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virginwhoredichotomy · 4 years ago

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alright here’s the wikihow article i’ve been threatening to write on how to brainwash yourself into not entirely hating 15x20, or: castiel’s absence is a good thing, actually.

disclaimers:

- i do not claim that this is the intended interpretation

- i am watching the show with my destiel/dean coded cas girl goggles stapled on

- i do not enjoy being bitter about things i like and therefore probably jumped through a lot of hoops to arrive at this conclusion

i know there were a LOT of things people hated about the episode and this will not address all of them. my main issues with the finale were 1) the manner of dean’s death, 2) the unresolved dean/cas arc, 3) sam’s extremely emotionally hollow happy ending, and 4) cas’ complete absence. the production quality/editing/pacing was terrible as well but that’s nothing out of the ordinary on supernatural rip

1. the bad guy (spn writers room) won

my correct opinion is that this was, in fact, one of chuck’s endings (though i don’t think they made it bad on purpose). on a meta level it makes a lot of sense for this to have been chuck’s ending since he is the meta stand-in for the writers. as long as they are the ones telling this story, EVERY ending will be a chuck ending.

some supporting evidence:

from 14x20 moriah

chuck loves circular storytelling: sam and dean as cain and abel as michael and lucifer, or dean and jack as sam and john as abraham and isaac. we know that chuck’s ideal ending would have the brothers regress back to their brodependent s1 selves and then have them meet a tragic end (15x04 atomic monsters). and something that really stood out about 15x20 is the way it just... completely erased 15 years of sam and dean’s character development. someone said you could watch the pilot and then the finale and understand everything and that’s completely true and extremely frustrating to any viewer with a brain. it’s also a trademark of chuck’s writing.

if you watch it with that in mind, 15x20 is so reminiscent of season 1 that if you pulled jarpad’s hairline back across his forehead and slapped on a grunge filter it might actually be the walmart version of an alternate s1 ending:

- jenny the vampire returns

- complete absence of any characters that aren’t sam and dean

- motw, specifically working one of john’s unfinished jobs

- sam happily leaving his hunter’s life behind and living a normal picket fence life with his blurry spouse, the way he dreamed in s1 and has repeatedly stated is not what he wants for himself anymore

- dean dying as daddy’s blunt instrument

- i hate to say it but the borderline romantic framing of dean’s death scene also counts as a kripke era callback considering how many romantic tropes sam and dean played into during the earlier seasons. erotically codependet etc etc

- probably more but i watched the finale exactly once and am not planning on doing it ever again in my life

tl;dr the 15x20/s1 parallels aren’t just parallels, it’s sam and dean actually regressing to their past selves because they are once again living chuck’s story (or on a meta level: still living the writers’ story). they don’t notice it and neither does the viewer because the framing of the episode suggests that god is defeated and sam and dean are living life the way they want. and yet their endgames are anything but what they would choose for themselves.

(if you watch the back half of s15 through this lense you can also suddenly excuse dean’s character assassination in 15x17/dean failing to break the cycle and being a bad father to jack just as john was a bad father to dean. running in circles is kind of chuck's Thing. god made them do it is a god tier coping mechanism for everything i’m mad at supernatural about.)

it all comes down to what cas said: freedom is a length of rope and sam and dean hung themselves with it. imo it’s still a dissatisfying ending after fifteen years of character development but it is narratively sound. the reason the story set up all these endgames and then didn’t pull through is that the antagonist won. 15x20 is a depressing tale on the dangers of hubris.

OR IS IT.

2. castiel’s absence is a good thing, actually

alright so this is where i’m probably REALLY going against authorial intent. here’s the thing about cas: he is the only character in the show that possesses true free will, both within the story (”you never did what you were told”, god himself in 15x17 unity) and outside the story (the showrunners kept trying to kill him and he kept coming back, cas falling in love with dean despite writers, actors and network actively trying to prohibit it). so if cas as the representative of free will had been in 15x20 my whole argument would collapse because his presence would mean it either WAS the ending sam and dean chose for themselves, or that cas no longer possessed free will.

but what did cas do instead? he rebuilt heaven for them. heaven is now a paradise of his own making, a place free of chuck’s influence and it’s where sam and dean will finally get to choose their ending. off-screen. post canon. across 50 ao3 pages. dean and cas are shyly linking pinkie fingers as we speak. because the ending the characters choose for themselves is not the writer’s ending to tell.

3. on destiel

i've already talked about my feelings on deancas in dabbnatural/15x20 so i'll just link those posts:

- i think they handled dean and cas’ relationship very well given the circumstances (my post and another very good analysis)

- textual reciprocation or not, destihellers won

- supernatural = queerbait is discussed with like zero nuance on this website and it's annoying as hell

i wrote this at 2 am, i hope i've managed to make my point. again, i'm not saying that this is what the writers were going for. but i do think it's a valid interpretation for the most part and i hope it helped someone feel a little less bitter about the finale!

#like. idk. i'm kinda over it. i think if this is what they were going for it was executed badly but i do like the concept #like i don't even have to fix anything about the finale like this i can simply sleep peacefully knowing that they did break free in the end

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samisadeangirl · 2 years ago

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I'll admit that my soft, squishy fangirl heart wanted the boys to live happily ever after together, but the rest of me understands that 15 seasons of horror and tragedy wouldn't have a purely happy ending. Though we did get however many weeks/months/years of domestic bliss that the opening montage lasted (my headcanon goes with Jared's suggestion that it could've been up to 5 years), and they're together now in Heaven for eternity, which IS as close to a HEA as one is going to get on SPN.

There's also part of me that wished that they'd gone out together in a blaze of glory . . . but then we wouldn't have gotten the heartbreaking but amazing barn scene and then simple but wonderful reunion in Heaven. And even though I'm a Dean girl (who loves Sam too!), I agree with Jensen that Dean had to be the one who died first, because he wouldn't have been strong enough to keep on living for his brother the way Sam was able to. Nor do I have an issue with Dean dying on a regular case, because that was always the danger with the hunting life, and even more so after Chuck's defeat when the boys no longer had the plot armor he'd given them or an angel buddy to turn to for healing.

One thing I love is that TPTB intentionally left so much up to fans' interpretation, so we could pick the answer each of us prefers when it comes to how long that domestic period in the Bunker lasted, how Dean Jr. came to be, who the "blurry woman" was, how long Sam lived, how he died, and so on. The most important thing about the finale though is how it reemphasized that the heart and soul of SPN has always been the brothers' love for each other.

This one goes out to all the Bibros and Sam AND Dean lovers. If you're not a fan of one of the brothers, please don't answer. (Also, if you love them both, but missed Cass so much that his absence soured the finale for you, please don't let that cloud your answer or refrain from answering.)

