Hehee, so funny that you're reading Crush now! I would've commented earlier on your fic, but I read it from the PDF - which, btw, GREAT idea - so much easier (and less dangerous) to read at work, and as I mentioned, it took me about 2 weeks, in stolen installments here and there, to finish.
Stolen time is the BEST!!!!
I had so many other thoughts all along the way while reading it, I'm trying to think of some of them now, as I really like to give big feedback, particularly when it's such an epic work of love, (speaking of which - Crush took me actually longer than your fic took you, I started writing the thing way back in season 3) so I know from epic-fic writing!!!
That is a long time to be wrapped inside a story - but the best writing experiences are like that, I think.
I remember really liking the fact that you didn't make all of the asylum staff cardboard cut out evil, aside from the art therapist - which - why the hell did she have that job? Surely any psychiatrist would totally love getting one of Sam's issues-ridden drawings? And isn't the point of art therapy to help delve into the patients' psyches via what they draw??? Anyway, I found her to be a complete jobsworth - which I imagine is what you were going for. But the rest of the staff were sympathetic, well-meaning and believable and totally not cliches, a welcome change!
One of things I did love about the whole thing that I forgot to mention was how well you wrote the POV''s. I really got the sense we were seeing everything through Dean and Sam's confused, and in Sam's case, almost childlike, perceptions. The language they used and their thought processes were very simplistic and jumbled, and very repetitive - with Sam's need for Dean - that felt exactly right, like the way a disturbed, amnesiac patient would feel. I have no psychiatric background, so I'm coming at this from a layman's POV, but it felt real to me, and it made me just love Sam even more...
I tried to get them right - and if not exactly to canon, then close to what I felt the boys might be like in a situation like this. Had Dean not also been drugged, or had Sam been less drugged, come to that, they might have had different responses and reactions to their environment. Like, maybe if Sam had been more okay, Dean would have felt more comfortable making a break and coming back for Sam? Or just saying to hell with it and calling Bobby? I don't like it when Bobby steps in to rescue so very much, so I wanted to avoid that. But it sure was fun working with a Sam who was more like a teenager than a fully grown hunter. He's so very sweet like that.
God, this is a long comment already, but I'm still thinking of things I loved about the fic!! Like the atmosphere - the endless rain and cold and damp - that really set the scene for it, made it almost gothicky in feel... Okay, so I must shut up now, I just want to say that I really hope you enjoy Crush, I had an awesome time writing it and was pretty nervous and sad when I finally had to post it - I imagine you can probably understand that - giving up something that had taken up such a large period of my life was pretty hard to do (God, that sounds pretty sad, huh? ;-)
I totally know what you mean about being sad when posting a story that took a while to write. It's like it's a part of you, something you thought about and surrounded yourself with every day, and now that it's posted, what are you supposed to do with all that time and energy! Anyone else would say, "Why, write another story, of course!" But as you probably well know, it takes a while to get over a story you were inside of for so long.
Thank you for your lovely comments; I look forward to finishing Crush!
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Stolen time is the BEST!!!!
I had so many other thoughts all along the way while reading it, I'm trying to think of some of them now, as I really like to give big feedback, particularly when it's such an epic work of love, (speaking of which - Crush took me actually longer than your fic took you, I started writing the thing way back in season 3) so I know from epic-fic writing!!!
That is a long time to be wrapped inside a story - but the best writing experiences are like that, I think.
I remember really liking the fact that you didn't make all of the asylum staff cardboard cut out evil, aside from the art therapist - which - why the hell did she have that job? Surely any psychiatrist would totally love getting one of Sam's issues-ridden drawings? And isn't the point of art therapy to help delve into the patients' psyches via what they draw??? Anyway, I found her to be a complete jobsworth - which I imagine is what you were going for. But the rest of the staff were sympathetic, well-meaning and believable and totally not cliches, a welcome change!
I'm not sure why Miss Windle was allowed to keep her job either. She certainly was a little tyrant, wasn't she! I figured that the hospital had to have one nasty person, everyone else was so nice, generally. And I wanted to stay away from the evil doctor/orderly cliché - that's a really fun thing to work with or read, but not very realistic all the time. And realism was what I was going for, so I'm glad you liked it.
One of things I did love about the whole thing that I forgot to mention was how well you wrote the POV''s. I really got the sense we were seeing everything through Dean and Sam's confused, and in Sam's case, almost childlike, perceptions. The language they used and their thought processes were very simplistic and jumbled, and very repetitive - with Sam's need for Dean - that felt exactly right, like the way a disturbed, amnesiac patient would feel. I have no psychiatric background, so I'm coming at this from a layman's POV, but it felt real to me, and it made me just love Sam even more...
I tried to get them right - and if not exactly to canon, then close to what I felt the boys might be like in a situation like this. Had Dean not also been drugged, or had Sam been less drugged, come to that, they might have had different responses and reactions to their environment. Like, maybe if Sam had been more okay, Dean would have felt more comfortable making a break and coming back for Sam? Or just saying to hell with it and calling Bobby? I don't like it when Bobby steps in to rescue so very much, so I wanted to avoid that. But it sure was fun working with a Sam who was more like a teenager than a fully grown hunter. He's so very sweet like that.
God, this is a long comment already, but I'm still thinking of things I loved about the fic!! Like the atmosphere - the endless rain and cold and damp - that really set the scene for it, made it almost gothicky in feel... Okay, so I must shut up now, I just want to say that I really hope you enjoy Crush, I had an awesome time writing it and was pretty nervous and sad when I finally had to post it - I imagine you can probably understand that - giving up something that had taken up such a large period of my life was pretty hard to do (God, that sounds pretty sad, huh? ;-)
I totally know what you mean about being sad when posting a story that took a while to write. It's like it's a part of you, something you thought about and surrounded yourself with every day, and now that it's posted, what are you supposed to do with all that time and energy! Anyone else would say, "Why, write another story, of course!" But as you probably well know, it takes a while to get over a story you were inside of for so long.
Thank you for your lovely comments; I look forward to finishing Crush!