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Introduction of the Other

s12e3 ""fake agents" scene. "This is my partner"

S13e6 "fake agents" scene. "Here is my associate"

#small but telling difference #between the two relationships #look at how Crowley reacted to the intro #vs how Cas reacted to the intro #castiel #crowley spn #dean winchester being an asshole #light version but still #and the last panel #Cas just defeated an ancient ominpotent entity to be released back to life #but here he realized that nothing had changed #he was still subjugated #imprisoned by his love and his guilt and his sense of duty #still just an associate #still just someone that “helps” the big heros

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which one of you is responsible for this

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Angels are warriors of God. I’m a soldier.

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i think I’ll forever be annoyed at how cas’ character arc for a whole series was finding his father and even prayed to him for help a season later as a last resort, but when put in a room with him they will apparently *ignore* each other and not even acknowledge each other’s existence??

like that’s some real great writing there

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one of the saddest relationships on supernatural has to be between castiel and his siblings. the traumatic severance of such important relationships between the two breaks my heart because through their disagreements, fights, and moments of love and loyalty, the fact of the matter is that the angels no longer consider cas one of their own and have such contempt and hostility towards him that even when cas asks for their forgiveness and begs them to stand by him, they turn their backs on him. if one angel tells cas to his face that he’s as infamous as lucifer, while another says that he should not dare call himself their “brother” because he chooses his human “brothers” time and time again and when he’s so defeated and drowning in his self-hatred, misery and guilt for the damage he feels he’s yet to rectify, he gives himself over to the same brother destined to bring about the end of the world as a tool to be used in the fight against the darkness. castiel losing his brothers and sisters, their faith in him, their respect as a soldier of god, his own place in heaven shatters my soul because if anyone deserves to have their home and family restored to them it’s cas. the angel with too much heart, a fucking hero in his own right with broken wings and a bent halo has become completely homeless and lost the family he so desperately wishes to be a part of. cas losing his heavenly family as the price of gaining his “free will” is an injustice that will never be repaired.

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And more than that, he just looked… tired. Like he’d battled the world and the world had won. (insp.)

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Garrison as physical space

According to Wikipedia, "A garrison is any body of troops stationed in a particular location, originally to guard it. The term now often applies to certain facilities that constitute a military base or fortified military headquarters."

I've been wondering about what Castiel (and Anna and Balthazar Uriel etc)'s garrison on earth was like as actual physical facility, but I came up empty. In S9 we saw Bartholomew's compound that Cas took over but it was more like a corporate office (the show very much portrayed both angels and demons as suit-wearing corporate drones, using corporations as stand-in for evil and creepy power but I digress). It was unsatisfying and didn't count for me.

Got a few thoughts recently below, still very limited, and as usual I ramble on. File under "nobody needs to read".

Speculations about what Castiel's garrison may look like:

In the show the angels frequently used abandoned human structures for their purpose (early seasons anyway), so I think for their garrisons similarly they would take over large abandoned structures around the world (cathedral? castle? skyscraper? industrial warehouse? Transportation hub? Nuclear plant? Shopping mall? likely "all of the above").

The exteriors are heavily warded, so that humans can't see them (or forget it right after seeing it); and of course demons can't even approach one. The interior of any building gets instantly renovated to garrison specs by their grace.

I like these buildings for the purpose (Kimbell and the modern art museum in forth worth Tx).

I think the garrison is like, a hidden dimension of etheric plane on earth. So the angels would be able to exit their vessels and stay there as their true forms in between deployments. It's not a logical hc but I just feel sad that they have to stay on earth crammed into a tiny cage all the time.

In the photos above, the stairs next to the windows could be their version of water cooler gathering place for gossip (and jokes by Uriel). Or another place Cas would watch the earthly world, the water and the grass and the birds and the humans on the other side of the windows. And all that could be happening right in the pictures, because they were all just wavelengths of light while in the garrison.

Above left could be the armory; above right could be the infirmary.

Did the angels have private spaces (like bedrooms, though they wouldn't need to sleep) within the garrison? Seems unlikely, but if not that would be so sad? (I don't know what a "room" would be like for an angel anyway...giant crystal prism? haven't thought through the physics)

And then after the angels are no longer using it (killed off by Uriel or otherwise recalled to heaven), the space is abandoned again, but the warding remains so it stayed cloaked to the humans, however it's no longer actively maintained, so it starts to deteriorate, and nature reclaims it, perhaps even stimulated by the residual angelic energy, and trees and brambles start to grow all over the interior.

