So, apart from the inciting incident, which is much of why we've shown up, what are the likely alterations made to canon?

In fic, you mean? Where authors taken canon and rework for another plausible outcome?

Looking back on the post, that's a really long sentence for "fanon" or "head canon".

But does it make sense, looking for the things they alter apart from the big 2: a) getting your ship into bed and b) the basic AU premise (college, cop, angels are slaves, etc)?

I hate the "John made Dean homophobic" trope, unsurprisingly. And it's really often written off--which is my beef--it's not played like a change from canon, but more as "you know John, he'd never have stood for that" like we'd been shown this even vaguely clearly.

I just feel...in a well drawn fic, you should be able to tell what the author's deliberately changing, and what s/he just believes about the characters. And the latter irritates me as often as not.

in a well drawn fic, you should be able to tell what the author's deliberately changing, and what s/he just believes about the characters

I get it. For me, the stuff I think the author just believes are things like Jessica being an artist (I'm not even sure how that became fanon, but it seems to be), and John drinking a lot. I'd have to think about it more, though.

I was literally shouting out Bobby's name. He was the only one who could save them.

My sister sends me one email per episode, title S02E13, etc as appropriate, and she asterisks or double asterisks to show how much she liked it. Sex and Violence was a two star episode, even though she's turned into a "when does Cas come back???" fan (I swear, that's not my fault--but I do wonder if you a) marathon the series and b) like Cas it does more easily seem like you really need him more--whereas us (true believers...coughcough) who spent years without him can like him more easily without needing).

The whole impact of the choice the siren made, the fight between Sam and Dean...she was totally into it.

And for some reason I actually typed the words "I thought he was faithful to Ruby"...I have no idea why I thought he'd have only slept with her in S4--it's impossible to forget Cara or the episode she appeared in and the context for the strain on their relationship. Felt weird. Maybe the Ruby bang is contaminating me.

It's the little Padalecki's first birthday today! Wow, that went quick.

I'm a little startled by that! And is Misha keeping Maison more under wraps than West was? Memory is hard.

Russ Hamilton tweets to Tumblr Nation about 8x22: [link] -- our reaction will be to [VERB] [ADVERBLY].

Yikes. They're such teases now. We've encouraged them to interact too much, I think.

Show tonight! Very relieved.

How a TV episode gets written, from someone who writes for TV, if not for SPN. Really interesting.

Oh thank God, before they cut to Dean and Cas I thought they were going to show another flashback of how Sam and Amelia met!

Super Tramp?!?