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The last Supernatural ep we watched last night was 12x10 Lily Sunder Has Some Regrets. It and the end of 12x09 went some way to answering the question I was getting nowhere with yesterday - 'where's my in for fanficcing Castiel?'. That angel finally reached max gross load there and got angry with his situation to the extent of taking it out on his friends. He's acting put-upon and under-appreciated, exasperated to tears with the Winchesters' latest attempt to sacrifice themselves to save each other. That sarcastic, bitter, 'You're welcome,' at the end of 12x09 was a huge moment for the character.

Since beating Dean senseless back in S5 he's sat on his frustrations, fears, disappointments, and failures like a champ and put up with those of others with tired stoicism and humility. When he's screwed up, he's done so from honest motives - protect Winchesters; fix what's broke; be of service. He's been learning and growing in every way he possibly can - from practical and emotional experience, from suffering and loss, from personal failure, from self-reflection, from the Novak family he nuked just by showing up, and from his friends.

The early evolution of the season 4/5 angels storyline showed Heaven flailing because God had left the building without leaving a plan, the remaining archangels holding it all together with the Apocalypse as the be-all-and-end-all of existence. By season 6 they're fighting a multi-front civil war. By season 8 they're all but destroyed, their numbers dangerously low, and we learn that it's taken brutal brainwashing - repeated full factory resets in Castiel's case - to keep the rank and file angels in line since at least Biblical times. Even the higher ranking angels are lost sheep, guessing at what God wants of them and - whether explicitly or not - asking, 'Father, why?'

By the time God dropped in at the end of season 11, when it looked like his last and only chance, Castiel had nothing left to say to him and no questions he felt were worth asking. On the one hand maybe a missed opportunity for the characters, but on the other... maybe that lack of a conversation with Cas said it all? Chuck had The Conversation with Dean, and with Lucifer, but he has no connection with the lower-ranking angels. None. God is over Castiel, who keeps not quite playing out his role in the story; and Cas has been pretty well cured of his zealous 'because God' angel programming, along with any illusion of a benign or worthy father figure in Chuck.

He's left with this quietly resentful disappointment that turns easily to self-loathing and self-doubt when he encounters failure. He doesn't take the opportunity to share that with Chuck, a detail hammered home by also having Misha Collins play Lucifer in that setup - a no-holds-barred, personal, messy-emotional father-son relationship with God that Castiel never had.

He's gone from resentment towards Dean for distracting him from his obligation to Heaven with its security blanket of narrow, emotionless certainty to the complete reverse, focusing everything he has on the Winchesters - Mary included - because Cas still needs something to believe in and something to serve. He equates that, now, with his protective love for this human found-family who taught him how to feel, love and live. With Dean especially, who doesn't see his own value and keeps endangering his life and soul.

Cas doesn't believe in himself, though, not even slightly. He still only defines himself, knows himself, relative to something he views as greater and more important than himself, and as a cause worth killing or dying for. He's trying to do his duty as he sees it - his duty to the thing he has faith in. It still hurts him when that faith lets him down, and that's the 'in' I was looking for.

a big, soft, comfortable, comforting, private hug where they have time to get comfy and close their eyes and start to feel self-conscious but hold on tighter until it passes and feel each other's warmth and safety and they're just Home

adksksknft! But ngl I expected more porn?

I do tend to say it with porn, no? ;) These two have a history of gorgeous, meaningful hugs when it matters though. That and the profound-bond eyesex they seem relentlessly unaware of doing from the moment they meet.

As a fanwriter, I'm at a loss with "Destiel", I have to admit - the sheer weight of their backstory is intimidating. I'd love to use my smut toolkit to wrestle my way to understanding Dean and Cas as characters, as a romantic/sexual pairing, hell, as a phenomenon of modern fandom culture, but I doubt there's much left to add to all the Cas/Dean smut that's been written over the past 15 years. I'm way late to the Supernatural party. I'm so late they're talking "revival"! The stats on AO3 are mind-boggling for this pairing alone.

The hug post got me thinking about their finale smut potential and motivations, though!

