Transcript: Track 48: Hurt/Comfort
Links to all fics mentioned can be found on the main episode post.
Jump to:
- Flight by NorthernSparrow
- What’s A Little Dying Between Friends? by carnationqueen
- On Drowning by domesticadventures
- Lights by LoversAntiquities
- Other recommendations
[Intro music]
Ellen: [00:00:00] Hi everyone. Welcome to the 48th episode of Mixtape Book Club podcast. My name’s Ellen
Mal: and my name is Mal.
Ellen: And welcome back. It’s been a little while, but uh, life has just got in the way and we have still been reading lots of Destiel fic, but uh, not being able to talk about it until now, but we are back.
And in this [00:01:00] episode, uh, we are going to take a dive into the time-honoured trope of hurt comfort fics,
Mal: and joining us to discuss her fic, What’s a Little Dying Between Friends, which is like the ultimate, hurt comfort fit title, by the way. So kudos on that one. Um, this is author carnationqueen, also known as Lily. Hi Lily.
Lily: Hi.
Ellen: Welcome.
Lily: Thanks.
Ellen: Okay, so as well as What’s a Little Dying Between Friends, we are, uh, the other fics we’re going to discuss today are Flight by NorthernSparrow, On Drowning by domesticadventures and Lights by Lovers_Antiquities.
Mal: And links to all of the fics that we’re gonna be talking about today are gonna be available in the episode post on mixtapebookclub.com, and also included in our collection on ao3. As long as the authors, um, agree to have their work submitted,
Ellen: yay. We remembered how to do it. Woohoo.
Mal: Woo. Yay.
Ellen: [00:02:00] Okay. Before we get stuck into, um, talking about those fics, we have to say a huge thank you to everybody who has, um, continued to support us on, on, not just like by listening to our episodes continuously, because there are a lot of people who I know have been doing that.
So thank you for listening in the first place. But, um, also all our ko-fi subscribers and people in our discord, um, thank you. We love you so much for, um, continuing to support us all this time while we were having our break. But we are back. And if, um, if you are, if you would also like to join our Discord server and help us to decide which topics we’re gonna talk about in the future.
We have some planned, but we, you know, we can always use some more suggestions. Um, you just go to ko-fi.com/mixtapebookclub. You can join. Okay. So let’s get into Hurt Comfort.
Mal: Yes. Okay.
Ellen: I did actually look this up. Like, I don’t know why I bothered looking it up because it’s pretty self-explanatory, but I went to, um, [00:03:00] you know, TV tropes or whatever the, that website is, that tells you all about the different tropes and it literally just says having one character get hurt so the other one can comfort them.
I mean, okay. Think I don’t know what I was expecting.
Mal: Yeah. I think an interesting discussion on this is where do you, as a person, where do you draw the line between hurt comfort, and just whump? Like, where is the line there? Because I think in my mind, one is more extreme than the other. Yeah.
Ellen: Yeah. I mean, isn’t that just kind of the same thing though?
Mal: Kind of the same thing, but if someone says to me that they’re writing a fic and it is like pure Dean whump, I’m thinking that Dean is going through it. He’s probably getting hurt physically as well as emotionally. There’s a lot of, there’s a lot of things going on, but a lot of hurt comfort fics rely on characters being hurt physically as well, because I mean, that’s kind of a time honored I’m going to help you feel better trope in there.
Ellen: Yeah.
Mal: So, but I don’t know, to me, in my mind, hurt, comfort [00:04:00] doesn’t always seem as extreme as a fic that’s tagged, like, you know, Cas whump or whatever. That’s a really weird word to say out loud, by the way.
Ellen: Yeah. But I mean, and maybe the, the sort of straight kind of whump fics, are more like hurt, no comfort kind of thing. ’cause that’s also a tag I’ve seen people use.
Mal: I just had a moment where I recoiled from my microphone. I was like, oh, you used the S word in this podcast. Why? Um, but
Ellen: S word, what did I say? Oh, straight. Okay.
Mal: I was like, wait, what? What are we talking about? Where are we going with this? So,
Ellen: I’m sorry to confuse you with,
Mal: but Yes. Um,
Ellen: yeah, there are fics that the, there are hurt no comfort with where someone is just getting pummeled and there is no one there to comfort them.
Mal: Yeah. Which, Hmm. Not personally my trope, I don’t think that one. Um, I’ll read pretty much anything up to a point. I mean, everyone has some hard lines I hope. But, [00:05:00] um, I’ll read pretty much anything. But I don’t know that hurt, no comfort has ever overly appealed to me. ’cause I’m very much of the camp of the, the hurt just makes the comfort sweeter.
Ellen: Oh yeah.
Mal: Um. And I don’t shy away from the hurt part. Like give me a good graphic pain where I’m like wincing at my phone or you know, clutching at my chest, having to take a, a little break, walk around the room. Does everyone do that?
Ellen: Yes. Yes.
Mal: Where there’s a lot of angst going on and you’re just like, ah, um, I love that. Love that. But I’m not sure if it would feel as good without the payoff at the end.
Ellen: No, you are right. Hmm.
Mal: Okay.
Ellen: I don’t if there’s much more to say about hurt comfort with,
Mal: I mean it’s, this one is a pretty self-explanatory one, isn’t it?
Ellen: It is, yeah.
Mal: Yeah. But we’ve got a pretty good variety of different types of hurt comfort within the episode today though I think we should just address up front. Apparently we just like hurting Cas apparently, because it’s much harder to find like really good [00:06:00] Dean, uh, hurt, comfort fics center around him, which is interesting ’cause he goes through a lot in the show.
So there’s, there’s arguably a lot of built-in per comfort opportunities within the show, but we just seem to like hurting Cas.
Ellen: Yeah. Yeah. Well a lot of those fics that are on our list, um, are like Cas who gets hurt like, it, it wasn’t until like I actually went through and found this, uh, the Lights one that I realized that that was the only Dean one that we had so far, you know?
Mal: Yeah. So I’m glad we got that one for some, some balance in there.
Ellen: Mm-hmm.
Mal: And I am happily the kind of trash that will be like, yes, please do show me Misha Collins covered in blood. I’m very happy, but, and I don’t want to know what kind of like weird primitive, hind brain part of me that taps into, but it’s very enjoyable.
Ellen: No, no, you’re right.
Mal: So, yeah. Yeah.
Lily: I wonder if part of, part of that, um, dominance of Cas being the one who gets hurt is because when it’s Dean, Cas can come in and [00:07:00] save the day so often and just, and heals him and. So we have that sort of imbalance there.
Mal: Yeah. Yeah. No, that’s a very good point because in order for Cas to not be able to hurt Dean, you kind of have to help Dean rather, you kind of have to by default kind of hurt him in some way or restrict him in some way, or have him as like newly floundering human or, I would almost bet, I haven’t looked through enough of the fics to like have any kind of statistical look at this, but I would almost think that the Dean, uh, hurt comfort is probably a lot more common in AUs.
Ellen: Mm-hmm.
Lily: I would say so. Yeah.
Mal: Yeah, because it just seems easier, right?
Lily: Yeah. You’ve got an angel on hand, you know, things do, do become a bit easier. So I think that when Cas is, you know, either literally or metaphorically got his wings clipped, that’s gonna change that balance immediately.
Mal: Yes. Well, talking of wing clipping.
Lily: Mm-hmm.
Ellen: Maybe we [00:08:00] should head right into Flight.
Mal: Maybe we should. Um, that was a really good accidental segue, so
Ellen: it was, yeah.
Lily: Oh, you’re welcome.
Ellen: But before we get, before we get there, I just, I was just gonna add that, um, the, having Cas, the one that gets hurt, uh, sort of taps into Dean’s like caretaker kind of personality, you know, like it’s, maybe that’s just naturally the way authors lean because they know that Dean likes taking care of people and Yeah.
Mal: Mother hen Dean. Yeah.
Ellen: Yes. And he is, he’s such a good caretaker in this, at this first fic. Okay. Let’s do it.
Mal: I’m excited. I loved all of these fics, which, you know, they probably wouldn’t be on the podcast if we didn’t love them, but I am, I really loved all of our selections this time, so
Flight
Ellen: Me too. All right, so the first fic we’re gonna talk about is Flight, um, by NorthernSparrow, which is actually the second in a, um, a series.
The first one was Forgotten, which I feel like we mentioned on a previous episode, but we never actually featured it [00:09:00] as a fic because it’s not actually Destiel.
Mal: Yeah, it’s more, yeah, it’s pre Destiel. It definitely could be read that way, I think, but it, um, definitely doesn’t go into Destiel territory within that story.
Ellen: Yeah. So this one was published in 2014, so it, I think, feel like this is one of NorthernSparrow’s quite early fics before she really got into writing a lot of Destiel. It feels like, especially with some of the, the author notes in this, on the, on like the chapter notes in this one, you get the feeling that Yes, just like falling into further down the Destiel rabbit hole as she went on.
Um, so this is, um, a long one. It’s 319,000 words. Um, it’s rated M. Uh, the, the summary is interesting because it’s not really a summary. It’s more like a, a little, a description almost. So the summary says that:
Sequel to Forgotten, AU from mid-season nine, Castiel is human and wounded and and Dean and Sam need [00:10:00] to get his grace back and his wings. Things do not go as intended and Cas faces a difficult road.
Long case fic with strong emphasis on Team Free Will, friendship and family bonds, will get serious and angsty and lonely. And she goes on to add that there will be two versions of this fic, Destiel and platonic. This version is the Destiel version. The platonic version is called Broken.
So that’s a really interesting way to kind of branch a story, I think.
Mal: Yeah, and I’m actually just looking to see if she ever, um, she did, so it was four years later, so those who were, uh, waiting on Broken um, got, um, a good chunk of it, I think, um, 27 chapters of it, four years later, but that was the same year as NorthernSparrow put out her epic Under the Midnight [00:11:00] Sun, which is one of my favorite fics from her.
Oh. Um, so I think probably got distracted by that one at that point, but yeah, there definitely is some of Broken out there.
Ellen: Yeah. She just got into writing Destiel and then went screw this other version. I’m just gonna write Destiel.
Mal: We, we pulled her in. Yeah. So you were right. Flight was one of the earliest fics from NorthernSparrow.
Um, I think the only one that’s older, just squinting back at ao3 here was, um, A Room of One’s Own, which is a really interesting contrast because one of them is just like pure smut, pretty much. Um, for anybody who has not read A Room of One’s Own, that that really is the summary right there. Lots of different types of smut until they work out it means something. Um,
Ellen: oh, okay.
Mal: And then. Yeah, it’s, it’s really good and it’s very funny,
Ellen: I think haven’t read that one. I need to read it.
Mal: It’s, yeah, it’s a funny fic, like she does a really good job of making it humorous. So you, you know, sometimes like you get a fic that’s got a lot of porny stuff in it and you get to the point where you’re just kind of [00:12:00] skipping through a little bit that just be, you’re just like, okay, come on.
Yeah. Um, you don’t do that with that one because each incident is, is funny and actually like, grounded in the story and is important and is moving the plot along because that is the plot. Um, yeah, it’s really good. I definitely do recommend it, but it’s a very, very different fic to Flight, that’s for sure.
Ellen: Yeah. Well this, this, uh, being so long, it’s got a lot of plot. It’s got, uh, I mean, it, it continues pretty much from where the end of Forgotten leaves off. But like you were saying before, Mal, that you don’t have to have read Forgotten in order to understand what’s happening at the beginning of this one.
