Home » Transcript: Track 8: Festive Fic

Transcript: Track 8: Festive Fic

Episode 8 posted December 24, 2020
Links to all fics mentioned can be found on the main episode post.

Transcript by kaede.

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[Intro music]

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

MalMuses: And my name is Mal.

Ellen: Each week we take a look at a different trope in the huge collection of Destiel fanfiction. And this week it’s Christmas, it’s the holidays, so we’ve decided to read some Christmas related fics and recommend some that we love to you.

MalMuses: We’d like to say thank you to everybody who’s listened to our episodes so far in the year 2020 and left us comments on our blog or on our social media. Links to all the fics that we’ll be talking about today are going to be available in this episode’s post on mixtapebookclub.com and included in our collection on AO3.

Ellen: So this week I want to wish all, everyone who’s celebrating this week a very happy Christmas or [00:01:00] whichever holiday of choice that you’re celebrating this week. Because you know, It’s a busy time of year and we’ve all got such a lot on at the moment. It’s just going to be the two of us this week talking about Christmassy stuff.

But we do have three fics that we’re going to talk about this week. The first one is Christmas in July by followyourenergy. The Bad Santa Clause by a whole bunch of fabulous authors, it’s like a group project for the second fic. And the third fic is called Snow Place Like Home (But My Home Is With You), and that one’s by almaasi.

MalMuses: So it’s quite a busy time in the fandom at the moment. We’ve got a few things going on, one of which is that the Supernatural Quarantine Zine has just released less than 48 hours ago as we’re recording. It’s a donation based PDF Zine collection of fanfiction and fanart. It’s really pretty and it’s got some lovely stories in it.

And it is a voluntary donation, just a dollar [00:02:00] minimum is the only thing that you need to donate, and it all goes directly to Direct Relief which is a great nonprofit here in the United States. We’ll leave a link to that in the blog post in case anybody is interested in obtaining a copy of that Zine, but I do believe that we’ve raised over $1,000 already.

Ellen: Oh, that’s awesome.

MalMuses: So, the more the merrier, really.

Ellen: Good news, yeah. And we both have little stories in this one, so yeah, we’re both pretty keen to see it do well. It’s a great Zine, like, have a look, the artwork is really beautiful as well, so. The other thing that’s going on in the last few weeks and going on until the end of the year, actually, is the annual Destiel Fan Favourites survey which is put together by unforth. There’s links to it from Tumblr, I’m pretty sure that it’s been shared all over Twitter and everything. But there’s basically a, like, Google Form that you go in and you list your favourite fics of the year and they all go into a big [00:03:00] collection for the Fan Favourites. So, it’s worth, if you read fics this year that you loved, you can go and put them into the survey and those fics will be added to the Fan Favourites collection. It’s a great way to recognise some fics that perhaps didn’t even get as much of a spotlight as others but that you loved and you want to make sure other people see.

MalMuses: Always an exciting time of year when the Fan Favourite survey comes out. You get to see lots of, lots of happy authors that they got included and people get to go back through their bookmarks and find things that they’ve forgotten about and it’s a good time of year when the fan survey comes out.

Ellen: Yes. And I’m glad that it’s going, it goes for a few weeks and it’s open until the end of December, because I haven’t put mine in yet, I must go and go through my bookmarks.

MalMuses: Yeah, I need to do mine as well. I did a little kind of promoting of it here or there, reminding other people to fill out theirs and kind of think of fics that they might have overlooked or they think deserve more attention, [00:04:00] but I didn’t actually fill out mine yet, so I need to do that.

Ellen: Yeah, me too, like, yeah. Okay, so Christmas and holiday fic, I think a lot of, in a lot of cases people love to write holiday fics for, either as to give to people, other people as gifts even, for Christmas, but they often tend to be very short and fluffy, I find. Or they’re timestamps of their existing work that they’ve published during the year or something that they have decided that they’d like to include or write an extra scene or two for you know, holiday kind of theme. Sometimes there are also larger, like, long fics will have, like, Christmassy, holiday scenes throughout, like, you know, inside them, I guess.

