#5th baversary queue

Where would Neon be without Oscar? He changed so quickly from a literally nameless OC for a contest entry way back when (I literally wrote in “OC” as a placeholder until his name came to me) to the adorable and beloved Oz he is today. It’s hard not to imagine him wandering his way into most of our AUs now, even as a tiny cameo if nothing else. I have had people ask me where he showed up in the actual Supernatural show!

If he showed up in SPN, this is probably the look he’d have for the brothers. They’re just so tall and he is so very very small.

It’s well known that we love to commission artists here to bring the stories to life, and because of that, there’s quite a lot of art going around that’s related to Brothers Apart and the other AUs. 

Well, originally we got a piece of art commissioned for the showdown between Dean and Bobby Loran in There’s No Place Like Home, and... totally forgot about it when we posted the story.

So, enjoy! Here is Dean, ready to take on his giant adversary!

Sam was hit with a witch’s curse when he was 10 and Dean was 14. Unable to find him or his attacker anywhere when the dust settled, John and Dean Winchester were eventually forced to give him up for dead. Unbeknownst to them, Sam was saved from the witch and adopted into a new family, and they’ve trained him to take care of himself as best he can in the world, and protected him from the witch’s gaze all these years. And someone very familiar will be staying at the motel he lives in, all unknowing. This sets off a chain of events that changes Sam’s life forever.

Brothers Apart started in 2014, and it was initially only going to be a single story arc, ending with Sam and Dean reunited and Sam's curse broken. This changed when I made the discovery that Archive of Our Own actually allows writers to post stories as a part of a series, instead of the way Fanfiction and Deviantart make you post by story or by page.

This was the first moment where I realized that Brothers Apart didn't have to end. It could... keep going, and suddenly I was full of ideas for follow-up stories and sequels, and we all know that it continued to develop from there!

A full list of the Brothers Apart storyline can be found at bamultiverse.com, and a full breakdown of all AUs can be found at deviantart.com. 

Stay tuned for more information about the stories during our 5th anniversary, including a few small peeks at the future! If you have any questions or ideas at all, be sure to send them in! We’re open for asks, submissions and prompts!

For anyone not caught up on the series, beware of possible spoilers!

Bowman and Jacob have come a long way, and I certainly never could have imagined they’d end up in something as prolific and fun as the Brothers Apart Multiverse! After Bowman fluttered his way into a case in A Lich of Sense, more ideas came. It didn’t take @neonthewrite​ and @nightmares06​ long to imagine more stories with the plucky sprite and the Winchesters.

Of course, when Bowman’s involved, Jacob isn’t far away. He’s one of the biggest humans, and also one of the chillest, and sometimes he’s the only thing tempering Bowman’s wild nature. Once Bowman flitted into the multiverse, Jacob walked in casually behind him.

Where Bowman and Dean circle each other in endless snark, Jacob and Sam try to keep the peace. It doesn’t always work out so well for Jacob ... he and Dean rarely hit it off right away. Persistence with his own snarkmaster has helped Jacob figure out the ornery elder Winchester in a few AUs.

You can find the story from which Bowman and Jacob originate on Amazon or Lulu (or other online bookstores, if you’re feeling adventurous).

Saving people. Hunting things.

It was what they were supposed to do. Who they were supposed to be. Instead, that life was stolen from them by a witch and a curse in childhood, stripped away and replaced by one goal:

Survival.

Originally, Brothers Apart was written with the assumption that at least one Winchester would need to be big enough to drive the Impala. The addition of one Jacob Andris to the AUs changed all that, and suddenly the possibility of having both Winchesters cursed together arose. 

These brothers of Brothers Lost have lived in Trails West together since childhood. They watch to see if their father ever returns, all the while knowing that he might see them as non-humans, and therefore supernatural creatures to be killed. Despite knowing all this, they've persevered and survived together. 

Enter Jacob Andris, walking the edge between being a teenager and adulthood. He comes across these two residents of the motel and reacts as we all know he tends to; he catches Dean and keeps him confined while trying to find out more about him.

When this confrontation clears and the dust settles, Sam and Dean have a new friend, and Jacob is the one to bring them out of the shadows and back to their old lives. With the Impala restored and the road before them, they search for their father and they work to help both borrowers and humans alike in the world.

But they don’t need to be watered. Someone should have told Dean that before he got hold of the spray bottle.

Honestly, Jacob didn’t expect Dean to go through with it. 

--Based off of a crack!fic idea that @nightmares06​ and @neonthewrite​ got that ended with Dean chasing Bowman around with a spray bottle of water. 

A month has passed since Sam was cursed, and there's no cure in sight. He and Dean are left on their own during one of John's hunts to go to school and do their best to get by. After all this time, Sam's no more used to being small than he was before, and when Dean catches an unexpected visitor he gets the chance to learn all about his new size. 

Sometimes, a story starts as the cutest and fluffiest AU possible, and then takes a turn for the worst. Hershey Kisses and Salt Lines was the first story in the BA multiverse to be a cliffhanger story, instead of just having a cliffhanger chapter, leaving the readers hanging for over a year before the next part posted.

Brothers Together was the first of this type, building up a relationship with a special OC to star in it (Oscar, who didn't exist before neon created him for the 2015 contest). We've had people asking what part of Supernatural he's from, and had to give them the sad news that he was never in the series. When a character gains this much life, you know a story about how he grew up alone is going to be heartbreaking. 

New readers beware! Brothers Together is not the story of sunshine and daisies that it appears to be at first glance!

Oddly enough, though Brothers Together posted before other stories, Brothers Adopted, Lost and Found were created beforehand.

Though @nightmares06​ has chosen to keep Sam and Dean as straight characters in her stories, as she has never been a shipper, there is LGBT+ representation to be found elsewhere. So though there will be no destiel, sastiel or sabriel, we will have other characters and other relationships to be seen!

Stan Baker is engaged to his fiance, Nate Sullivan. Though his role in Brothers Consulted thus far has been small, Stan will be appearing more and more often until he officially becomes a main character of the story. Nate will also show up in the future one day, but for now he remains the secret fiance that Stan has kept hidden from the others.

Much like the authors who write the Brothers Apart stories, Jacob is ace and uninterested in relationships, while his best friend, Chase Lisong, is bi and willing to try.

The sprites of Aeternum live in a world without men of their own species, so they tend towards relationships of the same sex. The water sprites are more likely to be ace, but fire sprites live for passion, and their relationships will burn as bright as their fires.