Home » Transcript: Track 6: Post-Canon

Transcript: Track 6: Post-Canon

Links to all fics mentioned can be found on the main episode post.

Jump to:

MalMuses: [00:00:00] Okay. Let’s go.

[ Intro music ]

Ellen: Hi everyone. Welcome to the sixth episode of Mixtape Book Club Podcast. My name is Ellen.

MalMuses: And my name is Mal. And this week we would like to introduce you to our lovely guest, Lindsay, who goes by andimeantittosting on AO3.

andimeantittosting: Hello.

MalMuses: Hi!

Ellen: Welcome. So each, each week we take a look at a different trope in the huge collection of Destiel fanfiction. And this week is, this is Sunday after the airing of the Season 15 finale. The entire show has ended. And there’s some mixed reactions to say the least. But what we’re going to do is head back into the Canonverse world of fanfiction. So we’re going [00:01:00] to take a look at what that, what the ending of the show might mean for writing fanfiction into the future, and we’re going to talk about some fics that feature alternative and happy endings in a post- canon kind of world.

Just a quick thanks to everyone who’s been listening to the Podcast and left, leaving us comments on, on our blog or on social media, you can find links to all the fics that we’re going to talk about in this episode on mixtapebookclub.com. So head over there and leave us a comment and tell us what you think. 

MalMuses: If you’ve been enjoying the stories that we’ve reviewed or if you’ve missed any of them equally, there is now a collection of all of the stories that we’ve reviewed on the Podcast up on AO3, which we will link in the blog post for this week’s Podcast episode.

Sam Winchester: Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, spoilers.

Ellen: Before we start talking about any of the, the fics for this week, we’re just gonna say up front that we are going to be talking about the events of the season finale [00:02:00] during this episode. So if you, if you haven’t watched it, I don’t know how you’ve been avoiding any spoilers, but we are going to be talking about spoilers. So just a heads up.

MalMuses: The three fics that we’re gonna be talking about this week are Welcome to Pine Shores! by Lindsay andimeantittosting. Take the Long Way Home by dothraki_shieldmaiden and Tall Grass by aeli_kindara. 

Welcome to Pine Shores!

Okay, so the story that we will discuss first will be Welcome to Pine Shores! by andimeantittosting, Lindsay.

As always, you’ll find the links to it on the blog or in any of our social media posts. This particular one is 21,000 words. It is Explicit. The story was published for Pinefest in 2020. And Lindsay, would you like to give us the summary of the fic?

andimeantittosting: Sure. So summary: 13 years ago, Dean with Cas by his side bought the run down Pine Shores Motel and made it into a home and a stopping place for hunters. In those 13 years, [00:03:00] he has never been able to bring himself to admit his feelings to Cas. After all, why rock the boat? But, Dean realizes, doesn’t Cas deserve more than just growing old in a shabby motel with Dean? Surely, as a good friend, it’s Dean’s job to encourage Cas to get out there and live his dreams.

Ellen: So, I guess, like, I found this a great fic, by the way, it’s really beautiful in that, you know, obviously they’ve decided to give up hunting and, and Dean and Cas are running this motel now for hunters and whatever. And you, you kind of explained all of that, the way that they came about doing that, Really, it wasn’t like just an infodump at the start, but you explained it well as the story went on kind of thing, and I find that really good. I was wondering, like, though you decided to set this, like, [00:04:00] 13 years later kind of thing. Was there a reason that you want, that you sort of made them wait for so long, I guess?

andimeantittosting: Mostly I, I wanted to write them older. The, the story was originally inspired by a song that kind of shows up throughout the fic, “Pancho & Lefty”, that has a line about one of the characters growing old and then, you know, in an old motel and the song really, like, just gave me, like, it was a song that inspired the fic and I discovered a couple weeks into it while double checking lyrics that actually I was completely wrong what the song was about. It’s actually a song about betrayal and I had to, you know, revamp everything to make it work.

Ellen: Ohh!

andimeantittosting: But I already had that, like, [00:05:00] image in my head of, like, an older Dean in this, like, shabby motel, just still loving Cas, and I just had to run with that.

Ellen: Yeah, it’s really sweet. Actually, it gave me, kind of, a little bit, like, not in a, in a, in a funny way, but like that it gave me like Schitt’s Creek vibes. Like a rundown motel, you know. It was good. I loved it.

MalMuses: That’s true, I think since watching that show, that the motel that Dean and Cas in is now pretty much the motel from Schitt’s Creek like in my head.

Ellen: Yeah, yeah, yeah, me too.

MalMuses: Maybe, maybe a little better maintained. Dean does try, so. One of the things that I actually really like about this fic is your introduction of other characters you have. Obviously, you have Sam and Rowena in the background of this fic. You also have Claire and Kaia, which I really like. [00:06:00] And I really like seeing kind of the similarities that you picked out of how Claire and Dean can actually be quite similar in some ways.

But then you also have another character with a beautifully on the nose name of Hunter, if I remember correctly, who is wonderful as a reader because I think the reader kind of automatically picks up on the, on the similarities between this character and Dean, but Dean hilariously does not. [ Laughs ] So what made you decide to include that aspect of it, or was it something that kind of came out in the writing and then you kind of leaned into?

andimeantittosting: Well, I wanted to show, like, you know, some of the new hunters who are coming through the hotel, and I thought, you know, I wanted to write this guy who is just, like, everything, like, a young Dean was, like, [00:07:00] cocky and charming, and Hunter is very openly bi, which is something that, I think young Dean probably could only dream of, but, and Dean’s just so annoyed by him, and it was just, I just had so much fun writing this and writing Dean’s reactions and completely missing where Cas’s reactions are coming from, and thinking that like, Hunter must be the one who’s, must be the one who’s like offended Cas or said something and Dean gets all defensive of him. And then I had to give him just the most on the nose name just because I knew it would just make Dean just that much more annoyed.

MalMuses: Yep, because he can be annoyed at the stupid name as well as the person themselves.

andimeantittosting: Yes.

MalMuses: I think it’s great as well how, how well Cas handles Hunter and is quite happy to [00:08:00] kind of sit around and listen to his stories and, and then, you know, have a drink with him or whatever. And, and Dean can’t quite get his head around how Cas could possibly do that. And as a reader, you’re sitting there like, well, he likes you. So. [ Laughs ]

andimeantittosting: Yeah. That’s the thing is, Hunter, like Hunter has no problem with Dean. Hunter thinks Dean’s great. He looks up to him. He wants to be his friend and Dean’s just seething.

Ellen: Yeah.

MalMuses: Yeah. I think that was a really nice kind of extra layer to the story because you, I mean, effectively you could have written the story without that subplot and it would still have been kind of a really nice, kind of very domestic kind of future fic, but I think adding that in really kind of added something to it for me because it gave it this almost kind of in-fic meta layer to it that was just really good to me.

Ellen: And it helped Cas to, to work out his, like, I mean, not Cas, [00:09:00] it helped Dean to work out, you know, his feelings because he kind of, you know, when Hunter was sort of coming on to Cas a little bit and, and he was like bristling from it, you know?

