#so like i have a couple stories published from abt a year or two ago

[way2gosuperrstarr]

i wanna start writing again but i literally feel like the world's most ass writer in the entire universe . like is it really worth it if im gonna stare at it and hate it like .5 seconds after im done w it. i wanna write my y/n's story but like either its gonna sit in whatever program i'd use to write (i dont wanna use google docs due to the whole ai training thing .... idk if its fully true but i dont wanna risk it) forever or it would just be quietly archived on my ao3 without so much as a whisper to let any person know it exists 😭

[eirvosol]

i'm bored lets do this

times new roman or arial .... arial is just default font but college has made times new roman the font that gets my brain gears working HARD

yes, probably. i have a ton of crappy handwritten stories from elementary/middle school hidden away. i like writing in pen more tho

uhhh consume content until it has consumed me and then pump a couple thousand words at like 3 am bc hyper fixations get the brain pumping

more than one word but any phrasing of "there you are" makes me Insane

don't rlly have any superstitions

that i'm actually terrible at writing and everyone is lying to me

mmm writing exposition that i can feel in my soul

dialogue. i love writing exposition but action can be too Much for me to write. probably a conversation between two ppl w some deeper theme idk

half of me does, half of me doesn't

YES. other ppl's writing haunts me bc something apt it has made me insane. my own writing haunts me bc of how badly it was written.

no i love angst i love it i do but i am too sentimental to kill my darlings

ability to write complete stories (instead of countless unfinished one shots), ability to write action (ie kisses, fights), and uhhh CREATIVITY!

uhh anything to do w conflict and resolution ... i get kinda stumped on how to resolve some issue within a relationship (maybe cause i can't solve my own laugh out loud). easy to write ....... trauma, unconfined love, self doubt. i love writing exposition of internal issues and feelings <3

not when i was younger, but i do now bc i love sharing my love for certain books and the feeling of knowing a book i have has been so well loved amongst many people. i do get nervous abt borrowing books from others tho

yes, yes, and yes. like i said in the previous answer, i love being able to tell that a book is well loved. with each dogeared page, scribbled note, water stain, and cracked spine, you can see the years of love and attention a book has received <3 like i said before, i'm sentimental T__T

not weird ig but a reciept

idk buddy im still working it out

zhongli sees red everywhere.

it’s not as if the world was colored red, a monochromatic scarlet. his eyes just seem to find their way to all things red. the color sneaks up on him and traps him in an everlasting trance.  it strikes a fire in his chest, with colors as brilliant and sharp as the red that surrounds his mind.  

he has not experienced so much red in thousands of years. the last time he was consumed by it, he gained and lost everything.  

yet, this compulsive notice of red is not the same as the dreadful war that graced him with the land he walks on now. no, it’s not the harsh red of blood. it’s the type of red that pulls you in completely, and leaves you craving and yearning for something you didn’t know you had.

never before had zhongli been so entranced by the fiery depths of red.

not until he met diluc.

a scarlet blaze of pyro. a phoenix devastating every wall zhongli could ever put up.

zhongli had found himself drunk on the fumes that diluc left behind, absolutely devoured by the flames he never doused.

diluc was a red that zhongli could not ignore. his red was incomparable to any other.

i love this passage deeply and it makes me sad that this is still stuck in my wips (I WILL FINISH IT ONE DAY) i wrote this like a year or two ago so i can't rlly explain the process except that i was absolutely devastated over the pure domesticity and passion of this pairing lol

19. started writing original stories on wattpad in elementary school (don't ask), got swallowed whole by the internet in middle school and started actually writing fan fiction in high school, took a creative writing class for dual enrollment, wrote an actual original short story and began writing poetry, and ig here we are... i mostly write fan fiction so nowhere to go w that but i'd like to publish a poetry book in the next 5 years

20. eternal happiness w my one true love ... a lot of my slash writing has some influence of what i crave in a relationship so yeah i'd choose the fulfillment of that over my writing reaching its peak

21. no. i adore writing and i wouldn't want to quit. i love being able to write. i rlly can't explain it but i just love it.

22. how could u ask me this.... no i am not organized jus gdocs scrambled with my schoolwork <33

23. my laptop propped up on my lap as i rot in bed at the late hours of the night....i cannot be poetic about my writing setup i am simply a gremlin

24. i used to just let the writing guide me but now i just make a messy outline of the overall plot and specific scenes and what i want them to cover. last time i wrote more than 5k words, i had a long ass paragraph for each scene i wanted to cover and what it would include lmao

25. mmmmmm i honestly can't say ... id have to reread my shit and i can't handle that

26. most of the characters i like i see myself in so it makes it easier. also, i am a stickler for characterization and it makes me go Insane if a character says something they never would

27. steve. he's so annoying (/heartfelt) and oblivious. i have to make him miss 90% of the signs right in front of his face smh

28. legolas <333 writing lotr ff is so magical bc i get to focus on exposition more. writing w his mind was so lovely to do

29. other people's writing or poetry. i get inso from the way people describe things ig ....if my inspiration runs dry, i just rot until something hits me lmao

30. no, my dreams r too chaotic and i rarely remember them when i wake up

31. im not good at this Wait .... thank you for reading my writing and showing so much love to it. you make me believe that i can actually connect to people w my writing like others writing has done for me. i love u <3

32. 'visible world' by richard siken or this one quote from a zhongluc ff that went something along the lines of "to have the capability to love something once tarnished is strength" i actually used this line in my college essay lmao but they both deal w overcoming adversity. 'visible world' helps me a lot when im in Bad places

33. mm video editing ig? it helps me connect to some of the characterization that revolves in my head

34. USE IT!!! IT DRIVES ME INSANE WHEN U GUYS DONT USE IT PLEASE

35. run on sentences LET ME SAY WHAT I NEED TO SAY IN ONE SENTENCE!!!! THE PACING IS OFF IF I BREAK THEM APART

36. Pain.

37. "wow! this mf was mentally ill and gay asf!!!!!"

38. i will reread my writing obsessively while writing it but cannot physically reread it once its published

39. idk once i hit writers block, i stop until its gone bc .... Writers Block

40. here's something i wrote recently (its unedited sorry)

blood and bones and ash / you live in my ribs / pressed right against my beating heart / tell tale and told / you're a comfort to my very soul / eyes peering into me / gold and amber and everything more / pinch my veins / let me feel your pain / as long as it's you / (i hope it's you) / spill into my guts / fill every crevice and / bloom like flowers / let their leaves sprout through my skin / rip out to feel the sun's warmth / i will be your soil, dig your roots deep / as long as it's you

Weird Questions for Writers (because writers are weird)

1. What font do you write in? Do you actually care or is that just the default setting?

2. If you had to give up your keyboard and write your stories exclusively by hand, could you do it? If you already write everything by hand, a) are you a wizard and b) pen or pencil?

3. What is your writing ritual and why is it cursed?

4. What’s a word that makes you go absolutely feral?

5. Do you have any writing superstitions? What are they and why are they 100% true?

6. What is your darkest fear about writing?

7. What is your deepest joy about writing?

8. If you had to write an entire story without either action or dialogue, which would you choose and how would it go?

9. Do you believe in ghosts? This isn’t about writing I just wanna know

10. Has a piece of writing ever “haunted” you? Has your own writing haunted you? What does that mean to you?

11. Do you believe in the old advice to “kill your darlings?” Are you a ruthless darling assassin? What happens to the darlings you murder? Do you have a darling graveyard? Do you grieve?

12. If a genie offered you three writing wishes, what would they be? Btw if you wish for more wishes the genie turns all your current WIPs into Lorem Ipsum, I don’t make the rules

13. What is a subject matter that is incredibly difficult for you write about? What is easy?

14. Do you lend your books to people? Are people scared to borrow books from you? Do you know exactly where all your “lost” books are and which specific friend from school you haven’t seen in twelve years still possesses them? Will you ever get them back?

15. Do you write in the margins of your books? Dog-ear your pages? Read in the bath? Why or why not? Do you judge people who do these things? Can we still be friends?

16. What’s the weirdest thing you’ve ever used as a bookmark?

17. Talk to me about the minutiae of your current WIP. Tell me about the lore, the history, the detail, the things that won’t make it in the text.

18. Choose a passage from your writing. Tell me about the backstory of this moment. How you came up with it, how it changed from start to end. Spicy addition: Questioner provides the passage.

19. Tell me a story about your writing journey. When did you start? Why did you start? Were there bumps along the way? Where are you now and where are you going?

20. If a witch offered you the choice between eternal happiness with your one true love and the ability to finally finish, perfect, and publish your dearest, darlingest, most precious WIP in exactly the way you've always imagined it — which would you choose? You can’t have both sorry, life’s a bitch

21. Could you ever quit writing? Do you ever wish you could? Why or why not?

22. How organized are you with your writing? Describe to me your organization method, if it exists. What tools do you use? Notebooks? Binders? Apps? The Cloud?

23. Describe the physical environment in which you write. Be as detailed as possible. Tell me what’s around you as you work. Paint me a picture.

24. How much prep work do you put into your stories? What does that look like for you? Do you enjoy this part or do you just want to get on with it?

25. What is a weird, hyper-specific detail you know about one of your characters that is completely irrelevant to the story?

26. How do you get into your character’s head? How do you get out? Do you ever regret going in there in the first place?

27. Who is the most stressful character you’ve ever written? Why?

28. Who is the most delightful character you’ve ever written? Why?

29. Where do you draw your inspiration? What do you do when the inspiration well runs dry?

30. Talk to me about the role dreams play in your writing life. Have you ever used material from your dreams in your writing? Have you ever written in a dream? Did you remember it when you woke up?

31. Write a short love letter to your readers.

32. What is a line from a poem/novel/fanfic etc that you return to from time and time again? How did you find it? What does it mean to you?

33. Do you practice any other art besides writing? Does that art ever tie into your writing, or is it entirely separate?

34. Thoughts on the Oxford comma, Go:

35. What’s your favorite writing rule to smash into smithereens?

36. They say to Write What You Know. Setting aside for a moment the fact that this is terrible advice...what do you Know?

37. If you were to be remembered only by the words you’ve put on the page, what would future historians think of you?

38. What is something about your writing process YOU think is Really Weird? If you are comfortable, please share. If you’re not comfortable, what do you think cats say about us?

