#idk I'm just thinking a lot lately about morality and the importance of including human flaws in my characters

[chronal-anomaly]

you guys ever think about Lena has the potential to be so much more powerful than what she is now?? like imagine someone who could control your time instead of just her own? suddenly you blink and you're replaying the same actions of the day, or watching a copy of yourself in a different timeline? Freezing you in place while the world continues on around you, as you're slowly driven mad by the same isolation that nearly took her under? She could show you how you die, how your children die, how your children's children die, how the very planet dies. Starting and ending timelines as easy as breathing, instead of Time's Champion she's taken the place of Time Herself, and lord she is vindicative

[fenris-returns]

sorry if this is cringe or too personal of a question, but what does north euro pagan living day-to-day look like? are there daily prayers or rituals you do, do you talk to family members that have passed? do you take any aspects of Christianity and repurpose them towards your faith? like baptisms or confessions or really anything I guess, since they're repurposed a lot of pagan holy days and rituals for themselves, idk I'm still really new to this and its hard to find guys that aren't cringe or like, wiccan lol. or OLD

Not cringe at all! I think it’s fair. To be honest my daily habits probably aren’t terribly different from most peoples, although I do make sure to find time in the middle of the day and the evening to at least say thanks or prayers. It’s nothing special, just reaching out. As far as holidays and baptism and things of that nature, it’s important to know that Europeans were baptizing by sprinkling water over children long before Christianity came to Europe. Norse naming ceremonies for a newborn child included the father sprinkling water over the child and speaking their name. The more you can absorb historically to give yourself context for how many “Christian” ideals are actually just European traditions and morals, the better.

Weekly I sit down in front of the altar and bow my head and pray with an offering, usually of something worthwhile like alcohol or food that’s been made from scratch, and offerings should be left outside as often as possible. It’s important to remember two things, in my opinion, regarding prayer and offerings.

Number one, the gods are not vending machines. I don’t sit down every week and ask to win the lottery or for a raise at work or something like that. I ask for guidance, I ask for strength, I ask for wisdom, and I thank them for everything they’ve done for me so far. I make offerings because I love the gods and they take care of me, not because I’m hoping to get something out of it. This separates me from Christians because this is not an attempt at getting a ticket into heaven by going to church and making offerings. This is from my heart and soul, straight to the gods themselves.

Number two, you are not equals with them. They are the GODS, not just some human ancestors. We are their flesh and blood, and you ought to take pride in this, but we are simply still human beings. You need to make offerings, and it needs to be something worthwhile. It should cost you blood, sweat, and tears if possible. It’s not about your suffering, or to fulfill the monetary needs of a church - it is to show your continued devotion and your thankfulness for what has been given in the past.

Oh, and on one last thing, on your question about speaking to dead family members, do not do that. They’re dead. Don’t disturb their peace, or worse yet, get something else in your home in the mix. My cousin spent many years trying to communicate with her late brother, my other cousin, and she has suffered greatly for it. The dead can speak to us when we die and join them, and those that ride with the wild hunt are doing more important things, anyway. Just my two cents.

Also hey man I’m KIND of old now. I’m turning fucking 30 in a couple months 🥲

[omgitsemilyward]

hey, yours is one of the best/most reasonable reactions I've seen to the interview. the harsh judgement on his new relationship/ pregnancy was very upsetting for me to read, as if they were a betrayal to what people knew him as? I wish more people grasped we don't know these people. we don't know why they make the decisions they do. the whole thing had me thinking on the 'parasocial' relationships people form with celebs really.

anyway, I'm just so glad he got help when he needed it most, and that it seems like he has very good friends who care about him. I hope he continues to be well. your post on it gave me a good opportunity to sort my feelings over it :)

Hi there - thanks for this message. I’ve already gotten some interesting messages about this and I like this one best and so I’m going to use this as an opportunity to share my (relatively) meaningless thoughts on all this, and this is probably going to be the only post I make about this so… here we go