Mal: Yeah, so I was saying that before we were recording before, yeah. When I was saying that you definitely can read this one as a standalone, there’s like a couple of scenes where you just, you have the sense that obviously a lot of things happened before, but there’s nothing in this fic that won’t make sense or, and you can, even, even the characters that are recurring from [00:13:00] the first fic, you can very easily get a sense of like, oh, this was the douche from the first story.
Even though you’ve not read it. Um, I don’t think there’s any detriment to having not read the first however many hundred thousand words. ’cause I’m pretty sure the first one is very long as well. So, yeah. So you’re looking at reading like half a million words if you wanna read them altogether. So. Yeah.
Which is just an investment of time that not everybody has, let’s be honest here.
Ellen: It’s true. Um, except us serial fic readers, um,
Mal: us people with problems.
Ellen: Yeah. So the beginning, the beginning of this one, I think they, they did manage, I, I read Forgotten like years ago now, and I’m trying to remember what happens at the end.
They did, they do kill like one of the bad guys in that. But there is still one bad angel who is at large who is Ziphius.
Mal: Yeah. And you, so from what I remember, you definitely do get the impression that [00:14:00] everything is kind of tied up in the first fic. That, you know, it’s kind of, um, what’s the word? Where you have those fics that, you know, they’re back on the road back doing what they should and everything is well again, and that doesn’t necessarily mean all the bad guys are dead, it just means they’re back to fighting them normally.
Ellen: Right? Yeah.
Mal: Um. And that was kind of how I felt about the first one.
Ellen: But Cas is low power.
Mal: Yeah. Mm-hmm. Um, because I, I guess we should spoiler the little, uh, the, a little bit of the first fic in that a lot of it deals with, um, the boys having essentially lost all of their memories of Cas.
Ellen: Mm-hmm.
Mal: Which makes her a very difficult read at some ti at times it’s very sad. Yeah. But that is resolved by the end of it. However, there are a few places in Flight where that becomes relevant. Like people’s reactions or the way they do things are somewhat colored by everything they’ve been through in the first fic.
So that’s the only way that I would say it [00:15:00] really affects this one. But there’s nothing that kind of feels out of character or like, that they wouldn’t just do anyway, even if those first things hadn’t happened because these, these boys have always been through a lot. So,
Ellen: uh, where do we even start with this?
Um, okay, so. Over the course of this fic they travel like all over, all over the US and they even travel to other countries. Am I remembering that right?
Mal: Mm-hmm. I think, um, yeah,
Ellen: and like there a lot of it involves trying to track down like elementals of different kinds and like the, the, the lore behind this fic is amazing.
There’s just so much going on the entire time. But the, the point of it is that Cas’s wings are, are not working. He can’t fly and he’s low on grace. So they’re trying to work out what they can do to fix him before he gets worse, his condition gets worse. And I don’t really wanna spoil what happens in the first few chapters, but the…
The [00:16:00] first few chapters are actually really brutal. Like, if you get through the first few chapters, then you’re gonna be okay for the rest of the fic but because I was reading them going, oh my God, what are they doing to my babies?
Mal: Yes.
Ellen: It’s so, it’s so horrible what happens to all of them, but, um, they’re gonna be okay.
Mal: Nobody escapes in this, in this fic, nobody. Like Dean Cas, even Sam, they all go through it equally. So
Ellen: Yeah. So maybe, maybe, maybe it’s hurt comfort for all of them. They all get hurt. Yeah. And they all comfort each other.
Mal: Yeah. Well I was just looking at the tags actually. And they’ve got the hurt comfort tag, obviously.
Um, they’ve also got, um, angst as a separate one, which feels necessary because it’s angst front to back for everybody. Yeah. Um, they’ve got, they’ve specified Hurt Castiel and Castiel whump but they haven’t specified, um, anything like that for Dean. Which makes sense because I think in this it’s more. It’s definitely more emotional issues for Dean.
Like he, he does at one point kind of go through it physically [00:17:00] quite a bit, but it’s a lot more emotional, depressed, it’s that, that, um, loneliness that we talked about in the summary there.
Ellen: Yeah.
Mal: So, uh, yeah, a little more on the emotional side for Dean. I say that as if he doesn’t like, break multiple bones and get frostbite and all these horrible kinds of things in this book.
Ellen: Oh yeah.
Mal: But just compared to everyone else, he gets off pretty lightly, I guess.
Ellen: I mean, Sam falls into a fire and nearly dies, but Yeah.
Mal: Yeah.
Ellen: He’s, he’s fine.
Mal: There might be a little torture here and there, you know?
Ellen: Oh my God. Yeah.
Lily: That’s all very canon typical.
Mal: I guess the important part is it is a fic with a happy ending. We should specify that. It does. It is a happy. Well, pretty much a happy ever after type of fic. Everybody survives and is healthy and good and I feel like that’s the important thing to spoil upfront.
Ellen: Yes, absolutely.
Mal: How they get there. It’s just a bit of a ride.
Ellen: It’s such a ride.
Lily: I’m not sure [00:18:00] that I could have read this, what one without knowing that it has a happy ending. ’cause it does get really, really brutal at times.
Ellen: Yeah. Yeah. And yeah, like you said, not just physically. Like there, there are parts of it where they’re not even speaking to each other properly and everybody is just feeling awful separately. Like if they just spoke to each other, then maybe they could resolve something, but they don’t.
Mal: Yeah, there’s a good chunk of the fic where that is the case, like in the middle there. And it’s very important plot wise. It’s not just like, you know, it’s not caused by miscommunication or anything like that. It’s, it’s plot wise where they are separated in this way. But it’s a good chunk of the fic, I was skimming back through it this morning.
Um. Just to kinda get an idea of, of the pacing and the setting. And for me, I think that was the hardest part of the fic to read because you’re very much in Dean’s head during this kind of separated section in the middle. I don’t like, maybe it’s just that I’m a bit of a Dean girl. I don’t [00:19:00] know, but like the, the pain that Dean goes through, the emotional pain and like the loneliness and the desperation that he is going through.
Ellen: Oh, he’s so worried. Oh yeah, no, you’re right.
Mal: Yeah. Like it was, that was way worse than reading like the painful, whumpy sections to me. I just wanted to give him a hug.
Ellen: Yes.
Mal: Actually I wanted Cas to give him a hug. So, but you know, well, Sam, I would’ve said I would’ve settled for Sam, actually. Somebody hug the hunter.
Ellen: Yes. Was that the part where he would, he didn’t even know if Sam was still all right? Yeah, well there is a part, he’s on his own in this fic,
Mal: a good few chapters in this fic actually, where he, um, I guess it’s not, I mean, there’s gonna be some spoilers. We’ll try not to completely spoiler, but, um, there is a part in the fic where he is physically separated from Cas and isn’t even sure if Cas is alive.
He’s fairly sure that Cas is alive, but I guess subjected to a fate worse than death possibly, um, where he [00:20:00] will not be able to ever see Cas again, if that’s the case. Um, and also thinks that Sam is dead. So even though he’s not, spoiler, but yeah, his, uh, his mind space at the time is definitely not a beautiful palace.
It’s a little rough and, uh, and you do, you do feel for him, but, but it’s very, um, I think very canon the way he reacts to it, like kind of swings between this very sad kind of desperation. Like everything is terrible and everything, but he also just won’t give up either. Like he tries. Yeah. Everything. He tries stupid things.
He tries to make deals and he just keeps trying. And you, and you feel for him. ’cause you’re like, well what, what else can he do? Like he can’t, he can’t do anything other than just give up and lay down.
Ellen: He blames himself for the whole thing too, right? Like it’s very canon
Mal: mm-hmm.
Ellen: For him to do that.
Mal: Yes. Very Dean. Very Dean. Blame him. Mm-hmm. For something that was definitely not caused by him in the first place. But [00:21:00] yeah, lay him the bad guys. Dean. It’s a good start.
Ellen: The other thing I loved about this story, uh, was the wing grooming. And like, I guess at first, after, I don’t know how much of this to spoil, but basically, so let’s just say Cas’s wings are manifest in the physical plane for a while.
They get hurt and then in order for them to rehabilitate he has to do some, like, you know, he has, they’re, they’re in the real world and he can’t sort of tuck them away anywhere. So, and Dean, just the gentle way in which he discovers that he actually is in love with Cas over is gradually over the whole fic, by the way, it’s very slow burn. But he’s like, he, he discovers that he likes the smell and the feel of Cas’s wings and he’s just like patting them gently while they’re watching TV and stuff. It’s just so sweet. The whole thing. [00:22:00]
Mal: It really is. There’s, there’s, you know, there’s two different types of wing fic, right? There’s ones where it’s just like very sweet and maybe he’s slightly in awe of the wings or whatever. And then there’s those like fully into like wing kink territory, which I was like, this fic doesn’t really necessarily go there very much. It’s there. It’s in the. It’s kind of in, it’s in the, of the fic you get the sense that that’s a thing.
But um, it’s really more about kind of Dean almost being in awe of these magnificent things and what they represent and being so gentle with them. And I absolutely love how much we get Cas grooming Dean in this fic.
Ellen: Yes.
Mal: Um, ’cause there’s so much, and, and this is very much a NorthernSparrow, you know, thing that, that happens in a lot of her stories, which is something we all love, but there’s so much for Cas that is instinct and is just based on the fact that he is not human and he does not think or act like a [00:23:00] human would.
Um, and just, just him sitting there just like grooming Dean’s arms and like cleaning his fingers. It’s so cute.
Ellen: Yes.
Lily: On the topic of the wings too, there’s a lot of like the wing body language that happens in the fic too, which gives Dean some insight into Cas’s emotions. ’cause he’s, he lies about a lot and he hides a lot, but his wings give him away. And I thought that was a really lovely aspect as well.
Mal: Yeah, I like that. And I like that it implies, I think this, even one of the pieces I re reread right before we were recording was, um, Dean contemplating the fact that, you know, he always looks so stoic and he thought that Cas was always so calm and collected and serious.
And actually he probably wasn’t like this whole time he’s, he’s been upset or stressed or scared and Dean’s just never been able to pick up on it before
Ellen: because his wings are showing.
Mal: Yeah.
Ellen: Oh, [00:24:00] it’s such a good idea. Like the very concept is just amazing. I love it.
Lily: Yep. I loved watching Dean figure out that he could read Cas by watching his wings. That was lovely. As it’s, he sort of started to make those connections
Mal: and he gets so gleeful about it at points. He’s just like, oh yeah. Like I can make the wings puff up. Woo. He’s so happy about it sometimes.
Ellen: Yeah.
Mal: Which I think that probably loops us right back to, that’s like Dean’s caring, like mother hen type thing. Like he loves to be able to see that he is taking care of somebody and he can see that he’s actually like having an effect, like the things he’s doing. It’s like a little feedback loop for him.
Ellen: Yeah. And at first he’s quite oblivious to, um, implications of him actually doing that uh, grooming and stuff. And then as it goes on, he, then he starts realizing that it’s actually, Cas is really into it. And
Mal: I was trying to like work out, like at what point it sort of [00:25:00] starts tipping into something a little bit more, or at least you, the reader starts to see that Cas is. I wouldn’t even say anticipating, like, hoping that maybe it could be a little thing a bit more. And I’ve just realized, I think it’s on the boat. They’re on a boat, at boat at a certain point in this book.
Lily: Oh, the boat? Yes. Yeah. And he has some of those little not human behaviors that happen then
Mal: Yeah. That happen on the boat. And you’re just, as a reader, you’re just sitting there like e
Ellen: you kicking your little feet?
