Article: 'Flipping the script: 4 reasons fanfic is a feminist pursuit.' Also, some fic recs.
I read this article about Fanfiction today: Flipping the script: 4 reasons fanfic is a feminist pursuit.
In honour of international fanworks day (which some of y'all are still having, but for me was yesterday) I thought I would share said article. It has some thoughtful and positive things to say about fanfiction and it also mentions one of my favourite tropes, race/ethnicity bending.
Like most of fandom, I’m still madly working my way through reversebangs and still trying to catch up on all of the last round of big bangs, as well as summergens and just random non-challenge works posted by many of my flisties. There’s just so much awesome fic around right now!
In between racing through current works as fast as I can, I occasionally fixate on a particular theme and devour everything I can find that fits that trope. Earlier last year it was race/ethnicity bending fics: How would Sam and Dean’s story change if they weren’t red-blooded, mid-western American boys?
As a fan who’s not American, who migrated from her country of birth to the country she lives in (Australia) and who then married into a culture very different to her own, this idea fascinated me and I couldn’t get enough of these stories. They were hard to find too, so back in May last year, I recced a bunch of 'em over at Rocksalt Recs. Some of the stories I wanted to rec, I couldn’t because of the Comm rules, and I've been meaning to post a rec list on my own journal ever since. This article prompted me to do it now, so here they are in random order:
--
Title: When the badger grows horns
Writer: rambling_rosie
Characters and/or pairings: John, Mary, Sam, Dean, others
Rating: Gen. PG-13
Warnings: canon character deaths, racial slurs
Length: 25,000
Summary: John Ashiihi Winchester was a warrior at heart, but once he left Dinétah, not even his beloved Grandmother Chee could foresee where his path would lead him-or his sons.
Why read it? What if…John Winchester was a traditionally raised Diné (Navaho)?
This story is mostly set pre-season, beginning with John joining the Marines-because “it was a good and honorable thing for a Diné warrior to be a United States Marine”. The story then takes us through his meeting with Mary and his introduction to the supernatural, right up to where the canon pilot starts, with an epilogue set around the time Sam is resurrected from the pit.
It’s the basic background story we’re all familiar with…except...the Diné people are largely matrilineal; family is important, as is the hogan, the traditional sacred home that every traditional family-even if they usually live in a newer home-must have for ceremonies, and to keep themselves in balance.
How would the existence of a home they could return to and a family with strong female role models affect Sam and Dean’s upbringing and values? How would belief in a different religion affect the Winchesters’ experience of hunting? What effect would being perceived as ‘the other’ by the dominant white culture have on their hunting practise? The writer answers these questions with sensitivity and insight, and she had the story beta read by someone with personal ties to Diné culture too.
As an added bonus, this story comes with two sequels, which are also worth a read; the series is known as the Dinéchesters AU.
[Excerpt:]
John almost didn’t have the nerve to go through with the fourth ghost hunt. But Bobby called his friends Rufus and Caleb, and the four of them together went to the graveyard to dispatch the spirit. At Bobby’s insistence, however, John did all the work while the other men stood guard. “I know it ain’t what you’ve been taught,” said Bobby, “but if you’re gonna hunt, you’ve gotta be prepared to take out anything you find, even if it’s already dead. Especially if it’s already dead.”
It was an old ghost that had killed ten people in the last year alone, and it was a racist; its first target at the graveside was Rufus, who shot it before it could do more than force him backward a step. Then it spotted John and started screaming slurs even Bobby had never heard before. Somehow that angered John enough to finish the digging and pour the salt and lighter fluid over the bones, and he felt a fierce satisfaction at the terror on the ghost’s face when he tossed the match into the grave and at the scream the thing gave as the fire sent it to the Burning-Pitch-Place.
As the other men slapped him on the back and escorted him back to the car for a beer while they waited for the fire to burn out, something deep down clicked back into place, something that had been irritatingly loose since he’d returned from Vietnam and worse since Mary’s death. He knew at last where he belonged, who he was as a Diné warrior, what it meant to be of the Campbell Clan of Lawrence, Kansas.
Saving people, hunting things. The family business.
He could do this.
