Ha ha! It is to laugh...AKA my writing life

[neotoma]

I have not been able to get the hob story to move an inch yet again -- this is the second time I tried to write it for the sabriel_mini and the second time it didn't budge.

So I'm picking up 'The Man Comes Around' again since it's already at 22K words, even though it was utterly jossed by the end of season 5 -- I started writing it after 5.10 during the mid-season hiatus. Which means that I had anticipated the car-based puns for the Horsemen, but not which ones (I had Death drive a Pinto, etc), and didn't have Anna or Gabriel get killed. Also there is an alligator-style egg mound in the back of Bobby's scrapyard that an entire garrison of angels is getting broody over.

alchemyalice gave me a critique of the partial draft way back when, but I could sure use volunteer alpha readers. I know that I need to work on the Dean&Sam stuff, and rewrite a lot of the early part of the story -- I started it as a Dean/Cas fic and it mutated into a Sam/Gabriel one. Anyone want to volunteer?

Comments

[hannah]

Alligator-style egg mounds are new to me for this fandom. Which means I endorse them wholeheartedly.

[neotoma]

Alligator style, or possible megapode style. Just imagine angels building a huge communal nest out of rotting vegetation and shiny things, and then guarding it feircely.

[hannah]

Bobby's scrapyard being perfect for that for all the wrong reasons. It'd take a couple of weeks before he starts adding bourbon to his morning coffee.

Angel eggs always require a little bit of effort for me to believe in, because they can't work if angels are multidimensional wavelengths of celestial intent, since they wouldn't require the whole breeding-and-birth process of carbon-based lifeforms...but then, if the fic has them as physical beings that don't need vessels for this dimension, it's all right.

And the sort of communal-style parenting that'd come from the set-up you have here would be absolutely adorable.

[neotoma]

Well, it's more that eggs are kind of congealed bits of co-mingled Grace. A bunch of angels feels the need to get together, mingle Grace, and bury the results in a defensible place until the new angels emerge.

I figure angels are precocial -- they hatch, they can walk and talk and obey orders from the get-go. They would look to the older generation for advice and guidance, of course.

But yeah, it would lead to a very different way of arranging one's society, wouldn't it?

[hannah]

Oh, that's nifty! Yet another thing I haven't seen before in the fandom. I adore it when that happens.

High on my list of Fics I'm Not Going To Write, No Really, I Swear is a Supernatural fic where angels are physical beings with wings and fingernails and digestive systems and all that good stuff - where they lay eggs, and their culture dictates they're to be incubated, hatched, and raised communally, to minimize the family for the sake of the society. And yes, they're quite precocial here, too.

I have a lot of notes about eggs being laid in pairs, angels being an endangered species, the meaning behind older brothers and sisters versus younger brothers and sisters, the sexual dimorphism leaning towards the raptor model with the females being larger than the males, Dean mistaking Castiel's cloaca for a navel, stuff like that.

[neotoma]

I keep writing AUs, because the actual canon in SPN is kind of bleak. Also, this way I can do a lot of worldbuilding...

Are your angels using a ZW sex chromosome system as well? Because with females being the heterogametic sex, you'd get some interesting things pop up...

[hannah]

The canon is hampered by the fairly limited effects budget, as well. No such restraints when it's just text.

I hadn't been, and I am now. I had Cas as a female, and a lot of planned conversations with Dean about the nature of being a parent and how that relies on the social definitions - he doesn't know his parents, he won't raise his kids as his own or even know who they are, and he can't figure out why Dean finds that so upsetting.

[neotoma]

Limited budgets are the bane of any SF&F series.

Castiel as a female, but Dean doesn't know because the secondary sex characteristics aren't at all the ones that humans have? I could get behind that... :D

If they have a ZW system, there are likely the occasion gynandromorphs and maybe even parthongenically born WW females, among other things like sex-linked feather patterns -- barring, lace edged, etc.

