Home » Transcript: Track 13: Space Gays

Transcript: Track 13: Space Gays

Episode 13 posted March 5, 2021
Links to all fics mentioned can be found on the main episode post.

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[Intro music]

Ellen: [00:00:00] Hi everyone, welcome to the thirteenth episode of Mixtape Book Club Podcast. My name’s Ellen.

MalMuses: And my name is Mal.

Ellen: In each episode we take a look at a different trope or subgenre in the huge collection of Destiel fanfiction. We’re almost up to 96,000 fan fics in the Destiel pairing now, so we’ve got quite a lot to get through, but this week we’ve been asked, thanks to popular demand, we are going to take a look at fics that are set in space.

MalMuses: Space Gays! My favorite. So to help us discuss her fic, Dark Side of the Moon, as well as a few other space fics that we’ve picked out, we would like to welcome Cass. Cass, do you want to let us know what your different handles are on AO3 and Twitter and places?

Cass: Yeah. Yeah. Well, my name is [00:01:00] Cass, as you said. I’m also imogenbynight on AO3, violetmatter on Twitter. And thevioletcaptain on Tumblr because apparently I’m incapable of just choosing a username and sticking with it, but yeah, thanks for having me.

Ellen: Welcome. So we’re going to… we’ve got four fics that we’re going to talk about as well as Dark Side of the Moon, and the other ones are The Parts of Our Sum by Annie D, Untethered by TheTwistedWillow and skies of powdered gold by casfallsinlove.

MalMuses: And as always, links to all the fics that we’re going to be talking about today are going to be available in the episodes post on mixtapebookclub. com and also included in our master collection on AO3.

Ellen: Yeah. So Space Gays. How much do we love space gays?

Cass: Love space gays!

MalMuses: This is my jam, y’all. I’m here. Yes!

Cass: There is not enough, frankly.

Ellen: No, that’s true, actually. When we were, I was looking through the [00:02:00] tags for it, and the alternate universe space tag is actually quite small for Destiel, so. You know, get writing those space gays fics people

MalMuses: I’m on it. Don’t you worry.

Ellen: I know you are. The whole reason that we decided to do this topic so quickly was that a few episodes ago we spoke about I’d Cross the Sky For You by superhoney, about a coffee shop in space and everyone was sort of like “We need space gays!” So okay. We’ll do that.

MalMuses: I guess we could be persuaded [laughs]

Ellen: So basically we’re, we’re like giant sci-fi nerds over here. Do we wanna give… like, one of the questions that we did get from our friends in the in the Profound Bond server was that, was to talk about sci-fi that has influenced all of us, and you know, why we sort of love it so much. So I don’t know. Do you want to go each one at a time and [00:03:00] talk about what the sci-fi that we love?

Cass: Yeah, sure. Well, I guess. I, yeah I’m just trying to think so I, I guess from when I was really young, I was always really into The X Files and that’s probably how sci-fi, that was kind of my way in to sci fi and then, you know, Star Wars, Star Trek, Battlestar Galactica, all of the stars it’s just, it’s such, there’s such a wide scope, for storytelling, when it comes to having the entire universe at your fingertips, which I think is a very attractive thing as a writer.

EllenofOz: Definitely. How about you, Mal?

MalMuses: Well, for me I was one of those kids, like, my ex stepdad was always super into, like, the old sci fi, I guess, from when he was a kid. So, like, all of the old movies from the 50s, like, Twenty Million Miles from Earth, and The Day the Earth Stood Still, and all that, like, really corny, like, stuff.

So, that [00:04:00] was kinda like I guess our bonding thing that we did when I was a kid, like he would put on those, like, really old sci fi movies. And then when I went to college, one of my roommates was like the biggest sci fi nerd. In my head, that was what I connected sci fi to, like I didn’t really have any like connection to like more modern sci fi.

I was just like, oh, it’s like the weird puppets and bad lighting. Which horrified my roommate so then I got, you know, a crash course whether I wanted to or not. So it was very much like if you imagine if you met Charlie in real life and she you found out that you know you had never watched Star Trek?

Her reaction was exactly what happened to me So, yeah, I got the whole rundown Star Trek, Star Wars, all the stars, like I said Stargate, like everything. Yep

Ellen: Yeah, so for me my parents are big sci fi nerds, like to start with, like they’d been [00:05:00] Doctor Who fans for, before they were called Whovians a long time ago. And so they, yeah, so I must’ve watched Star Wars when I was probably, I don’t know, a baby like, you know, going to the cinema to watch it, I guess.

But so yeah, I’ve always loved that kind of space adventure type stuff. And then I always enjoyed reading like the hard sci fi stuff, like actually, you know, spaceships and I guess technological sci fi books as well. So. But one thing that I find really interesting about this, the Destiel fandom, or the SPN fandom, I guess, is that I found a bunch of people who are also really big fans of Red Dwarf, because I was a huge Red Dwarf fan in my high school years.

I was really kind of bordering on my first kind of real fandom and then randomly later I’ll mention it to people and they’re like, “Oh yeah, I love that show!” So anyway that’s my nerdy confession [00:06:00] time.

So I guess the and then reading some of the hard sci fi, like, you know, spaceships and all that kind of thing, whenever I find a book like that, that actually has romance in it, I’m always really surprised because often those kind of sci fi is more, I guess it’s, it’s not, it’s aimed at people who enjoy reading romance. So to have, especially in our kind of fandom that kind of story that also has a really awesome romance in it is just perfect.

MalMuses: Oh yeah. There needs to be more sci fi romance, like, that’s a niche that we just need to go into and make explode.

Ellen: Right? Let’s do it.

MalMuses: I can’t see why those two things can’t go together, like, amazing world building and romance? Yes, please.

Ellen: Yeah, there’s just not that much of it around, like I don’t know, I’m always a bit surprised when I find some.

Cass: Yeah, it’s definitely an under… underserved niche, [00:07:00] for sure.

Ellen: So I guess that’s a good segue into one of the other questions that we had from, from PB. We had how do the writers who are writing about space in… when you have such a big kind of world building or, you know, universe building task to do how do you avoid too much exposition in that?

I mean, this is not just for fanfic, this is for any sci fi I’m sure, you know, to balance that with your romance story that you’re inserting. What do you think? It’s a difficult balance.

MalMuses: I don’t know. It, it’s, yeah, I, it is a difficult balance, but I don’t know if it’s necessarily that different to writing any kind of au where you have to world build really.

Like if you were writing a fantasy story or something else, you’d still have to do that, I think, and you’d still have to be careful about. You know, feeding that to your reader gradually and not just dumping it all on them at the beginning and putting them to sleep.

