#the main arc castiel goes through in s4 is not falling in love with dean its realizing the angels are wrong

[lesbiten]

as someone who isnt like. huge on d3stiel. i will say it is interesting going through and seeing all the 'big d3stiel' moments in context and some of them are very 'yeah, i get that' and othes are '...you have to purposely take this extremely far out of context and then spin it around in a circle to interpret it the way you did'

[incarnateirony]

Diagnosing the problem with our show narrative

Alright, so here's a really, really touchy topic. I know our fandom is full of Sam/Dean/Cas stans, but I do implore you to break out of that mindset while reading this attempted breakdown of why there's a lot of dispute over various placements in the fandom in general, outside of individual microcosms of singular season/subarc issues people may have with a character presentation, versus overall systemic issues with character presence/trending/relevance/infighting about who's important or mishandled.

Let it be clear with a disclaimer that if at any point it sounds like I am putting "blame" on any particular character, that is not the point, and a request to put it in full context of the discussion before coming to a foregone conclusion. The same goes for any perceived slight to overall significance, as this ultimately comes down to general mishandlings and origins.

That said,

Let's start at the beginning, as we should. The show started from Sam's primary perspective, even if Dean brought the push/drive. They offset in directions of emotion versus action at any given point over the course of three seasons, standing on their own with the occasional insight. From the gate, Jared was first listed, first called, and MC with Dean as a strong co-star role. They were our Luke and Hans in the Star Wars layman talk of the Hero's Journey. Unfortunately, over time, this was not panning out on our ratings, we were verging on cancellation, and they started trying to expand even before Season 4.

In Season 3, the writer's strike made them truncate Bela's story, among others. The need for offsets for the characters was strong, trying to increase counterplay, rather than tiring the GA - outside of fandom bubbles of Sam!Girls and Dean!Girls or bibros standing the infallibility of their constant circle of depressive offset. It's easy to forget, fandom-side, that there's a GA - ESPECIALLY in the mid-2000s - that would never be engaged in the hard stanning of viewpoints. Until twitter and other mediums REALLY expanded to the general population, most talk was on livejournals, personally maintained website forums, and the like. And with a general audience to mind, and numbers slipping - and the Hero's Journey itself minded - they had to reach beyond.

First, I'm going to talk S4 beyond the touch of Castiel: The Hero's Journey turned into the Double Journey Narrative in season 4. The Temptation of the Woman manifest as Ruby, and the Lover started as Anna. This advanced the ability of the brothers to weave more complex personal storylines, both between each other and knitting in elements from abroad, while giving them strong legging in an increasingly more challenging television landscape minding the 2008-09 industry crisis (which I've talked a million times on this blog.)

Now to Castiel: His initial role was the Herald who brings message of the threat from the empire, and depending on the version or rendition, becomes the early threat of the empire itself. Anna held the Hero's Journey of the Lover/Goddess/Leia, the distressing but powerful damsel that rebels against the empire, even if occasionally in jeopardy. But when McNiven didn't work on set, they were already working on trading out longevity of characters, essentially spackling their opposing stories into each other. Anna became the herald/threat, Castiel took on the long term magical helper.

This formula still held strong through S4-5, even if a bit awkward.

Temptress-Hero-Rogue-Lover

Here, have a few chart explanations of the monomyth covered in the Hero's Journey. (some are slightly varied due to exactly where they seed in some free floating elements, so I'm including several versions.)

So let's cut to the chase. Sam's freedom to live was different from Dean's at initiation, but they both had it respectively, in their own ways:

Sam received the call to adventure and hook by way of Dean, after trying to refuse the call. The mentor and white spirit had several varied manifestations in early seasons, and we know their road of trials. Over time he found his dark nature, and atoned with John, despite his harrowing and wondering. The point of the reversal and abyss for Sam kicked off Dean's arc to turn it into a double journey narrative.

Dean made a bargain for the then-ultimate-reward (bring back Sam), crossed into new rules - fell into the abyss -

Sam continued on (beyond the screen) having Dean's return refused of him and running in the dark night of the soul, with attempted sacrifice demanded of him.

Boot Dean's loop - resurrection and incorporation with quick call to adventure, meeting supernatural aid and going through trials while dealing with inner struggles; we met this in rapid time as he encountered his Goddess; Sam's handling had already had most atonement with the father done, but Dean's arc had him dealing instead with his Mother. "Finding love in the underworld" is just something I'm going to leave to sit. But moving on, the harrowing, new rules, refusal of the return and rebirth, rescue from without, his black moment - we start catching up with Sam in the double narrative.

