More SPN recs

[norwich36]

A few more SPN recs, though I am way, way behind with bigbang, and will only get more so since I am going out of town this week and my second job returns next week, so I'll be back to 14 hour days. A pity, since spn summergen starts posting this week, not to mention a couple stories I've been waiting all summer for will be going up on bigbang.

As always, if you like your recs unmixed with crit, please don't click. Also, authors: if you got here by googling yourself, you might want to hit the back button, since I mix a fair bit of criticism in with my recs, even of stories I like. Read at your own risk.


The Mad Road (gen) by bellatemple. One of the most fascinating AUs I've read in the fandom. Dean dies in a fire on the ceiling of a motel room, and so it's John that breaks into Sam's house in Stanford--but Sam's really not willing to listen to his dad, even when another fire almost takes his girlfriend's life. Meanwhile, some mysterious hunter in a mental hospital needs Jo's help. There are some really cool twists in this story that bring season 4 and 5 canon into the AU plot, including time-travel, so don't be put off by the "Dean is dead" scenario--his death doesn't last any longer than it does in canon. It's true the ending is a little Deus ex machina (literally), but I felt like the rest of the story was really worth it. Features strong appearances by Jo, Ellen, Ash, Bobby, Castiel, and Ruby.

Immigrant Song . by trinityofone (Gen and then Dean/Castiel). This is episodic, so even if you're not into Dean/Castiel you could still enjoy the first 4 chapters, since they are gen. Basically it's an alternate season 6, in which Sam, Dean and Cas are driving around in the aftermath of the apocalypse, hunting monsters. Really fun appearances by Chuck, Becky, Gabriel, and Kali, among others. Some of the cases include lesbian nun orgies, frat boys holding Zeus hostage, genderswapped Dean, etc. A very enjoyable read, and although the first five cases are pretty independent, the last one wraps all the threads together. Parts 5 and 6 also have excellent Dean/Cas stuff.

The Tragedy of Life (Jared/Jensen) by lizzywinks. Jensen has chronic self-esteem issues in the beginning of this, which allow people to walk all over him, and he's only started to turn his life around when he dies in a freak accident. Fortunately, having Chad Michael Murray as your death coach turns out to be a blessing in disguise. I kind of wanted to prod Jensen myself at certain points in this story, but by the end I really loved it.

Out of the Night that Covers Me (Sam/Dean) by mickeym. Well written Sam/Dean piece that goes AU sometime in season 5. Though Dean and Sam managed to stop the apocalypse, in doing so they said yes to Michael and Lucifer, and now they have to deal with the aftermath. Sam, in particular, is so consumed by rage that he checks himself into a psychiatric hospital to avoid hurting people. This story focuses on Sam and Dean's slow recovery and their attempt to adjust to normal life. Some of the practical details of their new life seemed a little too easy to me, but the focus is on their emotional recovery, which is a lot more organically developed and really lovely.

The Play Nice Proviso (Jared/Jensen). Someone on spnpermanon said this, and they were very right: the first 9 chapters of this are awesome, and the last 5 chapters are like a completely different story. The first 9 chapters constitute a pretty original AU: for a variety of reasons, Jensen goes into SPN hating Jared's guts, so much so that they have a physical fight on the set and have to have a "play nice" clause inserted into their contracts. I love enemy slash, and the first 9 chapters are classic enemy slash: they hate each other's guts but are ineluctably drawn together. The characterizations and the banter in these chapters are really fun. Unfortunately, chapters 9-13 then turn into a totally different story, where they're so sickeningly in love they keep outing themselves to friends and family because they forget anyone else is in the room, and decide to get married before they even have sex. If you want closure on the love story, you could probably just read chapter 10. And if you don't mind the complete change in tone, chapters 10-14 aren't bad, precisely--they're just a completely different story. Smallville peeps, though? Skim 11-13 (for the Michael Rosenbaum bits) and then read chapter 14 and the epilogue--I think you'll like them.

This is the Place (Sam/Dean) by mistyzeo. A slightly AU post-apocalypse story: Sam gets out of hell hours after falling in (though it was much longer in hell), and Dean has to take care of him. Decent hurt/comfort and first-time Wincest. This story wasn't particularly memorable, but I did enjoy reading it.

Pins and Needles (Sam/Dean) by teashopmuses. An excellent casefile with bonus hurt/comfort: six months ago Sammy was seriously injured on a hunt, and it looked for a while like he might never recover. Now he has to learn how to cope with his new physical limitations while hunting. The story goes back and forth between the hunt Sam was injured on and their current hunt, and the details of his recovery are a lot more realistic than is the norm in this sort of story. The casefile is well-done, the established Dean-Sam relationship is lovely, and there are a couple of great OCs in this.

Carouselambra (Gen) by brihana25_fic. A well-written and very creepy casefile set in season one, with flashbacks to a related case when Dean was 19 and Sam 14. Sam and Dean thought that John had gotten rid of a serial-killing ghost 9 years ago, but something very similar has popped up again and is killing boys that look like Dean. Excellent horror, though perhaps a little too much Dean-torture for my taste. When the only way to kill the supernatural perp involved even more self-sacrificial Dean-torture, I have to confess I rolled my eyes a LOT, but I will say that the kickass ending made up for it. And if you like to watch Dean suffer, you will definitely enjoy this.

This Irregular Breathing Thing by monjinator (Gen). The author has pairings listed for this, but they're misleading--one is actually rape, and the other doesn't even qualify as UST, as far as I can tell. This is a Chuck-centered AU with a really interesting premise: Chuck's visions come via physical contact with angels. Unfortunately, Zachariah decides to exploit that via rape (not graphically described, but frequently repeated throughout the story), but Chuck eventually gets out from under his control and forms a tenuous friendship with Castiel. This story ended far too abruptly for my taste, but I really do love Chuck and thought this did a great job of portraying him as someone surviving a horrible situation and developing courage along the way.

Don't Give Up the Ship (Jared/Jensen)by saklani2 and myficjournal. This was maybe a little too dialogue-heavy and one or two plot details seemed impossible in the WWII setting. Nevertheless I still really enjoyed this AU in which Jared and Jensen are crew on a WWII submarine who end up falling for each other. I was worried that the relationship build-up would seem contrived, but it really wasn't, and I thought the authors did a good job portraying exactly how closeted they would have to be in that situation and how hard it would be on both of them. I also thought the duty v. love theme was realistic and well-done. I confess I didn't read all the sex scenes in this story, but I did think the first couple did a good job portraying how two men who not only lacked experience but even ideas about how to proceed might act. This story does have a happy ending, even though at certain points that doesn't look possible.