Please reblog so it reaches more people.

#fan poll #dean winchester #sam winchester #15.20 carry on #spn finale #brotherlylove #sam and dean forever #this is the show #long live the brodependency #anti finale hate #it might not have been the finale we wanted #but it was the finale we deserved #and i wouldnt have it any other way

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astudyinfreewill · 5 years ago

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if it’s too broke, don’t fix it

so let’s be clear about one thing.

i will be writing fix-it content for the way supernatural ended, because guess what, honk honk!! i’m a clown 🤡 and as it turns out when you spend your formative coming-out-of-the-closet years invested in TV’s longest queerbait, it’s not so easy to just stop caring. go figure.

but i will not be writing fix-it for 15x20, for a simple reason: to me, it’s unfixable.

look. i am more or less convinced by this point - by looking at the internal narrative, the meta analyses, the reactions of the various cast and crew, and behind-the-scenes evidence compiled by fans far more dedicated and detail-oriented than i - that some executive fuckery happened to the ending. nothing else makes sense, nothing else explains an episode that surreally bad, nothing else explains why the run time was so much shorter than usual and why the pacing felt so clunky and stilted, if not last-minute cuts. so, sure. i’m on board. the network got cold feet and decided to axe whatever destiel content the writers may have worked in (probably too little and too late, but that’s by the by). i can even believe they had a hand in the disappearance of eileen - a long-standing love interest, a deaf character, and of course, most importantly, a woman, from the final two episodes, because everything has to be about the brodependency, of course, of course.

however, even if you take into account the possible/very likely “no homo” revisions, you’re still left... with the rest of the episode. you’re still left with dean winchester - a character overwhelmingly read as bisexual, an abuse survivor, the poster child for PTSD both mundane and supernatural (no pun intended)... dying young on a random hunt. and this wasn’t the result of last-minute executive meddling: this was the plan from the start of season 15, and it’s why jensen struggled so much last year with accepting the finale (rather than any ~homophobic feelings~ about 15x18, which he only got the script for a couple months in advance and was reportedly completely fine with). and sure, there’s a chance executives may have had a hand in that too, but at the moment we have no evidence to believe so.

dean started the series as a traumatized kid who’s been turned into a weapon by a physically and emotionally absent father, an unforgiving and unloving man who raised him to believe his only purpose in life was to look after his younger sibling, whether that meant saving him or killing him. dean was parentified from at least as young as the age of 8, left to do the physical and emotional labour his father should have been doing for both him and sam. dean spent much of the series borderline suicidal, believing he had no intrinsic worth beyond what he could sacrifice to keep others safe. dean spent much of the series believing he would always die young and bloody, that sam was the only one of the two of them who would get to live a full life.

and the show decided to end by confirming all of that, by killing dean off as soon as he’d finally found freedom from destiny. and not even in a blaze of glory for some higher purpose, no-- he was killed off on a random case in what i’m sure some writer felt was a delightful example of ~tragic irony~. well, guess what? i’m not laughing. you lead viewers on an emotional journey for 15 years, they’re going to want catharsis at the end. this? this was the opposite of catharsis. i don’t know if there is an opposite of catharsis, but the internet suggests defilement (probably a good enough translation of the greek miasma) and that feels about right.

and that kind of defilement doesn’t serve the story, either-- because dean spent the later seasons coming to accept that maybe he could have a happy ending, that maybe he did deserve to retire, to enjoy his life, to finally rest - and he definitely didn’t mean rest in peace. the narrative led us on this journey of seeing an abused, PTSD-crippled character start to want more for himself - only to rip all that out from under him in the name of misguided ~high stakes drama. probably because happy endings for everyone are boring and cliché’d and having a ~shocking conclusion is better than having a good conclusion (s/o GOT finale). growth? healing? coming to see yourself in a better light and demanding more for yourself? unrealistic.

well, miss me with that shit. as a bisexual person who took a long time to come to terms with my identity, as an eldest daughter, as someone who deeply believes in the narrative idea of humanity trying and trying and trying until they finally reach happiness - fucking miss me with that gratuitous tragedy shit. i want soft epilogues. i want endings tied with a ribbon. i think we - especially the queer community, especially women, especially people who’ve struggled with low self worth and mental health - deserve it by now.

so, you see, it’s not so much that i can’t write a fix-it for 15x20. in fact, it would be simple enough to do - tragedy is easy to spin into emotional content. which i promise is not a dig at people writing or enjoying that kind of content, because i’ve read some myself, and it has been excellent; more power to you all. all i’m saying is it would be easy enough to write dean getting to heaven and seeing jimmy novak castiel in that roadhouse, whether or not kansas is playing. it would be easy enough to write dean driving to cas and them meeting under a starry sky, ‘the night we met’ playing in the background as it was originally meant to in 15x20, and to imagine them having a tearful, bittersweet, at least we finally have each other reunion.

the truth is that i won’t. i refuse to. even if i believe that the writers would have given us a destiel endgame if not for executive interference - and that still remains to be definitively seen - it’s not the endgame i would have wanted. it’s not the endgame we deserve after 15 fucking years.

queer characters shouldn’t have to die for the right to be happy. we deserve a soft epilogue - and i’ll write my own, damn it.

#spn #dean winchester #meta #spn meta #spn negativity #spn finale fiasco #ambra.txt #long post

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missjackil · 4 years ago

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So why are you always stanning Dabb? He all but ruined the show and the finale. I just don't understand why you're always deffending him?? He dgaf about Sam and Dean just his precious side characters. But hey, to each his own I guess.

Hi Nonnie! I want you and everyone to understand that I don’t actually “stan” Dabb. I don’t deny that the Dabb era is my favorite era, I also don’t deny that he’s had some really dumb screw-ups. However, I always feel the need to defend him because just about everywhere he’s goofed, has already been done by the other showrunners. I also lived through the summer before season 12, when he took over, on Tumblr, listening to most of the fandom talk him down before he had done anything, and I feel like most of the discourse is because none of you want to admit that you never really gave him a chance!

This will be long so if anyone wants to hear my explanation, click away

It started out with whining and moaning that Andrew Dabb’s assistant is a rabid Destiel shipper. So much so that she had 2 books published on the subject. The Hellers were beaming with joy because surely he would make Destiel canon, and they also claimed he hated the “toxic brodependency” and was going to break it down. They claimed that Dabb believed that the side characters were just as important to the show as Sam and Dean are and he would bring about an ensemble cast. Normally, the anti-destiel crowd would write all this off as a heller delusion, but because Dabb’s assistant actually IS a Heller herself, they believed the claims.

