Cross Creek - Gratuitous author notes
I don't know if anyone reads author notes, and I didn't want to spam y'all at the posting, so I figured, I'll put this post up and those who care will find it and those who don't, well, won't.
Ollie
Some of you may have noticed in the comments that I generally outline what I think eventually happens to Fay and Ollie. I think eventually, Ollie does return to the hotel and spends his winters with Fay and the Deadites, but leaves over tourist season. I think he travels and sees the world, and comes back to Cross Creek over the long winter to tell Fay all about it.
But at the end of Cross Creek, he had to leave, because he was just too angry at Fay to stay. She left him. Yeah, she did it so she could defeat Kur and keep the deadites safe, but she fucking left him and he's pissed about it.
Side note - Johsua Jackson is my Ollie.
Farrah
In early incarnations of this story, [only in my head and never written down], Farrah had a love interest, and he was one of the dead. He was going to help her defeat Kur and also be a deciding factor in her crossing over. But then I worried that this was putting too much focus on Farrah and taking it away from the Winchesters, so I cut it.
Millie [Millicent Cooper - the 1950s starlet] is Farrah's BFF. They're actually very close.
Dead Disco
Originally, there was supposed to be a Disco for the Dead, and every time I hear the song by Metric, I think of it now. I ended up cutting it for length. I really never thought this story would be that long and it just. Kept. Getting. Longer. So I ended up chopping the Disco out. At the disco, which is head yearly, Farrah makes all the ghosts corporeal [like she did with Charlie] and they dance like geeks, have ghostly punch. Farrah hangs streamers and a disco ball for them. It's the highlight of the off-season for the dead.
Mythology
I did end up reading up on Sumerian Mythology and Kur, Inanna and Erishkegal are all real. Here are some links:
Myths of Kur
Inanna
Erishkegal
Wiki Inanna
I did take some liberties with the mythology as I needed. I've always loved the story of Persephone and Hades, and at first, I hadn't put in the part about Persephone eating the pomegranate seed in Hades and having to stay there, and instead only had Sam muttering on about it. But after both my betas came and told me they had no idea what I was talking about, it occurred to me that not everyone is obsessed with Greek mythology as I am and I put in the tag line explaining the pomegranate reference.
Side note - when I started writing the story, I actually had no idea what the big bad was. but I figured it would come to me as I worked.
Sam on the Other Side
I had thought about detailing Sam on the other side, after he gets pulled into Room 43, but before he gets totally sucked into the nothing. I sort of imagined him hanging out with all the deadites and finding out for himself that all ghosts are not created evil.
Dean Reading
I'm obsessed with the idea that Dean probably reads a lot since they're on the road, but it's not something we see in canon a lot EXCEPT for the too famous Vonnegut references. so I was DETERMINED to have him NOT be reading Vonnegut, so he reads John Le Carre's The Spy Who Came in From the Cold, mostly because I've always loved the title and I thought that Dean would be okay with reading Cold War Spy Fic.
Opening Scene
I actually planned for the story to start with Sam and Dean researcher Cross Creek before they got there, but I couldn't get going on it, so I started with the scene that is the current opener, the boys arriving at the hotel. And I just never got around to writing Sam and Dean showing up in town, in the Impala, speaking to the locals about going up to Cross Creek and having all the locals ominously tell them that it's closed for the winter.
Sam's First Dream
The 'wheel' that Dean gives Farrah in the dream is Dean's gun. This notion of a wheel being a gun is SHAMELESSLY stolen from the Alfred Hitchcock movie Spellbound staring Gregory Peck and Ingrid Bergman. In this movie, Peck is an amnesiac and at one point, while relating a dream to psychiatrist Bergman, Peck speaks of a wheel falling into the snow. Later on it's revealed that the wheel is his subconscious' interpretation of a revolver, and Peck was witness to a murder. This movie's dream sequence was famously designed by Salvador Dali and when I was writing my sequence, I kept wishing that I could spend five minutes in Dali's mind so that I could make mine as visceral as I found his. I love the movie Spellbound SO MUCH, I can't even tell you.
I really struggled with his dream because it is prophetic but I didn't want to ruin the end of the story! Farrah blindfolding Ollie is her blocking her thoughts from him so he doesn't know what's happening, and when she gets in the boat, it's supposed to represent her crossing the river Styx to the underworld. The coin that Ollie tosses her is her tithe to the ferryman, which was traditionally placed on the dead's eyes or mouth.
Random Shoutout to Joss Whedon
When Dean is outside room 43, and the word Don't appears on the door, this is my random shoutout to the Angel episode, Smile Time, where Angel gets turned into a muppet, and there is a Don't Room in the basement. There is TOO MUCH Awesome in this episode for it not to be referenced in every fic. [Is there a Geppetto in the house?]