MalMuses: Yeah, like, quite often you’ll get a bigger fic with you know, just some Christmas portions in it and various other holidays as well, especially if people are writing something that maybe takes place over the course of a year, or a [00:05:00] school year, or something like that. Quite often they’ll have lovely Christmassy sections in them.

Ellen: Yeah, so it’s not actually that easy to find stories that revolve around Christmas even. When we were looking through them, a lot of them seem to be quite short, like only, you know, a few thousand words at most, so, but they’re almost always,

MalMuses: Yeah, but we did manage to find three.

Ellen: We did. They’re almost always very fluffy and romantic. So they are our favorite sorts of things this time of year.

Christmas in July [00:06:00] 

MalMuses: [00:06:00] So the first fic we’re going to talk about today is Christmas in July by followyourenergy, who we have had as a guest on this Podcast before. It was published in 2019 and it’s almost 30,000 words, just 29,000, and it’s rated Mature. There is a little bit of smut in there. It’s not a, you know, hugely Explicit fic like some of them are, but there is a sex scene in this one. And the summary goes:

When Dean Winchester follows a service dog who won’t leave  him alone, he finds Cas Novak passed out in a stairwell with a Christmas tree on top of him. A Christmas tree? In July? Who does that? Turns out that Cas does that. And once he gets to know the snarky, independent, handsome man, Dean can’t help but fall for him. A story about being seen.

And I think the end of that summary is pretty important with this story, because this story does have Castiel as a blind man, which is quite key to the story, it’s how he ends up with a Christmas tree on top of him.

Ellen: Yeah.

MalMuses: [00:07:00] So what did you think of this one?

Ellen: Oh, I love this one. So I think last year when this was posted, Mary posted it serially over a few days just before Christmas, so it was sort of a fluffy, extra chapter each day, that was just heartwarming and lovely. But one of the things I like, I love the most about this particular fic is that Cas is just really sassy. Like he just, and I mean Dean’s all getting upset about the fact that he keeps accidentally saying things like, Oh let’s go and have a look. Or something. And then he realizes that Cas is blind and he shouldn’t have said that. And then Cas is like, What are you talking about? You can say that. Like, I don’t care. And so he’s always just giving, giving Dean heaps back. Like, I just really love that.

MalMuses: Yeah, he is very snarky in this and I really like that too. And he will kind of mess with Dean about it a little bit.

Ellen: Yeah. Yeah, he does.

MalMuses: Cause obviously he’s completely used to being, being blind by that point. He takes it in stride and is, if anything, a lot less worried about it than Dean is. So, he does mess with him a bit at several points in the fic and very much enjoyed that dynamic.

Ellen: Yep.

MalMuses: [00:08:00] I think one of my favorite things about this story is, even though it is very Christmas focused by the kind of continuing theme of the Christmas trees throughout the whole story, it does actually cover kind of a whole year of time, I think or maybe even more? Pretty sure it was a year. Hmm.

Ellen: Yeah.

MalMuses: Don’t quote me, Mary, but I think it was a year. But even so, and you’re focusing on these other holidays, but you still have this kind of Christmas link running through. Really lovely. The initial Christmas tree he buys from a yard sale and his reasoning is that it’s cheaper to get it in July and that he can, you know, takes it home from this yard sale that he has and then decides he’s going to have a Christmas in July tree. [00:09:00] So he has this hideous, stinky yard sale tree, which Dean is just horrified about. And it’s covered in lovely things like flip flops and sunglasses and tacky kind of Christmas, like, dollar store July decorations. I think that’s such a good introduction to Cas’s character in this.

Ellen: Yes, and I, it’s actually funny, Christmas in July kind of thing because obviously I’m in the Southern Hemisphere and Christmas for me is about being hot and, and flip flops and sunglasses, so, like whenever I tell people about that who live who have never been to summery places for Christmas, they’re always boggled by that, they’re like, how, what do you mean it’s hot in Christmas? It’s weird.

