Month: May 2016

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( For the misunderstandings, I know it can be hard to phrase things over the internet, so I did ask two other people to look at the asks before I answered them to be sure of my interpretation. I’m not trying to snip at anyone, I just want to make sure we’re all on the same page. I dislike conflict to the point that I’m more likely to hide than answer if anyone wants to start a fight, as neon can attest to. )

Sam and Dean both have very strong personalities. It’s inevitable that they will clash at some point or the other, and this has actually already happened in the stories a few times. Misunderstandings, as well, arise when there’s such a huge discrepancy in size.

In Shadows and Reflections, they spend most of the story misunderstanding each other, the Second Interlude, of course, Sam feels like he’s being ignored and he has no way to leave on his own, and the big argument goes down in The Schism of Fire and Water when Dean feels like he’s being ganged up on and forced to do something he is absolutely against. A byproduct of these arguments is the fact that Dean is indeed over 115 feet tall from Sam’s point of view. If you see someone that size getting mad at you, you’re going to be intimidated, especially near the beginning of getting to know them again.

Over time, Sam’s getting better at both realizing he’s fine no matter how pissed off Dean gets and hiding it if he does get intimidated. There will always be arguments between these two, because what two brothers don’t fight? However, the dynamic of the fights will continually change as well depending on how their relationship is doing at the time.

Of course, Sam’s current solution to Dean being ornery is sitting on him until he talks, which worked pretty well considering Dean doesn’t want to just snatch his little brother up. He is pinned.

A brief look back at The Schism of Fire and Water to remember the most volatile fight they’ve had:

Practically growling, Dean sat back. “I don’t like this. How are we supposed to kill Ilyana if she’s in a container this big?” He held his hands spaced about two feet apart. “I can’t exactly shoot her without shooting through the container and that ruins our entire play.”

Bobby and Sam shared a silent look. Either Dean was the only one who hadn’t figured it out, or he was desperate for another option…

“Dean…” Sam said quietly. “It has to be me. I’m small enough to be trapped with her. I can do it.”

Dean’s eyes lit with anger, glancing between Bobby and Sam with a look of betrayal. “No.”

Bobby tried, “Dean…”

“No!” Dean stomped to his feet, slamming his chair in against the table angrily.

Sam was knocked from his feet, landing on the table next to Nixie with a fearful look in his eyes at the huge, angry human. He’d never seen Dean like this before. He took a shaking breath. He could do this.

Sam scrambled to his feet again. “Dean… it’s the only way. You know I can handle it.” Sam gave Dean his most pleading look.

Bobby joined in with Sam, trying to calm the other hunter down before he did or said something he’d regret. “Dean, I’m just as worried for Sam as you are. But you know as well as I do he’s more than up to the task.”

Dean backed a few feet away like a cornered wolf, almost snarling at Bobby. “Hell no! I’m not signing up for my brother’s funeral! As soon as he’s trapped with her, he’s at her mercy! She already tried to blow him up!” He paused, staring straight at Sam with a dangerous glint in his eyes. “Or worse. She doesn’t blow him up. She grabs him and zaps them both off to god knows where and we never see him again!”

Sam was shaking his head. “Dean, she’ll be trapped. She can’t just ‘zap off’ with me the way she wants to. This will work.” Sam put all of his emotion, all his trust into that sentence. He couldn’t convince Dean if he couldn’t convince himself.

Dean wavered. Sam could see it in his stance, the way he held himself uncertainly. But before Sam could call himself victorious, the glint in Dean’s eyes hardened again. “No. I’m not offering you up as a sacrifice. We’ll find another way,” he growled, stomping over to the table. He put his hand down right next to Sam. “We’re leaving, Sam.”

Sam stared at the hand like it was a snake. Dean saw his hesitation. “Well? Aren’t you coming?” he snapped.

Sam edged away from him, towards Bobby. Surely Dean wouldn’t just grab him up. “No… I’m going to stay here and do some more research.”

Past the anger in Dean’s eyes, Sam saw remorse and betrayal. Like Sam had taken a chunk out of him in his refusal. Please… you have to understand, Dean. I need to do this.

I’m the only one who can.

“Fine,” Dean growled. He stomped towards the stairs. “But don’t expect my help if you plan on using my brother as bait!”

A door slammed upstairs, rattling the table. Sam’s shoulders slumped, amazed at the amount of fear he’d felt at the unexpected anger from Dean.