Mal: Yeah, pretty much. Yeah. Um, which, you know, as often happens in fic because it’s also how it happens in the show that’s obviously right before the very angstiest part of the fic, so Yeah. Yeah. Like we get a little, we get a little something’s and is ripped away from us.
Ellen: Yeah.
Mal: Yep.
Ellen: Alright, so in this one we’ve got, um, Sarah who is from, I wanna say like one of the first seasons in the show, right?
Mal: [00:26:00] Yeah. I always do this where I just, in my head, I just have her as an original character that we all use, but she’s not, she is from,
Ellen: she’s from the show,
Mal: from, I just always forget that she was from the show. Yeah.
Ellen: Like season one, even?
Mal: Because we, yeah, I think it’s, I think it’s one of those characters and a lot of different fandoms have these where we have just taken this very tiny piece or one or two episode character and just made them into a very, like, I feel like you find Sarah a lot in fanfic, um, paired up with Sam most often.
Ellen: Yeah.
Mal: And you know, she’s a great character. Like we have taken and really just made a fandom version of this character, which is very convenient. ’cause when it’s a character like that, you can kinda make them whatever you want or whatever you need for the story.
Ellen: Yeah.
Mal: Um, was she, was she a nurse in the show or a
Ellen: I have no idea.
Mal: some kind of medical professional?
Lily: I don’t think that she was,
Mal: don’t think he was. Okay. Gosh, I’m gonna have to go find her and watch her episode.
Ellen: I am too actually, hang on.
Lily: Is she the one with the art dealer father?
Ellen: Is that “Bloody Mary”?
Lily: Can’t remember. It [00:27:00] could be.
Mal: Oh, okay. Apparently she was in the show twice in season one and in season eight. Hmm. Season eight. When did you show,
Ellen: was she in that episode?
Lily: Ooh that one was “Clip Show.”
Ellen: Where they went, where they went back to?
Mal: Yeah, so she was in “Provenance” in season one.
Ellen: Okay. So she’s been a little bit more present than we think.
Mal: Yeah. She’s just not always on screen, I don’t think. Huh. Okay. Anyway.
Ellen: Alright, well I haven’t watched season one in a really long time, so
Mal: thanks. Thanks Sarah. Yeah, I’m trying to remember what number episode “Provenance” is. I know it’s like really towards the end. Yeah, it’s 20,
Ellen: it’s episode 19.
Mal: 19. Yeah. There we go. Close enough. God, it’s sad that I didn’t have to look that part up. Um, okay. How do you know you’ve given a little too much of your life to this show? No, no, no such thing. Um, yeah, Sarah is in this FA lot and she is a nurse [00:28:00] in this fic which is very useful, which I think is where we were kind of going with all of this, honestly.
Ellen: Yes. Yeah. She and the, the guys from the Salt Lake City Zoo help with Cas’s wings and they are just so, like that whole chapter is just amazing.
The way they all like, don’t they, they all don’t trust each other to start with and then they realize that they’re actually working on an actual angel and they’re like, oh my God. And then from then on they’re just all in and they can never get rid of them for the rest of the fic.
Mal: and it turns out, and it turns out towards the end that they were also Dean Cas shippers. So you’re just like, yes.
Ellen: Oh, of course. Of course they are.
Mal: They’re no, they were great, great original characters. I really liked, really liked that ’cause they were very interesting characters and obviously that kind of stuff’s something that NorthernSparrow writes very well because, you know, she’s done a lot of stuff with birds and things in her career. So when she writes that kind of thing, she puts in those like little details that make it feel so real because she, you know, has this knowledge.
I was, I was [00:29:00] seeing a post on Tumblr the other day where it was like that feeling when you’re reading a very specifically niche fic, and you can tell from reading it that someone does this job in real life. Yeah. And NorthernSparrow is absolute peak of that experience.
Lily: Mm-hmm. A hundred, a hundred percent.
Ellen: It’s very specific wing, wing anatomy.
Mal: Yes. Love it.
Lily: Mm-hmm. That was one of the things that I had in my notes too, is that, that her works are just, they’re so grounded in reality and you’ve got that little bit of expertise in there that really fleshes it out. And then they so often just take a really distinct paranormal turn. So you’ve sort of got a bit of both worlds.
Mal: Yeah. And, and it’s that like grounding in reality that makes the, I guess, fantastical stuff, like go down real easy. Like it all seems so believable
Lily: mm-hmm.
Mal: When you read her fics. And I think it’s because we do have that, like the, the, the reality part, the stuff that, even if it’s not used in exactly the same way, like angel wings that do this or, or whatever, but it, it comes from somewhere.
You can see [00:30:00] that she’s very knowledgeable in that area and it makes her really fascinating angel lore, which I love. And we, we’ve got certain like tropes and things we use for angel lore, like all throughout the fandom. Like certain things that over time we might have picked up from like one line in the show that we took and ran with or Yeah.
Like even like little comments at conventions or something like that we’ve taken and kind of ran with. And over the years we’ve made this whole like, overarching angel lore that’s so much deeper than what the show gave us.
Ellen: Yeah.
Mal: And, um. And I think ours is better, but
Ellen: yes.
Mal: But there is a lot of that in NorthernSparrow fics. It’s definitely like a kinda a signature of her fics, I think. Is that Angel lore, including, you know, the, the books of the Angel lore I think is a very specific NorthernSparrow signature.
Ellen: Oh yeah.
Lily: Oh, they repeat in so many of her fics.
Mal: Yes.
Ellen: The other thing that she does really well, uh, I dunno if this is, but I assume it’s common to others of [00:31:00] her, um, canon kind of works, but the way that she characterizes Cas is extremely like, like literal.
Like he, he’s like, at one point he, it’s when Sarah’s leaving the bunker and to drive home and she’s got like a 10 hour drive or whatever ahead of her and he makes her like 75 cookies or something so that she will have, you know, three cookies. Every 10 minutes or something to eat and he’s calculated it and he’s and Dean’s just looking at him going, mm-hmm. Okay, let’s do, it’s like helping him package up the cookies,
Mal: like, it’s so cute. Yeah. It’s like early, earlier seasons Cas with like a twist of adorable.
Ellen: Yeah. But not to go so far as to like infantalize him, like he’s just, he’s still
Mal: No, it’s, it’s never that.
Ellen: He’s still badass. Like
Mal: it’s, yeah. Yeah. Like he’s an absolute badass in all of her fics, I think. I don’t think there’s a single one where you can’t say that character-wise. He’s [00:32:00] actually a badass angel, but he, he does have this, like,
Ellen: he doesn’t, he doesn’t understand how things work.
Mal: I don’t think even naivety is the right word. ’cause it’s not, yeah. He just. Yeah, humans just need to be more logical. We just need to keep up with Cas. Really.
Ellen: Yeah. You need to explain things properly, otherwise you just don’t get it.
Mal: Yeah. It’s really all our fault. It’s not him.
Ellen: Yeah. There’s just so many little things about this fic.
Mal: Yeah, I was gonna say, is there anything else we wanna say about this one? But I think it being such a long fic and having so much in it, both plot wise and emotions wise and everything else, like I feel like we could talk about this one for a really long time. Um,
Ellen: yeah. But we do have three other fics to talk about, so I know you should move.
Mal: I know,
Ellen: but just like this, the payoff is worth it for this. Like it’s a long fic and it goes like, it goes all over the place. And some, in some points you feel like, okay, are we, are we building up to something here or are we just going on the adventures of like, you know, the guys as they go [00:33:00] around and find these elementals or whatever. But the end is just epic. And mm-hmm. Really worth it. So please go and read it.
Mal: Yeah, definitely, definitely epic. Like, um, it feels like a, like a season finale kind of deal. Like you’ve had all these like almost episodic feel throughout the fic of like, you might have like a quiet, angsty, fic. There are even some little kind of parts that you could argue feel like monster of the week parts where they have to quickly do something else before they can do the next thing. Um, and then it all builds to season finale at, at the end.
I do wanna mention my favorite character in this fic was Crowley.
Ellen: Oh yeah.
Mal: Um, and he’s, he’s not in it much, but his influence is everywhere, let’s put it that way. But, uh, that sounded way dirtier than I was gonna be.
Ellen: Yeah. Thanks. Thanks, uh, Jared Padalecki.
Mal: But you know what, I’d be down for that too. So,
Ellen: [00:34:00] I mean, on one hand he’s like, really, he’s. You know, you can’t trust him at any point. Like he’s working with the enemy or he’s helping them with stuff. And then another point he shows up with cupcakes. So, you know, like, who knows?
Mal: Yeah. There is a scene there, there is a scene where in the fic they’re trying to work out who’s side Crowley is on. Um, and ultimately to just resign themselves to the fact, well, yeah, he’s, he’s on his own side and he always has been and he always will be. And that’s, yeah, that’s just Crowley. So, and I also really like the fact that, am I like hallucinating? Does he, is that very brief mention at the end that Crowley gets some kind of like reality TV show?
Ellen: Yes, I think you’re right.
Mal: I swear there is like, he’s, um,
Lily: oh yes,
Ellen: he’s talking to the, to the reporters or something
Mal: like reporters and stuff. And then I swear there’s like a brief one line mention in there somewhere that he gets given a reality TV show, which is just hilarious. But [00:35:00] also somehow that just suits Crowley so well.
Ellen: Yeah, I mean there’s been a lot worse, like reality TV shows. I’m sure it’ll be great
Mal: for sure. Yeah. So, yeah. But yeah, Crowley’s great character in this fic. ’cause you never quite know what he’s doing until, until it all eventually comes to a head. But
Ellen: Anything you wanted to add, Lily, before we move on?
Lily: I think that we have probably covered most of what I had. I had so many notes written down and I had things crossed out, which would just be spoilers and it’s like, oh, there’s so much that I wanna say. But it’s hard to do it without spoiling the fic. Like talking about Crowley and the stuff that happened with him and I, Ugh.
Ellen: We could do, we could do a little spoilery section if you want to, and then we can just say like, if you don’t wanna hear spoilers, like fast forward five minutes.
Lily: Oh.
Mal: Okay. I think just give us, give us 60 seconds people Go, Lily, go.[00:36:00]
Lily: Alright, I’ve, I’ve got screen open here. I mean, I guess this part’s not really a spoiler and I’ve just got this little quote out of it, highlighted where they’re going for their drive. Cas has had a bit of cabin fever. He’s really excited just to be out and seeing stuff as they drive around and he’s pointing out like the cows that he can see and the horses that he can see, and somehow Dean manages to make that about those cows.
Those cows are all straight and those horses are all straight and look, there’s a cow and there’s a horse and they’re standing next to each other and do they really need to be that close together?
Mal: The sexuality of cows and horses? Yep.
Lily: Like cows are supposed to be with the cows and horses with horses. It’s the way life is. And just seeing the conflict that he has about, you know, being straight and perceiving himself as straight and he’s just projecting it [00:37:00] everywhere. It’s just splattering all over the place where he is talking about the cows being straight, the horses being straight, so,
Mal: and you’re just sitting there like, Dean!.
Lily: It wasn’t really a spoiler, but,
Mal: yep. I love it.
Ellen: He’s so conflicted in this story.
Mal: Well, my, my spoilery part that I would like to talk about is so very different to that, but it’s, um, I absolutely adore the use of the angel tears and how when Cas is, uh, trapped in the ethereal dimension, um, but his tears can pass through to this dimension.
And I ended up going back the second time I read the fic was trying to like, pinpoint like little points where I thought like, oh, that’s a tear or whatever. Like some of them you are shown and given like tiny little tidbits before, you know what they are in the, in the fic
Ellen: Oh.
Mal: Um. And it is just like, oh, but just the thought of Cas being like trapped on the other side of this kind of invisible barrier almost and just crying [00:38:00] because he’s lonely and he wants to help Dean and he’s frustrated and everything else.
I was just like, oh my God, it destroyed me the second time around. Reading it with that in mind, but you hit there is like something, I think there’s part where he’s like walking through the bunker and stepping somewhere and he just like steps on something and thinks it’s like a bit of grit under his shoe or like stuff like that.
Just like little tiny bits leading up to him finding, like having this little pile of of angel tears and it’s going back and reading it knowing that that is caused by Cas literally just crying because he’s just so like frustrated and sad and alone and just, you’re just like, oh no.
Ellen: Oh, that’s heartbreaking.
Lily: And he’s seen the pain that Dean was going through too. ’cause that was that period when he was feeling so lonely and just so hurt. And Cas watching him go through that as well.
Mal: Yeah. It’s, it is an interesting way to read it because you know that like you’re reading all of Dean’s sadness, like we’re really in his head and we know how bad it is for him and we can’t see Cas, but we get these little, these, these little [00:39:00] angel tears, like physical angel tears, and you realize that actually Cas is kind of going through exactly the same thing, but with an added layer of frustration that he’s desperately trying to reach Dean and Dean can’t see him or hear him or anything.
So yeah. Anyway, that was a big spoiler, but I loved that part. So yes.
What’s a Little Dying Between Friends?
Ellen: Okay. Shall we move along?
Mal: Yes, let’s do it. Where are we going next?
Lily: Sure.
Ellen: Shall we talk about Lily’s fic next?
Mal: Yes. Let’s talk about Lily’s fic. Let’s do it. Would you like to read the summary for us, Lily?
Lily: Sure. Okay.
So Castiel, stabbed by Ramiel with Michael’s lance, is dying slowly. It will take days, maybe weeks, but die he will. It is apparently inevitable. Neither Dean Sam nor Rowena can find a way to save him. They’ve tried everything and Crowley hopes that a slow motion inevitable death may make Dean [00:40:00] and Castiel remove their heads from their collective asses because really everyone is over it.
He’s a bit smug, after all, having Lucifer as his prisoner and is feeling a bit magnanimous in his hubris. Will impending death make Dean examine how he feels a bit more honestly? Bring tissues.
Ellen: Oh my God, so many tissues.
Lily: Really? Okay.
Ellen: Yes,
Lily: I know. I cried like a baby writing this thing.
Ellen: Oh,
Lily: so
Mal: yes, there are a lot of feelings in this fic.
Ellen: Yes.
Mal: So this fic is 27,400 words of pure feelings. Um, but I think the first thing that has to be said is this was your first fic. And it’s fantastic.
Ellen: Yeah.
Lily: Thank you. Yeah, it was my first foray into fanfic, so I was slightly terrified writing it and just hitting that little post button for the first time. It’s like my heart was [00:41:00] just going.
Ellen: Yeah.
Lily: But, um, also really exciting and you did such at the same time.
Mal: Did such a good job with it. Yeah. No, you did such a good job. Thank you. Um, the characterizations are so good in this.
Ellen: Yes.
Mal: Um, there’s a part where, you know, Dean goes off for a drive, um, where you kinda wanna smack him a little bit when you’re reading it, but at the same time he would not be Dean if he didn’t do that.
Lily: Like, he’s gotta run away from his problems first.
Mal: Yeah. He’s gotta run away from his problems so that he has time to realize he’s running away from his problems. Then he can come back. Yeah. But so good. Yeah. Wanted to smack him during that part. That is one of the notes that I had, that I wanted, but only very briefly. And he needed, he needed that development to get where he needs to go.
Ellen: Yeah, we said we should probably say that this is, uh, canon verse based around like, obviously you can tell from the, the summary, but, in series 12, um, on the “Stuck in the Middle With You” episode where Cas does get stabbed by the spear thing.[00:42:00]
Mal: Yeah. Which is one of my favorite scenes in canon, so, yay.
Ellen: It’s a, it’s a great episode in, in canon itself. But this just makes, this, just takes like all of those feelings of, you know, grief and like, what the hell is happening and just spreads them out over a glorious, like 27,000 words.
Mal: And we have one of my favorite Crowley shipper, uh, tropes again in this one.
Turns up a lot in canon, actually really turns up a lot in canon, uh, fics, um, where Crowley is essentially shipping Dean and Cas and has reached his point of no return, he’s like, all right, I’m going, I’m gonna do something about this. Um, mm-hmm. And Rowena also, um, I feel like Rowena, just character wise, I feel like she’d just be a shipper in general.
Like, I can see Rowena being a fanfic reader.
Ellen: Yeah. Anyway, she’s had a lot of time over her long life to, you know, you know, keep up with the trends. And she probably was shipping like, you know, [00:43:00] Jane Austen’s works at one point or another, I’m sure.
Mal: Oh yeah, for sure. Uhhuh. Yeah. I dunno how we got into that tangent, but Yeah.
Um, but she’s very good in this fics. She’s only, um, she, I guess briefly, um, in it, she shows up once or twice, uh, possibly in this, I think she’s mentioned there’s a, a mention of Sam talking to her and then she shows up.
Lily: Yeah.
Mal: Um, but I, I love using her. In fact, like she’s such a fantastic character that we were given for like magical purposes where anything that we need to happen can probably happen.
Um, but I love the fact that you actually didn’t take that route with this one. Like you had her involvement, but she can’t fix it, which mm-hmm. I kind of love that. She’s, she’s your get outta jail free card, but you did not use her for that, so. Yeah.
Lily: Well, I love her and I had to put her in there and it just would’ve made it too easy if she could just, waltz in and fix everything and, but I still had to have her there because she’s wonderful.
Mal: Yes, yes. And I love, I love how you [00:44:00] did fix it in the end. Like, sometimes, sometimes simple is best, right?
Lily: Mm-hmm.
Mal: Um, and so I, I loved how you fixed it and I also loved, uh, without it, it’s the shorter fics. It’s really hard not to spoil, but I’m trying my best here. Um, I love that he was so sort of malicious with it almost. ’cause uh, definitely. Is it a spoiler to say that Cas could have been cured earlier? Is that?
Lily: Well, I, I don’t think it’s a spoiler because it’s, it’s what happens in canon,
Ellen: it’s what happens in the show.
Lily: Yeah. I’ve just stretched out the, the time in between.
Mal: Yeah. You just stretched it out. And I think it’s more that Crowley is, or at least you get the feeling that Crowley is fully aware and could have fixed this a lot sooner, but he was kind of enjoying it and not in like a nasty, like, I wanna hurt Cas way just in a, I’m playing with my favorite toys, hurry up and kiss way.
Ellen: Yeah. And then in the end he’s like frustrated [00:45:00] that they’re not getting on with it because it’s like, yeah, come on. Like, you know, he, um, he has to almost step in at the end, but Yeah. Amazing.
Mal: Yeah. Crowley is the Destiel shipper experience in that. Yeah. You’re just like, why are you not getting on with it?
Ellen: Yes. Um, and this, I mean, obviously the hurt is, um, is Cas getting stabbed and what, like his very slow dying process, but we also have a Dean is going through this awful, awful like, um, emotional turmoil because he, there’s nothing he can do. He just tries to make Cas as comfortable as he can and, you know, it’s just so heartbreaking the whole way through.
Um, so how did this, how did this story actually come to be? Like, how did you come up with the idea for this one?
Lily: Um, excellent question. I, I felt inspired to, [00:46:00] to write a fic and I was on a rewatch. Like I didn’t have an idea of what I wanted to do. I just had that creative bug. I mean, you probably both know what that’s like.
Is there something that you wanna do but you’re not sure what it is yet? And I was on a rewatch and I got to that moment in season 12, episode 12, and they said it kills angels slowly. And then it was over pretty quickly. Yeah. And I was like, oh, that was pretty fast. What if that took longer? What would that do to them?
And how can I be mean, how can I hurt them? Um,
Mal: you, you just, that went not long enough.
Lily: Let’s, no, and you know, I, I’ve had, I think I’ve put this in the author’s notes at some point too, that I’ve, I’ve had the experience of having a loved one go through a terminal illness and, you know, the feelings and the turmoil and that sense of [00:47:00] helplessness that, that brings up.
But also that, um, like, I wouldn’t say that it’s a gift, obviously, because it’s a, it’s an awful thing. But to have the opportunity to make sure that you say the things that you wanna say to people, and you don’t leave things undone when you know that it’s, it’s coming, this is gonna happen. I can’t do anything about it.
And, you know, putting some of my own feelings and angst and grief into that story and stretching it out that way to give them a chance to work through those things. So that was sort of part of where that came from.
Mal: Yeah, I do think some of the best fan fics come from the inherent angst and drama of Teen and Cas with just like a little shake of the author in there.
And that’s what, that’s what makes every fic different. Um, and certainly not every fic comes from like, you know, I’m not saying that every fic is like an author insert kind of deal, or that they’re dealing with something, um, because some of them [00:48:00] are just porn and that’s fine. Um, but, but there’s, there’s a, there’s a, yeah, there’s a quality to a fic sometimes I think, um, where it, it, it comes from a different place where it’s coming from like deeper, further author and they’re, you know, working through something or at least putting some kind of lived experience in.
Ellen: Yeah, it really comes through in this, um, in the, in the emotions of this fic definitely
Mal: it does. Like one of the things that I wrote down in my notes specifically, um, is that you did a really good job of capturing the helpless sense of urgency that Dean has. That like, there’s a lot of way you’re reading in this and just the way it’s written, like the actual structure of the sentences and how you’ve paced it is you can kind of see Dean’s mind racing, like trying to think of everything he can to try and do this, but at the same time being so helpless because there is nothing he can do.
And it’s the [00:49:00] way that it’s written, like the actual tone of the fic is really good at that. I think it’s very much in Dean’s head and you feel, feel those emotions with him as you’re reading. Um, and I loved it. Yeah. I loved the pain.
Ellen: Yes. I agree.
Mal: It was great.
Ellen: By the time I got to the end, I was like, oh my God. I need something happy!
Mal: I did note that because of like how well written that was on Dean’s side and seeing that all from him, I would, that there were parts where I would’ve loved to have just been in Cas’s head and be able to see him seeing Dean be like that. Does that make any sense?
Ellen: Yeah. Yeah. Although Cas spends a lot of this fic being not being completely lucid, so it might be an interesting trip, um, to see what’s going on in Cas’s head.
Mal: Yeah.
Lily: Might be a bit wild. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. But maybe Sam’s point of view might might’ve been an interesting one to use in there too, because he has an interesting [00:50:00] little role to play there while Dean is having his moments.
Mal: I love Destiel fics that don’t neglect Sam because I feel like even though, you know, he may not be part of the partnership, but he is definitely a very important part of the Dean Cas dynamic. Um mm-hmm. Especially when you’re, you know, writing canon. Like you, you almost can’t have Dean and Cas without having Sam.
For me personally, I know some people. Mm-hmm. Everyone likes their fics different, right. But I,
Lily: mm-hmm.
Mal: I, I love having Sam in canon Destiel fics, because he’s got so much to offer from snarky commentary to serious talks, to smacking Dean upside the head occasionally. Like he has a lot to offer in this realm of fic and is such a great character in his own right.