To be honest I did too! I was new to the fandom and didn’t care who was running the show or when, so when I saw y’all losing your shit over the regime change, I assumed it was warranted and dreaded season 12 too. I picked apart everything in every episode and bitched along with everyone else until about halfway through when I realized that there was actually some really good stuff happening.

Of course, there were negatives, every season under every showrunner has had them and Dabb wasn’t guilty of anything new. Yes, there was forgotten canon, but Kripke was forgetting canon before the end of s1 with less than 22 episodes to think back on. Remember when they could detect a demon by saying “Chrstos”? How about Dean saying Baby is manual transmission but she’s actually automatic? Was Sam at Stanford for 4 or 2 years? And that’s just season 1!

Everyone griped that Dean wasn’t frantic enough in finding Sam when the Britts kidnapped him, yet, he wasn’t frantic when Sam was abducted by Vetala for 3 days and was busy being buddies with a teenage girl in s7.

Everyone bitched that Dabb was paying too much attention to side characters when it was actually J2 who wanted more time off with their families and the only way to remedy that was to give more time to side characters, which actually began in s8 under Carver, but you tell me why Gamble felt like Bobby’s story needed 9 episodes in s7 and Sam’s mental breakdown only needed 4 episodes? Or why Cass needed his own story with the angels in s9 or Crowley and Rowena needed their own story in s10? At least all the side stories in the Dabb era directly affected Sam and Dean.

“Dabb wants to breakdown the toxic brodependancy!!” Well wait, you mean Sam and Dean had this beautiful, trusting, ride-or-die relationship before then? Seriously, they did nothing but betray, lie, and leave each other for the first 10 seasons! Had Dean not given the “nothing past or present I would put in front of you” speech in Sacrifice, I wouldn't have believed Sam was #1 to him anymore since s4! Remember it was Gamble who had Dean choosing Cass to fight alongside him instead of Sam at the end of S7 with the “Id rather have you” speech, and who was it that had Dean actually telling Cass he loves him in s8 before Jensen said “yeah no... not gonna do that” if anyone would have made Destiel canon it would have been Gamble or Carver.

Sure Dabb broke the toxic brodepency... he made it much less toxic! Sam and Dean stopped betraying and leaving each other, their lying to each other almost stopped but when they did, they fessed up to it before the other found out on their own and flipped out. They learned to trust each other and depend on each other for everything and to me, that's much more valuable than anything provided in the seasons before.

So when it appears that I stan Dabb, it’s not that I don't realize there were serious screw-ups in his era, but because the brother’s relationship was 100 times better than previous seasons.

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samisadeangirl · 2 years ago

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Sadly I have no idea when I'd be able to write a fic like this, since there's already a metric butt-load of fic projects in the mental queue, including finishing the story I'm currently posting, starting the fic for the SPN Pro Ship Bang I've signed up for, and getting to the planned sequels for several ongoing series that have already been delayed for too long.

But yeah, the potential for angst and desperate!Sam and feels would be off the chart . . .

so dean selling his soul in "all hell breaks loose" probably already makes you insane, but it should shred you like cheese and here's why:

it's established in season 1 that sam wants out--after they find azazel and kill him, sam's done. he tells dean this outright in 1x16 "shadow".

dean's not happy about it, obviously, but dean never argues with him outright. he asks sam to stay, and sam says no, and dean stops trying to argue. we get kicked-puppy dean, but dean's accepted this for the most part.

even in season two when things start to go sideways, sam doesn't really change this plan. sam's focus tilts more on being "saved," and it's implied that he'll be free when azazel dies--there's that endpoint again, when sam can be normal, "when it's over." when it's over, sam is done with hunting.

most importantly, sam doesn't tell dean that the endpoint has changed, doesn't even hint at it. going into AHBL, dean believes that sam has come with an endpoint, and that it's here if they kill yellow eyes.

after the deal's been struck and yellow eyes is dead, dean doesn't plan on telling sam anything. not only does he not plan on telling sam how they got him back, he's not planning on telling him how long the contract is, sam wheedles it out of him because dean's not very good at lying to him.

that means, that when dean sells his soul in AHBLP2, dean is selling his eternal, mortal soul for a year with sam that he is not expecting to see.

sam is going to spend dean's year in california, with friends that sam's long-since fallen out of contact with, (some of which think he and his brother have been on a crime spree bc of 1x6 "skin") safe and as far away from dean as his legs can carry him--or, sam's just fucking off away from the life to god knows where, and dean's letting sam go because sam asked him to. not letting him die, never letting him die, but letting him go.

dean in the season two finale is telling sam, "i love you, so i am making my death anonymous. i love you so much that i will die alone."

the intense, silent devotion of making a sacrifice anonymous, of surrendering the right you have to your own death, of accepting an eternity of literal torture so sam can exist--that's it, just exist--away from dean but alive somewhere.

anyway, i'm chewing my leg off, have a nice wincest wednesday

#fan discussion #dean winchester #sam winchester #2.22 all hell breaks loose #fic ideas #angst #feels #brotherlylove #sam and dean forever #this is the show #long live the brodependency

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naruhearts · 6 years ago

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14x13 First-Watch Thoughts: Dean Winchester, John Winchester and Destiel

Before I write a full proper review this weekend (and I plan to write a separate Sam post) (I’ll be missing other key details for sure) let me SCREAM about:

JOHN WINCHESTER FADING AWAY AT THE END OF THE EPISODE LIKE A GHOST INTO THE ETHER as the Winchesters said goodbye to him --> TPTB visually/narratively textualized his ghostly presence like we’ve seen in S13/S14 -- Ghost-Monster-Yeager-Michael epitomized figure. He loomed over Sam and Dean's lives (especially Dean's) as the core toxic remnant of their past that they internalized and which subsequently influenced them to live out their toxic life courses and crippled their healthy self-processes, yet John Winchester’s narrative cathartic (and redemptive) role was fulfilled during Season Who Am I 14.

DEAN: For the longest time I blamed Dad. I blamed Mom too. I was angry. [...] But to be honest I don't know who that Dean Winchester is [re: letting ‘some other poor sons of bitches’ take Sam and Dean’s place if they were normal].

DEAN: I'm good with who I am.

Dean ACTUALLY used his words and disclosed the sources of his trauma and parental neglect *screams* He self-introspected during the dishwashing scene in the kitchen -- the Heart and Home -- by precisely doing what we expected/hoped for him (and Sam) to do: reflecting on their current lives in response to 2003!John Winchester’s resurrection and determining what really holds true value and worth...what holds more fulfilling love and true heart’s desires than a pearl ever could --> Found Family. DEAN, recalling that life is short, accepted his current respective life with Cas and Jack and stressed the self-fulfilling importance of why their lives turned out as such. What they went through since Mary died in 1983 moulded them into who they are today. HE ACCEPTS WHO HE IS!! Dean accepts who Sam is. Sam and Dean, as grown men, become the optimum versions of themselves where their physical, emotional and mental suffering was, of course, undeserved, but also ultimate self-cathartic blessings in disguise: it contributed to their both their psychological resistance and individual journeys towards self-actualization as they create interpersonal bonds with others outside themselves. THEY LET GO.