Cass: Yeah, yeah, I agree. Especially that, [00:08:00] yeah, of that gradual feed of information, but also I think a lot of it comes down to doing a lot of world building and planning and things that you don’t actually explicitly mention in the story itself, which is something that I definitely do a lot of myself.

Where you may, you know, you might know the full history of this universe that you’ve created, but you’re only mentioning little pieces of it. But because you know that full backstory yourself when you’re writing it, you don’t really need to include all of it. You can have characters casually mention things and there’s still a consistency when somebody else mentions something else later because you are holding all those pieces in the back of your mind, that you don’t necessarily need to tell the reader you know, the specifics of, of some space battle that’s happened somewhere or if you were writing a fantasy of, you know, some warring [00:09:00] factions of some other castle you don’t necessarily need to mention all of those details as long as you know them yourself, I think, is the trick.

MalMuses: Yeah, that’s so accurate, I think, because you need a whole world for your character to see.

If we’re only seeing it through the character’s eyes, you need to have somewhere to put them. And so yeah, very, very accurate, I think, like I have thousands and thousands of words of world building. [00:10:00] Like I, there was a one story I wrote that was like, I think it was about 40, 000 words and actually my document that just has like research and notes and outlining and all that stuff in it is almost 30, 000 by itself. [laughs]

Cass: Yeah, that sounds very familiar.

Dark Side of the Moon [00:10:22]

Ellen: So talking about world building and research let’s go and talk about your fi, Cass. Okay. So Dark Side of the Moon is by imogenbynight on AO3. It was a DCBB story in 2013.

So it’s got art as well from thimblings and it’s 37, 000 words long and it is rated M. And would you mind reading the summary for us?

Cass: Five months into his six month mission, an accident leaves flight engineer, Dean Winchester, stranded on the moon. It comes down to a man he’s never met to bring him home.

[00:11:00] Very short and sweet synopsis for that one.

MalMuses: It is. But I mean, very accurate. That really tells you exactly what the book is about. [laughs]

Ellen: Yeah. So I guess we’d better give a bit of a rundown on what, the premise is that Dean does go to the moon as like, as part of a mission to install some mining equipment that he has designed which is one of the things I really love about this story, and you know Space Fics in general is, Dean is usually some kind of engineer and he’s able to show just how smart he actually is by having attended university and got into a space program.

Cass: This is actually one of the little notes that I, because I’m a bit of a, A nerd. I made my little list of notes of things that I could mention during during the podcast.

[00:12:00] And one of the first things I wrote was that one of my favorite things in space fics is how they always lean into Dean’s engineering abilities and how smart he is. I mean, he, he custom built himself an EMF meter with a broken Walkman. He’s smart.  So it’s a…

Ellen: Well, I feel like right at the start there in the show they kind of made him one way and then they leaned into the kind of, they leaned into him being more of the you know, not as smart for comedy effect later in the series.

Cass: It felt to me like I, I never felt that he was being portrayed as less smart, more that other characters underestimated him. And so it always It was always a bit heartbreaking, but I’d never, it never really occurred to me that he seemed less smart or that just other characters would, would assume that he was less smart and he sort of brushed it off and didn’t defend himself where he maybe should have.

Ellen: [00:13:00] Yeah.

MalMuses: Yeah, I think it was often to his advantage to let people think he wasn’t as smart as he actually was. And and also like the two things can coexist just because they concentrate on Dean being kind of goofy and wearing his hotdog pajama pants and all this other kind of stuff like that doesn’t cancel out him being smart. He’s allowed to be a smart idiot.

Cass: Yeah

Ellen: So I guess to continue with the story, an accident, like, happens and Jo and the other one is?

Cass: It is Jo, Victor and

Ellen: and Pam. That’s right.

MalMuses: Oh, I was so sad about Pam.

Ellen: So they, yeah, an accident happens and they get killed. I guess that’s not really a spoiler because you kind of need to know there is some canonical side character death.

MalMuses: It’s right there in the summary that there’s a, there’s an accident. That’s right.

Ellen: [00:14:00] And so Dean’s left on his own. Yeah, that was really sad, that part. But yeah, then Dean starts questioning the reality around him. So I loved the way that he started hallucinating and everything, I thought that was really interesting. Very well done. Very creepy.

Cass: Thank you. Thank you.

MalMuses: Yeah, I really liked how you wrote that, because I’m a big fan of Lovecraftian horror. So, although I always feel like I have to put the disclaimer out there that the man was a douche hat, but like, yeah, but I like the legacy he left us with. And. And I could definitely see elements of that in what you wrote and the way that you wrote Dean’s hallucinations and things that are going on in this story. So I really enjoyed that part. And I actually feel like the artist did a really good job of portraying what was going on there too.

Ellen: Yeah, the art was really beautiful!

Cass: She did an incredible job. I, I was beside myself when I got the… when she sent through the art. [00:15:00] This was the first DCBB, like the first challenge that I’d ever done. So it was the first time I’d been luckily, lucky enough to have art created for anything that I’d written. So to, to receive the, the work that she did, that she’d done was so exciting. It’s really expressive really cool art that she made.

Ellen: So how much research did you actually do to work out all these? Like, I know that you did because you’ve already said, but the, the day to day lives of astronauts, I guess, and having, living on the moon and that kind of thing.

Cass: Yeah. I did a lot. So I, I remember I… This was actually a real mess, this fic, when I started it because it was only a couple of weeks before the draft due date for the DCBB.

Ellen: So many DCBBs get written like that. Don’t they

Cass: [00:16:00] Yeah. Well, the thing was, I’d been writing, I’d been writing something else that was a Canon Universe fic because that’s all that I really wrote up until that point was Canon Universe.

And it was getting too long and I realized there was no way I was going to finish it in time. So I. Basically, I was scrambling to think of something to work on, and someone sent me the video of this astronaut, Chris Hadfield singing Space Oddity on the space station. I don’t know if you guys remember that.

MalMuses: Yes, yes. I love Chris Hadfield.

Cass: Yeah. So someone sent me that video, and I was like, wow, that’s really cool. Like, and I started watching all this stuff about the about the astronauts, you know, day to day lives. And I sort of, that’s kind of where the idea sprung from, so before I even started there was a bunch of, I guess, research of watching all these videos of astronauts. But then from there I found all these message boards that… like NASA message boards, that apparently you can just access online Where people are discussing their jobs at NASA [00:17:00] and I listened to audio recordings from the moon landing in the… the 1969 moon landing.

I read huge amounts of like research papers and things on, on, you know, what kind of plants can be grown in low gravity. I did an insane amount of research. I also have a good friend of mine, AJ, who is somebody that I used to discuss Supernatural with a lot is an astrophysicist, so talking about so the group that we would all sort of discuss the show, so I’d sort of bring things up within the within the chat and AJ would offer little bits of information as well, so yeah, I [00:18:00] had a lot of research, a frankly ridiculous amount of research.