39. What keeps you writing when you feel like giving up?

40. Please share a poem with me, I need it.

[charmspoint]

THANK YOU FOR SAYING THAT ABT THE BSD MANGA ILY THANK YOU I FEEL LIKE MY OPINION IS FINALLY VALIDATED WHICH IS: BSD has turned meh. I have become indifferent towards the plot due to the fact there are no real stakes - I feel like the OP characters like Dazai will always have a solution with a deus ex machina feel to it, making it impossible for me to care. With the recent chaos happening in the manga (I too gave up on the manga a year or so ago!), I was baffled to find out I could no longer enjoy it. My memory is poor, and I can't really pinpoint it at the moment, but BSD just... doesn't engage me as it used to. Keep in mind I was an obsessive fan of it and analyzed it to the tiniest details, but all of my great love for the series has long died, sadly. But! I am glad to hear you feel similarly about it because, yes, the potential was there, but it got terribly wasted.

Bruh don't I feel it, me and @autumn-foxfire have like monthly bitch sessions about the state of bsd at this point. I was also super invested in it in initial arcs (Up until the guild arc ended) and then slowly started petering off only to drop it the first time around the hunting dogs introduction. Then after some time i was like okay ill go give it a second shot, came to the vampire arc went 'wow this is really fuckin stupid' and dropped it again. Idk will I pick it up again, maybe I'll just stick to being an anime only, even tho I also have problems with some adaptation things but that's BESIDES THE POINT.

Please click under for The Point

The thing about Kafka is: He's really good at coming up with interesting concepts and ideas and REALLY BAD at executing them in any sort of satisfying way. Like, when I say I only like bsd until the end of the guild arc, I don't mean it was perfect. It could have handled it's female cast better, it would have been fun to see more mafia and agency team ups besides soukoku and shin soukoku, I still don't get why shin soukoku is supposed to be a replacement in training since Dazai and Chuuya still work together perfectly and even if they hate each other they hate each other less than Akutagawa and Atsushi AND have way more experience fighting together but that once again is besides the point. The point being those arcs of bsd were SATISFYING. We got introduced to two organizations, seen them butt heads and then have them forced to work together against a common enemy. It's very simple but it's effective and it's satisfying.

And then the rats struck.

While up until then bsd wasn't perfect it was fun and had lovable characters and an interesting plot and engaging dynamics. Rats arc wasn't horrible per say, the idea of the cannibalization was really fun (Though I think Kafka should have used it to get rid of Mori, nobody fuckin likes Mori) but this is where we slowly get introduced to what I think are two main failings of Kafka's writing: That he's unable to handle characters properly and that he likes writing smart things but doesn't know how to write smart things.

Kafka has a very, very bad habit of INTRODUCING TOO MANY FUCKING CHARCTERS. Every arc is a new massive group with like a bunch of members, one of who may actually end up being fleshed out before they are inventiblely replaced by another large group or maybe two why the fuck not. The mafia and the guild left lasting impressions on me and I can still name all the main members but fuck me if i know a single rat aside from Fyodor (AND ILL GET TO FYODOR). Kafka feels like someone who's idea of rising conflict is 'introduce a bigger enemy each time' and it's just so annoying. Chapters and arcs end up centering around these groups of new characters while old characters, who we loved the manga for, just fall into obscurity. He almost had me in the hunting dogs arc by giving Yosano a backstory. I was so excited! I was like!!! finally development for the agency!!! But that barely went anywhere did it. I've talked about this with Foxy but it really feels like Kafka is just BORED of the og characters and is trying to silently sideline them for his new shiny characters. When's the last time we saw Chuuya again, you know, the ex partner of one of the series protagonists? The next predicted mafia head? Is he important? Foxy tells me Dazai's been sidelined too, fUCKIN DAZAI, for a good while I was sure Kafka liked Dazai a lot better than Atsuhi for protagonist and now he's getting sidelined. I know bsd is still really popular in japan but at this point i think it would have been more merciful for Kafka to just end bsd and start a new manga with new characters instead of doing whatever weird metamorphosis this is turning out to be.

Introducing new characters isn't a bad thing of course, but bsd has become mcdonalds of new characters. They are cheap and disposable. I can't feel anything for them because I know nine times out of ten they'll barely make any impact and they'll disappear as soon as the new group slides in. When adding new characters you should do so while knowing what role those characters will play in your plot, what will they bring. If a character is just there to waffle around until they get shoved away they should probably be cut because they are wasting time and space. AND YOU SHOULDN'T SIDE LINE YOUR CORE CAST FOR UR SHINY NEW CHARACTERS YOU'LL GET BORED OF IN COUPLE OF ARCS ANYWAY, ARE YOU A TODDLER???

I still think that bsd could have been SO much better if instead of focusing on the next big evil group they just focused on shifting tension between the agency and the mafia. I mean they've had to team up for the guild and then they immediately got thrown into the cannibalization. It would have been interesting to see them pull against and pull towards those ties made during the guild arc when they are forcefully pitted against each other again (and decide that killing mori would be in everyone's best interest). Instead we got, idk I already forgot what the rats arc ended up being about, atsushi and aku team up again yadda yadda yadda, Chuuya gets done dirty and never recovers, Fyodor ruins Dazai

SO ABOUT FYODOR. As I said, Kafka strikes me as someone who REALLY likes to write geniuses and who wants people to think he's super smart but also has no idea how to show his work. At first this was okay. We had Dazai and Ranpo who were very good at pushing the plot along and sometimes you'd get explained how they got to that conclusion and sometimes you didn't but it usually wasn't a big deal. But then the writing became more and more and more of 'well he's smart so he figured it out so just trust me' without actually explaining anything and as you said, it ended up feeling boring, unengaging and very deus ex machina. You know what Kafka's writing reminds me off? That video about how Sherlock is so happy to stroke itself to how smart they look while never showing their work, you know the one. Kafka likes writing smart characters but doesn't actually know how to write smart characters so instead of giving us reasons and clues and explanations to how they come to some conclusion, how they predicted or planned or whatever, he just goes 'oh well they are super smart so they figured it out'. I don't think I need to explained why this is bad, annoying and unengaging writing. This is why i say Fyodor ruined Dazai for me, Dazai was fine as a genius but then they had to pit him against Fyodor who's another genius and things just got ridiculous. You know how in that sherlock video the guy points out the one scene that encapsulates every irritating thing about sherlocks writing. This had been it for me and BSD (thank you Foxy for helping me find the panels)

THATS NOT HOW CODES WORK, THATS NOT HOW ANYTHING WORKS, THEY WOULD JUST BE COMING UP WITH TWO DIFFERENT SETS OF CODES HERE. Even if they were both smart enough to remember every conversation in detail, how on earth are they supposed to 'guess out' what the other means. How are they supposed to confirm or deny that's what a certain word means in a way that can be understood, how can they even guess what the word the other guessed is IF THEY ARE BOTH TALKING IN CODE. KAFKA'S ANSWER: THEY'RE MONSTERS, THEY ARE JUST THAT SMART, NO NEED TO EXPLAIN IT BECAUSE THEY ARE JUST THAT SMART AND THAT'S YOUR SOLUTION AND THAT'S BULLSHIT. This scene broke bsd in half for me and honestly made me dislike Dazai for a long time (I got better), but it honestly shows so well how Kafka wanted to make his characters so smart he actually made his manga really fuckin stupid, ruining very good and interesting concept he had started with.

In the end, Kafka writes how I wrote when I was 15. With no idea where the plot is headed, adding new characters and situations whenever it strikes his fancy whether they work for the story or not, ending up just flopping around plot holes and fizzled out character arcs and boring ass writing. And that's fine for a 15yr old writing fanfiction. It's not fine for a presumably grown ass published author of a relatively popular manga.

Thank you for coming to my Ted Talk.

[thejugheadparadox]

ok i talked abt rossetti + elizabeth siddal’s self portrait as part of my art history final 2 years ago and i am dying to know about christina. please

CHRISTINA ROSSETTI!!! i honestly barely knew anything about the portrait before seeing that post i would love to know more. i am so fascinated by christina georgina rossetti born 1830 died 1894, so she’s like ridiculously quintessentially victorian, she basically never knew another monarch. when she was a child she was angry and had a lot of tantrums, her and her brother the painter one dante gabriel were know as the two storms whilst their others siblings maria and william were known as the two calms (suuch classic irritating twee victorian fake middle class art family shit but i find it faintly endearing). she dropped out of school at the age of 14 due to a religious breakdown, and never went back. during and after that she was really fixated on christianity especially anglo-catholicism and its very specific doctrines. she was REALLY into it in a way the rest of her family werent (except her sister who became a nun i guess). she’d been writing poetry since she was very young, cus she’s from this eccentric art dynasty they played writing games as kids and shit - her maternal uncle was john william polidori who wrote the first published vampire story and was lord byrons doctor if that rings any bells? that relation specifically is sooo interesting to me bc its about legacy and who you are remembered as and whether youre noticed and also maybe youre gay? yk. i love it. 