--
Title: Comiendo Entra la Gana (or on AO3 HERE)
Writer: almadeamla
Characters and/or pairings: John, Mary, Sam, Dean, others
Rating: Gen. PG-13
Warnings: canon character deaths
Length: 6,200
Summary: Dean and Sam are born Donaciano and Samuel to Juan and Mary Winchester.
Why read it? This story really captures the essence of what it is to be the children of immigrants, caught between worlds. This is exacerbated in Sam and Dean’s case by being caught, not just between cultures, but between the world of the natural and the supernatural.
[Excerpt:]
Dean walks him to school his first day. Papá promised he’d be there, swore and swore as he played lotería with them at the table, using dried pinto beans to cover the pictures on the cards. Sam holds his brother’s hand and isn’t sure if he wants to go to school anymore, not without Dean. He’s had Dean with him his entire life, his whole vida, all of his años. The words spin around in his head, English and Spanish, mixing together and he can’t tell which is which half the time. Dean or Papá will look at him funny because he gets confused. It’s not his fault there’s only Dean and the English he learns from other people and the TV… He is Samuel Esteban Contrera Winchester, born from the proud and the bloodthirsty and the elegant, but he’s only five years old and those words go over his head like the clouds pass through the sky. “Am I speaking English or Spanish?”
Dean rolls his eyes.
“Eso es español.” Dean pauses, waits for it to sink in. “And this is English. Got it?”
“I was just checking.”
--
Title: O Drom si Baro (The Road is Long) (or on AO3 HERE)
Writer: Keerawa
Characters and/or pairings: Sam, Dean, others
Rating: Gen. PG-13
Warnings: off screen canon character death
Length: 1,600
Summary: Their father's been laid to rest, but Dean and Sam's road has just begun.
Why read it? What if the Winchesters were …Romani?
So much of Sam and Dean’s life has been nomadic that this really seemed like a perfect fit. An important part of what makes the boys them is the isolated way they grew up, outcasts in their own society, forever on the move. This story explores the boys within a culture that is accepting of the supernatural, one in which a life spent on the road is perfectly acceptable. It gives them a home base and a large family which understands, but still keeps them perfectly in character.
[Excerpt:]
“Sam’s got this idea, thinks we can maybe track Yellow-Eyes using old newspapers. Look for reports of mothers with young children who died in fires, you know? Like that kid who could move stuff with his mind we found last year.”
She snorted, seemed to relax. “That Sam, always reading and writing. No wonder he’s so dili. He should have pulled Sam out of that gadje school when the boy hit puberty, same as you.”
Dean was surprised that Mala would skirt the taboo like that. Talking about the dead invited their muló back for a haunting. But he wasn’t gonna let his Dad go undefended. “Well, he had his reasons. And it’d be good, having a big-name dukàto in the family, right? Law wouldn’t dare mess with us then. And Sam knows just how to talk to gadje, can get us in and out of places like you wouldn’t believe.”
--
Title: Rock of ages
Writer: Rivkat
Characters and/or pairings: Sam, Dean, others
Rating: Gen. PG-13
Warnings: N/A
Length: 1,180
Summary: What if Sam and Dean were Jewish?
Why read it? This little gem gives us utterly believable Jewish Winchesters; John hates God because he took Mary and he refuses to keep the Sabbath because the monsters don’t; Dean makes sure they light the candles each evening and organizes for Sam to do his bar mitzvah, despite the fact that he himself eats bacon and doesn’t really believe. Sam, of course, rebels by learning fluent Hebrew and defiantly wearing his kippah at all times.
A beautifully written story that gives us the pre and early seasons tale we know so well, and the characters we all know and love, but with a Jewish twist. Jewish Dean is delightfully pragmatic, and young Sam embracing his religion with deep devotion is utterly credible.
