it's all about the way you do the things you do
I have watched neither the BSG nor the Rome season finale. I am sort of detached from it all (though if you spoil me here in my own LJ, I will cut you). I don't know. The only shows I MUST watch as they air are Supernatural and Friday Night Lights. I enjoy Heroes, but am not overly fannish about it. I am still angry at Grey's. I kind of like having more nights free to write and chat and occasionally go out and socialize. Hmm...
***
I have here bits and pieces of posts I started but never finished. Does anyone else do that? Mostly it's stuff I've said in other people's comments that I thought I might spin out into posts of my own, but then got distracted by something else, and never did expand on the original thought, or it's stuff I've said many times and figured I'd worn it out. I'm posting it here because maybe it's of interest, maybe it's not. Maybe someone else has something to add. I dunno. I just don't like the feeling that I've got unfinished posts hanging around that I know I'll never get to.
on audience, guilty pleasures and 'badfic':
I've been thinking about this as well - last week I posted a ramble about this story I'm working on that I think works as a story, which is why I will post it when it's done, but I'm also highly aware of how ... idtastic it appears to be, but I think it may only be visible to other people because I've been wibbling about it all over the place. Someone who clicks to it via a link on a comm, who doesn't have my LJ friended (or who filters me out and only checks once in a while for fic updates, or whatever), would never know that I've spent a deal of time going, "OMG am I too close to this story? Is it nothing but some weird exercise in hitting my own kinks in ways I never anticipated they even could be hit?" (And of course, there's also the fact that it's AU, it's genderswap, it's het, it's incest - only in fandom would that last bit worry me least)... but in the end, I know myself - I wrote it, and once it's done and polished, I'll post it. [I am amused at the thought that I would ever NOT have posted BWR, actually]
but this is the most I've thought about the audience in forever. I mean, okay, when I first post a story in a new fandom, I worry, but I think that's reasonable - it's starting over as a relative unknown in a place outside one's comfort zone; it doesn't have the same anxiety attached to it, that I'm exposing myself to people in ways I'm not sure I really am.
Anyway. I guess I already think most people hate me, so I don't worry too much about losing what little social capital I have by posting things that might not be considered cool (I mean, I've written schmoopy canon het. Is anything less cool in fandom?), but I am not, generally, writing the big emotional h/c epics that people seem to feel fall into that "guilty pleasures that shouldn't be guilty" category that has been talked about.
Like, saying, "Oh, yeah, I read fanfic, but not the badly written stuff on Ff.net/Mpreg/wingfic/high school AU"? which is saying, in essence, "I'm a fan, but I'm not as big as loser as *those fans over there*."
Identifying by exclusion again? This is a typically fannish habit - most of us do it, and I don't think we recognize we're doing it until someone else points it out.
And I say that as someone who does caveat recs when I feel something is *badly written* or outside the range of what I consider acceptable characterization, if it hits my personal buttons so hard I feel I can't be trusted to say whether or not it's a good story by the standards I usually use to judge, so it's not like I'm exempt, though I really do try to own my own kinks and not to have guilt about anything I enjoy.
I think the problem is that in some ways, form follows content, or they're not as easily separable as I originally thought, so that the big h/c epic is necessarily, by dint of its subject matter, going to be longer and less spare stylistically because there's more room to expand than the short story that does a lot less outright emotional exposition.
I'm trying to figure this out.
I mean, part of the problem is that so much stuff is badly written, but that goes in all directions, and also that something I may consider luridly purple and unreadable is someone else's lush and brilliant. And under the badly written rubric comes a lot of the stuff that's come to be identified as 'crackfic' - wingfic, high school AUs, mpreg, genderfuck, etc. Since so much of it is badly written in the technical and not just stylistic sense, those genres of fic become ghettoized, much as romance and SF/F are ghettoized in published fiction, and the "good stuff" is said to transcend its genre (again, disassociating from the unpopular/unloved, much as we do in fandom) - Margaret Atwood claims her SF novel isn't; the guy who wrote "Remains of the Day" claims his SF novel isn't (and SF/F fans claim it just isn't *good* SF because it doesn't go far enough - he thinks he's breaking new ground because he doesn't read in the genre. Note: I haven't read either Atwood's or the other book, so I can't say for sure, but in general terms, the disclaiming they do - or the argument about whether BSG is good or bad SF or whether it's SF at all etc. - it sounds like the same thing as what we do, "I only like X when it's *good*, and therefore it can't be X, because X by definition sucks.")
