Transcript: Track 9: Favorites of 2020
Episode 9 posted January 8, 2021
Links to all fics mentioned can be found on the main episode post.
Transcript corrected by kaede.
[Intro music]
Ellen: [00:00:00] Hi everyone, welcome to the 9th episode of Mixtape Book Club Podcast. My name’s Ellen,
MalMuses: And my name’s Mal.
Ellen: Each week we take a look at a different trope in the huge collection of Destiel fanfiction on AO3. But this week, because it’s New Year, Happy New Year everyone! We’ve got something a little bit different for you. We’re going to do a year in review of the shit storm that was 2020. And we’re going to introduce you to some of our favorite fanfics from this year.
MalMuses: Links to all the fics we’re talking about today will be available in this episode’s post on mixtapebookclub.com.
Ellen: So I think we’re each going to talk about a few different fics that we enjoyed this year, but I, I guess, I mean, this year, what a crazy year. I mean, [00:01:00] between all this, like, even like, I don’t even know where to begin with trying to actually say a review of 2020.
MalMuses: Yeah. We started the year with half of Australia on fire and then we sort of ended the year with half of America on fire. So it was just, it was a wild year. And although the Coronavirus was part of it, it wasn’t even all of it. It just seemed like the entire year was a wild ride.
Ellen: Yes, I think a lot of people reacted in wildly different ways to it all as well, being stuck at home for the whole time because some people were able to kind of tap into their creativity while they were stressed out of their brains, worrying about all of the COVID stuff, while others found it very difficult to actually, you know, produce any content, I guess. We just consumed a lot of streaming TV and that kind of thing, or reread old, old favorites.
MalMuses: Yep. [00:02:00] I found it really interesting actually, cause I’m somebody who tracks my numbers for how much I write each month,
Ellen: Yep.
MalMuses: Just purely for my own interest more than anything. So I could kind of, even though I’ve still, by a lot of people’s standards, produced a lot of words this year, I’ve still been able to compare it to last year and just look at the kind of steep nosedive that just happened around March time,
Ellen: Yeah.
MalMuses: Which I’ve yet to fully recover from.
Ellen: Yes.
MalMuses: So there was a pandemic nosedive, and then when that was like, creeping its way back up, I then got a season finale, Supernatural ending nosedive. So.
Ellen: Yes! Well, of course that was the other problem. The other thing that happened in the, in the last year that affected a lot of people’s ability to consume fan content, I suppose. The actual ending, a lot of people were very worried leading up to the ending because we weren’t really sure what we were going to get.
We had that big, big hiatus gap in the middle of the season,
MalMuses: Yeah.
Ellen: [00:03:00] During which, you know, a lot of great content was produced as well, but, and then the actual ending where people had their various reactions to it, but, where then some people were so upset about it that they were no longer able to even read fic, or you know, so there’s been a bit of a, I don’t know how to say it, it’s a wildly different reaction from all across the fandom.
MalMuses: Yeah, I think as a fandom, we now have two endings. We have the people who either enjoyed or will take parts from the actual ending from 19 of 19 … I just gave Supernatural 19 seasons, if only. [ Laughs ] From 15×20, and then there’s like the other half of us, which are just like, no, I, I know no 15×20.
Ellen: Yes.
MalMuses: I, I just remember nothing after 15×18. That’s where it ended :to me.
Ellen: [00:04:00] Yep. Fair enough too. I mean, all opinions are valid, I suppose, as long as you’re not trying to, you know, attack other people for having a different one.
MalMuses: Exactly. Yep. So, despite everything that was going on during 2020, and like we said, it being a bit of a wild and crazy year, AO3 tells us that there were still 9,710 fics posted or given their final update within the year. So between January 1st and December 31st of 2020,
Ellen: Wow!
MalMuses: Almost 10,000 works.
Ellen: That’s amazing.
MalMuses: It’s pretty impressive. We are quite a prolific fandom. I really think nobody could ever read all of these.
Ellen: And I mean, it’s, it’s, we’ve made it to, no, what did I say earlier today? I was looking at this and it was like, over 9,000, like 9,400 … no, 94,000, sorry, let me just get the right numbers there. [ Laughs ] [00:05:00] In total, 94,000 fics that are, that are tagged with Destiel. So that’s pretty amazing.
MalMuses: Which just makes me grateful that AO3 has such a great tagging system, really, because there’s no way that you could ever read all of them, but at least you can hunt down the bulk of the ones that have the things you like in them.
Ellen: Exactly. That’s why we love fic so much, because we can target exactly what we like. And, and we can read stuff with, hopefully without being disappointed by finding, you know, random tragic endings or whatever, whatever it may be.
MalMuses: And some people love their tragic endings and at least it makes them easy for them to find as well. So there’s actually several tags that I kind of keep track of, which are not necessarily my thing, but I have friends that would be really into them. So as soon as I see that there’s a new fic being posted with that tag, I’m like, have you read this? So.
Ellen: [00:06:00] Yeah.
MalMuses: Gotta love that tagging system.