[Excerpt:]
Sam didn’t like to use holy water. Dean was a pragmatist. If you found a religion with lots of effective paraphernalia, you used the paraphernalia, regardless of the theology… He put on the tefillin when Sam said to, though. As stupid as they made him feel, if Rambam suggested that they’d prevent possession then he wasn’t going to ignore a potential protection like that… but two hot guys wearing black leather boxes on their foreheads and arms tended to attract a lot more attention than two hot guys on their own. Sam refused to get a protective tattoo instead, even after that bitch Meg took him over, but Dean figured that out: he knocked Sam out with a mickey in his beer and did the work himself, then propped Sam up in the bed, with a printout from the relevant portion of the Shulchan Arukh holding the involuntary tattooee blameless on the unmarked side of his chest for when he woke up.
--
Title: The Girl from Outside (and on AO3 HERE)
Writer: Honeylocusttree
Characters and/or pairings: Jess, Sam, John, Dean,
Rating: Gen. PG-13
Warnings: N/A
Length: 8,300+
Summary: (AU) Jess is an undergrad anthro student hoping to do her honors’ project on the little-known, poorly understood ethnic group known colloquially in the United States as Hunters. A Stanford professor puts her in touch with a student who happens to have been brought up in the Hunter community, but her efforts to conduct interviews with the student and his family takes an unexpected turn the very day she arrives.
Why read it? In the author’s notes Honeylocusttree says: “I was really interested in the idea of dealing with hunters as an ethnic group, with a language and traditions and beliefs all their own.” I too am fascinated by different languages and cultures and, to paraphrase the comment I left on the story, the author’s take on Hunters as a sort of ethnic-based nomadic sub-culture, somewhat like Travellers, with their own language, sacraments and rites of passage was completely captivating. The text alternates between live action and Jess’s field study notes, in which she strives to be a true anthropology student: the girl from the outside, unaffected by the culture she is studying. The three Winchesters, as they appear in canon, really lend themselves to this AU scenario too: John as the old-school 'separatist' traditionalist, Sam as the young gun who wants to integrate with the mainstream and Dean caught in the middle.
[Excerpt:]
Thesis: Although believed by many to have gone into decline since the turn of the 19th century, Hunters (the ethnic and culturally distinct population) have in fact continued to flourish well out of sight of the general American population. (Middle America-outskirts)
Fieldwork: Interview subjects (change names for final)
Sam Winchester
John Winchester (???)
Robert Singer (NO- not present)
Dean Winchester (? Available? )
When I stepped into the old, two-story house, it was dimly lit and dusty. Difficult to ignore I had difficulty ignoring the enormous circular [marks/designs/??] painted directly behind the threshold, and my informant told me that they were traps ‘to prevent demons entering.’ He delivered this declaration offhandedly. He told me that an ordinary person would have no trouble crossing the lines and symbols marked out in red paint. I confess that I breathed a little easier when I crossed that particular, secondary threshold. I also hoped that I was imagining the brief [glance] my informant [cast] at me, as if he too were relieved.
[He was only a few months older than me. Nothing like the images in popular culture of grizzled old men and women, armed and mistrusting of outsiders. Sam’s face was open, his every gesture honest MORE??]
In a handful of simple steps I had walked out of the world I understood and into a place guided by an entirely different, alien set of rules.
--
Title: Down South Dukin’ (or on AO3 HERE)
Writer: starlingnight
Characters and/or pairings: Sam, Dean,
Rating: Gen. PG-13
Warnings: N/A
Length: 2,494
Summary: An AU in which Sam and Dean swear a lot, drive a Holden, call each other mate, hunt drop bears, and complain about America - or at least Dean does. It seems Sam’s been having trouble with the whole national pride thing lately, though that’s nothing a bit of footy won’t fix…right?
Why read it? It’s entirely possible that this story is only hysterically funny if you’re Australian (or a Kiwi…). Even if you don’t understand half of what they’re going on about, you should still appreciate the brotherly bantering. Sam and Dean are still Sam and Dean…just…Australian. And by now a lot of not-Australian people have probably heard something about our incredibly embarrassing Prime Minister Tony Abbott…Dean is definitely right about him!
[Excerpt:]
“Fucking pollies,” Dean muttered, stabbing at the remote. ABC News fizzled into Seven, which changed to Nine, which changed to Ten, which changed to SBS, which changed to the ABC. Tony Abbott scowled at them out of the TV.
