brightly_lit

*THIS POST CONTAINS SPOILERS FOR THE HOUSE OF THIRTY CATS, (C) 1965*

Sorry, House of Thirty Cats, in the end I wasn't inspired to write any fic for you. After finishing it tonight, I've thought a lot about what so enchanted me as a kid, since it rambles a lot (mostly about cats and their particular behaviors), introduces a mystery it barely solves, and promotes highly questionable values in some ways.

Yes, I had a fascination for cats at that age, wanting them to be as adorable and noble and glorious as they are presented to be in the book (yet, especially during the very charming cat-POV section, it actually portrays them quite realistically). (Having a rather bratty, violent cat killed that hope presently, alas.)

So yeah, any kid will probably enjoy the animal stuff. But really, I think it's how admirably accurately the author describes the world and human interaction. I read voraciously at that age, willing and eager to read just about anything, but there are lines kids' books just don't cross, so I was floored when a cat actually died--quite realistically. It's not the last cat to die in the book, either. I probably also greatly related to how things never quite went right (though still more often in the book than in reality); I couldn't connect to this magical fantasy world I read about and saw on t.v. where everyone always got along and everything always worked out right.

The author also touches on kinds of success at fixing what's wrong with the world that was extremely appealing to me at that age, as I was ever trying to do just that, and of course failing utterly. Aaaand ... yeah, the way it works out in the book isn't realistic, but given how realistic the rest of it is, I imagine I thought maybe I could make it work myself if I could just figure out the trick. So anyway, bottom line: cute, wobbly children's book that's barely for children

Thanks, author, for writing that book that meant so much to child!me.

Well, we'd have made pretty decent time through the canyon if we hadn't gotten stuck IN TOWN RIGHT AFTER WE LEFT in a traffic jam that delayed us nearly an hour. O__O It was all right--we just had fun listening to an MCR CD and singing, but it did delay us by quite a bit. We drove up to this place in pitch darkness. It's in a tiny remote Utah town. I said to P as we turned off the highway, "Well, if worse comes to very worst, there's camping here!" ... only to find the camping sign referred to the very place we're staying! ! The handpainted sign looked pretty sketchy, as did the dirt lot, and at first we couldn't reach the manager ... though then a neighbor saw us trying to call him and came out of his place, the nicest guy ever, telling us where to find the manager, then the manager called, also very nice, and we got in the place, and it's SO NICE. We'll try to take pictures tomorrow morning so you can see (which will be the first we ourselves have seen of the outside!). The most adorable cowboy decor!!

As for the canyon, it was reeealllly slow going for about 40 minutes. We wondered if we'd be able to see what the rockslide did to the road. We were on the eastbound section at that part, one lane each way, with the damaged westbound part of the road some twenty feet above us, but still, there were parts of road and railings that had just gotten plumb knocked off the upper highway there. It was pretty intense.

You ladies are all so wonderful with your sweet messages this morning and last night--they helped me feel way better about my anxiety on the trip. <3 <3 <3 I look forward to responding and catching up on lj when I have more time and can focus on doing it properly. :-)

Okay, I wrote all that last night. Con starts tomorrow! Still as ever anxious, but better now we're here. I should really be trying to sleep instead of doing this, but I'm a little too anxious to still, and I thought you might like to see the video we made today. We forgot the connector with which to upload still pictures, but my video camera has an attached USB, so I was able to upload video! I decided to film a few things today so you could see the cowboy VRBO and some of the scenery around here, and I ended up catching today's adventure on tape. I hope you enjoy. It'll probably be more amusing to watch than it was to live, but hey, life's always gotta throw a few surprises atcha ...

And another 10.2 episode tag! 150 words again, since I can’t seem to write less.

Title: Boxes
Warnings: horror (probably only PG-13), but gen
Summary: Sam knows exactly where Dean fits into his life, now.

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Title: Broken (Sequel to Kintsugi)
Author: brightly_lit
Rating: PG-13
Genre: gen, intense angst, h/c (mainly hurt!Sam, some emotionally hurt!Dean), brother feels, heroics and badassery, pathetic first time
Characters: Sam, Dean, OCs
Word Count: 16,000
Warnings: language, horrific concepts, mentions of child abuse and torture, PTSD
Summary: Dean spent his whole life searching for the little brother who was taken from him at age 6. He thought once he finally found him, everything would be perfect, but Sam is more broken than Dean could have imagined someone could be and still be able to function. Worse yet, Dean can't even tell if Sam wants his brother back in his life ...


