As part of destielfanfic’s anniversary celebration, here is an author spotlight by jackvelvet! Some of her fics we’ve reviewed:
Perceptions
Redemption Road (contributing author)
You can find her fic master list here on livejournal or here on AO3.
Behind the cut:
About
Destiel Fanfic Highlights
Art: Dessert for Two
Art: Cover Up The Grace
Self-Written Fanfic Highlights
Perceptions
Embers
Without further ado (and in her own words)…
About:
The How/When/Why of Destiel.
I started watching Supernatural. Everyone had been raving about the show. I kept being reluctant to get into it, judging it solely on the basis of its host network. I swore up and down that I knew those kinds of shows, and I had no desire to be lumped into the “young adult soap opera” audience.
Until I caught some repeat of something from season two on TNT. Even then, it wasn’t the best repeat to catch. The werewolf episode? I judged it hard. Sam was super emotional, and I think there was emotional music playing, and despite the darkness of the ending, I just kept thinking, “Yup, soap opera.”
The episode that played immediately after that? Hollywood Babylon.
Mind equals changed. It was a fitting episode to see after hyper-analyzing the prior one with my hipster-super-meta goggles on. Ran out and got the first season for a whopping fifteen bucks. Stayed out of fandom. Knew there was an angel named Castiel coming (because it was hard to avoid). Kept pronouncing his name in my head as “Castille.” Had no clue what the big deal was with the hamburger dude from 24.
ENTER CASTIEL.
Enter love.
Let’s not even talk about the pairing. Or Jared (sorry Jared, but this is a Destiel thing right now). Let’s just talk about how superb the actors portray the characters. There is no Misha. There is no Jensen. There is only Dean and Castiel. Despite how—let’s say infuriating—the show can be (I am talking about choices made with writing—there’s a big difference between making Dean a misogynist and making a narrative misogynistic, for instance), the actors? (Okay, let’s bring in Jared and the recurring cast too.) You just. Can’t. Not. Love. Them. Because they make that world real as hell.
And so it’s easy, especially when you identify with Dean’s older-sibling/parental impulses, his need to compartmentalize and just shut down to get shit done, and Castiel’s awkward curiosity, to just get sucked into this idea that these two could be something together. (Granted, they need to really work on themselves because whoa, their canon relationship has some unhealthy aspects to it.)
I don’t want to downplay Sam. I identify with him too. His brain, really. And how he wanted to use it before Jess died and “the life” stole everything from him. In fact, I’m into Sassy too (for those not familiar, that’s the Sam/Cas portmanteau).
But Dean and Cas just…really resonate with me. In a way that few fandom pairings do. I can take off my slash goggles and still feel pain for their canon relationship. But again, I think in part that’s because—and there’s lots of controversy around this—that our society is heteronormative. I sometimes wonder what everyone would think if say, Castiel’s perceived sex was that of a woman? Would we suddenly see the sexual tension? The romance beyond the friendship?
And this is where I get into sexuality. Because I am not a person who just sees two pretty people and decides to exploit a sexuality just for titillation. (Okay, I am human, but that titillation needs a believable backstory.) What I see between Dean and Cas I have seen between people who love each other in a romantic and/or sexual relationship. And what amplifies it all is that some of Dean’s behavior is classic subtextual behavior. (This past season overflowed with so much subtext I was starting to think it was on purpose, but I may be skewed since I’m aware of how homosexuality and bi-/pansexuality used to be portrayed in motion pictures.) And, of course, the kicker being that I know classic bi/pan closeted behavior because I have exhibited it myself. I have seen others exhibit it. So this is where Dean and Castiel becomes a painful thing. People like myself who need to really see, well, us, portrayed in mainstream fiction start to wonder if: 1) we’re being ignored on purpose, because we’re terrible nothings; 2) the people who dictate what’s “okay to see” on Supernatural are cowards and have no business being in charge of a show starring some seriously brave people; or 3) if the creators/writers/directors actually do these things subconsciously, because maybe they have something to work out themselves. (And again, if that’s the case, why not do it already?)
But artists owe us little. They do have a great responsibility to society, but on a very technical level, they owe us little. They give to us, and we take. That is the basic nature of our relationship.
So while we lament over the lack of representation in our favorite shows, while we struggle with loving something so much that apparently hates us so much that it won’t acknowledge our existence (or will only do it for laughs), we turn to fandom.
And I turned to where I had to turn: Destiel.
This naturally takes me to the next part of the spotlight.
Destiel Fanwork Highlights:
Destiel fics I’d recommend.
I don’t have any.
Part of this is because my activity in fandom has screeched to a halt. I went on a long hiatus to take care of my career. I am slowly coming back to fandom, but my career takes precedence.
