Fan Fic Recs: Fic pairing--like wine pairing only with more H/C
You know those people who can match specific wines to best complement certain meals? There definitely needs to be a contingent of fandom that pairs Supernatural episodes together for best effect. Or fic together for best effect! For those of you with discerning Dean H/C palettes (all of you!), I'd like to offer up a feast of my recent favorites. I suppose if there's a strict theme it's "Dean and major depression"--and while I absolutely adore each fic individually, I'm reccing them together, and in the following order, because I think their interaction with each other adds a new exquisite flavor to the mix. There's something very special about a body of fandom that can continue a story together, however unintentionally, while keeping to styles and voices and interpretations that are also so vibrantly distinguishable from one another:
1. Prairie Wind (the On The Day It Rained Forever remix) by geckoholic
Characters: Dean, Sam
Genre: hurt/comfort, angst, curtain!fic (a bit)
Rating: PG-13
Warnings: self-harm
Summary: Out here, nothing to do, Dean's not getting better. - A while after Dean's back from hell, Sam decides what his brother needs is a little downtime. It doesn't work out as planned.
Reccer’s comments: This is tragic and gorgeous and phenomenally sad. I love the understatement of it, the attention to all the sad little things. And just--the idea that there's a good chance they've hit a point from which there just isn't any coming back. Not really.
[The original is also great and can be found here!: Prairie Wind by honeylocusttree]
2. In the Light by fannishliss
Characters: Dean, Lisa
Genre: hurt/comfort, angst
Rating: PG
Warnings: none
Summary: Back in the day, Zeppelin had made Dean feel fiery and alive and brimming with confidence. Dean remembered that feeling. 5x22
Reccer's Comments: This brings back everything I felt about 5x22/its afterward and then some. It lives and breathes its own music, as well as its nods to the music that has played such an important role for Supernatural and the Winchesters, with equal facility and grace. Just gorgeous.
3. it would be this by amonitrate
Characters: Dean, Lisa, Soulless!Sam
Genre: hurt/comfort, angst/drama
Rating: R
Warnings: soulless care-taking
Summary: "I'm not trying to mess with you, Dean. It's what you said. Leverage. The vamps can use Lisa and Ben against you."
Reccer's Comments: H/C is a great genre. NOT THAT I'M BIASED OR ANYTHING. (And you all assuredly approach the debate with equal impartiality. ;)) But I digress! There's a lot of reasons this fic is excellent--the attention to detail, its finest nuances, the depth and scope of its characterizations, its pacing, the fact that it is damn good writing on any day, in any genre--but I think the one enticement I can offer that is unique to this fic and this fic only is how perfectly it defines what hurt/comfort is all about. I don't want to give anything away, but what's at work in this fic is the reason hurt/comfort is a genre at all; and I don't think that we, as a corner of fandom, have that many opportunities to be able to point to something and say: That right there? is why I read fan fiction.
4. Morning Shift by downjune
Characters: Dean, Sam
Genre: hurt/comfort, curtain!fic (ish)
Rating: PG-13
Warnings: none
Summary: He awoke each morning with the desire to do right, to be a good and meaningful person, to be, as simple as it sounded and as impossible as it actually was, happy. And during the course of each day his heart would descend from his chest into his stomach. - Jonathan Safran Foer
Reccer's Comments: I'm not sure what I can say about this fic that isn't better said simply by experiencing the writing itself, but to me it feels like an ending without an ending. It's a sad thing, and also a happy thing, and it intermixes the two poles in ways that seem like such an event cannot possibly exist. But it does, and that is wondrous. This fic offers a breath and a reprieve from everything that's come before (both in canon and in the fics listed above) without ever erasing or undermining or hand-waving what has come before.
1. Prairie Wind (the On The Day It Rained Forever remix) by geckoholic
Characters: Dean, Sam
Genre: hurt/comfort, angst, curtain!fic (a bit)
Rating: PG-13
Warnings: self-harm
Summary: Out here, nothing to do, Dean's not getting better. - A while after Dean's back from hell, Sam decides what his brother needs is a little downtime. It doesn't work out as planned.
Reccer’s comments: This is tragic and gorgeous and phenomenally sad. I love the understatement of it, the attention to all the sad little things. And just--the idea that there's a good chance they've hit a point from which there just isn't any coming back. Not really.
[The original is also great and can be found here!: Prairie Wind by honeylocusttree]
2. In the Light by fannishliss
Characters: Dean, Lisa
Genre: hurt/comfort, angst
Rating: PG
Warnings: none
Summary: Back in the day, Zeppelin had made Dean feel fiery and alive and brimming with confidence. Dean remembered that feeling. 5x22
Reccer's Comments: This brings back everything I felt about 5x22/its afterward and then some. It lives and breathes its own music, as well as its nods to the music that has played such an important role for Supernatural and the Winchesters, with equal facility and grace. Just gorgeous.
3. it would be this by amonitrate
Characters: Dean, Lisa, Soulless!Sam
Genre: hurt/comfort, angst/drama
Rating: R
Warnings: soulless care-taking
Summary: "I'm not trying to mess with you, Dean. It's what you said. Leverage. The vamps can use Lisa and Ben against you."
Reccer's Comments: H/C is a great genre. NOT THAT I'M BIASED OR ANYTHING. (And you all assuredly approach the debate with equal impartiality. ;)) But I digress! There's a lot of reasons this fic is excellent--the attention to detail, its finest nuances, the depth and scope of its characterizations, its pacing, the fact that it is damn good writing on any day, in any genre--but I think the one enticement I can offer that is unique to this fic and this fic only is how perfectly it defines what hurt/comfort is all about. I don't want to give anything away, but what's at work in this fic is the reason hurt/comfort is a genre at all; and I don't think that we, as a corner of fandom, have that many opportunities to be able to point to something and say: That right there? is why I read fan fiction.
4. Morning Shift by downjune
Characters: Dean, Sam
Genre: hurt/comfort, curtain!fic (ish)
Rating: PG-13
Warnings: none
Summary: He awoke each morning with the desire to do right, to be a good and meaningful person, to be, as simple as it sounded and as impossible as it actually was, happy. And during the course of each day his heart would descend from his chest into his stomach. - Jonathan Safran Foer
Reccer's Comments: I'm not sure what I can say about this fic that isn't better said simply by experiencing the writing itself, but to me it feels like an ending without an ending. It's a sad thing, and also a happy thing, and it intermixes the two poles in ways that seem like such an event cannot possibly exist. But it does, and that is wondrous. This fic offers a breath and a reprieve from everything that's come before (both in canon and in the fics listed above) without ever erasing or undermining or hand-waving what has come before.