Like, he is in this story. Like he, like in this story, we definitely get the reminder that like, yeah, okay, we’re reading a dust deal fic, but like Sam and Cas are friends too, and Yeah. Sam is also going through things at this time, so
Ellen: Oh, he’s very, he’s so worried. And, and, but he [00:51:00] noticed, like he, he realizes that what Cas needs is for Dean to be there, and so he’s mm-hmm. And he’s constantly pushing,
Mal: And he’s better at recognizing that than Dean is. Yeah.
Ellen: Yeah. Oh, it’s such a lovely fic. I love this one.
Mal: Yeah, you did a great job. And lemme say this is your first fics, but you have nine fics now if I’m counting correctly. Um, but I also wanted to compliment you on another of your fics. ’cause I have another of your fics, which I read. Was it before or after this one? I can’t, I think it was after I read this one, which was Clean Blue Air.
Lily: Oh, that one? Yeah.
Mal: Yeah. And that’s actually, that’s actually one of my favorite fics I’ve read this year. So, good job.
Lily: Oh really?
Mal: I know, I know we’re not talking about this one yet today, but I, I went on like a binge of like post canon heaven type fics.
Lily: Mm-hmm.
Mal: Um,
Ellen: oh, is that the one where Dean’s in heaven and he’s, he finds the house and like
Mal: he’s fighting the house
Ellen: and Yeah, the house. Yes. I read that one too actually last couple of weeks ago. Yes. I love that. Yeah. So [00:52:00] that is, that is very funny.
Mal: So if anybody into that kind of trope Yeah, definitely gonna read Clean Blue Air as well. It’s, it’s, um, a shorter fic, it’s like 15,000 words, so it’s a nice little chunk without being a one shot, so very good.
Lily: Yeah, I definitely was at a point where I just needed something a lot lighter because I’m right in the angst at the moment, still with other fics and things. So it’s like, need this breath of fresh air in there. I had a lot of fun writing that one.
Mal: It, it is a really fun fic, but again, there’s like, you know, there’s a lot of emotion and things going on in there. Like it’s not just a fluff piece, ‘ cause you know, Dean actually works through quite a lot of things in that fic. We, we don’t need to go too much into detail about this fic, I guess, because it’s not the one we’re talking about, but please just go read it ’cause I loved it and it’s fun watching Dean fight his house in heaven.
Ellen: He struggles real hard with that one, but it’s, it’s funny.
On Drowning
Mal: Alright, so shall we move on to, On Drowning?
Ellen: Okay.
Mal: So On Drowning by domesticadventures [00:53:00] is 28,000 words and this one was published back in 2015 so I guess it is slightly older these days. Yeah. That means it’s 10 years old. Oh my goodness.
Ellen: Oh wow. Oh,
Mal: why, why did I do that? Um, okay. And the summary goes like this.
The absolute last thing Dean would ever admit after saving Cas’s life is that it was all thanks to the unhealthy amount of time he spent reading about drowning on Wikipedia. Not that he’s not grateful, but what he really needs is an instruction manual for everything that comes after.
So I guess in some ways a slightly strange summary there, like very intriguing. Doesn’t necessarily tell you a lot.
Ellen: It doesn’t give anything away, to be honest. Yes.
Lily: No, it really doesn’t.
Mal: Um, but this is a canon fic, um, with, you know, hunting, hunting happening, hunting, going wrong. Um, and apparently one where Dean is, is, I think we’ve all done it though.
Like right. We’ve got something on our mind or whatever. We just end up doing like [00:54:00] deep dives on the internet about random things that soothe us. Yeah. Um, and Dean has done a lot of reading on drowning because he wanted to, uh, to know everything that was going on and make sure that he was read. It. It’s very much Dean being like very anxious, I think, but in his own head and dealing with it in his own way.
Lily: I love that it came out of a fandom kind of context. He’d been watching Dr. Sexy.
Mal: Yes
Ellen: Ahhh yes.
Mal: Considering in this one, I don’t think they are,
Lily: ended up down this rabbit hole of where he, where they got it wrong.
Ellen: He was looking up the medical stuff. Yeah, that’s right. Yeah. But the, that funny part aside, the rest of this fic is quite angsty to be honest.
Mal: Yes, yes.
Ellen: It’s, um, so Cas falls through and like we can spoil part of it because obviously we need, we kind of need you to talk about the story, but, um, Cas goes out on a, a frozen lake and ends up falling through the ice, which is absolutely [00:55:00] terrifying. Like. That the idea of falling through ice and then being trapped underneath ice, like, is just absolutely terrifying to me.
I don’t know, uh, about you, but, oh. Um, but between them, um, Dean and, and Sam do actually get him out of there, but he’s, um, you know, cold and not breathing and stuff. So Dean gives him like CPR and all sorts of things, and they get him to a hospital and he’s okay. But then he’s got this ongoing like, care that needs to happen.
And there is also an ongoing lack of communication where he feels like he’s being a burden on them and he doesn’t, you know, he thinks he’s being annoying and they’re like, both Dean and Sam are trying to give him, they think he, he, he prefer to have space, so they just kind of leave him in his room and don’t bother him too much. Where in fact he actually needs help quite a lot. And
Mal: yes. Oh, it’s, please bother the angel. You’re like reading it and you’re like, please go bother him. Like.
Ellen: [00:56:00] And, and just little things like he can’t, he doesn’t wanna have a shower because he doesn’t, he’s afraid of sort of getting the water on him again because of what happened to him. And it’s like, oh, it’s, oh, it’s so sad.
Mal: Yeah. It was, and, and Dean helping him. Yeah, Dean helping him with that. And in like a completely nonsexual way. I mean, we’ve had, like, we have many, many fics where it’s just like, oh, they go for, you know, sexy shower time or he helps Cas shave and it turns into something else or whatever.
Um, but there’s like so many intense emotions involved in that and Dean is just so gentle with him at that point. Like, you know, washing his hair and making sure he is not getting the water on his face and that kind of stuff. Um, and it really comes back to like that, like mother hen caretaker Dean
Ellen: Yes.
Mal: Part, yeah.
Lily: Mm-hmm. I really enjoyed the role that touch had in this fit where, you know, this one point where Cas says, like, “you only, you only ever touch me when I’m [00:57:00] dying.” And
Ellen: oh yeah,
Lily: that becomes such a sticking point for Dean. Like it breaks his heart and seeing how touch then becomes a part of how he cares for Cas.
Ellen: Mm-hmm. Yeah.
Lily: Is really beautiful.
Mal: Yeah. Kind of love. Yeah. Love seeing Dean being forced to confront his behavior and assessing it and changing it. Like, yes. Good job Dean. Um,
Ellen: also because he, later he realizes that he’s, oh, okay. I’m gonna get just spoilers again now. Um, okay. Spoiler alert, I’m gonna say something which is a spoiler.
Mal: Yeah. It’s hard with the shorter fics. Um, yeah.
Ellen: Then Dean pulls away where he, he doesn’t, he, anyone who gets close to him gets hurt and he can’t deal with that, so, but he doesn’t tell Cas that until later.
Lily: Oh. There’s some heartbreaking mis miscommunication in there too.
Mal: Yes. Yeah. Messes up his words a little bit.
I don’t know if the [00:58:00] Dean necessarily messes up his words. I think it’s Cas’s interpretation in that specific, but the fact that Cas was in a position where that interpretation was even possible, that he could think that, um,
Ellen: mm-hmm.
Mal: Is definitely both of their faults. Yeah. I love the part at the beginning, like one of the, my kind of most powerful things in this fic to me is, is very brief and early on when the, the hunt and the ice lake, uh, scene is actually happening.
We see Dean a lot in canon as being very capable. Like when things go down, he’s hitting the ground running, he’s fighting, he’s coming up with a plan, he’s trying something like, he’s just naturally kind of a fighter by nature. Um, and we’ve seen it a lot in Canon with Sam. Like if something’s going wrong with Sam, then Dean is immediately like, full speed out the gate.
We gotta fix this. He’s reacting immediately to things that happen around him. Um, but when Cas goes through the ice into the lake, Dean [00:59:00] freezes and he just can’t.
Lily: Mm-hmm.
Mal: He can’t do anything. It’s actually, it’s actually Sam that has to save, um, Cas from like, getting him out of the, like finding him, getting him out of the lake, like Sam is the one who is, you know, more levelheaded and is thinking it through and, and yeah.
Ellen: Dean’s fully panicking.
Mal: Dean is really experiencing like a, yeah, like a, a freeze reaction to what’s happening. Mm. Um, and like something about that was so powerful because we are, we are in like Dean’s point of view at the time, and you can kind of see him almost like slightly removed from it. Like he just can’t process the, the chance of losing Cas at that point.
Which is very, very interesting.
Lily: Mm-hmm. Yeah. Yeah. That was something that really stood out to me as well.
Mal: Mm-hmm.
Ellen: But as soon as he gets him on the shore, he’s like, okay, get outta the way. Yeah. I know how to do CPR
Mal: kick back into gear. Yeah. Like, come on Sam, I know how to do this. And Sam’s just like, I had to do everything, dude. Like
Ellen: Yeah. Oh now you’re awake? okay.
Mal: Yeah. Um, [01:00:00] but there’s no judgment from that in Sam. I think this is definitely one of these fics where it’s like Sam knew the whole damn time. Okay. He was just waiting for Dean to catch up. Yeah. But, um, I feel like with the shorter fics, it is difficult to discuss in depth without completely spoiling everything.
Oh. And it’s a very, very tiny specific trope that I really love in this one. And it turns up a lot in either fics where Cas is an angel and kind of de powers and becomes human in some way or fics where Cas is human, but kind of newly human. And that is the trope of Dean having to have Cas try every variation of something. Like in this fic, it’s like drinks because he knows that Cas needs a lot of hydration when he is healing and everything else.
And so he’s bringing him like juice and he can’t just bring him juice. He has to bring him like orange juice and cranberry and apple. And he has to bring him Gatorade in like all the different colors and he has to bring him like different types of bottled water and vitamin waters and all these other things.
Ellen: Yeah.
Mal: And [01:01:00] it’s, it’s just Dean’s way of caring and it’s Dean’s way of loving somebody. But it’s, it’s just so funny to me. ’cause I just always picture like Cas just sitting there and like the little like nightstand table next to his bed just being like completely covered in every kind of drink you can imagine.
Ellen: Yeah. So is it this fic where they bake all the pies where they bake like every kind of pie?
Mal: Yes. I think they do a lot of baking, uh, together.
Lily: The cooking together?
Mal: Which again, Dean can’t do anything just by like there, there is no one flavor, one half, one baking. No. He has to do everything.
Ellen: Yeah. They just spend the whole day baking. Because they can. Oh, that’s so sweet. I think there was another point in this bit where, um, it might’ve been actually when Cas, when Dean was helping Cas in the shower and the, the line stood out to me, but I didn’t write down the exact line. But it was something like he’s looking at, at the lean like shape of Cas’s body and thinking that the muscles were built by [01:02:00] Jimmy, but it now belongs to Cas or something. And I just thought that was really sweet.
I’m trying to
Mal: yes. Yeah. Actually I ha I did write that line down.
Ellen: You did? Oh good! I’m glad.
Mal: But I wrote that exact line down because it said, um, “Cas has a body that up until recently was borrowed. He’s muscular for reasons that don’t belong to him. Those reasons belonged to Jimmy and the results are Jimmy’s too.” and um,
Ellen: there you go. That sounded a lot better than the way I described it.
Mal: No, I mean, you, you got the point there. Definitely. But yeah, we must have been on the same way where when we were reading that, because I wrote down that line.
Ellen: It’s beautiful. Like it’s a, yeah, it’s really good. Also kind of like weird sentiment, but Yes.