Ellen: Yes. And actually now you mentioned that, so I actually went back and looked in my history which, like, I would love for AO3 to do more with like, I love their tagging system, I love just about everything about their database, it’s, it’s fantastic. I’d love them to do more with stats though, like not personal writing stats, that’s one thing which we already have, but for reading stats, like, for me to find out how many, like, I can’t search my history easily.
MalMuses: Yeah, that is a wishlist item for me too.
Ellen: So, so basically what I did was, I, I’m a bit of a, a coder in my real job, my other, other job. [ Laughs ] And I saved like a, like I saved the source of my, like I basically scraped my history pages for this year, for 2020. And then I’ve, I’ve been learning how to use Beautiful Soup, which is like a HTML parsing, basically, so it just pulls out everything with a certain HTML tag.
[00:07:00] So, what I’ve done is put it into a, like an Excel sheet, basically, that just has like a title and an author of everything that I read in 2020, but unfortunately with the history, there’s no way of telling, it’s just everything that you opened, right? So there’s no way of telling whether I actually read it or not.
MalMuses: That’s true, yeah.
Ellen: So in total, the number was something like over a thousand fics that I actually opened, but there is no way I’ve actually read that many. So I started going through this list and sort of deleting ones that I’m, I was pretty sure I hadn’t read. Cause obviously there’s a lot for the podcast that we, we’ve put into, our posts that we haven’t actually read, but I think I’ve narrowed it down to pretty much, well I haven’t gone all the way through cause it’s quite a huge list now but, I’m pretty sure that I read somewhere between 200 and 500 fics last year,
MalMuses: That’s a lot!
Ellen: [00:08:00] But obviously it needs a lot of improvement. Like I’m sure that if anyone out there listening actually knows Beautiful Soup or is like, would be willing to kind of come up with a way to write a script to pull stuff out of history, let me know, cause I’m dying to know. Like, I love numbers like that. I love the stats. Like I can, you can pull out all of the tags that are on all of the fics and work out what sort of tags that you generally like. And how many of them are different fandoms. And, you know, there’s a bunch of stuff that, that I have been able to do on my own, but, but that’s on the entire history. And I really just want to pull out stuff I’ve read. So, I don’t know, it was just something I was playing around with a couple of weeks ago.
MalMuses: Yeah, because you probably have a lot, especially for the podcast where I’ve sent you links for fics that I’ve read, which I’ve wanted to put on lists and things, for example. And you probably opened them just to get the link.
Ellen: [00:09:00] Yes. And I mean, I, I always, whenever I read a fic, I always put kudos, that’s the only way I know that I’ve read it. So, I do that on purpose so that I know that I’ve already read something. So if you could open each fic and see whether you’ve left a kudos, then at least you’d know, then I’d know if I’d read it and that kind of thing. Anyway, that’s just a random thing that I was playing with.
MalMuses: Yeah, I try to be very generous with my kudos and give them to, you know, any fics that I started reading or, or enjoyed and opened up.
Ellen: Yeah, yeah.
MalMuses: And then every now and again, I just get the one where it’s a fic that I absolutely love and I go back to read it for like the third or fourth time and almost accidentally hit the button and yet somehow it tells me that I’ve never left kudos on that fic before.
Ellen: Oh no!
MalMuses: And I don’t know what happened, it’s happened to me a couple of times now where I’m just absolutely amazed that somehow, somehow I managed to miss. And I’ve probably left comments and things going through and yet,
Ellen: And yet just never hit the kudos button?
MalMuses: [00:10:00]Somehow managed to not hit the kudos button.
Ellen: Or it’s like some kind of glitch in their database where, because they went, they had that purge during the year, didn’t they? Where they removed multiple kudos, right?
MalMuses: Oh yeah, that’s true.
Ellen: Because I used to be able to leave like five or six kudos because our internet here is so bad. [ Laughs ]
MalMuses: And it used to be a little bit of a game with you. [ Laughs ]
Ellen: Yeah …
MalMuses: See how many, how many occurred when you hit the button.
Ellen: I used to love leaving multiple kudos, but oh well. They got taken away.
MalMuses: Yeah it did. Just one kudos per person now, which, you know, is the fair way probably, but it was a fun little thing before, to see the multiples.
Ellen: Yep.
MalMuses: Okay.
Ellen: Shall we go on to talking about the fics then?
MalMuses: Yeah, shall we dig into our fics?
Ellen: Let’s do that.
MalMuses: Would you like to go first? Pick your first one?
Ellen: Sure.
MalMuses: Alright.
Ellen: We’ve probably got the same ones, you know.
MalMuses: I don’t know. We probably should have checked that first, but I guess we’ll find out.
Ellen: Yeah, we [ unclear ] checked.
MalMuses: [00:11:00] No, I tried. I did try to pick some that I thought maybe you wouldn’t have, and that we haven’t already mentioned on the Podcast because, definitely had some favorites this year, but we’ve already talked about them in depth, so I tried to pick ones that we haven’t mentioned yet.
Ellen: Alright. Well, I, I’m going to, the first one I’m going to talk about, I don’t think we’ve mentioned yet, but, but it is Enchanted Ink by castielslostwings. I don’t know if you’ve got that on your list.