Through this, the temptation of the woman through Ruby became Sam's ordeals and black moment in preparation for the true showdown. In fact, the showdown being built is that of Lucifer/Michael Sam/Dean, with support in the sidelines of dark/light in Ruby/Castiel.

Now, this brief hyper-compressed breakdown of our story run in mind (and admittedly some gloss over to not turn into its own novella,) we have to understand this storytelling balance we had going on.

The temptation of the woman ran its course, both Sam and Dean faced sacrifice (Sam falling to the cage, Dean almost committing to Michael, and showdown); in the end, Sam resurrects while Dean goes back to incorporating to the world, but before we get there. Boom, there went Ruby, who had been a huge driving force of Sam's end of the journey.

Castiel, on the other hand, survived. The "brothers in arms" lived on through them. And that was the final manifestation of a raw five year plan that Kripke admitted was only a few pages long at conception, but still had a rough body draft, spare for originally intending a dark ending for both instead of incorporation. They were greenlit for more, went with incorporation/resurrection and there we were: season 6.

No Ruby. Cas is popular, pull him back out, reactivate the call to adventure. But it failed to follow the same circle due to the chaos that was S 6-7. I can cover for weeks all the general failures that were in these seasons, most blatantly manifest in season 7. But the simple fact is - we basically went 2 years without a true overhanging structure, just seat-of-our-pants storytelling.

Now, you may wonder why I'm going into all of this discussing problems with our narrative.

From late season 5 through season 7, Castiel - no matter how strained his role was - continued on as an offset connection to Dean, if less integrated. No replacement for Ruby manifest.

Season 8 hit, and Carver took a new threshold. As per my discussion "Regarding trivial arguing on leads," Carver changed up the formula by moving Castiel from Support Character to Secondary Lead (acquiring his own subarcs increasingly so, esp S9+), his own trials, and major structuring elements rather than strictly playing off of moments associated with the primary leads. But this was the beginning of a shift. At this point, not only does Sam no longer have his own support character in wing to continue to diversify his application in overhanging story arcs, but Dean's previous support character has taken on a respective story position as a secondary lead. As a result, Sam's ability to run powerful independent arcs has been greatly minimized. And, the more extreme Sam stans will hang me now, it essentially started drifting Sam back into the position of secondary lead rather than primary lead, especially by the time the Trials finished, which even then was highly limited to the perspective of Dean rather than broader application. Meantime, Castiel births into his own arcs, even human world adventures, growths, and insights, which have little-to-nothing to do with the Sam/Dean arcs beyond gearing him to rejoin with them - the literal quality of a secondary lead, and new to him in this era (unlike early application as a compliment/support without deep insight as to what was going on with him beyond when he was with Sam and Dean.) If you look at this chart, EVEN CASTIEL HAS HAD HIS OWN CYCLE OF THE HERO'S JOURNEY AS A MAIN CHARACTER NOW, which is why Edlund called him that.

Dean, on the other hand, not only had Sam AND Castiel as a strong offset, but continued being handed other support lines, such as Benny. And dark as it was, Mark of Cain was an independent story. Dean continued to pull ahead of the pack, while Castiel crawled forward, and Sam wasn't being gifted any new counterplay. Ruby gone for 2, 4, 6 years with no replacement. We can argue "Jared should be able to hold the screen all he wants!" But this isn't a show where you just stand there and Get Good Things For Standing There. He has been stripped of a LOT of his elements, partially due to fandom upsets in the interest of choking him off from anyone /but/ Dean. In result, as much as I am loathe to admit it, but it is just Real Talk: at current, and pretty much anywhere after S9, Sam has continuously diminished into a role of Secondary Lead rather than Primary Lead. And that sucks.

And though the extreme stans will SCREECH at me for saying that, the simple fact is: in the end, whether they realize it or not, they agree. The consistent cyclic upset about what focus Sam is/isn't getting is distinctly to do with this slide. Whether or not you want to admit that's what has happened, that is exactly what has happened, and clearly they AREN'T content with him Just Existing There And Occasionally Solutionizing (neither am I.) We are actually standing the same point. The extremists are just upset when I call a Spade a Spade, because they take it as an insult to Sam/Jared, and it’s NOT. It is literally addressing exactly where our problem is and why THEY even see a problem.

