No way to tell if some member of her family has or had one of those crappily engineered vehicles where you need an engine hoist to swap out the spark plugs then got shafted by the mechanic, I suppose?

Fall out, I suspect, ita !.

Do a percentage of people fall out of every fandom? I was a lifer with Buffy and Angel, and obviously continue to be for SPN, so for me that's the norm, if that makes sense. I never know whether people are drifting away from SPN because they don't like it anymore, or it's a natural drift.

He feels sick at the sight of that bright red liquid, Jared’s life, all over him and puts it back, gripping him hard as if it could keep Jared’s blood inside of him

YES, yes it could! Author, you almost got it! Just make Jensen grip him in the right, non-porny place, and he could actually keep the blood inside him!

This is almost the point in movies where I start bleating "stop clutching and shaking her and put pressure on the wound!". Yes, I blame Anakin for his mother's death because he moved her. Plot point based on bad medical training, it kills me )and almost got me kicked out of the movie theatre).

Fall out, I suspect, ita !.

Mentally, I have a S5 exodus with the Harvelle's death as the final (but far from first) inciting factor. Would that be when many of them fell out? Or later or earlier, or just general normal attrition like Amy mentions?

I'm in one of those moods where I think no one's case files are up to par, so I'm neck deep in AUs. What is your guys' general preference for AU characterisation? Bad guys stay bad, good guys stay good, unless the author explains why not? Clearly that's mine. I get that people honestly think John was a bad guy, and that's a separate issue. Lisa is almost in that boat, but when you write Anna or Gabriel happily dating Crowley, why, though? Aren't there enough names that you can slip someone else into those niches?

I also wonder about age or power hierarchies. When a top dog in the show is hired help in the AU, I expect there to be a point. But at least in the story I'm reading, there doesn't seem to be any point at all. If it's important to a character that they're older than whoever, shouldn't there be a reason why your AU has them not anymore? I mean, shouldn't every deviation from the canon framework specifically serve your story? Especially since the alternative is usually specifically distracting from it? Especially when there is a canon alternative bad guy/henchperson/younger substitute? Or the character could just be an OC?

(Also, 6'4 Viking-type Alexander Northman in your SPN story isn't cute or clever. IT'S DISTRACTING, BRUH.)

I don't get choices...

("He has a slight concussion, he'll probably be unconscious for a couple days, so let him sleep it off in your bedroom, and give him aspirin every four hours when he wakes up to address his headaches and double vision"--why not give him memory loss you resolve with another blow to his head? That's pretty much how far off you are right now)

He feels sick at the sight of that bright red liquid, Jared’s life, all over him and puts it back, gripping him hard as if it could keep Jared’s blood inside of him

What is the "it"?

The act of gripping, which I read as clutching some unwounded body part. And since the wound was in the torso, gripping would be kind of hard for stemming bloodflow, unless one is the Hulk.

The act of gripping, which I read as clutching some unwounded body part

That's a stunningly clumsy sentence, which I couldn't even work out how to complain about, to be honest. I would not be convinced there's meaning in it, no matter what the author intended.

Yesterday I read a short fic wherein the actual pairing parts where quite hot, but the encounter hinged on a "could Batman beat Superman?" argument that was way specious. My finger hovered over the kudos button for quite a while, but I couldn't do it. Don't introduce that as your premise, title your fic that, and then NOT MENTION BATMAN HAS SCENARIOS TO KILL THE JLA. There's no way two boys in high school are going to have the argument you just wrote.

I don't know if I'm in an extra snippy mood (because that would be appalling), but the lack of subject matter expertise at least feels like an all time high right now.

Link, Julie? Just for the lols.

Bev, my first thought was that you spelled lulz wrong, dear god brain.

I'm working my way through the J2BB, and I clicked on The American President because hey! political intrigue, Secret Service, action and violence! Once I hit the point I complained about, it was more chapters of hospital vigils, meeting the parents, talking about feelings, and just lots and lots of fluff.

Before that it was inappropriate sex in the White House. 'Twas not a very good fic, but not hilariously bad, porn and fluff, but if you want to give it a try, here it is [link]

ita, I was leaving the show when the Harvelles died, and that just put the nail in the coffin. In part because of my feminism issues, but also because I found the whole angels-God-heaven-destined Chalice plot line to be far less interesting than the story where some random guy wakes up from a late movie to see his wife on fire on the ceiling, and turns his life into something he'd never even imagined before.

What I liked about the first 3-4 seasons was the way that the Winchesters weren't destined to be hunters, and had no special destiny. (Mary being a hunter did a nice job of giving her back some agency, but at the cost of some of the random chance elements.) That was the story I was interested in, and as the show grew away from being about ordinary people dealing with the supernatural while still constrained by reality, I grew away too. (And that there weren't any women who could apparently stick it out in that world--that bothered me, too.)

I don't know why other people left the show. That was it for me.