MalMuses: It is on my list. That’s fine.
Ellen: Oh no!
MalMuses: That’s fine, I’ll just, I’ve got my entire list in front of me. So I’ll just pick ones that you haven’t picked yet.
Ellen: Okay. Alright. Well, I mean, Wings has written lots of amazing fic this year. Including like other favorites, fandom favorites, like Fire and Ice for instance. And you know, Darkness Around the Sun, and a bunch of other really awesome longer fics that I love.
[00:12:00] But, and I’m like an unapologetic Wings fangirl, so, you know, I’m just gonna rave about all of these and sorry Wings, I love you. But this one especially is, Enchanted Ink is like my, I think my absolute favorite of this year. So I won’t read out the summary. I’ll just try and explain it a bit.
It’s, so, it’s like a, it’s an AU where there’s magic that brings tattoos to life. So people have tattoos and they can move around on the body and the tattooists cast spells to create the effects that these tattoos produce. And so Castiel has, has been, he broke up with someone who, who actually purposely damaged his wings tattoo. He has wings on his back and they produce like a wing effect behind him, which is just such, like the imagery of that is one thing, but now that we have this artwork from Gio as well. I think that, that Wings commissioned from her for this fic. I need to reread the fic now because you get the full kind of visual image of this.
[00:13:00]So Cas with tattoos all over him and these wings like spreading out from behind his back. Oh my god, fantastic. But, so Dean and Sam are the tattoo artists who like, they work in the Bunker as their like shop. And you know, the whole concept of this tattoo magic thing is just brilliant. I love it. And yeah, obviously Cas comes to them needing help with fixing his wings because they’re broken, and, and Dean helps him out.
So, and you know, love ensues as usual, but I just, I thought it was an amazing concept. It blew my mind and [00:14:00] I just, you know, love the way that Wings writes, you know, romance and also all the little Easter eggs in there like, you know, hamsters and random stuff that she adds in there is really brilliant. So. Do you agree?
MalMuses: Very much. That was, like I said, on my list as well, because that was one of my favourite fics of hers this year, and I absolutely loved it, and obviously fresh in my mind at the moment, because we did have that lovely art from Gio, which I think everyone needs to check out the fic if they haven’t before, just so that they can see that amazing piece of art.
Ellen: Yes!
MalMuses: Let it lure some people in to read that amazing fic, because it’s so good. I really liked it, like you said, I really liked the whole tattoos, moving aspect, that was really cool.
Ellen: Yes, I would love a tattoo, like, I don’t have any tattoos, but if I did, I would love one that moved around.
MalMuses: I have a few and they would be a lot cooler if they moved.
Ellen: [00:15:00] Yeah. Or like change color or I don’t know, it might be a bit creepy at first, but no.
MalMuses: It’s very magical. It’s almost almost Harry Potter-like to me. Like it seems like something that would exist in that world.
Ellen: Yeah. Yeah.
MalMuses: I guess because of, you know, like the moving paintings and things that they have. So it’s just that, like wonderful, magical element in a world that otherwise seems kind of pretty, kind of normal, modern AU. And I really like worlds like that where it’s the world that you recognize, but then there’s some little twist or change.
Ellen: Yes. Yeah. And if that little twist happens to be that there is magic, then I am all in. [ Laughs ]
MalMuses: Yeah, me too. [ Laughs ] Okay, so for my first pick for the year, something completely different from magical tattoos, I am going to talk about the South Side Swing series by, now I believe the name is tiamatv. [00:16:00] In case anyone out there has ever wondered, pronouncing people’s AO3 usernames is the bane of my life.
So, sorry if that’s pronounced incorrectly. It’s a series of fics, technically a series of one-shots, or I think a couple of them just have maybe two chapters, just kind of shorter stories, but it is one large kind of overarching narrative that all together is about 75,000 words. Started off just with a one-shot and then ended after I think six of them.
So I’m going to read the summary from the first one because it gives the kind of the best idea of what’s going on without spoiling for the later stories. So the first one is just called South Side. And the summary says:
[00:17:00] Dean knows he’s distracted. He is the street boss of the Chicago outfit, and he really can’t afford to not have his head in the game. He’s here to meet the damned Bratva who’s been running around his city for the past week, and if he fucks up, Bobby will kill him. Well, if this job doesn’t do it first, if only he could keep his mind off the hot accountant from last night.
So, as you can tell immediately from the summary, I’m sure there’s a great twist to this story, and it does have several, I think, really popular tropes in it. I think that kind of mob, mafia type stories are quite popular in the fandom, they’re actually not, and I think it actually goes as a good point for this fic for me to point out that they’re actually not one of my favourite AU types necessarily.
They’re not something that I seek out. But this particular one made such an impact on me that it became one of my favourite fics of the year, regardless.
Ellen: Awesome.
MalMuses: [00:18:00] And it does have a, I will say a Russian mafia Castiel, he will point out quite often in this fic that he is not Russian, he was born in Brooklyn, but he does have that, that Russian element to it, which a lot of us like in fic.
Ellen: Yes, indeed.
