Recs: Disability fics

Tomorrow, I'll be posting my au_bigbang fic. In honour of that, considering it involves a character who can't speak, I'm going to rec some of my favourite Supernatural fics involving some kind of disability. My spn_j2_bigbang fic will also involve blindness, so this will remain topical.

If you know of any other good ones -- any pairing or none! -- let me know. I'm suffering from a lack of gen, considering both my Big Bangs are gen.

Unsaid, by [as yet unknown author]
Relevance: Dean is deaf, Castiel is mute.
Characters/Pairing: Dean, Castiel, Sam, assorted cast (Dean/Castiel
Teaser:
They make a good pair, the deaf boy and the mute angel.
At least, that’s what Dean figures the people in charge of the orphanage thought when they stuck them in the same room. Not that anyone knows Cas is an angel. Not like anyone would believe that.
Notes: This is a sweet AU. Not as totally AU as I thought, actually, but quite. There's no magical healing at all, just dealing with it.

My Eyes Are An Ocean, by entangled_now
Relevance: Dean is blind.
Characters/Pairing: Dean, Castiel, Sam, Bobby (Dean/Castiel)
Rating: NC17
Teaser:
Dean can't tell what time it is, or if it's daylight, he can't tell if it's cloudy, or raining, or hell even if the curtains are open.
But he does know one thing.
The world smells like breakfast.
Which is a pretty good start.
Notes: This fic deals with the fact that there's magic and angels and a hope of healing by making it a trade. It doesn't come easy. It reminds me of the gods' interventions in the Fionavar Tapestry, somehow -- earned, not a gift. I don't like the sequel as much because, for me, it takes away some of that. But this is gorgeous. Love, and sacrifice, and hope.

Unsuffer Me, by [as yet unknown author]
Relevance: Dean is deaf, scarred, and apparently mute.
Characters/Pairing: Dean, Sam, Bobby, Castiel (Dean/Castiel)
Rating: NC17
Teaser:
After the end of the world I just wanted to rest and chill out, not to re-build my life from scratch around the fact that I can’t hear shit and that I look like the fucking phantom of the Opera.
Notes: This was written especially for me, and it's so awesome. It covers a long healing process, both of Dean's own body and his relationships to other people. There's magic, an acknowledgement of the potential for that kind of healing, but it's thwarted and things don't quite work out the ideal way. Which is the way life works.

You can now read my fic here!

Reviews - Julian Branston, Kazuo Ishiguro

The Eternal Quest (Julian Branston)

This took me oddly long to read. It's quite dense. It wasn't quite as full of hijinks as I'd expected, really, given that the summary is that Don Quixote was a real character who Cervantes met and who got involved in his life. But it's enjoyable, in any case. Cervantes as characterised here is likeable and fun. Ongorra is comically villainous. And the old Knight is quite batty and yet also noble, particularly in light of his back story. Cervantes' family made me laugh a little, though they're so... tumultuous that really there's only an impression of the whole of them, not any particular character that stands out. There's a lot of small details that I rather like.

I'm ambivalent on the little bit of romance. It's nice, but also somewhat out of the blue, and it doesn't really go anywhere, either. The Duchess disappears from the text, just like that.

Perhaps more editing would have made this an easier, more enjoyable read -- it certainly had the potential for me to give it four stars, at some points.

Never Let Me Go (Kazuo Ishiguro)

This book is a bit like having a one-sided conversation with the narrator. In consequences, it kinda feels like it rambles a bit -- they digress to talk about something else and then a couple of pages later, wrench it back to the original point. In some ways that makes it feel very natural, like someone talking, but to read it, it gets irritating.

There's a difficult tone to it... Very resigned, unemotional, and somewhat, I don't know, superficial. The narrator skims the surface of the truths revealed. It's natural to do that, in some ways, for a real person, but in a character, it's hard to engage. The characters of Ruth and Tommy were much more vivid for me than Kathy: Ruth and her needing to be in the know, needing to be superior; Tommy and his anger issues and his struggle to be creative. Ruth felt especially real to me: I knew a girl whose name was very much like her, and I was pretty much the Kathy in our interactions, too.

The way it engages with the issues -- with the idea of clones -- without dragging out all the backstory is interesting, dealt with it in this way. Like it's a fact of life, like what you're reading is all very matter of fact. And you go along with it a little, and then you stop, and you think about it... It actually reminds me of the way Kathy describes being taught about what her life will be: somehow it builds up so you've known it all along, but you never have this big moment of revelation. Unfortunately, that deadens the sharper shocks, I think.

I enjoyed it, and it was very easy to just settle down and read it. It's not racing action or anything, pretty leisurely, and not compelling in the sense that I couldn't put it down. But I wanted to know -- even suspecting what the end would be like, I wanted to get there and see.