Remember, that’s an angry Dean Winchester, over a hundred feet tall! Not many people could stare him down and win at that size!

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I think Sam’s method of dealing with him is pretty effective, all things told…

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Wonderful art by @little-miss-maggie!

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May 10th excerpt:

After spending so long either held in a hand or tucked away in a pocket, the solid ground beneath Sam’s tiny boots felt so strange. He knew that it might look like the counter was a solid surface, but in reality there was open air beneath it, where the basin of the sink could be seen and the bathroom trash was tucked under. The room he and Dean had stayed in while their dad hunted was almost identical, aside from the beds and bathroom on the reverse side of the wall like it was a mirror image.

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(Sassy, when this one came in, nightmares saw it first and sent me a message telling me I’d like these questions. And I do. These are the best questions.)

The answer is YES. It’s one of the skills that is so fun to consider with my little babies.

They can feel changes in the air pressure, sometimes even to the point of knowing the weather is shifting. Bowman Leafwing happens to be one of the best wood sprites out there who can utilize that acute sense to the fullest. It happens once in his canon story, Bowman of Wellwood, though I haven’t found many opportunities to slip it into the AU stuff yet that I recall. Bowman, if he’s concentrating, can feel the shifts in the air around a hand grabbing at him, and he can use those shifts to duck around a grab and avoid getting caught; it’s a tough trick considering how fast humans are, but he’s done it before.

And yes, that skill is also used for dodging around things and avoiding crashes, especially for the daring ones that fly in the dark. Bowman’s uncle, Larxe Maelstrom, also taught him how to use that in heavy wind situations, so he can still fly steadily in really strong gusts where unpracticed sprites might not be able to.

Make no mistake, despite his willowy frame, Bowman can be considered a top-tier athlete among wood sprites for his aerial acrobatics.

The wings are mostly bat-like, yes, but there’s also the leafy aspect to them (not that the leafiness changes much as far as flight goes). They extend down to about their mid backs, and most of their clothing has slits up the back to accommodate them. This is the reason for the scarf around the waist that Bowman wears. Without it, that middle flap of his shirt could wave about in the wind and it would be distracting as well as a drag to his flight speed.

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Art commissioned from QuackGhost on Deviantart.

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This is actually a pretty straightforward question. The sprites don’t follow any traditions/beliefs pertaining to a menstrual cycle, because they don’t have one. Despite appearances, they are not closely related to the Great Ape family, and that’s actually one of the only types of mammal that has a cycle.

Sprites, all of my sprites, are Spirit-made, so even though they look a lot like humans there are a handful of biological differences (in the case of the wood sprites, they’re actually part plant so that right there opens up a bunch of differences).

Jacob, explaining this to Dean in Brothers Asunder:

Jacob frowned, feeling a little like a bad guy for what he was suggesting. But, as the only one good to drive the car, he knew that he had some room to insist. Dean needed the rest. Another glance down at Bowman showed that he needed it, too.

It also gave Jacob an idea. He reached out and gently scooped his hand under Bowman. The sprite flopped over on his hand before sitting up sluggishly, blinking slowly. His wings hung slack.

“What?” Bowman groused, his voice heavy with exhaustion.

Jacob looked over Bowman’s slumped form at Dean. “Bowman’s basically a plant, Dean. He’s been up and flying around since well before the sun went down. He needs to recuperate a little, at least. And you probably should, too. You had an arm busted tonight, dude.”

“Plant?” Dean asked, eyebrows scrunched in confusion. “Like energy-from-the-sun kinda plant?” He gave Bowman a slightly accusing look. “And you didn’t want to tell me that? ” he shot at the sprite, sounding put out after being lectured about how Bowman was ‘fine’ not long ago. How in the world was he going to be able to watch out for the little sprite if he didn’t even know something as important as that? At least if he or Jacob needed energy they could grab some coffee or a soda, but a plant…

“We don’t have an extra sun on hand, so you’ll need to take it easy until the morning,” Dean said tartly. “Sam won’t be happy if we run his little brother into the ground when he’s not around.” He held out his hand, beckoning Jacob to hand the sprite over. “I’ll keep an eye on small fry over here and make sure he doesn’t get into any more trouble.”

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May 9th excerpt: 

Sam’s chest hiccuped as he cried, curling into as small a ball as he could while the kid’s voice rumbled around him. Everything was dark, except the few shards of light that snuck in past the huge fingers.

Surrounded. He was surrounded by fingers.