Would their post-finale reunion go the smut route right away? Depends how smutty/romantic one's interpretation of their backstory is, I think. If I load a headcanon where they've already been lovers in the past, or wished they were but put it on hold, then yep, they'd be straight in there with the cinematic kiss the second they get enough eye-contact to reassure them that everything's okay between them. Don't come knockin' when Heaven's a-rockin'.

I sort of love that if I take the show at face value they're messier than that, though - that the show didn't give them a real-life-isn't-like-that cosy wrapup, just this lifechanging bond played out over 12 long seasons that even they struggle to categorise and rationalise, and probably couldn't explain on paper if their lives depended on it. They've both worked so hard to find their common ground, to accommodate each other's unique ways of being difficult, broken, and beautiful - but they're both pretty obtuse about the implications. I reckon they at least need a good run-up, and some actual, on-topic conversations in a no-stress environment before tearing each other's heavenly garments asunder, post-finale.

Cas loves Dean, and said so with (what he genuinely thought were) his final words, passionate and uncompromising and pure of intent, but what does monogamous love of a human mean to a fallen angel who's shown little sign of carnality or domesticity in his quest to adapt to humanity's ways and get comfortable with human emotions? He wanted something more than the closeness they had already by season 14/15, so bad you could spot him yearning at 300ft, but what? What exactly would his wish-fulfilment look like? Does he even know himself? What's Cas' #destiel headcanon? I'm open to it being happy and fulfilling human life-parter type sex, naturally, but also to it being... something other? Something so alien to humanity that he's sure Dean can't follow him there?

Dean loves Cas, less and less obliquely as the series progresses, but it's not a love he knows how to deal with. He goes with "brother" because that's the tidiest mental compartment he can find for the intensity of this bond, I think, and because blood family is always his frame of reference for everything that matters most to him. He grows more comfortable with it as Cas becomes easier to talk with, more emotionally articulate and outwardly human, but he also seems increasingly mystified by how to respond to it - something too big to ever get dealt with while they're so busy putting out apocalyptic fires and, you know, dying all the time.

I reckon Dean took Cas' love confession at face value, that it devastated and humbled him, that he wasn't anywhere near ready to hear it said aloud; that hearing it as 'goodbye, I'm dying for you' was one of the cruelest personal blows he's ever taken; that he understood Cas didn't need him to do or say anything in return at that moment, but must regret that he didn't speak his mind sooner; that everything else Cas said to him in those few minutes caused such a profound shift in his understanding of himself that he's got a lot of quiet thinking to do before he's back on an even keel and ready to act decisively about his relationship with anyone else. Dean's typically slow at processing things he can't wrap his head around instantly, things that leave him feeling exposed, and... well... he didn't get much time after that.

I keep warily eyeing that weirdly amorphous and dreamlike Heaven they ended up in, too, with its optional passage of time and sense of... emptiness. Especially having seen how antsy Dean looked about the deal in The Winchesters. Can he even play by Jack's hands-off rules up there?

I'd hate for a belatedly vicious plot punchline to sneak up on the happy couple while they were blissed out and off guard from making the nekky love in a heavenly sunny meadow full of bees or whatever, screwing their way towards happily-ever-after, but that's the way my brain seems to be leaning on the finale's picture of Heaven. My guard is up, my suspicion's aroused, so anything I write to consummate their relationship, set post-finale, would get tangled up in that less attractive puzzle.

I felt the fandom's howling wilderness of pain in 2020 and I don't want to make it WORSE by pitching in now with unnecessarily angsty smutfeels, y'know? I'm all about the character-building angst and hope never to change, but even I think these two deserve an uncomplicated, happy sex life - if for no other reason than cosmic compensation for all they've sacrificed and all the times they got hit, stabbed, or dead - by this point in the story.

"If I load a headcanon where they've already been lovers in the past,"

Please share the past lovers headcanon?Season/episodes?

I didn't have anything specific in mind when I wrote that. I remember getting to the early season 8 episodes before actually thinking, "Wait...did Dean and Cas fuck in Purgatory?"

Then I got overexcited about Naomi brainwashing Cas and the meta-storyline and all the lovely hurt/comfort/whump/angst, and my slash braincell wandered off for a bit.

