The Mad Road Notes and Acknowledgements
He saw that all the struggles of life were incessant, laborious, painful,
that nothing was done quickly, without labor, that it had to undergo a thousand fondlings,
revisings, moldings, addings, removings, graftings, tearings, correctings, smoothings,
rebuildings, reconsiderings, nailings, tackings, chippings, hammerings, hoistings, connectings
- all the poor fumbling uncertain incompletions of human endeavor. They went on forever
and were forever incomplete, far from perfect, refined, or smooth, full of terrible memories
of failure and fears of failure, yet, in the way of things, somehow noble,
complete, and shining in the end.
-- Jack Kerouac, The Town and the City (1950)
NOTES AND ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
Welcome, welcome, one and all, to the third annual Bella Temple Big Bang Babbleathon! Step right up and marvel at her half-assed attempts to explain her myriad of confused inspirations! Challenge your mind to follow the twists and turns of the plot development and her near breakdowns of frustration! Roll your eyes at her incoherencies when faced with writing something non-narrative! But first a word from our sponsors!
This big bang was brought to you by thehighwaywoman and wendy of spn_j2_bigbang, the lovely ladies who somehow manage to put this challenge together every year, and apieceofcake, the artist crazy enough to jump on board with providing the beautiful graphics scattered throughout. Further support provided by art_savage, essenceofmeanin, maychorian, ratherastory, roque_clasique, and smilla02, who provided invaluable assistance and cheerleading through out the first draft and beyond, and by maisfeeka and whiskyinmind, who beta-ed and threw in reassurance that, no, this wasn't readable drek, and finally by caffienekitty, who was good enough to even look over various bits of this thing twice, even putting up with "oh gawd, here comes the deadline HOLD MY HAND" mania in the final week. Without any of the above wonderful people, this fic would not be what it is today.
So! The Mad Road! First thing you should know is that that title is, you guessed it, totally riffed from Jack Kerouac, which admittedly by this point should be obvious, considering he's also the source of the quotes scattered about, as well. Interestingly enough, his works are not among what I consider my major sources of inspiration over the course of the writing of this fic (I shudder to think of what might have happened were I to try to be too Beat), I merely have a deep love for his use of language, especially in regards to short bursts of manic prose. And they fit.
Shut up.
Anyway. This fic actually first came into being in my head sometime around when I finished my first big bang back in 2008. At the time it was a simple story about John getting possessed and institutionalizing Dean, and mostly focused on Dean himself and a delightful self-insert OFC nurse's aide who assists him in defeating the evil demons around him. Then, as is only natural with these sorts of things, it started to get complicated. "Why a bunch of demons?" I thought. "Pre-series you'd only really see one at a time. What, is it one demon guy just bouncing from employee to employee? WTF, brain?" and so on. (There was "but, wait, Dean's over 18, he can't be involuntarily committed just on his dad's say so", too, and suddenly it was a court drama as the demons convinced a state judge to keep Dean committed and -- yeah, let's just be glad I didn't go that way, m'kay?) Then I started thinking "but, wait, John just being possessed and committing Dean isn't dramatic enough for John. He should think Dean's dead." And then they killed of Jo and Ellen and I went "THIS IS NOW THE JO AND DEAN BUDDY TRIP HUNTING EXTRAVAGANZA" and it suddenly wasn't even quite about the mental institution any more and I had this whole plan where I was going to have Dean be schizophrenic, so the narrative should be schizophrenic, too, just this side of word-salad, and I started trying to be clever and started rereading Catch-22 for hints on how to handle multiple POV changes and time shifts without losing the reader or going batshit nuts myself and then I realized that, holy crap, THAT WAS ACTUALLY A REALLY BAD IDEA, and anyway, Sam wants his part to get told, too, dammit, and I started color coding my POVs to keep track of them and was putting up weekly posts to my beta group going "WHAT THE HELL AM I DOING HERE?" and then I realized that I wanted Castiel in it, too, but it was pre-series, and what would Castiel even going to be DOING there? But he wanted in and he was neat and then there was the whole "who is this random stranger I keep having show up? Is he God? Is he the Trickster? Is he even real?" and for awhile there was this whole side plot thing about a blend between the soldier who kidnaps death in the old European folktales and Wicked Jack from Appalachian folktales and the angels who refused to choose sides in the original war and I don't even know, okay? And, then, well. Then I realized that the easiest way to make the whole "Dean's dead! No, he's in an institution!" thing work without involving, like, possessed shapeshifters was if he came from the future.
And when "time travel" becomes your Occam's Razor, you might just be in trouble.
But that's where my wonderful wonderful giant squad of betas comes in. I LOVE YOU ALL.
Next year, I'm writing a nice, simple, urban legend fic with no heavenly beings and no world endage. (And then halfway through I'll change my mind and end up with, like, a cyber-cowboy roller derby space opera, or something.)
Good night, everybody.
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