ANYWAYS. she was so into religion that it stopped her getting married twice. she was engaged to the prb painter james collinson for a bit but broke it off bc he reverted to roman catholicism and she couldnt be doing w that shit. she later got engaged to charles cayley and also broke that off for religious reasons! Or At Least Thats What They Say. she also turned down a possible proposal (ppl dont know if he proposed and the whole affair is a guess) from john brett, which she wrote a fun mean poem about called no thank you john. anyway she never married and she pursued lots of Things but none of them really went anywhere, she wanted to be a nurse w florence nightingale in the crimean war but got rejected, she worked with “fallen women” in her 30s and 40s. shes not one of those tragic figures who never knew fame while they were alive tho, she was pretty successful and released multiple collections. she was publicly antifeminist and declined to sign petitions in support of womens suffrage but wrote this one unpublished poem called from the antique that explicitly expresses her dissatisfaction with her limited life as a woman. 

she got ill lots, as is classic for old timey lady poets, like emily dickinson style. she got depressed lots and after her dad died her family didnt have much money. she wrote a lot about inadequacy, as a woman and as a person and most often as a servant of god (every fucking poem ends up about jesus i swear to god it gets annoying). her brother was more successful and her sister was more devout and she never seemed to get the things she wanted and she never really had any friends, especially female ones. almost every time she was published, it was by her brother, william michael, who also published her works en masse after she died, and we have explicit sources showing both her brothers would tell her not to publish poetry they deemed out of character or unwomanly. i dont mean to entirely demonise them as the Bad Guys of the story but i find it very.... interesting that when u look at her poetry that is available but not officially published there are both feminist poems and a couple of pieces that coiuld be interpreted as love poems towards women. there are (admittedly pretty unfounded as far as i can tell) theories that even more of them existed and were destroyed, but i should say we DO know that there are missing poems and destroyed scraps that pique ones interest i will say!

ive read her collected family letters and what stood out to me is HOW ridiculously fucking boring they are. i think theyre hiding something.. i am fascinated by all of it. she interests me. i have some kind of parasocial relationship with her and i feel like her work is SO easy to translate to modern day and what ppl our age are writing about like she wrote what is essentially lonely notes app poetry about religious guilt and sexual repression and hating herself like. god i sound like those ppl who say dantes inferno is fanfic but i think about it a lot and i think about her a lot and i would recommend a lot of her poetry... if anyone wants specific recs do ask. to me its a story about hiding and repression and wanting to be good. jesus christ okay u did not ask for this but youre getting it. you made me start thinking about her again this is on you. 

[atlascas]

DEANCAS FIC REC

(last updated 7/1)

FINALLY. this is like. just a place for me to rec and write excessively abt the fics i've been reading lately. it won't be organized but it WILL be very earnest and i'll keep it updated as i find/remember more. also i have obnoxiously high standards when it comes to fic so these ARE the cream of the crop, if u will. the god tier. the s tier. 

very loosely organized into "newer fic" and "classics." these are subjective categories. do what you will

✨ = new fic on the list

💖 = in my brain rent free!

CURRENTLY READING

these are the fics that i’m currently reading! may or may not get recced. usually i read the first couple paragraphs/lines and if i like the writing it gets bookmarked and put on this list.

lazarus needs a robe of scarlet thread by herrosesneverfall, 90k, canonverse au. dean starts getting stigmata. when i was getting back into spn there were a LOT of religious fics flying around bc that was the Hot Topic of Discussion. this was one of them

Three weeks ago, Dean woke up in a pine box. He thought dealing with the nightmares was going to be the most difficult part of his new life after Hell, but at least they were something he could understand. Something he could deal with. Something he deserved.

Then he began having agonizing visions of crucifixion. Wounds appeared on his body out of nowhere. Wounds that refused to heal and coated his skin with the sickly sweet smell of roses.

Stigmata are said to be the marks of saints, but Dean is not a saint and the wounds are only the beginning.

kingdom come by ahurston, 8.7k, coda to 15x18. cas gets to go home. im gathering all the s15 fix-its to my heart and holding them close

Cas wakes up on the coast of Maine. He makes his way home.

hunger by ellispark, 10.8k, s13 au. dean grieves cas, post s12 finale. perfect writing perfect awful heartwrenching characterization so far on dean’s end especially towards jack. nuanced emotional writing

Dean takes his meal and throws it away, plate and all. He's not hungry. How can he even begin to eat, knowing what he kept from Cas — what he kept from both of them?

They could have had something, and now all Dean has is this gaping, empty hole in his stomach, in his chest, and he has to learn to breathe and eat and move around it.

the law of equivalent exchange by awed_frog, 60.8k, canonverse. cas loving dean in all permutations of humanity, throughout time.

“And what’s the point of it?”

“Of love? There isn’t one. Loving is its own purpose.”

NEWER FIC

“newer” just means “i discovered it in 2020/2021 after coming back to spn fandom” so it very well could have been published before 2015 but really who’s checking. not me that’s for sure.

💖 so says the sword by komodobits, 85k, s4 au. cas guards the michael sword in the beautiful room. this is easily the MOST obvious rec on this entire list but it was the first fic i read when i got back into spn this year and jesus christ it set the bar sky fucking high. the way they create a coherent mythology out of the mess that is spn canon is incredible.

The briefing was simple: ‘Stand guard over the Michael Sword until the battle is ready to commence. Await further instructions.’

Castiel doesn’t mind working security duty; he was briefed shortly after the initial salvation of the Sword from the pit, and again before taking up his position. He knows what to do. However, it’s easy to forget that the green room isn’t real. Time moves differently there, the space ever-changing to make a prison of mountains, cathedrals, salt flats, orchards, and whatever Castiel was led to believe about Heaven’s greatest weapon—Dean Winchester is something entirely unexpected.

assimilation by komodobits, 5.6k, coda to 12x01. mary meets dean and cas and they go to find sam. such good character studies of all three of them. the best mary pov fic i’ve read

Mary always thought you were supposed to be able to tell. That you could just look at someone and know they were – you know. One of that sort. It’s not supposed to happen to her son.

cuckoo and nest by komodobits, 10k, ambiguously canonverse. dean and cas navigate relationship anxiety. cute, in character, and their relationship is realistic and the conflict well-written and emotionally nuanced and really really really good. 

For a long time, Castiel thought that every earthly possession other than the immediately necessary was excess to requirement. But Dean – Dean who named his car, who keeps a photograph of his mother in his wallet, some thirty-plus years after her death, who still has the crumpled ‘Do Not Disturb’ sign with a sleeping pelican emblazoned on it from the Microtel outside of Roanoke where he first kissed Castiel, clumsy and unsure, under the unsteady fluorescence of an exhausted bathroom bulb – is sentimental.

It puzzles Castiel, where Dean draws the line between what is meaningful and what it is worthless.

💖 one white lie by komodobits, 11k, au. cas panics when trying to ask dean out and has to fake being a jehovah’s witness. it’s adorable and hilarious and it’s been ages since i actually got butterflies at a kiss in a fic but this did it. it did it. it felt like someone swaddled my soul in a cashmere blanket and kissed me on the forehead

Castiel takes a deep breath and rings the doorbell. He doesn’t need to run through what he’s going to say – he’s already planned and edited and rehearsed it a thousand times. He is going to ask Dean Winchester out to dinner. If it’s not too forward, he’ll say, perfectly charming. You see, I’ve seen you around the neighbourhood and you always seem so earnest and I’d really like to get to know you bette— The door swings open, and Castiel panics.

He intends to excuse himself. He means to apologise and come back some other time. However, in a moment of blind fear, what comes out of his mouth instead are the words, “Could you spare a moment for Jesus Christ?”

a crash course in someone else’s history by annie d (scaramouche), 11.5k, set during s6. cas comes to as his s4 self without any memories of the past two years and has to figure out what the fuck is going on. it’s kind of like so says the sword. you’ll know it when you get to it.

Castiel is captured inside a trapping circle of holy oil set by Dean and Sam Winchester. The brothers call him "Cas", claiming that he has amnesia and that he is obligated to help them take down Crowley to atone for his betrayal of them. It's the strangest story Castiel's ever heard, and one he doesn't have time for because he's only just raised Dean from Hell and has work to get back to.

💖 cas and dean’s adventures in gardening by ahurston, 19k, post-canon au. a series featuring dean and cas living in the bunker, human. cas is very into plants. i read this yesterday actually and it made me smile SO much it’s just so lovely and sweet. i’m also a sucker for any fic where cas has a garden. he deserves a fucking garden okay

In this post-God world, everything is different. A little quieter, a little softer. Cas grows a garden, Dean cooks, and they take care of each other.

tall grass by aeli_kindara, 57k, post-s12. dean and cas live in the bunker on their own, and cas grows a garden. i did say i love fics where cas has a garden. plus domesticity, plus some good case fic, PLUS dean and cas’ relationship is so gentle and good

“I think we should have a garden,” Cas says.

Dean looks up from his beer. He hasn’t had that much to drink, but Cas still has a vague look of unreality about him, a splash of living color that doesn’t fit in the bunker’s echoing stillness. Dean didn’t hear him coming. A lot of the time, Cas is so unobtrusive it feels like Dean has the bunker to himself, with Sam away.

Dean shakes his head to clear it. “A — garden?” he repeats.

in a week by renrub, 2.3k, post 15x18. cas is in the empty. dean saves him. this is genuinely the best “dean pulls cas out of the empty” fic i’ve read so far like conceptually this entire thing just fucks. when cas is cycling through the barn scene. god. SO well written

Castiel is outside a barn covered in sigils. He frowns. This isn’t right. This has never been something he repented for.

i won’t even wish for snow by annie d (scaramouche), 5.6k, college au. cas goes to the winchesters’ for christmas. honestly scaramouche fics belong in the classics section bc she’s like an og deancas writer but whatever. mistletoe! banter! good in-character au! this fic’s got it all

It’s the third year that Castiel’s spending Christmas with his best friend’s family, and he expects it to be much like the previous two. Then mistletoe happens.

convenient husbands by annie d (scaramouche), 39k, canonverse au. cas is a phoenix, dean is a hunter. they get married and have a sick psychic bond. unexpectedly fluffy considering how the fic starts and i love the banter so much and dean/cas’ relationship gets fleshed out and organically developed it’s very cute

"It's only temporary, right?" Dean says. "Just until you're healed up, and then we'll never have to see each other again. So what do you say, Castiel, do you want to marry me or not?"

cinderwings by bendingsignpost, 181k, cinderella au. cas goes to a masquerade ball to save his people from an eternity trapped in a void. he meets prince dean. i can’t tell u how much this fic drew me in - thru good worldbuilding, but mostly thru cas’ social awkwardness. like it works PERFECTLY to his advantage in this fic and reading how expertly he manipulates social situations w/o any fucking idea what he’s doing is both hilarious and inspiring

Under the cover of a masquerade ball, Castiel has five nights to recover the key to his people's freedom. The world has changed greatly in the six centuries since their banishment into the void, but the task isn't impossible. Unfortunately for Castiel, this is going to involve talking to people - especially the Knight Prince who has taken an interest in Castiel and his "costume" wings.

as the crow flies by bendingsignpost, 3.4k, au. dean and cas go on a roadtrip. cas has wings! it’s so dreamlike and meandering and the slowburn is so good. honestly it reminds me of stevebucky/stevesam post tws era roadtrip fics if ur hip LMAO

Cross country road trips with Cas are the best.

long-term relationship by bendingsignpost, 2.7k, au. dean and cas have a Serious Conversation about their relationship.