JOHN: I'm so proud of you boys. I love you both...so much.

THE LONG-WANTED AND LONG-OVERDUE PRIDE AND VERBALIZED LOVE FROM A FATHER WHO ABUSED HIS SONS FOR YEARS. He finally told Sam and Dean that he loved them. He asked for forgiveness, and they freely chose to give it, additionally permitting themselves to embrace cathartic closure. Now THAT is how you transform trauma into your self-motivational strength!! In particular, we knew *points at all the extensive John vs Dean meta* that Dean yearned to hear those direct words from John. He yearned for years. For Dean to hear it spill out of John’s actual lips -- to hear John verbalize how much he loves Dean, how he’s proud of the man he has become -- after everything Dean has done for him -- is sheer meta fulfillment executed in the most emotive way. Instead of watching his son die without fostering altruism e.g. 2x01 In My Time of Dying, we see John watching his son LIVE and grow -- exercising his agency, formulating decisions for himself, and finally discovering SELF-WORTHINESS. SELF-LOVE. SELF-ACCEPTANCE. John also told Dean that he “never meant for this. I guess I hoped that eventually you'll get yourself a normal life. A peaceful life. A family.” Well--

Dean told John he does in fact have a family, topped off with the smile of utter happiness on his face.

He chose his own timeline in which Cas and Jack exist. He chose his Found Family.

It’s intriguing to note that, in the context of John hoping Dean would have “eventually” obtained a “normal life” -- a “family” -- for himself, if we go off SPN’s constantly-reiterated narrative differentiations between familial family (brothers) and intimate family (husbands, boyfriends, girlfriend) aka Love and...Love, the unsaid connotation of ROMANTIC family applies here, as @thetwistedwillow and I discussed. Sam is Dean’s family, but John isn’t referring to him.

John is referring to Dean getting himself an Apple Pie Life™ -- one that Dean initially tried with Lisa and Ben Braeden but couldn’t sustain; Dean seeking marital happiness outside The Life™ was NOT personally/characteristically feasible. It entailed burying vital truths about himself -- imprisoning his non-performativity -- as a broken man within a broad illusion of Want vs Need whom Lisa also tried and failed to fix...failed to make whole despite Dean once telling her that she comprised his happiness long ago.

Indeed, the present era of Season Cyclic 14 ushers in truth.

Dean has a family with “someone who understands The Life™.”

This aforementioned Life™ -- regardless of it being full of pain, horror, and death -- offers Dean joy, security, and new beginnings.

Cas and Jack, willingly choosing to incorporate themselves into The Life™, are the mirrors of freedom to Lisa and Ben’s jagged misfortunes.

They accept who Dean is wholeheartedly. They lend him purpose, zeal, and love -- buckets of love. They are aware of his faults. They encourage his strengths. They represent his faith and his hope.

(Cas, more than anyone, is indelibly aware of Dean’s capabilities.)

In terms of communication, Dean told his brother Sam that he loves him in 14x11 [for attempting to find another way re: Michael]. He directly told his mother Mary that he loves her in 12x22. Tonight he finally told his father John that he loves him, too. ALL the emotional honesty and transparency, my friends!!

Who else is left for Dean to say such significant words to? WE JUST DON’T KNOW!

- - - -

14x13 practically crossed off most of this + my entire SPN300 checklist!!!

- CHOSEN FAMILY VS FOUND FAMILY themes - S14 Dean encountering/hearing about the Castiel of Old—the Angel of the Lord who hasn’t yet built a trustful and ever-complex ten-year relationship with him - Sam finally rectifying and clarifying things with John as a grown man!! TPTB know what 14x13’s premise means for Mary Winchester and TFW’s characteristic arcs aka EMOTIONAL CHARACTER-DRIVEN NARRATIVES. They are facing their pasts and must subsequently introspect and FINALLY act upon their WANTS vs NEEDS. Bros (Dean the Emotional Hero of SPN in particular) may have wished John was alive, but is it worth losing Cas and Jack? - Is it worth losing the real Cas Dean knows? Worth replacing the angel who executed his own choice to Fall, embodied his newfound humanized principles and willingly became part of Dean’s life? - (And here the focal point of the Destiel-adjacent 14x13 narrative comes in) If John didn’t die, Dean’s life course progression towards self-actualization (with Cas as a key aspect of his psychological realizations; Dean and Cas as both each other’s offsets to healthy self-process) wouldn’t have happened. Losing Mary—losing John—ALLOWED Dean to, despite all the unfortunate circumstances, endure necessary pain in order to heal…to: A. release himself from the shackles of predeterminism, Brodependency, parental absenteeism, repression, toxic misemotionality, and trauma + eliminating the old perceptions of himself as a blunt tool: his father’s hammer and society’s hammer and B. embrace his reflection that he sees in the mirror of his identity - Is alive!John truly what Dean WANTS? What he NEEDS? Dean and Sam, confronted by personal ultimatum in terms of their individual relationships with John and the psychological states/growth stages his death left him in, must decide! - TL;DR character development - And, of course, proliferation of endgame Destiel in some way (not a BIG way yet, but building blocks) from this point onwards and subtext moving into its final pre-text phase as I hope/expect Dean to choose his reality with Cas

(I’m expanding on the last point in a bit!!)

I have LOTS of additional thoughts (tbh they’re all an incoherent jumble lol), but as of now I’d like to say that nothing else can surpass the heartwarming satisfaction that bloomed in my chest over the way Dabb and Glynn beautifully interweaved the narrative’s Family/Love/Forgiveness/Self themes into an episode full of amusing callbacks e.g. Plucky Pennywhistle’s Magical Menagerie (there were a LOT of easter eggs I tell you) and heavy-weighing characteristic ones e.g. Goodbye Stranger Destiel redux -- and oh my gosh, the Dean and Cas narrative callbacks we received tonight, where Dean couldn’t believe that OG Cas had NO recollection of him?!

I don’t know about you, but the romantic subtext smacked me in the face; the negative spaces and unsaid verbalizations were glaring. I was, quite frankly, thumping the table in excitement, because alongside the explicit and gorgeously done Lazarus Rising redux scene -- in a PIZZERIA no less *gestures at Cas = Pizza D/C bonding meta and romantic connotations* -- Sam and Dean confronting OG Cas depicted Dean and Cas' current relationship and dual growth reverting to zero in this AU.

