What's this, you're asking... season 16? Well, some folks have formed a group called Frontierland Productions and plotted out a 16th season of Supernatural, taking place in the years (yes, YEARS) between 15.19 and 15.20. When I read the most recent episode, "Take the Long Way Home," I expressed my love and writer ameliacareful suggested I recap it like a filmed episode. And then quickreaver basically double-dog-dared me, so here it is. A retelling of someone's fic. Will anybody care? Let's find out! But go read the fic first. Seriously, it's amazing.

And remember, any snark is written with the utmost love and respect...

THEN: Chuck. Jack. Sam and Dean are the subjects of a podcast. They went to Vegas and killed a minotaur. Same shit, different day, right?

NOW: We see the Winchesters in the Impala, staking out an apartment complex. Apparently they're waiting for a witch who is magicking up a career as a fashion designer, despite a lack of talent so appalling that even Sam Winchester recognizes it. I wonder what Tofer the witch would think about Sam's orange jacket? (I'm quite sure Tim Gunn would be disappointed, but kind.) Two women are dead, but (spoiler alert) we never find out if Tofer is killing his competition, or if his ugly-ass clothes are killing his models.

A cute little purple car shows up and the guys follow Tofer inside, using the building keys they stole earlier. Oh, wait, this guy's full name is Christopher Listofler? That's. Um. Unfortunate. Okay. Moving on. The door opens on its own before they have a chance to break in. Tofer is sitting there in his living room with a lit candle, for that nice witchy ambience. {Sidebar: I need to point out how pleased I am that Sam changed his hair a little bit after 15.19 and has long, face-framing bangs again, kind of like the back half of season 8. And no evidence of hairspray. I approve.}

Tofer immediately pegs them as Not FBI, but Sam, for some reason, is mesmerized by whatever is draped over a clothes dummy in the corner. He can't seem to look away from it. Dean is also distracted by it, but not to the same extent. Tofer gets out a spell that makes Sam hit the floor, so naturally Dean shoots him in the head. The candle sputters out but the room is brightly lit by a brilliant glowing cloud swirling near the ceiling.

Sam's eyes are open but he looks dazed and unfocused. Dean goes into full-on panic mode (nice!) and checks for a pulse. Sam suddenly comes back online with a gasp. Dean is still panicky, buzzing around Sam asking if he's okay and telling him not to move. Sam calmly touches his chest, gazes up at the glowy cloud swirling above him, and says "I think that's my soul."

Duh duh duh!!! Soulless Sam is in the house!

Title card!

{Sidebar: I also have to say I appreciate that season 16's title card is just shirtless Sam with wet hair, lying on his bed with his hands behind his head, staring sadly through the blades of his ceiling fan. It's a bold choice and I respect that.}

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My own personal muse has curled up and died. I've given up on my Big Bang that's due next week, and most likely the Oh Sam comment fill that I think is supposed to come out next week as well. All my muse gives me these days is the finger.

Luckily, other people continue to astound me. In particular, crowroad3, who wrote the amazing Caoinheadh, which is allegedly inspired by my 13.19 episode coda but surpasses it in so, so many ways. And kalliel, of whom I've often said I'd hate her if I didn't love her so much, because she's so talented she just makes me emerald fanfiction green with jealousy. Read How Many Thousands and tell me how right I am.


Why is this here? I don't know. Maybe I just needed to see it today. It's not always about you, you know.
(Sorry, I didn't mean that. It's for you too.)

I'm late to this, as I'm late to everything.


If you read LJ on your phone, your year-in-review graphic doesn't have the cheerful holiday goat, even if you're viewing it in a browser and not through the app. Thanks, LJ.

106 posts doesn't seem like very many, especially when you consider that approximately half of them must be episode recap/reviews and polls. I posted a couple of metas and 11 fics in 2017, although one was unfinished and another was actually posted to Tumblr before 2017, so that's really only ten written in 2017. And four of those were short episode codas (in fact, one was a single sentence). I guess my biggest accomplishment, if you can call it that, was that I finally participated in Summergen (which turned out to be a lot of fun and I will hopefully do it again this year). The rest of my posts were mostly nonsensical whining.

