on, Jenn, that you want to just kind of plug or get out there or, or tell us about?

rupertgayes: Let me think about it. Yeah, I mean Oh my God, yes. As always, the light of my life, my absolute reason for living. I say this with such a flat voice. This really stupidly [01:04:00] idiotically, ridiculously long Supernatural rewrite I have the entire series and the first segment is called heard from your mother (she don’t recognize you), so it’s the heard from your mother series. And I’ll usually do acronyms if I’m talking about it on social and it has its sequel and I’m working on the third and final part, but it’s a 15.18 canon divergent? Time AU? I say this with question marks because you gotta read the whole thing to know for sure.

But instead of going to the empty Cas wakes up in 2003. He doesn’t really know who or what he is, but he runs into Stanford era Dean. They get together before season one starts, and then it set, it sets off a chain reaction of a lot of things, you know, going differently in the story.

Mal and Ellen at the same time whisper: It’s great. It’s amazing!

rupertgayes: It’s, it’s very long.

Mal: Half a million words. It’s very long.

rupertgayes: Yep. And I dunno how, [01:05:00] how this happened!

Ellen: Well, I’m gonna catch up on the second part before you start posting the third part, hopefully.

rupertgayes: Oh, yeah. Don’t, yeah, you got time. I’ve been, I had to take a bit of a break because I wrote 500,000 words. I’m entitled to a break. And I started writing, you know, a few other things.

But now we’re back. Can’t, absolutely can’t wait to dive into season three. There’s a lot of really cool things there. There’s definitely more of it going off the rails from like, what we’ve seen in the past. Giving characters that we’ve seen before a larger role, maybe introducing some other characters from the show a little bit earlier.

And finally getting like some of these questions answered because some of these readers have been very patient waiting for everything to get resolved.

Ellen: Yep. Awesome.

rupertgayes: There’s, there’s a few other things in the works too, but that’s the big one.

Ellen: Excellent. I can’t wait. [01:06:00]

rupertgayes: Me too.

Other recommendations

Ellen: Do we wanna go through a few other quickfire demon recommendations while we’re here?

Yeah, sure. Yes. I’ll just start off by saying another one that we’ve reread that we decided not to talk about in depth, but we will mention is called Who Is The Lamb and Who Is The Knife? By fairychangeling. It’s actually another DC B B F that’s from 2016, so it’s a bit older as, and, and it’s only rated teen, but it’s about the angel…It’s like an au like a, I don’t know, like a medieval kingdom type thing.

rupertgayes: Yeah. Kind of omegaverse too. A little bit.

Ellen: A little bit. Yeah. So Prince Castiel is the, he’s an angel and demon Dean is the, the demon king. And also it’s got like this Michael is the angels’ king and he is married to Dean’s brother [01:07:00] Adam.

So it’s got like a Michael/Adam thing going on too, which is really cool. And this, and as like, this was written in 2016, so it’s like before Michael and Adam came back, you know, so it’s interesting take on that.

rupertgayes: trendsetter.

Ellen: Yeah, it’s, yeah, it’s really cool. It’s nice. It’s a bit more fluffy maybe than some of the others we’ve spoken about and it’s got some nice wing kink type stuff in it too. Like the angel wings are really cool.

rupertgayes: Yeah, I mean this one, it did have like the required unrequited love, which is always, I always enjoy that.

Mal: I have another one shot to recommend. This is one of those ones that’s, that’s gonna be very divisive by the people will love it or it’s not gonna be for them at all, because it does have an mpreg tag in it.

And I know that’s one of those tags that, you know, people either completely avoid or they just really love. So if that is something that you enjoy reading there is a little fic by the lovely Tobythewise. He wrote this [01:08:00] in 2020 and it is a fic where Cas figures out a way to basically burn the Mark of Cain from Dean’s body.

So he convinces Dean to let him in and say yes. And. It’s not a spoiler to say that yes, the spell does work. But there, there are complications following on from that. It’s, it’s got the usual, like… they don’t communicate well. All the, all the usual lovely Destiel treats of miscommunication in there, they do work it out in the end.

It does have a happy ending. But it’s a pretty nice little one shot. Yeah, it’s just over 6,000 words. It’s been quite some time since I’ve read this one, so I think I’m due for a reread. But yeah, this has cure for the Mark of Cain. But do watch out. It does have that mpreg tag if that’s something that people are avoiding. So…

Ellen: Did you mention the title? Sorry, I didn’t…

Mal: Oh, did I? Probably not. I’m bad at that. Yeah. So this book is called One Little Mark by Tobythewise. [01:09:00]

Ellen: Okay. Awesome.

rupertgayes: Very nice. Yeah. So the one that I did find, I know we were talking about getting different versions of Demon Dean, you don’t have to talk about on the podcast.