But when, when I was actually in the, in the UK, we had a Christmas in July party in July. And it was lovely. [00:10:00] It was, it was warm, we sat outside, it was sunny, we had presents. It was just, it was perfect, it was like home. And all our friends were just like, this is the weirdest thing I’ve ever seen. [ Laughs ] That’s just a random factoid.

MalMuses: Oh, that’s really lovely though.

Ellen: It was. It was really good.

MalMuses: I like that. I do, I do enjoy like a snowy Christmas.

Ellen: Yes. Yes. I did enjoy it.

MalMuses: Even when I was, even when I was in England, we would sometimes, go away for Christmas just to get somewhere that was snowier because England tends to be more on the rainy side than the snowy side usually for Christmas .

Ellen: Yes, yes.

MalMuses: [ Laughs ] So we would, you know, travel to kind of, you know, other countries for a few days because, you know, we were lucky to be able to do that. We had kind of family all over the place. So we can go and do that. So in my mind I do like a snowy Christmas.

Ellen: Yeah.

MalMuses: I’m crossing my fingers for this year, but I have a feeling I’m not going to get my wish this year.

Ellen: [00:11:00] Oh really? Oh. Well, it’s, you know, it’s not going to be super hot here, but in a couple of, oh my god, it’s only a couple of days away. Anyway, anyway, let’s talk about this fic. [ Laughs ] 

MalMuses: [ Laughs ] Getting sidetracked, but,

Ellen: I’m trying not to get too sidetracked to, you know, worried about the fact that Christmas Day is only a couple of days. So there are dogs in this, there’s like a service dog in this one.

MalMuses: Yes. So, Casiel has a service dog. His name is Zeppelin, which obviously Dean is very fond of immediately, he gets on with, with Zepp immediately at the beginning of the fic. And obviously he plays kind of quite a key part in it and I love how expressive Mary made him that you know, sometimes when the two of them are being stupid about something, the dog will kind of give them a look or kind of walk over and sniff one of them. So I love the fact that the dog itself is, you know, a character. It’s very intelligent, just like a service dog is,

Ellen: [00:12:00 ]Yeah.

MalMuses: You know, everyone, everyone loves an animal in a fic, right?

Ellen: Yeah, definitely. Especially when there’s, when it’s an AU and nothing, like a modern AU, nothing scary is happening to the animal.

MalMuses: Yeah, that’s true. Never hurt the animal, okay. Just, just have nice fluffy animal times. Yeah. So I did really like Zepp as a character in this. I also really liked that Cas himself was so very kind of independent. He works as a physical therapist and has kind of a, you know, a good job, and an active life, and does all these things, and Dean ends up being the one that, at a couple points in the fic, ends up thinking, you know, well, does he really need me at all? Like, just, does he need me in his life at all? He’s, which I think was a really nice way of doing it.

Ellen: Yeah, and of course he does. [00:13:00] Of course he does. He’s a little bit lonely on his own, but even though he’s, he’s getting around and perfectly functioning independently.

MalMuses: Yeah. Yeah, there’s a really nice analogy that Mary uses in this fic about cake. It’s probably not, not a spoiler just to go into depth on the kind of analogy that turns up a couple of times in this, where Dean is talking about cake and how cake doesn’t always need frosting to be perfect. You can have, you know, a really delicious flourless chocolate cake that is just as wonderful as something with a bunch of frosting and sprinkles on it.

And sometimes you just have to find people in life who enjoy your cake for what it is and don’t just want your frosting. 

Ellen: Yeah.

MalMuses: So, cause Dean has a lot of frosting in this fic. Dean is a model. We all know he looks like one anyway, but he is actually one in this fic.

Ellen: Right.