Ollie and Fay's Parents
They're dead. Car accident, I think. It was nothing supernatural related if anyone was interested.
Ollie
Some of you may have noticed in the comments that I generally outline what I think eventually happens to Fay and Ollie. I think eventually, Ollie does return to the hotel and spends his winters with Fay and the Deadites, but leaves over tourist season. I think he travels and sees the world, and comes back to Cross Creek over the long winter to tell Fay all about it.
But at the end of Cross Creek, he had to leave, because he was just too angry at Fay to stay. She left him. Yeah, she did it so she could defeat Kur and keep the deadites safe, but she fucking left him and he's pissed about it.
Side note - Johsua Jackson is my Ollie.
Farrah
In early incarnations of this story, [only in my head and never written down], Farrah had a love interest, and he was one of the dead. He was going to help her defeat Kur and also be a deciding factor in her crossing over. But then I worried that this was putting too much focus on Farrah and taking it away from the Winchesters, so I cut it.
Millie [Millicent Cooper - the 1950s starlet] is Farrah's BFF. They're actually very close.
Dead Disco
Originally, there was supposed to be a Disco for the Dead, and every time I hear the song by Metric, I think of it now. I ended up cutting it for length. I really never thought this story would be that long and it just. Kept. Getting. Longer. So I ended up chopping the Disco out. At the disco, which is head yearly, Farrah makes all the ghosts corporeal [like she did with Charlie] and they dance like geeks, have ghostly punch. Farrah hangs streamers and a disco ball for them. It's the highlight of the off-season for the dead.
Mythology
I did end up reading up on Sumerian Mythology and Kur, Inanna and Erishkegal are all real. Here are some links:
Myths of Kur
Inanna
Erishkegal
Wiki Inanna
I did take some liberties with the mythology as I needed. I've always loved the story of Persephone and Hades, and at first, I hadn't put in the part about Persephone eating the pomegranate seed in Hades and having to stay there, and instead only had Sam muttering on about it. But after both my betas came and told me they had no idea what I was talking about, it occurred to me that not everyone is obsessed with Greek mythology as I am and I put in the tag line explaining the pomegranate reference.
Side note - when I started writing the story, I actually had no idea what the big bad was. but I figured it would come to me as I worked.
Sam on the Other Side
I had thought about detailing Sam on the other side, after he gets pulled into Room 43, but before he gets totally sucked into the nothing. I sort of imagined him hanging out with all the deadites and finding out for himself that all ghosts are not created evil.
Dean Reading
I'm obsessed with the idea that Dean probably reads a lot since they're on the road, but it's not something we see in canon a lot EXCEPT for the too famous Vonnegut references. so I was DETERMINED to have him NOT be reading Vonnegut, so he reads John Le Carre's The Spy Who Came in From the Cold, mostly because I've always loved the title and I thought that Dean would be okay with reading Cold War Spy Fic.
Opening Scene
I actually planned for the story to start with Sam and Dean researcher Cross Creek before they got there, but I couldn't get going on it, so I started with the scene that is the current opener, the boys arriving at the hotel. And I just never got around to writing Sam and Dean showing up in town, in the Impala, speaking to the locals about going up to Cross Creek and having all the locals ominously tell them that it's closed for the winter.
Sam's First Dream
The 'wheel' that Dean gives Farrah in the dream is Dean's gun. This notion of a wheel being a gun is SHAMELESSLY stolen from the Alfred Hitchcock movie Spellbound staring Gregory Peck and Ingrid Bergman. In this movie, Peck is an amnesiac and at one point, while relating a dream to psychiatrist Bergman, Peck speaks of a wheel falling into the snow. Later on it's revealed that the wheel is his subconscious' interpretation of a revolver, and Peck was witness to a murder. This movie's dream sequence was famously designed by Salvador Dali and when I was writing my sequence, I kept wishing that I could spend five minutes in Dali's mind so that I could make mine as visceral as I found his. I love the movie Spellbound SO MUCH, I can't even tell you.
I really struggled with his dream because it is prophetic but I didn't want to ruin the end of the story! Farrah blindfolding Ollie is her blocking her thoughts from him so he doesn't know what's happening, and when she gets in the boat, it's supposed to represent her crossing the river Styx to the underworld. The coin that Ollie tosses her is her tithe to the ferryman, which was traditionally placed on the dead's eyes or mouth.
Random Shoutout to Joss Whedon
When Dean is outside room 43, and the word Don't appears on the door, this is my random shoutout to the Angel episode, Smile Time, where Angel gets turned into a muppet, and there is a Don't Room in the basement. There is TOO MUCH Awesome in this episode for it not to be referenced in every fic. [Is there a Geppetto in the house?]
Ollie and Fay's Parents
They're dead. Car accident, I think. It was nothing supernatural related if anyone was interested.