That said, I haven’t read any fics since I took that hiatus. Before then, I found lots of great works. They had great plots, tasteful sex, and gorgeous prose. But not one of them really resonated with me.
Going back to what I said earlier, this all ties into really one thing: I don’t believe what I’m reading. I want to see Dean and/or Cas struggle like I did. I want to see them overcome the real issues in their relationship. I want the journey, not the destination. And I don’t want to feel cheapened by the journey. I don’t want to go in thinking Dean is going to come to grips with his sexuality—a very real and human thing people go through—only to find out that there was some magical homoerotic instance in the past that we are never shown until it’s convenient to the plot. It’s like, “Okay, he’s gay/bi/pan, now that we’ve got that down, here’s some man-man sex.” (Don’t get me wrong. It works for the genre of story, and I love me some man-man sex. Sex is just a good thing. And it’s realistic too.)
But fandom doesn’t really exist for realism. It exists for fantasy. So lots of what is out there is fantasy. And that’s just perfectly fine. In fact, it’s probably necessary. I do indulge in the fantastical side of fandom (writing and reading), but nothing has hit me at my core. What would hit me at my core is the kind of fic that gives me the mirror I have been searching for.
I haven’t found something like that yet. I just haven’t. It doesn’t mean it doesn’t exist, but I just haven’t read it yet. So I can’t recommend anything that really just, I guess, grabbed me tight and raised me from perdition. My Holy Grail is still out there. Believe me—when I find it, I’ll rec the hell out of it.
So I’m going to rec some artists instead.
Artmetica [deviantart, livejournal, tumblr]; a favorite:
Dessert for Two
Gikun [deviantart, livejournal, tumblr]; a favorite:
Cover Up The Grace [tumblr]
They probably don’t need the recs, because they’re popular (their contributions to the fandom are astounding), but I’m going to rec them anyway. Stellar artists.
If Castiel’s still looking for God, he’ll find Him in Artmetica’s and Gikun’s galleries.
Self-Written Fanfic Highlights:
And now the part where I talk about my own fics.
Well, I’ve written a lot of fanfics. Not all in the Supernatural fandom. The few I have written in this fandom have not all been Destiel. (Two of my favorites are Sassy.)
There are only really two works that stand out to me. They are the ones I will remember long after I forget about what fanfiction is, mostly because of the sharknados that swept around them.
Perceptions [M, 30,500 word count]
When Castiel becomes mortal, he rejects Dean’s offer of a seat in the Impala, and distances himself from the Winchesters for good. A chance encounter in Buffalo, New York reunites them, putting them on a case investigating strange poltergeist activity at a local restaurant. But Castiel is not the same awkward angel Dean once knew. Something’s changed. Life happened.
The first is Perceptions. Which is, if I remember correctly, the last fanfiction I ever wrote. (Technicality on a Batfic I wrote, because the chapters were technically written, just not edited and not posted.)
Writing that fic was hard. I took a long look at my writing and decided to really step it up. (If you compare the writing there to how I write now, there are some changes, but nothing dramatic. Mainly, I’ve gotten better with filter words, tight POVs, and general editing tricks.)
The plot was…not hard. I don’t know. Plotting is something I love to do. But the writing itself was different. And I did something that I’ve definitely done before, but really went for broke on it with this one. I incorporated a theme, and I didn’t tell anyone. I didn’t make it obvious, unless you count the title.
That is, until the hate mail came in.
I found myself suddenly having to defend my work to complete strangers who felt I owed them something. What?
I added in an author’s note. I sent back messages. I had to explain to them that the hint was in the title and the first chapter. That it was stated again in the last chapter.
I’d like to think I have thick skin. I’m a woman who constantly thinks I’m equal and can play in all the boys’ clubs. And I knew that these people were just being jerks. Fandom has some toxic people, and Supernatural is sadly known for having a higher toxicity than other fandoms. I chalked it up to the fandom.
But apparently my skin wasn’t so thick, because that got into my head. I actually thought that perhaps I had wasted the past few years of my life on fanfiction. I’d stepped my writing up to the next level, incorporated things that aren’t often incorporated into fanfictions, and failed. Miserably.
Ironically, I had skewed perceptions of my own. It wasn’t just the toxic people who pushed me out. It was me. I thought I had wasted so much time writing fanfiction that I had screwed my actual writing career over. And every time I logged in and saw a comment in my inbox? I thought it was more hate mail for Perceptions. And I didn’t want to have to copy and paste that whole “you knew the perception was skewed because of this clue here and this clue there and the fact that Dean wonders if it was all psychosomatic at the end” message again.
