I didn't hate it, there were some interesting and new character traits and dynamics and interpretations, but nothing grabbed me. I don't know if it was the story, because the writing and narrative was perfectly adequate, or if I just get a huge disconnect when wings are physical and bird-like. Or maybe I didn't really recognize Cas or Dean, which is weird to say for this Dean. It reads like all the appropriate boxes are checked, but...

Re: the "father/our father" thing in the hotel, it occurs to me that prior to that, Sam and Dean were in the car with ShifterBaby when Sam says "Shifters can have babies? I thought they were freaks of nature."

It could be a plot hole given it's a new writer, but it seems to me Sam couldn't have known what Gramps had planned -- at least, not at that point. Although, I really wondered why their first instinct wasn't to call Bobby. When Sam made the suggestion to talk to Samuel and Dean balked, Sam said, "Pitch me another idea" and Dean didn't have one. Meanwhile, I'm saying, "Call Bobby, you silly boys! What's wrong with you?"

Upthread someone wondered if the shifters were possessed by something else. I thought maybe Big Boss shifter was hosting a demon, until he walked right through a devil's trap.

Fanfic is very educational. The letters of the day were C, B, and T. It's like Avenue Q.

I caught Walk the Line on FX and saw that wee!Dean also played wee!Johnny.

Damn, I spend too much time on Facebook when I try and hit like on wee!Dean playing wee!Johnny.

ha! i find myself wanting to do that quite frequently on livejournal.

I am kinda in love with the SPN crew for having the baby shift into the diaper box kid. That's so...so...I don't even know.

That was pretty awesome, especially with the preceding explosion.

I'm not surprised to see Dean being pretty good with kids.

No, we've seen him interacting a few times with young boys and he's always been great with them.

And I'm not taking points off for yelling at Ben when Ben got into the guns. There was a whole bit showing that Dean made a solid effort to keep the Impala guns locked away. (I'd be less forgiving if Ben had been messing with the gun under the bed.) Finding a kid within seconds of possibly blowing his brains out can justify some yelling.

I think that was completely justifiable yelling. But I also think Dean's deluding himself if he thinks Ben doesn't know about the gun under the bed.

Still, Sam's surprise at Dean's dad skills was a little odd. Didn't we have several flashbacks where Dean was left alone taking care of Sam?

Was Sam mostly surprised at his adeptness at baby-wrangling? Because we've never seen Dean with a baby before, and it's probable Sam never has either. And Dean may have helped take care of Sam when he was a baby, but Sam wouldn't have any memories of Dean when Dean was 4 or 5. And as low an opinion as I have of John's parenting skills (I know I'm in the minority here) I sincerely hope he never left a 5 or 6 year-old alone in charge of a baby while he took off on a hunt. In the SPN backstory in my imagination the boys were a bit older before Dean was given full responsibility for looking after Sam on a practical day to day basis.