Style and content aren't the same thing, but they're so intertwined it's hard to separate them. Otoh, you could give me and someone with a far more lush style the same basic plot and I think we'd come up with two totally different stories - I don't know how other people work, but I try to fit the ideas I have to the style I like to write in. Which sounds more conscious than it is, but...
I think one of the reasons h/c, for example, tends to run to longer stories is that you need the time for both the hurt and the comfort, and also, if someone's writing that, they are interested in the details of it in a way I, for example, am not (I am not fond of certain types of hurt/comfort stories; I am especially not fond of healing via the magical penis). So when I write a story that could nominally be called hurt/comfort (say, Sirius has the flu), I don't know that it follows the generally expected h/c tropes or that it would work for someone looking for a true h/c story of 60K words which lingeringly details the hurt as well as the lavish comfort (in my Sirius has the flu story, there is no conscious comforting from anyone else, though I do think it provides comfort; in fact, Sirius provides comfort to someone else, even in his icky, sickly state, and from that, he takes comfort, I suppose).
Then there's the question of characterization and interiority and some characters are going to let you ramble for pages inside their heads (Mal Reynolds, Sam Winchester) and others (Danny Ocean, Zoe Washburne)... not so much. So once you're writing from the POV of a character who doesn't *do* emotional exposition, you don't really have that room to ramble.
Obviously, I haven't read in a lot of the old slash fandoms, but I've read enough to give me an idea that a lot of the old school stuff would have sent me away screaming, and I have read recent stories in newer fandoms that totally pinged me that way, and I hated them. To me, they were full of things that just strike me as *wrong*, from a characterization POV, and as questionable choices from a writing POV.
Now, it could be that I've totally internalized the DWM English Department aesthetic, or it could just be that I don't mind lush prose so much if I feel that the author is doing it well (imo, obviously) and the characterization (again, imo) supports it.
I won't even get started on the term crackfic, because I think it's often used to give a writer a get of jail free card not for a wacky premise, but for not writing a wacky premise well.
***
on endings:
I've noticed recently that I've been unsatisfied with the endings of stories I've been reading. I am the last person to throw stones, as I habitually rush the ending, but I've read a few things I really liked, up until the final paragraph or two, where suddenly everything is resolved cleanly, and loose ends that should still be frayed and dangling are all neatly tied up.
Don't get me wrong, I love resolution, and I love a happy ending, but I also want it to be emotionally believable, to follow on what came before, and not just be a function of authorial fiat. I want to either see the work to get there, or I want the author to acknowledge that there will be work, that the ending isn't the last word.
I don't have the same problem with happy endings a lot of people do, because to me, "happily ever after" has never meant, "And then they never had problems again." It just means, "and then they didn't have this particular problem again. Hopefully." wherein "this particular problem" is usually related to the obstacles in the way of the couple getting together (because usually it's a romance of that sort that I'm reading).
One of the interesting things about writing Remus/Sirius for so long is that you (for values of "you" meaning "me") are always, always aware that they don't get a happy ending, ever, and no matter where you end your story, you know that either Azkaban or the veil is waiting just around the corner (well, unless you're writing Bring Back Black, which I am all in favor of).
So that case, the canon kind of takes care of leaving the ends dangling. And as I said, it's not that I don't like happy endings, because I am ALL for 'em. In every fandom I've ever written in, my manifesto has been, "Let them shag and be happy!" because usually canon provides enough angst--I don't need to pile on. But sometimes I feel like we force it, don't allow for that - "Well, this problem is solved, but there's still this and this and this that will have to be considered down the road," and as a reader, that jars for me.
I dunno.
***
on titles:
I have a whole list of titles - it's actually in a private "notes to self" post - that I would like to use someday, but most of which currently have no stories to go with them. And they mostly come from song lyrics or poems or, occasionally, from wacky things people have said (either characters on shows, or people I know), or from aphorisms.
Most of my stories come with a title attached when I get the idea - hell, sometimes the only reason to write a story is so I can use the title - or I slap something up at the top of the page anyway, when I'm two or three paragraphs in. Sometimes it sticks, sometimes it changes repeatedly. Sometimes I love the title and discover it no longer works once the story is done and then I do the frantic title scramble at the end, which I LOATHE (Bartleby.com is my best friend then). On rare occasions, I have no title at all - usually in stories that are written in one sitting and thus, don't give me time to mull in my back-brain. Sometimes they just pop up spontaneously. I had some other title for "Beggars Would Ride" early on, and then one night I was lying in bed and I thought, "self, the epic AU NEEDS to be titled Beggars Would Ride. Remember that." And that was that.