Then we hit the other side of the fence: Dean stans that aren't happy with Dean, mostly over his emotional handling or presentation. Few Dean stans argue about him not having /story/ presence, because that's kind of ridiculous, but in regards to his emotional handling, that's another thing entirely. Because this structure put Dean through the central wringer for S9-11 at least, and then slightly burden shared in 12 but still got the brunt of it at the end. As a result, Dean's stans take him as abused, mishandled, and there's really no win. Because he's pushed as a character to extremes, but when he acts in extremes, his own fans are then upset and feel he's being mishandled, acting too fiercely, or whatever we want to call it, while he's been literally bearing the story on his back for many, many seasons in a row and, by the time they started trying to share it off back to Sam - even without actual focus on Sam's independent arcs (still as a secondary lead in respective capacity, although S12 itself became hazy on leads in general with an UTTER FUSTERCLUCK of storytelling and how much timeshift even went Men of Letters side) - it was already too late and they just hammered it in with the final deathshot to Castiel.

So now, we're in season 13 with the following issues:

Dean is overworked, overtaxed, at wits end and rolling through waves of extremes after propping up story as a central totem for years

Sam needs more focus, but doesn't have the proper narrative symmetry to pull it off to the caliber he needs it as a primary lead, which leaves his fans forever upset about his application.

These upset fans then refuse to recognize the significance of an elevated other lead, Castiel (S8-9+) and Castiel fans are on the defensive always worried about Castiel's increasing application. These upset fans take offense and blameshift onto the character that continues to improve general engagement and diversification rather than looking for a manageable solution to extend it the other direction.

Most of this infighting gets us nowhere beyond just personally recognizing we ourselves are upset about One Specific Thing and not realizing that a lot of this has one element that traces back 8~ seasons:

Sam needs counterplay.

In the end, everyone feels like they're getting boned. Sam fans feel he isn't getting enough story, but Dean fans feel like Sam's getting all the emotional/social, even if Sam's social isn't the kind to feed into story, leaving both unattended. Cas fans are lured with the position of a secondary lead, but aren't gifted full screen time, and Sam fans (SOME, not all) direct Sam's slide to the upgrade of this. Dean fans tend to be more inclusive (again not all) of Cas because he IS one of the social/emotional engagements being given to help the character, whether romantic or otherwise. In the end, we get the extreme wing of Sam fans sniping at the defensive wing of Cas fans in a blameshift that is NO ONE IN THE FANDOM'S FAULT, over a problem that's very real, but not actually sourced from Another Character Existing, but more the Lack Of Another. Giving Sam a primary engagement character can give him story expansion that pulls excessive load from Dean and opens the engagement opportunities and social function, much like we saw out of Dean between getting Cas back and realizing Mary was alive - the relief allowed better handling of Dean's social front, but this was temporary, and again, we fall to stressed characters, but no expansion for Sam. This is an independent problem from Cas having less screen time, which most of his fandom just recognizes is A Thing and Will Always Be A Thing, but are left on the defensive from other fans that feel the character is somehow to blame while simultaneously trying to undermine significance, which is just pretty absurd; but when you're standing favorites, sometimes we get tunnelvision. This turns into misdirected frustration. Sam lacks story, Dean lacks social/emotive, Cas lacks screen time. Get frustrated at everyone, but nobody listen across the lanes... when we have one easy solution: Give Sam more counterplay.

That's why I was so initially happy about Jack, even if it seemed forced/rushed. Sam>Dean>Cas>Jack>Sam>Dean>Cas>Jack, and while Sam took on mentoring and reflecting on his own history, they ended up pulling that actual counterplay away from us. I can only hope in the end they pass that pillar back to Sam to make him be able to take charge of this end of the storyline, attach to Jack in counterplay AND see it through to finalizing the death of Lucifer, but I can't bank on that.

There's really no One Showrunner responsible for the lack of Sam's counterplay. Gamble didn't fix it. Carver didn't fix it. Dabb didn't fix it. The fandom sure as hell didn't help with insisting on only Sam and Dean relying on each other, which just can't reasonably be manifest and just pitfalls us into reverse and crashes.

I literally feel like 99% of hurt feelings, resentment, issues with character placement, issues with character exhaustion, would LITERALLY be a nonissue if we had fixed this for Sam many moons ago. We'd have an entirely different dynamic now and TBF, most of the plot arcs we remember between S6->now would probably be obsolete and totally different, but this overstressed fandom wouldn't be arguing the same circle jerks about the same broken things.

And this is just incredibly frustrating because the question now is: is it too late? We're talking about 1-2+ more seasons now. Can we pan this out? Can we give him something? Can we fix this without people cacking themselves?

