#party!cas

@7faerielights, we were right!! Sleeper Agent Dean it was. Literally everyone predicted this, more or less, but I still found it satisfying. No trigger, though he was clearly using Dean to spy. I interpreted the point they made of suggesting that Michael used Garth that way was to imply that he’d been similarly spying on the Winchesters all along, which is how he knew exactly where to find them.

I had a little complaint/annoyance about how much I had to suspend my disbelief to imagine that none of them had been considering the possibility that Michael had an open line to Dean, especially given how immediately they jumped to that conclusion with Garth. But actually they’ve had to do a lot of playing dummy this season for our benefit, like when Scully would have to pretend not to know some medical stuff she would OBVIOUSLY know so that the audience could get an explainer. 

Interesting that he left before because Dean’s struggle was making him so uncomfortable and he needed to crush his spirit. That’s pretty much exactly why The Empty let Cas go...he wouldn’t sleep and it was bothering him. The Empty wants to take him back just like Michael took Dean back. Both are obvious depression metaphors. Both boys gotta fight for who what they love!

All the 12x12 callbacks and I can’t even calm down enough to list them. But, uh, yes. Bookmark for later. I’ve already seen people writing about this so I assume the discussing is going to get moving pretty fast.

All in all, a pretty satisfying mid-season finale! No surprises, really, but Bobo writes economical and meaningful dialogue and I liked all the evoking of past canon as well as little moments of humor.

I think something less tangible that’s been happening for a long time, because back in season 10, even, we were talking about this. And I know in season 9 there was also at least some commentary on the way Cas was operating, when he had some grace again. Though I missed most of those conversations… My first Cas episode with fandom was 9x21 and I remember people talking about him leaning on the desk in his office and how it was a human mannerism. And that was all before we discovered he’d sewn his coat in 9x18 and we only got it in deleted scenes. 10x09 as well, I remember commentary on his mannerisms, as I think there were some especially noteworthy moments where he was behaving much less stiff than usual. 

All of early season 10 for Cas was pointing out how he’d rather be on earth, rather be with the Winchesters, and in general suggesting that he might one day be better suited for a human endgame than even he realises, especially played off against Hannah, who copes so poorly with being on Earth compared to how Cas has grown so comfortable there. 

And I don’t think Cas has ever really got more stiff and formal after any of this, just that the writing moved away from directly challenging Cas about who and what he was for a while and started asking him different questions and framing him in other lights. He picks up a lot of trauma towards the end of season 10, once he gets his own grace back, and he’s out of the zone where he would die without it and therefore challenged in the story to think about this himself. The writers don’t really wanna spend all their time telling the same thing over and over and if it’s a few season renewals before this can be relevant again, all I know is that Cas never answered the major questions he was posed, and this was never satisfactory resolved in any way when it comes to the themes of that time, just that we moved onto his depression arc. 

But I think in that time we saw a lot of stuff where Cas supposedly, at least with his original grace and often times without any magic effects on him, was still in a really terrible place, being depressed and traumatised, saying yes to Lucifer, and all the punishment season 12 put him through, including some very emotional moments like in 12x09 where he kills Billie on their behalf. 

This season his return from the Empty has made him seem more confident in some ways, but at the same time he’s still lost about his purpose, still struggling with being sure he’s completely accepted by Dean and dealing with low key self worth issues which of course affect him, because he can’t come out squeaky clean. But he had at least to fight off some of the worst things he believed about himself in order to defeat the Empty and on the other side of that he’s been standing taller and more confidently, which is great. But I think his mannerisms have been slowly creeping in and evolving for a long time, especially since being human, and while playing Cas since then always as a lower powered version of Cas, I think the change has been a long, slow process, but at this point we’re getting to where it’s extremely obvious how he’s so different from how he used to be.

