Archive of Our Own

Screen name, preferred name, and pronouns?

Bethmints, Beth, she/her

What got you into fic writing and the fandom?

I have been writing fanfiction since I was a kid. My first one was for Yu-Gi-Oh! It was written on a word document in Papyrus font (for the vibes~) and I remember NO other details about it lol. I don’t even think I realized it was fanfiction at that point, to be honest. I just wanted to write a story about the show that had taken over my brain.

In middle school I started engaging in fandom, and throughout middle and high school I wrote a LOT of awful Fruits Basket, Kingdom Hearts, and HP fanfiction. (This was a decade or more before everything came out about JKR. As weird as it is to think about now, it was a HUGE part of my middle and high school years.)

I started watching Supernatural in undergrad just in time to see Lazarus Rising the day it aired (!!), and I was a lurker on the Destiel Livejournal community pretty much from the start lol. I wrote a few Supernatural fics—one about Chuck suffering through grad school (lol, was writing what I knew back then), an abandoned Ghostfacers zombie apocalypse AU, and a Destiel lemon fic that at the time I thought was totally scandalous. (I reread it recently and it is SO tame haha.) 

But alas. Life. I took a very, very long break from fandom during which I graduated, got married, had three kids, and completely disconnected from all the things that used to bring me joy. Mostly because of like… religious obligation? (ex-IFB 😩) That whole ‘life isn’t about being happy’ thing that’s so pervasive in Christianity, I took that shit to HEART, let me tell you. Even after I got over that, though, I still couldn’t shake the worry that I was actually a weirdo and that Adults Don’t Do Stuff Like This. (Joke’s on me, now that I’m older I realize that all those long, plotty, beautiful fics I deeply treasured when I was younger were written by adults.) Still, all throughout these years I was reading Destiel AUs off and on when I was stressed out lol. My drug of choice.

Last year life got crazy and I desperately needed an escape, so I decided to finish watching Supernatural, and I have not stopped writing since lol. My first multichapter fic, Me, Wanting, & You, is extremely thinly-veiled cope for some of the stuff I was dealing with at the time. 

I feel so very fortunate to be an active participant in this fandom now. I’ve made lots of friends and writing is seriously such a therapeutic hobby. I’m really, really terrible at keeping up with chats and leaving thoughtful commentary, but I try my best and everyone has been really nice to me regardless lol. (And I’m totally over the whole ‘not a real adult’ thing, too. All of this has helped me realize that younger me was actually pretty great and I should have been a little kinder to her. So I’m trying to do it now, moving forward. <3)

Do you have a specific writing process? If so, what does it look like?

I’m a freelance writer by trade (if you’ve ever googled a random question about nutrition you’ve probably seen my real name and photo lol), so my home office is also where I write fic. I have dual monitors and they are a GODSEND. When I’m able to write fic varies a lot depending on my workload and my toddler, so I don’t have a specific daily writing routine.

Name of the fic?

Heaven Came Down! My current WIP.

Why that name, and was it hard to come up with? 

A good chunk of this fic takes place in the Endverse. One of the things I knew was going to happen from the start was (spoiler alert) the angels were going to return to Earth, causing Endverse Cas to return to his full angelic power. 

Heaven Came Down is also the name of an old gospel hymn, which seemed appropriate for a canonverse Supernatural fic. (And appropriate for yours truly, working through all of my religious baggage via Castiel.)

And, no, the title wasn't hard to come up with, really. I love naming fics!

What sparked the idea for the fic, and how did that concept change throughout the process? 

The AU polls in the Destiel AU Reverse Big Bang server were the initial spark. HunterCorp Dean and Endverse Cas won their respective polls, and I was inspired first to write a little porny one-shot about HunterCorp Dean getting stuck in the Endverse and getting thoroughly debauched by Endverse Cas.

Well then I got an angsty idea… what if HunterCorp Dean, the professional hunter, killed his world’s Castiel before meeting canon Castiel or Endverse Castiel?? As just part of the job, you know. It compelled me SO much, but I thought it would be a separate fic (and also a one-shot, ha).