MalMuses: And I don’t even know where to begin explaining this story. This poor author is probably sick of me commenting on this story by now, because I, have been back and read it multiple times throughout this year, the whole thing, over and over and over.
It’s just the way that it’s written is really gripping. They write a really, really fantastic Dean POV for the whole thing. And yet somehow, even though you’re not in Cas POV, you can still work out what he’s thinking a lot of the time. It’s really, really hot, I will say that. This is some incredibly high quality chef’s piss smut in this, really good.
[00:19:00] But it’s also, you become interested in the story of how these two men from technically allied, but possibly opposing factions of the crime world, as it were, end up together and kind of keep that under wraps and don’t even label it for a very long time. And how that happens and watching the kind of emotional development of it is the best part for me.
There’s not some huge kind of mafia crime story in this, so if you think that, you know, you’re not necessarily really into crime stories or anything like that, I really wouldn’t let that put you off with this because it’s very character-focused, it’s not really focused on, you know, some, although there is plot going on in the background, you can keep track of various escapades that they’re both involved in, it’s really not what’s driving it in this one.
[00:20:00] And one thing that I actually wrote down, and I know I’ve mentioned in comments to the author as well, the stories are all set in Chicago, which is one of my favorite cities in America. [ Laughs ] And it’s written so well that I can basically picture myself walking around the city while I’m reading this fic, or any of the fics in this series, and it’s just so colorfully done that even if you’ve never been there, the city itself feels like a character. I don’t know what else I could say about this fic really. Do you have any questions? Have I sold you on it yet?
Ellen: Oh yeah, you sold me on it. I don’t normally read, you know, crime type AUs, I don’t know why, I just, it’s not really my thing. I don’t do, like, you know, true crime or mysteries or anything like that. But, but I, I love a romance and that sounds pretty amazing. So yeah.
MalMuses: Yeah, definitely recommend this one. [00:21:00] Almost, almost, especially for people who don’t usually go for that kind of crime type thing. I’m sure it’s great if you do, because you’ll already have kind of a love for those kinds of tropes, but otherwise it’s almost like a, like a good starter, starter crime fic.
Ellen: Yeah.
MalMuses: And it’s, it’s always fun to have a bit of a, bit of a Strangers to Lovers thing going on in fic sometimes, I think.
Ellen: Fabulous. It’s going on my list then.
MalMuses: Yay, I’ve converted you. [ Laughs ] I hope that I can convert some other listeners as well because I will happily chew anybody’s ear off about this fic for hours.
Ellen: Awesome.
MalMuses: So if anybody wants anyone to talk to about this fic, you know where to find me.
Ellen: So my second one that I’m going to mention is called Memories Bring Back Memories (Bring Back You) in brackets, it’s really hard to say like, you know, with punctuation, but that’s the entire name of the fic. It’s by sobsicles, previously known as Son of a Bitch Supernatural. [00:22:00] Well, I can’t remember her full, what her full name used to be before she’d shortened it to sobsicles, but we always just call her sobs for short. So.
MalMuses: Yeah. I think it was just Son of a Bitch SPN Family. That’s what it used to be.
Ellen: That was it. That’s it. But she shortened it to sobsicles.
MalMuses: But she was, she was always Sobs.
Ellen: That’s right. So this one was, it, okay, so this is published quite a lot earlier this year, like back in May. So the details of it is starting to get a little hazy, but I did love reading this fic at the time when I read it, I remember. This is basically, this is a Canon fic, a Canon divergent fic where at the very beginning, Cas and Dean wake up together, but, not together, but in the same place, but they don’t remember who they are or who each other is. And so they go through, oh, it’s probably quite a few chapters trying to work out, like based on what they’re carrying and what they find. They’re trying to, they know that someone is trying to kill them, so they’re kind of running away from something. [00:23:00] They find the Impala, I think, you know, they’re, they’re trying to get away. And then they, they work out that this person called Sam is important to them somehow, but they think he’s the one who’s trying to kill them.
So they’re trying to get away from Sam and it’s just like, the actual concept of it is amazing. And you know, eventually they, they kind of get their memories back, but not before Cas and Dean have fallen in love and, you know, got together, I guess it says, I think in the tags, it actually says that, it’s not exactly non-con, but they don’t have all of their memories when they get together. So, if that’s a problem for you, then maybe steer clear. But it’s really, it’s beautiful, like the way they actually do, you know, get together in the end and then they get their memories back and they’re like, Oh my God, what have we done? But the resolution is still really amazing. So yeah.
[00:24:00] So this fic was for the SPN Media Big Bang earlier in the year, so that means it also has some really beautiful, speaking of Gio, some really beautiful artwork throughout the fic. I think there’s a few different pieces in this one from Gio. So it’s based on, so this, cause it was a Media Big Bang, it’s based on a movie. So it says it’s not based off the Bourne Identity, but it’s inspired by it. So basically it’s just the losing of the memories and trying to work out what’s going on aspect of it that’s inspired this fic. So, yeah, brilliant. I loved it.
MalMuses: Yeah. I remember reading this one when it first came out. I remember there was a fun kind of little, little twist to the end, which I won’t spoil for anybody, but, the way that they kind of dealt with things at the end was, was quite fun in my opinion and I remember really liking Cas in this fic, so.
