idk man

You are only allowed to reblog this ONCE. Any more than once and this is completely ruined. 

I think this very much has to do with "heaven's persuasion" as Cas calls it at the time. 4.20 "The Rapture" starts with Cas having learned that heaven will intentionally start the apocalypse and kill millions of humans in the process. He is so horrified by this that he decides to rebel. He enters Dean's dreams, but says even Dean's dreams aren't a safe enough place for him to reveal the secrets he's harboring, so he sends Dean to meet him at another location, and when Sam and Dean arrive there, the whole place is torn to bits. Cas fought multiple angels tooth and nail to avoid capture so he could tell Dean the truth—that the angels were going to start the apocalypse and let them all die. However, he was captured before he could pass on his knowledge and then he was brainwashed back into compliance with heaven's orders.

One of the things I think it's clear the higher ups told Castiel as part of the brainwashing process is that humans dying just means they go to heaven and live forever in peace where they are better off than on earth, so why even fight the apocalypse? Silly Castiel! There's no reason to fret! Humans dying is a good thing! It's a mercy killing! So when Cas returns at the end of 4.20, he is operating under this new worldview and the results are chilling.

CASTIEL Of course we keep our promises. Of course you have our gratitude. You served us well. Your work is done. It's time to go home now. Your real home. You'll rest forever in the fields of the Lord. Rest now, Jimmy. JIMMY No. Claire? CASTIEL She's with me now. She's chosen. It's in her blood, as it was in yours. JIMMY Please, Castiel. Me, just take me. Take me, please. CASTIEL I wanna make sure you understand. You won't die or age. If this last year was painful for you, picture a hundred, a thousand more like it. JIMMY It doesn't matter. You take me. Just take me. CASTIEL As you wish.

Cas acknowledges the suffering he's put Jimmy through and in his own way, is trying to show compassion in this moment, but his thought process is absolutely alien. He sees the compassionate choice toward his vessel as 1) letting him die instead of healing him (drink the Kool-Aid type shit) 2) possessing his little girl to "spare" him the suffering of possession. He doesn't really seem to understand why Jimmy would beg to be possessed again instead Claire. He's completely lost perspective on human connection to the point he can't grasp a parent putting their own child's well-being above their own no matter the personal cost. This is another function of heavenly brainwashing/the cult mentality. The angels have a hierarchy in which everything is (allegedly) for their father and they sacrifice for him, not the other way around. They, in turn, intend to slaughter humans in droves for their own peace because they see humans as beneath them in the hierarchy. Cas has been re-programmed to believe this is how things should be, so he absolutely cannot understand in that moment why possessing Claire instead of Jimmy is an absolutely horrifying proposition to her father and not a form of mercy in Jimmy's eyes at all. It doesn't compute with brainwashed!Cas's understanding of hierarchy.

We see Cas's brainwashing in regards to death and ascension into heaven as the ultimate mercy again—two episodes later in 4.22:

DEAN You know what's real? People, families -- that's real. And you're gonna watch them all burn? CASTIEL What is so worth saving? I see nothing but pain here. I see inside you. I see your guilt, your anger, confusion. In paradise, all is forgiven. You'll be at peace. Even with Sam.

Gracelessness as powerlessness. Being duped and manipulated for trying to protect his family. Failing to protect Jack and Kelly (as he failed to protect Sam and Dean). Walking into the lake to die. Returning the power he could not wield.

13x04

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And what does Cas say to try to get a rise out of Lucifer in 13x12?

CAS: [from off camera] Face it. You are useless and impotent and unnecessary, and you will die alone, unmourned.

13x12

He might as well be listing his own fears.

///

It's not just characters like Ambriel and Ishim that inflame his weakness, though. It's this whole aspect of being a good soldier, you know? And soldiers... are expendable.

DEATH: Stupid little soldier you are.

Is it obvious that Kris is my favorite character?

Repeating your father's revenge-driven quest and allowing it to consume you because you also lost the woman you loved or stepping away from the generational loop set for you.

Obeying your father's dying wishes or rejecting them for love.

Letting circumstances turn you into a monster or retaining your humanity, defying the course set for you by those circumstances.

Whether you can ever sink so low that you can't come back from it no matter how much you want to—whether the hole you have dug can ever become so deep you can't climb out or whether you can always make the choice to change.