It was a painful encapsulation of the unstable past vs healthy present.

Castiel the Angel of the Lord was non-humanized and never saved Dean from Hell. Emotional detachment and warrior-obedient violence resurfaced as his characteristic markers.

Dean, whom Cas -- from the point of first contact in realtime canon -- forged a profound bond with (the bond that proliferated into an intrinsically complex underlying romance narrative which worldwide audiences have been devoutly privy to) was struck by harrowing shock here, and TPTB took intentional liberties to visually fixate on Dean. Sam, on the other hand, reacted via wariness, and he was placed in the periphery -- blurred out to juxtapose their varied emotions of brother and husband; one of these is, as per usual, not like the other.

Dean realizes the integral role Cas currently holds in his life -- how far they’ve come together, in that the Goodbye Stranger parallel scene between him and Cas has him begging for Cas to stop -- to no avail -- and my heart lurched awfully when Cas made no move to do so. Dean fails in breaking his personal Naomi bred-reminiscent Soldier coding because we all know this certain iteration of Cas never freely chose Humanity.

He never Fell, never embodied the human principles of free will/autonomy and self-identity, never found kinship, and never fell in love with Dean.

Keeping the above in mind, when the real Cas comes back to the bunker after the ever-palpable and necessary self-catharsis that occurred during his absence, TPTB’s narrative brings the episode’s thematic premise of WANT vs NEED full circle as Mary, Sam, and Dean witness his entrance.

Sam and Mary are awed after the temporal fracture ordeal they just experienced, but there lies, once again, a certain cinematographic focus on (12x19-reminiscent) Dean.

We observe Dean’s onscreen expression of raw appreciation and self-conviction in that he has realized, amongst the throes of meta-laden cathartic self-acceptance, that everything he encountered since childhood -- the good, bad, in-between -- was worth it. This current canon reality is his heart’s deepest desire. He accepts it. He WANTS it.

For Dean Winchester, a life without Cas is no life at all.

RATING: 10/10

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thedogsled · 7 years ago

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Hi anonymous gencest person in my inbox! First of all, I wanted to reply to you thoroughly, I just happened to not be online at the time that you sent your first message, and as a result it’s taken a little time to write this reply. You seem to be really hurt by this, but the tone of your message is understanding and kind, and you deserve to be spoken to with the same respect that you did in your messages to me. I’ve put your message under the cut to protect you a little bit (I hope that you find it).

For the folks on my dash, please don’t think this is me jumping back into it. Mostly that’s because, as you mentioned in your message, I feel like everything has gotten very out of hand. The tone of the original conversation changed underneath me, because while my issues were only with tagging, I feel like some people perceived it to be something else. I’d like to clear that up. Ad hominem attacks are always unnecessary, and they derail reasonable conversation. I also think that a lot of this jumped off the back of already raised tensions and preconceptions, and the divisions in fandom are wholly responsible for that. So that’s mostly why I haven’t mentioned it on my blog since the scuffle happened, and why I’m happier putting the rest of this under a cut. I don’t agree with what this turned into (kink shaming, and making genfic people into some sort of commodity to be shot across the battlefield like human cannons), and it’s left a bad taste in my mouth how the whole thing was handled, much as it seems to have done with anonymous.

This post is about that.

Anonymous said:The gencest wank is reaching new levels. Now people on twitter are claiming that participants "support child abuse" (which child?) and are "grooming" other people. There is disagreeing with the ambiguity the term gencest imply and there is straight up calling content creators who just want to write on their favorite characters predators. Now I feel even worse about writing Winchester Gen fic and I'm not even a participant! Are yall even going to care about that?

Anonymous said:(same g*ncest wank anon) Look, nevermind. I dont really expect anything. I was hurt by both sides when I'm at a low point and just wanted to write some S&D gen fic to cheer me up. I came to vent but it wasn't called for. I'm sorry. Have a nice day.

I’m going to start right back at the beginning. This wank started on Twitter, and it’s still continuing over there. I think a lot of the reason why things are never let go of on Twitter is because the format has a toppling effect. With things only loosely dated, and Twitter sending you notifications for things you might have been interested in, it tends to keep fires burning a lot longer. The viciousness of the conversations is one of the reasons why I’m not a very big presence of Twitter myself, not to mention block and let block isn’t considered to be a social default. People just engage with material no matter the consequences, forgetting that other people on the internet are living breathing emoting human beings.

Part of it, too, is Supernatural fandom’s divisions in general. If you look just at the wank that crossed my dash just in the last week - one week! - there’s the gencest wank, wank from old meta writers about new meta writers, wank at people who wish Cas had been in this episode, wank about Danneel--it never ends. And instead of those wanks being considered as separate incidents, they instead build one on top of another, so people come into conversations with a lot of baggage, which they aim at each other in quickfire succession.

It’s not okay. That’s part of the reason why I try and avoid engaging in ‘antis do this, antis do that’ drama, fandom dividing into sides etc. because it’s draining, it’s tiring, and it stops you from doing things you want to be doing. Trust me, I know all about the pain of just wanting to write/draw/reblog so and so, and feeling like you can’t because the fandom is a trash heap. Other multishippers feel the same way, like they can’t reblog content from certain bloggers because it’s only going to cause drama. I haven’t written or drawn anything but Destiel (apart from that one Sabriel fic for the RB last year) since I started this blog, despite being a multishipper at heart myself, because I don’t feel like that content is welcome or will be engaged with.

This fandom cultivates that kind of unwelcomeness, in my opinion, to almost everyone in it. It also prevents people from blogging on their own blog, because again people feel they need to seek out and engage with content (even untagged content) that they disagree with, or they’re not interested with, instead of just blocking it. I like talking about ships, and I like discussing how problematic some of them are. I like discussing dark fic. I like discussing tagging practices, and how to keep people safe from being triggered in a fandom which is full of people carrying their traumas with them. While I like engaging with the dark potential of characters, I do my best not to do so at the expense or harm of others. All of those things lead to conflict, and conflict I avoid so much I don’t end up using my blog as I want to. For example, just last year I got involved in a Megstiel conversation which ended in people saying rude things about me and wearing it as a badge of honor that I blocked them. I like Megstiel. I have RPed it and I like the potential the two characters have with each other. It’s not my OTP, and I’m not a relentless wave of positivity about it, but that’s okay. That’s my opinion, and not an opinion I should have to defend, and it’s okay to block people rather than argue needlessly and spread ill feeling around even more.