The interesting thing about this is, I've seen the stats for people on my flist who have a lot more posts and a lot more interaction from readers. And yet, my ranking of overall LJ users is pretty high (75 as of today). Since that ranking can't be based on my prodigious posting schedule (heh) or my large number of likes and comments (an average of a little over 17 per post, which is mostly from people who have entire conversations in my comments that don't involve me at all, not that I'm complaining because I actually love that y'all do that), so it's got to be based on hits. As in, maybe I get a lot of visitors (I do hit the top 25 posts occasionally) who just aren't commenting. So. Say hi, guys!

Anyway. My favorite things about 2017 were works that were done for me, not by me.

First, the incredibly talented crowroad3 posted all your lovers, a gorgeous little Trials!Sam fic, on my birthday. I said it then and I'll say it again: I'm simply not worthy.

Second, if you're like me, you have a silly fantasy that one day a talented, respected, dare I say beloved artist will read one of your works and say "I want to art that." And it happened to me, when quickreaver created this masterpiece to accompany my OhSam prompt fill. Literally a dream come true, guys.

Finally, tifaching got my spn_summergen prompt and turned it into Message in a Bottle, which is nothing I ever would have come up with, and I guess that's the best part of Summergen, isn't it? Someone taking your wee little seedling and nurturing it into a beautiful flower that you didn't even know existed?

So, that was my LJ year. Real life? Eh. There were upheavals of various kinds, medical dramas both human and canine, setbacks and triumphs. As always, I found myself ending the year pretty much in the same position I was in when it began - broke, exhausted, and frustrated at my inability to find a nice comfortable pair of black over-the-knee boots. Such is life.

How about some resolutions for 2018?

1. Finish those two fics that I've been poking at for a year - you know, the ones where you ignore the huge chunks of plot still to be written, and keep rewriting and refining the non-plot bits that you've already done?
2. Post more recs. Every time I love something, I should share it with you guys.
3. Continue to fight for my right to party.
4. Follow/friend more people. I have a bad habit of thinking I follow someone just because I read a lot of comments from them on my recaps or polls. Luckily, LJ is doing this thing now where they send me "things you missed," and I usually see that email and think "how did I miss this post?" and then realize it's because I haven't friended that person. So I'm gonna fix that.
5. Like more. Comment more. I'm bad at this, because I do almost all of my LJing on my phone, but I just need to get over it.
6. Endeavor to persevere.
7. Whine a little less. (Maybe. That's a hard one.)
8. Find those damn boots.

Let's have a great year!

13.01 On further review

( Spoilers for 13.01 )
And finally, I've been informed that my review is not actually a review because I "basically typed out the entire episode." So, I apologize to anyone who accidentally read an entire review and didn't realize, until the end, that I was basically typing out the entire episode, and was therefore spoiled.



13.01 Codas

So far, I've only seen a few, although all are outstanding. (If you like having your heart broken. Which I do). So allow me to recommend the following:

Gloaming by indefinissible

untitled 13.01 coda by themegalosaurus

A Son's Prayer by madebyme_x


My unfinished fic

This isn't an episode coda, it's more like a prologue. I started writing this right after Kelly made her escape in S12, and Lucifer was allegedly back in the cage. It got Kripke'd pretty quickly, so I set it aside. But after 13.01, I liked that I had kind of predicted the Sam/Dean dichotomy toward Jack (as if we didn't all see that coming), so even though it's rough, I'm going to post the part I actually finished...

