Return to Supernatural.
No, I'm not watching the show. I'm not writing new fic or drawing new things. I'm finally finishing editing that 2010 Dean/Cas Big Bang fic so that I can post it on AO3 and wash my hands of the fandom.
I haven't seen the show since S5 and I eventually lost track of what the post-Apocalypse arcs are after S6 (actually, I still don't know what S6 was about). I'm now coming at this mess of a fic after several years' distance from the show/fandom and it's showing in how I'm editing the next chapter.
Dean/Castiel? Yeah, it doesn't really do it for me anymore. Yes, this fic is tagged pre-Dean/Cas and I don't think I'll ever get around to writing the sequelfic (because the first fic is +210k words and, uh, no thanks to the second fic when I have more pressing things to write like the Tronfics) so it'll never move fully into Dean/Cas but I'm slowly and surely toning down/erasing any hints of (pre) Dean/Cas. It feels like these moments have been shoehorned in just to make it an official Dean/Cas Big Bang entry. Hilarious, self.
I've grown more keen on Jessica Moore. I've reworked so many passages from her POV and so many lines of dialogue to separate her from the Winchesters further and give her a stronger voice, character, and agency. Part of it's influenced by a post and a (very angry) rebuttal floating around Tumblr about female characters. Part of it is the common knowledge that SPN has always been about the Winchester bros, yes, but it's written as though the Winchester World View is the only right one and everything revolves around these two knucklefucks from Kansas. The jokes about women getting close and personal with Sammy W. dying? Yeah, it got old and uncomfortable after a while.
Jessica shows up and dies in the first episode, is used as the spark, the push that puts Sam back on the road and starts the whole damn show. Why not imagine how different things'll be if she never died? But there are still outside forces trying to make Sam join Dean in the hunt for their father. If she survives or escapes Brady, would she be a newcomer to the hunting scene? What if she's also a hunter and escaped him because she knew how to ward him off?
I thought and still think it's more interesting to make her an experienced hunter from a hunting family because it'll make an excellent contrast to Sam and Dean, who went into the hunting business because their mother was killed by a demon. She comes from a stable family environment and has fond memories of childhood and her parents. She's familiar with and friendly towards other hunters and is fully capable of taking care of cases on her own. I could go on about the ways I try to fill in the blank slate we're given.
She'll always be tied to the Winchester narrative because of her association with Sam and with my decision to rewrite S1 and weave in the S4 arc. It then becomes a matter of how I write her and how I carve out spaces for her. She's one of two main POV characters in the fic (the other being Dean) and she joins the brothers' hunt for their father partially because she loves Sam and partially because the demon inside Brady made it her business by trying to kill her.
Female characters are few and far between. We're taught to sympathize with the male characters, we're taught that they're more important, that they're the default. Few female characters are written with the same care and attention as male ones, therefore we can't relate as easily. It's incredibly biased and unfair and so many of us know this even as we write dominantly male-voiced narratives. It's a challenge to change that view and inclination.
The very least I can do is make the effort to write female characters with as much care and attention as I do the male ones, even if the story is dominated by male characters. I wrote the D/C BB to challenge myself to make a female voice one of the dominating narratives and it is incredibly difficult. Or, it was but interestingly, several years later, it's much easier to do. Maybe the distance gave me a better grasp of Jess's voice. Maybe I got better at writing a character who didn't have a difficult or traumatic back story. She had a relatively uneventful childhood and didn't suffer some tragic event that has made some people into hunters, so her desire and drive to hunt is not based on that tragic loss.
So she's the kind of protag who isn't "fish out of water" wrt to the hunting business but is the outsider looking in on the Winchester Show. I always liked outsider perspectives. It's so fun writing how these characters would interpret these events and characters.
I have no idea what I'm talking about. I should pay attention to class.