For a fic that was only 37, 000 words, again, it was probably that same amount of research documents that I ended up having.

Ellen: I mean, sometimes the research is almost as much fun as actually writing the story, in my opinion.

Cass: Definitely.

MalMuses: It is. That, that one I, that one I mentioned earlier, where you just said, like, the research was about the same amount.

That was one where Dean gets sent to Mars. So like, so much of my research was just like listening to audio of like takeoffs from Cape Canaveral and stuff, just listening to it over and over and like making notes and stuff. But, but it is fun and you feel really productive even when you’re not getting words on the page, which is quite unusual.

Cass: Yeah that’s true. This this actually was originally going to be set on Mars as well. And it ended up being because of the research that I was doing [00:19:00] there were a number of things that just weren’t going to work if I did set it on Mars, so I ended up having to change it. Which is really funny, so basically this whole story is, it’s kind of a metaphor like of… thematically it’s about the idea of isolation as a metaphor for hell.

And so I’d originally been planning to set it on Mars, being like the red planet, so it was going to be a lot more visually hellish. So then when I, when I had to change it to being on the moon for numerous science-y reasons that I can barely even remember now, but when I had to change it to the moon, I was, I sort of struggled to, to find a way to make it still feel hellish so I hope that I managed to do that, but

Ellen: yes, you did! Well, I mean, the fact that, that Cas has to come and rescue him to pull him out of there, [00:20:00] it like kind of the major metaphor, that was a big indicator, but no, it definitely felt like that, especially when he was, you know on his own and going through, you know, his trauma over again, kind of thing.

And I guess one of the things that I thought was really fascinating was his, when he’s first is on his own and he starts seeing things and he, and the fact that everything is still on the moon, like there’s no wind, there’s no, there’s no trees, no, nothing. Everything’s just completely still. Yeah. That was a really freaky kind of concept, which I appreciated.

Cass: Yeah. Actually, that was something that ended up being a bit of a happy accident. I think I, because I put something, I originally had had a line somewhere near the beginning of, of like a, like a windstorm or something that within, within minutes of, of doing it, I, I’d done some more research and discovered, wait, there’s no wind on the moon [00:21:00] which is actually how that whole bit came about, came about was because I’d just sort of instinctively written about something that’s physically impossible, and then my research.

Ellen: It might have worked on Mars.

Cass: Yeah. The amount of times I kind of flip flopped.

MalMuses: Yeah, I had almost the exact opposite experience there. I was like, it’s so dead quiet outside. And then I researched and was like, nope, Mars is pretty noisy. Yeah.

Ellen: Oh, really?

MalMuses: Gotta change that.

Cass: Yeah. It was funny. It was the I think it must’ve been, it must’ve been something that I’d originally had when I’d originally been sitting on Mars, maybe. I’m not sure. I just remember that, yeah, I very quickly realised that, wait, I can’t have, I can’t have there being a terrible windstorm on the, the rock with no atmosphere.

MalMuses: All those little things that you just don’t think of. Yeah. Until suddenly you’re in the middle of it and you’re like, oh, oh wait.

Ellen: [00:22:00] Well I guess that’s the joy of writing on a planet that, you know, a heavenly body I guess that isn’t familiar is that you can make up, like within reason, you can have just about anything you want like, if it’s a planet that’s not known to us, I guess. So on the moon you are bound by certain physical certainties. But for example, the other fics that we’re, the other fics that we’re reading about the Stargate au one is a planet that, they could have made up anything they wanted about that one.

So yeah. Shall we go on to that one since I started talking about it now?

Cass: Yeah,

MalMuses: As you mentioned it. Yeah!

Untethered [00:22:40]

Ellen: Good segue. So this fic we’re going to talk about next is called Untethered. It’s by TheTwistedWillow and it was published last year, 2020 and 32, 000 words long, and it is also rated M.

So this fic was written for the Media Big Bang last year in 2020 and [00:23:00] so it contains art from jdragon122. Just a couple of warnings on this one. It does have dubious consent and non-explicit mPreg in it. If that’s not your thing, read the tags. You know, make your own decision. The summary goes like this.

Forced into a new life on an alien world, Dean must learn to rely on the land, an array of undiscovered skills and strengths, and a collective of people who are so very different—and yet so alike—in many ways.

This story is based on an episode of Stargate SG1, I think. But it’s not a crossover doesn’t have actual Stargate characters in it.

So it’s just basically Dean is stranded on a planet that is quite Earth like, I guess. But the people there are actually, I didn’t write it down anywhere here, [00:24:00] but it is, this is actually an A/B/O story, an Omegaverse. So, he, he runs into Cas, who is an Omega, basically.

MalMuses: Yeah, I think it’s, I think it’s probably not a spoiler to say that it’s an A/B/O story where Dean doesn’t understand that it’s an A/B/O story, because he’s not from there.

And Cas is also very confused because Dean kind of looks and acts like an Alpha, but is definitely not one. So it’s kind of interesting in that sense, for people who are into A/B/O, it’s definitely something a little bit different on that front.

Cass: Yeah, I’d actually even say so I’m usually pretty squicked out by both A/B/O Dynamics and mPreg, but this fic didn’t bother me at all.

I really enjoyed it. So I feel like it’s probably worth saying that if you, if anyone sort of is usually squicked by those things that this might be one that you could give a shot. Cause yeah, I really enjoyed it. And it, it wasn’t… both of those elements aren’t, [00:25:00] like, they’re not really super explicit. And, yeah, it is a different sort of approach than what I’ve seen before and have been squicked by in the past. So, yeah, I just wanted to say that as well.

MalMuses: That’s a very good point.

Ellen: Yeah, it didn’t have many of the… a lot of the tropes that we usually see in A/B/O wasn’t in this. So, yeah, a lot of the Omegas who are, you know, having children and caring for them are the women and the Alphas are the men, mainly. I think that’s…

MalMuses: Because I think the point of it was a little different here than the usual points of writing A/B/O I think it was definitely a it was more of a different path of evolution I guess on a different planet rather than any of the more kind of social constructs that we look at A/B/O through the lens of here [00:26:00] if that yeah, that makes any sense.

It was it was more a biology thing than a kind of anything else evolution, but it was really it was really interesting and I liked the way that you could read the fic to start with and not even realize because we’re seeing it through Dean’s eyes and he doesn’t get it. Like A/B/O is as much of a strange thing to him as it would be in real life to me So yeah interesting way of handling it. I was quite curious about that.