Castiel says, budging over to make room for Dean on the couch, “I thought we should have a serious talk about our relationship.”

Reflexively, Dean laughs.

Castiel does not.

“Uh, Cas... you know we’re not dating, right?”

all this and heaven too by ftmsteverogers, 7k, ambiguously canonverse. dean is trans. dean and cas are fucking and lowkey hiding it from sam. perfect character study PERFECT trans dean fic it’s so fucking well-written 

“Hey,” Dean said. “I’m not ashamed of you, okay?”

Cas raised skeptical eyes to meet his.

“I mean it,” Dean insisted.

“I understand you mean it,” Cas said. “But I don’t think it’s any better if you’re only ashamed of yourself.”

💖 the love story of the runner up by margo_kim, 4.7k, ambiguously canonverse. cas tries dating other men. bear with me here. this is an outside pov fic from an oc named miguel who is WONDERFULLY characterized and very endearing like i find outsider/oc pov to be on Thin Fucking Ice bc it always ends up as fandom/author self-insert but miguel is his OWN MAN. he gets his own lil arc and everything. dean and cas are concentrated perfectly crystallized versions of themselves and the little glimpses we get of them are amazing. ALSO i wrote like 9k of an spn vent fic (basically the same premise but w an oc named marcus) back in like. freshman yr of hs. so when i first opened this fic i was like what the fuck someone’s been in my google docs. very weird experience 10/10 regardless

“So you saw a white man in a trench coat pop out in an alley,” Paul says, “and you thought, what, ‘I want to see where this is going’?”

“If you get hung up on details like that,” Miguel says, “it will take a very long time to get through this story.”

For a very weird era in his life, Miguel dates an angel who is in love with another man.

sunshine by northernsparrow, 8k, set during s13. dean and cas have a long conversation about their Profound Bond. the description left me off-balance (it really. really truly says “dean is straight in this fic” like okay bro WEIRD hill to die on) but it pulled through w the relationship study and reassurance and snuggles. a sweet fic

One-shot with a single conversation between Dean and Castiel, set in a late-S13-ish world. Gabriel, Cas, Sam & Dean are all living in the bunker together, Gabe's been cracking certain jokes, Sam's found a certain book, Cas is injured and isn’t healing... and it's all making Dean wonder if his angel friend might have some sort of a "bond" with... somebody? Whatever that means.

Maybe it's time for a talk.

💖 still life by catchclaw, 16.5k, post-s8. cas, newly human, goes to live on his own for a while. he and dean maintain a relationship thru the phone. this is LITERALLY the only first person fic i fucking respect okay like i was skeptical! i really was! but the pov is PERFECT and also my man kevin tran is in this fic and i love him and miss him very much. oh and cas going off to explore humanity on his own..............perfect arc. very much in character we love that for him

Dean'd always thought that falling in love was a capital letter kind of thing, an Important Event you carved into the calendar of your life and never, ever forgot. But with he and Cas, it wasn't that simple.

it’s mostly cowardice, and bad timing by ferritin4, 1.6k, pre-canon. actually this one is just a dean study it’s not deancas but i spent an entire night looking for it and i need someone else to read it too. dean is smart!!! SAY THAT

Dean gets his GED.

a list of reasons the bunker shouldn’t get a sofa by lizbobjones, 5.6k, set during s12. sam and dean and mary and cas haul a sofa back to the bunker. cute domesticity and fluff

Let me count the ways that this is a terrible idea.

no kingdom to come by domesticadventures, 16.8k, canonverse. dean and cas deal with being stuck in quarantine in different ways. this is the one and only quarantine fic i’ve read and it’s really good lmao. dean and cas’ relationship is so organic and tentative in this one

“We should fuck,” Dean says.

Cas looks up from where he sits on his bed, hair still damp from the shower, frowning as he places a finger on the page of his book to mark where he left off.

There are a million things Cas could say here; Dean has rehearsed them. After lunch, his restlessness had given way to a vague panic, a dread that matched his every step and crept along with him from room to room. Eventually, he had returned to his bedroom and spent the rest of the afternoon pacing back and forth, playing out all the possible scenarios. When Cas asks him Why? or Are you being serious? or when he sighs and says, in that way he has, Dean, he knows exactly what he’s going to do. He’s going to shrug casually, like he isn’t invested in the answer, like he isn’t desperate for an outlet, and say, Why not? He’s going to raise an eyebrow and say, What, are you not interested? He’s going to crowd into Cas’ personal space, he’s going to shove himself right up in there and whisper Cas against his ear.

Instead, Cas says, carefully, “Okay.”

till the juice runs by deathbanjo, 8.4k, canonverse. it’s like dean’s being cursed to have bad hookups with men. SUCH a funny fic and the deancas tension is so simple and sweet and GOOD. plus cas is so enjoyably characterized here he’s so human and worn in and experienced in his own unique way. perfect use of rowena too

Apparently whoever drew up the venn diagram of Dean’s sex life decided the circle labelled ‘good sex’ and the one labelled ‘sex with men’ should be kept far apart.

turn of the year by kototyph, 3.9k, canonverse au. sam and dean get stuck out in the middle of nowhere on the winter solstice. what i wouldn’t give for a full 80k of this verse actually. also i went on a kototyph binge after reading shut up put your money where your mouth is and they have a SOLID spn repertoire

Fifteen minutes later, Dean gets back in the car with empty hands and ice in his fucking eyebrows. “Get the map out,” he says through chattering teeth, sticking numb fingers under his arms.

Sam holds up the battered 1995 Rand MacNally they keep in the side pocket, turned to a page of uninterrupted green. “We’re going to die,” he announces.

💖 bullets in the gun by kototyph, 4.9k, canonverse au. cas is a cop (i know. still) who gets kidnapped by dean in an unfortunate turn of events. GOD this fic is SO FUNNY. cas’ canny and strategic escape attempts render him a very active VERY funny pov character plus the hate attraction to dean is PERFECTLY WRITTEN VERY BELIEVABLE. dean’s kindness also shines thru even as he literally holds cas hostage like!!!! PERFECT characterization. both of them are so LIKABLE here. if you read anything on this list read this

“Sorry, sweetheart, but I’m going to need to borrow your car.”

as you will by kototyph, 1.8k, victorian au. cas endures a proposal mishap. it’s cute it’s funny it’s sweet!

"No?" Castiel echoes, dumbly.

and if i was looking too? by kototyph, 2.6k, au. cas is undercover where dean works. this fic is just so cute like. bird angels.................

There are some things Castiel hasn't told Dean, and there are some things he doesn't need to.

the most important thing by northernsparrow, 94.5k, s10 au. amnesiac cas raising claire until he comes across someone familiar. claire is so well characterized here i really loved her arc thruout this fic. she just wants her dad back and u can’t even blame her the author rlly does an amazing job creating realistic and heartbreaking motivations for her. oh and dean and cas (esp cas characterization!) are sweet in this but honestly the highlight IS claire for me

Jimmy Novak remembers nothing of the last six years. Reunited with his troubled daughter Claire, he's struggling to raise her on his own. The most important thing is to make Claire happy. But why does he keep having these dreams of wings, and of two men in a black car? (Canon-divergent from S10E11, when we first met Claire again and Dean was still struggling with the Mark of Cain. Takes places several months later).

there’s only one sure thing that i know by blinkiesays, 20.3k, post-s5. dean goes to help cas out in ohio and they end up building a home together. i love the writing it’s rlly funny and sweet.

Dean doesn't even get halfway through explaining before Bobby starts laughing. When he lets himself think about it for more than five seconds, Dean can almost see Bobby's point: he's faced down demons, witches, vampires, werewolves, ghosts, angels, and Satan himself and now he's been defeated by the God damn Midwest.

💖 to an angel, love and worship are the same thing by geminisage, 10.3k, post s15 fix it. dean grieves cas - and then cas gets brought back back from the empty. i didn’t have this in my bookmarks so i MISSED it the first time around on this list but this was another one of the fics i came back to spn fandom to. it’s so fucking unique?? it actually reads like spn like i think fic tends to soften dean/cas up and makes them more emotional + emotionally intelligent than is ever shown in the show. here the dialogue/characterization adheres RIGOROUSLY to their communication in canon in that dean’s not overtly emotional, and cas is very reserved. they have to negotiate their relationship exactly like they would in the show. it’s all clipped conversation and anger and hurt and (warning btw) LOTS of internalized homophobia on dean’s end but it’s SO worth it. dean navigating his [GESTURES VAGUELY] everything is compellingly written, emotionally true, and PERFECTLY characterized. cas characterization also amazing like u rlly feel the quiet devoted bittersweet love. ok this was long clearly it’s a good fic go read it now

Just as Dean knew they would, the weeks do stretch into months, and then into a year. Grief never gets easier, Dean knows from experience, but you do get better at it. After all, you can get used to anything.

the violin house by teh_helenables, 8.5k, post-s5. dean and cas build a home after stull. so slow and lovely and sweet and gentle. i need to put this here so that i don’t forget it tbh. it’s very much dean as a war wife cas as the husband away on the front

The Apple Pie Life is a slow process, but Dean and Cas are getting there—until Cas is called for battle and Dean is forced to wait.

💖 muscle memory by komodobits, 18.9k, au. amnesiac cas wakes up three years in the future with dean in his kitchen. komodobits DOES NOT FUCKING MISS!!! i CRIED at the end of this i had NO INTENTION OF CRYING the rest of the fic isn’t even SAD i just had to sit there at the end of it w tears dribbling down my face. INSANE work of art

Dear Castiel,

Hello – it’s Castiel. This must all seem very confusing, and I’m sorry for that. Dean says to tell you that this isn’t some kind of ‘time-travel stunt’, although I’m sure that won’t be your first thought. I know it wasn’t mine. I’ve told Dean to leave now, as this is my notebook and I want everything in it to come from me – or rather, from you. I know you think it's the fifteenth of January, 2010, but it isn't. At the time of my writing this, the date is the fourth of October, 2013. Dean Winchester is your boyfriend of a year and a half, and you no longer work at the library, and in early 2010 you were hit by a car and hospitalised. I’m sorry.

a.k.a the 50 First Dates Dean/Cas AU where Castiel wakes up on a day just like any other, except that three years have passed without his knowing, and Dean Winchester is in the kitchen wanting to marry him.

don’t forget the experience points by annie d (scaramouche), 10.8k, au. cas is sam’s work friend, and he and dean get to know each other. genuinely an adorable fic. i adore cas’ characterization in this it’s snarky AND awkward AND confident in a way that i absolutely believe he would be if he had 30 yrs of human life under his belt

It's because Dean was an awesome brother than he took such an interest in Sam's new friend. No, really. What happened afterwards was mostly an accident.

actus fidei by manic_intent, 5.6k, canonverse au. dean’s a priest, cas is still his angel. i was HOOKED from the description alone like That’s Everything I Love in One Sentence. Cool!!!!!!!!!!!!