MalMuses: Dean’s the one with lots of frosting, but he also has, has plenty of cake going on. Sounds like I’m talking about his butt, but I’m actually not. For once. [ Laughs ]

Ellen: [00:14:00] It’s a really lovely you know, analogy about, you know, accepting people for who they are as well. This fic does have some, some lovely sort of soft scenes between them and a very happy ending. So if you need some, you know, feel good, heartwarming Christmas romance, then this is definitely worth a read. Yeah, it’s a nice way to spend a little while before Christmas.

MalMuses: Oh, gosh, I just remembered as well, you made a Manip for this fic.

Ellen: I did?

MalMuses: So if you want to see some lovely EllenOfOz art,  you can catch some in this story at the end of, I believe it’s chapter 10. There is a very sexy little art piece.

Ellen: Oh my goodness.

MalMuses: Thought we were going to get away without mentioning that, but no.

Ellen: It was a year ago?

MalMuses: It was, that was a whole year ago.

Ellen: Oh wow, that feels like a really long time. I forgot all about that.

MalMuses: So yes, great art piece by our lovely Ellen there. Which I’m now staring at.

Ellen: Thank you.

MalMuses: [00:15:00] It’s taking up the entirety of my screen and I’m not complaining.

Ellen: It is a very large image. [ Laughs ]

MalMuses: [ Laughs ] Ah, okay. Shall we move on to our second story we’re going to recommend?

The Bad Santa Clause [00:15:25]

Ellen: So the second one is called The Bad Santa Clause. It’s written around the same time as Christmas in July, but It was by Castielslostwings, jscribbles, MalMuses, pingnova, and sobsicles. All of our little writer besties in a group there that have written this wonderful, you know, several chapters, 74,000 words, and Explicit. [00:16:00] And summary goes:

A quiet pre-Christmas hunt goes terribly wrong for the Winchesters, Castiel and Jack, when Dean accidentally murders Santa Claus. Ho ho ho, bitches.

So this is loosely based on the Santa Claus movie that sort of, I don’t know how old it is now, but quite a number of years old now, I suppose. The one with Tim Allen.

MalMuses: Yeah, it is quite old now, isn’t it?

Ellen: He accidentally kills Santa and then ends up having to take over the role of Santa. So, it’s not, it’s not very much like the movie in actual content, it’s just that premise of you know, Dean accidentally killing Santa and having to, um, you know, it’s a curse then that, uh, he is, has to become Santa.

So, I don’t know. I, you guys did such an amazing job  with this one. For some reason, I never actually read the entire thing last year, I only read the first few chapters and, and didn’t get a chance to read the rest. [00:17:00] So I, reading it now, I’m, I’m disappointed that I didn’t actually read it that back then because it’s so amazing. I love it. I was on the edge of my seat the whole time.

MalMuses: Aww, I’m so glad that you liked it. It was so much fun to do because we got to take that concept, like you said, from the movie, which, could be like quite kind of cracky really, like quite a silly kind of thing, but we kind of took it that bit more seriously and put it as like a canon story and tried to draw parallels between Dean kind of losing control of himself to Michael and then losing control of himself to this Santa magic that he encounters.

Ellen: Yeah, yeah.

MalMuses: And it was so much fun to do.

Ellen: [00:18:00] Yeah, cause I, there was so many twists and turns, like I, I wasn’t really sure what was going to happen next. It was just like, one minute they’re all, you know, they’re trying to solve the, the curse. And obviously, running through it is a Destiel sort of romance story, so Dean’s also worried that Cas is now, like they, they have a moment in like the first chapter where they are getting close and then, you know, they kind of both back out and so he’s worried the whole time that, that Cas has sort of got the wrong idea and, you know, so you’ve got two kind of running stories at the same time, but then suddenly these elves show up and there’s like, it’s just, the whole thing is amazing.