So I can't really explain it, and I don't know if my titles are actually any good, but I like them now, which I didn't when I was using the "One descriptive word" or the "Try to tie it into something that's actually in the story" method, which feels very didactic and too on the nose to me.
***
on Wincest:
I generally *don't* see brothercest; I generally ping for hetcest (Simon/River, Eomer/Eowyn, Peter/Susan).
And I didn't really see Sam/Dean until this season, where the world has gotten so much smaller and more dangerous for them.
One of the things about Simon and River is that they start out and they can't trust anyone else, and River is a mess, and so they *have* to turn inwards - by the end of the series *whimper* and in the movie, that dynamic has changed a little - Simon can make room for Kaylee, River can function enough to learn to fly Serenity, so that even though there will never be anyone more important to either of them (and their fugitive status makes the 'verse beyond Serenity impossible for them), they still have a bit of broadening outward.
Sam and Dean - it's all turning them in. Sam *can't* walk away now - not that I thought he would after Devil's Trap, but it was still an option as late as Salvation, and his *choice* in ELAC. But now, there's no going back, and the thing is, even if it's just in a gen way, they both *choose* each other over and over again, so even if they had the opportunity to finally be free of the feds, the demons, and the other hunters, they'd *still* choose to be together.
I still have a hard time actually making them have sex, though. Or seeing them give up on women altogether. Hmm...
I think...hmm... for me it becomes a matter of emotional necessity, rather than sexual attraction? Obviously, there has to be something that keeps them doing it once they start - it has to feel good, and be what they want - but for it to really work *emotionally* for me, I tend to see it more as need and desperation and the only thing left they haven't done together, so that line gets crossed eventually because all the other lines have been crossed, and yeah, desire is in there at some level, but it's more about *need* on a really basic, instinctual level.
And it's harder for me with brothers, and with Sam not being the basketcase that, say, River is, where you can easily work around taboos, because River doesn't share in them. Sam's desire to appear normal works against him for me in the first season - now that that's breaking down, and now that he's had to carry the weight while Dean fell apart a bit at the beginning of the season, now I can see him reaching out to cross that last boundary, if that makes sense.
I admit, I tend to be finicky about it.
***
on Dean and a long-term love interest:
I think a kickass hunter type would work, but she'd have to have her own thing, and her own issues, not just be a carbon copy of Dean, or be built to be a love interest, the way Jo originally was.
As much as I love Dean/Faith - and I do - and what I love about it is that Faith isn't going to stick around in the backseat of the Impala: she has her thing and Dean has his, and they orbit and meet up and part and meet again, so it's a relationship, but it's not a focal point of either of their lives when they're not together.
I think Jo is too young, and Dean's already slotted her into little sister territory now (which, well, sadly I don't think they're going there on the show, but I still think it'd be kind of awesome if it turned out to be true), but Jo only becomes interesting when she's an agent in her own right, when she's taking decisions and making mistakes, not when she's hanging around the bar and mooning over Dean. I mean, seriously, what straight woman with a working sex drive *wouldn't* be mooning over Dean? (Don't answer that if you're in the teeny freakish percentage who wouldn't be.) But without her own history and baggage to make her *real*, she's just another pretty blonde.
I agree that Ellen (most of all) Kathleen or Andrea or Hailey or, if she were going to survive, Layla - all of them sparked with Dean for me in some way, and all of them had something *different* to bring to his life.
If I were writing it, for the show and not for fic, and I were avoiding the Mary Sue, I'd go with someone like Ellen who is already in the know about hunting, because accepting that is the first and largest hurdle, but someone who doesn't necessarily hunt full time. Someone who perhaps acts, as Ellen does, as a clearinghouse of information for other hunters. Or someone who is part of a hunting ... partnership and mostly handles the research aspect of things, a Giles - capable of holding her own, but not really enthralled with that aspect of it; or a witch or psychic with gifts not tied to the YED, so there'd be that work connection where they could get to know each other as hunters, as people, as friends first. Someone settled down and not willing to uproot herself, but also someone who could become a touchstone, and home base, for Dean to return to from his journeying, with the knowledge and acceptance that he is likely always going to go back out on the road, that he is never going to give up the hunt, in some form or another. And of course, accepting that she is always going to take second place to Sam in Dean's world, as unfair as it may be.
