Supernatural Fic Rec: Six of One by Vehemently
My plans for this morning got derailed when vee_fic posted her thoroughly absorbing Supernatural novel Six of One (damn her!), which I read in one sitting unless you're counting coffee breaks (and I personally think coffee time should get built in). It has a good Sam voice and a terrific Dean voice and a smart plot and a nice set of original characters, exactly what the plot needs plus enough more to be people, and it does things I thought I disliked in Supernatural fic and makes me love them, because it has everything that I love best about the series: the unbreakable love between the brothers and how that's not something special in the show, it's just families writ large; the desolation of life on the road and the small comforts of daily life and the whole beat-up dusty aesthetic, half attitude and half practicality. Vee is especially good and especially subtle at showing how the Winchesters' family dynamic affects their interactions with everyone else, how Dean is always comfortable with being the big brother and always terrified by loss, how Sam is always comforted by being taken care of and is as ferocious in defense of his family as Dean is, when driven to the wall.
I also liked story spoilers:
the correctives Vee offers to Supernatural's problematic treatment of women and minorities, not to mention giving a much more realistic and earthy look at living poor than the show tends to offer. My favorites of the original characters are probably Melvin (so practical and precise) and Shaniece (so, so kind), although I have a soft spot for the women's magic of the Sluice Gate Monster. And I love the Buffy-ness of the ending: how it takes a collective effort instead of just individual heroism to overcome the demon; how it takes the determination to live as well as enough devotion to die for what you love; how at the very end it comes down to family, after all.
I love other parts of it more than I can possibly say: this Jo, who is such a believable development from canon, and who makes me want to write fic for her, because I think she is never going to have all of what she wants (she'll get the hunting now, but maybe not the husband; and her husband may love her, but it's not with the same fierce terror that he loves his brother or his daughter, and one day she'll have to face it); Betty, and Dean and Betty, and Dean staying with Jo because she stays with him, and Dean putting himself between his daughter and everything, and how it's his daughter he seizes on when he doesn't know why he won't hunt, and how he is crazy in love with her and still misses Sam bad enough that if he weren't Dean-underneath-the-Sam he'd cry; Sam's loneliness and determination and how he can pull his big brother on like a mask, because that's what younger siblings do, even without the magic spells; but okay, mostly I love Dean for being Dean even when he doesn't know he is, even when he's been stripped of hunting and Sam, the two things that make him what he is.
I also liked story spoilers:
the correctives Vee offers to Supernatural's problematic treatment of women and minorities, not to mention giving a much more realistic and earthy look at living poor than the show tends to offer. My favorites of the original characters are probably Melvin (so practical and precise) and Shaniece (so, so kind), although I have a soft spot for the women's magic of the Sluice Gate Monster. And I love the Buffy-ness of the ending: how it takes a collective effort instead of just individual heroism to overcome the demon; how it takes the determination to live as well as enough devotion to die for what you love; how at the very end it comes down to family, after all.
I love other parts of it more than I can possibly say: this Jo, who is such a believable development from canon, and who makes me want to write fic for her, because I think she is never going to have all of what she wants (she'll get the hunting now, but maybe not the husband; and her husband may love her, but it's not with the same fierce terror that he loves his brother or his daughter, and one day she'll have to face it); Betty, and Dean and Betty, and Dean staying with Jo because she stays with him, and Dean putting himself between his daughter and everything, and how it's his daughter he seizes on when he doesn't know why he won't hunt, and how he is crazy in love with her and still misses Sam bad enough that if he weren't Dean-underneath-the-Sam he'd cry; Sam's loneliness and determination and how he can pull his big brother on like a mask, because that's what younger siblings do, even without the magic spells; but okay, mostly I love Dean for being Dean even when he doesn't know he is, even when he's been stripped of hunting and Sam, the two things that make him what he is.