So it does actually feel like it’s almost crack, but you know, It could actually be a real case that they have to deal with at some point where they have to try and work out how to, how to, you know, break the curse and, and Dean’s just not having any of it, he doesn’t want to be involved, he doesn’t want to be Santa, he refuses to get in the sleigh. It’s like, he’s just really against the whole thing. And I loved that, that Dean and Sam, I’m sorry, that Sam and Cas were more kind of, look, you’re going to have to roll with this a little bit here. Like, come on, you’re not getting out of this.

MalMuses: [00:19:00] Yeah, they tried to be sympathetic as much as they can, kind of could be, but they kind of drew the line at him ruining Christmas for millions of children.

Ellen: Yeah. I mean, there was also the side of it that if he didn’t, if he didn’t go along with it, things were going to go really badly. Like if he, you know, the curse was gonna sort of make things really bad. So, yeah.

MalMuses: Yes, definitely looking out for him there as well. And throughout this curse that’s put on him and the kind of changes that he’s forced through, Dean really develops some kind of very intense body image issues in the middle of this fic. Which were actually really fun to play with because we don’t usually think of Dean like that. Or at least, like, I don’t generally. I kind of mostly think of him as being kind of pretty confident and comfortable with who he is in that way. So it was really interesting to throw that at him and [00:20:00] see how he handled it and kind of do some, I guess, kind of like a little bit of narrative about how lots of people feel that way, and lots of people are actually very happy that way, and him having to kind of adjust his thinking a little bit about who he is.

So, it was a lot of fun. And obviously, throwing Cas into that, and Cas just doing his best to really be supportive, but also, not really getting it to a certain extent, but supporting Dean regardless.

Ellen: I mean, I don’t, I don’t want to say too much about what happens because, because there are a lot of twists in this and I don’t want to spoil anything because, actually each new thing that happened, I just, a couple of points I actually laughed out loud because it was just so crazy and so I wouldn’t want to spoil anything.

But, I would suggest that, definitely give this one a read if you’re after something lighthearted and, or even there’s, there’s some angst in the middle of this as well. [00:21:00] Like they’re, they’re pining, both of them are pining after each other  for a fair bit of it. And there’s some scary points where things can sort of start to go really wrong. But you know, these, you, you group of writers here are my favorites for a reason. Like, this is a really well written story and I really loved it. So thank you.

MalMuses: Ahh, I can’t crawl under the desk, because I’m not sat at one. No!

Ellen: It’s just becoming a habit.

MalMuses: There are some angsty bits, but no. We need to put a stop to that. There’s definitely a few little angsty bits, but then on the other hand, you have Jack on light-up roller skates careening around the bunker, so, you know.

Ellen: Aw, Jack was like such a good part of this too. Like he, he just brought the absolute joy of you know, having a Christmas to life, you know. Like he was so excited about everything, which is just perfect.

MalMuses: [00:22:00] Yeah, he really brought the Christmas cheer, yeah. 

Snow Place Like Home (But My Home Is With You) [00:22:05]

So our third story that we’ll be covering today is Snowplace Like Home (But My Home Is With You) by almaasi. It’s an Explicit fic, 47,000 words, almost 48. And it was, this is a slightly older one, it was published in 2015, I think. Yep, that’s right, 2015.

This is also a kind of canon story. It’s, she said that it’s set during kind of Season 10, if Season 9 had been completely different. So, although it’s in the canon universe, it’s not tied to a particular episode or anything like that. And the summary for this one goes:

It’s Christmas Eve, and Dean, Sam, and Castiel are snowed into a small town with big festive spirit. They splurge on a fancy room in a B&B. Hey, they deserve a treat. There’s a tiny plastic tree and a working TV, so they could perhaps overlook the lack of hot water and Dean having to bunk with Sam. [00:23:00] Sleeping arrangements soon reach a happier equilibrium. Dean’s just cuddling Cas to keep him warm, he swears. The tingly feeling means nothing. Christmas Day arrives and Cas doesn’t have a gift for Dean. Dean doesn’t know what to give Cas either. Sam has a few ideas, but will the other two truly understand what he means?