MalMuses: Yeah. And I do love stories where essentially Dean’s feelings for Cas have always been there, it’s just a case of, I’m not going to go there, like a choice that he’s made at some point, whether that’s through him thinking that it won’t be reciprocated, or that he’s not good enough, or any, any variation of that. It’s, it’s really entertaining for me to read that through Dean’s eyes, and occasionally want to just yell at him a little bit, which is obviously why this was such a good fic for Pinefest, because we do get to read all of that delicious pining, even though Dean is attempting to set Cas up with other people at various points during the story, he’s very much kind of doing it in spite of himself.

Ellen: Yeah.

andimeantittosting: Yep. I really love writing Dean as self-aware. [00:10:00] Like, he knows his feelings, he doesn’t always like to express them. But I like to give him credit for knowing himself and the repression is only as far as speaking about things, not as far as acknowledging them himself. And what he’s actually clueless about is Cas’s feelings.

Ellen: Yeah.

MalMuses: Yeah, I think that’s a good distinction, actually, that he’s very much aware of how he feels, but it’s the speaking it out loud, the actually trying to do anything about it.

Ellen: Yeah, he’s not willing to act on it.

MalMuses: Yeah. Cause we all know Dean’s, Dean’s not dumb. He’s a smart cookie, really, and probably much more emotionally aware than we sometimes give him credit for.

Ellen: Mm-hmm.

MalMuses: He just, just doesn’t have the, maybe even the confidence to act on that, which might sound strange, he’s pretty confident in other ways, but has his reasons for being the way he is, certainly.

Ellen: [00:11:00] And they are, like, in some ways fairly similar, these three fics, because they’re all basically, like obviously they’re, they’re similar because they’re all post kind of canon kind of thing, but they’re all where, where Dean is like saying, he continually says to Cas, I think you should get out there and you know, try to have a relationship with this person or that person, and Cas is always just like, no, no, I’m happy with how things are now. I don’t, I don’t need that or whatever. And he never says, he, and like, Cas also never tells Dean how he feels at any stage, you know? But they never actually speak to each other properly. That’s one thing. They’re not,

MalMuses: The miscommunication, like always.

Ellen: They’re always not communicating.

andimeantittosting: Mm-hmm.

MalMuses: I also quite like the idea that Cas is so patient, basically. I think it’s definitely a very, like, angelic trait in that he maybe [00:12:00] sees time so much differently than everybody else does. But that he is prepared to just, just wait until Dean gets the shit together, basically.

Ellen: So this fic was, you obviously wrote it for Pinefest, so you have some really pretty art in this one. Your artist was imogenbynight, is that right? I’m just looking up at the … yeah, it was,

MalMuses: It was Cass that did art for this, right?

Ellen: It was Cass, yeah.

andimeantittosting: Yeah, it was, imogenbynight made some beautiful, beautiful art pieces for this.

MalMuses: Yeah, they’re so pretty.

andimeantittosting: [ Unclear ] by them. 

MalMuses: Her art is always lovely, but she definitely excelled herself on this one, I think.

Ellen: Yep, we love bangs, bang fics for that reason, don’t we? 

MalMuses: Yeah, it’s nice to have a little, a little visual to go with it. Obviously that doesn’t work for, for every fic and I don’t think a fic loses anything for not having art with it, but it’s also really interesting sometimes to see how other people are seeing what you’re seeing in your head.

andimeantittosting: Oh, for sure.

Ellen: [00:13:00] So I guess, like, you’ve included Sam in this one and he is like, as we, as Mal said before, he’s with Rowena. You know, is that, like, I know that, Sam has like a whole list of different ships that he sometimes ends up with in Destiel fics, and I’ve, I’ve gotta say I really love it when he’s, he’s in a relationship with Rowena. I don’t know why, she’s just, I just love Rowena, so that’s one reason. But yeah, tell us about that, like what, how come you chose to have him with Rowena in this particular one?

andimeantittosting: Well, Rowena really was my endgame ship for Sam. Like, I, I like, I love Saileen also. I shipped it, but then once she died and then the connection, Sam’s connection with Rowena grew and grew, [00:14:00] especially in Season 13, I just, I really love the dynamic. I think Rowena brings out really interesting things in Sam.

Ellen: Yep.

andimeantittosting: I remember, for years there’s been like lots of speculation about, you know, Witch Sam and which I really would have loved to see more of.

Ellen: Yes.

andimeantittosting: And also in their own way, they’re both, there’s an episode where Sam and Rowena are just researching together and they’re such nerds together and it’s so much fun because you wouldn’t expect it because she’s, you know, so dramatic and bigger than life, but she’s a nerd too, and, but also I think she maybe helps Sam explore some of his, what’s the word I want? [00:15:00] Darkness isn’t quite the right word I want, but like, Sam is very repressed in his own way and very, you know, has, he has very strong ideas about what makes him good or not good, and I think Rowena helps him re-examine those things and maybe be a little kinder to himself and a little, a little less judgmental in general. And I, I just really love the things she brings out of him.

MalMuses: Yeah. I think it’s really interesting that you just said that actually, because one of my, I guess kind of headcanons about Sam is that in the earlier seasons, after the whole, kind of, demon blood thing with him, that, I wouldn’t say that he necessarily had a fear of power, but it was something that he definitely did not want for himself, that he kind of didn’t want any association with, [00:16:00] and I think that led to, for a long time, him being the Sam who stepped back, or was quiet, or didn’t lead.

Because in his head, somewhere, there was that association that any power that he held was bad. But then I think Rowena is one of the characters in my mind that throughout the later seasons kind of helped break that association and helped him realize that power can be what you make it. And that it’s in the choices that he makes and if he chooses to use that power or he chooses to lead, then that is okay because he’s going to do that in his own way.

And I think quite a bit of that, I do think, is actually from seeing Rowena and seeing that, yeah, she has these powers, but it’s actually the choices that she makes that determine what’s good or what’s bad. And I also think that Rowena kind of comes across more as, more as an equal to Sam in that way, like she doesn’t, [00:17:00] obviously she’s not stepping back from kind of the hunter aspect of his life or anything like that, because she’s completely aware of it and is in her own witchy way involved with it. And I guess it makes her kind of feel like she’s on an even footing to him in some ways.

Ellen: And they’ve also kind of got their shared trauma, I guess, because you know, they’ve both been kind of abused by Lucifer in the past. And that, that, that recent episode where they were sitting in the car, kind of sharing the fact that how scared they were, was just a bit of a revelatory moment.

MalMuses: I think that was the episode where I really started kind of shipping them hard.

Ellen: Yeah.

MalMuses: Like it had been an idea for me at that point. I was like, yeah, I can see that. That could be cute. But like at that point and obviously back in that season, the idea of Eileen returning I don’t think was on anybody’s radar at that point.

Ellen: No, it was pretty out of the blue really, yeah.

MalMuses: Yeah, so Sam and Rowena were very much my endgame ship at that point, too.

andimeantittosting: I think that was [00:18:00] also the episode that made me go take them from like a crack ship to no, I’m taking this seriously now, and I like it.

Ellen: Yeah.

MalMuses: Yeah. And they can offer each other something, because I think being with Sam would almost be a bit of a redemption for Rowena because, you know, she has her own stuff. She has her own stuff to deal with, for sure, but maybe being with somebody who could bring out the good parts of her instead and who wasn’t just about, you know, money or power or any of the other things that she’s been with people for, could be a very good step for her too, and I do, do really like that character, so, want what’s best for her as well.

Ellen: Yeah.

MalMuses: Alright, do we want to ask anything else about this fic or is there anything else that you would like people to know about the fic, Linds?

andimeantittosting: I think one of the things we were talking a little bit earlier about how like Cas also doesn’t speak up for the 13 years and I think that is something that I, it’s really [00:19:00] important to me when I write, like the, the mutual pining fics is that Episode 18 notwithstanding, for the majority of their relationship, the miscommunication between Dean and Cas, it goes two ways.

You know, it, as much as Dean isn’t talking about his feelings because he assumes Cas doesn’t feel the same way or can’t feel the same way, Cas has also been keeping quiet about his feelings. You know, there’s an episode in Season 14 where Cas talks about how clearly he was brought back to prepare for war with Alternate Universe Michael or brought back to help Jack. Maybe that’s actually in Season 13, sorry.

So Dean of course takes that to mean that Cas’s priorities are elsewhere and so no wonder he [00:20:00] doesn’t think that it’s something he can speak up about and Cas says, you know, I don’t get words wrong but he’s also,

Ellen: He’s not saying the words. [ Laughs ]

andimeantittosting: Yeah, misinterpreting what Dean is saying and taking what Dean intends to be expressions of care to just be like, you know, How strong are you? How much use can you be? And right up until Episode 18, he thinks that what he wants is a thing he can’t have.

Ellen: Yeah.

andimeantittosting: And I, I just think it’s very important that, ’cause I think sometimes the fandom has a tendency to put all the weight on Dean to figure himself out and speak up, but, you know, Cas has agency in this too, and both of them could stand to get over [00:21:00] themselves and say what they mean and actually hear what the other one is saying.

Ellen: Yep.

MalMuses: They’re both a mess, basically.

andimeantittosting: Yeah.

Ellen: Well, it was finally, it was, in the end, it was Death who locked them in a room and forced them to confess their feelings. [ Laughs ] Which we’ve been wanting to do.

MalMuses: Which would sound like a crack fic if it hadn’t happened. [ Laughs ]

andimeantittosting: And then poor Dean couldn’t even have time to say his, his response.

MalMuses: So, which, obviously,

Ellen: And then they never mentioned it again.

MalMuses: Yeah, which obviously launched a million fics instantly. So.

Ellen: Yeah.

MalMuses: Yeah.

Ellen: Anyway, we’re not bitter. [ Laughs ] 

Take the Long Way Home

Well, let’s, shall we, shall we go on to our next fic on the list. Take the Long Way Home is by dothraki_shieldmaiden. [00:22:00] It was published for the DCBB last year, in 2019. So it does have art in it as well. Art is by czarcaustic. And there is, it’s beautiful, colourful sketches and really beautiful art, so check that out. So it’s, this one’s a bit longer than the other two that we’re talking about today. It’s 95,000 words and it is Explicit as well. And the summary goes like this:

Three months ago, when Dean decided to retire, he thought his life was going to end up differently. He thought he might get to have it all. Sam, Cas, Jack, and a nice little place to live. Instead, he gets Sam and Jack off on their summer of love tour, radio silence from Cas, and a never ending road trip consisting of himself.

Still reeling from the loss of his Grace, Castiel travels the country in search of hunts. [00:23:00]Driven by a need to prove his usefulness, he pushes himself beyond all limits of endurance. Together with the help of a few friends, a crumbling Victorian house, and a stray cat, Dean and Castiel patch themselves back together and create a home together. 

So it sounds actually quite fluffy when you read the, the summary, but in fact, there’s quite a lot more to it than that, in the end.

MalMuses: Mm-hmm.

Ellen: I guess Dean, he road trips across the country and ends up in Vermont, I believe. Is that right?

MalMuses: Yeah. Yeah, that’s right.

Ellen: And finds this, this house that’s sort of fallen to pieces and decides that he’s going to stay there and fix it up. So, Dean’s pretty much in one place during this, the entire story, I think, after the first chapter, I think. And, and Cas is the one who’s doing the road tripping and taking on hunts to try to, you know, [00:24:00] prove himself useful.

It’s been a little while since I read this one, but I remember that it, it being you know, it had, it has a really beautiful happy ending, but a lot of the, the sort of journey that Cas takes on the way to the end of this story is quite sad. He gets quite, you know, angsty, along the way quite broken, I guess, depressed even. And yeah, at this point in time when we’re all still reeling from the, the, the finale, you may not want to like go there right now, but it is a really gorgeous fic and it does have a very happy ending.

So, you know, if, if Angst with a Happy Ending is, is your bag, then definitely give this one a go. Lindsay, what did you think of this one? You just, you read it this week as well?

andimeantittosting: Yes, I’d read it before and then I re-read it this week and, I’d forgotten how much [00:25:00] hunting there was in the beginning on Cas’s side.

Ellen: Yeah.

andimeantittosting: It’s, yeah, it’s a beautiful, beautiful fic. The first, the first half especially is a lot of angst and, but as long as there’s a happy ending, I enjoy a lot of angst so I cry bucketfuls of tears and then have the story make it all better.

Ellen: Yup.

andimeantittosting: And I, I don’t know what it is. I love any story where they fix up a house. I, I think it’s from being in my 30s and still renting. [ Laughs ]

MalMuses: Me too, actually, and I don’t know why. Again, any fic where they fix up a house, I’m like, yep, that one’s mine. I can’t help it. It must, must be an age thing.

andimeantittosting: But they both, you know, I love they both eventually do start to talk about, you know, [00:26:00] the things that are the things that are haunting them and finding ways to heal together. I love what they named the cat. I don’t know if I can say what it is or not for spoilers.

MalMuses: It’s probably a minor spoiler, I guess. I feel like that’s fine. Cause I really loved that cat character, I guess, if you can call the cat character. Yeah.

Ellen: I remember sort of part of the, like when, when Cas actually does catch up with Dean at the house, that’s not a spoiler to say that because Dean’s sort of begging him to come and, and join him there. And he does like, he’s pretty sort of broken when he arrives, but he does find joy in sort of the garden and the, you know, the little bunnies that are in the garden and all that kind of thing. I just love, like, it’s almost like taking you back to that sort of crazy Cas time where he was following the bees and stuff, you know. [00:27:00] I kind of liked that.

MalMuses: Yeah. And when it comes to like post-Canon fic, I really do enjoy like, I guess, classic curtain fic kind of vibes, or it’s very domestic in certain ways, and we get to see them doing the little things that they never had time to do before they fixed the world. Basically.

Ellen: Sitting around doing laundry.

MalMuses: Yeah. Like, give me some laundry stories. [ Laughs ] Yeah, but especially with, you know I think that the most common ones are probably Dean cooking and Cas gardening, though they do lots of other things as well, but I, I really like that kind of domesticity for them because they just never got a chance to have that, and even canon-wise, there’s definitely a part of Dean, I think, that craves that.