Mal: Yeah. But it, it, I think it carries on a little bit. I didn’t write down any more of it, but he talks, he’s thinking about how those muscles were built up, not just from, you know, exercise or going to the gym, but from like carrying groceries and holding Claire and stuff like that and how
Ellen: Yeah.
Mal: Yeah. It’s, it’s, it’s intrinsically human how those muscles were built.
There’s a, [01:03:00] there’s a lot of introspection type things in this fic, even though, ’cause it’s, it’s the kind of slow angst in a way because there’s no miraculous sudden cure for pneumonia and recovering from drowning. Like, it’s something that takes time and it’s angsty time. So it’s not like they’re rushing to do something or cure something or fight something.
They just have to wait and heal. And so there’s, even though you’ve still got that kind of emotional desperation where you’re waiting for them to get their heads out their asses. Um, it’s, it is slower feeling than the other two fics, I think.
Ellen: Yeah, that’s true.
Lily: Mm-hmm. I, I’ve found for, you know, a fic, that it has such a serious premise, it’s, it’s still read as being very sweet and soft in a lot of ways. Yeah.
Ellen: Mm-hmm. There’s a lot of caretaking in this one too. Like, it’s gentle and it does have a happy ending. Like I, and I don’t, we don’t usually cover fics that, [01:04:00] don’t have a happy ending, but even though we’ve, uh, like described it as being very angsty in whatever it, yeah, it does turn out okay in the end. So,
Mal: oh. I actually will say I had another kind of favorite point in this fic, and it was a Sam moment and it’s one of my favorite characterizations of Sam, where Dean is hugely stressing and he ends up telling Sam that Cas, uh, kissed him, and Sam’s just sitting there and he’s like, “wait, what?” And Dean, like, he, he processes for a second, and then he’s just like, “And?” And Dean’s like, “What do you mean, and?”
And Sam’s just like, “and then what, like, what point are you trying to make?” And, uh, and you just, you feel a little bit like almost sorry for Sam, where you’re just like, oh man, he’s been dealing with this for so long.
Ellen: He’s probably like, “and you hadn’t before?”
Mal: Yeah. And he gets really offended on Cas’s behalf, um, for Dean’s like interaction.
And you’re just reading it. You’re just like, Dean, you’re never gonna win this one. [01:05:00] Like Sam is a hundred percent on Cas’s side here.
Ellen: Yeah. Isn’t it something like, he, you kissed him and then you freaked out and ran away? Like you just left him there and, yeah.
Mal: Yeah. Pretty much so I was just, he’s like rubbing in his temples just like stressed, just like, come on guys.
Ellen: Yeah. Yeah. Bless him. Poor Sam.
Mal: Yep. Okay. All right. So I think it’s time we torture Dean a little bit ’cause we, we did all three un unintentionally clustered all of our Cas hurt comfort together.
Lights
Ellen: We did. Okay. So the, the fourth fic we’ve got here is just the short one. It’s called Lights and it’s by LoversAntiquities. This one was published in 2018, which is still a long time ago, but not as long as the other ones.
Mal: Not as painfully long as that last one.
Ellen: Um, so this one’s only [01:06:00] 2,600 words long. So just a shorty. And even though it is marked as Mature, I feel like it is a little more smutty than the others.
Mal: It is actually, I think it’s something we’ve talked about a lot on the podcast, how, I think over time the definitions of the ratings have changed a little bit.
Ellen: Yeah.
Mal: Um,
Ellen: so I’m not sure if we mentioned that the last, that On Drowning one was actually Teen rated. Yeah, there’s, I don’t think there’s any actual explicit stuff in it at all. Um, whereas this one does have a little bit,
Mal: you kind of almost don’t notice that there isn’t ’cause it’s so very, like, intimate.
Ellen: Yeah, it is.
Mal: You don’t even really notice that it’s Teen rated.
Ellen: There’s, there’s still a lot of touching and a lot of like, feeling like they’re intimate, even if they’re not getting it on. Um, literally.
So, Lights, um, the summary goes like this.
Dean can’t breathe. Try as he might, he hasn’t been able to suck in a deep breath in the past hour, not with bruised ribs and the associated pain. Blood [01:07:00] continues to drip from his nose and eardrum, probably busted with shaking hands. He struggles to wipe it away. His attempts all in vain.
The motel will probably hate him after he leaves, whenever that is. The least his father could have done was leave a note, a map, something telling him where he was, not just dumping him in a non-descript location with a collection of gashes and bruises he can’t even treat, not by himself.
So that is pulled straight from the fic to be, it’s like one of those summaries that is part of the fic,
Mal: um, John Winchester hate club.
Ellen: Oh my God. There’s, there’s a lot of, like, this is only a short fic, but there’s, it feels like there’s a lot that was not said in this one. Like
Mal: mm-hmm.
Ellen: Obviously there’s,
Mal: yeah. It’s, it’s really well done in terms of implying so many things that we don’t see, but get a very clear impression of.
Ellen: Yeah. Yeah. So for some reason we don’t even know, find out what the reason [01:08:00] is. Um, John has arranged for Dean to be beaten up and left in this motel like bleeding and like with broken ribs and stuff, it’s like, oh my God. What, what the hell, John?
Mal: Yep. And even in the fic, you get the feeling that like to John, like this wasn’t a cruelty to John necessarily. He probably was trying to teach a lesson, like he had a point. Um, I think there’s a brief mention that there was a hunt and something went wrong and I don’t think we necessarily really ever find out much about that, like you said. But, um, you get the feeling that John probably thinks he’s justified in what he did, that he’s probably trying to toughen Dean up so that he’ll survive this life.
Um, and I’m not a hundred percent not backing John on that one, to be very clear. John Winchester hate club flag flying high in this fic, but at least from John’s point of view, I don’t think it was intended as [01:09:00] anything malicious. It’s just the fucked up life that they have. Um, and trying to toughen up Dean so that he survives it, which I mean, kind of Cas kind of ruins that because Cas is just like, Hmm, no.
Ellen: Yeah. So, so this is the other thing that doesn’t get explained really, and we don’t really understand why is that this is a, a pre canon fic, like this is before or any of the show. So, um, but Cas is there somehow and has apparently been appearing to Dean for two years before this point.
Mal: Yeah. We got a little, a little dose of time travel in here.
Ellen: Yeah. And he already knows, he knows future Dean somehow, but he won’t tell Dean how they meet or like any of that stuff. And he’s gonna have to wipe his memory at some point, but he hasn’t yet.
Mal: Mm-hmm. So, yeah, I think that’s one of the reasons why it works, is because we’re in Dean’s point of view. So we don’t know all of these things. Like, we don’t know [01:10:00] how he first met Cas or in this version, or, you know. We, we don’t even necessarily know how far in the future this Cas is from or anything like that. But it makes sense that we don’t know these things ’cause we are very much in Dean’s point of view and he
Ellen: Yeah. And Cas won’t tell him any of that stuff.
Mal: Yeah. Cas doesn’t tell him those things. And also even with the John stuff, there is a reluctance within Dean to think badly of John, even though he definitely should be thinking badly of John. Yes. And he has, he has some, but, and even though, you know, Dean doesn’t excuse what his dad does in this, but he, you know, just, just Dean in general in canon, he does tend to be, I guess he tries to rationalize the way John acts even in canon.
Um, and so that’s probably why this fic feels so very canon to me, even though that it’s talking about an event that did not happen in canon as far as we’re aware, like. We don’t [01:11:00] think that John had Dean beaten up at any point to toughen him up. But who knows? Who knows it. The fact that we can imagine
Ellen: there’s plenty of speculation.
Mal: It may have happened. Yeah, exactly. So this just feels like it fits so well into canon and then gives you this intriguing little, okay, but what if Cas had just, you know, zipped back in time to go help out Dean before he knew him or, or whatever, for whatever
Ellen: reason,
Yeah, baby Dean
Mal: that happened. Yeah. It, it, it almost feels like it could be a premise for an episode where Cas like goes back in time to fix a few things or to just help Dean through a few things in his past.
Ellen: Yeah. And then gets a bit frisky with him at the same time.
Mal: A little frisky,
Lily: just a little bit. I remember reading, uh, thinking when I read this one that this is what I love about fanfic and this is what I love about writing it as well as reading it. Is this, it’s just taken a little dip in a moment of [01:12:00] time, and it relies so heavily on our understanding of canon, our understanding of the characters and all of their backgrounds.
And you can fill in all of those little quiet spaces, like you were saying, Mel, like understanding Dean’s feelings towards John and why John may have done this thing and, and, and how well it uses all of that to just take this little tiny piece of time. And, but it ha it’s so much and it’s so rich, even though it’s so tiny.
And yeah, it just, it’s the sort of thing that just leaves me thinking about it when I’m finished, especially with this one, is like, well, what happens now? Where do they go from here? You know?
Ellen: Yeah. Yeah. I’d like, I’d like more, I’d like it to be longer than four, the two and a half thousand words.
Lily: Mm-hmm.
Ellen: Just to find out what happens next. But No, it’s perfect.
Mal: Yeah, I think those are the, the best short, short fics. When you desperately wish that they were longer. Like that’s when, you know, you’ve hit on like a really good one. Like it’s got you.
Lily: Oh, I thought [01:13:00] about it for days.
Ellen: Yeah. Mm-hmm. My thoughts were more, just more like how? I, how how does, why is Cas there? Like how, how has he gone back in time? How’s, like, at what point did he know?
Yeah,
Mal: it could be like a whole thing. Yeah. Like it could, like, ’cause I think, uh, one of the last lines in the fic is even Cas saying that, um, he hopes that in the future Dean will understand that everything he did was for him. And so you, you almost wonder like they go through so much in canon and so many kind of phases of being, you know, hurting each other, betraying each other, going through all of these things.
And it made me wonder at what, like at what point, which kind of season of Cas are we seeing? Um, because there was definitely some, like, there was some pain there. Like they had been through some things I think before Cas went back into this old version, and he just wants to protect Dean from all the things he knows are coming.
But he can’t. He just has to go back [01:14:00] and comfort him and share things with him while he can, and then he’s gonna have to wipe his memory and just hope that Dean will forgive him and be okay. It’s, it’s a lot like, it, it feels like a, a burden for Cas, but one that he’s choosing because it’s all he can have at that time, if that makes sense.
Ellen: Yeah.
Mal: So, yeah. Oh, I love it. And it’s also incredibly hot, I have to say that. Yes, it’s very hot. Yeah. Which is, um, LoversAntiquities always does just wonderfully on that front. Like the Epic is always incredibly hot. But this one in particular, something, something about like the setting and the. Kind of like the rushed dark motel kind of, I don’t know. I liked it. It felt good. It was very like, I dunno, it hit a good spot in my chest.
Ellen: Yeah. So, and like, it’s, it’s young Dean who doesn’t really know what’s going on, but all he knows is this hot angel comes to visit him and like gives him the time [01:15:00] of like, the care that he doesn’t get from anywhere else and,
Mal: mm-hmm.
Ellen: Okay. I am, I’m going away from the hot part and towards the more emotional part again, but, you know,
Mal: but it’s, I, I like the, when we get a young Dean where we can see how in another world, or with other choices, he could have been so uninhibited. Um, and, you know, if he had maybe when he was younger, been more able to do things like this with Cas, if he’d been in whatever way, whether it was facing his own sexuality or not being afraid of John or like, however you want to frame it, if we had just been able to have like that little bit of like carefree Dean where he could indulge himself in these ways.
