Roof But No Ceiling (Notes)
Hello! Thank you so much for reading (assuming you have and didn't skip straight to the notes and acknowledgments, I don't know, you do your thing, I'm not here to judge). This is my - holy hell - sixth contribution to the spn_j2_bigbang, and I must say, I am rather proud of the result.
Which, of course, did not happen in a vacuum. First off, I have to give a biiiiig thanks to the folks over at spn_j2_bigbang, whom I would name individually but I'd be afraid of forgetting members of, for setting up and running this whole thing for yet another year. I had to skip last year, and despite it being one of, if not the biggest challenges in this fandom, I was a little worried it'd die before I could swing through for another round and try again. They are so incredibly impressive, keeping track of so many details, and I bow to their greatness at challenge organizing.
As for this fic itself. Have you checked out little_jade's artwork post, yet? If you read through, you saw some of it throughout the story, but I didn't manage to use it all and unfortunately don't have extra icon space, so you simply must look at all of it. The bugs. The buuuuugs! And I adore the way she realized the fungi/starscape connection.
Thanks must also go out to the amazing team of people who put up with me in the actual writing of this beast (my longest yet in the Supernatural fandom, possibly my longest ever): butterflykiki is a superhero who is somehow willing to listen to me babble about plot points and copy and paste bits of prose out of context at her and still get excited to read my fic. I managed to luck into three betas on this, chiiyo86, missyjack, and caffienekitty, each of whom has her own specialty and brought it to bear in order to make this thing as good as it hopefully turned out to be. They are just fantastic people, and I would have lost my entire brain to fretting over this thing if it weren't for their assistance.
This fic was basically two years in the making. Last year, big bang season saw me getting distracted by other plans, so the bits and bobs I'd managed to hammer into shape had to be set aside in favor of making sloths out of old socks. Which is fair, as I think this fic really took that long to settle into something that could make sense. Also for me to watch The Shining (and still not quite get around to reading the book), reread Mervin Peake's Gormenghast series, and get ridiculously deeply into the works of Shirley Jackson. I personally think their influences on me and this fic are fairly transparent (rickety staircase! actual literal references to King! . . . Okay, Gormenghast is not as obvious but if you've ever read the descriptions of that castle you might see where some of the inspiration for the details of the bunker came from!), but there are folks out there who like to know these things, and I am not above name-dropping (if you have not read Peake or Jackson, you should go start doing so, now. I'll wait. I still have to read more King, after all. . . .)
But enough blather (if you read this far). Thanks again for reading, and thanks again to all the folks who go into making one of these things real, and have a lovely rest of summer or winter, whichever you may be in the middle of!
Oh, and if you're wondering, the title comes from a clue to the word game/riddle "What's behind the green glass doors?" I always thought it was a particularly fun little image, myself.
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