So this was a new fic for me. I’ve read a lot of almaasi stuff, but for whatever reason, I’d never come across this one before, so I was really excited to get to read this for the podcast, and I absolutely loved it. I really adored this fic. It had me laughing out loud in parts and also kind of squeeing and awing at my screen at various points as well.

Ellen: Super sweet. Like, a lot of almaasi’s fics are like that. They’re, they’re really good at sort of bringing a really sweet kind of romance to things.

MalMuses: Yeah.

Ellen: [00:24:00] There’s like, there’s some really lovely Christmassy, like, winter tropes in this one too. So we’ve got bed sharing, we’ve got they’re snowed in, inner town, like, and a B&B. Yeah, I think Cas is having some odd dreams and he’s losing his grace, so he’s a bit confused about everything and, uh, yeah, I don’t, I don’t know. I didn’t actually get a chance to read all of this one, but the bits, the few chapters that I did read, I loved the way that, that it’s all so sweet and lovely. So just tell me more about this one.

MalMuses: Yeah, you must finish –

Ellen: I will, I will.

MalMuses: – the story because, I don’t know if you got to Christmas Day with the exchange of gifts yet in this one. I won’t spoil it for everybody, but Cas goes out and picks a gift for Dean. He’s been taking some advice from Sam. [00:25:00] Possibly misinterprets some of the advice from Sam, isn’t quite sure where he’s going with it, or if he should follow through with it. So he picks out a gift for Dean, which Dean then opens in the middle of a kind of Skype call with a bunch of their friends and family.

So, I believe that Charlie is in on this Skype call, possibly Jodi, obviously Sam is there, and Dean opens this gift, which, oh! [ Laughs ] The second hand embarrassment that I had, it was one of those moments where I had to like, put down the phone, and just get up and walk around the room quickly before I could carry on reading. It was amazing, it was so funny and it was so well-intentioned, and in a way, it was the perfect gift for Dean, but it may not have been exactly the right moment.

Ellen: Awesome,

MalMuses: So good.

Ellen: I’m looking forward to getting to that part. [00:26:00] Well, the thing I’ve enjoyed so far is actually Sam being like, he’s, he’s a true shipper in this one. He’s like, he knows that, well, how they feel about each other and he just, he’s like, Oh, come on, you guys can do it!

MalMuses: Yeah. He’s really trying on both sides. Like, come on. And they do get mistaken for a couple, even I think quite early on in this fic. And just kind of, they both just let it go. Like they don’t, like Dean doesn’t correct them at all. People who are making these assumptions and Cas just kind of barrels on like normal, not really reacting to it. Personally, I love it when they do that, for some reason, where it comes up that they may be a couple and they’ve been mistaken that way, and they just sort of roll with it. [ Laughs ] It’s just a little trope that I really enjoy, for some reason.

Ellen: I wish they’d done that in the fic, in the, in the fic … in the show, I wish they’d done it in the show more. That would have been so funny.

MalMuses: Yeah. Yep. [00:27:00] This fic is definitely Explicit, like once they, once they get there, they’re there. They are all in when they get to that point. It’s very well-written. It’s very nice to read. Very hot. Would recommend. But it’s also very sweet as well, which I think like you said earlier about fics in general, like, do have that kind of sweetness to them, which a lot of us  like, that’s what we come for.

Ellen: Yep.

MalMuses: So, and even during the kind of smutty parts of this fic, they still have that feeling, which, which I like a lot.

Ellen: Yes I, I liked that early on there’s canon tie-in with, with Dean sort of implying that John would leave them alone for, for, you know, multiple days over Christmas when they were kids. I mean, it really, it’s, it’s a good setup for them having like a proper Christmas afterwards, [00:28:00] you know, ‘cause it means like as children, they didn’t really get a chance to do that. Because, like, they’d be in a motel somewhere and it’d just be the two of them, and they didn’t have any money, so they couldn’t do anything, and, you know, that’s so sad, you know, for the past them.