So it’s, it’s nice to get to see him finally get to have it and to see Cas get to have it for the first time as well.

Ellen: Mm-hmm.

MalMuses: [00:28:00] I think, I don’t think it’s really a spoiler to say that actually, this fic has one of my favorite, I’m not sure I can really call it a trope, but one of my favorite things in fic is where you do have, you know, a very angsty or plot heavy fic or whatever, but then you get that lovely, super sweet kind of fluffy epilogue at the end where it’s, it’s usually either like a time jump or something significant happens where you get that kind of the contrast of that pure fluff that they deserved all along at the end, and I think this fic did that really well.

Ellen: Yep. And actually the other thing I really liked about this one is, what they described in here as Sam and Jack’s summer of love tour, but it’s really, actually really sweet because Sam just takes Jack off to, to see the country, like they’re just driving around seeing stuff, which is really sweet, I thought.

MalMuses: Yeah, there’s some nice dad bonding. 

Ellen: [00:29:00] Yeah, it is, It is like, Jack before he sort of became a more powerful kind of, I guess, from when he was in Season 13 or 14, I guess. Yeah. It’s kind of cute.

MalMuses: Yeah, I liked it. Because we see a lot of obviously Cas and Jack interaction and Dean and Jack and we don’t always see as much of Sam and Jack, I don’t think.

To me, he’s still, he’s still very much a dad figure as much as the rest of them. So it was nice to see, to see that for me. I like that. 

Ellen: Yep. Anything else in particular that we want to say about this one? It’s such a long fic, I feel like we haven’t talked about it enough, but,

MalMuses: I think it’s because there is kind of a lot going on that we don’t really want to spoil in terms of the actual plot of it, I guess. 

Ellen: Yeah. like it’s sort of like an, in some ways, an extended case fic, but where they have several cases to do, he gets into sort of a lot of situations that leaves cliffhangers in every chapter, and then,

MalMuses: Yup.

Ellen: [00:30:00] That’s interspersed with Dean doing domestic stuff, fixing up the house. So it’s a bit of an interesting way that it’s been structured.

MalMuses: Yeah, and something I think they mentioned in the fic, which I thought was interesting, is obviously Cas does get himself in a lot of situations in this story. And I love the fact that at one point it’s pointed out that, yeah, okay, maybe Cas is kind of a reckless hunter, but at the end of the day, who did he learn from?

Ellen: Yes.

MalMuses: And that the fact that Dean is so bothered by him being so reckless, kind of like, well, maybe you need to take a step back and look where he got that from. [ Laughs ]

Ellen: Well, dothraki_shieldmaiden is, is really excellent at writing the feels, basically, like the really intense emotional scenes. So, and they often write a lot of canon fic, so if you enjoy canon fic and you like the sort of angsty feels, [00:31:00] then definitely check out some more of their stuff, because they’ve got quite a lot of that canon kind of stuff. They also write lots of codas, I’ve noticed. So that’s good.

MalMuses: Yeah.

Ellen: Anything else?

MalMuses: I think that’s all I can say about that one without spoiling anything. So, lots of other thoughts, but I don’t want to spoil it for anybody. So go, go and read it and enjoy it for yourself, I suppose.

Ellen: Okay. Well then let’s move on to the, our third fic then.

Tall Grass

MalMuses: So our third story is the only one out of this group, I think, that was actually posted as a WIP, I don’t think this was a bang fic. Let me just double check that. Nope, not in any collections. So I’m assuming that it wasn’t and that it was posted sequentially. I read it all in one go. [00:32:00] It is an Explicit fic called Tall Grass by, apologies for butchering your name, aeli_kindara. And the summary is as follows:

‘I think we should have a garden’, Cas says. Dean looks up from his beer. He hasn’t had that much to drink. But Cas still has a vague look of unreality about him. A splash of living color that doesn’t fit in the bunker’s echoing stillness. Dean didn’t hear him coming. A lot of the time, Cas is so unobtrusive, it feels like Dean has the bunker to himself, with Sam away.

Dean shakes his head to clear it. ‘A garden?’ He repeats.

So straight from the summary there, we can tell what one of the main themes of the story is going to be here. And it also gives us a few other clues to what’s going on as well with Sam being away and them being in the bunker together. And we get, I believe, almost 60,000 words to explore that, 57,000, this one. So what did you two think about this story?

Ellen: [00:33:00] Oh, this is like, this is a beautiful story. Like I find that I really enjoy a lot of aeli_kindara’s work. And that they have a really beautiful poetic, almost kind of writing style, like very descriptive, you know, visual kind of scenes. And I really love the, all of the descriptions of the plants basically that, because Cas brings a lot of plants, not just in his garden, which is outside, but outside the bunker, but he brings a lot of the plants inside the bunker too. So we get all the descriptions of, of individual kind of species and stuff as well.

MalMuses: Brings them inside the bunker with occasionally hilarious results, I don’t think is a, a spoiler to say.

Ellen: Yes.

MalMuses: Okay.

Ellen: And, and reading about Dean’s reaction to that, all of that is just so funny, like, because he names the plants, like, different names and yeah, [00:34:00] shenanigans ensue. But yeah, I thought that the actual, like, even the outside descriptions are really, are very beautiful in this fic. And we also get an interesting extra Sam ship in this one, in that he is paired with Jody, which is not always a ship that we tend to see a lot, in Destiel fic at least, but,

MalMuses: I felt like I used to see more of it, and then for now, for some reason now I see more Jody and Donna. Personally I don’t mind, I like both, so that’s fine for me.

Ellen: Yeah.

MalMuses: But I do think I used to see a lot more Sam and Jody. And I can see, I can see the logic of that ship, so, I’m kinda, I don’t mind that one at all. That one’s just fine for me.

Ellen: Yeah, it’s funny because sometimes you get, Jody tends to give me like more of a mum [00:35:00] kind of vibe with the two of them, but really they’re not that, I don’t think they’re that much different sort of in age even. Not sure.

MalMuses: No, I don’t think they are. I’m actually not sure exactly how old Jody is, but I actually kind of picture her around the same age as them, if not, not that much older.

Ellen: Yeah, because she had a little kid, like, when she was first introduced, obviously, the boy, who, who died in that first case. So, yeah, she can’t be too,

MalMuses: But then, I guess, if he wasn’t hunting, Sam could very easily have had,

Ellen: Yeah, exactly, that’s what I mean.

MalMuses: Multiple children by now. So, yeah.

Ellen: Like, it’s, you know, they could easily be around the same age. So, yeah. How about you, Lindsay? What did you think?

andimeantittosting: Well, I initially read this fic when it was first posting. And I think it was the first fic I read by aeli_kindara and that really got me reading their other, their other work. I loved it. I think it’s an absolutely beautiful fic.

[00:36:00] And rereading it was a treat. Although there, there were parts that I did not remember, but one thing I do like in this fic is the original character they introduce who is helping Cas with his garden and then also he helps her with her plants. She’s just a, just a really great character.

