SPN Fic: To Everything A Season (Pt 2/4, Gen/Het, R)
Edit: Fine, LJ won't let me post it in one chunk, so part 2 is going up in two chunks.
Okay, y'all. I may have mentioned to a few people that the end of this think kind of detonated on me during the final polish, so I've been wigging out a bit on how to end something I thought was over, and it has thrown me a wee bit behind in my original schedule.
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I loved this detail, and the other ways you show a Sam who has changed so much and yet who is still just Sam.
Dean was happy for her, in a jealous kind of way. She deserved someone nice, and the girls deserved someone who wouldn’t be off hunting poltergeists when they needed him to help with their homework, or tuck them into bed.
Awwww, Dean.
"Reminds me of that time you tried to cook spaghetti for me and Dad in Cincinnati. Remember? We were out all night, tracking that ka’aliki demon, and came back to find you sacked out on the floor of that motel kitchenette
Wonderful story, just the story itself is adorable, and also how Dean keeps using it to deflect in that scene.
"He hasn’t done anything. He hasn’t been home for a while."
The echo of it was familiar. Too familiar.
Oooh. I like the echo.
Great dialogue between Sam and Dean.
And it’s only gotten worse since we killed the demon. He doesn’t have ( ... )
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Wonderful story, just the story itself is adorable, and also how Dean keeps using it to deflect in that scene.
I think probably the most fun I've had with this story is in coming up with different stories from their lives for the different characters to reference in ways like this ... it's all about Dean trying not to jump immediately into a "got a problem with dad" dynamic, but the story itself has to ring true, too. That was a BLAST to do.
This kind of thing fascinates me--when a character is on a single-minded quest for so long succeeds, what can they hold onto when it's over? So I get that John would unravel.Thinking it might go this way came in large part from some of the things John said in DMB, Salvation and DT. It seemed almost as if he was determined NOT to survive this confrontation. Which, of course, begs the questions, what if you do? And given how much of his life has ( ... )
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My only query would be if drunk John isn't a bit too much, because you have him really hitting such an extreme low before he gets amnesia and finds happiness, that it makes him getting the happiness too easy a contrast. His apathy and depression might have been enough. But I do like what you did with the drunken John, you didn't pull any punches and if he did turn to drinking that way, this is probably what would happen.I have to cop to a bit of a personal agenda in telling this particular story (*grin*) as taking John to the no man's land of self destruction by alcohol was the drive behind writing it. Being a dynamic with which I am very familiar, I was intrigued by how it would manifest itself in the John, Dean and Sam dynamic, especially in terms of how it might manifest of John's drinking was aimed at self destructing, not self medicating or simply a physical addiction; and if Dean wouldn't/couldn't step off and let that happen, even if it meant destoying his life trying to stop it ( ... )
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That does put a different spin on it. I'm not sure why, but I got from it "drinking out of control"--I didn't think of it as a deliberate thing, just part of the apathy/loss of meaning. That may not be a problem in the story, just what I assigned, because the suicide angle works. I really love the way you've fit Dean into that equation. It's heartbreaking and true to character; Dean would throw himself in front of a figurative bullet for John (or Sam), no matter where Dean is in life. Sam then seems to be trying to save Dean from going down trying to save John.
It's possibly that it would have been clearer with part 4 (this is part of why I hardly ever read WIP's...but I seem to break that rule a lot lately! :)
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Most of the references are in Dean's perspective on his dad's drinking ... comments about suicide by monster and one line in particular where Dean makes the observation about John, in terms of drinking and then going hunting, of "Just that determined to get himself dead."
But I wanted to leave some room for people to see it the other way, too. I like leaving the reader latitude to define my work the way they want to read it rather than being necessarily boxed into the way I was thinking when I wrote it. Sometimes that works for me; and sometimes, against.
Sam then seems to be trying to save Dean from going down trying to save John.Exactly. And, too, like the latitude I am trying to allow the reader, I'm kind of implying Sam doesn't really get that it is about suicide for John. The he thinks it is more of a replacement of one obsession with another rather than the realization that John may be trying to impair his own survival skills to a degree that ( ... )
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(I think maybe we needed to see more evidence of what made Meredith such a bitch, though?)I actually have a reason for not doing this, which I hope will become clear once the story is complete. Without being to direct about something I want to come across more subliminally, I felt very strongly that both Sam and Dean's women needed to be viewed through the filter of Winchester eyes. Julie not so much so, because she is such a tool in the recovery of John, so I needed her to be more honestly viewed rather than viewed through the filter of someone else's perceptions ( ... )
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