Ellen: [00:25:00] Yeah. Sobs always writes the good, the good angst, like, she gets right in there with the feels, you know? Which is always fun.
MalMuses: I’m hoping that plenty of people will try it out, even kind of with some of the, the angsty overtones, because it does have, you know, a happier ending, you know, there is a happy ending to it. But it’s also quite fun, I think, to see both of them without their memories.
It’s kind of fun to see them just, without all those burdens that we’re used to them carrying, that at least for a good portion of this fic, they’re not aware of them. They’re kind of worried about other things, you know, about the fact that, they might be serial killers and there might be somebody trying to track them down and they don’t know what’s going on. So they have issues, but yeah,
Ellen: Yes! [ Laughs ]
Maluses: it’s fun to kind of see them in a canon context, be able to take a break from their baggage for a while.
Ellen: Yes, yeah, cause that’s right, they do wake up and one of them’s covered in [00:26:00] blood and then he’s like, Are you hurt? And the other one’s like, No, I don’t think this blood’s mine. And from then on it’s like, Oh shit, like are we serial killers? Yeah, it’s just the way that that all played out was so good. I loved it.
MalMuses: Okay, shall I move on to another fic?
Ellen: Yeah.
MalMuses: Yeah. Alright, I’m going to take a dip back into something kind of magical-ish. Much shorter, this is an 8,000 word story. But it’s one that, I’ve kind of, lived rent-free in my mind and I’ve been back and read several times so I thought it was one that was worth mentioning. And it is Sympathy for the Devil by followyourenergy. So we’ve had Mary on to chat to us before but we didn’t get to talk about this particular fic then. And as it’s one of my favorites, I’ll go ahead and read the summary to you.
Dean needed money for his sick brother’s medication. After trying everything else he could think of, the peasant had only one solution left: face the kingdom’s fearsome [00:27:00] dragon, the Devil, who lived with his riches on the top of the castle of the beloved late Prince Castiel. He knows he’s in for a losing battle, but he must do everything he can. But the Devil surprises him, and through mutual kindness the two strike up a friendship, one that leads to great and beautiful things.
So, as I think is quite clear from the summary and the text, this is a Dragon Castiel fic.
Ellen: Yes!
MalMuses: So it is a kind of fantasy, fantasy-realm kind of story with peasant Dean and Prince Cas, and it’s a Friends to Lovers kind of fluffy courtship sort of story. There’s only 8,000 words, so it’s one of those things where I’m like, look, it’s short, just give it a go. Trust me. It’s, it’s 8,000 words, you can do it. No, I really love this one. I love the idea of Cas as the dragon, as this somewhat misunderstood, fearsome beastie.
Ellen: [00:28:00] Yes.
MalMuses: Because in a way that is quite, quite Canon for him sometimes, I think,
Ellen: Yes!
MalMuses: Because we have this, this kind of, you know, he is, he is very much other, he is not human. And he can be quite fearsome when he wants to be, but then he also has his, his moments where we see, we see the softer side. I think that you’ve probably read this one as well, haven’t you, Ellen?
Ellen: Yep. I sure have. I, I mean, you know I’m a sucker for fantasy anyway. But I especially love, well, dragon stories in general, But, ones where the dragon turns out to be a good guy. That, I love that, which is why, like, I don’t think that’s a spoiler because it’s Dean and Cas, like, you know, what’s going to happen.
MalMuses: Yep. Yeah.
Ellen: But that’s why I love like this, the Pern series by Anne McCaffrey so much, because the dragons are like a part of their, of their community and they’re, [00:29:00] you know, important to the way of life that they have there. And I just really love that. So yeah, when I was surprised when I, you know, I read this one because a lot of Mary’s other works tend to be either canon or modern AUs or, you know, not sort of magical components that much. But she did a fantastic job with this one. I really loved it too.
MalMuses: Yeah, it was a nice little surprise treat from her. I was very happy to read this coming from her. So, anytime you feel like doing another fantasy fic, Mary, you’ve got two people right here that will read it.
Ellen: Absolutely.
MalMuses: Yeah, and I do love a good Creature fic as well. So, this I think is a very good one. There’s a certain quality to good Creature fics with having the Creature be expressive enough to still be the character while looking like something else.
Ellen: Yeah.
MalMuses: [00:30:00] And Mary very much managed to hit that one right on the nose. I think she did really well.
Ellen: So my third one, I’ve umm’ed and ah’d because a lot of my favorite fics that I read this year, which will come out in the, I’m gonna, I’m gonna write a Tumblr post with my top, it’s probably gonna be like my top 20 or 50 or something, I don’t know, ‘cause there’s so many, but a lot of them,
MalMuses: Top 100!
Ellen: That I love the most are actually ones that we have read for the podcast that we’ve already talked about. So I had to sort of hunt through and pick one that I haven’t talked about before. And I think this one was you know, definitely one of my favorites that we haven’t mentioned is The Smell Before the Rain by jscribbles. So we did talk to, to Scribbs earlier in one of our other episodes. But I don’t think we mentioned this fic.