MalMuses: Yeah, one of, one of those things that’s so sad and that, like, authors do use quite a bit because, I mean, you know, they have a lot of basis in canon for that sort of thing. And  it’s, and it can be used particularly well when they’re doing stories like this, where they can compare and do something slightly different as adults, so. And it is a very, very sweet Christmas that they end up having. They end up getting like a little tree for their hotel room and like decorating it, I think they actually kind of like, make decorations like they’re there with like markers, like you would do kind of as like a family activity or with kids. And making decorations in the hotel room, it’s pretty adorable, isn’t it?

Ellen: [00:29:00] Yes, I did, I did read that part. That was super cute. And making paper chains and whatever.

MalMuses: Yeah, I’m really enchanted with the idea of like, Cas just sitting there with his markers.

Ellen: Yes!

MalMuses: Making these, making these chains. I love it.

Ellen: So, they, almaasi does say in the author note that he set out to write the fluffiest fluff that could ever fluff, making use of a whole host of my favorite Christmas fic tropes. And so, I think they succeeded quite well.

MalMuses: Oh yeah, definitely. Fully succeeded. So definitely read this one if you like a good dose of fluff and tropes packed in from end to end. Because as fanfic readers, we do love our tropes.

Ellen: We do. I’m definitely going to finish this one very soon.

MalMuses: Do it, do it. Yes.

Other recommendations [00:30:00]

Ellen: [00:30:00] Well, at this time of year at, like, just before Christmas, usually there’s a huge outpouring of fics relating to Christmas, so I’m sure that there’s plenty out there. Like, these are from last year or earlier, the ones we’ve discussed, but there are plenty more coming out each day during this week. Yeah, so there’s a new Bang that’s just been put together this year called Destiel Lifemark Bang, which, the idea was to take you know, a cheesy Christmas, a Hallmark movie or Lifetime movie, cheesy holiday movie and make it into a Destiel romance.

So there’s been a whole bunch of fics posted in the last week or so that are all, like some of them are only short there, a few thousand words, but you know, there are some longer ones as well. So I’ll put a link to the whole, the Bang collection on the post so you can have a look and see what’s been posted there.

And there’s some really awesome-looking ones that I’m looking forward to getting into at some point. But we’ve got a few…

MalMuses: [00:31:00] Christmas is definitely the time for cheesy Hallmark movie type fic. I think.

Ellen: Absolutely. We’ve got a few others in the list here that we might like to mention as, you know, recommend.

MalMuses: Okay. So, if you’re in the mood for a festive canon fix-it fic that will not only give you some lovely Christmas feelings, but will fix the end of the show by being divergent from episode 19 of Season 15, then you should check out All I Want for Christmas is You by andimeantittosting on AO3.

It’s  3,000 words, it’s not, you know, a very long, chunky fic, but it’s very sweet, it’s got some really strong found family feelings in it. Obviously it does have a reunion between Dean and Cas. I don’t think that’s a spoiler to say. [00:32:00] I know we’re all hoping for that, wouldn’t be fixed if that didn’t happen, right? And, and it is Christmas themed. Taking place in the bunker with, like I said, their whole kind of found family going on. All of the kind of canon, or almost canon, couples that we like in this. So definitely go and check that one out if you’d like some, some found family Christmas in the bunker and to fix Season 15 at the same time.

Ellen: Yep. And if, if you are, you know, in that boat where you can never get enough cake, MandalaRose also published a, recently published a fix-it fic diverging from 1519. It’s, it’s kind of the same deal, it’s like a Christmas in the bunker with all of the family, like with the Wayward girls and with you know, everyone except Cas until later.

I won’t give anything away, but yeah, she also posted that [00:33:00] recently and it’s a really beautiful, you know, Christmas celebration in the bunker with all of the family as well. So, you know, you can never have too many fix-it fics involving all the things that we kind of missed about the actual finale with the, you know, the family and everything.