On the very first time that Castiel manifests in front of Father Dean Winchester, he gets as far as "Rejoice, for you are blessed-" before Dean shoots him with a salt-loaded shotgun.

not with a bang but a yelp by strange_estrangement, 1.4k, canonverse. team free will leave yelp reviews. this isn’t d/c actually it’s just a crack-ish fic but the formatting is cool and the references are SO funny and so well done

What happens when you visit dozens and dozens of motels every year? You leave Yelp reviews.

the courtship of combat by bendingsignpost, 18.2k, medieval a/b/o au. cas is politically coerced into fighting in a courtship melee for prince dean's hand, and he teams up with two unexpected allies to do it. I KNOW HOW THE ABO THING SOUNDS but i swear it's done well - it's by bendingsignpost so ofc he puts his own spin on the premise. im absurdly into it. PLUS jack is in it!!!!!!! it's technically an unfinished series but the first part is so good just on its own

When pressed upon to mate for a political alliance, Commander Castiel dares to refuse his king. As “I do not wish to mate at all” is clearly the wrong thing to say, Castiel takes the other path and lies. “You must know my affections lie elsewhere, my king.”

King Michael studies Castiel’s face long and hard. Then, with a nod, he snaps his fingers, pointing to Castiel. “The Winchester omega.”

“Yes,” Castiel says with no real recollection of who that is.

The ruse of an unavailable omega works well enough, right up until that omega is no longer unavailable. Then, with what seems to be his entire nation cheering him on toward victory, Castiel must enter the melee to win his mate. Backed by allies, training, and his own natural talents, the only question is how well he can contrive to fail.

four letter word for intercourse by bendingsignpost, 194.7k, au. dean calls a sex hotline. OH BOY solid characterization excellent plot/premise like bendingsignpost is so good at turning absurd premises into realistic, believable fiction. also sex hotline fic is usually a BIG turn-off bc of the power dynamics/one-sidedness of a relationship based on sex work but. BUT. bendingsignpost does it well! it’s not weird at ALL i started reading and was immediately reassured abt its intentions and its plot direction

As a grease monkey turned college freshman, Dean's constantly three seconds away from being stressed out of his mind. It hardly helps that he's finally figuring out his sexuality in his thirties.

What might help with that stress is a little phone number (and a big credit card bill). If he can't figure out how to be bisexual in person, he can at least give it a go over the phone, right?

(It's probably a bad idea, but he really can't help himself.)

the tunnel of love by xylodemon, 21.4k, post-canon. case fic! dean and cas have to kiss on a loveboat to solve a case >:)

"We might," Cas starts slowly, pausing like he's choosing his words. "We might have to kiss."

Dean just stares at him.

when you have a future. by firebog, 17.6k, post-s8. dean and sam and cas learning to be human post-apocalypse. reminds me of robotmango’s writing! it’s kind of eccentric and very very sweet and funny.

Sam closes Hell. Castiel closes Heaven. The heroes save the day. There's no Heaven or Hell waiting to cause the next big disaster. There's no more end of the world. There's only a squirmy feeling in his chest that feels a lot like freedom. So, now what?

(Things I promise you in this fic: dog poetry, rabbits, and fluff)

six inch heels by alitneroon, 2.3k, canonverse. dean does drag! excellent fucking character study. prose is fantastic

Dean does drag on a whim, and ends up in way over his head.

sharing is caring by gateskeeper, 2.5k, canonverse. five times dean and cas shared something and one time they didn’t. look. sometimes u just need some saccharine tropey fluff. it’s VERY well written

Sam knows that Dean and Cas have shared a lot together, but ever since Cas became human permanently, it seems like they've been sharing a lot more. 

Or: five times Dean and Cas shared something special and one time Dean refused to.

💖 empty spaces by schmerzerling, 60k, au. dean has to take care of his dying father, and takes up running to cope. that’s just the beginning. HEAVY trigger warnings for ED (specifically anorexia) and suicidal thoughts. there is a happy ending, but dean has to fight to make it there. god. okay. this is a dark fic. it’s also one of the most well-characterized fics i’ve ever read. dean’s spiral is excruciatingly accurate and written with the kind of wry compassion that comes from either extensive research or extensive experience. it’s also completely immersed in dean’s perspective - dean’s relationship w his dad, dean’s relationship w food scarcity, etc. it’s incredible. it’s kinda scary. it’s deeply sad. cas is explicitly autistic and it’s ALSO incredibly accurate and loving, and makes cas so true to his canon self. ugh. and i burst into TEARS at some of the accompanying art, which is so sparse and lonely and beautiful. 100/10 experience one of the best fics i’ve read this year

Dean is fine. The way he sees it, things are simple. He had a house and a family and food in his stomach, and now he doesn't. And yeah, that's a downer, but he's not going to let that stop him from being fine, because he's in control of the situation. He definitely doesn't need anyone to save him. And it's not like the weird guy with the nice butt from down the road is the knight-in-shining-armor type, anyway.

broken road by thegeminisage, 109.6k, 14x13 au. dean makes a wish and gets more than he bargained for. a lot of “john comes back” fics are kinda short on nuance, which this author has talked about a lot - and oh MAN does this fic deliver on nuance. john’s abuse is absolutely present, but his pov makes him a complex character instead of a flat caricature for dean to reject. and the way this fic resolves really makes it clear that the priority is dean’s emotional well-being over all else!!! this isn’t about dean taking the path fandom thinks he should take w his abuser (killing john, punching john in the face, etc), this is abt dean coming to terms w his abuse and finding his own emotionally satisfying way of resolving it. also dean and cas are in an established relationship and it’s very slow and sweet.

A 14.13 Lebanon rewrite. When Dean uses a wish-granting pearl to try and kill the archangel Michael before he can escape the cage in Dean's head, they instead wind up with a newly-resurrected John Winchester.

It's been more than a decade since John died, and a lot has changed: Mary is alive, Sam and Dean have what passes for a proper home in the Men of Letters Bunker, and they're living with angels. John doesn't know angels are real, he doesn't know about the fragile new relationship between Dean and Castiel, and most of all, he doesn't know that Dean said yes to Michael, or that Dean's plan to defeat Michael would send him to a fate worse than death.

Now Dean must contend with both his father asking questions he can't answer, and his loved ones learning about the darker truths of his childhood, all while constantly battling the archangel trapped inside him. But Dean coming to terms with his history may be the difference between this being the beginning of a journey—or the end. 

home is not a place by imogenbynight, 6.8k, post-s11. human cas struggles with belonging, and dean struggles with their relationship. this reads a lot like komodobits’ cuckoo and nest, but it’s its own sweet little thing. they watch movies!!! very cute 

In which Dean is the oblivious one for a change.

love: a retrospective by xylodemon, 40.7k, post-s12. dean tries to deal w cas’ absence after s12 and reflects on their relationship thru the years. this was written before s13 aired, so - no spoilers - but jack plays a different role than he ends up playing in canon. it’s kinda fun seeing ppl’s theories pre-s13 tbh. makes me VERY glad that they took jack in the direction they did in show. anyway this is THEE definitive “they’ve been fucking all along” fic

Pretending Cas is just his friend has been the only thing keeping Dean's head on straight for years. He never realized how much doing that depended on him making himself scarce in the morning ─ not until Cas came back and moved into the bunker.

✨💖 if it all fell to pieces tomorrow by spocklee, 37k, post-s15 fix-it. cas gets broken out of the empty - and he immediately makes a break for it. new fave fix-it!!!! the writing is so understated and so straightforward - SO in character for cas tbh - that every single emotional beat feels like a PUNCH. and there are so many amazing character moments it made my chest seize the fuck up!!!!! perfect characterization perfect relationship moments perfect cas/jack parenting moments. the yearning over the phone is OFF THE CHARTS and spocklee makes the most of that tension!!!! PLUS old canon characters get to make fun appearances!!!!! i cannot recommend this shit enough

After the Empty, Cas has to spend some time alone. Orpheus tries to convince Eurydice over the phone that it’s okay to turn around now.

✨ before and after breakfast by spocklee, 10.5k, post-canon. dean and sam and cas tackle a monster of the week case with unexpected consequences. perfect pov perfect relationship moments SUCH GOOD TENSION. again this writing style just lets the tension dial up to 1000% every word is meaningful and it makes my chest hurt!!! spocklee SHOULD have blown up during the spn renaissance and i STAND by that

The monster of the week is a ghost who hates meat, alcohol, and feeling yourself. Guess who it is during the commercials.

CLASSICS

isn't it cool how every person has diff fics they consider "classics?" anyway these are required fucking reading. if u've been around these will prob be old news.

💖 asunder by rageprufrock, 23k, au. dean and cas go to sam's wedding. i reread this once a year like a religious ritual.

Wherefore they are no more twain, but one flesh. What therefore God hath joined together, let not man put asunder. (Matthew 19:6)

💖 the girlfriend experience by rageprufrock, 15k, set during s5. dean teaches cas how to be human. mostly the sex part. literally the gold fucking standard of s4-5 era deancas fic and for deancas fic in general, personally

While it's not like Dean hasn't had a couple of truly regrettable hit-and-runs in his sexual history, this is probably the saddest fucking thing that has ever happened to him.

okay, cupid. by orange_crushed, 4.5k, au. dean tries to sign up for an ok cupid profile and has a revelation. as soon as i put this entry down i realized this entire fic rec was an exercise in futility, because if i could i'd literally just rec everything orange_crushed/robotmango has ever written. still one of THEE best authors in this fandom. go read all her fics. i’ll put the highlights here

"The dating thing?" Dean frowns. "Online dating is for weirdos. Robots. Dudes hanging out in their basements."