( Read more... )

Title: Though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death
Genre: Gen, angst
Length: About 3100 words
Rating: Light R or hard PG
Characters: Sam Winchester, Dean Winchester
Spoilers: Mentions events that happened at the end of S12
Warnings: Language and a little bit of violent imagery
Author's Notes: My first attempt at Summergen! When I saw that my recipient was crowroad3, I was both overjoyed (because I'm such a huge fan) and horrified (because what could I write that would be worthy?) Thank you, my friend, for the fabulous prompts, and for being such an inspiration in general. Thanks also to the spn_summergen mods for running this challenge, which I know takes much time and dedication and blood and sweat and tears, and to every other participant, for providing so much awesome gen fic and art that I still haven't quite worked my way completely through, and thanks also to my darling speedy beta, manzanita_crow.
Synopsis: Something bad happens when you break a blood oath with a reaper. Sam and Dean have to fix it.


~~~

They leave the Impala at the Timber Lake Trailhead. Dean slams the trunk closed, shoulders his pack, and raises his eyebrows at Sam, as if to ask you sure about this? Sam shrugs. He's as sure as he'll ever be. It's not like there's anyone they can ask. Not like he has one of the most powerful witches in existence on speed dial any more. Not like there's any real way of knowing if this is going to work, if the weeks of sweat and blood prepping for this are actually going to pay off.

He unfolds the map and lays it across the trunk. "If we head straight east, we'll pick up Route 34 at Farview Curve, and we'll miss all this." Sam runs a finger along the switchback twists and hairpin turns of a section of Route 34. "Or we can go northeast, between these two creeks. It will take a little longer, since we'll have to backtrack some once we get to the road, but we won't have to cross a creek without a bridge."

Dean squints up at the cold morning sky, down at the frozen ground. Scuffs at the hard crust of snow with his boot. "Creek's probably frozen, don't you think?"

"Yeah. Okay. East it is." Sam folds the map and keeps his face neutral. Doesn't want to reveal how relieved he is that Dean actually... spoke. Contributed. Acted like he gives a shit, about this job or literally anything else. He threads his arms through the straps of his own pack, checks his compass, and starts down the slope away from the trailhead.

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And now, let me put in a plug for the story that was written for my own prompt. After S10 ended with Dean killing Death, I got a plot bunny where Dean actually killed Sam, and Death put him away in the promised mysterious safe place, and then stuff happened. But I didn't know what to do with it, so I put it away and eventually submitted it as a Summergen prompt. tifaching ran with it and took it to some unexpected places and I don't want to give away any details, because I want you to experience the lovely way it unfolds. But I do want you to read it, because it's awesome! Please check out Message in a Bottle and show some love!

I had a couple of conversations about the royal baby this weekend, and it was SO HARD not to say "And she was born on Sam Winchester's birthday!!!" My Tumblr and LJ have been full of Sam Winchester, for obvious reasons. I haven't had a chance to look at much of it but some time in the next couple of days I'm going to sit down and scroll until my eyes bleed. And it will be marvelous.

I'm way, way behind on LJ but I've managed to read a few things. I keep saying I'm not a slash fan (and I keep saying "I keep saying I'm not a slash fan") but over the past few days I've read three truly marvelous slashy fics that I can't not recommend, probably because they're from three of the best writers out there - less than 3333 by kalliel, Come Sail Away by indiachick, and Goodbye Stranger by frozen_delight. If you're like me and you shy away from "slashy slash" (as frozen_delight so aptly put it) but you like beautiful thinky lyrical writing that just might happen to have some subtle sexytimes or unrequited feeeeels, you must read these.

And for those in Other Fandoms, May the fourth be with you. But since everything comes back to Supernatural...

Just some thoughts I had after rewatching, and reading other peoples' posts...

( I'm STILL their bitch )

No spoilers in the comments, please! :-)

Happy birthday to duckondebut, though it's probably already well past her birthday where she is. If you're not reading her, you really really should. Here's a good place to start. You like Supernatural? You like Mystery Science Theater? You like funny? You like tragic? Then you'll like 9.02 with commentary from Sam and Hallucifer. Trust me.