She fits well into the dynamics of the world, and her, her introduction to the supernatural side of things, she really takes it in stride and I don’t want to say much more about her because I feel like it would spoil a lot of the emotional plot but [00:37:00] I just thought she was just an exceptionally well done character and I also really love what Cas’s garden is, that it’s not, you, you know, your traditional flowers and vegetables and so forth, which I mean, I love when Cas has one of those gardens too, I, but in this case, he’s rehabilitating a stretch of prairie with like the plants that are native to the area, and it’s just really fascinating how that works.

MalMuses: Yeah, I think that’s a really nice kind of theme that that brings into the fic with the prairie grass and how that grows which becomes kind of clear at the end. But that was actually kind of a theme, one of those themes going through that was really beautiful, but you don’t necessarily fully appreciate until the end of the fic which I won’t spoil but I really enjoyed that aspect of it as well.

Ellen: [00:38:00] Yeah, and I like how animated sort of Cas becomes whenever you, the garden or the plants are kind of involved.

MalMuses: He gets right into it.

Ellen: Yeah. And with the, the original character who comes in and you know, them being animated together is sort of really puts Dean kind of on the back foot a bit. Like he’s like, who’s this new person coming to take my friend away from me? And despite the fact that he doesn’t like it, he does actually then go on to try to, you know, set them up or whatever. You know, he’s just, sometimes he’s so blind.

andimeantittosting: Mm-hmm. One thing this fic really, that’s a little different about this fic, is [00:39:00] that it’s not a retirement, Dean especially, but both of them are still, still hunting throughout the fic, and it’s not implied that that’s going to stop, but, but they still manage to have the domesticity, like, in between that.

Ellen: Yeah.

MalMuses: Yeah, it feels like it’s not taking up as much of their lives as it used to, that it’s definitely still part of who they are, but that maybe they can now have this, this other life as well, much more domestic, which I actually think it’s quite, quite a nice balance. Like with, with post-canon fic, it tends to either be one of the other, either they’re still hunting full time and it’s case fic, or it’s purely domestic and they’ve moved away somewhere else or decided to give up hunting entirely. And this was kind of a nice balance between the two for me.

Ellen: Yeah. It’s sort of almost, dovetails neatly into the canon, like the existing canon now, because you know, Jack is away and is helping to fix up Heaven. [00:40:00] So yeah, it kind of almost fits in.

MalMuses: Yeah, there’s probably several points in Season 15 where this could have kind of slotted itself in very easily.

Ellen: Yeah.

MalMuses: Oh, I did actually really enjoy, I know we spoke about the Sam and Jody pairing, I also really loved the idea of Sam, I don’t think it’s a spoiler to say, he goes obviously to stay with Jody, it’s clear from the beginning that he’s not in the bunker. I kind of love the idea of him just being surrounded by all of these wayward girls that are kind of up there with Jody and, and handling that and how he kind of adopts them as family even more than he has within the show, you know?

Ellen: Yeah.

MalMuses: And I really enjoyed that, just the idea of Sam and then this kind of found family loving chaos around him a lot of the time.

Ellen: [00:41:00] Yeah, actually, it’s funny you should say, that the family, not funny, but in addition to that, they also have, like, Thanksgiving and Christmas involved in this fic, and I love that when they have, when people put that in fics and have that, because that’s, that, like, celebrating holidays, Mrs. Butters notwithstanding, is such a domestic, domestic thing to do, like, with, like, with your family, basically, and they, I, I just wish they’d actually had that in the show at some point, where everyone had just come over and they’d had a meal. I can’t remember them ever actually really doing that.

MalMuses: Yeah, I think the closest thing that we ever had was them eating roast chicken at Jody’s that one time.

Ellen: Yeah, they went to Jody’s place and did it. And I hope they’ve done that some other time other than that one time. But, but they never actually, you know, got the chance to have a family kind of celebration like a Christmas thing. 

MalMuses: Yeah.

Ellen: Not that we saw anyway. [00:42:00] So I guess in a way, even though there is some sort of angst and kind of you know, difficult times in this fic, it is like, like a overall quite a feel good kind of, you know, family feeling type of fic, which is nice. You know, at this time after the finale when we’re all, you know, a bit sad about the fact that all of the found family is no longer around,

MalMuses: We, we, we might be a little fragile, some of us.

Ellen: Yeah. This is a nice, it’s a nice fic to read, but it’s sort of get, like, there are parts of it that are difficult at this point to kind of get onto, you know? Does that make sense?

MalMuses: Yeah. I, I feel like it’s one of those ones that I will come back and reread in a few weeks probably, because I feel like, the, the sadness hit different right now,

Ellen: Yeah.

MalMuses: In a few weeks it will probably almost be the reverse. It will feel quite healing, I think.

Ellen: [00:43:00] Yeah. I mean, having said that, it does have a happy ending and it is, you know,

MalMuses: It does, it has a lovely ending in my opinion.

Ellen: And some very delicious kind of smut.

MalMuses: Mm-hmm.

Ellen: But yeah, there are some sad parts that might be a bit difficult right now.

MalMuses: I feel like people either go two ways, like, they either seek out more angsty stuff, like, or they avoid it. I feel like there’s two very distinct types of people when it comes to this type of thing. So, gotta have something for everybody. So if you, I feel like as well in this one, the, the sadness is maybe more emotional in this one and less, plot-based compared to the last fic we discussed.

Ellen: Yeah.

MalMuses: So there’s, there’s even varieties of angst out there for folks.

Ellen: Wonderful. No matter what kind of sads you like.

MalMuses: [00:44:00] Exactly. Right now, I think we possibly have enough sads in the show.

Ellen: Yes.

MalMuses: I don’t know if we want to segue into talking about that part.

Supernatural finale talk

Ellen: Yes, shall we do that? Let’s segue. Okay. So one thing that we have to say about our fandom is that when we’re upset about something, [ Laughs ] we really, you know, let it be known. And I think we’ve actually managed to channel a lot of our, you know, angst, some people anyway, into either fix-it fics, codas for the, this finale, or into doing, you know, other things like raising money for charities, for instance, which has been going on this week.

I will say that one of the, the, the, the emotional kind of side of the, of, of, I guess the emotions that the fandom of feeling, if you’d like to sort of listen to [00:45:00] some more reactions about at least the Destiel side, go and have a listen to the Fangirl Business Podcast. Chrisha and Catherine, they, they, often talk about the emotional aspects of each of the episodes, and they do a lot of, you know, screaming and crying and, you know, general outpouring of joy, and so they will definitely have this episode covered at some point in the next few weeks, so, go and listen to them rather than maybe us discussing the events of the episode. I guess the main thing that we wanted to talk about was the way that this kind of ending has affect, will affect us as fan creators of fanworks.

So I, there were, there’s one tweet that I just wanted to mention that actually was by a, a Twitter user called bunnymicious who said that she, this is the actual literal quote that they’ve put on here:

[00:46:00] “In my heart, I feel that the fandom was always better than the actual show. It was the meta writers who provided the deeper meaning and the fic writers who took the characters and made them live up to their potential. The fan family was us all along and where, what made it truly special, the community around it. No one can take that from us.”

