[Fic] Happy Days -- Sam, Dean, Jack; post-15x19, theatre of the absurd
My Summergen 2021 was Happy Days, for a prompt that asked for Sam and Dean and Jack go to Comic Con, and for Sam to be mistaken for Dean from Gilmore Girls.
I did a bad job fulfilling this prompt in that I knew what kind of fic the prompt was likely after and then didn’t write that fic, and also a bad job of filling this prompt because the parts where it meets the prompt are probably the parts that work the least. But I did try to lean into that, and I actually kind of like that "prompt done poorly" ended up anchoring the fic’s… aesthetic?
In the sense that like, yes, it does feel completely random that Sam and Dean would end up at Comic Con, and yes, Sam is absolutely forcibly removed from 1/3 of the fic with very little explanation expressly for Plot Reasons, but the fic doesn’t feel shy about either of these things? Sam and Dean know very well that their being at Comic Con (and in San Diego at all) is random, and Jack, omnipotent shepherd of the universe, knows very well that he’s gotten rid of Sam for plot reasons (and feels sort of bad about it). I like the idea that part of Jack’s strategy was just like, Dean would be a great person to talk to rn because he is distracted and e maybe might agree with me without bothering to think things through.
The basic premise is that Sam and Dean are just kind of sad-floating through the world for a while after 15x19. No one’s in crisis and nothing is happening, but no one is having a really great time. So you just kind of wander to Mexico and end up in downtown San Diego for a while and around you the world is happening, continuing to happen, but it’s not really clear whether it’s happening enough, or too much, or what.
And Jack wishes for better.
My favorite parts of this fic:
- THE WATERMELON COOKIES. A mainstay of any Mexican bakery, but Denis’s is one in between National City and San Diego. And even though Sam says that cookie stop is as random as it appears and not tied to any twee childhood memories Dean wants Sam to recall, it actually is. At least, it is in the fic universe where my fics happen, lol, because they’ve definitely been to that exact bakery before. Stupidly, I do not remember the mytharc plot of that fic (though I suspect neither to Sam and Dean, so this feels appropriate). I DO remember the homework everyone was doing, and I think Sam was in 6th grade. But anyway, they’ve eaten watermelon cookies in San Diego together before. Dean was depressed and Sam was stressed and John was hooking up with a widow whose late husband kept black dogs that might have been Black Dogs. I don’t think there were many twee childhood memories to be had at the time, but I remember one scene where Sam and Dean and the woman’s daughter Graciela whip up the highway and visit a random not-quite-landmark at the roadside, and I think all three of them felt a lot of relief in that one moment.
- I liked being able to describe San Diego’s weirdo freeway offramps and the vibe of downtown and also Comic-Con, which has fairly little in common with the 5x09 Becky convention. I wanted to bring in some of that corporate feel, but also the range of characters who go to Comic-Con, be they ear candle evangelists, mini poster defamers, or baffled San Diego moms there with their kid because it’s something local. Oh, also that Starbucks. I think the Comic-Con/San Diego divide felt important to this fic, because CC is also this whole thing that carries this universe unto itself into a space, similar to the way Sam and Dean ride into anywhere-and it’s very much a part of San Diego and also very much not, and I’m not sure either entity (city, convention) ever quite see each other.
- I really like the vignettes about other people existing and living and existing and dying in the world beyond Sam and Dean. I just think there’s something interesting about the incredible insularity that rules their headspace (almost has to) but also their contradictory but deeply-held knowledge of the world and all its people, all its people who deserve to live their lives and endure their personal tragedies and fuck up their planet and be in love and go to dentist appointments. I tried getting at some thing like this in a fic I wrote over new year’s, but I think this one does it better.
This fic gave me an existential crisis, because how do you even write anything when omnipotence is on the table. With omnipotence in play there’s actually no reason anything has to be endured-but I guess that’s the whole point, right? Finding a way to disarm omnipotence without the gesture reading like masochism, and instead signalling something else.
