I came to this off barkley's recs page, and man, do you nail it. I opened the first section at 8 pm last and finished it after midnight, having done lots of out-loud squeaking, mostly of the "Dean! Ack! No!" variety. But your John makes me melt, he's perfect--fucked up and unable to connect but so much love for his sons, even if he rarely remembers to tell them. And you cut off his leg OMG!
Which was really an interesting way to take it, because of course John is such a powerful character he could overwhelm a story, and doing that keeps him in the story but not dominating it--it's an interesting variation compared to TPTB's choice to just dump him entirely (sob!). You get a lot of the angst and regret among the characters but still get to use him, and give the characters an anchor they don't really have anymore in canon.
As an aside, unlike some of the other readers, I found the Andrew business a bit too distracting, especially the epilogue, since one of the things I love about shows like this is that it's not destiny that makes them heroes, it's personal choices and forced decisions. The Winchesters are heroes through a fluke of fate, and by that reasoning anyone could be. That aside, Andrew was still interesting and clearly drawn, regardless of whatever separate agenda he may have. I just didn't feel the story required that element, if you follow me.
Anyway, I still thought this was marvelous--the suspense was awesome and you did a great job with a lot of the gritty details of the hunters' lives, like the warehouse in Seattle, and the dirt and exhaustion of being on the run, the way one's perception gets skewed and judgment degraded by sleep deprivation. Dean's horrible decisions are bad decisions, and ones he wouldn't make when he was in his right mind, but that's the point there, and you show his thought processes in such a way that you don't frustrate the reader.
Sam and John are marvelous, just pitch-perfect from beginning to end, with anger, resentment, and frustrated love all tied together. The therapy scenes in particular were fantastic. Funny and painful.
So, yeah. This was really really great and I'm gonna rec it to people. Thank you so much for writing it.
ps -- y'all wouldn't happen to have a place where it can be found in one file? Because that would rock.
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Which was really an interesting way to take it, because of course John is such a powerful character he could overwhelm a story, and doing that keeps him in the story but not dominating it--it's an interesting variation compared to TPTB's choice to just dump him entirely (sob!). You get a lot of the angst and regret among the characters but still get to use him, and give the characters an anchor they don't really have anymore in canon.
As an aside, unlike some of the other readers, I found the Andrew business a bit too distracting, especially the epilogue, since one of the things I love about shows like this is that it's not destiny that makes them heroes, it's personal choices and forced decisions. The Winchesters are heroes through a fluke of fate, and by that reasoning anyone could be. That aside, Andrew was still interesting and clearly drawn, regardless of whatever separate agenda he may have. I just didn't feel the story required that element, if you follow me.
Anyway, I still thought this was marvelous--the suspense was awesome and you did a great job with a lot of the gritty details of the hunters' lives, like the warehouse in Seattle, and the dirt and exhaustion of being on the run, the way one's perception gets skewed and judgment degraded by sleep deprivation. Dean's horrible decisions are bad decisions, and ones he wouldn't make when he was in his right mind, but that's the point there, and you show his thought processes in such a way that you don't frustrate the reader.
Sam and John are marvelous, just pitch-perfect from beginning to end, with anger, resentment, and frustrated love all tied together. The therapy scenes in particular were fantastic. Funny and painful.
So, yeah. This was really really great and I'm gonna rec it to people. Thank you so much for writing it.
ps -- y'all wouldn't happen to have a place where it can be found in one file? Because that would rock.