So this, yeah, this is A/B/O but it’s also Canonverse. [00:31:00] So the boys are, this is after they defeat, sorry, after they, let me see this, the end of Season 14 when they’re trying to defeat God, but, you know, Jack’s dead and Chuck is upset with them. So he sends them to another universe, which is almost the same as the one they have except it is A/B/O and they are very confused by the entire thing because none of them obviously know what A/B/O is, like what Alphas and Omegas are.
And so Cas, he starts feeling sick and, you know, feverish, and I mean, we know what’s going on because, you know, we know about A/B/O, but they don’t, and they’re sort of really, Dean’s really worried about him and has to try and, you know, make him feel better and, and then eventually Sam’s like, you know, he, he looks it up, he does some research and he finds out that Cas is actually an Omega and he’s going into heat. [00:32:00] So he’s like, Dean, whatever you do, you don’t touch him.
MalMuses: [ Laughs ] Yeah, that information comes a little late for Dean.
Ellen: Yeah, because you know, it’s already kind of happened. But anyway, so they can’t control their urges in that. But the thing about this fic, before you go into it, that you need to know, is that it does have graphic violence and, like, rape, basically.
Cas has a really, really difficult time in this fic. And I think that’s one of the reasons that I, this one stuck with me for so long, because it is the depth of feeling in this. Because he is, you know, he’s pregnant, basically. I guess that’s not really a spoiler to say that because it’s, it happens quite early on.
But he’s, you know, taken away from Dean and locked up, basically. And goes through a lot of really, really hard angst. Which I don’t normally, I would not normally choose to read, like, extremely heavy angst fics, because, you know, I read, I read fic to escape. [00:33:00] But, but because, like, you know, I love, love the way that Scribbs writes. She’s brilliant at writing the, the heavy feels, and obviously the ending is, you know, a happy ending. It’s all resolved in the end, but yeah, there is a lot of like, really heavy stuff in the middle of this. But I do love the way that the A/B/O is represented in like a, you know, with our canon boys, I guess. And also there’s babies, which is always nice.
MalMuses: Yeah, I don’t know if this is just me, but I find myself more able to enjoy angst when it’s in a canon setting than in an AU setting. Like if I’m putting the boys or reading them in an Alternate Universe, I feel like they deserve better in some way. [00:34:00] But if they are in Canonverse, I’m like, well, angst is their, their bread and butter. They’re really, so I just, I find it a lot easier to read it.
Ellen: That’s so awful to say, but you’re so right.
MalMuses: Yeah. Plus we get that opportunity to fix it when we, we write the angst in Canon fics, which is the part that we never get to see in the show, you know, we get to write the happy ending and to fix it. Which this, this story does have a lovely kind of ending to it. So, you know, you can go into it knowing that, which I think is, you know, it’s another, another way to be able to just enjoy it for what it is and not let the angst break you down too much.
Ellen: Yeah. And also she does say in the tags that the, the non-con and the graphic parts are skippable. And she does say that at the start of the chapter, you can skip this part. Here’s basically what happened. So if you don’t want to read the, the really nasty bits, you don’t have to. And it, yeah, I guess, it was hard to read because of the angst parts, but it stuck with me. [00:35:00] You know, it lives in my head sometimes.
MalMuses: Yeah, one of the aspects I really enjoyed about that fic is that the world they are put into is, like I said, similar but different to the one that they’re used to. And to that end, they all technically had counterparts in that universe, like in all of the other universes that Chuck made in canon, there were other Deans and and Cas’s and Sams.
Ellen: Yep.
MalMuses: In that particular ‘verse, Sam and Dean are no longer around so it’s not like they’re running into themselves, but they do run into a whole other version of Castiel which, it’s really interesting the way that they’re done and the way that the bond between Dean and Cas is shown again with this AU character in it. And it’s a different bond to the one he has with his, with his Cas.
Ellen: Yeah. Yeah.
MalMuses: But it’s definitely still there. [00:36:00] And I really, really loved the way that that was done. I loved the, the kind of ultimate, almost, if, if Endverse!Cas was an angel, almost.
Ellen: Yeah.
MalMuses: I really liked the way it was done. And that character was, was amazing. I loved that part of that fic. So, one for, one for Omegaverse fans, one for Endverse fans, one for angst fans. I think there’s a lot going on in that story actually, so a lot of different people could read that one I think.
Ellen: Yep, definitely. What’s your third one then?
MalMuses: Okay, my third one, for something completely different. So, every now and again I like to change up my fic reading with, kind of, I like to think of it as like an extreme AU, so something completely different, like something historical, or something in space, or something completely different. [00:37:00] And my itch for that got scratched by Ltleflrt this year.
At the beginning of the year, she finished posting Hunter’s Caress, which is a western AU. And I will go ahead and read the summary, because it’s going to do a much better job of telling you what the story is about than I will.
Castiel Jameson won’t rest until the outlaw who murdered his brother faces justice, and Dean Winchester is the only man alive who can help him track the villain down. Some say Winchester is a cold-blooded killer himself. Others say he’s been wronged his whole life. All Castiel knows is that the desire glinting in Dean’s green eyes is even more dangerous than he is. Castiel fights to keep his mind on business, but during the long nights on the trail with a dangerously handsome hunter, he finds himself dreaming of yielding to Dean’s illicit kisses and losing himself in lawless passion.
