#qstiel

Dean and Cas being manipulated by supernatural beings into believing their love for each other is unrequited.

Dancing in the Dark: Cas is SO noisy while he’s in the Empty that he wakes up the other angels and demons who were sleeping there. After a rousing speech to them all about how if they are noisy enough, Qstiel cannot go to sleep without freeing them, an immense and obnoxiously loud angel and demon dance party ensues with live music (Abbadon, it turns out, is an AMAZING beatboxer.) 

Qstiel, who is losing his mind over the cacophony of voices and stomping feet, boots all of them back to life just to get rid of them. 

Many of us, like hounds with a scent, have honed in on that one part of the Qstiel line: “I know who you love…” But there’s a problem with taking a single line out of context: it’s easy to mold it into whatever we want to believe. Non-shippers can make a convincing argument that that one line is about Cas’ platonic love for several people just as easily as a shipper can argue that line is about singular and romantic love.  No matter who you are, what you believe, we HAVE to rewind and look at the FULL CONTEXT. And the full context is whittled down to romantic love. From what we know from canon and from the symbolism, we can easily surmise that Qstiel is referring to a singular and romantic love. 

———————

CAS: SAM AND DEAN NEED ME.

Qstiel: “Oh save it.”                           Qstiel is calling bullshit. What has the narrative of the show been trying to define? Singular versus plural. Romantic versus platonic. And here’s Cas using the excuse that the brothers, as a unit, need him in order to get Qstiel to send him back home.             Qstiel wants Cas to stop lying to himself. This isn’t about Sam. And Cas has no idea if he’s needed. Now Cas does want to be wanted, but only by one human (which we gather from the rest of what is said). It’s time for everyone to appropriately use we/I, us/me, them/him.  Qstiel: “I have tiptoed through all your little tulips.”             Let me save some time and space: read the lyrics to the song here. Flowers are a major symbolic tool in Supernatural. Out of all the things Qstiel could liken Cas’ thoughts to and it’s about TULIPS. Tulips represent true/perfect love with a mythology based on star-crossed lovers, one of which SAILS OFF A CLIFF… uhhh… Dabb? Is that a toss to: “So what, I’m Thelma and you’re Louise and we’re just gonna hold hands and sail off this cliff together?”.             So basically, out of everything Qstiel could glean from Cas’ mind, he picks apart Cas’ ROMANTIC THOUGHTS. He doesn’t pick up on power-hungry Godstiel and use that against Cas. He doesn’t talk about Cas’ life before the Winchesters or even about being an angel. Nope, he brings up the tulips (true love) and in the next breath: memories and feelings.   Qstiel: “…your memories, your little feelings, yes.“             This is the second time he says ‘little’. Little tulips = little feelings. Of course, they’re not actually little, especially to an angel. Feelings are a big deal! Using the word ‘little’ is a mockery to Cas’ love. It’s another way to try and make Cas himself feel stupid for thinking his love could be returned (Qstiel mocks Cas’ intelligence several times).              Listen to Qstiel’s tone, too. He’s airing out Cas’ dirty little secret, in a mocking tone and with exaggerated facial expressions. There is no reason to taunt a platonic love. Qstiel is the bully dangling Cas’ deepest secret to use as a weapon against him. He’s mentally, emotionally and physically abusive to Cas in their scenes.             And I don’t know about you, but when I had a secret love or crush, I kept it close to my heart. I would have been mortified had someone violated my mind and treated me like Cas is being treated here. Any other loves (familial, friendships) aren’t a secret and aren’t taboo. If just friends, just bros, it wouldn’t be a big deal. Qstiel: “I know what you hate. (whispering) I know who you love. What you fear.”

            Qstiel didn’t say, “I know you love them.” He didn’t say, “I know those you love.” Everything in these statements is singular and yet packed with complexity: Cas hates not being with Dean, whom he loves, and he fears his love is unrequited. What fear is there in love unless it is a love with great risk to one’s heart?            Qstiel: “There is nothing for you back there, no.”             How can Qstiel get Cas to shut up, lay down and go back to sleep? Why, show him all of the horrible things he has gone through in the name of that (singular) love, of course. Make him believe it is one-sided and not worth fighting to go back to, make him believe his worst fear is truth. Qstiel is lying to Cas here. 