"You hang out in your basement."

"I have an air hockey table down there,” Dean says, icily.

💖 pwp: pie without plot by orange_crushed and majorenglishesquire, 82k, post-s8. sam and dean and cas quit hunting for a little bit to open a bakery. this is my comfort fic. i love it so so much.

he is in the kitchen with flour on his hands and an apron and there is flour on his forehead and cas leans across the counter and wipes it off with his thumb and dean says "thank you" and cas says "you’re welcome" very seriously and later dean makes apple turnovers and he only ruins them a little and sam realizes it’s not a real hunt like four days into it and he lets dean stay undercover for like a week and a half or longer maybe way longer because he is such a good everything

💖 la cucina by orange_crushed, 4k, post-s8. dean gets into cooking for a newly human cas. it's so gentle and loving and kind and makes me tear up every time. YES food is a comfort item and expression of love for dean. no i don't want to talk about it

Dean turns around and Castiel is picking through the jars, turning them over carefully to read the labels, totally engrossed. Dean watches him.

"Is there," Dean says, "uh, anything in there you like?" Castiel looks up at him and then back at the apples, sitting in a basket on the counter in their golden skins, ripe and pretty. Castiel smiles up at Dean.

"I don’t know yet," he says.

today, your barista verse by orange_crushed, 13.6k, coffeeshop au. a series of short sweet lovely fics where cas is a barista and dean is a smitten customer. literally the only coffeeshop au i respect

"Is that-"

"My number," says Dean, because he's a fucking champion, he's cool, he's collected, he's Captain Smooth of the USS Smoothtania, that's right. He is definitely not leaning against the counter for moral support. Cas doesn't looked seduced or impressed, though. He does not look like a dude who just met Captain Smooth and wants to ride the loveboat. He looks puzzled.

fata morgana. by orange_crushed, 6.6k, post-s9. dean is the king of hell. bela and cas team up to find him. bela pov. yeah you fucking heard that right BELA POV. BELA AND CAS!!!!!!!!!! makes me lose my mind i love everyone in this stupid desolate fucking hell wasteland.

The endless asphalt and broken road, the empty land and piles of human garbage, the unwanted ends of life, the cracked toys and broken screens and burning cars and gravel. Dean Winchester is the king of hell.

"Oh," says Bela.

That changes certain things.

💖 gran fury. by orange_crushed, 5k, pacific rim au. sam and cas pair up in a last ditch mission to save the world. permanently damaged me at age 15 and i've never recovered. major fucking angst warning.

They sit in silence and Castiel passes him the bottle. There’s not much left to say. Sam takes a gulp and it burns going down, like the cheap shit it is. He holds the bottle up against the light. He can see the Fury through it, distorted like a funhouse mirror. She’s a tomb but Sam loves her. Loves everything that’s left.

"To the end of the world," he says.

"To the end of the world," says Castiel.

💖 shut up (put your money where your mouth is) by kototyph, 24k, au. dean and cas get drunk married in vegas. dean renovates cas' house. this fic is SO MUCH BETTER than i remembered/expected and the entire series is fucking adorable go read it RIGHT now

Dean's done some pretty stupid things, but getting drunk-hitched in Vegas to a colleague he barely knows might just take the cake. His surprise husband, Castiel, is a little weird but likable despite that, and Dean figures they’ll go back to Boston, get a quiet annulment, and go their separate ways. Six weeks later, he’s still married to one of the strangest, most genuine and definitely most dangerously lov-- likable guys he's ever known. Dean doesn't know why or really even how it’s happening, but it’s getting harder and harder to remember that he has divorce papers to file.

not part of the plan by annie d (scaramouche), 338k, arranged marriage au. cas is slated to marry a noble from the winchester house. things spiral out of control. if you’re looking for an extensive well-developed political au, this is fucking it. i love reading about political machinations so this was FASCINATING to me. 

Castiel's spent most of his adult life keeping his head down and staying out of trouble. This is a deliberate choice on his part, because as a cousin of the King, he'd rather stay unimportant and forgotten. This changes abruptly when King Michael decides that he has a better use for Castiel: he is to be wed to a noble member of the neighboring Republic, as part of an agreement between their two nations.

Castiel knows he has to obey, but that doesn't mean he won't rebel in what small ways he can. Unexpectedly, his actions end up having far-reaching consequences.

💖 all things shining by askance and standbyme, 142k, au. sam and dean and cas go on a hunt that's not really a hunt, and against all odds good things happen. it's beautifully written and has scenes that literally make my heart leap out of my chest with joy and awe it's just WONDERFUL it's a wonderful fic. incredible mythology too omg i found that the authors actually created the myth the entire story is based on - like they don’t pull a random one from history, they made one up THEMSELVES. they even self-published it on amazon if ur curious

Something in the world is waking up.

It isn’t long before it’s brought to the attention of the Winchesters and Castiel: miracles are spreading across the country, the paranormal seems to be shrinking back on itself—and it all has something to do with the missing prayer book of a traveling preacher who died over a century ago.

Dean is convinced it’s all the lead-up to another Apocalypse; Sam and Castiel aren’t so sure. Regardless, it sends them out on a less-than-typical road-trip, following the Mississippi and remnants of a very old story that seems increasingly to call to them. And along the way the trio learn much more about themselves—and the consequences and origins of love—than they’d ever have anticipated.

💖 broadway musical by griftings, 12.4k, crack. romcom where cas is supposed to play matchmaker to dean and jo and well. you know. it actually made me cackle out loud when i read it again so you know it's still good. absolutely one of the funniest fics i’ve read

This is the day that marked the Holy and Blessed Union of Dean Winchester and Jo Harvelle.

The merging of prominent bloodlines is always a grand occurrence, but breeding pedigree hunter families like Winchester and Harvelle is something to be rejoiced. It is also something to be meticulously planned, which thankfully the Host is very good at.

Or, the romantic comedy where Dean Winchester and Jo Harvelle are destined to get married, Castiel is given the task of playing matchmaker and fails terribly, the entire Heavenly Host becomes a sitcom audience, God warns against male pregnancy, and Jimmy Novak is incredibly unimpressed with angels in general.

the five people you meet in heaven by chevrolangels, 22k, ambiguously canonverse. dean dies and goes to heaven and meets five people from his life. NOT a post-finale fic but still horrifically sad. i remember sobbing hysterically when i first read this so

Heaven is white.

Well. Isn’t that fucking stereotypical.

Dean isn’t really sure how he got here. Or even why he’s here. And hell, for all the times the Winchesters have died, he thinks he ought to know the drill by now. But what he doesn’t know is when most folks go, they find something different.

There’s a system God put in place. That when you’re gone (for good), there are a couple things you gotta do first. There are five people waiting for you.

They are the five people you meet in heaven.

any port in a storm by microcomets, 53k, post-s8. dean and cas go on a haunted cruise for a case. you know what happens next. also the art is by anobviousaside and it's gorgeous

The angels have fallen, leaving Castiel graceless and Dean with, well, more of other people’s problems. When a string of couples goes missing on the east coast, Dean and Cas decide to investigate—and find themselves trapped and hunted on a couples’ counseling cruise. Although battling monsters at sea is dangerous enough, sorting through emotional baggage proves to be far more deadly. (And, in which Cas embarks to find his missing grace and Dean is put out. Not necessarily in that order.)

a turn of the earth by microcomets, 95k, pre-canon au. cas is on the run from the empty and crash lands in dean's life. at one point he punches john in the face. a fucking beautifully written character study of pre-canon dean, honestly.

Dean’s your typical half-orphaned, monster-killing 22-year-old until a trenchcoated stranger crashes into his back windshield one September night, claiming he’s an angel that knows him from the future and that he’s on the run.

Frigging fantastic.

(Or, in which Castiel gets stuck in Dean’s timeline preseries and Dean kind of hates it—until he doesn’t.)

unfinished duet by microcomets, 5.8k, canonverse. sam observes dean and cas throughout the years. i remember this breaking my heart back in 2013!

Sam watches Dean and Cas over the years and notices a few things. (Or, Dean and Cas unscripted.)

💖 ergative/absolutive by glassedplanets, 8k, college au. dean and cas are best friends who meet in an astronomy class. i'm never not thinking about this fic it's so sweet and the friends to lovers is so soft and believable

He really shouldn’t be thinking thoughts like this about his best friend who literally just broke up with his girlfriend, but he knows he’ll blame it on sleepiness in the morning. He always does.

a certain light by flightagain, 24k, au. cas works at the gas n sip. dean is a customer. this author’s writing style is so lonely and heavy but it’s very lovely

Castiel works at the Gas-n-Sip. There are half-price nachos and flickering lights, there are office-workers and werewolves stopping by for snacks. Dean is a frequent customer, and his office might be haunted.

the one thing you can’t lose by majorenglishesquire, 5k, ambiguously canonverse. dean can pull cas around and it’s adorable. character study-ish. very sweet.

You know what I like a lot? The thought that Dean can just tug Cas anywhere at any time and Cas, who can lift tons without effort, who can demolish things with the light of his grace, who has battled and gone to war, has defended and broken, will just let Dean do it.

brother lover by twentysomething, 4k, set during s4/s5. dean’s jealous of sam and cas’ budding relationship. this fic is so tropey but it does it well and it’s funny as fuck

However- and it doesn't happen a lot- they have to invoke 'I saw her first.’

his fucking kids by 8sword, 3k, canonverse au. dean and cas raise claire and emma together. yes, claire novak. yes, emma of 7x13 spice girls fame. this was the first kidfic i read for spn i think. obvs written before jack or claire actually came back into the picture but it was the TEMPLATE of kidfic for me for ages

Jesus, the school should just have a parking spot labeled, “Reserved for the Novak-Winchesters,” because Dean’s getting sick of having to cruise around the parking lot looking for a spot every time he gets a call from the principal about Emma.