Continued from here.

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Title: Kintsugi
Author: brightly_lit
Rating: PG-13
Genre: gen, intense angst, h/c, emotional h/c, brother feels
Characters: Dean, Sam, OC
Word Count: 4,600
Warnings: language, horrific concepts, mentions of child abuse and torture
Summary: Dean needs a new protective sigil tattoo, and he visits the tattoo artist other hunters recommend--the only person in the area who's precise enough for the work. Getting two words in a row out of the guy is hard labor, but undeniably worth it in the end.



Kintsugi is a Japanese method of mending broken pottery with gold, where the pot is considered more beautiful for having been broken.

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When Misha got the script for 9.01, you know he HAD to know there would thereafter be (mostly) naked pictures of him all over the internet. Sucks for Misha (or, who knows, maybe he's into that kind of thing), but lucky for us.

You're welcome.




(Thanks to cuddyclothes, from whom I shamelessly stole this pic.)

Title: Three Times Dean Went Crazy and One Time Sam Did
Author: brightly_lit
Rating: PG-13 for language, angst, mild violence, disturbing concepts/situations
Word Count: ~3,500
Genre: gen, wee!chesters, teen!chesters, h/c, angst, hurt!Sam, brotherly love
Characters: Sam, Dean, John, Lisa briefly
Summary: This is about wee!Sam and teen!Dean and times when their messed-up lives pushed them too far--this is not a feel-good fic.


Dad had had to test them both to make sure the shifter hadn’t replaced one of them with itself. Late that night in their room, 6-year-old Sam had stared at the bandage over where his father had cut his arm with a silver knife, and asked Dean quietly, “Have I been bad?”


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Title: He Gripped Him Tight Down There
Author: brightly_lit
Rating: PG-13 for language, innuendo
Characters: Sam, Dean, Cas
Pairings: Um ... all, and none.
Genre: Humor, crack, spoof
Warnings: Subtle but racy innuendo, so ... just like the show.
Word Count: 1,200
Disclaimer: Not mine, and if they were, look what I would do to them!

Summary: My first time through the series, I didn't see all the Destiel and other subtext; I just thought Cas and Dean had a baffling, highly dysfunctional friendship. But once I started seeing all that subtext, I CAN'T STOP SEEING IT. I've grown convinced the writers ship these characters at least as hard as the fans do. Some moments are particularly outrageous. So this story is my only-slightly-less-subtle-than-the-show spoof of all that stuff in the series. The title refers to Cas having gripped Dean tight down in hell, of course. ;-) Enjoy!

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Title: Alien
Author: brightly_lit
Rating: PG-13 for language and one mild sex scene (they could easily show it on the series)
Pairings: None
Characters: Sam, Dean, OCs
Genre: Gen, Stanford-era, hurt/comfort, angst, teen!chester (Sam is still a teenager), first time, brotherly love
Warnings: None
Spoilers: None; takes place pre-series
Word Count: ~13,000
Disclaimer: I don't own Sam and Dean or their history
Summary: This is the story of when Sam went to Stanford and figured out, with a lot of difficulty, loneliness, and false starts, how to make his way in the normal world without the family that had defined his whole life for 18 years.

"If there was one thing he’d learned at college, it was that you could take the boy out of the hunter’s life, but you couldn’t take the hunter’s life out of the boy."


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Title: Same song, different verse
Author: brightly_lit
Disclaimer: These characters don’t belong to me, they belong to the wonderful creators of Supernatural.
Pairing: None--it’s gen. It skirts a few lines, but I tried not to do anything I didn't think the show's writers would do
Genre: Gen, angst, humor, fluff, action
Characters: Sam, Dean, Cas, Claire, Anna, and a couple of small surprises
Rating: PG-13 for violence, death, off-page sex, and language
Warnings: Minor character deaths, violence
Word Count: 14,000
Summary: Jimmy Novak isn't the only vessel Castiel could use. There is also his daughter, Claire, now 19, troubled, broken, in need of help only the Winchesters could provide. Castiel needs her for a vessel, but one thing's sure: she will never, ever say yes to him.


“We are not about to become three men and a baby.”

“Well, he’s ... not exactly a man, anymore ....”


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On to Part 2 ...