Um, I just love that he’s just so passionate about it and it’s kind of a, a youth thing. He’s a much less burdened down by the world and everything that’s happened than he is in like
Ellen: Yeah. He hasn’t had to save the world yet. Few times.
Mal: Yeah, exactly. I mean, that’s, that’s gotta be a [01:16:00] weighty thing to carry around with you.
Ellen: Yeah.
Mal: But, um, and I, I love seeing him like that, seeing that complete lack of inhibition, like that he’s doing things because he can and why not?
Lily: I found it particularly sad in a way, like knowing that at some point he’s gonna lose all of that. Like he was a time in his life then, Sam was at Stanford and John is doing things like this, you know, just dumping him and leaving and he’s so alone and he’s got this, this wonderful situation with Cas, like someone who cares about him and is looking after him is making him feel valuable and which is something that I think we all want Dean to have, but knowing he’s gonna lose that as well, it’ll be like it never existed.
Yeah. Mm-hmm. Was very sad.
Mal: Very bittersweet. Yeah.
Lily: Mm-hmm.
Ellen: Oh, poor baby Dean.
Mal: Do you, do you wonder what, what kind of drove Cas to that as well? Because it’s, it’s very [01:17:00] clear from their conversation and everything that this isn’t the first time this has happened. Um
Lily: mm-hmm.
Mal: This isn’t the first time that Cas has been back, that that’s even talk about, you know, positions and things that Cas enjoys, which is knowledge that Dean has.
So you, you wonder what, what happened on Cas’s side to drive him back to this, if that makes any sense. Yeah. And I also love fics, like this one that could feasibly, like it could fit into canon seamlessly, because there is the talk of Cas, like wiping memories and everything else. It like. It’s one of those things that like could have happened and the show could still exist exactly as it is without changing anything.
Ellen: It would make some like really awful things canon if we could.
Mal: Yeah. Yeah. It would, it would.
Ellen: But yes, it does fit. Alright. We can’t say anything else about that one without just reading the whole fic out because it’s, it’s a shorty. But yes, it’s great.
Mal: It’s short and it’s intense and well worth [01:18:00] your time.
Other recommendations
Ellen: Um, okay, so we’ve probably got some other recommendations to make. I’m sure we do. Uh, who wants to start?
Mal: So I have a few to mention.
Ellen: Mm-hmm.
Mal: Um, it’s quite well known that I have a bit of a thing for historical fics and fics. Um, very specific genres. Like if you give me like an old, like Western or like something like that, very, very into that.
Um, I love those kinds of like really intense AUs. Um, there is a fic called Down By the Water by Cas_Wings. Um, it’s 88,000 words, so it’s a, it’s a good chunk of fic. Um, but it’s an AU set in 1853. Um, and, you know, it’s kind of a western going, going west kind of, um, story. And Cas loses everything. Like there’s a, a river crossing and he loses like his, his wagon, his supplies, his wife, like he loses everything.
Um, [01:19:00] and you know, obviously you have to deal with like, you know, period typical like homophobia and things in these kinds of fics. If that’s something that bothers you, then obviously don’t read this one. Um, but the Dean finding themselves throughout this, like, I love the individual character development in this for both of them.
And when you finally get to like any kind of smutty part, it’s, it is very slow burn. Very slow burn. Um, but when you finally get to it, it is very. Romantic and feels momentous for the characters. Um, but obviously the situation that they’re in, especially with Cas, like how it starts like losing everything.
Like there is so much like emotional hurt, comfort in a sense, and physical hurt, comfort too, like later on. But, um, so much emotional stuff in this. I love this fic and I would recommend it to anybody. And I, I think it’s a very accessible AU as well. Um, in terms of historical stuff, um, in the way that it’s written.
Like it is an easy read. It’s not written in such a way that like the prose, um, is gonna be off-putting for somebody who usually [01:20:00] reads modern fics. Mm-hmm. So definitely want to recommend that one. And then I have at least three more, so you guys go ahead.
Ellen: Okay.
Mal: It’s, it’s a big, it’s a big, it’s a big trope and I really like it. So,
Ellen: um, Lily, did you have one that you wanted to mention next?
Lily: Uh, yeah. Um, there’s one called Graceless by spinsomnia. Uh, it’s, it’s nice big chunky ones, 146 K and it is, uh, let’s put it post canon, but the, like, the basic premise is that Cas and Eileen are back and Dean is finding himself in some ways accidentally on purpose hurting himself because he wants Cas to heal him.
And it sort of goes through this cycle of he’s sort of questioning for a long while, [01:21:00] whether it’s does he want Cas, is he doing this ’cause he wants Cas close to him or is he doing it for the sensations of the grace and the healing? And there’s a lot of really juicy description of what the grace feels like, um, in Dean’s body and, um.
Potential trigger warning. It does sort of escalate to some self-harm kind of behaviors and, um, even heavier at times because he gets quite adamant about wanting Cas’s presence and wanting Cas’s grace and wanting to be healed. And I know we were saying that a lot of this is a lot of the hurt comfort trope is very Cas based.
This one is definitely a Dean, hurt comfort, and it goes off in a really, really interesting direction where, oh, I don’t, I don’t think I can say much more than that without giving away big chunks of it. Although it is such a [01:22:00] big chunky fic, it does a really good job of exploring where the lines lie for Dean with what he wants from Cas.
And in a way he’s, he’s keep emotionally, he’s keeping Cas at arms distance and using other things as tools to bring him close. And you sort of left through a lot of the fic wondering what is happening? What is it that he’s needing here? Is it Cas that he needs? Is it grace that he needs? And is it a combination?
And I thought it was a really, really fascinating exploration of that. And yeah, a really, really well told, well told story.
Ellen: Sounds interesting.
Mal: I’ll be reading that one.
Lily: Oh, and my notes here. Cas is sassy. He’s very sarcastic.
Mal: And we love, we love a sassy Cas. Yes.
Ellen: Excellent.
Lily: And he gets really, really, really fed up with Dean and his [01:23:00] behavior in this too, which is just fabulous and gets quite steamy at times too.
Ellen: Perfect.
Lily: Mm-hmm.
Ellen: Yeah. Okay. Um, so I have one that is called Basic Lessons in First Aid, Magical or Otherwise, which is by stuffy_J. Um, this one is, where is it? 54,000 words and it’s explicit. Um, this is like, it’s a, it’s an alternate. It’s, it’s an AU where Dean works in a hospital. He’s like a nurse. Um, he, it’s like a hospital that deals with a lot of magical people and creatures and whatever.
And he finds, um, this man in an alleyway, like on his way home from work one night, and it’s Cas, spoiler, um, takes him in, he’s like injured and he doesn’t remember. He’s like, like, got amnesia. He doesn’t remember who he is or what it, [01:24:00] like, I think he remembers what his name is. So we, we can refer to him as, as Cas, but he.
He doesn’t know where he is come from or why he’s hurt or anything. And so he kind of lives with Dean for a while while they try and work out what’s going on with him. And he, and, and eventually it turns out that there’s a much bigger story going on in the background, but we don’t find that out till later.
And I just checked the tags to see if I can actually say what anything about what Cas is. Um, because he is not an angel, but he is a, it is like a creature Cas fic, but it’s not spoiled in the tags, so I won’t say what it is. Um, just that the reveal is quite amazing and, um, the, the rest, like the, the resolution is really good.
It’s, it’s like a satisfying resolution and happy ending. So, um, yeah, it’s a really well sort of put together mystery, I guess. ’cause you, we all the way through, they’re trying to work out what’s going on with Cas and they, they don’t find out till much later. [01:25:00] But yeah, I enjoyed that one.
Mal: Okay. I have. I’ll say a lot of recommendations in this arena. So I’m just gonna, I’m gonna just quick fire a few and just try to do one or two line descriptions of what each one is about.
Ellen: Okay.
Mal: Okay. So for something completely different, but incredibly angsty. Um, I have to recommend, Out of the Deep by riseofthefallenone.
Ellen: Oh, yes.
Mal: Which is, yeah. Pretty well known in the fandom. It is very chunky. It’s almost 500,000 words. It, it is a merfolk AU um, but quite a dark one. Like this is, you know, quite a, a dark, fic in some ways, and there’s some hella angst in this fic.
Ellen: Mm-hmm.
Mal: But it’s so good. Like, it’s really, really good. It’s quite well known in the fandom, so I imagine a lot of people have read this one, um, if they’re into that kind of thing. So that’s Out of the Deep by riseofthefallenone.
Um, I also wanna recommend, um, a fic that we have covered on the podcast before, so if you want to go back and listen to us talk [01:26:00] about it in depth. Um, but it is called Psalm 40:2 by unicornpoe. Um, and it’s a, the easiest way is it’s, it’s, it’s a post canon fic with a pre-series Dean.
Um, it’s, it’s really good. It’s canon, but it is incredibly angsty just from the, the setup of it. Um, there’s some, some time travel stuff there going on, obviously as you have that, that earlier Dean. Um, and it has one of my favorite tags, which is the inherent queerness of wanting what you think you can’t have. Um, very, very good. And it’s about 45,000 words. Definitely recommend that one if you enjoyed that kind of pain. Um,
I will also briefly mention, just due to the the specific type of angst is very similar to On Drowning. So I’m going to recommend, um, A Need For Breathing by Fiona Fiona, possibly P-H-Y-O-N-A. [01:27:00] Um, 27,000 words and in this one Cas has a nasty case of pneumonia and Dean has to take care of him. Um, but it’s, so, it’s definitely kind of a sick fic kind of deal. Like it’s very much dealing with, with Cas being sick. Um, but you know, there’s, there’s a lot of things to work through. There’s, there’s some angst, um, it’s also very funny at certain parts.
Um, so that was A Need For Breathing by phyona.
Ellen: Mm-hmm.
Mal: And then I also have a couple of NorthernSparrow recommendations. So if you would like to try an angsty NorthernSparrow fic, but don’t have time to read a too fic series of half a million words, which is reasonable. Um. I recommend a fic called All the Nights by NorthernSparrow, which is 32,000 words. Um, and again, this is a, everybody gets hypothermia fic. We love hypothermia in this fandom.
Ellen: It’s a good opportunity for cuddling.
Mal: It is, it [01:28:00] is. So, um, this fic is canon compliant up until I think about halfway through season 15. It’s a case fic um, lots of unresolved tension, um, and platonic cuddling, so yay. But that is a much shorter dose of NorthernSparrow angst, if you would like that one.
Obviously I think the ultimate NorthernSparrow angst is, um, You Can Keep Holding On, which is a, I don’t think it’s a spoiler or it’s a necessary spoiler to say that it is a cancer AU. For anybody who would be bothered by reading that, then please don’t. But it’s written so exceptionally well and it is canon, so that’s worth reading.
Um, right. I’m gonna stop for a second in case anybody else wants to go in, ’cause I’ve still got like three or four more.
Ellen: Oh my God. Uh, well, I will quickly throw in, um, another Dean, uh, hurt Dean one is, uh, War Wounds by CBFirestarter, which I think we might’ve discussed brief, like
Mal: yes, that’s a [01:29:00] great fic.
Ellen: I think, I can’t remember whether we discussed it as a, like a main fic, or we just mentioned it when we actually spoke to CB at one point, but, um,
Mal: yeah, because I know we had CB on the podcast, but don’t know that that was the one that we,
Ellen: well, War Wounds is a one where, um, Cas has like a horse rescue ranch type place and he, uh, rehabilitates horses that, you know, need help.
Dean comes there to, he’s like lives nearby. He’s got like PTSD from like, I think the army, I’m gonna say? And he, uh, helps Cas on, on the ranch and they become closer and yeah, it’s really beautiful. Lots of horsey stuff in it. Really lovely, fic read it.