“You know,” Sam said, deadpan, “I reckon you two have a lot in common. Same nose, same attitude-“
“Shut your mouth or I will shut it for you.”
Dean flicked through the channels again, all five of them. He sighed.
“Channel surfing would probably work better in America,” Sam said. “Don’t they have like fifty?”
“Sellout,” Dean said. “By the way, fuck this guy, I bet he’s a leviathan.”
“Dean,” Sam said, “there’s no more leviathans here. They’re probably all being Republicans over in America or something.”
--
Title: Winchester, like the Bishopric
Writer: kroki_refur
Characters and/or pairings: Sam, Dean, Bobby
Rating: Gen. PG-13
Warnings: N/A
Length: 2,882
Summary: AU. After everything that's happened in the past few years, what Sam and Dean really need is a change.
Why Read it? Here, the author gives us an English Sam and Dean, driving around Britain, hunting monsters, in their classic Mini Cooper. Of course, Britain is roughly the size of Kansas, so this presents some unique problems that their American counterparts just don’t face. Cue comedic potential. Oh, and Bobby is a Scot.
[Excerpt:]
“Well, ye ken ye laddies’re always welcome here, and at Ellen’s, too,” says Bobby, and Dean sighs.
“You’re having a laugh, right?” he says. “What if we’re in Cornwall or something? Have you got any idea how far it is from Cornwall to Ellen’s? It’s over five hours’ drive, and that’s not even thinking about the traffic on the M5. Cost a fortune in petrol, too.”
“Well, ye cannae be in Cornwall every day,” says Bobby. “It’s no like it’s a hotbed of paranormal activity.”
“What if we want a cream tea?” says Dean, and Sam glares at him. “What?” he says. “They do brilliant cream teas in Cornwall.”
Bobby sighs. “Look,” he says. “I’ve offered mah place, ah dinnae ken what else ye want me tae do. Ye can always squat.”
“Yeah, that’s fine for towns, but you know what these villages are like, Bobby,” says Sam. “Everybody’d know we were there in five minutes.”
Alrighty, so there you have ‘em. If anyone else has read any fabulous stories where Sam and Dean are something other than red-blooded, mid-western American boys, I’d love for you to rec them to me!
In honour of international fanworks day (which some of y'all are still having, but for me was yesterday) I thought I would share said article. It has some thoughtful and positive things to say about fanfiction and it also mentions one of my favourite tropes, race/ethnicity bending.
Like most of fandom, I’m still madly working my way through reversebangs and still trying to catch up on all of the last round of big bangs, as well as summergens and just random non-challenge works posted by many of my flisties. There’s just so much awesome fic around right now!
In between racing through current works as fast as I can, I occasionally fixate on a particular theme and devour everything I can find that fits that trope. Earlier last year it was race/ethnicity bending fics: How would Sam and Dean’s story change if they weren’t red-blooded, mid-western American boys?
As a fan who’s not American, who migrated from her country of birth to the country she lives in (Australia) and who then married into a culture very different to her own, this idea fascinated me and I couldn’t get enough of these stories. They were hard to find too, so back in May last year, I recced a bunch of 'em over at Rocksalt Recs. Some of the stories I wanted to rec, I couldn’t because of the Comm rules, and I've been meaning to post a rec list on my own journal ever since. This article prompted me to do it now, so here they are in random order:
--
Title: When the badger grows horns
Writer: rambling_rosie
Characters and/or pairings: John, Mary, Sam, Dean, others
Rating: Gen. PG-13
Warnings: canon character deaths, racial slurs
Length: 25,000
Summary: John Ashiihi Winchester was a warrior at heart, but once he left Dinétah, not even his beloved Grandmother Chee could foresee where his path would lead him-or his sons.
Why read it? What if…John Winchester was a traditionally raised Diné (Navaho)?
This story is mostly set pre-season, beginning with John joining the Marines-because “it was a good and honorable thing for a Diné warrior to be a United States Marine”. The story then takes us through his meeting with Mary and his introduction to the supernatural, right up to where the canon pilot starts, with an epilogue set around the time Sam is resurrected from the pit.