———————

After Cas mentions Sam and Dean, it isn’t, “Oh I know you love them but they don’t love you back.” No, it was, “You think you can fool me into thinking Sam and Dean need you? We both know the truth because I saw inside your head and I saw the ONE you love but it’s a shame he doesn’t love you back. Just go to sleep and forget about him.”

This entire scene was also another, “You have to choose: us or them,” moment for Cas, which of course is also in the singular. Cas can choose himself or he can choose to go back to Dean.   Just as Cas faced Metatron, Naomi, Hannah and other angels, he also faced Qstiel, a cosmic entity masquerading in his God-given body/image and told him to FUCK OFF.

Despite the shit he’s gone through, despite the pain and sorrow, despite possible unrequited love… he still chooses Dean. His LOVE for Dean PIERCES THE VEIL OF DEATH so he can return to him.

It’s always been about one human. Dean is Cas’ weakness. It is all canon and it’s gorgeous.

I kept coming back to Qstiel talking to Cas about being in his head. Something about the phrasing was unusual enough that I felt I had to dig into it a little more deeply. Qstiel’s dialogue reads like this: “Oh save it. I have tiptoed through all your little tulips--your memories, your little feelings, yes. I know what you hate. (whispering) I know who you love. What you fear.”

We’ve all been focusing on the line about who Castiel loves--and oh sweet baby Jesus is that worth unpacking. But that line works best when we look at the whole speech: a speech about memories, feelings, hatred, love, and fear--all of which has something very interesting to do with tulips. So I investigated these tulips a bit more closely.

“Tiptoe Through the Tulips” is a famous song written in 1929 by Al Dubin and Joel Burke. The lyrics read as follows:

Tiptoe through the window By the window, that is where I'll be Come tiptoe through the tulips with me

Oh, tiptoe from the garden By the garden of the willow tree And tiptoe through the tulips with me

Knee deep in flowers we'll stray We'll keep the showers away And if I kiss you in the garden, in the moonlight Will you pardon me? And tiptoe through the tulips with me

Maybe it's flowers you stray will be the showers of life And when I kiss you in the garden in the moonlight Will you pardon me and tiptoe through the tulips with me?

The song is very clearly about a pair of lovers, one of whom is hesitant to kiss the other because he or she is unsure if the sentiment will be welcome. If we frame this with a Destiel perspective, it feeds very nicely into the line about who Cas loves...and what he fears. If the song is applied to Cas and Dean in this context, then Cas loves Dean...and fears it isn’t reciprocated.

Now even beyond this, I felt the need to google “tulip symbolism,” and here’s what popped up first (source). Pay special attention to the bold:

While it’s not the fanciest flower in the garden, the beauty and grace of a simple Tulips means the flower has become a symbol for meanings like:

Perfect, enduring love between partners or family members

Undying passionate love, whether the passion is spurned or returned

Royalty and a regal nature

Forgotten or neglected love

the 11th wedding anniversary

Abundance, prosperity, and indulgence

Charity and supporting the less fortunate 

A different website makes a similar claim, that “the meaning of tulips is generally perfect love.” This website says the same thing--that tulips symbolize “perfect love.”

Are you seeing a pattern yet?

The Empty has tiptoed through Cas’s tulips, it says. It has seen his perfect love, love that persists whether spurned or returned, whether forgotten or neglected. And judging from the song lyrics, this isn’t your standard familial love. No.

This is perfect romantic love. And at this point, there’s only one good candidate to act as the object of Cas’s perfect romantic love.

“Just your friendly neighborhood cosmic entity”

Demons, angels: they come here and they sleep. They live lives of light or darkness or fire or joy but then they die and it’s lights out, kids. Everything sleeps. Everything is quiet and still and endless and nothing ever wakes up.

Nothing ever has. There’s nothing that can wake up when there’s nothing to wake up to.  

Nothing’s ever woken up before, and nothing’s ever stomped around, leaving a slimy trail of icky feelings wherever it walks.