I’ve purposefully not been making posts about this stuff for a number of reasons, but primarily because I think a lot of people have presumed to know exactly what happened between him, his wife, and Olivia based on a feeble timeline that people have tried to piece together based on random entertainment press reports and stuff. I think there is an incredible amount of information we simply don’t know because we do not know any of them personally, and so I’ve never felt very comfortable saying anything about it. I’m definitely not saying anyone is in the right or in the wrong here either bc, once again, how can we say when we don’t know almost anything?

plus - who am I to even have an opinion on these people I don’t know? I should probably just leave this post right here, because that’s really my entire thesis with this.

(but I, like the person who sent me this nice message, kinda want to use this as an opportunity to share my thoughts and feelings)

I think a lot of us (myself definitely included - anyone who has followed me for a long time knows this) put him and Anna on a pedestal based on all we knew about them, which was very, very little. So as soon as there was the smallest amount of information that things weren’t as perfect as they seemed, people took it almost personally - that they didn’t match the image they had latched onto -, and then made a lot of assumptions and a lot of judgment about what happened; again, based on the tiniest amount of information. Plus, I do think the internet amplifies these things in a weird way that does away with a lot of nuance and goes to straight to classifying things as a binary: “this person is a perfect cinnamon roll who can do nothing wrong” or “this person is absolute garbage trash” - the thing we all forget though, is that human beings do not exist on some moral binary for the most part.

(Also here I am, talking about this on the internet…. anyways)

I spent a lot of my years on this specific website being uncomfortably attached to John and Anna and their relationship, and it’s not something I’m particularly proud of. I don’t say I completely regret being such a huge fan of his, hers, theirs (for one thing, it kinda got me my job, but that’s another story for another time), but looking back on it I wish I had not been so invested in the relationship of people I didn’t know. It was really weird and without my own personal life experience, I might have also immediately jumped to a lot of judgment about why or how their relationship ended. But between now and then I’ve grown a lot as a person and I know that people, especially public figures, often live much more complicated lives than what they present to the world. And people get divorced allllll the fucking time for allllll sorts of reasons.

Maybe it’s the child of many divorces in me, but I’ve been honestly pretty shocked by how little grace people are giving them. Maybe it’s also the fact that I’ve been such a big fan of each of these people (including Olivia) for so much of my life that I’m quick to be defensive (? Idk if that’s the right word) of all of them before anything.

At the end of the day, I guess I’m just disappointed that there is even “discourse” about this to begin with - not surprised by any means, but just disappointed. And disappointed about how quick people have been to judge, or how people are try to equate this to things that are not at all equivalent.

the most important thing to me out of all of this is that John is on a path to recovery. I’ve dealt with some addiction stuff with some of my family that I’m not going to get into on here but it is hard and at times a little terrifying and I’m just so relieved that he seems to have a really good support system. That’s the thing I’ve been most concerned about since the news broke that he relapsed and was going into rehab - I’m grateful that he was able to get help because not everyone does or not everyone will before it becomes too late to do so.

[mittensmorgul]

Do you ever miss old Cas? Like I know his character development has been super important, and everything he's becoming has been all about who he truly is, and not an angel puppet. But sometimes I watch older episodes and I miss early Cas. I miss the "You should show me some respect," the "I'm not here to perch on your shoulder," and the "we had an appointment" kind of moments. Idk, I love Cas all around, but sometimes I miss his early mystery and badassery.

Hi there! And no, I don’t really miss “old Cas.” But I think the three examples you’ve chosen aren’t really similar at all. The first two are literally what you described as being “an angel puppet.” They’re both from the same conversation at the end of 4.02, when Cas’s only goal was to manipulate or threaten Dean into doing Heaven’s bidding. Because again, context matters. Folks throw these lines around a lot, but so often the larger surrounding meaning is just losing the larger point here:

DEAN: I thought angels were supposed to be guardians. Fluffy wings, halos -- you know, Michael Landon. Not dicks.CASTIEL : Read the Bible. Angels are warriors of God. I'm a soldier.DEAN: Yeah? Then, why didn't you fight?CASTIEL: I'm not here to perch on your shoulder. We had larger concerns.

and

CASTIEL: Three days ago, you thought there was no such thing as me. Why do you think we're here walking among you now for the first time in 2,000 years?DEAN: To stop Lucifer.CASTIEL: That's why we've arrived.DEAN: Well... bang-up job so far. Stellar work with the witnesses. That's nice.CASTIEL: We tried. And there are other battles, other seals. Some we'll win, some we'll lose. This one we lost. Our numbers are not unlimited. Six of my brothers died in the field this week. You think the armies of Heaven should just follow you around? There's a bigger picture here. You should show me some respect. I dragged you out of Hell. I can throw you back in.

This isn’t “badass Cas” here. It’s Cas not caring one whit about Dean, as long as Dean sticks to the mission. Dean is nothing more than a tool to Cas at this point. And he might not be self-aware enough to understand it yet, but Cas is equally a tool of Heaven at this point. There is literally nothing about either of those lines that I would wish on Cas again.

Now for the “We had an appointment,” from 5.04, that was Cas interfering with Zachariah and Heaven’s plans to save Dean, and was more of a moment of comic relief (and literal relief) that he’d saved Dean from Zachariah, you know? This was more than a year’s worth of character development removed from those quotes from 4.02.

But, this in mind, how is Cas any less badass NOW than he was back then? I just... don’t understand the complaint, I guess?

Granted, Cas spent the first several episodes of s13 being actively dead, so that really limits the amount of verbal badassery he was capable of at the time... but knowing all along that Cas would not only be “dead” for a few episodes, but that the entire purpose of this was for us to witness Dean’s specific struggle with his loss, I was more than happy to play along with the show. And because I didn’t let myself become bitter over these facts, 13.04 was one long, glorious Fuck You letter from Cas to his long-term struggle with depression.

(the post below this on my blog is actually a reply to someone asking about Billie’s line to Dean in 13.05, “I say live.” And I suggest that it applies equally to Cas vs the Empty Entity)

Castiel’s personal growth arc since the end of s6, including the majority of s7 while he was again literally dead, and then returned with no memories only to regain them to his own personal horror, has been about his guilt and penance for the things he did, for how badly he fucked up in s6. And then how much he struggled with putting any of that to rights.

I could pull a long series of out-of-context quotes that sound terribly Sassy Cassie, if that would make you feel better about any of this. I know there’s at least one post going around about how Cas is just as sassy as ever, with quotes and gifs as evidence. First off, it makes me really uncomfortable to reduce a character to a few random catchphrases like that. But also, just like Dean, his arc has largely been about overcoming depression. And as such, he’s struggled through A LOT of introspection and come to some major revelations about who and what he is, and who and what he wants to be.

I mean, his personality hasn’t fundamentally changed, but his understanding and motivations and goals certainly have.

His desire to stay in Purgatory in s8 because he couldn’t face what he’d done was one of his initial reactions to this. He’d rather run away and suffer eternally alone in Purgatory than confront what he’d done to Heaven in the name of stopping another apocalypse.

He was so hopeful and willing to believe in Metatron’s plan to “fix” heaven, to shut the gates and lock all the angels inside, because of what Naomi had put him through (torture, reprogramming... I mean we learned A LOT about just how resilient Cas is, and just how much he’s struggled through just to get to this point, where he finally understands exactly how much Heaven had tried to control him like a puppet or a tool.) But he’s so desperate to find a way to atone, to right his wrongs, to make up for the damage he’d done, that he was blind to the truth of how he was being manipulated yet again.

He struggles directly with humanity-- his own humanity-- in s9, before he once again does things because he feels he has no other choice. He was ready to die in 9.09 until he learned that whatever angel Dean had dealt with in order to save Sam back in 9.01, it hadn’t been Ezekiel, but someone who’d lied to Dean about his identity... and Dean needed to know this. So instead of sacrificing his life, Cas sacrificed his own agency yet again, stealing the grace of another angel. I think we can all agree that this particular bit of “badassery” is something we’d never like to see from him again. It’s on par with Dean selling his soul to save Sam, meaning it is an objectively horrifying choice. And that fact is pointed out to Cas repeatedly, by pretty much every other angel character in the narrative over the next season and a half.

And aside from his late s10 job as babysitter and pork rind delivery service, he really hasn’t been not-badass. He’s finally free of Heaven’s “reprogramming,” and for the first time in his billions of years of existence, he doesn’t have an instant “fix” available to him to erase his memories or reboot his operating system. He finally has to DEAL with the cumulative fallout from all his past choices and actions.

So like no other angel ever, Cas has had an opportunity to work through all of this, to understand free will, to understand humanity, and it has made him a better individual. Yes, he’s struggled with depression, and with the consequences of his actions and past choices, and he’s felt unworthy or useless or... like he’s poison.

I mean, these aren’t the typical things angels feel, you know? Because Cas has become so much MORE than that. I think this is why the petty-sounding complaint that Cas is no longer a badass, or that he’s become weak, makes me so angry.

Yes, I’m sorry. I’m watching his entire character arc unfold, seen him fight through some of the most heart wrenching battles against depression (both literal and metaphorical), struggled to reclaim his own personal arc from the whims of fate over and over again, only to emerge personally strengthened each time like steel put through the forge to temper it, and then I see comments on his arc like this, and it just makes me want to scream.

Cas’s entire story has always been about agency. His early “mystery” was the fact that he was unknown and unknowable as a tool of Heaven’s will, you know? Why in the hell would I miss that?

If you think Cas isn’t 10000% MORE badass than he ever was as Heaven’s malleable tool, might I suggest rewatching s12 and s13. If you want Cas-flavored snark, there’s plenty of that. I could spend an hour pulling quotes for you, if you’d really like. But this isn’t about snappy one-liners or Cas being a badass warrior, or him winning fights by being the more ruthless and uncaring participant.

His fight against three other angels in 13.07, for example... he had several opportunities to kill those angels and technically “win” that fight. But Cas is a better person than that. Three other angels were intent on capturing or killing HIM (which didn’t really seem to matter to them...), while Cas was intent on NOT harming them, you know? In a fight, it puts him at a disadvantage, but morally it puts him on the high ground.

Then during all his conversations with Lucifer, Cas gave just as good as he got. If that’s not the best flavor of Sassy Cassie, I don’t know what to tell you.

So... Cas has once again had his agency stripped from him, because that has ALWAYS been his struggle-- both in-story and on a metanarrative level-- and his story falls apart if it suddenly becomes something else. This is how his character development has always run, and how it will always run, until the last turn of the narrative wheel when we finally get to the end of the entire series.

This is how stories work.

And Cas is one of the most intensely profound character development arcs ever written. I can’t stand that his struggles with agency, depression, self-understanding, free will, happiness, love, and purpose can be reduced so frequently to whether or not he’s performing badassery in a particularly proscribed fashion at any given moment. It just seems... petty. And misses the point entirely.

I guess I take it so personally because I recognize stuff I’ve personally fought through in Cas’s arc... black depression and worthlessness... and hell if fighting my way out of that wasn’t one of the biggest (and yet still somehow ongoing) fights of my entire life. So to have someone suggest that somehow this still just isn’t good enough for them feels like a very personal Fuck You, you know? So I’m sorry if this came off a bit angry and defensive.

Might I suggest that Cas doesn’t need to punch things or kill things or terrify things all the time in order to be badass? Sometimes simply fighting through the worst of his personal struggles with himself and living to see the sun shine another day is far more badass than stabbing some idiot in the face.

Cas’s struggle with his own agency, with his own free will, with his own choices about who and what he is and wants to do and to be IS his story. And it’s insanely badass to me.