My favourite example this season is in 13x19 where he’s bored waiting in Heaven, and he isn’t waiting like Cas would do in the old days, where if he was impatient he’d still stand still and radiate annoyance, or maybe pace back and forth if he was REALLY agitated. But we get a whole montage where he flops all over the furniture, pokes and prods things, and moves around the room bored and curious and very very much in a human way where it’s not even being disrespectful or whatever, it’s that he genuinely is bored and is distracting himself from a long wait in a really human way. I don’t think it’s really surprising with where is NOW or particularly weird for him. It’s not a red flag that anything is short term weird with him. Based on how the last like 4 years at least have gone for him, it’s not super strange for him to be behaving like this in season 13. But if he was doing it 5 or 6 years ago and longer it would have been much stranger, maybe even a red flag that something was wrong with him, and would have had way more purpose than just being to make us laugh at how bored Cas is, but to make some really profound point about him which would be new and revealing instead of expected and just a way of reminding us how different Cas is these days. I don’t think it’s revealing now in the sort of way of saying “wow! how human Cas is!” except maybe for people who REALLY weren’t paying attention, compared to if stiff and proper Cas had been revealed to act like this away from the Winchesters’ eyes in like… season 4 :P 

But, yeah, idk, Cas goes through so much and he’s been gradually changing for a long time, and in season 9 and 10 especially there was so much focus on who and what Cas was, and things like Claire calling out how much he changed and stuff, that it was a time of a lot of growth and shaping of Cas while season 8 had very deliberately been a sort of soft reset where it turned out Naomi was responsible, but it’s a last hurrah for Cas being remotely like he was in his most angelly times. They really rebuilt who and what Cas was in that time and since then we’ve been exploring deeper the new version of Cas.

I suppose no one really reads my episode notes but if you see me joking about party!Cas a lot, it’s because of this from 13x19: 

elizabethrobertajonesListen, at some point Cas transitioned from the stoic Cas we once all knew to a new and better Caswe’ve been talking about this a long timesince season 10 at leastbut I think finally I can say for certainthe season 10 - present Cas is…party!Cas

mittensmorgulPARTY CAS

elizabethrobertajonesand will refer to him as such meaning this period of his life indefinitely until it changes again :Pwe can keep it to season 13 if that makes more senselike his newfound purpose since the Emptybut I was harping on Riverboat Gambling!Cas earlierso I think this is actually something that’s been going on a whileand Party!Cas is just a more dominant trait this season than ever beforebut the arc to  becoming party!Cas has long been in motion

mittensmorgulthat reminds me of some of the early s12 meta talking about ‘growing up’ and how the characters were getting to experience adolescence for the first time… and Cas is kinda going through growing pains too. guess this is late adolescence for him now :P

elizabethrobertajonesawwwwwteenage party CasI love himso much

(I ended up typing this all to Mittens while first watching Cas messing around in 13x19 in the heaven waiting room. Though at the start of that episode, Rowena complains they don’t go to enough parties, and when she hangs up on them, Cas is like, “she’s right, you never go to parties.” I figure he’s waiting for someone to throw him a birthday party while Sam and Dean are too awkward to ask when it is after all this time.) 

Party!Cas finds time for yoga. 

His mannerisms have been softening up for years. I remember someone reblogging a gifset of Cas from 10x09 and weeping a lot in the tags about how human his mannerisms were… And that was a long while ago.

A lot of people laughed at me describing animated Cas as more active and normal Cas as “a wall of ‘fuck you’ that occasionally stabs people” but he has been a little less stiff lately, but he definitely still was acting very angelic in the Bunker, like, not sitting down, even if he might have leaned, and not accepting an offer for a drink. Then in Heaven he was flopping on the furniture, bored and distracted… if there had been a minibar in the throne room, he’d have made himself a cocktail. I think the contrast was somewhat deliberate… Cas is still somewhat between worlds, still more angel than human in Sam and Dean’s presence, but more human than angel around the angels - now he’s the only one wearing colour and the one sassing the angels, using the wrong words to them, and then meeting Naomi, a reminder of how angels USED to be programmed back to a robotic perfect working condition.