Castiel would know who the older members of his community were, and which ones were most involved in his raising, but no, I'm pretty sure he won't get why Dean's upset. Otoh, it's Castiel -- he's not so good with human emotions in canon.

[hannah]

No mammaries, no nipples, but a navel - at least, something that looks like a navel. And then when Dean finds out what that actually is, he's torn between fascination, embarrassment, disgust, and shock.

He would've been raised mostly by the community's males until he's old and strong enough to join the other females in their own set of activities. One of the females laid the egg he hatched out of, and one of the males helped make that laying happen, but he doesn't know which one, and whenever he asked he never got an answer and was actively discouraged from asking again. So by the time he finds Dean and Sam, who were raised by their parents, he immediately thinks John and Mary were incredibly selfish people, to keep their children all to themselves.

Also, when he needs to get clean and wash out his hair, Cas takes a dust bath. It's Sam who figures out what he's doing first.

[neotoma]

You know, if the females are taller/bigger, and Castiel is female, does that mean Gabriel being shorter is a male? Is his obnoxious chatter the angel version of male songbird calls ('this is my place!' 'I've got a good food source/nesting ground!' 'Mate with me and your eggs will have a high chance of survival!') because if so... I can see angels being utterly confused by humanity.

Does Cas think Dean and Sam (especially Sam!) are also female at first?!

[hannah]

He would be, yeah. When I was thinking about who I'd have play Cas' mate/spouse/partner, I settled on Freddy Rodriguez.

Another thing I'd not thought about until you brought it up, and I'm so happy you did. The males would be more verbal than females, on the whole, as the females who go out beyond the little safe communal villages/living areas would have to be stealthy and quiet, both for their own safety and to better hunt. Males that raise children and go about the general running of the place would have to exchange more verbal information, and be more casual about doing so.

Cas doesn't know about human culture, but he does know a bit about mammal biology - it's important for hunting to know which ones are which, so he's able to extrapolate and properly guess Sam and Dean's genders.

There's about 2000 angels kicking around when Cas meets Sam and Dean, and until he showed up, everyone thought they'd gone extinct around the time of the first Crusade. This is really the sort of thing I should look into developing into something, since I managed to create a lot of notes and an entire story arc and it'd be a shame to leave it to nothing.

I mean, I won't write this, but maybe if I had help...It's either write an AU examining Castiel's relationship with his own kind as it develops based on his interactions with Dean and Sam, or go balls-out and try to write a novel, and I think it might work better as fic.

[neotoma]

there's just so many mating pattern options if you're stealing from bird biology -- including the lek systems that sometimes include things like male-male interactions that seem to be live sex shows to attract females.

I would love to see you develop into something, since it sounds fascinating, but I do know the problems of a wonderful premise in search of a plot...

[hannah]

Like Balthazar wasn't putting on that menage-a-twelve just for his own fun. Dude has to show off to impress his lady.

"Angels as endangered species getting reintroduced to the world" was a premise in search of a plot for a few years, and it wasn't until I started watching Supernatural that it found something it could latch onto and use. I did write up the plot somewhere, and I'd be happy to type it out for you on my journal sometime this week if you'd like.

[neotoma]

I can just see that...

Sam: So, Castiel's friends Gabriel and Balthazar invite you to a party?
Dean: ... Sammy...
Sam: A wild party...
Dean: ...
Sam: Which turned out to be a gay orgy for the viewing pleasure of all the female angels...
Dean: ...
Sam: So, did you manage to impress Castiel?
Dean: ... I hate you.

[hannah]

Sam's assurance Dean attended the anthropological event of the decade does nothing to help.

[neotoma]

LOL. Poor Dean, Sam is never ever going to let this go. "Remember the time you attended an angel orgy..?" will be an effective way to shut Dean up for years.

Otoh, Sam could pout about how he missed out on the anthropology event of the decade...