Season 9 pinged my slash radar too, human-feels!Cas and distracted!Dean, but that season could've been intentionally written to keep the two of them physically separated. It's like a season-long chastity belt!! Nothing a determined slasher can't overcome with tenacity and a Jedi handwave, spinning time for them out of a pause for breath in the narrative (9x03 I'm No Angel and 9x06 Heaven Can't Wait being obvious choices with a smidge of offscreen unaccounted-for time), but I'm still at the stage of noodling over why the Supernatural creators made that choice for their story and characters. Cuz it plays like they just plain got spooked by the 'profound bond', there (!).

If you like a canon-compliant fanfic setting (which I usually do), most of Supernatural is thin gruel as a setting for any sustained 'shipping - for any pairing. I can think of a dozen good moments where I could shoehorn in a feels-raw PWP without difficulty, but anything lasting and exploratory between them... They're just so ridiculously occupied the whole time!

I bet there's a ton of 5x04 'Endverse' Cas/Dean fanfic, because it's one of the few opportunities to really get stuck in for any sustained smutty storyline - to give them days/weeks/years to play with. And because those two were so very obviously doing the deep rugged nasty anyway, obviously.

Fanfic evolution, history, context, noodling, AUs and the Omegaverse

I've had a lousy few health days and ended up listening to a long, slow-burn, characterisation-rich Omegaverse fanfic in between sleeps. I've wanted to get my head properly around the A/B/O AU concept for ages (I'm feeling my fannish-elder age and thinking a lot about our evolution as a creative community after we got online, about the gamechangers like Buffy, Harry Potter, X-Files, and Supernatural) but never found one that was this much in-character to keep me engaged for the duration of a long read. I've only finished reading smutty shorts before.

I mean, I'm so broad-minded about fictional content that I have trouble fitting my mind inside my actual skull (my joke excuse for chronic migraine!), but I'm basically here to read about the characters I already love being recognisably themselves in some way, even in the most extreme AU setting. I wander off quickly with a 'meh' if that's missing, as I tend to do with original works/characters unless the writing is next-level extraordinary (Wolf Hall, Dresden Files, Titus Groan/Gormenghast, most of Terry Pratchett) and don't have two fucks to rub together about the kink side of fanfiction. I'll read it if it's there in an otherwise engaging piece, but it's never a draw for me.

I'm trying not to get all analytical until I finish hearing/reading this fanfic, but my brain-spider's groping as far back as Kirk/Spock and Amok Time for context and history, here. And I wouldn't say the same about mpreg, which I've tended to view as an evolution of smarm (The Sentinel fandom's 1990s flavour of it in particular) and soft whump, more than of graphic, romantic slash like K/S - yet I thought all this time that mpreg and the Omegaverse shared a common ancestry. Innteresssting.

I had the vague thought as I listened that some of the best AU fanfic I ever consumed came from the Star Wars: TPM/Jedi Apprentice fandom - the Qui-Gon and Obi-Wan pairing stuff on the Master Apprentice mailing list and archive. Soaring AUs and worldbuilding, yet deeply grounded in what little we then knew of those two characters. And there was so little to go on - I mean, Lucas' prequels were, to put it politely, heavily stylised rather than emotionally deep. That fandom had epic AU/AR fics that took my breath away with their character-richness, with their emotional beats, and had me going, "How?!?!" with writerly awe at a time when I was no slouch myself in the writing department. I need to find the energy to get myself up to date with the Disney!Star Wars content explosion and pay another visit.

Lurker here reading your new spn posts. I love your rumbelle and spydoc love scenes a lot because you always make it so real for them. What would Castiel be like in bed in your fanfics compared to those characters?

Hello, Lurker. And thank you for reading my fic! You know, I think Cas would mostly be kind. And what that meant exactly would be completely dependent on his partner's needs. He'd have no human hangups or taboos of his own to worry about.

