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#vs dean dies and cas gets to still see him in heaven ie they get to spend eternity together
samclownchester · 4 years
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Supernatural Rewatch 04x10
Heaven and Hell
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Ok, there’s a lot to unpack in this episode, let’s see what I can do
Angels and Emotion
We find out that Anna chose to fall, to extract her grace from herself and become human, mostly because she was tired of being perfect like a marble statue, she wanted to feel.
(Side Note: I am so confused as to where her body came from. Did she just like … insert herself into her mother’s womb?? She said she was a miracle birth but like … idk later when angels lose their grace, they always stay in the vessel they had … so what happens when an angel loses their grace without a vessel?)
Anyway, she says:
ANNA I mean it. Every emotion, Dean, even the bad ones... It's why I fell. It's why... why I'd give anything not to have to go back. Anything.
DEAN Feelings are overrated, if you ask me.
ANNA Beats being an angel. … Perfect... Like a marble statue. Cold... no choice... only obedience.
Which brings up a prevalent theme that we see throughout Supernatural which is that being a human is the most desirable thing in this world. It also really solidifies the idea that heaven and angels are not things we want to trust or be (which was admittedly a jarring concept to my little religious 14-year-old self when I first watched this show lol). Supernatural often circles back to this idea, of glorifying the normal and mundane, the little moments that most of us take for granted, that these characters rarely get to experience. Whether it’s the peaceful life the boys never had, or the deep coursing emotions that angels miss out on, Supernatural likes to take moments to remind the viewers to be grateful for the lives we have.
On the topic of angels as “perfect marble statues” though … in this episode  we already learn that this isn’t true about Castiel. He feels something.
DEAN Where's your boss?
URIEL Castiel? Oh, he, uh... He's not here. See, he has this weakness. He likes you.
Uriel already considers Castiel too emotionally compromised to do the job properly. Then when they come at the end of the episode, and he sees Anna and Dean kissing, he is clearly feeling something.
I asked @piades​ what Cas was thinking when Dean and Anna kissed, because I didn’t really want to jump to the often drawn conclusion, and they responded
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Which is honestly very similar to this post which talks about longing
And I think that’s accurate and these people are smarter than me so I’m gonna leave it at that ^_^
But, although Cas is clearly capable of some level of emotion Anna still says this to him
CASTIEL I'm sorry.
ANNA No. You're not. Not really. You don't know the feeling.
*thinks about the “you’re playing Sorry” scene in S7 and the “I know what it’s like to be sorry” scene in S9*
Cas has a lot of character development up ahead of him I’m telling you that.
Anna and Dean vs Ruby and Sam
I maintain that Cas is Ruby’s true parallel/foil, but we’ll talk about that in another episode. In this episode Dean connects with Anna and there is such a drastic difference between the way they interact and the way Sam and Ruby interact
Now, Obviously these are vastly different situations but I want to compare them.
We see Ruby talking to Sam trying to pressure him into drinking demon blood, and when he says no she lays on the guilt, not accepting no for an answer.
RUBY No, your abilities -- you're getting flabby… You know what you got to do.
SAM No, I'm not doing that anymore.
RUBY Sam...
SAM I said no.
RUBY Well, then you better pray that Anna gets her groove back, or we're all dead.
When Anna and Dean are talking, she brings up his time in Hell, and he makes it clear he won’t talk about it and she doesn’t ask him to talk about.
ANNA About a week ago, I heard the angels talking... About you... What you did in Hell. Dean, I know. It wasn't your fault. You should forgive yourself.
DEAN Anna, I don't w-want to, uh... I don't want to... I can't talk about that.
ANNA I know. But when you can, you have people that want to help. You are not alone. That's all I'm trying to say.
Now, like I said these are pretty different situations and I could maybe pull different conversations to compare, but what I’m trying to get at with these is that Ruby doesn’t respect Sam’s choices. She will push and push until Sam finally gives her what she wants, where Anna is willing to let Dean take things at his own pace.
(and these are things that you can see if you compare the two different sex scenes as well. I’m not gonna get into it but go watch them if you want, you’ll see what I mean).
((Stop violating Sam’s consent I swear, the neck stabbing threat is still good, I promise 🗡️🗡️))
Dean in Hell
Lastly, we have Dean finally admitting and explaining to Sam what his time in Hell was like. Jensen’s acting in this scene is superb.
But I don’t wanna talk emotions right now, I wanna talk about this
DEAN It was four months up here, but down there... I don't know. Time's different. It was more like 40 years.
