#wastemanjohn

💔 - Dean was pregnant when Sam left for Stanford AU

AKA what if Dean showed up in the pilot episode with a three-year-old in tow?

How this originally came to be was that I was thinking of ways that Dean would feasibly stop hunting around the Stanford era, and while I can’t convince myself that he would quit and join Sam at school unless something major happened, I do think he’d be ready to quit to raise a kid. This was paired with my feeling that if they lived in an omegaverse universe, they would mate fairly young. Sam and Dean being put in a situation where they go into ruts and heats that have their hormones driving them to mate and bind themselves to someone, plus their already intense feelings and complex bond, and the fact they are left alone for weeks at a time, it’s easy to imagine how it would happen.

The basic backstory for this universe is that Sam and Dean ended up mating and soulbonding the first time they had sex after Sam presented as an alpha and Dean went into heat because of lack of suppressants. John doesn’t notice because their scents have always commingled and were very intertwined ever since they were little and they’ve been successful in hitting their claiming scars. They’re very happy for a little bit, but then Sam starts talking about leaving hunting and John behind and having Dean go with him to college and Dean begins to feel very guilty for having “stolen” Sam’s choice and his future.

This ends up with Dean causing a fight to push Sam away, claiming that he was never happy and didn’t want to be with Sam, that the heat had fucked him up, and that Sam needed to go off on his own and figure himself out. Sam doesn’t fully believe him, but it hits at his insecurities that he’s not good enough for Dean, that he can’t provide for Dean or protect Dean like a good alpha could, or at least someone older and stronger could. It also makes him incandescently angry that this comes out of nowhere, so he leaves—he goes to Stanford on his own. 

Dean finds out he’s pregnant after Sam is gone and he can’t bring himself to get an abortion, but he also can’t bring himself to tell him and derail his future. A part of Dean is glad it happened because it feels like an even compromise—Sam can go to college and Dean gets to keep a little piece of him with him. John is completely baffled by Dean’s refusal to get an abortion and his reluctance to name a father, insisting it was “some alpha he met at a bar.” John berates him for not being more careful, and tries to convince him to abort, then when he becomes too far along—give the baby up for adoption, but Dean adamantly refuses. 

Dean decides to leave and ends up in a cabin in the redwood forests of northern california—close-ish to Sam, but at least a four hour drive. John eventually forgives him and opts to check in every once in a while and Dean keeps tabs on his comings and goings while he raises his little girl, who he names Jennifer (Jenny, for short) after Jennifer Hills from I Spit On Your Grave. When John goes radio silent for longer than he normally would between check-ins, Dean feels like he has to go get Sam and look for John.

oh for SURE he calls him sammy. one of the best things about wincest (to me) is the blurred lines and crossed wires of different kinds of affection, and i think it would be immensely (and surprisingly) arousing for them both to hear "sammy" slip out of dean's mouth during sex<3

I think we should normalize being able to tell someone, "hey, you made a typo here, or the tense is messed up here, or did you mean this word?" style constructive criticism because that is genuinely helpful and we're all human and make errors. I'm always so grateful when someone points that stuff out so I can go and fix it.

But I think bigger criticisms based on character choices or writing style can be a minefield of is this in good faith, or do you just disagree with someone? Which disagreement is fine, but fanworks are often highly personal little pieces produced by people in their spare time, often simply for fun, so I think treating it like mainstream art isn't fair because it doesn't have the same reach or even the same motivations for its production. For me, it's like complaining about a hand-crocheted blanket from a hobbyist being imperfect vs. something you bought for hundreds of dollars. You just simply don't do it out of tact and politeness.