It’s the basic background story we’re all familiar with…except...the Diné people are largely matrilineal; family is important, as is the hogan, the traditional sacred home that every traditional family-even if they usually live in a newer home-must have for ceremonies, and to keep themselves in balance.
How would the existence of a home they could return to and a family with strong female role models affect Sam and Dean’s upbringing and values? How would belief in a different religion affect the Winchesters’ experience of hunting? What effect would being perceived as ‘the other’ by the dominant white culture have on their hunting practise? The writer answers these questions with sensitivity and insight, and she had the story beta read by someone with personal ties to Diné culture too.
As an added bonus, this story comes with two sequels, which are also worth a read; the series is known as the Dinéchesters AU.
[Excerpt:]
John almost didn’t have the nerve to go through with the fourth ghost hunt. But Bobby called his friends Rufus and Caleb, and the four of them together went to the graveyard to dispatch the spirit. At Bobby’s insistence, however, John did all the work while the other men stood guard. “I know it ain’t what you’ve been taught,” said Bobby, “but if you’re gonna hunt, you’ve gotta be prepared to take out anything you find, even if it’s already dead. Especially if it’s already dead.”
It was an old ghost that had killed ten people in the last year alone, and it was a racist; its first target at the graveside was Rufus, who shot it before it could do more than force him backward a step. Then it spotted John and started screaming slurs even Bobby had never heard before. Somehow that angered John enough to finish the digging and pour the salt and lighter fluid over the bones, and he felt a fierce satisfaction at the terror on the ghost’s face when he tossed the match into the grave and at the scream the thing gave as the fire sent it to the Burning-Pitch-Place.
As the other men slapped him on the back and escorted him back to the car for a beer while they waited for the fire to burn out, something deep down clicked back into place, something that had been irritatingly loose since he’d returned from Vietnam and worse since Mary’s death. He knew at last where he belonged, who he was as a Diné warrior, what it meant to be of the Campbell Clan of Lawrence, Kansas.
Saving people, hunting things. The family business.
He could do this.
--
Title: Comiendo Entra la Gana (or on AO3 HERE)
Writer: almadeamla
Characters and/or pairings: John, Mary, Sam, Dean, others
Rating: Gen. PG-13
Warnings: canon character deaths
Length: 6,200
Summary: Dean and Sam are born Donaciano and Samuel to Juan and Mary Winchester.
Why read it? This story really captures the essence of what it is to be the children of immigrants, caught between worlds. This is exacerbated in Sam and Dean’s case by being caught, not just between cultures, but between the world of the natural and the supernatural.
[Excerpt:]
Dean walks him to school his first day. Papá promised he’d be there, swore and swore as he played lotería with them at the table, using dried pinto beans to cover the pictures on the cards. Sam holds his brother’s hand and isn’t sure if he wants to go to school anymore, not without Dean. He’s had Dean with him his entire life, his whole vida, all of his años. The words spin around in his head, English and Spanish, mixing together and he can’t tell which is which half the time. Dean or Papá will look at him funny because he gets confused. It’s not his fault there’s only Dean and the English he learns from other people and the TV… He is Samuel Esteban Contrera Winchester, born from the proud and the bloodthirsty and the elegant, but he’s only five years old and those words go over his head like the clouds pass through the sky. “Am I speaking English or Spanish?”
Dean rolls his eyes.
“Eso es español.” Dean pauses, waits for it to sink in. “And this is English. Got it?”
“I was just checking.”
--
Title: O Drom si Baro (The Road is Long) (or on AO3 HERE)
Writer: Keerawa
Characters and/or pairings: Sam, Dean, others
Rating: Gen. PG-13
Warnings: off screen canon character death
Length: 1,600
Summary: Their father's been laid to rest, but Dean and Sam's road has just begun.
Why read it? What if the Winchesters were …Romani?
So much of Sam and Dean’s life has been nomadic that this really seemed like a perfect fit. An important part of what makes the boys them is the isolated way they grew up, outcasts in their own society, forever on the move. This story explores the boys within a culture that is accepting of the supernatural, one in which a life spent on the road is perfectly acceptable. It gives them a home base and a large family which understands, but still keeps them perfectly in character.
