#cosmonautte

I hope you feel better

YES YES YES.  I just saw your ask on Leila's blog and freaked out.  djhsfsdjhfhjsdf

Phoenix-greece, you asked for fics where Cas is a Winchester, and Sierra dropped this off in my inbox:

Rain Falling Down by Maychorian has Jimmy/Cas raised by Bobby, and the Winchesters are there too, but the companion piece Coming Down on a Sunny Day is directly about Jimmy/Cas being raised as a Winchester, also by Laura Maychorian but only on FFnet. These two are gen. On the other end of the spectrum there's the porn Wincestiel series by Stoatsandwich on Ao3 that starts with Brotherly Love.

Thanks, Sierra!

applesarefuckinghealthy replied to your post: ANOTHER question but your answer was so well...

i totally should! but btw they should ask kassie (amorremanet)! and look here amorremanet.tumblr.com/…

Also I think I only see Dean and Cas as sometimes romantic, or just left-of-center of romance. That is to say, romance is only one aspect of their complex relationship, and the relationship itself tends to fluctuate between signifiers of several things: duty, loyalty, friendship, human urges, vulnerability, awakening, ascension, descent, misunderstanding, faith, trust, expectations, love. We can say that love encompasses all these things, sure, but I think we can as easily say that faith encompasses all these things including love, that ascension encompasses all these things including love, etc. It's about which one of them we assign as thesis concept and which ones we assign as supporting arguments, and my preferences tend to fluctuate on any given day.

Maybe these AUs are more about how Dean reacts and what it does to him, because Cas is Cas is Cas even when he's a tiger or a flame. He still orbits Dean. What would be especially interesting is the S5 where Cas starts to lose his grace so he becomes more like his vessel. Function loses out to form. No grace to stop the fire from burning Dean. No grace to quell adolescent hormones. No grace to stop the tiger from hungering after prey. Eventually it all becomes a metaphor for need/love/devotion/etc. You are consumed, you are immolated, you are drowning, you lose control.

I'm not sure if Dean/Clairestiel can be truly romantic because Dean'd think it's creepy because she's so young, so if sex happens, he'd feel like shit about it. And I'm not sure if Dean's discomfort would be something Clairestiel can understand. I also think Dean's caretaker instincts would kick in more because even though she's an angel, she looks like a kid. In 5x03, he wouldn't take her to a brothel. He'd take her to a carnival and they'd eat cotton candy and ride the ferris wheel.

Tigerstiel is like the polar opposite because if an angel looks like a tiger, it's more difficult to forget it isn't human, which is what Dean tends to do in canon. This creature is dangerous, it can kill you, and it's both humbling and terrifying to realize you have somehow won its heart, whatever heart it has. You wonder if it can turn on you at any moment. The connection you have to it can overwhelm you, but you work through the fear and wonder to try to meet it halfway because somehow you trust it anyway, and you trust that it trusts you. But you never forget it can rip you apart. As for whether it's sexual, well, IT CAN BE. Maybe it's more erotic? It's not really Dean getting fucked by a tiger and yelling "OH YEAH HARDER HARDER", but more like Cas licking Dean's wound and resisting the thrill the taste gives him? 

Firestiel has all sorts of fun hell associations! Like, Dean can never seem to escape the theme. Fire took his mother, it took forty years of his life (or death, depending how you look at it), then it took his brother, but fire also raised him from perdition, like the only way out is through. He can walk through these flames and not burn. He has walked through these flames and been burned to ashes. I like the interpretation of Firestiel as a cleansing fire, but I also like it when it can't help but burn Dean when it loves him most. It doesn't mean to, but what is fire if it doesn't burn? Shouldn't you have known better? Should he? As for whether it's sexual, you got the burnplay kink, hey hey. But like Tigerstiel, the sexual acts aren't endgame. Part of the appeal of Tigerstiel and Firestiel is the trust it takes to open yourself up to a powerful thing who doesn't always keep its powers in check, the horror of seeing it backfire, and what are you even feeling when it breaks the world/itself for you?

So idk, sometimes it's romantic, sometimes it's horror, sometimes it's kinky, most of it is the profound bond between a man and various things that shouldn't be sentient and/or young girls.

When I found out my little brother-16-played Bikini Kill and Le Tigre at his kickboxing class when it was his turn to play DJ I think I hugged him for five minutes.