So I suspect since Jensen's been less invested in the show, Jared's been able to grab more of the spotlight and show more of his ability.
I also think that Jared has just become a better actor than he was in the first couple of seasons, when he was still incredibly young. That's probably part of the reason Jensen became the character who got the majority of emotional scenes in the early seasons. By S4 Jared had raised his game a lot, but by then the show was kind of tied to the notion that Dean would always be the emotional viewpoint.
And yeah, it's got to be exhausting for any actor to play the same character for 9 years. I don't know much about the Jared and Jensen, but I can imagine it might be hard to be a certain age and feel like the chances you're ever going to get your big break are slim, especially as the quality of the show you're on is in decline.
Oh! That is interesting! Are the characters in the AUs a common fanon, or related to the way they are at certain points of the show, or is it different between stories, or something else? For some reason there are very few AUs for Sam/Dean, as you said, and so so many AUs for Jensen/Jared. What's it like for Jensen/Misha? I think I maybe read one or two of those, ever, without other people involved...
Dean/Cas AUs are almost entirely indistinguishable from Jensen/Jared AUs, to the extent that you could take a Dean/Cas AU fic, find and replace the names for Jensen and Jared, and I doubt you'd know the difference (oddly, Cas would probably be the better fit for Jensen in that scenario because he's more often the woobie, although there's some variation). They're mostly just original fiction with the characters' faces pasted on. Which is another reason I've lost some of my enthusiasm for Dean/Cas--in spite of the massive amount of fic written, very little of it is the kind of fic I want to read.
I think the lack of AUs may very well be in part that the Sam/Dean contingent of fandom is older and mostly on LJ, where wacky AUs never became quite as popular. I also think in part that canon Cas is hard to write, and so instead of trying writers create a scenario where they don't have to. AU Dean is far more often recognizable as Dean than AU Cas is recognizable as Cas. In the Jared/Jensen case there are probably a lot of people uncomfortable portraying real people cheating on their real wives. If you make Jared and Jensen into Medieval knights you avoid the squickiness.
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I also think that Jared has just become a better actor than he was in the first couple of seasons, when he was still incredibly young. That's probably part of the reason Jensen became the character who got the majority of emotional scenes in the early seasons. By S4 Jared had raised his game a lot, but by then the show was kind of tied to the notion that Dean would always be the emotional viewpoint.
And yeah, it's got to be exhausting for any actor to play the same character for 9 years. I don't know much about the Jared and Jensen, but I can imagine it might be hard to be a certain age and feel like the chances you're ever going to get your big break are slim, especially as the quality of the show you're on is in decline.
Oh! That is interesting! Are the characters in the AUs a common fanon, or related to the way they are at certain points of the show, or is it different between stories, or something else? For some reason there are very few AUs for Sam/Dean, as you said, and so so many AUs for Jensen/Jared. What's it like for Jensen/Misha? I think I maybe read one or two of those, ever, without other people involved...
Dean/Cas AUs are almost entirely indistinguishable from Jensen/Jared AUs, to the extent that you could take a Dean/Cas AU fic, find and replace the names for Jensen and Jared, and I doubt you'd know the difference (oddly, Cas would probably be the better fit for Jensen in that scenario because he's more often the woobie, although there's some variation). They're mostly just original fiction with the characters' faces pasted on. Which is another reason I've lost some of my enthusiasm for Dean/Cas--in spite of the massive amount of fic written, very little of it is the kind of fic I want to read.
I think the lack of AUs may very well be in part that the Sam/Dean contingent of fandom is older and mostly on LJ, where wacky AUs never became quite as popular. I also think in part that canon Cas is hard to write, and so instead of trying writers create a scenario where they don't have to. AU Dean is far more often recognizable as Dean than AU Cas is recognizable as Cas. In the Jared/Jensen case there are probably a lot of people uncomfortable portraying real people cheating on their real wives. If you make Jared and Jensen into Medieval knights you avoid the squickiness.