[Excerpt:]
“Sam’s got this idea, thinks we can maybe track Yellow-Eyes using old newspapers. Look for reports of mothers with young children who died in fires, you know? Like that kid who could move stuff with his mind we found last year.”
She snorted, seemed to relax. “That Sam, always reading and writing. No wonder he’s so dili. He should have pulled Sam out of that gadje school when the boy hit puberty, same as you.”
Dean was surprised that Mala would skirt the taboo like that. Talking about the dead invited their muló back for a haunting. But he wasn’t gonna let his Dad go undefended. “Well, he had his reasons. And it’d be good, having a big-name dukàto in the family, right? Law wouldn’t dare mess with us then. And Sam knows just how to talk to gadje, can get us in and out of places like you wouldn’t believe.”
--
Title: Rock of ages
Writer: Rivkat
Characters and/or pairings: Sam, Dean, others
Rating: Gen. PG-13
Warnings: N/A
Length: 1,180
Summary: What if Sam and Dean were Jewish?
Why read it? This little gem gives us utterly believable Jewish Winchesters; John hates God because he took Mary and he refuses to keep the Sabbath because the monsters don’t; Dean makes sure they light the candles each evening and organizes for Sam to do his bar mitzvah, despite the fact that he himself eats bacon and doesn’t really believe. Sam, of course, rebels by learning fluent Hebrew and defiantly wearing his kippah at all times.
A beautifully written story that gives us the pre and early seasons tale we know so well, and the characters we all know and love, but with a Jewish twist. Jewish Dean is delightfully pragmatic, and young Sam embracing his religion with deep devotion is utterly credible.
[Excerpt:]
Sam didn’t like to use holy water. Dean was a pragmatist. If you found a religion with lots of effective paraphernalia, you used the paraphernalia, regardless of the theology… He put on the tefillin when Sam said to, though. As stupid as they made him feel, if Rambam suggested that they’d prevent possession then he wasn’t going to ignore a potential protection like that… but two hot guys wearing black leather boxes on their foreheads and arms tended to attract a lot more attention than two hot guys on their own. Sam refused to get a protective tattoo instead, even after that bitch Meg took him over, but Dean figured that out: he knocked Sam out with a mickey in his beer and did the work himself, then propped Sam up in the bed, with a printout from the relevant portion of the Shulchan Arukh holding the involuntary tattooee blameless on the unmarked side of his chest for when he woke up.
--
Title: The Girl from Outside (and on AO3 HERE)
Writer: Honeylocusttree
Characters and/or pairings: Jess, Sam, John, Dean,
Rating: Gen. PG-13
Warnings: N/A
Length: 8,300+
Summary: (AU) Jess is an undergrad anthro student hoping to do her honors’ project on the little-known, poorly understood ethnic group known colloquially in the United States as Hunters. A Stanford professor puts her in touch with a student who happens to have been brought up in the Hunter community, but her efforts to conduct interviews with the student and his family takes an unexpected turn the very day she arrives.
Why read it? In the author’s notes Honeylocusttree says: “I was really interested in the idea of dealing with hunters as an ethnic group, with a language and traditions and beliefs all their own.” I too am fascinated by different languages and cultures and, to paraphrase the comment I left on the story, the author’s take on Hunters as a sort of ethnic-based nomadic sub-culture, somewhat like Travellers, with their own language, sacraments and rites of passage was completely captivating. The text alternates between live action and Jess’s field study notes, in which she strives to be a true anthropology student: the girl from the outside, unaffected by the culture she is studying. The three Winchesters, as they appear in canon, really lend themselves to this AU scenario too: John as the old-school 'separatist' traditionalist, Sam as the young gun who wants to integrate with the mainstream and Dean caught in the middle.
[Excerpt:]
Thesis: Although believed by many to have gone into decline since the turn of the 19th century, Hunters (the ethnic and culturally distinct population) have in fact continued to flourish well out of sight of the general American population. (Middle America-outskirts)
Fieldwork: Interview subjects (change names for final)
Sam Winchester
John Winchester (???)