Dean Winchester is about to hang when Castiel saves his neck with his crazy plan, but dying might be better than spending day and night playing nursemaid to such an infuriating city slicker. [00:38:00] He appreciates the stubborn detective’s desire for justice, but he’d appreciate Cas a lot more if he’d stop being a lawman long enough to just be a man. He certainly has all the right equipment. Dean aches to run his fingers through Castiel’s dark hair, he yearns to know how Castiel’s golden skin will feel against him. Before the coming of the next dawn, Dean vows to teach him the pleasants and sweets rewards of a hunter’s caress.
So, what else is there to say, really? [ Laughs ]
Ellen: Yeah, it’s a very detailed summary.
MalMuses: Yep, this is a long fic, this is 160,000 words, this one.
Ellen: Yep.
MalMuses: There is a lot of plot, which I think is kind of hinted at in the summary there. There’s obviously a lot of, of Dean and Cas sexual tension and, and passion in this one. Though it’s, it’s definitely more of a slow burn than I guess could be expected from, from that summary. [00:39:00] Though it’s not, it’s not super slow, but there’s actually a lot of plot going on.
Dean is a hunter in this story of the supernatural variety, and the beginning of the fic finds him about to be hung for clearing a nest of vampires, which unfortunately somebody, somebody saw, and saw, you know, him, him murdering somebody. Him and Sam are both in, in big trouble. And Cas comes along wanting to hunt down the outlaw Alistair White. And he believes that Dean is the only person who could manage to take him there and survive, as Dean has had previous dealings with Alistair.
Ellen: Alistair’s always such a good baddie.
MalMuses: He is. He’s, he’s, he’s really one of the OG, like best baddies, I think, in the fandom. So.
Ellen: Yeah.
MalMuses: [00:40:00] I mean, it’s really good in this because you have this, this whole like Western aspect where you feel like you kind of know what to expect. Like, we’ve all seen Western movies or you know like, we, we know those tropes but then throwing in this whole supernatural element with, like demon possession and then supernatural added in really changes things up a little bit.
Ellen: Yeah.
MalMuses: And I find that the two things went together surprisingly well. [ Laughs ]
Ellen: Yeah. I mean, well, they’ve had Westerns in the show after all, so I guess it’s a natural fit.
MalMuses: Yep. Because we can all picture Dean immediately, thanks to that episode I think.
Ellen: Yeah! Exactly.
MalMuses: Yeah, it was a long one, I think it was about 30 chapters by the time it finished.
Ellen: Yeah.
MalMuses: Like I said, it was about 160,000 words.
Ellen: Yep.
MalMuses: But well worth reading. I found it to be a fic that didn’t kind of slow down and get dull at any point. Like, the plot just kept going, even when, you know, Dean and Cas were kind of on their, kind of slow boil for a while there. [00:41:00] The plot kept going and then even when the plot was, you know, taking detours, you had Dean and Cas to keep up with. So.
Ellen: Right. Okay.
MalMuses: It really kept me kind of on the edge of my seat for quite a while with this one, especially because it has like a kind of Enemies to Lovers aspect going on, which, when it’s done well, I really like, and it’s definitely done really well in this one. Like they have legitimate reasons to be enemies. But at the same time, you want to yell at them because they’re definitely much better if they just work together.
Ellen: Idiots to Lovers.
MalMuses: Yeah. Always Idiots to Lovers, isn’t it? [ Laughs ]
Ellen: Yeah.
MalMuses: There is, there is a little bit of violence in this one, I wouldn’t say it was any worse than canon necessarily, but you know, there are references to things that happen in, in the Old West. So, you know, lots of violence and, and murder and rape. [00:42:00]So that’s not something that’s happening to the characters, but it’s, you know, something that exists within that world. So.
Ellen: Sounds awesome.
MalMuses: Anything else that I should say about this one? I’m trying not to, to avoid kind of, major plot spoilers, because there is obviously, like I said, quite a bit of plot in this one. So I’m kind of trying to talk around it without spoiling the plot itself. It’s always awkward trying to find a way to relay your enthusiasm for like certain parts of a fic without being able to actually actively spoil those parts for anybody.
Ellen: Yeah.
MalMuses: Basically, please read it. It’s good. It’s great. I love it. [ Laughs ]
Ellen: Or I’ll have to put it on my list. The list of neverending [ unclear ].
MalMuses: I think, if I remember correctly, I think the general concept for this came from a romance novel. Yes, it was. It came from a romance novel called Desperado’s Caress. Which obviously was completely changed up and made to work with Supernatural and all the rest of it. But if you happen to have read that novel, then this one would be one for you, I think. [00:43:00] I haven’t read the book, though I’m actually now quite curious to, just so I could kind of see what elements came from that.
Ellen: Cowboy romance, there must be a huge market for those, right? There must be heaps of them.
MalMuses: There’s got to be, yeah. They probably don’t all have demon possession in them, but, you know, their loss, really.
