#that whole he's love with humanity speech he gave to gadreel he damn well knows castiel is in love with dean and is toying with him

[wisefoxluminary]

I was reading the draft script for 9x22 Stairway to Heaven and I found this part in it hilarious. Castiel opens the gates of heaven and finds shirtless pictures of Dean plastered everywhere. The next page cracks me up the most because it sounds like Sam is implying that this is Castiel's ideal version of heaven. Is he too ashamed to admit he's got a schoolgirl obsession with Dean? If they actually included this in the episode, it would be the most wildest thing ever.

[mittensmorgul]

Aah season 9. I’m watching 9.22 right now (*waves at Dabb from s15*) and crylaughing about how much s9 Metatron is just desperate to be Chuck.

METATRON: Yeah, and you met with the enemy... In secret. What is that old line about sins and stones? GADREEL: He spoke. He lied. And I listened. That's it. But I serve heaven. I serve you. METATRON: Good. Don't forget it. I mean, I-I don't get this whole Cas lovefest, either. I'm offering our people a way home, and still -- still, they're choosing him over me. I mean, sure, he's cute. And Castiel has this simple...charm. He's like a mentally deficient puppy. But I'm lovable. And funny. I made God laugh -- twice! GADREEL: You're the one who asked him to lead an army. METATRON: Well, I didn't think he'd be good at it.

Metatron is trying desperately to control the story, but he doesn’t understand the characters, and has completely miscast them for his purposes, you know? He could’ve written Gadreel as his villain, and rightly or wrongly, most of the other angels would’ve bought that story. They’d bought Gadreel’s original story and locked him in prison for millennia. But that’s not the story Metatron wanted to tell. He didn’t just want to elevate himself, he needed to villainize Cas, to cast him down in the eyes of all the angels. Yet all the while, Metatron wanted to BE Cas. He was even trying on trenchcoats. He was fascinated, and obsessed, with Cas.

All the angels Metatron convinced to explode themselves for Cas were CONVINCED they’d actually been approached by Cas himself. So another of Metatron’s “writer’s tricks” was this ability to create reality out of whole cloth. we KNOW Cas wasn’t the one who convinced Tessa to explode herself for the greater good or whatever, and yet:

TESSA: People like you, they never understand. Sacrifices have to be made. DEAN: So you go after one of the bad guys, and if a few humans get microwaved, no big deal, right? TESSA: In the grand scheme, they don't matter. DEAN: Oh, Tessa, you are so wrong. TESSA: When Castiel came to me and told me what I had to do, he said I was chosen because I was strong. Others...they couldn't handle this. They're too weak.

and

DEAN: Good times. Here's the deal. I like you, Tess, okay? For an angel. But tell me, why are you doing this? TESSA: Castiel. DEAN: No, forget Cas. Why are you doing this? What would make a person want to pop their top, huh? I mean, look, I've been in bad shape. I have. But I have never been that damn low. TESSA: I guess I just can't take the screaming. DEAN: Who's screaming? TESSA: All of them. The lost souls. The ones that can't get into heaven now that it's been boarded up. I hear them. They are so confused. They're in so much pain. All I want to do is help them. It's what I do. It's my job. But I can't. So I suffered... Until death, nothingness. Suddenly, it didn't seem so bad. It seemed quiet. DEAN: So, why don't you just jam an angel blade in your throat and call it a day? TESSA: I thought about it. But I was too weak. Till Castiel gave me a reason to die. DEAN: Yeah. See, that just doesn't sound like the Cas I know. TESSA: But doesn't it, though? And the Cas you know, would he raise an army of angels without telling you? 'Cause this Cas did. I'll tell you a secret. There's more out there...Like me. So many more.

And Dean said he was doing what he had to do, so did Tessa, as she killed herself with the first blade. She’d been driven to desperation. Then Metatron goes on about the very same thing. He engineered the experiences of all the angels-- from the bombers convinced Cas himself had recruited them. It’s... eerily similar to what Chuck has engineered in 15.05. It’s like the entire “case” was engineered specifically to lure Sam and Dean, right down to the victim they swore to protect appearing to be Lilith on a mission to destroy the Equalizer gun. I mean, for all Chuck’s machinations, he could’ve written it as Dagon instead of Lilith, you know? But Chuck’s somehow still stuck in the “old days” of the story, and even his cast of side characters is reflecting that now.

GADREEL: Tessa, Constantine -- I recruited them, and you brainwashed them into blowing themselves up. METATRON: So? Well, that's an old writer's trick -- flipping the script. You start by building up a seemingly unbeatable enemy, like the death star, or a rival angel with a bigger army. That way, I look like the underdog. But then, oh, no! The competition gets greedy. He starts pushing things too much. With the help of my combustible double agents. And then, after a rousing speech, his true weakness is revealed. He's in love with humanity. And now...I'm inevitable.