So, I guess, what we’re saying is that no matter what’s actually happened in the events of the show and how we may have felt about how it all ended, it’s up to us now to take that canon and turn it into something that we prefer, I guess. Would you agree with that?

MalMuses: Yeah, I think so. I think Supernatural for a long time has kind of positioned itself to do something really pretty unique in that they essentially made [00:47:00] death of the author canon.

Ellen: Yeah.

MalMuses: And I think they’ve been kind of putting in the pieces for that for a long time with Chuck and his writing and then, after his writing his alternate universes and then, his abandoning of those universes and how Team Free Will still had to carry on even without Chuck pulling the strings and making their own version of the world and their own interpretation of the world.

Or so they thought at points and I think that’s a pretty good reflection of fandom right there. I think they kind of handed us that. I said, you know, even once the show is gone, or if the show does something that you personally don’t like, well, that’s not the end. Even in the show, that’s not the end.

Ellen: Yep. Yeah. And I guess we saw that firsthand in the, like the aftermath of the, you know, Cas’s death, you know, 18, where like a, I don’t know, I don’t think I’ve ever seen as many codas like for any other episode as they were in the last two weeks. [00:48:00] So after the events of Episode 18, when you know, Castiel confessed his love for Dean and died, spoiler alert, we hit 90,000 fics on AO3 that are tagged Castiel / Dean Winchester, which is amazing! That’s so much fic! There’s so many individual stories. So,

MalMuses: There was a day during that week, I believe, where you had to go almost 50 pages deep on AO3, if you were looking at this, the overall Cas / Dean tag, you had to go almost 50 pages deep to find something that wasn’t from the last week and wasn’t kind of a Dean / Cas Episode 18 focused story.

Ellen: That’s amazing. Can’t believe it. And even like from Episode 19, [00:49:00] there weren’t that many, it was just, they’re all stemmed from the fact that, that Cas got taken away from Dean before Dean could respond to, to his confession, you know? 

MalMuses: Yeah. The fandom had some feelings about that.

Ellen: Uh-huh.

MalMuses: So, and then I think, some of us tried to fix it immediately, and then there were some people who were like, no, we can wait for 20, like I have faith that we’ll get the answer in 20. And when they didn’t, there was then another explosion of people fixing it. So if you like codas, we have been very blessed the last few weeks with a lot of them. So, I even broke my own rule about not writing any. So I think it inspired a lot of people.

Ellen: Yeah, we spoke about it last time and included a list of some of those codas in, in our blog post, and I need to update that list again, actually, just because I have read a few more of [00:50:00] the 18 codas that were really awesome. And you know, there, there’s like over 400 fics or something that have the tag, that episode tag. So there’s a lot to go through. And then now, after 20 where they, you know, they teased us for, like, by them saying that, that, you know, Cas’s confession was romantic and then, not sort of mentioning it again at all, they’ve really, I think, incensed a lot of people into kind of needing to have some alternative fix-its for this. And so.

MalMuses: Creation can be driven by a lot of things, and I think for some people it’s kind of driven by rage currently. What that will change into as it, as it calms down, I don’t know, but I have a feeling that the, [00:51:00] the urge to fix it is not going to go away anytime soon.

Ellen: That’s right. So we’ve already seen some, I think Lindsay, you, you wrote one almost immediately after this episode, right? You posted it right away?

andimeantittosting: I did, yeah, I’d written a short little one after Episode 18 and then after Episode 20 I just, I, you know, just raged and cried for a bit and then at like two or three in the morning I just wrote, it’s still very short, it’s under a thousand words, just a fix-it, just frantically wrote it and posted it in an hour.

I was really inspired by posts, some meta posts by MittensMogul, about how, like, there was a feeling of, like, unreality to the episode, so, I was like, okay, then I’m going to write an episode where that, [00:52:00] or a coda where it wasn’t real.

Ellen: Yeah.

andimeantittosting: And I’m writing, I’m in the process of writing a second coda with a second way that that might not be real.

Ellen: Oh good, okay, excellent.

andimeantittosting: Longer, slightly, might actually get beta-read before being posted this time, but, 

Ellen: Yeah. Yes, I’m also in the process of, like, I don’t know when I’m going to get a chance to write it, hopefully by the time this episode goes up, I might have written at least some of it, but yeah. You know, you just get that itch, don’t you? You have to start writing it down.

MalMuses: Yeah, I think within a few hours of the episode airing, I think to start with, I was on voice chat obviously with a whole bunch of people and almost as soon as that voice chat ended, [00:53:00] I had my own, like, private little breakdown, yelled about it with my partner, and then just started writing, and like, a thousand words just came out instantly.

And then since that point, I’ve kind of worked on it and kind of realized that obviously, I’ll probably know by the time this podcast goes up which way I went with this, but I don’t know if it’s going to be something that I’ll post or if it’s something that was really just me dealing with things, whether it was just catharsis for me to get it, get it out. I don’t know if I’ll post it or not, but I think that, that really is what a lot of those stories were about. They weren’t necessarily even written for other people. They were written for the author to deal with their own feelings about what had just happened. That’s very much the case for, for me. I don’t know about you two, but that was where I was coming from with that.

Ellen: I think a lot of codas tend, like, just by their nature, tend to deal with a lot of the same kind of [00:54:00] themes or, I guess, they, people take them in the same way, but obviously because it’s such a personal kind of reaction to the episode, then, that’s fine, like, go right ahead and, and write down whatever it is that’s in your head that you think happened next or in a, in a different way.

And you can never have too many fics, so, that’s why I, I feel like after I wrote one last week, and, two weeks ago actually, and when I read a couple of other codas, I realized that what I had down was actually really, really similar to some other ones. But I still posted it anyway, because I thought I had to get it out of my head, you know, it needed to come out. And so I may as well just share it. And plenty of people have read it and enjoyed it. So, you know, it’s, it’s good catharsis.

MalMuses: [00:55:00] Yeah. I think the fandom needs it. It’s our medicine right now.

And I know that, you know, soon we’ll start seeing probably long entire kind of fix-it fics. I think that’s probably something that won’t ever go away at this point. But for now, those little codas definitely, definitely help.

Ellen: Yep. So I’ve got, I’ve got a few of them in a list that I might, I won’t like mention them all here, but like I’ll, I’ll link them in the post at some point. Either in a Tumblr post like I did last time, or in the actual post itself.

The people are taking it in quite varied ways, to be honest, to fixing. They’re either filling the fanfiction gap between, like, while Dean’s driving in Heaven, that he goes to find Cas, like, for instance castielslostwings wrote a really great one about that, taking it in that direction [00:56:00] where he goes to find Cas somewhere in Heaven. There’s other ones where, like I read one just, just before where Dean, where Cas has actually been, been made into a reaper and he comes to reap Dean after Dean dies. And,

MalMuses: Ooh, that’s interesting. Mm-hmm.

Ellen: But yeah, there’s a bunch of other sort of Heaven based ones as well. I’ve only read a couple that are from Cas’s point of view, which is what my eventual one may, may end up being. So yeah. And definitely I think there will also be fics where people, like we know, Mal, we’ve already have spoken about this before, that we just ignore the last two episodes and write a whole new story starting from the end of 18.

