#non writers don't understand how meaningful a single nice comment can be

[meownotgood]

it makes my heart warm whenever anyone tells me they enjoyed something I made. thank you for your kindness towards me and my fics

[elizabethrobertajones]

I don't condone sending you shitty messages, but I understand why Cas fans are fed up. Season after season they promise us more screen time for Cas, more attention for his story, and then it always ends the same way: with nothing. Even the Jack thing, which seemed to be mostly about him last year, ended with the three Winchesters as 'loving parents' and Cas sidelined as the failure who couldn't protect or understand Jack at all. There was zero meaningful interaction between them, which wtf. Ugh.

The thing that gets me here is there’s a weird presupposition that anyone who doesn’t care about this sort of thing isn’t a “cas fan”, like, that someone who is deeply invested in the entire story and has strong emotional reactions to ALL the characters so doesn’t pick favourites or particular arcs to hone in on, is somehow less attached to whatever character. As a Cas fan but also fan of everything else, I’ve really enjoyed his season and felt like we got a lot. Nothing to me would be a season where Cas literally had nothing - no screen time, no mentions. Season 1 or something, you know? Even season 7 has a bunch of stuff for Cas even though he’s in like 4 episodes for all intents and purposes. 

Like, idk, at this point I just feel like I’m too tired (in a health way not a wanky way) to really address what’s up with people who only care about specific parts of the story and how to ever describe the show as I care about it in a way that doesn’t presuppose you care about all the characters and storyarcs already and therefore things come off as much better balanced and you can make meaningful comments about what is and isn’t in the show. If you say Cas had “nothing” with Jack, it’s not the same as explaining in a nuanced way how you feel that despite multiple scenes together and their supposed pre-birth magical connection, Cas always felt like more of an abstract guide for Jack and in the end his influence was shown repeatedly to have less sway on Jack than his care for Sam and Dean in several scenes such as the end of 13x21 or the Gas n Go scene in 13x23, and though they had a few conversations and a nice moment in 13x06, ultimately they didn’t bond enough for you to be convinced by their relationship and still feel Cas and Jack have a very idealised and vague relationship in comparison to the one Sam and Dean built with him, and hope that next season they get to spend more time together - *takes a deep breath* - because that way you will feel more comfortable enjoying their relationship… Etc etc etc.

That’s nuanced, taking into account the span of their interactions in the season, not reducing it down to all or nothing and feeling like Cas was shafted in favour of the Winchesters, accounting for storylines and how much time the characters typically spend on screen, reasoning that within the absolutely normal framework of the show as you enjoy it this was about what you could have expected and you’ve now got a baseline normal for them to exceed next season if they were to make you truly happy, and… Idk. Like. I enjoy the show on such a wide scope that personal character grudges which become spiteful or jealous of other characters against a fave make no sense to me. I’m happy to let a storyline or arc resolve and for a character to float through a season as emotional support to someone else’s main arc, I’m happy to understand the pressure Wayward put on the storytelling re: Cas in the midseason. I’m always happy to see the good writers vagueblogging Buckleming’s writing, and make emotional allowances for Buckleming episodes to impress me with bare minimum decency instead of the sort of literally Shakespearean drama Yockey might deliver or whatever… 

Anyways, people can be bitter in their own spaces but as you say, people shouldn’t send me bitter wank just because they’re miserable that I enjoy the show more than them because I’m literally just tending my garden and I’m happy for people to come hang out here and enjoy the flowers and sunshine and compost heap all in their proper places, and it’s not my fault neighbours have bad ugly gardens, and it’s my right to prune or otherwise deal with weeds that in this metaphor I guess are seeds they throw over the fence trying to make my garden more ugly. 

(And weeds can be beautiful too… I like the trashy stuff and would let wildflowers grow in the lawn…) 

I mean idk i can see WHY “Cas fans” in the “i only like cas” sense are upset, largely because I have non-stop wank from them pouring into my inbox so they’ve explained in meticulous detail their problems with the show. But I am never going to agree the show sidelines, eliminates or removes Cas in the sense that he has “nothing” because he has had SO MUCH this season and coming up with arbitrary standards he has to pass to be well treated which are way above a rational minimum standard of decency based on normal expectations of how the show is written, means that people who only care about Cas and follow this standard are NEVER going to be happy. And as a result NEVER enjoy the actually really good, powerful Cas storylines the show has been writing. At this point it’s becoming like, self-deprivation from the thing they love, when it’s right in front of them, they’d rather sit with folded arms and refuse to open up and let the choo choo in, as Cas says, waiting for a banquet the show is unequipped and unprepared to deliver, while treating a normal 3 course filling and balanced meal as if it is a single bowl of watery gruel, and basing all complaints as if gruel is all that is served, and the only prospect for the future is gruel, and meanwhile I’m sitting here having another helping of delicious food like, what the heck. It’s not a fan fic banquet but it’s great and I can’t wait for the next course.