Staying out of other people’s opinions didn’t happen, this time. Blocking didn’t happen (the gencest mod did use her block later on, which I wholly support, when I was still following the drama, but the block wasn’t respected. When people log out to get around blocks, it isn’t respectful, and it’s part of what fans the drama higher). Not to mention all this drama came in at peak level because all this fandom is is Us Vs. Them until everyone is in a frenzied final battle situation during every incident. Sometimes the drama is being exacerbated and misrepresented, and there are absolutely trolls trying to stir the other thing to being much worse than it is “for fun”. Fandomwank and the anon comms on Dreamwidth (formerly LJ) and to a certain extent Reddit, love making Tumblr and Twitter fans go at each other, and even if we’re pretty shitty with each other already, that’s being driven and exacerbated constantly by forces unseen.

(Note: People may accuse me of making this up, I suppose, but we’re a powderkeg and people love to start fires. The fake Cas stan on Twitter from this summer is a GREAT example of this, they had Misha’s name in their URL and dropped shit on the writers and cast for a long time just to make people froth at the mouth “How could they say that to Jared” etc. I think people really underestimate how much rubberneckers love drama, and if there isn’t any they will happily start it. That said, a fair amount of drama starts organically, and I’ll concede as much, but if you think cackling supervillains are crazytalk let me introduce you to MS Scribe...)

Rambling about drama aside, because I’m quite passionate about how stupid this fandom gets, I want to get back to your ask. I haven’t touched your actual comments yet, and that does a disservice to them because this drama has genuinely hurt you. Fandom should know that. Their words hurt real people. The bickering hurts real people. It drives people away. It drives people I know away, and it’s hurting this anon as well. It’s like anon says: are we going to care about that? Because we should. We should be making this fandom a better place. We should be mending bridges, not distancing people and telling them their pain doesn’t matter. It matters. At least it matters to me. I want you to know that, anon.

That it matters, that’s why I got so passionate about the tagging issue. We should care for everyone’s comfort in this fandom, and that matters to me too. We shouldn’t shout names at each other. And maybe if people hadn’t been at a default level of at each other’s throats, we could have had a conversation about this. I honestly believe the gencest mod came at this from a reasonable position originally, with no ill intent. I may not have made that clear in my previous posts, but I was determined to give them the benefit of the doubt. I don’t think their definition was even that wrong, given that they weren’t trying to redefine the brodependency, imo. My issues only came from a need for fandom itself to invoke the terms Wincest and incest where necessary to protect the people who seek protection from those terms, who are harmed by it, and blacklist it. So that their blacklists work, and continue to protect them. That’s okay, I think, to ask for that, not at the exclusion of the gencest tag, but alongside it where it’s necessary. Incest isn’t what the exchange is about, as I understand it, but obviously the inclusion of ‘wincest’ in the portmanteau does make the real intent cloudy, and excludes people who might otherwise have been interested in it. You mentioned in your ask that the term was ambiguous, and that was my only issue with it, not whatever it’s gotten turned into, especially if that negativity is explicitly anti-Wincest. If the mod wants to use a term that invokes incest for her non romantic gen fest, then that’s the mod’s prerogative. Re. tagging, I think it matters, but tagging is different to the challenge. I’ve tried to be clear on the difference I feel about it since the beginning.

I think that when you are inside the bubble of a ship, it becomes difficult to see the issues with that ship. Let’s take it outside of the fandom and look at Buffy, for example. The fair and honest truth is that Spuffy is an abusive ship. It was literally abusive, then framed as love, Joss Whedon’s gross projection of being able to creepily stalk women and do whatever he wants to them because ~love~ and the woman will ultimately forgive him for being a ruthless monster and they’ll get together. (coughMarvelcough). It’s my OTP for Buffy, but it is what it is. In SPN fandom, Wincest has a similar problem, because it’s been around right since the beginning of the show, and there’s some people I feel who have forgotten that it’s an incest ship, you know, and forget that other people don’t say “It’s just incest” in real life. Only on the internet. (The response to poor Jason Fisher’s defense of Superwiki from the GA made that disconnect really clear to me. The GA literally have no idea why this show would defend incest, because how we speak about incest within fandom is wholly different to how it’s discussed in the real world.)

That said, boy oh boy. I’m about to open a whole other can of worms here.

Wincest folks get constantly attacked. Like I said, it’s an incest ship, and between the GA and people who are triggered by it and purity culture, you’ve got these people who just wanna write their ship and they’re constantly on the toe of everyone’s boot getting a right kicking. I’m not going to argue about the moral rights and wrongs of writing incest, because it’s none of anyone’s business. Writing incest isn’t a gateway drug to performing it any more than if you write stories about murder that’s what you’re setting up to do next yourself. No matter why someone writes it, generally speaking that’s between them and their catharsis. People get uppity about other people’s ships and kinks when they should stay in their own lanes, really.

Tagging is the key to that. Acknowledging your ship has issues and then making sure you tag those issues responsibly. That’s important. It protects us. It protects me when I write darkfic. It protects people who write darkfic because they’re survivors, and helps people to deal with those things when it’s tagged properly, when it’s given the name of what it is, rather than sanitized. That’s my issue with gencest as a tag (not as a fest), because it felt like sanitized incest. You need to call that what it is. You need to identify it. Your older brother climbing into bed with you naked and without permission isn’t gen. To some people within the ship, the identification of it is half the battle. When we tag considerately, we are being kind to people we don’t know, as well as protecting ourselves. Tags make fandom better and safer.

With the way things have unrolled, it’s made it so engaging in either fest seems like picking sides. That’s not okay. That’s not just this battle; this is just another casualty of the whole ship war, something which has sucked the fun out of many things people enjoy doing, and driven many many people out of fandom. I’m sorry that this one hit when you were already feeling so low, not least because we all deserve to have nice things. Fandom is supposed to be the place to go to when life is shitty, to give you fun and relief. It’s not meant to feel like getting sent back to the trenches. Not for anyone.

We need to mend our bridges. We need to keep making our content, and stop seeing it as ride or die. We need to keep our nasty opinions to our own blogs and stop calling each other names when we don’t agree. We need to stop seeing blocking as unreasonable behavior and not proper curation. We need to stop raiding ship tags for wank, or dumping our crap on other ship’s tags in the first place. We need to give more people the benefit of the doubt, and engage on conversational levels about out fandom and our ships. We need to call out issues from within our own fandom, so when drama is getting splashed around we need to say “hey, they have a bit of a point, here, maybe we can talk reasonably about it”. We need to stop shadowboxing with an enemy we think is the boogeyman, when in reality we’re punching real people in the face. We need to tag proactively, and kindly, and keep our fandom corners clean so that when people come to visit we can say “hey, we take our tagging really seriously, you can’t call us out on it.” That’s the fandom I want to be a part of.