Ellen: And even though he is obviously we’ve talked about mPreg, so it’s not sort of a spoiler to say that Cas is the one who gets pregnant. It’s not… we don’t end up actually seeing them with the baby or, you know, giving birth or anything like that. So if that’s also part of the squick for you, then you don’t have to worry about that. It’s usually quite nice to see them be parents.

[00:27:00] But I did love the way that you know, this did have a lot of nods to Stargate Universe in it. Like the technologies you know, the name, the planets that they are visiting and that kind of thing. Yeah, I thought it was really well done as a kind of a merge, not really a crossover, but a…

MalMuses: Remember, this, I think, was one of either the first or second year that we were doing MBB. And so I remember from that, and from discussions involving that, that this is based on a an episode, I think, in the first season of Stargate.

Where one of the characters in the TV show ends up on this kind of very rural kind of like a farming planet. And ends up falling in love with a woman that he meets there. So obviously, we have a slightly different version here, but I can definitely see where the inspiration came from.

Cass: I’ve only seen really a couple of episodes of Stargate. [00:28:00] But, it’s, the author I think did a really good job of making the Stargate aspects of the story accessible to people who haven’t really seen the show and who aren’t really familiar with it. Yeah, they did a very good job of incorporating little bits and pieces without overwhelming the story with things that people who don’t watch Stargate would not understand.

And it is just really, really beautifully written, I think, as well. It’s really evocative, evocative writing.

Ellen: Yeah. And they’ve also done a great job of gradually revealing to Dean what’s happening in this place. Like he knows something’s not quite right with all of the scenting and all of the things that are going on, not, not even just with the Omegaverse stuff, but in general, why are these people here and why are they so much like humans and stuff?

MalMuses: Yeah, I always like following JDragon’s art because I feel like when [00:29:00] she does like supernatural fics, she’ll, like, always pick really interesting ones. So even just through following the art, you can find some really, really interesting stories because they always pick, you know, really cool stuff.

Cass: And the style as well of the art is really, really cool.

The Parts of Our Sum [00:29:13]

MalMuses: So the third fic that we’re going to talk about today is The Parts of Our Sum by Annie D. This was published back in 2013. So the same year as Cass’s fic, I think. It’s 55, 000 words and it is explicit. And the summary goes,

Castiel, a former soldier, has worked for the Company his entire life. They’ve been good to him, providing clothes, shelter and new body parts whenever necessary. Now the Company’s gearing up for a space exploration voyage, and Castiel’s volunteered for the research team. During the preparation period, he meets Dean Winchester, who makes Castiel wonder about the things he’s missed out on.

[00:30:00] So from, I mean, you could probably tell from the summary, I guess, though, I suppose it could also be assumed from the summary that Cas is a robot of some kind, but that’s actually not quite the case here. Cas is human, but kind of an augmented human in this AU.

Ellen: A cyborg.

MalMuses: So he has, yeah, he’s, he’s, he’s got a few extra parts. If I remember correctly, it’s both his arms and his lungs. At the beginning of the story. Anyway. No spoilers. [laugh]

Cass: It’s a lung and a half and his trachea. And his, and both of his arms.

MalMuses: there we go.

Ellen: That’s very specific.

MalMuses: I found that whole, that whole system that NED created to be really fascinating though. Yeah. Like I really love like anything with like kind of robotics kind of stuff in any way just continuing down the sci fi hole. So this, so having those kinds of aspects and having it be in space. Mwah. [00:31:00] Perfect. Chef’s kiss. Loved it.

Cass: Yeah, this is a really cool one actually. This. This is actually one of the only, this is the only fic that we’re, like, discussing today that I had already read aside from my own, obviously. But I’d read this one back when it was first published in 2013 and it’s always stuck with me since then.

So I didn’t actually get to finish rereading it I’m about, I think I’m up to chapter eight in my reread of it at the moment. The whole time I’ve been rereading it, I’m just just remembering how exciting it was the first time. And I’m really enjoying going through it again because it’s Annie D is Scaramouche is also another name that Annie D goes by but yeah, her work is always incredible.

MalMuses: Yeah, the writing itself is so wonderful and almost lyrical in places. It really is.

Cass: It’s lovely. It’s beautiful. [00:32:00] And there’s always I feel like she always does a really good job of echoing canon in the AUs and especially just, just the, their relationship, the way that it develops is a really nice echo of kind of that they don’t really quite trust each other at first.

And the development is it just really reminds me of early, of early Dean/Cas on the show.

MalMuses: Yeah, that’s, that’s something I think I’ve talked about on the podcast before, which is one of my favorite things in AUs when they have. You know, really good kind of parallels or nods to canon while being in a whole other universe.

And I really liked that in this story as well. Like we got to see the kind of different ways that they would sacrifice for each other. And that kind of echoed, you know, a lot, a lot of that sacrificing that goes on in canon. So.

Ellen: I haven’t read all of this one yet, I’m halfway through, but I did love the way that sort of the action that happens is described.

Like it’s really well kind of written. [00:33:00] You know, when you, when you read something and you can see it playing out in your head, like a movie, that’s when you know that someone’s really got a handle on this world and they, they know how to make it work.

Cass: Yeah.

Ellen: I just really enjoyed that.  

MalMuses: I always enjoy and this is just something in general about Annie D’s writing, but it was also very prevalent in this one, I really enjoy her side characters, because they don’t feel kind of flimsy or just shoved in for a plot point.

You know, they, they have a lot of depth to them. I really love Kevin in this fic, particularly. I kind of feel for him at various points. I feel like, I feel like Benny probably knew what he was getting into. Kevin, on the other hand, [00:34:00] probably went into it thinking, “Oh, great. I’ve got this like nice, calm, boring cyborg dude that I’m going to live with. This is going to be so peaceful and wonderful.” And that’s so not what he gets in the end.

Cass: No. Definitely not, [laughs]

Ellen: oh my God I’m going to have to finish reading this one soon.

MalMuses: Yeah. Please do. Cause my favorite chapters are probably the last two, three. So definitely. It definitely, it builds up to a really good place and then surprises you.

Cass: I really, I want to mention as well that, I mean, this, this may be a very shallow thing to say, but it’s a very hot story like the scene when they get together is very, very good. And yeah, there’s some, yeah, there’s a lot of, there’s a lot of great tropes that, that are used masterfully.

MalMuses: Yes. It is. There are a lot of very hot tropes used there. And also, I don’t know, I don’t know if this would necessarily be a spoiler [00:35:00] because it’s just such a minor detail, but one that I really, really loved. You can make a decision to cut this out later if you want to. There’s an aspect to this story, whereas we’ve already talked about that Cas’s hands and, well, his arms in general, but his hands are kind of robotic.

They’re not his original hands. And so for a long time, even during these like, really hot scenes, like, he will not touch Dean during… How, how am I phrasing this? Are we, are we going like full, not safe for work on this?