It just reeks of feelings. Confusion, fear, anger, wonder, hope. It’s revolting.

It’s an angel – or it was, before it was swallowed up by Earth and humanity and those nauseating feelings, and then spat back out here, where it was supposed to be sleeping.

But it’s not. Instead it’s marching around, demanding answers, making a sticky mess of everything.

“Winchesters,” it says, and there’s that hope again.

And this just won’t do.

The inside of an angel’s brain – it isn’t supposed to be this sickeningly emotional. This angel, it’s different.

It’s seen a lot.

Wars and blood and creation and life, like every other angel, every one of God’s teensy little foot soldiers that have come here to rest. Oh, and this angel, it put so many of them here, oh yes, and there’s the fear now. It fears their judgement.

It fears failure. It fears being useless. It fears death.

And this is interesting: this angel has died before. One, two, three four five times, too many times to count. It’s been here but then it’s left again (let’s chalk that up to God, shall we) without ever waking. Until now.

It knows things and it fears things but more, more than this; two faces float to the surface. Winchesters, it must be, and suddenly the angel’s head is just swimming in love. How very precious.

There are other faces, other memories, that drift past as well. A blonde girl with a backpack, walking by the side of a road; a woman lit by a single lamp, hunched over a worn, leather-bound notebook; a woman painting a wall, and the life that grows inside her; and then the two men again. And again, and again. And then just the one, over and over – drinking from a bottle, driving a car, singing to music, eating pizza at a table and smiling and laughing and then the name rises up, front and centre and too loud to be ignored Dean Dean DeanDeanDeanDean.

It’s so much.

It’s too much.

The angel gasps, groaning on the floor. It’s so loud. It needs to shut. Up.

It’s demanding freedom now; righteous, still.

So very annoying. Trying to be clever.

“Sam and Dean,” it says again.

Enough.

A kitchen, a cemetery, an old laboratory, a lake, a white room, a dark shoreline – death after miserable death – but through it all there’s that face again. Here or there, it pops up; strange, how often that face is the last thing the angel sees before darkness falls.

It’s down again but it just won’t sleep. It’s not listening.

And it’s defiant, now.

“I’m already saved.”

It isn’t necessary to see into its head again. That face, that name, repeating again, projecting out without conscious though. DeanDeanDeanDeanDean.

The angel must not even realize just how deafening that sound is. But now it’s spitting and cursing and issuing threats and everything is getting so much louder.

Angels are supposed to be about falling in line. This. . . this will not do.

- and once again, he is the one doing the saving

(Now, I don't know whether you can call the following accumulation if thoughts meta, but this has been going through my mind ever since 13x04 aired and I need to write it down.)

Even though every scene in 13x04 was filled to the brim with emotions, the one that finally send me over the edge and brought tears to my eyes was when Cas said "I am already saved".

For several seasons, one of my biggest wishes was for us to get a reversal of Cas' line to Dean: "What is it, Dean? You don't think you deserve to be saved." I always imagined it would come in the form of Dean saying to Cas something like "You deserve to be saved", maybe in the context of Cas trying to sacrifice himself once more. I thought the most significant thing would be for Dean to accept Cas as he is and tell him he is loved, because for years that has been Cas role in Dean's life (to be the person that sees Dean as he really is and loves him all the more for it and to be the person Dean, the eternal non-believer has faith in).

Now, of course, Dean's feelings for Cas are in no way irrelevant and I would still be over the moon if, at some point, Dean tells him point blank that he's not just needed, he's wanted and loved. But still, the way in which the writers chose to reverse the line "You don't think you deserve to be saved" is so much better than anything I thought of before!

Because while Dean's love for Cas is important, it can't save him!

The only person who will ever be able to save Cas is himself. (Note that Cas response of "I am already saved" is to empty!cas saying "Save yourself")

Now, does Cas saying "I am already saved" mean the fight is over? No, of course not. Cas followed it up with "I will fight. I will fight. I will fight ...", meaning he knows full well that he might have to do so indefinitely and that he might still lose. (I wonder whether he himself expected the empty to spit him out that soon.)