Thanks
♥ Thank you to and for beta. All remaining mistakes are my fault, or my choice.
♥ Thank you to for her awesome and beautiful art, particularly in the face of illness and time differences. Praise her with great praise, and then give her tea and chicken soup.
♥ Thank you to TVTropes.org for being so inspirational and entertaining. It’s a fascinating wiki and I love losing myself in its pages.
♥ Thank you to SPN meta-writers, who gave me much to chew on and think over as I was plotting and writing.
♥ Thank you to and the BB team for running , for without them the vague idea of a modern Grail Quest would have stayed a vague idea.
♥ Thank you to my friendslist for listening to all my bitching and moaning and squeeing and bouncing. With this one there was a lot more bouncing than usual. I’m glad you didn’t kick me off for my obnoxiousness.
Author’s Note
A long time ago when I was a wee college student, I got obsessed with Grail lore. This was not unusual: I’ve always been interested in the unusual and strange. (For instance, in jr. high I was interested in werewolves and wrote a report on lycanthropy for a biology class. Got an A on it, too.) I love not just stories of ghosts and monsters but also of the beliefs behind the stories—how the superstitions and misunderstandings of the past play a part even in modern life.
The Holy Grail is one of those things, fascinating and inexplicable. Where the story came from and what it really means is still a subject of debate, and it’s still a potent symbol even in modern, cynical times.
Apocalyptic Love Songs is an attempt at a classic Grail quest in a modern setting. In the old poems, knights would wander the countryside, guided by visions, dreams and prophecies, but with no real idea of where they were going or even if they would find what they were looking for. And as Sam says in the story, most of the poems are unfinished so no one knows what endings their authors originally intended.
I’ve been wanting to write about the Grail in a fandom setting for over a decade. I had this idea I called The Sorcerer’s Briefcase in the back of my head for years, but it wasn’t until I signed up for that I decided to do it. The Grail seems to fit best into Supernatural’s America because it’s a place where magic exists and can be as dangerous as it is full of wonder; and two men who have spent all their lives questing wouldn’t object to undertaking one more quest.
It also gave me an excuse to write more about Dean and Castiel, who are a much newer obsession. I love their relationship in the show, but I love even more delving into how that could become deeper and richer in fic. Dean’s capacity for love is what makes him heroic to me, and I loved the notion of him being made strong by love, strong enough to save the world.
Apocalyptic Love Songs is about love. It’s about the love between family, between friends, between lovers, even between man and God. It’s about grace, heroism and faith, but it’s mostly about love.
If you have any questions about the plot and so on, please leave a comment to this entry. (I’ll put together a FAQ if it becomes necessary.) You can also read the wiki I put together while I was writing.
Disclaimer
Supernatural is the property of the CW Network and Eric Kripke. Jared Padelecki, Jensen Ackles, Jim Beaver, Genevieve Cortese and Misha Collins are property of themselves.