Just wait until I start rambling about the new and improved version of We Are Pilots. The changes are ridiculous and (for me) mindblowing. It's my own damn fic and yet the things I wrote have been leaving me in a daze. I mean, holy shit did I seriously write that? I don't understand, DDDDDD:
I haven't seen the show since S5 and I eventually lost track of what the post-Apocalypse arcs are after S6 (actually, I still don't know what S6 was about). I'm now coming at this mess of a fic after several years' distance from the show/fandom and it's showing in how I'm editing the next chapter.
Dean/Castiel? Yeah, it doesn't really do it for me anymore. Yes, this fic is tagged pre-Dean/Cas and I don't think I'll ever get around to writing the sequelfic (because the first fic is +210k words and, uh, no thanks to the second fic when I have more pressing things to write like the Tronfics) so it'll never move fully into Dean/Cas but I'm slowly and surely toning down/erasing any hints of (pre) Dean/Cas. It feels like these moments have been shoehorned in just to make it an official Dean/Cas Big Bang entry. Hilarious, self.
I've grown more keen on Jessica Moore. I've reworked so many passages from her POV and so many lines of dialogue to separate her from the Winchesters further and give her a stronger voice, character, and agency. Part of it's influenced by a post and a (very angry) rebuttal floating around Tumblr about female characters. Part of it is the common knowledge that SPN has always been about the Winchester bros, yes, but it's written as though the Winchester World View is the only right one and everything revolves around these two knucklefucks from Kansas. The jokes about women getting close and personal with Sammy W. dying? Yeah, it got old and uncomfortable after a while.
Jessica shows up and dies in the first episode, is used as the spark, the push that puts Sam back on the road and starts the whole damn show. Why not imagine how different things'll be if she never died? But there are still outside forces trying to make Sam join Dean in the hunt for their father. If she survives or escapes Brady, would she be a newcomer to the hunting scene? What if she's also a hunter and escaped him because she knew how to ward him off?
I thought and still think it's more interesting to make her an experienced hunter from a hunting family because it'll make an excellent contrast to Sam and Dean, who went into the hunting business because their mother was killed by a demon. She comes from a stable family environment and has fond memories of childhood and her parents. She's familiar with and friendly towards other hunters and is fully capable of taking care of cases on her own. I could go on about the ways I try to fill in the blank slate we're given.
She'll always be tied to the Winchester narrative because of her association with Sam and with my decision to rewrite S1 and weave in the S4 arc. It then becomes a matter of how I write her and how I carve out spaces for her. She's one of two main POV characters in the fic (the other being Dean) and she joins the brothers' hunt for their father partially because she loves Sam and partially because the demon inside Brady made it her business by trying to kill her.
Female characters are few and far between. We're taught to sympathize with the male characters, we're taught that they're more important, that they're the default. Few female characters are written with the same care and attention as male ones, therefore we can't relate as easily. It's incredibly biased and unfair and so many of us know this even as we write dominantly male-voiced narratives. It's a challenge to change that view and inclination.
The very least I can do is make the effort to write female characters with as much care and attention as I do the male ones, even if the story is dominated by male characters. I wrote the D/C BB to challenge myself to make a female voice one of the dominating narratives and it is incredibly difficult. Or, it was but interestingly, several years later, it's much easier to do. Maybe the distance gave me a better grasp of Jess's voice. Maybe I got better at writing a character who didn't have a difficult or traumatic back story. She had a relatively uneventful childhood and didn't suffer some tragic event that has made some people into hunters, so her desire and drive to hunt is not based on that tragic loss.
So she's the kind of protag who isn't "fish out of water" wrt to the hunting business but is the outsider looking in on the Winchester Show. I always liked outsider perspectives. It's so fun writing how these characters would interpret these events and characters.
I have no idea what I'm talking about. I should pay attention to class.
Just wait until I start rambling about the new and improved version of We Are Pilots. The changes are ridiculous and (for me) mindblowing. It's my own damn fic and yet the things I wrote have been leaving me in a daze. I mean, holy shit did I seriously write that? I don't understand, DDDDDD: