Dead Soldiers: An Oral History of the End Times by fryadvocate (r)

[musesfool.livejournal.com]

Fandom: SUPERNATURAL
Pairing: none
Length: 43,400 words
Author on LJ: girl_wonder
Author Website: LJ memories
Why this must be read:

Dead Soldiers: An Oral History of the End Times is a fantastic story about the apocalypse written in the style of World War Z. It tells the story of the war between heaven and hell - and the key figures of Sam and Dean Winchester - through interviews with the people who were there.

In the spring of 2015, as I finished my lecture series on the effects that the "End Times War" had on our culture, I once again quoted the statistic about Americans almost uniformly believing in angels and demons. I acknowledged that most modern scholars see this as evidence of groupthink and public hysteria since so many believers admitted to having never seen either angel or demon. However, the near consensus in modern academics did not necessarily indicate that their findings were “the truth”; there was always work to be done.

After that class, one of my students approached me and stated that she believed in demons because her mother had been possessed.

This bold statement challenged much of the recanted testimony of many prisoners who had claimed to be possessed. Notably, after undergoing psychiatric treatment, Tina Ryder, famous for her participation in the April Attacks, denied that she had ever been possessed by a demon. In order to more fully understand what life had been like in the sort of environment that created a feeling of demonic possession, I requested an interview with my student's mother.

At our first meeting, Sarah X agreed to talk only with the promise of anonymity. When she began her story, I realized that for all of the documentation of events and facts about the "End Times War," there was too much missing from an anthropological standpoint; we did not have any collections of interviews or oral histories, studies of the effects of the "End Times War" on specific churches or sects, or an ethnography of the unique culture that existed in Las Cruces during the revival of Glory Church.

Most notably, the widely accepted perspective of Sam and Dean Winchester, the two key figures of the "End Times War," was that of the FBI. The Winchester brothers’ histories were distorted by the events that they precipitated, and there was little documentation of their private lives. They were, in fact, most often grouped with the soldiers that died during the "End Times War," despite the fact that that association was only a brief part of their involvement with the events.

girl_wonder deftly weaves together testimony from many characters - some we're familiar with from canon and some who are original to this story - to give us a fascinating portrait of what happened during the apocalypse. Written for this year's SPN Big Bang, this is a fantastic, gripping read, that draws both Sam and Dean vividly, for all that we only ever see them through other people's eyes, and though it doesn't always seem clear to the people in the story, it's easy for us to see how important their relationship is to both of them, and how it factors into the war between heaven and hell.

Dead Soldiers: An Oral History of the End Times by girl_wonder

Please let the author know if you enjoy the story.

~*~