MalMuses: Yep. And I’m sure there’ll be more than one. We, we know that there’s at least one project already out there, [00:57:00] which is essentially going to be a whole new Season 16, just ignoring the fact that those last two episodes existed and moving on from there. And I’m sure that there will be a lot of, a lot of fics that do that and I’m looking forward to reading them all.

Ellen: Yes. And I’ve also seen some fanvids as well, like videos where people have edited in, you know, a “Hello, Dean” or, you know, ways that, that Cas could have been in the finale with, and you know, that just, I, it could have been so good. I don’t want to go, no, I’m not going to be salty. I’m going to stop right there. No more salt. I’ve had enough.

MalMuses: It’s in the hands of the fans now. And the fans are already stepping up, like, pretty well.

Ellen: Yeah.

MalMuses: And I don’t know how other people feel about this, I know that obviously everybody kind of has their own feelings and has been affected by it in different ways, [00:58:00] but I’m kind of getting to the point now where I’m remembering that actually, for me personally, I hadn’t needed the show itself for a long time. Like the, the fandom for me and the direction and kind of canons that we’ve developed of our own are still incredibly valid for me. And they’re almost now, I wouldn’t say a separate thing because obviously we still always have all of that source material that we draw from.

But I think we’ve kind of entered what in my head I think of as like the Harry Potter era of things now, where yeah, we may get little extra tidbits of content now and again and we can choose to either take those or ignore them as we see fit, but the world is what we make it now, it belongs to us now. And the fact that Supernatural made Death of the Author so very canon actually, I think makes that easier for us.

Ellen: Yeah.

MalMuses: [00:59:00] Because there, there are so many things, even if we want to stick to writing canon fic that we can do, there are so many directions that we can take that can change everything. Like we’re not being chased off into AUs to fix things because of the way the show works and, and what they did with Chuck and everything else.

Like we can fix it within Canon and have it make perfect sense. Possibly have it make even more sense, some people would say, than the end of the show actually did which I think is good ‘cause you know, I love, I love writing AUs, I do, but I know I’ve discussed on the podcast before that one of my kind of first loves really was writing canon fic, and I will always write canon fic, it’s something I’ll always come back to.

I tend to kind of, go off and onto a bit of an AU tangent for a while, but I’ve always got a canon fic kind of on the back burner bubbling away. [01:00:00] And I don’t think that’s gonna, gonna change for me because we have been given that way of making whatever we want canon through Chuck. So.

Ellen: Yep.

andimeantittosting: Yeah, I think for me, as baffled and disappointed as I was by the ending, because I did have a lot of faith that, in the storytelling ability of the writer’s room that felt like it didn’t follow the story that we had been told up until that point, I had, I had been wondering beforehand if, if we did get an emotionally satisfying ending, if I would still feel inclined to write canon fics because, or if I wouldn’t necessarily feel the need to write them in canon anymore if they got the happy ending that, [01:01:00] or the emotionally satisfying ending I expected.

And so, while this was not the ending I expected or wanted in any way, the fact that it wasn’t makes it easier to continue writing in the canonverse and write what we want to happen, what we know in our hearts is actually what should have happened.

Rather than being like, Oh, I don’t need that anymore because I already got what I needed.

MalMuses: Yeah, that’s a really interesting point actually, because kind of, as you mentioned it now, it occurs to me, that I have never, I mean, I, I have other ships, like almost everyone does outside of Dean and Cas, I don’t think I’ve ever felt the urge to write anything for a ship that was satisfactorily wrapped up on, on, [01:02:00] in an emotional sense within the show or, or book or whatever it may be.

Ellen: Yep.

MalMuses: Not that I don’t enjoy those just as much, and I do read fics that other people write, but I think for me, the urge to write does come from, on a very base level from wanting to see what I haven’t seen.

So in that way, yeah, I think that’s a really good point, and I agree with that. I think I would definitely have still written AUs either way, but it’s kind of a question mark of canon if they had kind of given me the perfect ending, I don’t know that I would feel the need to, to write that again.

Now, I think that just means everyone’s stuck with me writing canon fic fic for like the next several decades. I apologize in advance, [ Laughs ] but,

Ellen: That sounds like winning to me. [ Laughs ]

MalMuses: Yeah, I think Season 15 kind of gave us several points where it would be very easy to pick up different types of fic from.

Ellen: Yeah.

MalMuses: [01:03:00] So, like if you want to write, you know, just pure case fics, there’s definitely a point, I think slightly earlier in the season, kind of the after, after Purgatory but before Death kind of issue,

Ellen: Yep, yeah.

MalMuses: Like in, in that there was a really good point for that there. Then there’s obviously always the option of fixing the ending or,ignoring the ending and carrying on from 18, I think, depending on what type of fic you want to write, we’ve got several launch points within 15. And I know I’ve seen some people say that they just want to scrap 15 entirely and that they will continue on from Season 14 and pretend 15 never existed which is perfectly valid for them. There were definitely some parts for me that I really enjoyed in Season 15, so I’m going to kind of keep those.

Ellen: Well, I mean, the Destiel story itself was quite pronounced in 15. Like we had, you know, they were fighting at the beginning and then, they, you know, had the Purgatory makeup thing.

MalMuses: Yeah.

Ellen: And there was, you know, after that, [01:04:00] they were a lot more kind of friendly with each other, I guess. So I don’t know. We had some great stuff in there.

MalMuses: Yeah. So I don’t want to kind of throw the baby out with the bathwater, to coin a really corny old phrase. [ Laughs ] I, I want to kind of keep those parts of Season 15. But I also think it’s completely valid for the people who just kind of want to forget about that and move on from the end of 14. I think that’s a perfectly valid way of doing it for them too, or any other earlier season. Like, we can still do that. We don’t lose the earlier seasons. We can go back and change whatever we want. It’s the magic of fanfic.

Ellen: Yes. I guess that’s the thing that comes out of all this, that the fandom creators are not going anywhere. We’re still, we’re here to stay. We’re not, we’re gonna keep creating. So stay tuned.

MalMuses: Yeah, I know a lot of people I’ve seen on Twitter and stuff were kind of worried about that, [01:05:00] that they would lose a lot of their kind of fandom authors and artists and stuff. And I would say, I am on friendly terms with or know quite well a lot of different writers for this fandom and to my knowledge at the moment, there’s not a single one of them who has given up because of this.

Ellen: Yes.

MalMuses: Some of them, you know, may not immediately be churning out things as they take a little while to process, but I’ve not heard anyone say to me yet that they are done.

I don’t think that’s something we need to worry about for the time being. I think it’s, it’s almost kind of lit a fire under some people, I think.

Ellen: Yeah, I agree. And I guess the, you know, through this podcast and our platform, we’re going to try and you know, continue to support everyone who is creating fic for as long as we need to. [01:06:00] We’re, we’re, we’re here for you. 

Other Recommendations

We didn’t talk about other fics that are in this, in this trope that we wanted to mention. Mal, do you want to start with mentioning one? I’m just trying to work out which one I’m going to say.

