We Have A Gif For That

The Shawnee Trail

A deancas western au Posting date: 5/24/2020 on ao3 Chapters will be posted every Sunday playlist | ko-fi

Fic Summary: In 1887, Dean Winchester and Castiel Novak lead a peaceful life in Lawrence, Kansas. Dean and Sam are stagecoach messengers for Wells, Fargo and Castiel is the town doctor. When Castiel’s patient, Kelly Kline, knocks on their door one night about to give birth, she asks for the Winchesters and Castiel’s help in protecting her son against one of the west’s most notorious outlaws. To fulfill that promise, the men set out on a journey full of shootouts, trouble with the law, gambling, and an important discovery: Dean and Castiel really need to define the nature of their relationship.

I have degrees in costume design and textiles so I got mending through advanced mending as part of my higher education, but there were both aesthetics and techniques that I found fresh in Katrina Rodabaugh’s MENDING MATTERS.  Make slow fashion one of your things in 2019.

Whether you are brand-new or an old-hand at mending, this book has simple instructions for practical fixes that make clothing more interesting and will help you get more mileage out of your most-favorite shirts and pants.  Great guides for patching differently depending on what part of the garment you are trying to fix and whether you want a visible repair or an invisible one.  It’s all drawn from the Japanese technique known as sashiko, get down the basics and then adapt and apply in all the little ways that work for you.  

My favorite part of the Supernatural finale was the one where Dean finds Cas in heaven, and they both get the ending that they deserve

Anon friendo, congrats on achieving peace!

Seriously, I’ve been telling people I know who haven’t watched the end yet that for happiness, it’s best to watch through near the end of 15.19. Then you can make your own choices about what happens next.

Let them defeat Chuck. Let them have the full win. And then.... know that whatever you most wanted for all of them, for each of their happiness (not just Sam and Dean, but Jack, Eileen, Cas, Charlie, Stevie, Donna, and everyone else snapped away at the end of 15.18), whatever you were hoping for in the ending, that’s exactly what happens!

Congrats! You have won Supernatural!

If your notions are only kinda-sorta vague, and you regret not being able to see it unfold, there’s an ever-growing variety of fanfic endings being posted daily. At least one of them will hopefully give you some happiness and closure.

And if you accidentally saw the final episode and are finding it difficult to unsee, there’s a number of fix its even for that situation! “It was actually a djinn dream” is one I’ve seen used a few times now. And my personal favorite (because I wrote it) is Becky reading Chuck’s draft of the episode they aired, left by him on her computer, unpublished, before he lost his power. So of course none of it could “become real.” She deletes it and then texts Dean to thank them all again. And Dean tells her “Cas says hi.”

(if you want to read that version, i posted it on the ao3 here.  it’s only 200 words. That’s all it took to fix everything for me.)

Either way, you can choose your own ending. You can choose a different ending every day depending on how you’re feeling! And the show has told us this is valid. It’s OUR story now, and they can’t try to tell us how to engage with it anymore.

And in *my* personal version, everyone actually does get to win. Everyone does get a chance to live a life with free will and the family they’ve built around them.

Sam and Eileen get a dog. Dean gets a proper long vacation with Cas to somewhere he can just sit and watch the sunset with his toes in the sand and finally follow his heart. Charlie and Stevie live a long, happy life of hunting dates and cozy breakfasts. Donna, Jody, and the waywards grow their network, and find they’re more about saving people than hunting things now. Claire and Kaia find happiness and balance together. Garth and the garthlets keep on keeping on, because they were already the happiest dang family on the show.

And for anyone who says “well they could have all of that in Heaven! And that’s forever!” Yeah... that’s the point! In Heaven, choices don’t have consequences. You don’t wake up the next day to new things to deal with. The highs and lows of human emotion and life itself are apparently irrelevant there. Not that I *want* any of these characters to experience suffering, but that’s part of life. And once you’re dead... even in a perfect blissful heaven... it’s not the same as being alive. It’s just not the same, and the show has been pointing it out for years. “But heaven is different now!” yeah... in some basic ways, like the walls being gone and being able to make new memories but like... for there to be no possibility of conflict, or of suffering (which... was what Jack was supposed to bring to it), then there has to be some “drugging” effect in this heaven. Something that prevents people from actually fully being real people, because otherwise you can’t have perfect peace and contentment. So no... not interested in Heaven stories. At all. But if that’s your thing (and not an existential horror like it is to me... there wasn’t really much they could’ve actually done to fix the concept of heaven for me...) then by all means enjoy those too!

It’s just... so freeing to accept the end of canon and wander out into the liberated fields of post-canon life in fandom! Like we all were liberated from Chuck’s story the moment his power was zapped, and we are all now in the Impala driving away from that beach to begin living our real lives. So whatever your preferred headcanon, canon itself has said that’s totally valid. 

Sam: I don’t know man but it’s weird…I’m gonna go check it out

Dean: ok good ‘cause while we’re here Im gonna need a drink

Sam: *leaves Dean alone at bar*

Dean: *takes a swig of beer*

Dean:

Dean: …maybe I should try calling Ca-

Dean: ITS A QUARTER AFTER ONE IM ALL ALONE AND I NEED YOU NOWW

Dean: what the hell?!- I SAID I WOULDNT CALL BUT IVE- what? no wait- LOST ALL CONTROL AND I NEED YOU NOWWWW- Cas!!-

Cas: *poofs into room* Dean, what is it?

Dean: Cas i- WANNA KNOW WHAT LOVE ISS *clamps hand over mouth*

Cas: ??…Dean-

Dean: I WANT YOU TO SHOW ME

Cas: Dean? I don’t understand.. *steps closer and reaches out to touch shoulder*

Cas: what’s going on– *freezes on contact, eyes wide*

Dean: Cas what’s wron-

Cas: *forcefully grabs Dean’s collar and pulls him close*

Dean: Cas what the-!

Cas: I GOT CHILLS THEYRE MULTIPLYING

my ABSOLUTE FAVORITE pieces from 2019. i’ve always always always wanted my digital work to look more like oil paint, which is funny seeing as i’ve never used it before