💖 what has eight tentacles and isn’t allowed to eat pie? by annie d (scaramouche), 16k, post s8. dean gets turned into an octopus. another fic that was SO MUCH BETTER than i remembered i fucking love when that happens. it isn’t even about dean being an OCTOPUS like NO. NOT EVEN. it’s ACTUALLY about the bunker and building a home and a community and a family and about PHYSICAL COMFORT and you can actually feel the world expanding at the end of this fic like a gusty sigh of relief it’s SO WONDERFUL. kevin is in this fic. ellie is too and i had to look her up but THIS is her!!!! danay garcia u were too hot to stay on this show but i love you and miss u

Dean watched an anime porn about this once, but real life turns out to be way less interesting.

Or, the one where Dean gets turned into an octopus.

💖 a beginner’s guide to communing with the dead by suspiciousflashlight, 77k, canonverse au. dean is a cop who summons a powerful entity to help him solve a cold case. oh my god i can’t believe i didn’t put this on here i love this one so much. the writing bowls me over it’s so confident in its worldbuilding like you’re IMMEDIATELY plunged into dean’s pov (FLAWLESSLY executed throughout the fic btw) and you just learn about the world as you go!! and it’s such a fascinating world!!! i love the magic i love the typical bureaucratic red tape procedures i love normalizing the supernatural. i ESPECIALLY love monsters as normal people in a society. at one point there’s this exchange

“Monsters,” says Cas finally. “Beyond the Wall there are monsters.” “You mean, like, vampires and djinn and stuff?” Cas shakes his head. “Those aren’t monsters, those are just people.”

those lines have stayed with me for years. i think about them every time i rewatch an episode of spn.

Maybe it's the little girl whose disappearance turned into a murder, and whose murder turned into a cold case, and who has now apparently decided to move in with him. Maybe it's the unacceptable hole left in his life when his dumb best friend and partner in (the prevention of) crime decided to go and get himself killed. Maybe it's his brother, whose high-profile career and fantastic girlfriend and first-child-on-the-way are steadily leaving Dean in the dust. Pick one. Pick all of them. The why doesn't matter so much as the what, and the what is this: Dean is pretty sure he's going completely, certifiably insane. Sure, he hasn't started wearing all his clothes inside out, and he still showers on a regular basis (anyways, that's not crazy, just a little eccentric); but there's no getting around the fact that he just threw away his life, his career, and his reputation by dragging out his mom's old necromancy book and summoning a Class A Forbidden Entity to his attic. A cranky one, too. With horrendous bed-head.

dean’s list by almaasi, 3k, canonverse. dean makes a list. short and sweet. i read this so much in 2015 that it literally got engraved into my brain line by line and rereading it caused synapses to fire that havent felt anything in years

Dean writes out a list of men he would go gay for. Sam has a suggestion to make.

💖 the path of fireflies by museaway, 63.7k, post-s8. dean and cas open a charming bed and breakfast in vermont. no, literally. another CLASSIC. i think about the food in this fic all the time...........maple bacon baked french toast......the cinnamon rolls.....it literally sounds so good

After his humanity is restored, Dean wakes up in bed with Castiel, a wedding ring, and no memory of the past twelve years.

long nights in cold months by pyrebi, 2.3k, au. dean’s an insomniac and cas works at walmart. i forgot i had this fic ALSO basically memorized. holy shit. pineapple in the fruit aisle.....................anyway it’s short and sweet and the “plot” resolves in such a satisfying way

When you're an insomniac, you get used to the "what the hell are you doing up, man?" look. Dean just hopes the guy who's stocking the shelves will stop giving it to him long enough to help him find some damn pineapple.

incredibly single & ready to mingle by imogenbynight, 3.6k, au. dean and cas meet on facebook. short cute au!!!!!!

Sam uses Facebook like the social media junkie he is. He's befriended literally every person he's ever had a conversation with since he got an account, which means that approximately—Dean checks—eight hours ago, he shared this horrible photo with something in the vicinity of nine hundred people. The caption below the picture reads “incredibly single & ready to mingle ;)” and roughly half of them have liked it.

Dean has never been so embarrassed in his life.

💖 unknown quantities by xylodemon, 8.5k, post-s8. after a post-case tryst, dean has to figure out his and cas’ relationship. human cas fics hold a special place in my heart. funny AND good dean pov AND a misunderstanding that i actually think works!!!!!

No one ever tells Dean anything.

(or: Dean Winchester and the not-relationship crisis of 2014)

[kangyunas]

⁚ ⁛  oh my god ! you can’t believe who i just saw. it was  kang yuna !  they really resemble  seo soojin , don’t they ?  i heard they started their career about  one year ago  as the  main dancer + lead rapper + vocalist  in  v-nyx , but it sure seems longer, doesn’t it ?  they always seem so  optimistic ,  elegant  +  selfless  in interviews and to their fans, but their latest scandal made them sound like  timid ,  sensitive  + cautious … oh well, must’ve been the bad lighting. did you know they came all the way from  seoul ,  south korea  to new york city ?  it was really brave of them to sacrifice so much. you think they’re survive the spotlight ? 「+ seo soojin 」

god so i’m sleep deprived and idk what i’m abt to write so let’s see how many tws i can avoid adding. apparently , sleep deprived me is good at avoiding tws so that’s cool.

 —   𝒃𝒂𝒄𝒌𝒈𝒓𝒐����𝒏𝒅 𝒊𝒏𝒇𝒐.

on march 9th, 1998, kang yuna was born and raised in seongbuk-dong, seoul.

if the neighborhood wasn’t enough to tip one off, the kangs were well-off; her father having been the ceo of the family business in and around medical equipment while her mother was off signing paperbacks for her avid readers.

— quite a happy  little  family, which she pointed out time and time again to her parents soon after she learned how to walk and talk. and sing and dance, as they soon realized.

and who were they to ignore their precious little girl’s requests ?

(  ... ok, so they already planned on having another child but it made her much happier to think that she convinced her parents for a sibling  )

but by the time she was on her way to english preschool, she doted on her younger sister; it seemed endearing to those outside of the household, but beyond the surface, was an unfortunate side effect of two hard-working people that were too busy to come home and have dinner with their children.

only when she turned nine did she realize  why  she saw less and less of her parents.

as it turned out, her mother had an affair with one of her publishers and she’d taken advantage of yuna’s pleas for a sibling as a cover around the time.

her father found out, over the years, due to how much their youngest  didn’t  look like him — and more like that one publisher.

long story short, the teen lost her mother and sister as she got back home from school, leaving bare rooms and sour memories, their belongings all gone.

the news was publicized almost immediately and she and her father had to deal with the aftermath. bright flashes, handheld mics, and condescending tones became their norm for a little while.

from then, she saw her father even less... those early morning flights, late night meetings, or long business lunches really holding him captive. other than the times he’d try to show her the ropes of running the company, she saw the man maybe twice a week if she was lucky.

she quickly learned how to take care of herself without the help of their staff.

doing a lot of the house chores by her lonesome, it offered her some peace of mind. for whatever reason, her father took that as a sign that she was preparing to be a housewife.

arranged to be engaged to a business partner’s son by the age of sixteen, yuna tried her hardest to get out of it.

the most rebellious and impulsive thing she did was sneaking out to go to an open audition after being cast by a company scout at a talent show.

her father refused to let her become a trainee for two years, for obvious reasons, but yuna was adamant and in the end, he let her go.

(  suddeN i know i’m sorry i didn’t know how to get here without taking another 3pg essay to explain as;dlkf  )

she trained hard as a main dancer for a couple of years before she found her girls.

though she was very shy in meeting and training with them, she immediately found a safe place in their group. in their little family.

tbc.

    —   𝒑𝒆𝒓𝒔𝒐𝒏𝒂𝒍𝒊𝒕𝒚.

vvvvvv timid, even though she was raised to be a businesswoman

performing on the stage and in front of the cameras is a bit of a different story

but incredibly shy

will try to get a smile on your face, nonetheless

wears her heart on her sleeve tbh, she can’t tell a lie without her eyes getting glassy

the Mom Friend™

she’s used to taking care of the others honestly

no matter how much of a mess they make

probs cuts up apples and orange and peels grapes for snacks

and makes sure they eat something for breakfast

also packs the girls’ lunches when they have indv schedules

a pure bean

    —   𝒊𝒎𝒑𝒐𝒓𝒕𝒂𝒏𝒕 𝒇𝒂𝒄𝒕𝒔. 𝒕𝒐𝒕𝒆𝒔 𝒔𝒖𝒑𝒆𝒓 𝒅𝒖𝒑𝒆𝒓 𝒊𝒎𝒑𝒐𝒓𝒕𝒂𝒏𝒕.

once agaiN, this is basically soojin w a few exaggerations here and there

has a black belt in taekwondo for some reason probs so she can kick my ass

speaks english fluently bc she went to those fancy pants schools all her life

hates being called a chaebol / doesn’t want the attention that comes of it

loves cherries and avocados but like,,,,,,, not together

volunteers at the local animal shelter when she has time

could own a tesla but she probs has a minivan or a hatchback bc she a soccer mom

may look like she knows what she’s doing but is in a perpetual state of confusion

yuna at all times: ???¿¿?¿??

connections??????? haven’t thought of them yet but am always down to brainstorm but it’s like 3am and i’m supposed to be up at 8am goD,,,,,,,,,,,,,,, but as always, IMs are always open so pls come and plot with me and my bean ~

[aro-aizawa]

okay so kind of vent post but update post too bc im kind of stressing and dealing with my stress in the only way i know how: ignoring it. so first off if i’ve promised you anything and haven’t spoken about it then i’m super sorry and either im working on it or im being way too perfectionist with it and it’s actively fighting me no matter what i do. so yeah. it’ll happen.....eventually im sorry. 

second thing i want to talk about is bhaf. i’ve kind of? hit a brick wall? in writing it? like i have the entirety of usj planned, mostly all neatly organised with shiny bullet points and little sentences that i want to include. but...its just not working with me? 