MalMuses: Yeah, so one of my favourite post-canon fics that I’m going to bring up is called Talking Bear Mountain Picnic by MittenWraith, or MittensMogul on Tumblr. It’s a story, it is in a way a case fic, things, things happening in a small town in northern Maine and there is, easy to tell from, even from just the summary and the tags, there are some truth spells involved there.

What I think I like about it is just, the entire feeling of this fic, to me, is that yes, they are still working these cases, even after the show period has ended. [01:07:00] But there’s a much, kind of, calmer, more domestic feel to a lot of what they’re doing. If I remember correctly, Cas is human in this one.

And I, I tend to love fics where he’s human or in some way, not as, not as angelic as usual. And, but having him human and still working with them on, on this case and everything that this case brings up for them and kind of, pushes them into, is actually one of my, one of my favorite ways of doing things because you, you do get the, the domesticity feeling with this one. There are cabins involved, if I remember correctly.

Yeah, so it is actually quite domestic feeling in terms of the, there’s, there’s cabins and even if they are on a case for it, there’s hiking and outdoor kind of activities and them getting to enjoy things, [01:08:00] even if maybe they have ulterior motives for being there. Definitely one of my, I would say, overall favorite fics, not even just post-canon. It’s one that I really enjoy. It’s about 40,000 words, so we’ll get that one linked up on the blog post. Do you have one you’d like to mention?

Ellen: Lindsay, do you want to go next? You’ve got a few, haven’t you?

andimeantittosting: Sure, yeah, I had a few I could mention. One of them is A Place We Can Love by, I’m sure I’m going to butcher this, but anastiel. And it’s one where Cas is human and Dean is retired and they’ve moved to a town in Oregon and Dean builds them a house as like, this is like true curtain fic, like very domestic, [01:09:00] Dean has a blog, Cas has bees.

Ellen: Oh my god, it sounds lovely.

andimeantittosting: It’s, it’s very sweet and it’s, you know, the kind of Mutual Pining where they’re all but married except for that they haven’t told each other that they have feelings for each other, which is my jam. Ooh.

MalMuses: Clearly. Yep. [ Laughs ]

andimeantittosting: So that’s, that’s one I really enjoy. It’s about 40,000 words. Another one I, I like is Morning Glory by edgarallenrose. That one diverges after the Season 12 finale. That’s another one where Dean and Cas live in a house together. [01:10:00] This is another one where Cas keeps bees. And there, there’s some very, very interesting original characters who they meet through Cas’s stand at the farmer’s market.

Again, just a very lovely domestic fic. That one’s about 25,000 words. And then one other one I had wanted to mention is Where the, Where the Weeds Take Root by deathbanjo. This one’s about 30,000 words. Again, Dean and Cas are retired and living together. This one’s not angsty, but a little, maybe a little more melancholy feeling than some of the others that I’ve mentioned, [01:11:00] but again, lovely fic of them learning to live together and find their way to, you know, acknowledge their feelings.

MalMuses: One final one that I would like to mention is Wait For It by castielslostwings, which is a fic, again, post-canon, fits into this whole kind of curtain fics sort of trope where they’re living in the bunker and Chuck is no longer an issue. In this particular fic, Jack has kind of stepped up as the new God. And really the biggest thing that they’re trying to tackle in this, although there is kind of case fic involved, the biggest thing they’re trying to tackle is moving on from the life that they had and working out where they are now and who they are now.

It’s an interesting take on it because it’s, it’s [01:12:00] pretty much, I would say an Established Relationship fic, it’s, it kind of happens within the very first chapter. We see how that happens. And then it’s kind of tracking the progress of their relationship, how they get from working things out to being in a much better place at the end, because it turns out that even when they’re together, they don’t necessarily communicate the best. [ Laughs ]

And like I said, there is a kind of a case fic involved in this, but also some really like domestic elements too, with Cas like knitting and, and gardening and that kind of stuff. And Dean more kind of struggling to let go of who he was and work out who he is now. And as always, it’s wonderfully written by castielslostwings. Very gripping. So we will get that one linked up as well.

Ellen: Yep. That’s been on my open tabs for a while now.

MalMuses: Yeah, read it, it’s great.

Ellen: [01:13:00] One that I was going to mention quickly, I’ve only read a couple of chapters of this because I, I opened it up and started reading it but then I, you know, had to put it aside, but it’s called Dean and (Cas’) Top 13 Zepp Traxx by pantheon_of_discord, going with the Mixtape theme here.

But this one is actually, it’s 82,000 words, so it’s a bit longer, but it’s 13 chapters and each chapter is named after a different track that may be on the mixtape. So, different Zeppelin tracks. And from what I can gather of the bits I’ve read so far is that it’s case fic so they’re, you know, driving around doing different cases and it’s, it follows the progression of their eventual relationship and it does, like, it does have a, like a post-series tag, so it is supposed to be, like, they go on a, like, [01:14:00] Dean and Cas go on a road trip and, you know, do some cases along the way. And I think one of the interesting tags that this fic has that I’m quite looking forward to eventually getting to is, it’s literally, it says, “fuck you, Buckleming: I reject your reality and substitute my own.” [ Laughs ]

MalMuses: I think we’ve all felt that at times. I know, I know everyone has their own favorite writers and least favorite writers. 

Ellen: Yeah, go off, I guess. Yeah.

MalMuses: I like it.

Ellen: It’s Explicit and it was actually published like in, in 2017, so it’s a couple years old now, but yeah, it looks good. I’m going to have to get back to that. I’ll read the rest.

So I guess what we can say before we sign off is that you know, take heart. The, the fandom is on it and, you know, it’s not over. I guess we’re going to take over and, and produce some great content now. [01:15:00] After it’s, after we’ve got a closed canon, we’ve got, we’ve got the stuff we can work with and we’re going to make it all better.

MalMuses: None of our fics can ever be broken by canon again.

Ellen: That’s right. And we got, we got a canon confirmation that Cas has been in love with Dean for some time now, which changes a lot of stuff. But funnily enough that, that’s always been the case in a lot of fic. So, you know,

MalMuses: we had it right all these years.

Ellen: We were right. [ Laughs ] We have to say thank you so much to Lindsay for coming to talk to us today. It’s been a pleasure. 

andimeantittosting: Thank you guys for having, having me on this. It was great talking to you about these fics.

MalMuses: It’s nice to talk out loud about fandom sometimes to the people that don’t live with us, I think. [ Laughs ]

Ellen: That’s right. If you want to get in touch with us and tell us your, like, pour out your feelings about the episode if you wish, [01:16:00] or tell us about a fic that, that you’ve read recently that you know, relating to this new canon, you can contact us in a multitude of ways.

We’ve got our email address which is contact (at) mixtapebookclub.com, or you can, all of our social media accounts are at mixtapebookclub. So you can, yeah, just let us know what you thought about this episode as well, if you want to. And I’ve covered everything that I was going to say, just know, let us know what you thought. We’re, we’re very happy to take feedback in ways that we can make the podcast better for you as well. We’ll talk to you again soon.

MalMuses: As always, more than ever now, the story isn’t over until we say it is.

[ Outro music ]