We understand the machinations of heaven and hell and god and your father in Supernatural not as the violation of free will but as the shaping of ones circumstances intended to bend their choices to the desired outcome of an authority figure. This is causality:

"Whatever you do, you will always end up... here. No matter what choices you make, whatever details you alter, we will always end up... here"

We are not dealing with lifeless puppets on strings—not even ones who think they have free will but actually don't—no matter the presence of those fears. Autonomy remains. It is the whole reason the story exists in the first place. It's why heaven and hell find themselves subject to the existence of choice and must resort to coercing and bargaining and threatening and lobotomizing. It's why Chuck's anger simmers and then explodes—because his toys repeatedly resist his attempts to bend them to his will. He believes he can create mazes from which there is no escape, but he can't, and his creations chewing through the enclosures over and over confounds him. The presence of the enclosures he builds, to begin with, are proof that he cannot make them do anything. He and all who came before him must get our characters to comply—through manipulation, through the example set by their fathers, through the expectations of ones family, through loss and grief and pain, through resentment and rage, through a fundamental loss of hope and faith—in oneself, in ones family, in ones ability to escape or choose.

(not only are YOU poison, dean, but your wants are too)

///

We find Jack sitting behind the wheel of the Impala, fumbling with his phone, breath coming fast. His hands won’t stay still, trembling as he dials Sam.

“The case went bad,” he blurts the second the call connects. “I don’t know what to do. My powers won’t change them back.”

“Slow down. What do you mean they won’t change back?”

Jack’s eyes flick to the passenger seat. Two plush dolls sit propped against the leather, tiny stitched versions of Cas and Dean with button eyes that gleam in the light.

Jack swallows hard. “I better just FaceTime you.”

When Sam’s face fills the screen, his expression collapses into horror. “What happened?!”

“They can talk a little bit, if you—” Jack reaches over and pulls the string sewn into Dean’s back.

The doll rasps in a tinny voice: “Son of a bitch.”

Jack flinches. “Earlier it was a little bit of real talking. I don't know what—”

“Try again.”

He’s dangerously effective.

This is one of the reasons Cas is so valuable to Heaven. But the thing that makes him a unique special-ops type soldier also makes him a terrible yes-man. Cas has creativity and willfulness in spades.

In 8x17 Goodbye Stranger, when Cas approaches Naomi to tell him he’s found the angel tablet, he hardly lets her get a word in edge-wise, interrupting her often:

INT. NAOMI'S OFFICE - NIGHT CASTIEL (rushing into her office): I found it. NAOMI: Tell the Winchester the crypt is empty. Then you can come back— CASTIEL (shaking his head the whole time in disagreement, interrupting her): It's warded against angels. NAOMI: Well, you can come back— CASTIEL (interrupting again): Crowley's demons are still in town, and we're running out of time. What should I do? NAOMI (sputtering a bit, on her heels): Handle it.

"Handle it" means… use your judgment in this highly evolving, volatile situation. Naomi can afford to give vague, open-ended commands like this because she knows Cas will figure something out. His creativity and forcefulness means he doesn’t need step-by-step instructions—he adapts and problem-solves.

That same trait makes him a terrible lackey, because he won’t just nod along and obey without question. He interprets orders in his own way, which can make him unpredictable.

someone else on my dash put it better than me but there has to be some kind of magnetic fascination to it, almost... THAT is what makes a really juicy beginning

Like hmmm

what happens between Dean and Cas isn't birds singing or rasping violins

no, it’s a kind of interference pattern... signal distortion and static that scrambles everything for a few seconds click click shhhhh, like a sound that doesn’t make sense, and now the whole world has to recalibrate itself because these crossing signals that shouldn’t harmonize...

...do.

Cas disrupts Dean's certainty.

Dean disrupts Cas's certainty.

This isn’t romance. This isn’t even trust—not yet.

It's almost like recognition without comprehension.

In a lot of ways, it's kinda scary and at times veers towards over-corrective posturing, resulting in a bunch of mean stuff that can dip into glib or cruel as they prod and and insult and threaten and test one another...

...ofc as they try at the very same time work to draw each other in

It's the "I wanna know what you're thinking" of it all

They fascinate each other because they don’t make sense TO one another in so many ways and yet, they make sense of each other in deeper, almost irrationally deep, critical ways.

They don’t know what they are yet.

But the moment they meet, the oldest story in the universe cracks open and something ancient and impossible writes itself in without permission

And because of all that, they bend the world around them

("This isn't supposed to happen. You're not in this story.")

They shatter mirrors, rip out pages, and warp would-be parallel lines until they loop de loop