Jess spends a lot of time wondering why her boyfriend is so weird, especially if it's because he's so gentle and sensitive one moment, and completely martially badassed the next. With a side of family dysfunction.

Oh, I like those, too. And I did read one where she and Dean had been seeing each other for a while before she met Sam, although I don't remember the details of how that worked (as in, what Dean was doing there for so long) but I'm pretty sure it did end in threeway sexytimes, so.

I think I like most the pre-series fic where it's Sam's POV, easing into this very normal relationship/life with Jess, and trying to figure out all this everyday girl stuff that he has zero experience with, since even the girls he crushed on or dated previously ended too quickly when they had to pack up and leave again.

Like, a dumb fic about Sam trying to figure out what to get Jess for her birthday, or what to do if she was having horrible cramps, would make me stupidly happy.

I'm pretty sure it did end in threeway sexytimes, so.

What's with people and the catering to not me? When will it end?

I guess I'm realising my "outsider" POV thing comes into play with pre-series Sam/Jess. To define terms, outsiders are everyone not Sam or Dean, so even John and Bobby are outsiders, but Jess is more so, because she doesn't know about hunting.

There are two things I want people to be outside of--the brotherly bond (like, not knowing about it is a boon), and the hunting background. I love seeing how that tinges the narrative.

It has limited use in D/C fic, so I don't come up against it as much as I used to (I also feel, like Weechesters, that I read it all, and it's just not being generated in volume anymore), and I really miss it.

So fic where Jess is trying to figure out Sam, and he's opaque because she doesn't understand precisely how he's missing a limb, and that he's been brought up in two distinct dysfunctional ways, but she sees through to the core of him anyway (the basics of what I want out of most of the outsider fic, although misreadings can be interesting too) and loves him for that--I really dig it.

But half the time people do that, they like Jess enough to save her life, so it's really a lot of picking and choosing for me to do.

I wanted to do that with a Lisa POV fic, but it's not quite the same because after The Kids Are All Right, she knows a bit about Dean's life hunting.

I do love Jess trying to figure out Sam, though, especially when she finds, like, a knife under the bed or something.

Outsider POV in Weechester fic gives me crazy anxiety, because I'm always waiting for someone to call Child Protective Services. It's possible I'm a little over-invested.

I think there's room for a Cassie POV fic to do that sort of thing.

I like the premise of the lies they must tell in Weechester fic to get away with it, the constant scamming wee Dean must be doing in order to try and preserve some sense of normalcy for Sam, and the weird hybrid life that Sam does and does not come to terms with.

And trying to work out how normal John ever bothers to act.

Also, the Milligans.

I have a John fic in my head, where he goes to visit Adam a couple times a year, and the guilt and the pleasure of this totally *normal* kid are almost unbearable. To him, and to me, which is why I haven't written it.

OMG, that just reminded me of the "See, obviously if John hadn't handed Dean the shotgun in Something Wicked he'd have been killed like Adam before Jump The Shark."

Which is totally tangential, and probably just my brain's attempt at self defense. Because frustration at false dichotomies is much happier than pain at Winchester angst.

But I did get that argument handed to me last week.

I'm not following you. Who'd have been killed like Adam, Dean?

I just read your tag and I'm even more confused.

Yes. It was delivered in the context of a larger point, but the idea was either that John raised his kids like he did, or...

I mean, either Dean got raised like Dean, or he died like Adam. I'm not sure if it's that if he's not raised like he was he has to be raised like Adam, or if it's that if he's raised even one iota off the way it was written that he dies like Adam anyway, but it's a whacking false dichotomy, because there are plenty of plausible constructs that don't turn out that way.

The person never returned to the discussion. I'm sure it's because I wall-of-texted them, or otherwise soured them.

Oh, I get it.

People being wrong on the internet! Who would've thunk?

But wasn't it supposed to stop? Isn't that what all the discussing is for?