And THEN (but wait, there’s more!) I started to wonder… if HunterCorp Dean showed up in the Endverse, would the angels return to Earth? He could be a new Michael Sword, after all. 

I was struggling with how to put all these incongruent pieces together, until I realized that HunterCorp Dean and Endverse Cas could have a Crash Landing On You kind of story. Crash Landing on You is a K-drama in which a rich South Korean heiress has a paragliding accident that lands her in North Korea, and she ends up falling in love with a North Korean soldier as they try to find a way for her to escape. Coming at the fic from that angle made absolutely everything fall into place: rich, privileged HunterCorp Dean Winchester unwittingly finds himself in the Endverse, where he’s being hunted by the angels as a new vessel for Michael. He falls in love with Endverse Cas (very much a perma-grieving widower type in this fic) while they search for a way to get him back home. 

What is your favorite part of the story you told? 

Honestly, I really enjoyed creating some original characters in Brazil and in the Endverse: Fernanda, Vivi, Maryann, and Ray. In this Endverse, in 2020, the vast majority of the Earth’s population is long dead, so I didn’t want Camp Chitaqua to be stacked only with faces we knew from the show. Cas, Garth, and Kaia are the only familiar faces at Camp Chitaqua.

Another thing I really enjoyed was taking the Endverse we saw in 5x04 and fast-forwarding six years to 2020. It was fun to think about how things may have changed during that time. Croats are still around and still deadly, but they’re only a minor issue. After six years, they’ve pretty much flamed out. Camp Chitaqua is also very different. All of the camp’s fight died with Dean back in 2014. They're not going on the offense anymore, they’ve given up on trying to defeat Lucifer. They’re just trying to survive in a world that’s been completely decimated.

ALSO… GORDON WALKER REDEMPTION ARC!!! I planted the seeds for it in Act I, and it’s really going to come more into play in Act II.

Are there any Easter Eggs or little details you're really proud of?

HunterCorp World is a completely blank canvas that I got to create totally new lore for. So, I decided early on to mirror HunterCorp World with Apocalypse World. Apocalypse World has no Winchesters, HunterCorp World has no archangels. This has far-reaching effects on the entire society, religious structure, etc of HunterCorp World, and especially on their view of angels and demons. It was first inspired by the fact that HunterCorp Dean seemed incredulous when Dean mentioned God in 15x13, but my made-up lore actually ended up slotting perfectly into the existing canon, too.

We know that opening an interdimensional rift requires an archangel or archangel grace, and we know that in 15x13 the HunterCorp boys were able to do it somehow. However, it didn’t work correctly, causing John to get lost somewhere in the multiverse and HC Dean and Sam to be trapped between dimensions. Jack had to pull them out. In the fic, I explain that this was because they used regular angel grace, which was their only option since their universe doesn’t contain archangels. They were able to open a portal, but it was weak, and it didn’t work as planned.

What do you wish someone would ask you about the fic?

I welcome ANY questions, seriously! My brain is always in Camp Chitaqua or HunterCorp HQ these days. I would especially love to hear any questions folks have about Chapter 12, the big conclusion of the first act. I have been looking forward to sharing Chapter 12 since I started posting this back in March, and now I’m dying to chat about it! <3

Additional comments?

Peachy, thank you so much for organizing this! It’s such a fantastic idea and you’re managing it all so well <3 

Anything else you want to plug? 

I’d love to share another multiverse fic I wrote called From All Ills. It’s a post-canon fix-it featuring several Castiels from different universes coming together to help Team Free Will defeat Chuck. It’s kind of out there, but it ends happily with our Castiel returning from the Empty. It also features some angsty/smutty Endverse Destiel and HunterCorp Destiel. It’s my (other) baby.

Links to author's Ao3 & Tumblr:

AO3: bethmints
Tumblr: bethmints

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