(Basically there was this whole trend of "abandoned and overgrown places" on the internet and I just thought they would be perfect as locations of former angel garrisons.)

So when Castiel came back years later to an empty garrison

(Most photos aren't mine and source/link are in the image descriptions)

#note for self #castiel #spn angels #castiel's garrison #angel Castiel Thursday #Castiel Sapta

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it is like. a little wild that in crowley's second episode they establish that his betrayal of lucifer comes with the potential consequence of being tortured in hell for eternity. unironically what a good way to establish right out of the gate how insane crowley is as a character and the risks he's willing to take with his plans

dean's like ooh he's a demon can we really trust him? he just betrayed what was essentially his god. even if crowley had any regrets about giving them the colt he sunk cost fallacied himself so hard he'd be fucked for all of time if they failed anyway. kind of interesting that out of all of them the demon was the one who had the most to lose

#crowstiel parallel

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thinking about my moirail crowstiel take. i was kinda right about that one. thinking about how cas always feels free to speak his mind with crowley, for better or for worse, because with him he's free of expectations. thinking about how cas keeps crowley in check and acts as his moral compass because he knows that trying to be good takes a lot of effort for him

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Tagged by @panthera-dei and @confusedkittensposts to list five songs I actually listen to.

I then realized I have this following post in my draft folder from the last time I was tagged by @pantheira-dei and never responded so here goes😜

Poeira de Estrelas (Star dust), Johnny Hooker

Ate a Lua (to the moon), Toni Soares

Anthem, Leonard Cohen

Longo Caminho do Sol (Long Way of the Sun), Jards Macale (the lyrics is the POV of an atomic bomb who is wandering and afraid to go off)

Ceu Azul (blue sky), Jaloo

Maré (the tide), Cris Barulins

Innocent when you dream, Tom Waits

Changes, David Bowie

Rock and Roll Suicide, David Bowie

Green Grass, Tom Waits

I am too shy to tag other people but consider all my friends tagged.

#thanks for tagging me #list game #from my godstiel and crowley on the moon WIP playlist

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"I don't understand your definition of a happy ending"

I think the reason the hallucination idea is great is that it is an honest and organic response to what the canon storyline was for Castiel and the angels. As such, canon had done such a thorough job of obliterating Castiel's identity and self worth until there is no way out for him.

I am not one for happy endings (unless Juliet is involved), as you know. But I also tried; I thought, what if the story leads to Castiel becoming self-aware, recognizing the hallucinations for what they were, and understanding the enormity of his own trauma and loss? What if he actually gets to despair and grieve?

What if in his dazed state he happened upon his old garrison on earth (garrison being the physical building), now abandoned for years but still faintly pulsating with residual angelic energy, having been reclaimed by nature and overgrown with brambles and saplings, having become a habitat for earthly creatures; what if he wandered the garrison and saw where Balthazar used to tease him, where Uriel used to tell jokes, where Anna used to layout their missions; what if all the REAL memories flooded back of his hundreds of millions of years with his family, the terrible but also the good; what if that jolted him into reality, what if that gave him clarity of everything that happened to him and the angels, what if he broke down finally and properly in his true form, the trillions upon trillions of particle/wave of his electromagnetic spectrum collapsing and washing over earth like a snowfall?

If a clean slate is warranted, let Castiel make it himself. Let his celestial collapse accrete into a black hole, let him find out at the point of singularity that it becomes a big bang that begins a new universe all his own.

Obviously also doesn't count as happy ending

Castiel’s Hallucinations

Re: as much as I love happy endings, I can't see anything happening in this case, bittersweet maybe. If the angels that Cas has been hallucinating do come to life, especially after 5-6 years of Cas' hallucination starting, I see him not believing they are actually alive, confusing them with the images he has been seeing over years. And his perception of them distorted, because while he relished the hallucinations as they kept all those beings with him, they were a manifestation of his dark thoughts. At some point the lines blured to a point he doesn't know the difference

@confusedkittensposts, you know what, you are absolutely right. Not that I doubted it in the first place, as I’ve had to repeatedly gloss over this exact issue in my “it was all a dream” fix-its.

But, since I couldn’t sleep anyway, last night I started mapping out the fic for argument’s sake – and, nope, this road doesn’t lead anywhere good. Maybe to the resurrected angels taking Castiel to Heaven, hoping they might help him up there – but not before a lot of painful shit happens :-(

#forgive me for highjacking #being a Castiel fan is just a state of grief honestly

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sleepy 💖

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S13 rewatch notes

I'm watching s13 very slowly because it's terrible and I don't really want to watch it. Case in point: Ketch and Lucifer makes a come back. And Asmodeus. There are so many annoying characters on this show. So many...