So this one is an AU but it’s actually a 1950s AU It’s a little bit darker because I guess that is what I like to read. I did not know this about myself, but my bookmarks don’t lie. And it’s called Come Softly to Me by Kingdumbass, and the summaries is very quick. It’s “The devil comes in threes: An allegory in three parts.”, it’s 14 K.

Yeah, there’s, there’s possession, adultery, not a happy ending. But yeah, it’s very, it’s very cool. And honestly, I’ll probably need to update my own bookmarks with more Demon Dean stuff for people to check out. So, You know, if you already know where to find me on ao3, probably just also check out my bookmarks, because yes, that will [01:10:00] probably be the bulk of what I bookmark for Supernatural.

Ellen: Yes, go and find rupertgayes, on ao3. There’ll be a link in our show notes anyway. So go have a look!

Mal: I would like to also recommend if people want a really good kind of mid-sized fic that leads straight on from that season nine finale and just goes a slightly different direction, like doesn’t involve any of the spoilers that are available at that point.

It’s really just goes straight from that finale and gives some great demon Dean. I’m gonna recommend 12 Arches Facing the Sea by MajorEnglishEsquire. I really, really liked this fic. It’s so good. It’s 43,000 words, so it’s, to me that’s like a, a good chunky, mid-sized fic. I really like it.

It does have like some darker parts in it. Like some, some blood, some gore. There’s obviously graphic depictions of violence. There is a major character death. I will say that it’s [01:11:00] not a major show character in that way. It’s, it’s not like Dean, Cas, or Sam. Yeah. But it is a, a major character, death within the fic, so that’s something people need to consider.

And yeah, there are definitely kind of darker parts in this, but I found it very satisfying and I loved reading it. And I just really loved the, the Demon Dean and that one. So please go check that one out. If you need one of those chunky fics where you can kind of like curl up and sit down for a few hours and really stick your teeth into something.

Ellen: Awesome. I’ve got one more. I… Yes, I consent to seeing adult content, ao3.

Mal: (laughing) Are you sure?

Ellen: Come on, man.

rupertgayes: So I need it. I need my fics!

Ellen: I’m on my, I’m not on my usual reading device. That’s fine. His Saving Grace by our dear friend Desirae. She wrote this back in 2017. This is [01:12:00] a season 10 canon divergence where basically Dean has gone off to, to do his demon stuff with Crowley.

He’s kind of actually ditched Crowley and Cas has decided that, well, when Cas pulled Dean out of hell, he’s left a bit of his grace in in him like in the hand print, you know, like they’re connected by his grace and he is trying to make that… he’s trying to connect back with that grace to help cure Dean of being a demon, basically.

And in order to do that, he’s gotta wait for Dean to like fall in love with him again. So it’s a really beautiful slow development. I mean, it’s only you know, 10 K, but it’s a, it’s a slow development of their relationship back to being a couple basically, and Dean losing, gradually losing his demonic kind of aspects.

And there’s, there’s wing kink in this, there’s some lovely kind of demon true form stuff in here. [01:13:00] It’s, it’s lovely. I love it. I’m, I’m sad that I haven’t read this before and now that I have it’s going on my favorite list cuz it’s really cool. I like that one

Mal: Gonna have to read this one.

rupertgayes: Yeah, same.

Ellen: Any others that we wanna mention?

Mal: I do have one more that is very, very short and I just enjoyed because it’s angsty and I will say kind of ambiguous, so maybe not one for people who need like a very wrapped up firm, happy ending. But it’s called, all I want for you to do is take My Body Home by Xylodemon.

Mm-hmm. So this is a Demon Dean angsty fic, where Cas makes a deal. It’s incredibly short, so I won’t spoil more than that. It’s 1600 words. So it’s, it’s, it’s very short now.We can’t really spoiler any, like, without giving anything…

Ellen: You just may as well read the whole fic now.

Mal: Yeah. I’ll just recite it for you. We’ll turn this into a podfic. (laughing) No. I, I really liked it. I, it’s a little, little dose of angst. It, it was fine for me. It didn’t leave me feeling remotely unfulfilled. I think it was a great ending, [01:14:00] but I can see how people who don’t like more open, ambiguous endings would not appreciate that.