The way this is phrased makes it sound like 1 month = 10 years in Hell, but I don’t know if that’s necessarily true. We know they kind of dropped this idea later on in the show, never really touching on it again, but the use of the number 40 is interesting to me, because that is a number used very often in the Bible (ie it rained for 40 days and forty nights after Noah built his ark, Christ fasted for 40 days and 40 nights, etc) and, at least I have always been taught, that the number 40 was not used literally in those cases, but rather as a symbolic number that basically just meant “a very long time.”
So Dean talks about his time in Hell as forty years, he says he held out for thirty years and then caved, but I feel like this is all more metaphorical than literal. I would imagine that in Hell time is a lot more like … Jeremy Bearimy in the Good Place. Not entirely explicable to the human perspective.
Honorable mention moments:
That point near the beginning of the episode when Dean goes to help Ruby and Sam stays to plead with Castiel – switching associations for a moment. Sam talking to the angels and Dean helping the demon.
During the fight scene when Dean saves Cas from Alastair <3
Ruby referencing Godzilla and Mothra – listen there is no way she knew what those were when she was in Hell, she has watched movies since leaving Hell, most likely with Sam while Dean was in Hell. AU where Ruby’s not a horrible person and Sam gets to introduce her to all the movies he loves and other things humans have invented since she died.
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awed-frog · 6 years
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"why are angels in suits and archangels in ratty jeans" do you think maybe archangels have something that resembles free will, something regular angels have to struggle a lot to discover within themselves? (yes I read all your tags)
I’m not sure the two things are linked, though? Or linked in that exact way, ie free will automatically leads to freedom to customize your accessories?
Like, if we’re talking clothes, the most striking examples are Michael and Lucifer and how their fashion sense seems to evolve with their vessel.
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There could be many reasons for this. Most likely, it’s just a narrative way of showing a clear difference between Dean (or Sam) and their possessed versions, because the fact is, both Lucifer and AU!Michael used to dress in a very similar way to real!Dean and real!Sam, so without the change in clothes, both actors and viewers would have a much harder time telling them apart.
(The interesting exception, of course, is Cas. See below for more speculation.)
As for in-story logic, there are a couple of fashion-related points we can make.
First of all, both in Supernatural and IRL, suits embody a kind of willing submission to your role in society, and what your superiors think and want. While most lines of work have compulsory or traditional ‘uniforms’, suits are not dictated by practical or safety reasons. They simply signal you don’t work with your hands and you get (or hope to get) something of a decent salary. What’s particularly striking about suits is that, on the whole, they’re not really a good choice as ‘standard wear’ for tertiary jobs? Like - for one, most suits just don’t fit the wearer’s body very well. You walk around and you see a lot of people (basically all the women because boobs and curves, but also many men) who just look awkward and cheap. There’s a reason why ‘getting a bespoke suit’, complete with standing on ridiculous tiny podium with four Italian tailors shaking their hands at you is such a popular movie trope and generally shorthand for ‘you’ve made it’, and it’s because off-the-rack suits tend to suck - they fall weirdly on your body, might pull at your joints, and generally look really bad. If you’re Benedict Cumberbatch, you could probably find someting suitable even in Asda, but then again, if you’re Benedict Cumberbatch you’d look good in a sandwich wrapper, so that’s a moot point. And another thing is that suits are incredibly high-maintenance, even if Supernatural pretends otherwise? 
(And that’s another of those ‘black spaces’ we all watch with such rapt attention, by the way, because the boys wearing suits so often implies someone - *coughs* Dean *coughs* - spends a sizable portion of his time buying and looking after those clothes, and probably has a whole room in the Bunker full of fluffy fabric and costumes.)
Anyway - you need to fold them neatly and iron the shit out of them (and ironing shirts, that’s fun) and depending on the fabric every time you fucking move they fucking crease? And finally (I mean, I could go on because I hate them, but you know), finally they’re generally the reflection of an entitled, arrogant society which doesn’t take into account nature or weather. Like, people in suits may look all cool and unruffled inside their fancy AC-ed banks, but try wearing your bespoke woolen monstrosity on the tube, or outside on a summer afternoon, and you’re not likely to come out alive. So where manual workers are mostly forced to wear the same thing year-round to protect themselves from injury (or because their clothes need to be boiled when washed), and other professionals (like teachers) will adapt their wardrobe to seasons and mood, people who’re forced to wear suits truly represent the end of individuality, personality, and choice. 
(Our national bank and our biggest insurance will police everything down to your bra, nail polish and make-up, so while there are people who genuinely enjoy wearing suits - I guess - I’d say for most it’s not really a choice.)