But literally... there. There's my diagnosis of MOST problems in our structure all spun off of one advent: Ruby Died in S5 And Was Never Replaced.

God, I sound like a wife stan now. I neither particularly love, nor do I dislike, Gen. Even if a similar role was given to someone else, that would have been okay. But we've never gotten that.

We just... need to fix narrative symmetry because as it stands, we basically have Dean as the extensively overstrained lead and Sam and Cas both as secondary leads, whereas with the right offset of SIMPLE COUNTERPLAY Sam could resolidify his story pillaring and be up there with Dean again instead of petty circlejerk arguments to just offset them and the fountain of "hey guys so get this" which is kind of frustrating.

I'm going to get hate from other Sam stans for saying this, because hOW daARE but in the end, it's literally about how this needs to be fixed FOR Sam (and everybody else) instead of just being on the constant defensive of "HOW DARE SOMEONE ELSE GET POPULAR! AWAY WITH THEE!" - I prefer to diagnose where the problem is and FIX it.

So that's my take.

[dustydreamsanddirtyscars]

“Sitting On A Bench, Reflecting...” - On the Traces of “Forrest Gump” in the Story of An Angel of the Lord

“Life is like a box of chocolate, you never know what you’re going to get.” - Forrest Gump in “Forrest Gump”

One tiny white feather floats in the sky and slowly descends to the ground to eventually land on someone’s shoe. The certain someone, who is attached to said shoe picks it up gently and places it carefully into a book. It’s the introductory shot to one of the probably most well-known movies of the past 25 years. And it sets up the feather as a recurring theme, element and metaphor for the entire movie “Forrest Gump” from the year 1994.

A good 11 years separates this movie following the life of Forrest, a simple minded and innocent boy, whose “passion” and “gift” for running would lead him literally around the world and the beginning of a small show called “Supernatural”. On the surface there’s not much one could say connects this film and this show. One is embedded in a world where monsters like vampires and werewolves exist, the other is firmly placed in a “non-magical world” - though of course “Forrest Gump” in many ways can be considered a kind of fairytale just without the fantastic elements. Still - despite these huge differences in approach and especially in atmosphere and tone (one is a horror show the other a sort of sweet kind of drama after all) - when digging a little deeper the big themes tackled in both franchises align really well. From absentee parents, to the story of “adolescence” and “coming of age”, to family, love and the question of destiny vs. freedom of choice - there is much that “Forrest Gump” shares with “Supernatural” and in particular so with a character that was introduced in S4 with a shrieking sound on the radio, white noise on the tv and exploding windows in an all but abandoned gas station somewhere in the broader vicinity of Pontiac, Illinois, where on September 18th, 2009 one Dean Winchester dug himself out of his grave after he was dragged to Hell by Hellhounds four months earlier. It’s Castiel, Angel of the Lord, we are talking about, whose story feels like having quite a bit in common with Forrest. And all of that starts with one tiny feather dancing from the sky to the ground and coming to rest on Forrest Gump’s shoe, who sits waiting on a bench at a bus stop reminiscing about his life, telling anyone who will listen, his story.

Said feather is a recurring theme - paired with wings and birds and songs and metaphors of flying (mostly connected to Forrest’s one true love Jenny) - in the movie. A symbol capturing and describing how the main character’s life was seemingly shaped by circumstance, how one step lead to another, how he walked through life like a feather floating from here to there in the wind, drifting from one place to another, going wherever the road took him (and that is actually one major parallel to “Supernatural” as a whole with the Winchesters driving across America going wherever the next case leads them) without giving it much thought (in fact many places he ended up being had to do with him simply doing as told, to “run, Forrest, run” whether it was to get away from the bullies in his hometown or in the baseball team or when rescuing his companions from the jungle in Vietnam) - though he always had one constant, one person to return to: Jenny, his childhood girlfriend who throughout long stretches of the movie appears to be seen like an angel by Forrest (fittingly she is also often times wrapped in white flowy gowns, talking about her wish to become a bird so she could fly away - to escape her abusive father - or standing on a window sill read to jump and “kill herself” to be free while Lynyrd Skynyrd’s “Free Bird” is playing in the background). And an angel’s story is Castiel’s. A warrior of Heaven, a servant of God, who - like that tiny white feather - touched down on earth for the first time in millennia after he rescued none other than Dean Winchester from Hell.

