{"id":253161,"date":"2013-10-04T04:54:22","date_gmt":"2013-10-04T04:54:22","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.merindab.com\/private\/2013\/10\/04\/play-it-again-sam-why-are-destiel-aus-so\/"},"modified":"2013-10-04T04:54:22","modified_gmt":"2013-10-04T04:54:22","slug":"play-it-again-sam-why-are-destiel-aus-so","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.merindab.com\/private\/2013\/10\/04\/play-it-again-sam-why-are-destiel-aus-so\/","title":{"rendered":"Play it again, Sam: Why are Destiel AUs so popular?"},"content":{"rendered":"

spainkitty-mishassweetestkittles<\/a>:<\/p>\n

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andythanfiction<\/a>:<\/p>\n

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\"image\"<\/p>\n

Caveat: I\u2019m not into them. I don\u2019t read them. I don\u2019t write them. I\u2019m in this story for THIS story, but I\u2019m in this story in general for reasons that are probably not your reasons or this person or that person\u2019s reasons, and that\u2019s ok, because I\u2019m not you or this person or that person. \u00a0<\/p>\n

THAT SAID\u2026<\/p>\n

I think that they\u2019re popular on one level because for all that the fandom likes to grouse that Dean and Cas need to get together already and it would be so easy for TPTB to\u00a0just do it for fuck\u2019s sake,\u00a0<\/em>we also understand somehow that it\u2019s not that easy. \u00a0Dean and Cas happening as Dean and Cas is going to be long and slow and ugly and hard for reasons that have to do not only with inside themselves things, but all the outside themselves things that have been standing between them since Dean was Cas\u2019 mission objective\u2026like, oh, all the\u00a0different motherfucking species\u00a0<\/em>things from perceptions of reality to duties to an age gap that\u2019s literally wider than the existence of mammals. \u00a0<\/p>\n

Not to mention it\u2019s\u00a0hard\u00a0<\/em>to tell a love story in a world and a storyline that\u00a0eats love stories and burns them on the ceiling<\/em>. \u00a0Hard and ugly and you have to work around a lot of story you may not want to tell to get to the ones that you do, because for a lot of this branch of the audience, the MotW stuff and even the A plot is \u201cjust filler.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

But I think they\u2019re\u00a0more\u00a0<\/em>popular on a second level, and that is that when humans\u00a0want something really badly, they lie<\/strike>\u00a0find a story they like, they treat it like ice cream, trying it with every possibile flavor and topping they can think of to make it theirs as individuals and yet keep it a common and bonding thing. \u00a0This is why we have archetypes, this is why we have common story-shapes,\u00a0this is, on its most basic level, why storytelling itself exists.\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n

Dean and Castiel\u2019s story compels despite itself – and somehow\u00a0works\u00a0<\/em>as a teenaged firefighter and drag queen on Mars in the fifteenth century with wildly different personalities – because it\u2019s the story that the big romance trope has been trying to sell us for the last Very Long Time, but by presenting it by accident and non-heteronormative, most of the\u00a0really disgusting bullshit that sexist tropes tend to shove in there<\/a>\u00a0got stripped away. \u00a0<\/p>\n

Stripped down of all the trappings that I already mentioned above are really, really hard to write and not interesting to a lot of the audience anyway, it becomes this:\u00a0Person meets person, they were never intended to love each other, they seem wildly unequal and impossibly different, they are damaged, they hurt each other a lot, there are many things that stand in the way from outside forces, but they have to work together, and they come to respect each other, to see that they are equals in ways that no one noticed but matter more, that the differences matter less than they thought, that the damage matters a fuckton and not at all, that damage can be dealt with and sometimes even heal, that hurt can be forgiven but doesn\u2019t have to be forgotten or excused. \u00a0They come to then care about each other, then love each other, then fall in love with each other, and loving each other is so much the most important thing that people can do that none of the seemingly huge things that try to make them stop mattering to each other can matter against it.<\/em><\/p>\n

That\u2019s it. \u00a0That\u2019s the Master Recipe. \u00a0The Big Love Story. \u00a0The ice cream base. \u00a0They did the Thing without even meaning to do the Thing, (maybe better than most storytellers do the Thing because of that), and it makes people scream and jump up and down and yell \u201cthe Thing the Thing the Thing they did the Thing!\u201d and then run off with it and make the Thing do\u00a0their\u00a0<\/em>thing and at the same time get very, very invested and very, very scared, because this is THE THING, and if it doesn\u2019t work out in the end, that says dark and frightening and ugly things about whether or not The Thing ever can have a happy ending in a way they can dream of, because this is the least bullshitty version of the Thing they\u2019ve ever seen. \u00a0<\/p>\n

TL:DR – Cas and Dean have accidentally hit upon a story we like at its base. \u00a0And we want to hear the same story over and over differently, because we are, as humans, the same over and over\u2026but differently. \u00a0<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

SO FAR I\u2019M HAVING THE TIME OF MY LIFE. I LOVE MY DASH TODAY. This is beautiful!<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

spainkitty-mishassweetestkittles: andythanfiction: Caveat: I\u2019m not into them. I don\u2019t read them. I don\u2019t write them. I\u2019m in this story for THIS story, but I\u2019m in this story in general for reasons that are probably not your reasons or this person or that person\u2019s reasons, and that\u2019s ok, because I\u2019m not you or this person or … <\/p>\n

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