***
***
I have here bits and pieces of posts I started but never finished. Does anyone else do that? Mostly it's stuff I've said in other people's comments that I thought I might spin out into posts of my own, but then got distracted by something else, and never did expand on the original thought, or it's stuff I've said many times and figured I'd worn it out. I'm posting it here because maybe it's of interest, maybe it's not. Maybe someone else has something to add. I dunno. I just don't like the feeling that I've got unfinished posts hanging around that I know I'll never get to.
on audience, guilty pleasures and 'badfic':
I've been thinking about this as well - last week I posted a ramble about this story I'm working on that I think works as a story, which is why I will post it when it's done, but I'm also highly aware of how ... idtastic it appears to be, but I think it may only be visible to other people because I've been wibbling about it all over the place. Someone who clicks to it via a link on a comm, who doesn't have my LJ friended (or who filters me out and only checks once in a while for fic updates, or whatever), would never know that I've spent a deal of time going, "OMG am I too close to this story? Is it nothing but some weird exercise in hitting my own kinks in ways I never anticipated they even could be hit?" (And of course, there's also the fact that it's AU, it's genderswap, it's het, it's incest - only in fandom would that last bit worry me least)... but in the end, I know myself - I wrote it, and once it's done and polished, I'll post it. [I am amused at the thought that I would ever NOT have posted BWR, actually]
but this is the most I've thought about the audience in forever. I mean, okay, when I first post a story in a new fandom, I worry, but I think that's reasonable - it's starting over as a relative unknown in a place outside one's comfort zone; it doesn't have the same anxiety attached to it, that I'm exposing myself to people in ways I'm not sure I really am.
Anyway. I guess I already think most people hate me, so I don't worry too much about losing what little social capital I have by posting things that might not be considered cool (I mean, I've written schmoopy canon het. Is anything less cool in fandom?), but I am not, generally, writing the big emotional h/c epics that people seem to feel fall into that "guilty pleasures that shouldn't be guilty" category that has been talked about.
Like, saying, "Oh, yeah, I read fanfic, but not the badly written stuff on Ff.net/Mpreg/wingfic/high school AU"? which is saying, in essence, "I'm a fan, but I'm not as big as loser as *those fans over there*."
Identifying by exclusion again? This is a typically fannish habit - most of us do it, and I don't think we recognize we're doing it until someone else points it out.
And I say that as someone who does caveat recs when I feel something is *badly written* or outside the range of what I consider acceptable characterization, if it hits my personal buttons so hard I feel I can't be trusted to say whether or not it's a good story by the standards I usually use to judge, so it's not like I'm exempt, though I really do try to own my own kinks and not to have guilt about anything I enjoy.
I think the problem is that in some ways, form follows content, or they're not as easily separable as I originally thought, so that the big h/c epic is necessarily, by dint of its subject matter, going to be longer and less spare stylistically because there's more room to expand than the short story that does a lot less outright emotional exposition.
I'm trying to figure this out.
I mean, part of the problem is that so much stuff is badly written, but that goes in all directions, and also that something I may consider luridly purple and unreadable is someone else's lush and brilliant. And under the badly written rubric comes a lot of the stuff that's come to be identified as 'crackfic' - wingfic, high school AUs, mpreg, genderfuck, etc. Since so much of it is badly written in the technical and not just stylistic sense, those genres of fic become ghettoized, much as romance and SF/F are ghettoized in published fiction, and the "good stuff" is said to transcend its genre (again, disassociating from the unpopular/unloved, much as we do in fandom) - Margaret Atwood claims her SF novel isn't; the guy who wrote "Remains of the Day" claims his SF novel isn't (and SF/F fans claim it just isn't *good* SF because it doesn't go far enough - he thinks he's breaking new ground because he doesn't read in the genre. Note: I haven't read either Atwood's or the other book, so I can't say for sure, but in general terms, the disclaiming they do - or the argument about whether BSG is good or bad SF or whether it's SF at all etc. - it sounds like the same thing as what we do, "I only like X when it's *good*, and therefore it can't be X, because X by definition sucks.")