Mal: Yeah. You know, I have a feeling that when we had CB on the podcast that, that she was just about to begin posting that or was in the process of reading it. I think we did briefly mention it, but I don’t know that it was complete at the time when we spoke to them so
Ellen: well, it definitely is [01:30:00] now. Okay. And has been for some time. We’ve been doing this a long time.
Mal: Yep. We have been doing this a long time. My goodness. Okay.
Ellen: Lily, did you have another one that you wanted to say?
Lily: Uh, yeah, I had another one, but I have a feeling that you may have already done it at some point. Uh, Stay With Me, Sweetheart by MandalaRose.
Ellen: Oh yes. Oh, beautiful.
Mal: Oh, so good. Beautiful.
Lily: Uh, another big chunky one. 140 2K. It’s not actually tagged hurt comfort, but I feel like it fits. Um, yes. Being that it starts out with Cas is in a car accident and he’s trapped in his vehicle and, um, has quite significant injuries.
And Dean’s the firefighter that rescues him and then yes. Can’t seem to stay away. And he’s with Cas through his recovery and Cas’s emotional journey through the changes that that’s meant for him. Um, it’s fantastic work. Really good slow burn. Um, yes.
Ellen: Yeah. Yes. We love that one.
Mal: Definitely recommend that one. I do think we have [01:31:00] talked about that one on the podcast before. Mm-hmm. Um, with MandalaRose, so yeah.
Ellen: Brilliant one.
Mal: All right. Okay, here are my last rapid fire recommendations. Then something a little different, but still angsty read. Don’t laugh at me. Um, Stand By Me by whelvenwings. 31,000 words. Very angsty um, hurt comfort, but it’s actually a zombie apocalypse au.
Ellen: Yes. This one. I love this one.
Mal: Something a little different, a little fun. Um, I love that fic. Definitely recommend it. Um, also a fit called, I Don’t Know Why by saltnhalo. This is a very fun twist on hurt comfort because this is an assassin slash spy au, um, with like some little like dom sub undertones in it.
Um, it’s about 16,000 words. Um, and that’s by saltnhalo. Not sure if I said that. And [01:32:00] then one, which is a favorite fic of mine, and I feel like it’s a hard sell for people because they. I just like, what, why, why would there be a fic about that? Okay. I also can’t pronounce the name of it. So we’re off to a great start here.
Ellen: Oh no,
Mal: I think it’s pronounced Amāyō Juwes possibly. Uh, but it’s a Paleolithic love story. It’s literally a caveman au where, um, Dean is a Neanderthal and Castiel is a Cro magnan human. So like entirely different, I guess, branches of human evolution and how they come together despite not even being able to speak the same language.
Um, and it’s really, really beautiful. Um, but it also at certain points is incredibly angsty and there’s a lot of hurt, comfort and pain. And, um, you do get a happy ending, but it takes a little while to get there. Um, and that is by hopelessheathen or Elizabeth (Elspeth) McGillicuddy, um, on Archive of Our Own.
And if [01:33:00] you are kind of, you know, raising an eyebrow. Like, what the heck? Why am I reading about caveman? Just please trust me. Just please try this one. It’s chronically underrated for, for how beautiful it is. I promise you.
Ellen: It sounds fascinating.
Mal: Yep. And then my very last one, I think anytime you’re talking about angst or things like that, especially in the canon front, I think, um, Redemption Road deserves a mention. Um,
Ellen: Ah, yes.
Mal: I never, yeah, I very rarely hear people talking about Redemption Road, and I think it’s because there’s so much of it to talk about. Um, so it is, um, a 650,000 word series, um, of, I think it’s about 40. It’s technically kinda like 42 chapters, but it’s written as 42 separate fics because they are all by different authors, I believe.
Um, so it feels very episodic. It feels like a season of the show that would’ve been. Yeah, somewhere, somewhere [01:34:00] in the middle of the season run after they dealt with a bunch of stuff and this was the, the new big bad coming. Um, and they go through a lot of stuff and some of it is so incredibly angsty.
I could not put it down. I remember when I was first reading Redemption Road, um, it was the middle of winter and it was really cold and I had promised myself I was gonna have like a nice hot bath because my back was aching. And I was like, that’s what I need. And I sat there and debated whether I actually wanted to do that or whether I was just going to remain cold ’cause I could not put my phone down.
Ellen: Oh my God.
Mal: It was, yeah. It’s so good. It’s so good. But incredibly angsty in parts. So that is Redemption Road. And the, the author on ao3 is just SPN Redemption because they were all posted. I think that’s back then, I think that’s how you had to do like multi-author works. It had to be one author that posted everything.
Um Right. I think that’s a little different now, but I don’t think that set up existed back in 2011 when this figure was written.
Ellen: Oh wow. Yeah,
Mal: so [01:35:00] back in the day. So yeah. Hefty recommendation, but please, if anybody reads Redemption Road, like come and scream at me about it because I, I don’t actually know that I know anyone who’s read it other than me, but please do.
Ellen: I have not. I’ve, I’ve looked at it before and just went, oh my God, there’s so much.
Mal: Yeah, there, there really is. It’s a lot. But because of the way it’s posted, like as individual fics, it is quite easy to kind of read a chunk and then take a break and read something else or do something else, then come back to it.
So, ’cause it feels very episodic, so. Right.
Lily: That’s gonna go onto my mark for later.
Mal: Mm-hmm. Yes, please. If you do end up reading at it, just please let me know.
Lily: I will.
Mal: it’s, it’s a great, like what a season of what Supernatural could have been if they just embraced it.
Lily: So many missed opportunities.
Mal: Yes.
Ellen: Any other recs or are we all done with that? There’s a lot we’ve gotta give. We’ve, we’ve been done not posting for so long. We’ve gotta give everyone enough [01:36:00] fic to read to read until Yes. To make up for it.
Mal: Well, we, we will have a good list on the website post. Um, I, I, I’m already thinking of new things I can add to the list, so Yeah. We will have a good list of, I’d say probably mostly canon, but plenty of good angsty AUs too. Something for everybody.
Ellen: Yeah. Okay, so, Lily, it’s been a pleasure to having you to talk with us. Lovely to meet you and talk with you.
Lily: Um, thank you so much for inviting me.
Ellen: No worries. Um, what are you working on at the moment? Anything coming up for you that you wanna give a, give a shout out to?
Lily: I, I can’t seem to get away from the angst. Um, I am, I’m working on another one at the moment, which has, um, a lot of grief again in it. Mm-hmm. Uh, it’s called St. Jude. And it is, it’s an AU where Dean is, it’s a little, little [01:37:00] bit different in it’s, it’s an Omega verse, but it’s really, it’s very background to the story.
Ellen: Mm-hmm.
Lily: Um, so I know some people don’t really like Omegaverse will just not read something in that, but it is very background really. It was just an excuse for me to have Dean be the birthing parent of Claire and have Cas be the birthing parent of Jack and sort of put them together in a very emotionally volatile time for Dean where, um, Mary has just passed away from long-term cancer.
And then that’s not a spoiler because it’s, we just go straight into that in the first chapter and, um, sort of exploring what grief looks like and how it can change your life trajectory and letting himself feel those things while he’s in a place with a young baby and feeling like he just, he has to keep going.
He can’t stop, he can’t let this out. He just has things that he has to do and people he has to look after. [01:38:00] Um, so I’m actually getting very close to the end of that one. Um, right now it’s, uh, about, oh, I think about 92 or 94K and I’ve got I think another
Mal: nice good chunk. Okay.
Lily: Yeah. It’s the longest one I’ve done so far. Um, I think I’ve got a couple of chapters to go ish. And it’s a very good chance that there’ll be a second story after this. ’cause I had so much, so many ideas as I was going, I had to go, no, put that in in a bi, another bucket. Put it over there. No, I can’t do that one now. Put it in another bucket. Um,
Ellen: excellent.
Lily: So yeah, good chance there’ll be a follow up on that
Mal: That is the writer experience for everybody. I think. You end up with a very large bucket by the end of it,
Lily: it’s like, no, not this time. Can’t do it. Ah. So a lot of it was just like trying to rein in this fic and keep it a reasonable size.
Ellen: That sounds great. I’ll look forward to you posting it.
Mal: Yeah, I look forward to reading this.
Ellen: Yes. I mean, like we are, uh, we have got so much fic to [01:39:00] like, even, even in the last year when we haven’t been posting, there’s been so much fic posted that we haven’t, um, caught up on. So if there’s any that we’ve missed, please let us know.
Um, especially more recent stuff. I haven’t been keeping up with what’s going on generally in the pen for a little while, so I’d love to hear about some new fics. I know we’ve just had a whole bunch of DCBBs posted and it’s still going on. It, it’s like, Destiel christmas out there.
Mal: There’s some really good ones. Yep. Mm-hmm.
Ellen: Um, and there’s been like a bunch of like, we had reverse bangs and all sorts of things posted in the last few months, so there’s plenty of new fic out there.
Mal: Yeah.
Ellen: Um, yes, please get in touch with us. We’d love to hear from you. Um. Yeah, actually things have changed a little bit since last time we posted an episode.
You can actually now leave a comment directly in Spotify if you’re listening to us through there, or like, you can go to mixtapebookclub.com and comment directly on the post there. Or you can contact us via social media. Lots of [01:40:00] ways you can do that. Um, let us know what you think or if we’ve missed any hurt, comfort, fics.
Uh, what are we gonna talk about next time? Mal?
Mal: Ah, next episode we are gonna be discussing a fics where Cas is a dragon, so
Ellen: yay!
Mal: I love me a creature fics of any kind. So I’m very excited about that one. And I’ve already got a few, uh, favorites in mind that I know I will be talking about at length, whether anybody wants to hear about them or not, so.
Ellen: Excellent. All right, one more thank you to say to Lily. Thanks Lily.
Mal: Thanks, Lily.
Lily: Thank you. It’s, it’s, it’s been fun and an excellent reason to go and reread some of these fics, which I had read before, but like always a good reason to go back and go read them again.
Ellen: Yay for rereading.
Mal: Mm-hmm.
Ellen: All right, uh, thank you everyone for listening this week, and we will talk to you again very soon.
Mal: And as always, remember that the story [01:41:00] isn’t over until we say it is.
Ellen: Bye!
[outro music]
[outtake 1]
Mal: I’ve just realized during this recording I’m gonna have to try really hard, hard to not accidentally start slipping into some kind of Australian accent. [01:42:00] So I’ve got it from both sides now.
Ellen: Yay.
Lily: We won’t mind.
[outtake 2]
Ellen: I haven’t checked to see how many, uh, you know, Destiel fics there are nowadays, but I looked probably a lot more than there were last time
Mal: Yeah, I was gonna say, I looked a little while ago just ’cause I was very excited that one of my other ships finally broke through 10,000, which for them was a lot.
And um, and I think at that point it was like 124…. Oh wow. Yeah, 124,210 is where we’re currently at.
Ellen: Amazing.
Mal: I should have known that I looked up last week so that I could work out the all important figure of how many years it would take to read all Destiel fic if you read one a day.
Lily: Oh my God.
Mal: And apparently it’s 360, 60 something years. So,
Ellen: uh, we are never gonna run out of material.
Mal: Not gonna happen,
Ellen: but we might [01:43:00] end up with some like really problematic, um, topics by the end.
Mal: Yeah. You might be getting really into the deep, dark corners by the time you got to the end.
Ellen: Yeah.