Most of all we need to be kind to each other. Be better. For this anon and for everyone else who’s ever been hurt by fandom. Enough shittiness is enough.

To anon. I’m sorry you’re hurting. It fucking sucks, and I’m so sorry things got driven to the point they have now. I’m sorry you got stuck in the middle of it. That said, I want you to write. I want to read your content. Shippy or not, I love the relationship that Sam and Dean have, and seeing all parts of it, fluffy and dark and codependent and cute and playful and snarky. I love G rated fic as much as I love dark NC-17 fic, and I don’t care for people who gen shame, like fic isn’t interesting if it doesn’t have sex in it. Screw that noise. I hope you write. I want you to write. As part of a challenge or not. I hope you will. Everyone I’ve spoken to about this tells me they want more gen S&D content.

You, and anyone else, are welcome to send me any content you want, any time you like. I don’t reblog NC-17 content that isn’t under a cut, or content that attacks other fans, but you can send me any ship, anytime - anyone who loves any ship in this crazy fandom, regardless of what circle of affiliation you usually sit with - and I’ll share your content. With the right tags, of course! We don’t have to be this dysfunctional with each other. We can cooperate and coexist.

To anon: write it. Write it just for you. Write it to make yourself feel better, and write it to stick it in the eye of everyone who’s made you feel bad about it. When you feel powerless, doing it anyway is the power that you have, and you don’t need anyone to give it to you; it’s yours entirely.

I’m sorry this took me so long to post back to you. As you can see I wrote a little more than I initially expected to, and it took a while. If it makes you feel even a little bit better to read it, then it was worth it.

Thanks so much for your ask, for your patience, and for your respect. I hope next time you want to drop me an ask, it’s in happier times.

#dogsled replies #wank for ts #incest mention for ts #this is a multiship blog #ship and let ship #purity culture can eat my whole entire ass #but tagging is important

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mittensmorgul · 8 years ago

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I know there have been times in the series where people were in love with the idea of Cas giving up his grace for Dean or dying for him or making some other big sacrifice. And I just really really hate that idea? It reminds me too much of the unhealthy brodependency cycle. I don't want to see Cas become human like that, forced to under duress or making his ultimate life goal be about "bleeding for the Winchesters." We're getting past that. So I'm glad S10 didn't do the grace cure for example.

Hi there… I feel like I should make at least one disclaimer here before I even start to reply to this…

Disclaimer #1: I am not now, nor have I ever been in love with the idea of Cas giving up his grace FOR Dean, or dying FOR Dean. You used the words “forced” and “under duress.” You even referenced his line from 7.22 about “bleeding for the Winchesters.” Out of context that does sound really bad, and I’ll get to why below, but I really don’t get any of these objections to Cas giving up his grace, because they seem to ignore Cas’s own free will to make that choice for himself, you know? More on that in a second. First,

Disclaimer #2: Hi, I’m MittenWraith and you may remember me from such fanfic offerings as Revenge of the Subtext, which was essentially a rewrite of the end of s10 (that spared Charlie first off) and gave Cas the agency to CHOOSE to give up his grace, not because he was forced to, but because doing so (at the time in canon at the end of s10) also gave him everything he wanted– to be able to stay with Dean and NOT have to watch him murder the world, to finally free himself from the politics and feelings of duty to Heaven (which he’s since essentially declared his loyalty first to the Winchesters over and above Heaven… telling Kelvin to his face that he’s not doing any of this for any sort of redemption in Heaven, he doesn’t even care about that anymore, and referring to the Winchesters as his “family” and the other angels as his “men”). Cas has dissociated HIMSELF from Heaven of his own free will. To his way of thinking, using that grace to save Dean from an eternity of torment was merely a side benefit, you know?

I think we’re approaching this from two fundamentally different basic assumptions about Castiel. I’m not certain if there’s anything I can say that will help you see it from another angle here… but folks keep asking, so I’ll keep trying…

I started writing a thesis (I’m calling it that because it’s gonna be long, and structured like a doctoral dissertation. Hell, I might even write an abstract… it’s gonna be involved) on Castiel’s entire character arc as represented through his struggle for agency and free will against the blind obedience to Heaven that has been forcibly reprogrammed into angels who deviate from their orders. This is the lens through which all of Cas’s development has occurred. As for my thesis, it’s currently stalled out because writing deadlines for pinefest demand I work on that first, and I’ve only covered Cas’s first eight episodes out of 100 and already the paper is more than 1k, so clearly it’s gonna take an astounding amount of time that I just don’t have right now for me to actually research and write…

Point is, even in those first eight episodes (4.01, 4.02, 4.03, 4.07, 4.09, 4.10, 4.15, 4.16), this is already his main conflict as a character. Duty and obedience to heaven versus thinking for himself and doing what he personally feels is right. We see him push back against his orders in 4.18 giving Dean information that will help him “defy prophecy” for the first time, and then we see him attempt to make a complete break with Heaven in 4.20 only to be captured and dragged back for “angel boot camp.” When he returns to his vessel, he’s entirely back to Full Obedience Mode as a function of his grace having been tinkered with in Heaven. Anna lampshades just how horrible what was being done to him there really was, just as Dean lampshaded just how unhappy Anna was when she was given no other choice but to take her own grace back on in 4.10. Her free will, her choice to be human was taken away from her and she did “what she had to do.”

Worst. Phrase. On the show. Ever.

In 8.23 Cas may have had his grace taken from him against his will, but he tried to make the best of it. He struggled with his sudden humanity, but by 9.06 he’d made his peace with it.

CASTIEL: No, Dean. (He puts the box on the counter and turns to face DEAN.) I’m not. I failed at being an angel. Everything I ever attempted came out wrong. But here … at least I have a shot at getting things right. I guess you can’t see it, but … there’s a real dignity in what I do – human dignity.

His entire conversation with Ephraim underscores just how he feels now, and truly introduces this question for the first time:

EPHRAIM: Shh-shh-shhh. It’ll be over soon. I’ll take the pain away.CASTIEL: I want to live.EPHRAIM: But as what, Castiel? As an angel? or a man?

(hey lookie there’s my tag for this entire concept…) but then there’s this:

EPHRAIM: You say you want to live. But you can’t see what I see. By choosing a human life, you’ve already given up. You … chose … death.

Because to Ephraim, who it’s been established has NO understanding of human pain, of human emotions at all, ANY pain is something worth killing over. Even a teenage girl being “sorta bummed” about her boyfriend breaking up with her. To him, ANY human emotions were a pain not worth suffering.

