#08x21

Robert Sean Leonard as “James Wilson” in House, M.D. | 08x21: “Holding On”

oh I do see what you mean about never having a chance to like, really come to appreciate humans, but I personally don’t see that as the main tragedy of endverse Cas, I think it’s that Cas never had a chance to come into his own. Bc like, what is S6 onwards if not a growing up story, a coming of age story, a coming out story. I do think having gone thru S9 Cas came out stronger, but not bc of the function of him becoming human bc I like, have fundamental issues with the way spn handles “humanness” (and the way they conflate it with “humanity”), and also I think s9 was like.. bad and traumatizing, lmao, and then just. dropped threads and then we’re not really supposed to talk about it again lmao 8)

I think S9 loss of grace works because it helps show Cas who he is at his core, without the angelness which up to now has defined his being and purpose, and also shows himself that he has it within himself to survive and adapt and endure even in really terrible circumstances. And also showed him, like, the small everyday kindnesses, which although seemingly small can be/mean everything.

But yeah I think part of the reason endverse is the way he is, is that he never really has his growing up/coming of age that is sort of the whole MWWBK narrative, like metaphorically going to college and experiencing freedom for the first time after being strictly homeschooled lmao. And so he has a certain element of certainty of self missing, too, from his story, because he hasn’t really had time to fully explore/develop that Self. (grasping the straw of my Reclamation of the Divine shit here too, abt how like, in his moment of self-conception, man creates himself like in an existentialism way, tying that to the idea of creation as an act of divinity and therefore in creating himself, man is wielding divinity)

I think an additional tragedy of endverse, though, is that he also lost Dean? I think that’s also an important point here. I’ve said a bunch of stuff about this already somewhere, but like the idea is that like, the threads of Cas loses his faith in God and then recreates his faith in Dean. But then Endverse Cas loses Dean bc Dean loses himself (oh, so we’re torturing again?), and like, Dean who is not Dean is still Dean, so Cas will still follow him to the ends of the earth, but he also in some/many? ways isn’t Dean, as evidenced by 2009 Dean literally juxtaposed with Endverse Dean. Like to my mind, that is what causes Endverse Cas to really fall in the spiritual sense, not losing his powers or the drugs or whatever. Like he will still love Dean no matter what form Dean takes, but Dean also becomes someone he can’t love when he took on the, like, Alastair aspects of himself. actually here is a post, here is some more on that