That thought made Sam bury his head against his knees, hugging them to himself. There was no room to thrash anymore, and he waited for the end to come. It was only after a few long moments that stretched out around the stuffy air inside of the hands that Sam realized there was a voice – a voice that shook the wall next to him, but still a voice.

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(Well, Sassy, at least it gives me excuses to infodump about my lore)

This is many questions, I’ll just answer ‘em right in order.

1. For really bad inclement weather, wood sprites wouldn’t go outside, no. They’d bunker down inside their homes and make the best of things … they could find a container around if that was needed.

To keep themselves warm, most of the time they will snuggle together in a group (in Brothers Asunder, young Sam most definitely did grow up knowing of these snuggle piles). Wood sprites also know a few Prayers to help them out in such weather. They can Pray for magic that brings heat through the living tree all around them, and prevent them from freezing in their li’l cuddle piles.

2. Newborns and young babies do use cloth diapers, yes.

Fun fact about baby wood spites (hey, I warned about the infodump): When they are born, their wings are not fully developed. Instead, they have little leaf buds on their backs (which I’m sure their mothers are thankful for, no one wants to birth a set of fully developed wings). These leaf buds stay curled for the first few years of the young sprite’s life, developing into full wings with the help of sunlight. When they are four or five, the buds have reached a thickness of around twice what they were born with, and they start to uncurl. At that point, all flutters break loose as the nestlings learn to deal with the very sensitive nerves that are now exposed to the air.

3.  They wash their clothes with water. No, really. Just water. Stones in the stream can be used for scrubbing if needed, but honestly they don’t often need it. Groundwater in Wellwood happens to be extra pure (for reasons), so the stream is extra A-OK to use for cleaning.

4.  Correct. Wood sprites are very lax and don’t tend to be super inventive on their own, and usually they don’t need to be. “Necessity is the mother of invention” and all that.

Announcement!

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Now that things have settled down, this is just a public notice. Any fanart or fanfiction based on Brothers Apart is more than welcome! I just want to make sure we’re all on the same page.

  • If you write a story based on BA (or any of the AUs), make sure to credit and link back to the original story so people can find it.
  • Send me a link because I loooove reading the stories people come up with!
  • If it fits into any of the AUs, I might ask if you want the story to be canon, and then will count it as part of the AU from then on!
  • The more the merrier, if you want to create your own AU, feel free! It’s addicting, I promise.

In that line of thought, there are two stories from contest that graduated to canon! I’ve talked with the writers, and they love the idea.

For Brothers Unexpected, the story by @neonthewrite, Pinky Promise is now canon. Sam found himself the tiniest man in his room, and a day later has to deal with being even tinier!

For The Incredible Shrinking Winchester prompt-verse, the great story from TorchMLP, A Dwindling Perspective is now canon. Check it out if you want to see a sliver of what Sam went through while his entire world grew too big to see!

Hopefully these aren’t the only two stories I get to include in the great AUs we’re building! Make sure to support your fellow artists and let them know what you think of those fics! Soon I will include links to them in the masterpost of stories for all to enjoy! Thank you all so much for everything you’ve done, and I wait excitedly to see which story wins the poll!

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May 8th excerpt:

Jacob almost stumbled, his sneakers hitting the carpet hard for a few steps, but he kept on and pushed the trucks around the foot of the bed.

He angled sharply to take his trucks through the space between the beds, but stopped abruptly. Something in his path drew his attention like a lightning rod, and Jacob’s mouth formed a small ‘o’ as he stared.

It looked like a tiny little action figure, but it wasn’t one of Jacob’s. His eyes were wide with wonder as he stared. The small figure stood mere feet away from him, and Jacob’s face slowly broke into a grin.

The tiny person was staring back, and that meant they weren’t a toy. They were real!

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Good question!

We’ve been editing the stories one by one, and doing our best to keep them even. That way, we’re prepared whatever story gets chosen, we (hopefully!) have more ready for after.

That said, once the first story of each AU concludes, we’ll go back to another poll to pick the next. We won’t have the entire AU post all at once, and this will give us the time to write more of the AUs ahead of time. More stories get added to the poll each time a story ends, and we go on from there! So it’s up to you guys what goes up. We’re handing over the reigns, if not the AU names.

Hopefully, stories forever!

The actual length of the first story for each AU:

Brothers Lost: 27 chapters

Brothers Found: 16 chapters

Brothers Adopted: 27 chapters