Style and content aren't the same thing, but they're so intertwined it's hard to separate them. Otoh, you could give me and someone with a far more lush style the same basic plot and I think we'd come up with two totally different stories - I don't know how other people work, but I try to fit the ideas I have to the style I like to write in. Which sounds more conscious than it is, but...
I think one of the reasons h/c, for example, tends to run to longer stories is that you need the time for both the hurt and the comfort, and also, if someone's writing that, they are interested in the details of it in a way I, for example, am not (I am not fond of certain types of hurt/comfort stories; I am especially not fond of healing via the magical penis). So when I write a story that could nominally be called hurt/comfort (say, Sirius has the flu), I don't know that it follows the generally expected h/c tropes or that it would work for someone looking for a true h/c story of 60K words which lingeringly details the hurt as well as the lavish comfort (in my Sirius has the flu story, there is no conscious comforting from anyone else, though I do think it provides comfort; in fact, Sirius provides comfort to someone else, even in his icky, sickly state, and from that, he takes comfort, I suppose).
Then there's the question of characterization and interiority and some characters are going to let you ramble for pages inside their heads (Mal Reynolds, Sam Winchester) and others (Danny Ocean, Zoe Washburne)... not so much. So once you're writing from the POV of a character who doesn't *do* emotional exposition, you don't really have that room to ramble.
Obviously, I haven't read in a lot of the old slash fandoms, but I've read enough to give me an idea that a lot of the old school stuff would have sent me away screaming, and I have read recent stories in newer fandoms that totally pinged me that way, and I hated them. To me, they were full of things that just strike me as *wrong*, from a characterization POV, and as questionable choices from a writing POV.
Now, it could be that I've totally internalized the DWM English Department aesthetic, or it could just be that I don't mind lush prose so much if I feel that the author is doing it well (imo, obviously) and the characterization (again, imo) supports it.
I won't even get started on the term crackfic, because I think it's often used to give a writer a get of jail free card not for a wacky premise, but for not writing a wacky premise well.
***
on endings:
I've noticed recently that I've been unsatisfied with the endings of stories I've been reading. I am the last person to throw stones, as I habitually rush the ending, but I've read a few things I really liked, up until the final paragraph or two, where suddenly everything is resolved cleanly, and loose ends that should still be frayed and dangling are all neatly tied up.
Don't get me wrong, I love resolution, and I love a happy ending, but I also want it to be emotionally believable, to follow on what came before, and not just be a function of authorial fiat. I want to either see the work to get there, or I want the author to acknowledge that there will be work, that the ending isn't the last word.
I don't have the same problem with happy endings a lot of people do, because to me, "happily ever after" has never meant, "And then they never had problems again." It just means, "and then they didn't have this particular problem again. Hopefully." wherein "this particular problem" is usually related to the obstacles in the way of the couple getting together (because usually it's a romance of that sort that I'm reading).
One of the interesting things about writing Remus/Sirius for so long is that you (for values of "you" meaning "me") are always, always aware that they don't get a happy ending, ever, and no matter where you end your story, you know that either Azkaban or the veil is waiting just around the corner (well, unless you're writing Bring Back Black, which I am all in favor of).
So that case, the canon kind of takes care of leaving the ends dangling. And as I said, it's not that I don't like happy endings, because I am ALL for 'em. In every fandom I've ever written in, my manifesto has been, "Let them shag and be happy!" because usually canon provides enough angst--I don't need to pile on. But sometimes I feel like we force it, don't allow for that - "Well, this problem is solved, but there's still this and this and this that will have to be considered down the road," and as a reader, that jars for me.
I dunno.
***
on titles:
I have a whole list of titles - it's actually in a private "notes to self" post - that I would like to use someday, but most of which currently have no stories to go with them. And they mostly come from song lyrics or poems or, occasionally, from wacky things people have said (either characters on shows, or people I know), or from aphorisms.
Most of my stories come with a title attached when I get the idea - hell, sometimes the only reason to write a story is so I can use the title - or I slap something up at the top of the page anyway, when I'm two or three paragraphs in. Sometimes it sticks, sometimes it changes repeatedly. Sometimes I love the title and discover it no longer works once the story is done and then I do the frantic title scramble at the end, which I LOATHE (Bartleby.com is my best friend then). On rare occasions, I have no title at all - usually in stories that are written in one sitting and thus, don't give me time to mull in my back-brain. Sometimes they just pop up spontaneously. I had some other title for "Beggars Would Ride" early on, and then one night I was lying in bed and I thought, "self, the epic AU NEEDS to be titled Beggars Would Ride. Remember that." And that was that.