Robert Singer (NO- not present)
Dean Winchester (? Available? )
When I stepped into the old, two-story house, it was dimly lit and dusty. Difficult to ignore I had difficulty ignoring the enormous circular [marks/designs/??] painted directly behind the threshold, and my informant told me that they were traps ‘to prevent demons entering.’ He delivered this declaration offhandedly. He told me that an ordinary person would have no trouble crossing the lines and symbols marked out in red paint. I confess that I breathed a little easier when I crossed that particular, secondary threshold. I also hoped that I was imagining the brief [glance] my informant [cast] at me, as if he too were relieved.
[He was only a few months older than me. Nothing like the images in popular culture of grizzled old men and women, armed and mistrusting of outsiders. Sam’s face was open, his every gesture honest MORE??]
In a handful of simple steps I had walked out of the world I understood and into a place guided by an entirely different, alien set of rules.
--
Title: Down South Dukin’ (or on AO3 HERE)
Writer: starlingnight
Characters and/or pairings: Sam, Dean,
Rating: Gen. PG-13
Warnings: N/A
Length: 2,494
Summary: An AU in which Sam and Dean swear a lot, drive a Holden, call each other mate, hunt drop bears, and complain about America - or at least Dean does. It seems Sam’s been having trouble with the whole national pride thing lately, though that’s nothing a bit of footy won’t fix…right?
Why read it? It’s entirely possible that this story is only hysterically funny if you’re Australian (or a Kiwi…). Even if you don’t understand half of what they’re going on about, you should still appreciate the brotherly bantering. Sam and Dean are still Sam and Dean…just…Australian. And by now a lot of not-Australian people have probably heard something about our incredibly embarrassing Prime Minister Tony Abbott…Dean is definitely right about him!
[Excerpt:]
“Fucking pollies,” Dean muttered, stabbing at the remote. ABC News fizzled into Seven, which changed to Nine, which changed to Ten, which changed to SBS, which changed to the ABC. Tony Abbott scowled at them out of the TV.
“You know,” Sam said, deadpan, “I reckon you two have a lot in common. Same nose, same attitude-“
“Shut your mouth or I will shut it for you.”
Dean flicked through the channels again, all five of them. He sighed.
“Channel surfing would probably work better in America,” Sam said. “Don’t they have like fifty?”
“Sellout,” Dean said. “By the way, fuck this guy, I bet he’s a leviathan.”
“Dean,” Sam said, “there’s no more leviathans here. They’re probably all being Republicans over in America or something.”
--
Title: Winchester, like the Bishopric
Writer: kroki_refur
Characters and/or pairings: Sam, Dean, Bobby
Rating: Gen. PG-13
Warnings: N/A
Length: 2,882
Summary: AU. After everything that's happened in the past few years, what Sam and Dean really need is a change.
Why Read it? Here, the author gives us an English Sam and Dean, driving around Britain, hunting monsters, in their classic Mini Cooper. Of course, Britain is roughly the size of Kansas, so this presents some unique problems that their American counterparts just don’t face. Cue comedic potential. Oh, and Bobby is a Scot.
[Excerpt:]
“Well, ye ken ye laddies’re always welcome here, and at Ellen’s, too,” says Bobby, and Dean sighs.
“You’re having a laugh, right?” he says. “What if we’re in Cornwall or something? Have you got any idea how far it is from Cornwall to Ellen’s? It’s over five hours’ drive, and that’s not even thinking about the traffic on the M5. Cost a fortune in petrol, too.”
“Well, ye cannae be in Cornwall every day,” says Bobby. “It’s no like it’s a hotbed of paranormal activity.”
“What if we want a cream tea?” says Dean, and Sam glares at him. “What?” he says. “They do brilliant cream teas in Cornwall.”
Bobby sighs. “Look,” he says. “I’ve offered mah place, ah dinnae ken what else ye want me tae do. Ye can always squat.”
“Yeah, that’s fine for towns, but you know what these villages are like, Bobby,” says Sam. “Everybody’d know we were there in five minutes.”
Alrighty, so there you have ‘em. If anyone else has read any fabulous stories where Sam and Dean are something other than red-blooded, mid-western American boys, I’d love for you to rec them to me!