I would hate to be a gen or het only reader in this fandom. It would be barely worth showing up for.

The spn_gen comm over on LJ ain't half bad. There's always new stuff coming through every day. Can't say that all of it appeals to me, but still...

Dean can be in the background, angsting all over the place, ready to pick up the Cas-shaped pieces when she breaks his heart...

Maybe after I've gotten over my need to have him in the room, sure. But given how rarely it comes up in fic, good luck getting that out of my system.

There's always new stuff coming through every day.

Ooh, I'll have to look. The gen section of the SPN newsletter is always so depressingly underpopulated. And thanks for the spn_summergen heads up.

I seem to have totally lost my ability to read Sassy. I'm actually offended now. I think it's rude of Sam. And I can't wrap my head around Sam/Gabe, so all the D/C S/G fic I look at funny. I wonder if I will get over that. It didn't use to bother me so much. But it's such an "we're all gay!" pity ship to me now.

Yeah, this fandom has spoiled me rotten for gen. Almost all I read is gen. Long, meaty, plotty, delicious gen. Nom nom nom.

Other fandoms, I'm like, "What's with this smexing? Where the hell's the good stuff? Gimme the gen, damn it!"

A lot of the problem I have with much of the gen I've read is that the monsters are stupid and the relationship between the brothers doesn't match the time period the fic is set in. I started reading K Hanna Korossy ferociously, for instance, but her boys never evolve. It was wack.

I just can't do Big Bangs unless I love them desperately because I can't read too much at once online. I did read one 120K story (not SPN) over two days, though, because it was so compelling.

I love long meaty stories, and want to read the BB that was mentioned here, but alas no time.

I am coming back sometime this weekend, probably Sat. morning and rereading the thread for the recs.

This is not the story for this crowd. With one major change--Sam's childhood is marred by renal failure. He needs a kidney, Dean donates--it's fairly canon compliant. Major character death, which I never read, but for some reason I did, and the payoff was pretty awesome. It's gen.

It affected me about as deeply as Ten Thousand Miles another gen story from Big Bang 2009, one that left me devastated, and distracted for days.

Um. I seem to be infected with bleak today. Sorry for shedding all over thread. Waiter! More glitter and unicorns!

That's the story I was complaining about. I just...I like more variety in my stories. I hated the narrowness of the characterisation. John was a douche, Dean was too good to be true, and Sam...well, I don't know how it ended, because I got tired of the unremitting bleakness, and decided I didn't even want him to be happy in the end, because the circumstances were still so dire.

And Bobby was barely there, and the Castiel characterisation was confusing and vague.

I liked that Castiel was confined to an ancillary role, and the story focused on the filial relationship. Yes, it was over-focused. So am I. I guess I relate that way.

I knew it was the wrong story for the room.

I wanted a story focussed on the boys. Those weren't my boys. It's hard to find a good non-Wincest story about thier devotion to each other that shows their ups and downs.

But...I love Dean. That wasn't Dean. He wasn't layered or funny or nuanced. He was Beth from Little Women, with a layer of super hero thrown on.

I love Sam. But I hated who he was at the start of the story, for no good narrative reason, as far as I could tell. Why was he such a whiner?

And the John was so unforgivable. Prick!John can make a story easily unredeemable for me.

The story didn't have to focus on Castiel. It just had to make his existence and relationship to Dean make sense and jibe with canon. It didn't. Bobby came closer, but it still wasn't great.