MalMuses: Yeah, I think we’ll be fixing it for many years to come.

Ellen: Yes. Perhaps we will. But yeah, that one’s called New Holiday and it’s really super sweet as well. So check that one out.

MalMuses: Okay. So if you enjoyed the sound of, it’s a kind of collaborative effort that made Bad Santa Clause come together, then, another fic that you might want to look at is Christmas Don’t End in Blood, which was the Bunker Secret Santa 2018. So this was published the Christmas before last. And it’s basically, essentially, exactly what it sounds like. It’s a story with a secret Santa taking place in the bunker, [00:34:00] with all of your, kind of, favorite canon characters.

From, you know, Dean and Cas through to Jack and Rowena and some of the AU characters like Maggie and I think Claire is in this as well. I’m trying to remember off the top of my head who is in this. Pretty much, pretty much everybody that, that we love. And they do a Secret Santa in the bunker and obviously there is a Destiel story woven in there.

It comes about in the end and each chapter is from the point of view of a different character. So you can see them kind of shopping for their gift and trying to work out, you know, who they were going to have to buy for and how those gifts end up being received at the end of it in the bunker. So,

Ellen: That sounds super sweet.

MalMuses:  And that one was written by a bunch of, a bunch of different authors as well. I believe it was, let me see, MittenWraith, WinJennster, CastielsCarma, I think there were some others in there as well which aren’t showing up on AO3 at the moment.

Ellen: [00:35:00] I, since we got to talk about your fic in this episode too, I’m totally gonna throw in the fact that it’s a few years ago now, I think it’s probably like three years ago now, I wrote a fic with CBFirestarter called My Christmas Valentine, which is kind of a similar thing to, to that last one, I guess.

They’re, they’re having Christmas in the bunker and they’re buying gifts for each other. And you know, Dean gets the wrong idea. No, sorry. Cas gets the wrong idea about the present that Dean has bought for him and, you know, shenanigans ensue. But yeah, I’ve got to throw that one in there because I really loved writing it. It was really super sweet to write. So, it’s a few years old now, but it’s still, I, I go back and reread it now and then for [00:36:00] Christmassy time because I really loved writing it with CB. And there’s a, there’s a, like a sequel to it, which is a Valentine’s Day thing. So you’ll get it. It’s nice.

MalMuses: Awesome. I love it when I read a fic and then there’s like a little bit more. There’s a little sequel. I think I’m done, and then there’s just a little something extra. Always a nice treat.

Ellen: Okay, so we’ve, we’ve got a few more on the list that we will definitely post in the, in this Episode post, so check it out, have a look on mixtapebookclub.com. Hopefully that covers you for all your holiday reading needs, and if there’s any others that we haven’t mentioned that you love, or that have a new fic that have come out that you think we should add to the list, then please let us know, we’d love to hear from you.

MalMuses: Yeah, for those moments where we’re trying to avoid family and read fic in the corner. Because I know at some point this Christmas I’ll be doing that. [ Laughs ]

Ellen: I’ll be probably up Christmas night after we’re done with all the lunch stuff. Like, okay, no one touch me. I’m going away.

MalMuses: No one touch me, it’s Destiel time.

Ellen: Yeah, that’s right. So if you’d like to get in touch with us you can do that through any of our social media accounts. They’re all at mixtapebookclub on various platforms. Or you can email us contact@mixtapebookclub.com. And we’d love to hear from you.

MalMuses: In the next episode, we’re going to be doing a brief wrap-up of 2020, talking about some of our favorite fics for the year, and some of the most popular stories that came out this year. So do join us for that in the new year. Now we will be continuing to talk about Destiel fic for, I would imagine, many months to come at this point, we’ve got a lot to get through.

Ellen: There is, there’s a lot of it, and more every day.

MalMuses: So  thank you for listening and we’ll talk to you again soon.

Ellen: And we’d like to wish all of you a very happy holidays.

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

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