Once he gets the hang of humans, Cas is heartbreakingly gentle and measured in everything he does outside of a battle scenario. That has the potential to make him a mind-blowing lover. Certainly a generous one. He'd be intense, because he always is, and that butts up hard against the sense that he's inhuman. That his sensory experience of sex, of touch, isn't remotely the same as that of a human - and after he tried sex during his brief time living as a human, he'd be in a position to perceive the difference.

A hardened soldier character who can turn that off and be something else away from the battlefield is fascinating to me, because of course, Cas is capable of being fierce. Terrifyingly powerful. Single-minded to the point of obsession. Completely fucking deadly without meaning you any ill will at all as he stabs you neatly through the throat.

If I set a story during his earlier seasons, I think I'd explore how much of that Cas leaves at the door when he's intimate with somebody - and not just in steamy smut scenes, but in any setting where he's with someone he trusts and has no reason to expect to whip his blade out and be a defender or fight for his life. In later seasons, yeah, just gentle and patient and full of that bubbling-under passionate devotion to the people he cares about. His focus on the task in hand is unequalled by any other character I can name, so if he decided to be with somebody... whew!

None of that compares directly with Rumple and Belle, nor with the Doctor and the Master. I don't think?? Rumple has some of that gulp-inducing tenderness, they all share some of Cas' intense fire and focus, but...

The way I write those pairings is... I guess situational would be the right word? I portray a committed but rocky relationship from the get-go for Belle and Rumple. Antagonism and pain for the Master and the Doctor. I imagine I do that for all characters, all pairings I write, but I've never thought much about how those situations compare with one another (so thank you for making me start!)

You ever read a fanfic and wonder when the canon show writers began their very not secretive side hustle

With the A B O fics are you looking at omega Cas or omega Dean? Or neither?

I haven't looked for anything in particular - just followed a few rec posts on Tumblr to a small selection of authors on AO3. They've all been omega!Dean/alpha!Cas without fail.

I'm only guessing, obviously, but I think it'd be a lot harder to pull off coherent Omegaverse worldbuilding in an omega!Cas piece, while still keeping him recognisable. Not impossible - it's not like he has to be comfortable in that role or even a good fit for that aspect of the dynamic, and the harder he bucked the more drama you'd get, just like on the show - but Cas's past and identity issues maybe don't lend themselves to the Omegaverse AU transplant in the way that Dean's seem to. Maybe because we (and, as it turned out, he) know so little about his life before he met the Winchesters?

I've actually been really interested by the roles assigned to the other Supernatural characters in these Omegaverse stories I've sampled. Some - Benny, Garth, Charlie, Naomi, Rowena, Alastair, Gabriel - are pretty consistently placed in the narratives, while others very wildly from author to author and from AU to AU. Many of the named angels remain absolute dicks, or become dicks even if they weren't dicks on the show. Crowely is always pot-luck, as is Chuck. Jack's an infant, if he's there at all (most of the stories I've bookmarked so far predate his arrival on the show). Sam is all over the shop, everything from soulless!Sam bad guy to long-lost brother to years dead. When he's not dead and not a dick, he invariably ends up with a happy marriage or similar. That keeps making me smile.

I know I must be seeing "Destiel"-weighted sample bias purely because of where I sourced my initial recs from, but I keep picturing these authors grinning maniacally and going, "Right, Cas, some massively gut-churning guilt-angst for you (stay strong blue eyes); Dean, here's your dollop of identity-angst and past-abuse trauma with severe PTSD - oh, and a truly weird alpha to deal with but don't worry, he's hung. Hey, Sam, buddy, have a wholesome marriage, a nice house, and a great career. Mazel tov, my friend!"

[Nym, slowly learning about the Omegaverse from its parent fandom, and cackling occasionally at the absolutely fucking insanely mean things we fanfiction writers do to the characters we love so much.]

i was doing some ao3 research (don’t ask) and i have never seen supernatural but i don’t understand how destiel has such a chokehold on fandom. this is genuinely insane.

LOOK AT THEM. everyone else is so close in numbers of works and destiel is 40,629 works ahead is crazy. and it just keeps growing as well. in 2023 they had only 102,783 and were 39,397 works ahead. nobody is ever catching up to them. no ship will ever compare to the chokehold destiel has on ao3