Ellen: Go on, we’ll put a warning on it.

MalMuses: or like, am I coming up with some flowery way of [laughing]

Cass: At moments of extreme passion, maybe you say that.

MalMuses: Thank you. At the peak of his emotional yeah, he can’t touch Dean when he comes at all. [laughter]

Ellen: When they’re fucking…

MalMuses: Yeah, when they’re fucking he can’t touch him because he’s worried that his hands are gonna like, I don’t know. He’s gonna lose control of them, and he could basically crush Dean completely.

Ellen: Oh my god.

MalMuses: [00:36:00] And it takes a while for that to be resolved, like that’s its own kind of subplot. And I loved that because on the surface it sounds so ridiculous that it’s a subplot that Cas might accidentally, you know, remove some body parts accidentally, but it’s not, it’s so, it’s like woven in so well that it’s so believable and I was so happy when they, when that whole kind of subplot gets resolved. Super well done.

Ellen: Okay. Definitely going to have to keep reading, then.

MalMuses: Definitely. My main favorite thing about this story, or kind of favorite parallel and thing that happens, I don’t want to spoil for everybody. Um, yeah, there’s a fairly significant event that happens at the end and something that Cas ends up doing, which changes, changes their dynamic instantly.

And it was… [00:37:00] I mean, it’s one of those stories, like, you’re reading, you can tell that something is coming but you didn’t necessarily know what it was, and so when that kind of first hits you, it’s, oh, and it’s so well done, like, the way that it’s done, you know, you’re not told up front, you don’t necessarily have Cas thinking through what’s going to happen, it just kind of suddenly hits you as it hits Dean. It’s great. It’s really good. It’s very well done. And I know that was super vague, but please just trust me and read the story.

Cass: Yeah, ditto on all of that.

Ellen: So this is told from both their points of view, right? It’s like an alternating

MalMuses: I think it’s Is it just Cas?

Cass: I think it’s just Cas.

MalMuses: Yeah, it’s just Cas. Okay, if I’m remembering it’s just Cas and the reason I’m remembering Dean is because there is a timestamp to this story which I think might be partly from Dean’s point of view. Yeah, there’s a timestamp set like a couple of years later. So anybody who enjoys the story go and find the timestamp.

It’s great. [00:38:00] I think this is definitely one of those things where that whole building an entire world, but only showing us what we need is really evident in this story. Yes, definitely. Because there is this entire world and government and universe out there that we just see tiny pieces of. Yeah, and it’s really clear that, you know, she’s done the work.

But yeah, we’ve got a lot of really good world builders within our fandom. I feel like different, you know, different fandoms have different things they focus on. And maybe it’s because we came from like a Monster of the Week procedural kind of baby beginnings once upon a time. We seem to have a lot of really good world builders and creature builders in our fanfic family, I think.

Cass: Yeah, we’re very spoiled.

MalMuses: We are! Eesh. It’s when you try to read something from a new fandom and I’m like, “Oh, I could read something, they’re cute.” [00:39:00] And then you click and there’s like 5, 000 stories. And I’m like, oof. And like, that’s such a lot, but we’re just very spoiled.

Ellen: When you’ve got so few I mean, there’s, I’m sure there are some great stories in all fandoms, but you know, you’ve got less chance of getting something that you really love if there’s only a few.

Cass: Yeah.

MalMuses: I mean, it’s, it’s just, I mean, it’s just kind of math really, isn’t it? If you, if everybody has different authors and different styles of things that they click with. Yeah. So if you only really click with maybe 10 percent of the overall stories. Well, with Supernatural, that’s still like 10, 000 stories.

Ellen: Yeah, exactly. Oh my God. We’ve got a lot to get through.

MalMuses: We’re going to be doing this podcast, at 90.

Ellen: I hope you’re ready. [laughing]

Cass: I was, I was joking about this on, on Twitter the other day that that I’ll be, it’ll be the year 2051 and I’ll still be logging onto Twitter to talk about, to talk about Dean and Cas.[00:40:00] Cause I’m in this forever, so

MalMuses: it’s fine, there’s still going to be an audience for you. It’s okay, I’ll be right there with you. Yeah, I’ll be right there with you. [00:40:00] I’ll be on the podcast, oversharing about my nursing home. Probably.

Skies of Powdered Gold [00:40:15]

Alright, shall we do the last story? This is actually one that I’m really fond of, so I’m very happy to introduce this one. This one is a shorter fic, so for anybody who’s been intimidated by the length of the previous ones, this one might be for you. So this is Skies of Powdered Gold by casfallsinlove.

This again is a slightly older one, 2015, um, and it’s just under 15, 000 words. It is mature. I had to double check, because there’s always that line between mature and explicit, which I feel like has evolved a lot over the years. But we’re definitely in mature territory for this one. Okay. [00:41:00] So the summary goes:

Dean Winchester went from lone space explorer, joyriding through the stars, to captain of the Impala: a hand-built scavenging ship home to the best crew this side of the universe. He and his crew own their little slice of galaxy. They scavenge, they sell, it’s comfortable. Until Hannah asks if they can take in her homeless friend Castiel, another rebel Seraph, and Dean ends up saying yes – to a little more than he expected.

Ellen: I guess we wouldn’t be complete if we didn’t have a story that had kind of Firefly kind of vibes to it, like a ship with a motley crew

MalMuses: Yes… I was a split second from bursting into the theme tune there and I was like, nope, nobody gets to hear that. Nope.

Cass: There are, there are quite a few little Easter eggs that I think the author must have left in there on purpose as nods to Firefly. A few little, a few little bits and pieces that stuck out to me.

MalMuses: Yeah, there’s probably a huge overlap, I feel like, between Supernatural fans and Firefly fans. [00:42:00] And this definitely speaks to, definitely speaks to those people. This was, I was trying to work out, this was a bang, but I’m trying to work out which bag it was. Oh, this was a DCBB too.

Cass: 2015.

MalMuses: There we go. So this one has art by allovely, I think the artist’s name is.

Ellen: Yes, and very pretty art.

MalMuses: And it’s very pretty, the art. Yeah. Yeah, it’s very, very pretty.

Ellen: Very colourful art. So, Cas in this one is an angel let me think, he’s a seraph so he does have grace, so it is a little more towards canon I guess in that sense he’s run away from his life as a seraph and is joining the crew, and because he’s not with the other angels anymore, his grace is running out kind of thing, so he’s know, short on grace, I guess.

So he can’t really use it much. [00:43:00] Or it might run out, but this does have one of my favorite tropes is when Cas kind of goes all badass, like a super saiyan type, like, full on blasting his grace out. I love that. That is my favorite thing. And this does have that.