And the sad thing is, we’ve all accepted this as a good & worthy thing: buying your first suit is a sign you’re all grown up, and even if you’re not a corporate slave, you’ll be expected to wear suits at important meetings, weddings and funerals (hell, I know I’ve got a couple in my closet, so I’m not claiming any moral high ground here). What’s even more perverse, and also chimes in with the Supernatural universe, is that true wealth doesn’t give a rat’s ass about suits. As with other stuff, from dead languages to meditation to how well you treat your inferiors, there’s a wide gap between those who think they’re the upper class and the real upper class. This is a detail that often goes unnoticed, both IRL and in fiction, but a show like Billions, for instance, explored it to perfection: most characters will be in suits all the time, because the background is the financial world, but not Axe, our main character, who’ll choose jeans and leather jackets (which probably cost more than your house, and okay, but still: the key is comfort and non-conformity).
(See also: Chuck in his second-hand jacket vs. his archangels preening up and buying stupid stuff as soon as they fall in line.
Or: Chuck wearing whatever the hell he likes while his theoretically more powerful sister is stuffed into luxurious and revealing clothes, complete with pastel nail polish.)
Coming back to Supernatural, this is something of a pattern: normal angels are (almost) always in suits. Cas has a shabby suit hidden by his trademark trench coat - a fashion choice which has many reasons (chief among them, that John Constatine thing) but ends up representing the character’s dilemma and his push towards free will and a different kind of belonging. Both Michael and Lucifer dress shabbily when they’re not following Heaven’s plan, and suit up as soon as they manage to fulfill their expected roles. Raphael, the only archangel to be 100% loyal to the task he was assigned, is always shown in a suit.
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(Gabriel, who never fit in, lived and died (twice) in his own personalized wardrobe.)
Something else that’s a headcanon of mine is that angels, generally speaking, don’t give a damn about human stuff because they’re not equipped to understand it. Like, Crowley is susceptible to the joys of a well-cut suit, and also painfully aware of its meaning (as an illiterate, illegimate child of a socially rejected mother, belonging and riches is what he dreamed about, and it’s not a surprise he chose to be apprenticed to a tailor); then again, he’s a demon, not an angel, which means he’s got a deep layer of tortured humanity informing his thoughts and his decisions. On the other hand, what does a suit mean to someone like Lucifer, who’s older than balls, considers humans to be a mistake and the scum of the Earth and is used to see their fashion sense change dramatically every few seconds (to an immortal, fifty years must look like one or two minutes)? No - to Lucifer, and Michael, and possibly Gabriel, the main problem is that they’re not in their rightful vessels; and, as we’ve seen very clearly in Lucifer’s case, the consequences can be irritating and very, very dramatic. So it makes sense, in a way, that they’d focus on keeping their vessels’ skin in one piece without bothering with anything else? Like, Nick!Lucifer changing into a nice Armani would be like a guy being rushed to the ER for organ failure insisting on silver cufflinks on his hospital gown.
(That’s also why, I think, Lucifer never bothered to change anything about Cas’ appearance when he was possessing Cas? It was a way of 1) cutting down his workload, 2) annoying the hell out of Sam and Dean and tricking them for as long as possible and 3) refusing to claim ownership of a vessel Lucifer probably considered dirty and beneath him.)
As a final thought, I always had a problem with that whole ‘angels have no free will’ thing, because the show & tell on that one never matched all that well. I mean: the only angel whose journey we truly witnessed was Cas, and even with Cas, it’s stated outright he always had plenty of free will and a boatload of feelings and opinions - to the point where he had to be reprogrammed several times. Mostly other low-level angel we’ve seen, though, have displayed a remarkable sense of self and very disinct preferences: from Balthazar who did his own thing to hippy!angels who wanted to camp by a river, to Ishim who went against orders to get laid, to Gadreel who took an awful lot of independent decisions, to his subtextual husband/textual parabatai who’d chosen a suburban human life, all the way to Naomi (the highest in hierarchy) and to that cute angel in glasses (the lowest of the low, and rip). So while the ‘tell’ part of this story was always more or less consistent (‘angels can’t understand emotions, can’t make their own choices, Cas is the lone exception’), the ‘show’ part mostly fell short of that message: with the exception of the suit as shorthand for brainlessness and obedience, angels never acted like the brainwashed robots they were supposed to be. In fact, you could even argue that the only two angels who’re pig-headedly determined to follow the path Chuck traced for them are, ironically enough, Michael and Lucifer.
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