(also cut bc wow this went on longer than i expected oops - also to the peeps who don’t follow me because of my writing then uhh dont worry abt this i guess lmao)

its kind of feels like convincing a toddler to settle down in bed to read them a bedtime story except the toddler got hopped up on sugar earlier in the day and literally won’t sit still even for a second. so im running about the room frantically trying to catch them and put them in bed so i can read them their story and i can go to sleep. 

i mean its sorta like that but not at all. what im saying is its being unimaginably difficult. 

its been almost three weeks since i last added to chapter 14 and its killing me with stress. because lowkey i have a fear that if i stop updating for long periods of time that i’m going to lose most all my readers. aaaand that kind of stresses me because i don’t want to mess anything up with bhaf. its the first time i’ve had more than five people following the story so yeah i’ve kind of been working hard at it. 

and when i hit a wall like this it makes me angry. because i’ve hit enough walls with projects to know that this is what makes me stop working on a project for months or rather years in my old habits (though honestly my old update schedule was one 1.5k word chapter every six months so). 

one way that i usually try to get around that road block is that i work on new projects. i take an idea i have and run with it like it’s my main project. i throw myself into it and one day when i’m planning out stuff or writing for that new project, i’ll suddenly get hit with an idea for my main and jump ships again to get back to that project. and that was the plan! i was actually going to start up a new project called ad victoriam! which im super excited about!!

but the one thing that’s kind of stopping me with this plan is the fear that i mentioned before. i don’t want to lose any interest. and i dunno, it feels like the only one that truly cares for this fic is me? even if i do get a lot of comments per chapter (like theres 20 on chapter 13 that i havent replied to yet holy--) i dunno. maybe im just way too self-deprecating to really acknowledge that others care about this fic. 

so im kind of in a bind. im so stressed by not updating bhaf, but ive hit a complete road block creatively. the only way to get past that road block is to do other creative stuff away from the road block. but the stress of keeping reader happy its sorta weighing on me and crushing any inspiration i have for another project.

um. i dont....have anything else to say. im not sure what im going to do now, but i think its safe to say that bhaf might be getting a little hiatus? at least until i can find a way to ease up all this stress. i have one other way in mind, but im still not 100% sold on yet i guess. but if i do that’d still mean the hiatus is there but i’d still be working on bhaf but not in any meaningful way? 

okay i’ll stop being vague but im basically considering rewriting the earlier chapters. nothing big, like adding in scenes or anything, but i dunno just improving the general quality and tweaking a few things i missed, smoothing out inconsistencies of any kind. its sorta meaningless but its an old habit that i used to do when i hit a brick wall with any of my projects sometimes. i’d go back and rewrite the entirety sometimes adding in a few thousand words and generally coming out of it the better since i would be rewriting stuff that was a couple years old at that point. 

but im still being hesitant to actually do that because the old projects im thinking of were all under 20k words, unpublished with maybe nine or ten chapters. all of them rushed and mostly just the barebone scraps of stories barely filled with any emotional depth or character. all of them essentially copy and pastes of each other with mild changes depending on the plot.

whereas if you compare the two? well for starters bhaf is in third person and isn’t following an oc. secondly, bhaf is published whereas my old projects were not. thirdly, i only started writing bhaf just over six months ago so even though my writing style as improved due to writing as much as i have, it hasn’t really improved enough for me to justify rewriting all 58k words of it.

so......yeah. honestly if this post makes any sense to any of you then your head is a lot less jumbled than mine is. im unintelligent and when im stressed i cant explain good. 

tdlr: reached a creative block with bhaf, so its going on hiatus for until i can get past it. not sure if im going to rewrite it or work on another project.

((ALSO FUCKING SIDE NOTE: im also incredibly pissed at myself for it hitting now when the last chapter i posted had a fucking cliffhanger, the one thing that i hate with all my being when its not resolved as soon as possible. im half tempted to post this chapter at 3k words just so that i could get rid of the hiatus at cliffhanger. im so sorry guys.))

[herotheshiro]

so in abt 2017-18, i came across this manga called sneaky red by thanat. most of the 1st volume, translated, got posted online but i knew there was a continuation. while i don’t remember too much specifics abt my reaction to it then, i distinctly remember being affected by it and by that i mean ... liking it. i remember that i had the feeling of wanting to read the 2nd volume and even a year ago (almost the date!) on this very blog i noted that i “wanna read all of [their] works so bad” and at this point i had only ever read sneaky red so going off of that, i liked it apparently.

fast forward 2-3 years to tonight, where i finally forced myself to finish reading the series since the free month-long futekiya trial is ending soon. and well ... i thought i would be satisfied afterwards since i’ve wanted to finish reading this series for literal years but all i felt was ... disappointment. i’ve had the futekiya subscription for abt 1/2 a month already but i’ve been putting off reading sneaky red bc i mean i’ve read the 1st volume, i knew it was abt abuse pretty much and i wasn’t really into reading something so depressing (i had to reread the 1st volume in this read bc i legit have not touched the manga since whenever i read it last). and ... yeah it is a downer to read with little positive payoff. [putting under cut bc WOW this got long]

let’s get this straight, my perception of what this author is trying to do is this: two guys meet, one of them (A) has anger/emotion management issues and is quick to react with his fists and the other one (B) just so happens to get off at pain (...no further comment at this) ... which is coincidentally a “nice” set-up but A wants to turn over a new leaf bc eventually he feels bad whaling on B all the time ... except suddenly turning over a new leaf when you’ve been living and thinking a certain way for almost two entire decades is not that easy. which alright tl;dr, an abuser/someone quick to physical violence trying to reform. a rather heavy topic to tackle for your debut work ... and unfortunately i don’t think this author really succeeds in doing so. 1st volume was written in 2013 and is their debut work and it definitely feels like a new author work ... the story developments are kind of unclear at times and misaki (i think that was his name?) just accepting getting beaten up by a rando is just so incredibly sad to read bc like ... wtf? i cannot figure out how they came to love each other. i mean haru i can kind of see bc they kind of implied that misaki was one of the 1st ppl to have hope in him even though he himself felt like he was a lost cause, but misaki i just have no fucking idea what happened there. like lust turning into love? idk man falling in love from physical abuse frankly makes no fucking sense esp since it’s not even implied that misaki has low self-esteem or something that would make him accept this treatment. i legitimately would like to go back in time to meet me from 2-3 years and ask them what the fucking hell made me like this manga bc it’s messed up and the topics aren’t even handled that well! this is truly a manga that somehow depicts abuse as being shitty but also romanticizes it somehow?? even though i legit just read it a few hours ago i’m starting to mix up what happened in vol 1 and 2 so let’s just move on to vol 2 now.

vol 2 was definitely more put together in terms of story progression than vol 1 (i mean, being done 3 yrs later i would hope so). i did like it a bit more than vol 1 and there were some cute scenes bw misaki and haru but ... the scenes where misaki still went to see haru even after some seriously messed up scenes being like ‘i still love you’ ... really rubbed me the wrong way bc it kind of felt like a ‘you can heal abusive behavior through love’. i mean yes haru acknowledged his behavior and treatment of misaki was absolute shit and that he’d try to change, but also that ch where they kind of just substituted bdsm as a more socially acceptable way for haru to hit/hurt misaki during sex? BRO THAT’S NOT HOW IT WORKS !! i mean there were some scenes that felt realistic (misaki instinctively defending himself when haru raised his hand) but at the same time it also felt like the author didn’t really know what they were doing. like i get it, haru is supposed to be a nice person who just so happens to react badly to things but ... these kinds of things you kind of legit need professional help for. simply learning to depend more on friends/SOs, completely cutting out your toxic fam from your life... that kind of stuff is not really enough to help you heal. i mean this is a japanese manga, and ik east asian culture has ... thoughts on mental health care but the way the story was presented just didn’t feel realistic at all. yes they did show haru struggling to hold his emotions in check, i did like the scenes where haru was in his own head and saw his brother berating him for his behavior, and i do appreciate they didn’t merely just 180 change his personality and pretend it was easy to change for the better but ... idk. i just simply did not enjoy reading this story and about this relationship, i felt like their issues never really got resolved or are moving in a more constructive direction. i mean i guess this happens irl (bc ppl do stay in abusive relationships despite how bad it gets) but like i just had no fucking idea what misaki even saw in haru in the first place which sounds mean to haru but it’s true ?? like you gotta be attracted to SOMETHING first right, is it just bc he’s nice sometimes (this is worrying bc i’m someone who is weak to ppl simply being nice to me but also bruh if someone is beating my ass idk if i can be attracted to that) ?? it legit at times reminded me of bj alex which is an extremely unfortunate comparison in my book and you know what i just remembered that misaki was attracted to haru partly bc of his looks so uh yeah the comparison holds up.

i don’t even know if i can say i’m glad i read through these 2 volumes of sneaky red. apparently a 3rd volume is getting published next month and i’m like WHAT THE FUCK ELSE IS THERE TO TALK ABOUT ?? i saw a graphic of the side pairing (story covered in motion emotion) on the back cover which i got a lil excited abt bc i am intrigued by that pairing but like ... what else is there to talk abt re: sneaky red’s pairing. they’ve gotten together, they’re growing up and dealing with adult worries (jobs), and they’re moving in a more “positive” direction with their relationship (i.e., haru is opening up more to misaki) while attempting to hurdle the lingering issue of haru’s abuse -- what else is there to cover ... i think this artist really likes this couple which like makes sense for them since they’re their first published OCs but it’s prob just gonna be more senseless writing. the translated caption was like ‘the sequel of the famous debut work is here!’ and i’m like sneaky red is popular? this very unclearly written thing? but then again ppl liked k!lling st@alking and some of harada’s works that are OUT THERE are popular so i guess the fetish for abuse/hurt is strong ...

i didn’t really say anything coherent in this post bc deadass i don’t even remember what the fuck i read even though i read this manga like mere hrs ago which goes to show how much of an impact the story had on me (hint none). abuser stories are usually pretty hit or miss stories i feel, although tbh i don’t think i’ve ever read a hit story because the abuse is usually romanticized or somehow resolved without any issue which is frankly unrealistic and kind of dangerous to be telling people. i admit i don’t have personal experience with abuse (thankfully) so i guess i can’t really say stuff abt how realistic it is or not but ... just very disappointed with the story. i am still struggling to figure out what i liked abt this manga so much back then. i do like the art style a lot bc it’s unique compared to what you see in other BLs but the author’s writing is just very unclear sometimes ... it’s definitely improved since 2013 but ... hah. it was not really an enjoyable read. i legit wanted to stop reading at times but i’ve wanted to finish it for so long so i pushed on ... maybe i should reread so i can more definitively say what exactly i disliked but i don’t wanna read this again.