Fic: The Girl from Outside; PG; AU Jess, Sam, John, Dean

[honeylocusttree]

The Girl from Outside

Rating: PG
Warnings: Violence, possible abuse, Winchester-appropriate language
Word count: 8300+
Characters: Jess, Sam, John, Dean
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

Comments

[scarletscarlet]

This was really cool! Fascinating framing of the Hunter culture as a known-to-the-world subculture with history and language like that, and the outsider POV is always such an interesting lens. I liked your mix of live-action and Jess's report.

[honeylocusttree]

It was fun writing material for Jess, as an undergrad who maybe thinks she's a better writer than she really is, but at the same time is getting access to info that'll probably make her famous before she even starts her grad school stuff. I had a lot of fun running with this idea, and I love that other people enjoyed it as well. Thank you so much!

[13chapters]

This was great. I've often thought about Hunters as a subculture with its own rules and rhythm, but the idea of Hunters as an ethnic group is really interesting and not something that had ever occurred to me. I love Jess being the foil for supernatural shenanigans.

Wonderful!

[honeylocusttree]

Ooh, I'm really glad to hear you say that--honestly I was a bit worried about what reaction I'd get from someone with a background in this stuff, so I'm reaaally glad it worked for you. And I'm a fiend for outsider!pov, so though I've never really done anything with Jess, I found her really enjoyable to write here.

Thank you so much! Really happy you enjoyed this!

[salty_catfish]

I enjoyed this, great idea! I was really hooked by the way you portrayed the excorcism, it reminded me of Meg's excorcism in S1, the violence of it. Also you could've taken the route of 'and then black demon smoke poured out of his throat and then jess knew it was all real' but I liked that it wasn't the point of the story.

[honeylocusttree]

Hah, I'm always disappointed by fics that have the OC or outsider-character learn that 'it was true all along' because it always feels like such a cop-out. I like the idea that it *could* be true but it depends on your worldview, and it's fun to leave things open-ended, because I am evil.

Really glad you enjoyed this! It was a lot of fun to write, and I'm really happy it was fun to read as well. Thank you so much!

[chiiyo86]

I was immediately seduced by the concept in the summary, and not disappointed in the least by the execution! I do like languages too (I'm actually on my way to become an English teacher in my country), and I thought it was an interesting idea to have the Hunters get their own language - and the way John was purposefully avoiding English in front of Jess was very in character!

[honeylocusttree]

Sometimes it's hard to tell if my crazed ramblings make sense as a narrative, so I'm glad that the story here made some sense to you. :3 And I'm such a huge language dork--I'm one of those kids who learned Elvish in elementary school from LotR and frankly never looked back. And I just know if John really did have an entire language he could use with his kids that nobody else would understand, he'd totally do it.

I wondered about the language aspect of this, and am really glad to hear it worked for you and seemed believable. Thanks so very much!

[snickfic]

Okay, so, this is the coolest thing. I really enjoyed this framing of the hunter subculture. As you say, this universe is not quite our canonical universe, but in terms of how hunters operate, it's not far off, either. I particularly loved the idea of Bobby as their "shaman."

Re: your comment to someone else about this John being darker than canon, honestly, he matched my idea of canon John pretty well, especially as he would appear to outsiders. Then again, I think I get a lot of my idea from that one fic of kroki_refur's about Jess tagging along with the Winchesters, and John's pretty dark in that. So, uh, take that as you will. :)

Anyway, I really liked this a lot; I've never seen anything quite like it before. Nicely done!

[honeylocusttree]

I wanted to write Shaman!Bobby but there was no place for him. :c Ages ago I wrote a bit of a fic where Bobby was just a talking skull; this representation of him is derived from that. I love the idea of ending a fic with the skull calling Sam an idjit, but it didn't fit unfortunately and was not to be. But it makes me giggle!

I definitely think I was over exaggerating John's loominess here, but I liked the idea too much not to run with it. He's mostly there to freak Jess the hell out, and I think he does an admirable job at it. Heh.

I'm so glad you got a kick out of this--it was a blast to write! Thanks so much!