Cass: That’s an excellent moment.

MalMuses: I think we all love a bit of badass motherfucker Cas, right? [laughs]

Cass: This also has one of my favorite things is an “oh” moment. Where a character sees another character and their internal monologue says, “Oh.”

MalMuses: Yes. It’s like so much can be said with just those two single letters, right? Everything we need to know is in that single word.

Ellen: Like that moment we all had when, you know, Cas walked into the barn and we were all just like, “Oh, yeah.”

Cass: Yes.

MalMuses: [00:44:00] Right? And, and the thing is, we had no idea then. We had no idea at that point. But even so.

Ellen: That’s right.

Cass: It’s, it’s, it’s really unusual, I think and really cool interesting angle they’ve, they’ve taken. Because like you said, Cas is a Seraph, he is an angel, but that’s also technically kind of an alien in this?

MalMuses: Yeah. Like he comes from a planet of angels.

Cass: Yeah. So it was a really interesting approach, I thought that I hadn’t seen anything like that done before, which I really liked.

MalMuses: I found it interesting, and I think this is maybe one of the only fics I’ve ever read where this is the case where the Dean knew Hannah before he knew Cas.

So he, he kind of already had this idea of what Cas would be like, because he knew Hannah and he knew that Hannah was… had already kind of rebelled and left this planet. And so he had a lot of preconceived notions about Cas, I think, [00:45:00] some of which are proved wrong as the story goes on. But I think that’s interesting because when I, in stories where Cas is very “other” it tends to be Dean… he doesn’t know anything about him and it’s a process of discovery, whereas in this one, it’s more a process of Dean kind of realigning what he thinks he knows with who Cas actually is. Just a slightly different take on it, but I really appreciated.

I will say that one of my favorite things about this, like we were all just talking a moment ago about how we love a bit of like badass motherfucker Cas. But then. It’s like, just, just the range on this character, really, because one of the other kind of plot points in this is that now that he’s rebelled and left his planet, and he was this kind of awesome, you know, seraph warrior dude with all this power, [00:46:00] all he wants to do is go to this planet that’s just made of flowers, and that’s all, that’s where he wants to go.

Cass: It’s so, it’s so lovely.

Ellen: He’s very soft, as well, as being like very badass.

MalMuses: Exactly. Isn’t that one of the things that we all love about Cas? I think that we have this range because he doesn’t have any preconceived notions about how he is supposed to be. So. Love that.

Ellen: So he’s also like a, like caring and whatever, but also at the same time, a murderer.

Cass: Yeah.

MalMuses: Yeah. And we love him both ways.

Ellen: I mean, you knew that. This like this gets to the point quite quickly, I guess, with their, with their relationship at least, because as soon as Cas comes on board, he’s actually sharing Dean’s quarters because they haven’t got another space for him. So he’s, he’s like sleeping on the couch basically in Dean’s room. [00:47:00] So you knew that things were going to escalate fairly quickly. But when they do, it’s very sweet. They actually have a really…

MalMuses: it is very sweet, and we do get a nice episode of that air quotes, platonic bed sharing, which I know so many people love that trope. So come and get it, it’s right here. Yeah, we do have a nice incident of that before things really pick up for them.

Cass: Yep.

Ellen: And there is, there is actual. Like explicit kind of content in this, like, you know, smut, basically. I’m pretty sure that’s rated M. There is something that I might, that other people might consider it to be explicit.

Cass: Yeah. I think it’s definitely on the on the border line.

MalMuses: Yeah. I think the, it tends to be older fics as well.

I think just over time things have. evolved a little bit from what would previously be considered mature and explicit, and we’re maybe in a slightly different place now than we were, kind of, quite a few years ago about that [00:48:00] about exactly where the, the line would be. I mean, that line is also very tricky to navigate.

One person’s, one person’s opinion of what’s mature and what’s explicit is probably not going to exactly match somebody else’s. But I do think, that, you know, years and years ago, what would have been called mature, we would probably now call explicit and so on. So just how things evolve in the fanfic world.

I guess as always, just check your tags and, you know, create your own experience people.

Ellen: That’s what we love about ao3.

MalMuses: But yeah, I would, you are quite right, Ellen, I would actually say that this is explicit by my… well, is it? Yeah, just about. Yeah. I’m coming down on explicit for this one.

Ellen: I’m pretty sure that as soon as you know, like body parts are mentioned, then it kind of goes over into that kind of territory.

MalMuses: It’s kind of like, how descriptive are you being? That’s what it is.

Cass: [00:49:00] I always think of that that, that post that was going around several years ago, the, the envelope description. I don’t know if you guys have seen that.

MalMuses: The envelope analogy.

Cass: The envelope analogy. It’s a good one. It’s a very good one. Something else about this fic, that I do want to mention in terms of tropes that people might be interested in is there’s some A plus level hurt comfort in this.

It’s a very good Tending to Wounds um, that I very much enjoyed.

MalMuses: We love a classic Tending to Wounds. That’s one of my favourite tropes, and so give me Tending to Wounds in space, and oh my god.

Ellen: No wonder this is your favourite.

MalMuses: Actually, I don’t think, like, I would be. I’m very impressed. I had to pick a favorite this week, so I’m just not going to be able to do it just because they are all set in space and they all have really good tropes. So, you know, I’m there, pack me full of some tropey space gays, I am done. [00:50:00] Awesome.

Ellen: Well considering how much we know you love it, you, I’m gonna, I know you don’t want to talk about this, but.

I am going to mention that you have several space gays fics of your own as one of the like we were saying that the tag like the sort of in our fandom there aren’t that many but your fics make up a large part of it. Just saying!

MalMuses: [laughing] oh.. rude.

Ellen: Earlier you did talk about the one that was on Mars. So you’ve got Personal Space which is the one where Dean goes to Mars and meets a Martian which is, starts out being a wonderfully creepy kind of story of something being out there and him not knowing what it was, um, and then you’ve got the second part of that when, which is when they both end up back on Earth. [00:51:00] So, which turns into like a big sort of fluffy love fest. So…

MalMuses: The second part is called Earthly Desires. Ugh, I’m just blushing over here now.

Ellen: That’s right. So if you need more, yeah, more fluffy, like, you know, tropey space gays with added tentacles.

MalMuses: Yeah, and I do have to speak up and say that Personal Space also has really, really fantastic art by The Friendly Pigeon which I’m just so fond of. It came out of, I honestly can’t remember off the top of my head whether it was SPN Reverse Bang or Destiel Reverse Bang, but it was one or the other, which that originated from.

So, gotta give. Gotta give props to Pigeon for the art in that one.

Cass: This one, I actually haven’t, I haven’t read these, but I am definitely going to, because all of those things I am on board for.