The POV here was hard, because it was meant to feel a little off, dissociated, and I like to think that worked, but that always makes me nervous because "distance" is not at all how I usually situate my POV re: Sam or Dean. And also, if it doesn’t work then the narrative just feels superficial and under-characterized, haha. Then the "literally wtf is happening, the internal logic here is broken" no longer seems intentional. The Happy Days reference was an attempt to nudge that idea along, as was the insinuation of Hegelian (not Platonic) dialectics, which tbh I only just maybe understand. Too much? Not enough? Idk, but it made me feel better. XD
I did a bad job fulfilling this prompt in that I knew what kind of fic the prompt was likely after and then didn’t write that fic, and also a bad job of filling this prompt because the parts where it meets the prompt are probably the parts that work the least. But I did try to lean into that, and I actually kind of like that "prompt done poorly" ended up anchoring the fic’s… aesthetic?
In the sense that like, yes, it does feel completely random that Sam and Dean would end up at Comic Con, and yes, Sam is absolutely forcibly removed from 1/3 of the fic with very little explanation expressly for Plot Reasons, but the fic doesn’t feel shy about either of these things? Sam and Dean know very well that their being at Comic Con (and in San Diego at all) is random, and Jack, omnipotent shepherd of the universe, knows very well that he’s gotten rid of Sam for plot reasons (and feels sort of bad about it). I like the idea that part of Jack’s strategy was just like, Dean would be a great person to talk to rn because he is distracted and e maybe might agree with me without bothering to think things through.
The basic premise is that Sam and Dean are just kind of sad-floating through the world for a while after 15x19. No one’s in crisis and nothing is happening, but no one is having a really great time. So you just kind of wander to Mexico and end up in downtown San Diego for a while and around you the world is happening, continuing to happen, but it’s not really clear whether it’s happening enough, or too much, or what.
And Jack wishes for better.
My favorite parts of this fic:
- THE WATERMELON COOKIES. A mainstay of any Mexican bakery, but Denis’s is one in between National City and San Diego. And even though Sam says that cookie stop is as random as it appears and not tied to any twee childhood memories Dean wants Sam to recall, it actually is. At least, it is in the fic universe where my fics happen, lol, because they’ve definitely been to that exact bakery before. Stupidly, I do not remember the mytharc plot of that fic (though I suspect neither to Sam and Dean, so this feels appropriate). I DO remember the homework everyone was doing, and I think Sam was in 6th grade. But anyway, they’ve eaten watermelon cookies in San Diego together before. Dean was depressed and Sam was stressed and John was hooking up with a widow whose late husband kept black dogs that might have been Black Dogs. I don’t think there were many twee childhood memories to be had at the time, but I remember one scene where Sam and Dean and the woman’s daughter Graciela whip up the highway and visit a random not-quite-landmark at the roadside, and I think all three of them felt a lot of relief in that one moment.
- I liked being able to describe San Diego’s weirdo freeway offramps and the vibe of downtown and also Comic-Con, which has fairly little in common with the 5x09 Becky convention. I wanted to bring in some of that corporate feel, but also the range of characters who go to Comic-Con, be they ear candle evangelists, mini poster defamers, or baffled San Diego moms there with their kid because it’s something local. Oh, also that Starbucks. I think the Comic-Con/San Diego divide felt important to this fic, because CC is also this whole thing that carries this universe unto itself into a space, similar to the way Sam and Dean ride into anywhere-and it’s very much a part of San Diego and also very much not, and I’m not sure either entity (city, convention) ever quite see each other.
- I really like the vignettes about other people existing and living and existing and dying in the world beyond Sam and Dean. I just think there’s something interesting about the incredible insularity that rules their headspace (almost has to) but also their contradictory but deeply-held knowledge of the world and all its people, all its people who deserve to live their lives and endure their personal tragedies and fuck up their planet and be in love and go to dentist appointments. I tried getting at some thing like this in a fic I wrote over new year’s, but I think this one does it better.
This fic gave me an existential crisis, because how do you even write anything when omnipotence is on the table. With omnipotence in play there’s actually no reason anything has to be endured-but I guess that’s the whole point, right? Finding a way to disarm omnipotence without the gesture reading like masochism, and instead signalling something else.
The POV here was hard, because it was meant to feel a little off, dissociated, and I like to think that worked, but that always makes me nervous because "distance" is not at all how I usually situate my POV re: Sam or Dean. And also, if it doesn’t work then the narrative just feels superficial and under-characterized, haha. Then the "literally wtf is happening, the internal logic here is broken" no longer seems intentional. The Happy Days reference was an attempt to nudge that idea along, as was the insinuation of Hegelian (not Platonic) dialectics, which tbh I only just maybe understand. Too much? Not enough? Idk, but it made me feel better. XD