So I can't really explain it, and I don't know if my titles are actually any good, but I like them now, which I didn't when I was using the "One descriptive word" or the "Try to tie it into something that's actually in the story" method, which feels very didactic and too on the nose to me.
***
on Wincest:
I generally *don't* see brothercest; I generally ping for hetcest (Simon/River, Eomer/Eowyn, Peter/Susan).
And I didn't really see Sam/Dean until this season, where the world has gotten so much smaller and more dangerous for them.
One of the things about Simon and River is that they start out and they can't trust anyone else, and River is a mess, and so they *have* to turn inwards - by the end of the series *whimper* and in the movie, that dynamic has changed a little - Simon can make room for Kaylee, River can function enough to learn to fly Serenity, so that even though there will never be anyone more important to either of them (and their fugitive status makes the 'verse beyond Serenity impossible for them), they still have a bit of broadening outward.
Sam and Dean - it's all turning them in. Sam *can't* walk away now - not that I thought he would after Devil's Trap, but it was still an option as late as Salvation, and his *choice* in ELAC. But now, there's no going back, and the thing is, even if it's just in a gen way, they both *choose* each other over and over again, so even if they had the opportunity to finally be free of the feds, the demons, and the other hunters, they'd *still* choose to be together.
I still have a hard time actually making them have sex, though. Or seeing them give up on women altogether. Hmm...
I think...hmm... for me it becomes a matter of emotional necessity, rather than sexual attraction? Obviously, there has to be something that keeps them doing it once they start - it has to feel good, and be what they want - but for it to really work *emotionally* for me, I tend to see it more as need and desperation and the only thing left they haven't done together, so that line gets crossed eventually because all the other lines have been crossed, and yeah, desire is in there at some level, but it's more about *need* on a really basic, instinctual level.
And it's harder for me with brothers, and with Sam not being the basketcase that, say, River is, where you can easily work around taboos, because River doesn't share in them. Sam's desire to appear normal works against him for me in the first season - now that that's breaking down, and now that he's had to carry the weight while Dean fell apart a bit at the beginning of the season, now I can see him reaching out to cross that last boundary, if that makes sense.
I admit, I tend to be finicky about it.
***
on Dean and a long-term love interest:
I think a kickass hunter type would work, but she'd have to have her own thing, and her own issues, not just be a carbon copy of Dean, or be built to be a love interest, the way Jo originally was.
As much as I love Dean/Faith - and I do - and what I love about it is that Faith isn't going to stick around in the backseat of the Impala: she has her thing and Dean has his, and they orbit and meet up and part and meet again, so it's a relationship, but it's not a focal point of either of their lives when they're not together.
I think Jo is too young, and Dean's already slotted her into little sister territory now (which, well, sadly I don't think they're going there on the show, but I still think it'd be kind of awesome if it turned out to be true), but Jo only becomes interesting when she's an agent in her own right, when she's taking decisions and making mistakes, not when she's hanging around the bar and mooning over Dean. I mean, seriously, what straight woman with a working sex drive *wouldn't* be mooning over Dean? (Don't answer that if you're in the teeny freakish percentage who wouldn't be.) But without her own history and baggage to make her *real*, she's just another pretty blonde.
I agree that Ellen (most of all) Kathleen or Andrea or Hailey or, if she were going to survive, Layla - all of them sparked with Dean for me in some way, and all of them had something *different* to bring to his life.
If I were writing it, for the show and not for fic, and I were avoiding the Mary Sue, I'd go with someone like Ellen who is already in the know about hunting, because accepting that is the first and largest hurdle, but someone who doesn't necessarily hunt full time. Someone who perhaps acts, as Ellen does, as a clearinghouse of information for other hunters. Or someone who is part of a hunting ... partnership and mostly handles the research aspect of things, a Giles - capable of holding her own, but not really enthralled with that aspect of it; or a witch or psychic with gifts not tied to the YED, so there'd be that work connection where they could get to know each other as hunters, as people, as friends first. Someone settled down and not willing to uproot herself, but also someone who could become a touchstone, and home base, for Dean to return to from his journeying, with the knowledge and acceptance that he is likely always going to go back out on the road, that he is never going to give up the hunt, in some form or another. And of course, accepting that she is always going to take second place to Sam in Dean's world, as unfair as it may be.
***