MalMuses: Oh no, it’s fine.

Ellen: [00:52:00] Yes! You must!

Cass: No, As you’ve been describing this here, I’ve opened it up, I’ve got it ready. My, my next that’s getting bumped up my list.

MalMuses: Oh my.

Ellen: Just, just do read the tags, because there is some mpreg kind of Okay. You know.

MalMuses: In the second part. Not the first story. Only in the sequel.

Ellen: And tentacle porn, basically. But it’s wonderful.

Cass: I mean, I’m fine with that. That part of it, I’m fine with.

MalMuses: Yeah. No, the, the mpreg part is very, very non traditional in how it works.

And it’s only in the second part. But as I always say to any readers, just DM me if you have questions and I’ll tell you what to skip.

Ellen: But it leads to some of the most completely adorable alien kind of human babies that you’ve ever seen. So it’s worth, it’s worth it.

Cass: Excellent

MalMuses: Which again, there is really adorable art which Sunny produced, which like tiny little babies with wings. [00:53:00] So I’m going off into a little mushy puddle about alien babies with wings, but

Ellen: I’m going to have to reread it all now.

MalMuses: No, it’s okay. You don’t have to do that.

Ellen: Yes, I do. It’s amazing! And so also not only that, but you’ve also got your your work in progress, Oxygen, which is actual space, in space, like in a spaceship.

Which I can’t wait to read what’s coming next because I know you’ve been working on it again. Yay!

MalMuses: Yes, I have a chapter for that one coming out in the next, I’m going to say probably two weeks. There will be a chapter for that one. That is very, very, very different to the other stories. It actually loops back, yeah, loops back to Red Dwarf, how you were mentioning earlier.

So, it’s, that story is a… Dean and Cas wake up in space and they’re on a ship of three million people and they’re the only people awake. So, the one thing that I always try to tell people about that one, and I think I’m going to make like a long author’s note about this at some point is that, there was this, this particular story came from a prompt that somebody gave to me on, I think it was Facebook, I think it might have been Jen that gave me that, and at first glance, I guess that the concept is probably similar to, I’m struggling to remember the name of the movie, Passengers? I think there was a movie where two people wake up, and they’re in space, but that, like, was slightly creepy. I feel like he’d been, like, watching her for a long time. Also, I can’t remember what it was, but it was, it was weird.

Cass: I think, yeah, that it was like he woke her up so that he would have someone to be, like, to keep him company or something.

MalMuses: Yeah, like it was very verging on a lot of kind of non con stuff there. This is absolutely nothing like that. It’s very, it’s much more like Red Dwarf.

Cass: There’s a huge difference between.

MalMuses: [00:55:00] Oh yeah, like you could not be further apart there. But yes, they have a scatterbrained, AI that is operating the ship with them. Her name is Meg, the Megaship Engineering Guide. And she… So it’s, it’s, it’s very It’s, it is more Red Dwarf-y, but at the same time there is a very, kind of serious, dark, kind of, element running through it, which anybody who reads it will work this out.

They’ll know it is tagged and it’s, it’s tagged for a reason with things like body horror and cosmology, stuff like that. But it’s, it’s mostly funny, I think. Yeah.

Ellen: Excellent. Look, you did a great job of talking about your own fic there, well done, cookie for you. You get a cookie.

MalMuses: [00:56:00] Yeah, there were a couple of people that specifically requested that I talk about stuff and I’ve been, I’ve been trying, okay,

Ellen: Excellent, well done. Pats on the back.

MalMuses: I’ve been trying to be less of an idiot, but, ugh.

Other recommendations

Ellen: now we’ve got a few other fics that we can mention just in passing. I will mention one that I read as part of, I’m pretty sure it was part of the last media big bang as well. This one’s called The Love of a Righteous Man and it’s by SergeantMom573.

This one is a Star Wars verse [00:53:00] fig. So it doesn’t have, it’s not a crossover, it doesn’t have Star Wars characters, but it’s, um, Dean and Sam and Cas in in Star Wars verse and, you know, like Jedi and Sith and all that kind of thing. It does have sort of dom/sub kind of parts of it in it.

But it’s only, you know, 24, 000 words long. So it’s not super long one worth a read because I quite enjoyed that one.

MalMuses: [00:57:00] Okay. Well, the one, the one that I would like to talk about is the long road home series by Darmys. I don’t know how you want me to pronounce that. I’m sure that she’ll yell at me and tell me.

But this was, I think the first part of this. So Darmys wrote it for DCBB 2018. It is, altogether this is 300,000 words. It’s like a three part series. And it is set in space, as you would imagine. It’s based on or inspired by an original work a book by I think it’s pronounced Alis Rasmussen it could be at least I don’t know just great with names It is a space opera and it’s 300, 000 worlds all together.

It’s broken into three parts kind of three separate books. So three whole separate things that you can read that [00:58:00] I think if I remember correctly from when I read it, that if you do read just kind of one part, you will be kind of left on a bit of a cliffhanger, it’s definitely, you know, intended to be read as one big space opera.

And it is the story of how Dean and Sam who were born on a mining planet called Kansas, the journey that they go on when Bobby Smith, who obviously is our beloved Bobby, and is the master of a martial arts academy where they both kind of train and kind of were partly raised, obviously. We know how things usually go with Bobby.

He is kidnapped by alien bounty hunters. And Dean kind of throws away the life that he knew to go and try and track down Bobby. And on the way he meets Castiel, alien Castiel, in this one. [00:59:00] And he takes with him Baby, his, his, um, singing robot. Or, making cute little noises, I guess, you know.

You can take that however you want, but Baby has a really great personality in this one. I love it when Baby is like, a robot or a spaceship, or like, something in these kind of fics. Like, I really love that when we get to see more baby than we’re used to. Yeah.

Ellen: Yeah. What is, what’s the name of the first fic in that series?

MalMuses: So the first fic in the series is Not in Kansas Anymore.

Ellen: Okay.

Cass: I finally found the thing that I was thinking of which is a fic called Paper Planes by zerostumbeline33, which the it’s essentially the, [01:00:00] the so there’s been a third world war that’s decimated the earth and some people still live on Earth, even though it’s you know, crumbling and horrible.

But then there are more fortunate people who live on a like a station that is suspended above the atmosphere. And Dean is a water delivery pilot, so he brings water from the out the outer like, edges of the atmosphere, they collect clean water from before it gets polluted to bring down to the people that are still on the Earth.

And I wish I could remember a lot more about it, but I can’t remember a huge amount about it. I just remember really enjoying it. And it does have that element of Cas is actually the, it’s sort of like a switch where Dean is the one that’s out living in an unusual sort of place, and Cas is the grounded one.