Isn’t this exactly the way Chuck is “writing” for himself in s15? Metatron will eventually tell Chuck (in 11.20) that in his descent into evil villainy, he’d only been following Chuck’s own playbook, writing from Chuck’s own story. Metatron engineered every circumstance in his rise to power. While I’ve been typing, 9.23 has been playing now, and the entire scenario with the woman conveniently hit by a truck and killed right where Metatron happened to be on the scene to resurrect her ON CAMERA, his entire “miracle” broadcast out on Youtube the way he used the Heaven Microphone to broadcast his propaganda to every angel at once... Even with “God power,” Metatron still needed to engineer circumstances, and circumstances still weren’t guaranteed to play out exactly as he expected or intended. Because his plans couldn’t account for free will, just as Chuck’s can’t in s15.

Team free will is horrifically broken. Sure, they’re all on the same side, but the fractures between Sam, Dean, and Cas are severely limiting their ability to truly achieve a “win.” Dean, driven in part by the Mark but also just from his own frustration and anger and guilt (which drove him to take the mark in the first place), hasn’t had an appropriate outlet for his anger (which will be lampshaded by his eventual impotently angry speech to Metatron in 9.23 before his ultimate failure).

In s15, it’s Sam with a “mark of cosmic significance,” with an unwanted connection to Chuck the way the Mark once connected Dean to Amara. And now that we’re about to move into s10 on the tnt loop, I feel like I’ve been waiting for five years for Dabb to finally get his revenge on the 23 episode narrative failure of s10′s mytharc, this time “flipping the script,” as Metatron once called it, in favor of TFW.

At the end of Dean is on the outs with Cas because of Cosmic Nonsense interfering directly between them. Dean’s anger at Cas comes to a head, and it’s revealed that the real target of Dean’s anger is Metatron. As Cas tries to tell Hannah while he’s trapped in Heaven Jail, Metatron is the cause of all of their suffering. They only need to expose that fact and confront him. If only, for once, they could get out ahead of Chuck’s script.

DEAN: You've been working those people outside for, what, a day? They've already spilled blood in your name. You are nothing but Bernie Madoff with wings. METATRON [rising to his feet from the floor]: So I'm a fake. Do you have any idea how much pan-cake makeup and soft lighting it took to get God to work a rope line? He hated it. And, you know, humans sense that. So they prayed harder and longer and fought more wars in his name. And for what?! So they could die of malaria? Leukemia? And all the while, blaming themselves! "Oh, if only I'd been more prayerful, "God would have loved me! God would have saved me!" You know what?! God didn't even know their name! But I do. Because I've walked among them. And I can save them. DEAN: Sure, you can. So long as your mug is in every Bible and "What would Metatron do?" is on every bumper. METATRON: And? What, are you blaming me for giving them what they want, giving them a brand they can believe in? DEAN [starting to unwrap the First Blade in his hand]: I'm blaming you for Kevin! I'm blaming you for taking Cas' Grace. Hell, I'm blaming you for the Cubs not winning The World Series in the last 100 freaking years. Whatever it is... I'm blaming you.

Metatron wanted to be Chuck so bad, right down to insisting everyone call him Marv like he was just folks. Right down to using the same manipulation on Dean that he would eventually use on Cas.

METATRON: And you're powered by the bone of a jackass, and it is just awesome, right? Here's a tip -- next time, try to be powered by the word of God.

LOL. The word of God has lost a lot of its power in s15, and even Amara-- aka the source of power for that jackass bone-- has even pointed it out to him. But once again, Chuck’s favorite plot seemed to be working out anyway, through Metatron’s plagiarized story-- One brother sacrificed, check. But something went sideways. Dean and the Tablet shattered at the same moment. 

METATRON: Ah. So Gadreel bites the dust. And the Angel tablet -- arguably the most powerful instrument in the history of the universe -- is in pieces, and for what again? Oh, that's right -- to save Dean Winchester. That was your goal, right? I mean, you draped yourself in the flag of heaven, but ultimately, it was all about saving one human, right? Well, guess what. He's dead, too.

[...]

METATRON: You know, why you could never quite pull it together, Castiel? While you're sitting here with Your Grace slowly burning away and your reputation long extinguished? No curiosity. You didn't read enough. You never learned how to tell a good story. CASTIEL [looking straight at METATRON]: But you did. [CASTIEL swings his eyes over to the desk where METATRON's all-angel microphone sits with the switch on, broadcasting his entire speech to every angel in Heaven and Earth. The doors fly open and many angels walk in and take METATRON captive. CASTIEL raises an angle blade but then doesn't use it.]

The words were the thing. And whoever truly understands the whole story holds the key.

Sorry this got so rambly (I think everyone expects that of me anyway), but this is exactly what s15 is subverting, FINALLY. And not through the proxy of Metatron the Scribe, Metatron the Editor, and Chuck’s written word, but finally placing his due with Chuck The Author himself.