Ellen: Yep. [ Laughs ] Okay, well there are just a few of our favourites from this year. A lot of the other ones we’ve talked about in previous episodes, have definitely also made it onto my favorites list. White-Collar Contract, for instance, some of the other ones, Welcome to Pine Shores!, quite loved that one. You know, there was a bunch of different ones that we already talked about. So go back through our previous episodes and all of those ones I’d recommend for sure.
I will say a big shout out to everyone who has written coda fics for either 15×18 or 15×20. [00:44:00] I have been loving reading those this year. A lot of them are quite short, so I haven’t kind of bookmarked all of them or put them in lists, but they have been, you know, without exception, really fantastic. So thank you to everyone who wrote those.
MalMuses: It’s been quite healing to be able to read all of those, I think, actually.
Ellen: Definitely.
MalMuses: Really been helping me kind of deal with the end of the show, having all of those out there to read. So, if there’s anybody out there who’s still working on that kind of thing and you kind of wonder if you’ve maybe missed the boat with that or anything, then please don’t. I feel like I’ll be reading those for years to come yet.
Ellen: That’s so good to hear because I have a half written one that I feel like I’ll never finish. But maybe I will now.
MalMuses: Finish it. Yeah, finish it, I think.
Ellen: Alright.
MalMuses: There will never be too many ways to fix various episodes, I think.
Ellen: Uh-huh.
MalMuses: [00:45:00] Well, I had a whole bunch of fic this year, I actually did quite a lot of reading this year. A bunch of them have already been mentioned in the podcast. Like we talked about Christmas in July in the last episode, we talked about No Words earlier on, I think. Quite a few other ones. I will pull together a bunch for the blog post to kind of gather a few more that I’ve really enjoyed that we haven’t talked about in the blog post. And we unfortunately don’t have time to talk about today, just because if I talked about every fic that I’ve really enjoyed this year, we would have like a four hour long episode.
Ellen: Yes, absolutely. I’m going to do a Tumblr post as well listing a whole bunch of them too. So, keep your eye out.
MalMuses: Yeah. And we should probably mention that the Destiel Fanfic Favorites Survey has also just been posted for the year, [00:46:00] so that would obviously be a really good place to find recommendations for fic that was well loved this year, and new authors that you might not have heard of before that were well-loved this year as well. That’s now been posted, so.
Ellen: I think Unforth said that there were, now I’m testing my memory, over a thousand new fics that weren’t in the … does that sound right?
MalMuses: Yeah, I actually, I’m remembering a figure close to 1400, but I could be completely making that up.
Ellen: Yeah, there were, there were definitely,
MalMuses: Sorry if I’m making it up, Unforth.
Ellen: There were definitely multiple hundreds at least, maybe over a thousand fics that hadn’t been in the collection before that are now in it. And I had it open earlier and I closed it again.
MalMuses: And that is something that Unforth does yearly for this fandom, and I think probably doesn’t get quite enough credit for, because that is a lot of work to pull all of that together and deal with all of those survey responses. [00:47:00] So, a big thank you from me because I’m definitely somebody who uses the collection to browse around and find fic sometimes. So.
Ellen: Sorry, I was just opening it up. So there’s, there’s 2,800 works in that collection now, they’re all stories that, that someone has recommended at least one time. So, you know, you’re pretty much guaranteed a great read and you know, whatever type of story that you would like to read, there’ll be something in there for you, I’m sure. So yeah. We’ll put a link to that in our blog posts as well. Check it out. And thank you very much Unforth for all the work you do in putting that together. We love it.
So I guess, plans for this year, we’re going to keep on producing, you know, podcasts as we do every couple of weeks. New tropes to, you know, discuss and new people to talk to. So if you, as always, if you’ve got suggestions, you can send them in, but, next, for our next episode, I didn’t mention Cupcakes and Kittens as one of my favorites for this year, [00:48:00] even though it was, because we’re going to talk about it next time with MandalaRose. And we’re going to be discussing other fics where one or other of the boys is a baker. So Bakery AU fics next time.
MalMuses: Love a good Bakery AU. Make sure you bring some snacks to listen to that one.
Ellen: Yes. Cupcakes even. Or, or a kitten. You can bring a kitten. You can bring cupcakes and a kitten. [ Laughs ]
MalMuses: I can, I can do both. Yay.
Ellen: Awesome. So can I, but my cat’s like, you know, 10 years old.
MalMuses: Still a kitten though. If it’s a pet, it’s always a kitten.
Ellen: Yeah. Yeah. Sometimes it is. Alright. So yes, if you’d like to, you know, contact us and suggest, you know, ideas for future episodes, [00:49:00] or you just want to tell us about your favorites for this year, you can do that by, you can comment on our blog post, which is on mixtapebookclub.com, that’s where all of the links to all of these stories will be posted. You can email us contact (at) mixtapebookclub.com, or you can get in touch with us on social media where we are at mixtapebookclub for all of those.
MalMuses: Okay. Well, thanks for listening. We’ll talk to you again soon.
Ellen: And as always, remember the story isn’t over until we say it is.
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