Sam: It was the anthropological event of the decade, Dean.
Cas: [head-tilt] If you wish to attend a lek, Sam, I'm sure Balthazar will invite you if you just make your interest known.
Sam: ... really?
Cas: Balthazar is always looking to impress women with his sexual prowess. Your participation would in his party would enhance his attractiveness considerable, as it would prove that even humans find him irresistable...
Sam: ... I'm not sure how I feel about that.

[hannah]

Accidentally attended an angel orgy, no less.

Sam ends up politely declining the offer, instead deciding to mine Dean for information - Cas, too, since he's been a spectator for a couple of them. It's not where he met Muriel, who took the very odd tactic of being the one to court Castiel, rather than the more common pattern of the female courting the male.

Dean doesn't know if he should laugh or not when this tiny little angel, five-six at most, is getting up in his space about how he treated Cas. It doesn't help that Murray doesn't speak English, so Cas has to translate for both of them, and he manages to make even the most obscene death threats sound polite when he delivers them so perfectly deadpan.

[neotoma]

It's the accidentally attended an angel orgy. Dean was okay at first, what with the beer and snacks and all, and could kind of ignore the shirts coming off (it was a hot day! it's not his fault), so when the pants started coming off, he was right in the middle of it and couldn't get to an exit -- that's his story, and he's sticking to it!

lol. Castiel translating violent threats deadpan would be hilarious. And also trying to disuade attempts to flirt with Sam by males who really haven't figured out that Sam's also male -- Sam's so tall she must be female!

[hannah]

It's more of a wine than a beer, angels don't cultivate grains to ferment them but they do collect fruits from the local region. Like wine with a bigger kick, and Dean's really enjoying that, and angels don't usually wear shirts anyway and when someone takes his off he's fine and rolls with it, and then...some images are burned into his brain forever.

"What? What's he saying?"
"He said if you took so much as one drop of my blood for your nefarious sorcery he'll chain you to the canyon walls and feed you your own testicles, you sloppy, over-grown hairy sack of...the best word for that is shit, but it's worse in Enochian. It loses something in the translation."
"Worse?"
"Well, you know when we defecate it's not a question of it being either a solid or a liquid but both coming at once, so he's referring to the -"
"Just - just tell him I get what he's trying to tell me."

[neotoma]

Dean did not need to know that about angel genitalia, thank you...

lol -- considering bird testicles are internal, Muriel's threat is pretty gruesome. Dean's probably standing there with a very tired look on his face, because he knows what's coming -- the same kind of threat the father of every girl he ever dated tried to lay on him.

[hannah]

Dean's never seen the results of Castiel's defecation, just a couple of glimpses of him hunched over a pot or crouching over a little hole in the ground. When he found out that wasn't a navel he'd poked at when Cas was unconscious, he did one of those full-body heeby-jeeby things he does on the show sometimes that manages to be oddly endearing.

I so need to type up my notes on this for you.

[neotoma]

Dean's dance of disgust is kind of hilarious.

I'd love to see them.

[hannah]

It gets worse when he realizes that's not just the exit, but also the entrance, and Cas is a girl, so - OH GOD DRINK THE PAIN AWAY.

Remind me, and I can get to them later this week. Blog post or e-mail?

[neotoma]

Dean's coping mechanisms need work.

Posting it is a lot of fun, but if you don't feel comfortable having it up, email is fine too. I'll be traveling this weekend, so I don't know that I'll be able to respond a lot to it.

[wyntereyez]

I hope you don't mind a drive-by comment... I was just skimming through the comments and came across this, and I just wanted to say, I hope you do write this fic eventually. I have a biology degree, and I love it when people put so much thought into something like this, so much effort to make it feel real. It drives me nuts whenever I come across a Dean/Cas mpreg where the pregnancy is very human-normal and the end result is a cute little baby with wings. It makes me want to write a fic where the resulting combination of a flesh and blood human and a wavelength of celestial intent is much... messier.

Anyway... sorry for interrupting. Just wanted to say I love your ideas!