Meanwhile Cas had been doing everything in his power to SAVE HIMSELF, attempting to draw a banishing sigil in blood, cutting his hand on the rose thorns, until Dean managed to toss the angel blade to him and he could kill Ephraim before Ephraim killed him. Cas’s will to live was greater than his desire to only live as an angel. Even if he hadn’t fully chosen humanity for himself back then, he had passed step one of the test and chosen life.

This concept is underscored again when Cas describes to Sam why Dean would cling so hard to being a demon in 10.03:

SAM: What the hell are we doing to him, Cas? I mean, even after I gave him all that blood, he still said he didn’t want to be cured, that he didn’t want to be human.CASTIEL: Well… I see his point. You know, only humans can feel real joy, but … also such profound pain. This is easier.

Cas understands, because he’s experienced the same thing… he KNOWS the real joy and profound pain of being human now, and he also knows what it’s like to not be able to feel those things– not because he knows what it’s like to be a demon, but because he believes it’s similar enough to what it feels like being an angel. Now if that’s not horrifying, and if it doesn’t say bucketloads about Cas’s own personal regret about his own “I did what I had to do” moment in 9.09, in stealing Theo’s grace in what amounted to a sacrifice of his OWN humanity in order to save Dean… Tell me if ANY of this sounds like Cas is happy with this non-choice:

CASTIEL (on the phone) : Dean, I don’t have a lot of time, so listen. The leader of the opposition is an angel named Malachi.DEAN: How do you know that?CASTIEL: He had me. I, uh, I was tortured. But I got away.DEAN: How?CASTIEL: I… I did what I had to. I became what they’ve become. A barbarian.DEAN: What are you – Cas, where are you?CASTIEL: It’s better I stay away. They’re gonna want me even more now. But I’m gonna be all right. I… I got my Grace back. Well, not mine per se, but it’ll do.DEAN: Wait, you’re – you’re back? You got your mojo?CASTIEL: I’m not sure. But I am an angel.DEAN: And you’re okay with that?CASTIEL: If we’re going to war, I need to be ready.DEAN: (pause) Cas.CASTIEL: Dean. There’s more.DEAN: What?CASTIEL: Didn’t you say Sam was healed by an angel named Ezekiel?DEAN: Uh… Yeah, why?CASTIEL: Ezekiel is dead.DEAN: What?CASTIEL: He died when the angels fell.DEAN’s face has a very concentrated “oh this is bad” expression.

A VERY CONCENTRATED “OH THIS IS BAD” EXPRESSION

Under torture by Theo, Cas had asked for a quick death, until he heard that Ezekiel had died in the fall, and realized that Dean had trusted Ezekiel to help heal Sam… THIS INFORMATION WAS WORTH DOING “WHAT HE HAD TO DO” just to be sure that Sam and Dean were safe from this unknown angel that HE had personally vouched for… that we’ve just learned is actually Gadreel…

IT’S ALL A HUGE MESS.

To me, Cas’s decision to take on another angel’s grace was just as much of a non-choice as Metatron stealing his original grace had been. And to Cas, WHAT he is doesn’t necessarily matter as much as the fact that HE CHOSE IT FOR HIMSELF.

Every single time he’s done what he had to do, every time his agency’s been taken from him, the vehicle that made it possible was his grace.

He’s been asked over and over again for years if he’s really an angel (and been told to his face by numerous other angels that he ISN’T an angel anymore), he’s been called a tool and told he was only marginally useful… and yet he’s been called Family and welcomed unconditionally by the Winchesters. Mostly because they’re not FORCING him to be anything in particular, you know?

As to your “Always happy to bleed for the Winchesters” from 7.21, I’ve written a lot about Cas’s mental state in late s7 here, which goes a long way to give a fuller context to that line. Out of context, it sounds very different to seeing how it fits with the entire picture of Cas’s late s7 guilt. In a lot of ways, running away from his responsibility (think “I don’t fight I watch the bees” and constantly referring to himself and his actions in the third person, with “An angel brought the Leviathan back into this world, and – and they begged him. They begged him not to do it.”). It took redeeming himself in some small measure by helping to send the Leviathan back to Purgatory in 7.23 for him to even BEGIN to integrate himself again… And then begins his depression/atonement arc that includes his ongoing battle with his own agency via his choice to remain in Purgatory, his complete loss of agency to Naomi, and then Metatron… this has ALWAYS been what has driven and defined Castiel’s narrative, and every bit of character development he’s ever experienced.

And it’s ALWAYS been tied to his identity as an angel and the very existence of his grace. And even HE has said that he doesn’t identify as an angel anymore or feel allied to Heaven, but like Demon Dean clinging to whatever it was that made him a demon because it was easier not to feel that pain, like Soulless Sam desperate to do anything to prevent himself from being reunited with his soul, Cas is still holding on to his grace in a similar way (narratively speaking).

(thing is, once Dean was cured of the Mark and once Sam was reunited with their soul, they were GRATEFUL not to have been left in that unfeeling state, you know? they’ll take the pain, because it beats “being a stepford bitch in paradise.”)

Cas believes he needs his grace to be “useful,” despite already beginning to understand how the Winchesters see him as family. I don’t believe that Cas will be given a “no choice” scenario in which he’ll feel compelled to sacrifice his grace in an emergency situation, as some sort of “throwing himself on a grenade” because he had no other choice. The entire POINT is that it would be his freely-made CHOICE.

No matter WHAT he chooses. I’m not saying he absolutely must give up his grace. I’m saying that every sign and every conflict that’s driven his narrative development over the last 9 seasons has been leading him along this path where eventually he WILL have that choice. And when that time comes, I believe that what he eventually will choose for himself (because he wants it) is to live out a human life with the Winchesters.

I am REALLY looking forward to 13.04, because I think we’re going to gain a LOT of insight into Cas’s current emotional/mental state. And HOW he comes back from his current state of not-aliveness is going to be key to understanding what’s in store for him over the next season. So until then, I’m going to stand by this analysis.

#Anonymous #castiel winchester #are you an angel or a man castiel? (hint: he's no angel)#you learned it from the goats #spn 7.21 #spn 9.06 #spn 10.22 #spn 10.03 #spn 7.23 #spn 8.23 #and probably a lot more episodes but I'm currently burdened by fever delirium and i'm just happy that this reply is marginally coherent #and i do feel that the insistence that cas MUST retain his grace ignores the fact that it might not be what cas himself would even want #so we have both sides of the debate believing the other side doesn't care about what cas would choose for himself #when in reality all i want for cas is for him to be able to make that choice for himself...#i just haven't seen anything in the narrative that would point to the fact that his eventual choice will be to remain an angel #and everything points to him eventually choosing to be human #or else what is the point of repeatedly asking him that question anyway you know?#spn 4.22 #on the nature of angel grace #angels and souls #that's what free will is #and grace is sorta the antithesis of that...

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