He’s the best friend from that still lives on Earth that that Dean comes and [01:01:00] visits. And yeah, it’s a, it’s an unusual one, but it’s it’s really quite interesting. Just the, yeah, it’s called Paper Planes. It’s it’s rated E. And I think it was for a, a bang as well. I’m gonna double check.

Yes, DCBB 2014. Because obviously the, this, the station that’s suspended is sort of on the edge of the atmosphere, I guess you could your mileage may vary on whether or not it counts as a space fic, but there are, you know, scenes set on this on this sort of station that’s floating in the air above the clouds.

And I just, there’s a lot of really cool visuals in there as well.

Ellen: Sounds awesome. Definitely give that a go.

Cass: Yeah. So check that one out.

MalMuses: I’d like to give another, like, really quick short out shout out as well. [01:02:00] If somebody just wants to dip in to the whole science fiction space kind of deal I’d actually like to give a shout out to A Human Heart by sharkfish.

Now sharkfish writes amazing fics, really, really prolific author, so I’m, I’m really I’m sure everybody probably knows who sharkfish is if not then go and check them out because they write a lot of really good stories, like this one, Human Heart, is only just over three thousand words, 3231. But it features Astronaut Castiel, who is demisexual in this fic.

And Artificial Intelligence Dean. So at the beginning of this fic, Dean doesn’t really have a body, per se. He’s an AI, he can kind of, you know, he has a projected form, you could say. [01:03:00] So he, he, he exists in Castiel’s world, but he’s, he’s not human. And obviously this is the story about how Castiel falls in love with the AI, but there’s, there’s just such a lot that goes on in this story and such a fantastic world that sharkfish creates in only 3000 words.

So this is just like a really good, like. starter space slash AI fic for people, if they want to go and look at that one.

Cass: I’ll definitely read that. I’m a, I’m a huge sucker for for AI.

MalMuses: Yeah, and I really liked this one because it’s kind of a flip of what we often see. Like, we quite often see Cas as the robot, as the AI, because of, obviously, his, like, otherness in canon.

Cass: Yeah, I mean, that’s what I’ve, that’s what I’ve written, is Cas as a house

MalMuses: Yeah. So this was a really nice kind of flip of that as well. And Dean is the AI in this, but he is not robotic in any way, like literally the summary points out that he is crass and obnoxious and just, he’s, he’s, he’s Dean, you know, he is Dean. So.

Ellen: [01:04:00] That sounds awesome.

Well, we’ve got to say thank you very much, Cass, for coming to talk to us about space gays.

Cass: Thank you for inviting me. It’s been awesome.

Ellen: No worries. What, so what’s next for you? You’re, you’re one of the mods for Pinefest. I think we spoke to Mittens back, back right at the start of our podcast, but so you’re right in the middle of getting ready for Pinefest stuff to happen, right?

Cass: Yes. Yeah. So posting starts on April 10th. I think April 10th. Let me just double check that I’m not saying completely the wrong thing. Yes, April 10th.

MalMuses: I was about to say, yep, it is April 10th because that’s me. That’s when I post.

Ellen: Oh you’re first!

Cass: Yeah, you did, you did request an early posting date. So I was like, well…

MalMuses: right at… and I mean, they really delivered. [01:05:00] You really went for it on that whole early thing? It’s like, oh, okay. [laughing]

Cass: So yeah, April 10th is when posting will start. And yeah, so that’s gonna be fun. This is the fifth year already, which is wild.

Ellen: Oh wow.

Cass: But yeah, lots of really cool stuff coming this time. So that’s coming up soon. And yeah, other than that, I’m just slowly plugging away at a zillion works in progress that I… So my, my, yeah, my, my plan for this year is to I really want to finish out this year with no pending works in progress, like, half published on AO3. So I’m trying to focus on getting all of those partially published fics finished. So fingers crossed that I’ll actually manage to do that, because as usual, the plot bunnies keep on popping up and demanding to be written.

Ellen: Yes, as they do.

MalMuses: So if you have any space plot bunnies, just do those please [laughs]

Cass: [01:06:00] Those are plot tribbles, I think.

MalMuses: And they multiply. [laughs]

Ellen: Fantastic. We can’t wait.

MalMuses: Well, thank you very much for Pinefest, actually, I have to say, because as, as I’ve mentioned on the podcast before, it’s definitely one of my favorite bangs to write for like even like this year.

I told myself I had no time and that I wouldn’t be able to do it And I just couldn’t not do it.

Cass: Well, I’m glad It’s funny it’s funny that my very selfish reasons for starting a starting a bang was I run I’d run out of fics with the hugest amount of pining that I really craved and so I thought well You know what if I start a challenge that specifically requires pining, then people will write more pining things and it’s paid off.

Ellen: It really has. Fantastic.

MalMuses: Yeah. And that, and that is how I met Ellen too.

Cass: [01:07:00] Oh, really?

MalMuses: So you are, technically Cass, you are responsible for this entire podcast.

Cass: Wow, that’s awesome. I was just pulling up my statistics on here.

Cause I cause I recently I got… I was procrastinating in a creative way, and I decided to add up the total collective word count for the Pinefest over the years. And up to this point, so not including the fics that are going to be published in about a month’s time there are 4,350,228 words of Dean/Cas fic.

That have been published as part of the Pinefest, which is insane.

Ellen: Oh my god. All the cookies for you.

MalMuses: It’s amazing, that’s what that is.

Cass: So it really paid off.

MalMuses: Every word. All those authors. I suppose everyone loves a good pine, don’t they?

Cass: And especially these two these two fools, it’s very it’s very suitable for them.

Ellen: It’s very on brand for them, isn’t it?

MalMuses: I mean, it’s arguably the most canon trope.

Cass: [01:08:00] It is!

MalMuses: You know. So, definitely looking forward to all of those Pinefest fics that are coming up. And to you finishing all your wips as well.

Cass: Well, I hope so.

MalMuses: We believe in you. You got this.

Cass: Thank you. Thank you. I hope so.

Ellen: Links to all the fics that we discussed today will be found on our website, mixtapebookclub.com. And you can get in touch with us via the website. You can leave us a comment on the post, or you can get in touch with us other ways to scream at us about space gays or tell us what you thought about all these fics if you’ve read any of them. we are on Twitter and Tumblr and all the different places under @ mixtapebookclub, or you can email us, contact at mixtapebookclub.com.

Or if you’d like to chat with us on discord, you can do that through the profound bond discord server and where we have our own channel and you can get updates on when new episodes are posted there too.

MalMuses: [01:09:00] And please do come and join us next episode, where we’re going to be discussing a really classic time on a trope of “There was only one bed!” Ah, how do I do an exclamation point on a podcast?

Ellen: So thank you very much for listening and we’ll talk to you again soon.

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

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