But Xylodemon writes incredibly well so I find their writing to be incredibly satisfying no matter how they choose to end things. And this was incredibly well done in the, the space that they did. Like I can’t believe that they created such a wonderful fic in just 1600 words. So

rupertgayes: love a good one shot. I will always, I will always talk about that.

I think I read this, this one as well. I can’t remember for sure unless I have it in front of me. But if it’s Demon Dean and if it’s a shorter fic, then probably yes. And if it’s the one I’m thinking of, I also really enjoyed it.

Ellen: There was another one on this list that I don’t know if I actually ended up reading it, so I can’t speak to what it’s about or anything, but I wrote it down on the list because I love the name of the author’s name, which is “TheGrumpyOneIsSoftForTheSunshineOne”.

rupertgayes: Aw!

[01:15:00] but the fic itself is called Don’t matter how you feel (it only matters how you look). And it’s only a really short one too. So it’s the same, it’s like 16, 1700 words as well. So. We’d gonna have to go and give that a peek now that I’ve mentioned it.

Mal: Excellent. Okay. Yeah, there, there is a lot of good demon Dean offerings out there, but there need to be even more.

So please write more.

rupertgayes: Yes, please.

Ellen: More required! We do have a few more on the list, so we’re gonna, I’ll post links to all of them on the show notes on mixtapebookclub.com. So go and check that out if you want some more, even more than we’ve talked about already. There’s so many. Well, thank you so much, Jenn, for coming to talk to us today.

rupertgayes: Thank you. It was so fun to talk about. Probably gonna like, go back through this tag. Have another lookie Lou. See what I can find. But no, it was, it was, it was [01:16:00] genuinely so fun to talk to you guys about this, especially since it’s a trope that I adore so much.

Mal: Yeah. Well, thank you for providing us with two brilliant entries for the list today.

rupertgayes: I know, I, I can’t, I mean, I love writing Heard from your mother, unfortunately, no demon Dean, you know, we have body possession a little bit, but when it’s done, I would love to dive back into writing vaguely depraved demon Dean fic, because I think that might be my calling.

Ellen: Excellent.

Mal: Yes. Reading all of these books has just made me really, really desperate to get back to my… I did a season 15 divergent fic, which I did as a Mark of Cain Cas fic, like picking up on that little thread that they had in season 15 where there was a possibility that they might go down that route again and they didn’t in the show and I was so mad. So I was like, no, no. So I started writing a Mark of [01:17:00] Cain Cas fic and reading all of these demon Dean fic just made so inspired to go back and make Cas even more of an asshole.

I was like, I need to do this

Ellen: excellent! I love that one.

rupertgayes: I love it when he’s a bitch. (laughing) Yeah. I like ‘em when they’re all just assholes.

Mal: Yeah, it’s fun. It’s fun to just remove people’s filters sometimes.

rupertgayes: Yeah. My favorite thing when I talk about Sam is like he should have stayed a psychic and a bitch the whole time and I can get, yes.

I’ve had two different people who said that they’ve red heard from your mother and they’re like, I only read the scenes to Sam, and I’m like, Icon

Ellen: what? (laughing) Well, if you find any other gems do let me know and I’ll add them to the, to the list.

rupertgayes: Yes. Yeah. Actually, I, I feel like another friend may have written one, so I’m gonna go look and I will

Mal: Yes, definitely give it to us to add to the list and also just so I can read it.

rupertgayes: Yes, yes. Okay.

Ellen: That too. [01:18:00] So you can if you have any extra Demon Dean fics that we have missed or aren’t on the list, you can get in touch with us on Mixtape Book Club on all the social medias.

I, well maybe not all of the social medias, but a lot of the social medias. Or you can email us contact@mixtapebookclub.com or you can find us on Discord in Profound Bond discord server or in our ko-fi membership server.

Mal: And you can come back to join us again next time. We are going to be discussing more kind of canon fics most likely because we’re going to be covering case fics, which I’m very, very excited about and I already have a huge list in the back of my head now of fics that I can recommend for that.

rupertgayes: Oooh!

Ellen: There are a lot of really good case fics out there.

rupertgayes: So many good ones.

Mal: And we’ve already covered a few case fics on the show. Just cuz we have done a couple of different episodes which kind of lean into canon fics and some of those, even if it wasn’t the trope we were [01:19:00] focusing on, did involve case fics. So we will definitely try and come up with new shiny ones that were not involved in any of the other episodes.

Ellen: So thanks everyone for listening and we’ll talk to you again really soon.

Mal: And as always, remember that the story isn’t over until we say it is.

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