Greek Characters/Elements and their Supernatural Analogues

Odysseus – Dean and occasionally Sam

Troy – Brazil

Ithaca – England

Polyphemus the Cyclops – Gordon Walker

Circe – Bela

Calypso – Anna

Tiresias the Blind Seer – Pamela

Penelope – Lisa

Telemachus – Ben

The Suitors (known in this story as):

- Luke Ferrier – Lucifer (I feel bad about how punny that nearly is.)

- Father Michael Scruggs – Michael, in his vessel of Young John Winchester

- - (I know, I know, that's cheating because John Winchester is already a character in this story. But Adam is too young, and I just frickin' love Matt Cohen as Michael so I DO WHAT I WANT. )

Zeus – Chuck Shirley

Poseidon – Raphael, in his original vessel

Hermes – Gabriel aka The Trickster

Hades – Crowley

Persephone – Blonde Ruby, aka Ruby in her original vessel

- (Again with the cheating. Blonde Ruby is just 10 times more badass than Brunette Ruby, okay? I'M A MAVERICK.)

Artemis – Meg in her current vessel

Dionysus – Balthazar

Athena – Sheriff Jody Mills

Hera – Becky

Neither Castiel nor Jo have Greek analogues; Ash, Henrickson, Andy and the others are of course Odysseus's crew.

….

Sequels, Epilogues and Spin-Offs That I Am Tempted to Write,

But Shall Refrain From

Dean and Castiel remain together, the captain and his first mate. They have a rocky patch that results in Castiel drunkenly marooning Dean on an island and declaring himself captain, but once Sam sobers him up he comes back for Dean, and when they make land again they spend several nights in a disreputable inn making things up to each other.

Dean keeps up his correspondence with his son; when Ben is fifteen Dean writes him a long letter explaining the situation between him and Cas and asking him to try and keep from condemning him. He thinks it'll be the end of their correspondence, but he feels he owes his son that honesty. To Dean's surprise, Ben writes back.

Jo and Sam never marry and never have any children. They are very happy. Unlike Dean and Cas, they don't routinely bicker about petty disagreements and then resolve the arguments with athletic sex, but their love life is nothing to shake a stick at either.

Eventually Andy retires from pirating and comes to work at the orchard. He and Ash have jam sessions. Ash remains Ben's "cool uncle" type father figure and becomes one of the family. Ben becomes a printer and runs the local paper, and eventually gets politically involved because of it, becoming a well-respected man in his region.

A small, very sappy part of me wants maybe for there to be something between Lisa and Ash, but what I think would actually happen is that Ash would flirt with all the young girls in the village and have a marvelous time with it. And Lisa, presenting herself as the widowed Mrs. Smith now, gets noticed by the village butcher, who is really a sweet and quiet man who charges her less than he should. And while Lisa entertains the butcher in the evening with tea and biscuits, Ash is out drunk in someone's barn explaining to a wide-eyed country lass how he came back from the dead and his philosophy is to live in the moment.

They'd be good friends, though. I don't have any doubt about that.

….

Other Notes

I recently saw a commercial for the latest Ice Age movie (number four, I think?), and it features prehistoric animal pirates and elements of the Odyssey. So, either I psychically plagiarized a kids' animated sequel, or Pseudo-Greek Pirate Epic is just a natural point to come to when you've exhausted all other options.

Although the word count you see listed in the story info is around 95,000, without the Author's Notes it's only a little over 81,000. The moral of the story is that I talk a lot.

This is the longest story I've ever written.

Seriously.

And if it weren't a fanfic – i.e., if I weren't able to gloss over the whole "let's find Dad and also avenge the death of our mother" bit – it would probably be at least twice as long. I find the format extremely fitting because the Odyssey itself is a sequel, picking up where the Iliad leaves off. The Iliad tells the whole involved story of the battle of Troy and everything that happened during that 10 year war; the Odyssey starts with the triumphant warriors heading home and assumes you have some background knowledge about what they've been through up to now. All in all, if you put together the war and protracted sea voyage, it takes Odysseus 20 years to return to Ithaca. It only takes Dean eight.

Someone asked what version of the Odyssey I read, and I accidentally returned the book to the library before I wrote down the info. I do know that it was Viking Penguin Publishing version.

Before I decided to throw Greek gods in the mix, I pictured this story as a fun and fancy-free sex romp. Dean was going to be a pirate captain who sleeps with his strange new crewmate while at sea, but considers it to be a normal thing to resort to when there are no women around; eventually of course he realizes it's more than that blah blah blah.

I'm not sure how I ended up getting here from there.

Originally, I also planned to have Dean and Jo accidentally sleep together on Bela's island. But once I got to that point in the story and considered it, I realized it would be so damaging and so hurtful to all four involved (Dean, Jo, Sam, and Cas) that it would be nearly impossible to recover from. I couldn't do it. So I decided to go in a different, less agonizing direction and YOU'RE WELCOME.

No promises on the rewrite, though. :P

My greatest sadness in writing this story is the lack of room for Bobby and Ellen. In terms of 18th century gay sexual relations, having Bobby around is worse for the progress of the story than erectile dysfunction. It's one thing to write the old codger as understanding in a modern-day universe; in the 1700s, he'd be considered "understanding" if he gave Dean and Cas ten minutes to repent before lashing them to a stack of wood and setting them on fire. He might conceivably accept Dean's perversions as a private matter or a pirate vice, but he certainly wouldn't approve. Since he also didn't have an analogous character in the Odyssey, it was a hundred times easier just to leave him out. As for Ellen, since Jo ran away to become a pirate and I didn't have the time or inclination to write about her reuniting with her estranged mother, I couldn't really feature her. If I hadn't used Jo in the story, Ellen would have been Athena.

"Carry On Wayward Son" came on the radio yesterday, and as I was singing along I nearly smacked myself. I had struggled to find a good title for this story when one was staring me in the face all along! Think about these lyrics just before the chorus:

On a stormy sea of moving emotion

Tossed about, I'm like a ship on the ocean

I set a course for winds of fortune,

but I hear the voices say...

So, when I post the rewrite on LJ, it may or may not be titled "Winds of Fortune." Just so you know.

Thank you all for reading and reviewing. I love you guys.

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