Just a few days ago I was talking about Castiel’s trenchcoat, how it always set him apart from the rest. Just like Forrest, who couldn’t walk without aides as a child and was made fun of for being “simple minded”, Castiel, never fit in as the narrative told us. Cas was always a rebel (even if he doesn’t remember himself, those who re-programmed him know), the one who came off the line with “a crack in his chassis” as Naomi called it or as Samandriel put it, he always had “too much heart”. And while Castiel in S4 is intimidating and absolute, when it comes to human interaction he is ill-equipped, almost childlike, innocent. All traits one connect with Forrest Gump. Most of all though and that’s of course what defines Castiel’s arc in S4 most is how he “follows orders”, “doesn’t question”, but “obeys” and “does as he is told”. That is until “The Big Pumpkin Sam Winchester” where Castiel starts to express doubts for the first time and interestingly enough those doubts are connected to a bench in a park.

“I’m not a hammer”, Castiel tells Dean in 4x07 “The Great Pumpkin, Sam Winchester” and sitting down on a bench next to the one Dean is sitting on (there is a multitude one could just write about that little gap between them there btw, as to me it captures perfectly how Castiel grows closer to humanity, but isn’t completely on the same page or rather bench yet). It’s a scene in which Castiel expresses that he has questions and doubts - everything that a good soldier is not supposed to have. And yes, of course the parallel and wording of “soldiers” aligns Cas with Dean, in relation to this meta however it is also noteworthy that Forrest indeed became a soldier and worked well within the army. It’s a recurring theme, Forrest is told something and he follows. It captures how he drifts from one place to another. Rarely making decisions himself, instead he often times “goes with the flow”, “goes where the road takes him” or differently worded “floats”. And that is something Forrest at the end of the movie when standing at Jenny’s grave even voices himself and it captures the question of destiny vs. free choice that is so inherent to “Supernatural” quote beautifully:

“I don’t know if we each have a destiny, or if we’re all just floating around accidental-like on a breeze, but I, I think maybe it’s both. Maybe it’s both happening at the same time.”

And of course it takes us back to the feather imagery of the beginning of the movie, a feather floating in the breeze, that came to rest at Forrest’s feet while he waits for a bus (which also parallels nicely to Jimmy Novak’s bus journey but much more than that Castiel going to sleep inside an old bus when he is human in S9).

And to me Castiel and Forrest are working beautifully as parallels here - not just visually but on a narrative level as well. Because that’s where Forrest’s life truly changes, when he gets on that bus and meets Jenny, who introduced him to his son. That changes everything. Likewise Castiel, an angel with wings, was floating aimlessly and just did as he was told until the day he rescued Dean from Hell (and one could definitely see a parallel between Jenny and Dean here as well as they share the aspect of growing up in an abusive household). From there on out his mission changes, his focus changes, he himself changes.

“I’ve figured out one thing about this world… Just one, pretty much. You find a cause and you serve it. Give yourself over, and it orders your life.”

- Meg in 7x21 “Reading Is Fundamental”

And while his narrative mirror is Forrest, it’s also worthy to note that Castiel’s arc also works rather beautifully in contrast and opposition to Jenny, whose entire life circled around escaping and flying away. So when Forrest in the ending scene looks up to Heaven as if Jenny’s watching over him (like an angel) it gets clear she finally managed to escape and fly away. Castiel’s story can be seen entirely in reverse to her, as for him, it was never about flying, but falling. For humanity as embodied by Dean.

To me the scene in the park (a playground nearby - the whole conversation Dean has with Castiel here is a direct parallel to Dean sitting next to God on a park bench in S11) in 4x07 “The Great Pumpkin, Sam Winchester” works as a perfect starting point of Castiel’s journey. Roughly 2 seasons later we would meet him again - sitting on a bench (like Forrest) - in 6x20 “The Man Who Would Be King” telling us his story. A story that shifted from being a feather in the wind, following orders to making decisions yourself and having to deal with the consequences. A story that tackled the question of destiny and ended with free will.

I’m sure that none of these parallels have been inserted consciously by the writers at the time - though with Ben Edlund and 6x20 “The Man Who Would Be King” I could imagine that he thought of “Forrest Gump”, but the chances are slim - still to me these franchises work together and in opposition to one another, because they utilize the same tropes and themes. And I don’t know about you, but I personally quite like the theme of “reflection” and “identity” woven into these bench moments...

[In case all of this didn’t leave you all “I don’t know about you, but this person that wrote this bs has issues” ;P for more metas on benches and vending machines used as meatphors and symbols on SPN - yes, it’s a thing and apparently I have a thing for it - click here, here, here and here]