I changed gears. I left fandom, went on a fanfic hiatus, and furiously worked on my own writing. (I didn’t file the serial numbers off anything, either. I was a novelist before I was a fanfic writer, actually, and had manuscripts that needed editing.)
I logged in here and there, just to tell my friends that I hadn’t disappeared for good. That I would be back.
And of course, since then, I’ve only received positive messages about Perceptions.
Oddly enough? The one thing I hate about Perceptions is the one thing no one has addressed. And that, of course, is the appearance of an original character. Simply put: Supernatural is a sausage-fest. I didn’t want the fic to be, but how do you do that with a show where the women die all the time?
In fandom, it’s hard to pull off original characters. Rather, it can be easy, but they are rarely received well, even if they are the most awesome characters ever created in the history of ever. And the OC’s role is a supporting role, not a main role, and not a very good one at that (hover for spoilers). I could hide behind the whole “but fandom doesn’t WANT OCs!” excuse, but honestly, what the fuck do I care? I should have given that role some justice. I didn’t. Misogyny in fandom won’t end if we keep demonizing the appearance of women in fanfictions and being afraid to include them out of fear of retribution. Never again.
So it’s a weird one, this fic. I’ve had such a messed up relationship with it that I have no idea how I feel about it anymore. Did I like it when I posted it initially? Yes. Do I still like it? I don’t know. All I know is that it actually gave me this writing crisis and filled me with resentment. Just the other day I received another glowing compliment on it, but I always think of the hate mail I got. The posts I saw elsewhere. The personal insults I received. All because I wanted to write something that challenged me as a writer.
So now I get to talk about my other major Destiel fic, but first give the bad news—LJ mangled the fics I’m about to talk about (Perceptions is still available).
During my hiatus, where I only popped in once and a while, I was doing something to my fics to make my index look nicer. I don’t know what it was. Maybe I was changing the links or something. Either way, it required me to hit “save” on the edited posts. I previewed them, and the previews looked great…
But when they posted?
Yeah. I had block fics. Unreadable garbage. My code was sound, or had been. But prior to that edit, LJ had made changes to its rich text editor, and the site. These changes meant that saving anything, even with proper HTML tags, somehow deleted those tags.
(The glitch was quietly fixed some time later, because it didn’t happen after that. Who knows. Maybe it was just one of those “random days” on LJ where nothing works because someone decided to use LJ as a free-speech platform, which is, disgustingly, still a no-no in many areas of the world.)
I locked as many fics as I could, knowing I had little time to fix the code. I didn’t feel like fielding “your fic looks like crap messages” every time I logged in.
The fics I’m speaking of specifically are the Embers fics.
Embers [M, unspecified word count]
A series of epics and Vignettes focusing on the relationship of Dean Winchester and Castiel, told through the eyes of both Winchesters.
Some readers may remember this series. Embers has six fics total, some one-shots (or vignettes as I like to call them for some silly hipster reason), some not. Throughout the fics, Dean and Castiel go through a series of ups and down, all the while Dean is struggling to come to terms with his sexuality (surprised?). The fics’ titles even have significance when looked at together: Embers, Ash, Raphael, Castiel, Balthazar, Blaze. Obviously, judging by the titles, there’s some angelic interference going on here.
It wasn’t a typical romance. There were few fuzzy feelings, and those that were fuzzy were often followed by sessions of doubt. There were lines of poetry mixed with prose. There were choices made in the presentation (hence the fancy code) that were there to illustrate what was happening.
Writing wise, it had the whole twisty plot thing that I like to do, and it did have some minor themes, but overall, the quality of the writing was nothing like Perceptions. I still think it’s an enjoyable fic, and judging by the lack of controversy and hate mail I received for it, so did readers.
That fancy code, of course, is why I haven’t been able to fix it yet. That’s six fics to manually code. Some day, I’d love to reshare the fics with everyone, but will probably do it on AO3, which is much more fanfic friendly.
I think that’s it for me. Will you see anything new in Supernatural from me? I don’t know. Taking that hiatus pushed me to publish my original fiction, and that has taken up a lot of my time. I know us authors say it a lot, but writing really is hard work. It’s more than just having an idea. Even in the non-fanfic realm, you still have to do a ton of work before you can even think of sending it to someone who might think about publishing you. And a lot of fanfic authors DO that work. Writers get their multiple beta readers. They get their research done. They polish their coding until it’s perfect. Some even make ebooks out of their works.
Which is why I am thankful for spotlights like this. It gives us a chance to talk about the things we don’t really get to talk about outside of locked posts. The time creators put into work is often much greater than the time it takes for a person to consume it. All we can hope as creators is for our work to be timeless. That readers and viewers and everyone in fandom all carry these works with them for a long time. I don’t know if I’ve accomplished that with fanfic, but it’s nice to think about.