13x07:

Cas was back from the dead just one episode. Dean was back to his normal treatment of Cas. "Don't do anything stupid."

Cas walked away without response.

And later:

SAM: Sure do. I nailed down his location. He's not much further, so... Don't worry. You did tell him not to do anything stupid. DEAN: Right. When's the last time that's worked?

🔪🔪🔪

Then there was this:

SAM: Were they all witches? DEAN: Looking like. These aren't Hunter kills. They're– they're more ritualistic, like a sacrament or something.

This implies hunter kills of witches are normal, and would not warrant their investigation. But someone else kills witches, then they are going on the hunt. Such outstanding citizens.

#castiel #anti winchesters #rewatch notes

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another 13x6 rewatch note. I'm not making much headway.

"Tombstone" is a celebrated shipping episode, because suddenly Den was so happy because Cas was back! He was having carefree fun! He got to play old timey cowboy outlaw! He put a cowboy hat on Cas! "180 degree contrast to his suicidal mood in previous episode"

All I noticed was that Castiel looked sad and insecure throughout the episode. 180 degree contrast to his self-assurance when he bravely stood up to the Shadow (the symbol of his depression and self-hate) in his previous episode.

He looked tentative and stiff when he met Jack (even if he was happy to see him). He was downright annoyed on their trip when Dean was in the background enthusiastically making one-sided plans centering around Dean's interests and fantasies. Look at his expressions below, in contrast with Dean's good mood.

Why would he be happy? His child was not his anymore. He felt guilty that he wasn't there for Jack. He didn't know how to relate to him. We saw Jack showing Cas he could levitate a pencil when he first met Cas. Cas didn't get to teach Jack about his angel powers; Jack was learning it clumsily on his own under the supervision of two humans who very much hated angels. How did that make him feel? (I wrote elsewhere that he was robbed of teaching Jack anything angelic which he surely would have wanted.)

#castiel #rewatch notes #spn 13x06 #anti dean winchester #Dean critical

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Yes yes yes this is great! I am certain that's indeed what happened, and continued to happen even after he became "sane". Because these were the important "people" to him (positive or negative), the people who shaped him and his mind for thousands, if not millions of years.

I wish they never brought Lucifer back in season 11, yes, Casifer is fun and everything but they did ruin the character a lot.

One way I think Lucifer could have been in the story though is Castiel hallucinating him the whole time.

Like imagine if Cas hallucitaed like Sam, but he is not just seeing Lucifer but others too and slowly it becomes more of a Cas problem and manifestation and even a way of coping with his isolation and loneliness rather than something happening because of scars from Sam

Anna whisers all his doubts to him, Uriel points out all the 'wrongs' in the world, all the nagative aspects of humans that bother him. and Balthazar is a manifestation of disappointment. And Lucifer, he is all of Castiel's bitterness and anger and other dark thoughts, Naomi is his fear, something like that

#Castiel #spn angels

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Expendable from beginning to end

This is just a rehash of bitter Cas feelings that's already been discussed, but I can't help it after reading this 5x21 dialog. It's unreal if you really think about the situation.

CASTIEL: Dean? DEAN: Cas? DEAN: We all thought you were Dead. Where the hell are you, man? CASTIEL: A hospital. DEAN: Are you okay? CASTIEL: No. DEAN: You want to elaborate? CASTIEL: I just woke up here. The doctors were fairly surprised. They thought I was brain-dead. DEAN: S-so, a hospital? CASTIEL: Apparently, after Van Nuys, I suddenly appeared, bloody and unconscious, on a shrimping boat off Delacroix. I'm told it upset the sailors. DEAN: Uh, well, I got to tell you, man -- You're just in time. We figured out a way to pop Satan's box. CASTIEL: How? DEAN It's a long story, but, look --we're going after Pestilence now. So if you want to zap over here...

@lerry-hazel pointed out in a comment: "they cheerfully went with "I guess Cas is dead" instead of trying to figure out if he needs help - even though they had no reason to believe an angel can die from banishing sigil."

Yeah... If they all truly believed Cas was dead, it was pretty callous that they didn't express any sadness about his death in any way in 5x19 or 5x20 (funny though, how it would then parallel 15x19 and 15x20).

What's more, Dean banished Castiel in 5x18. If he believed angels could die from banishment, that means he meant to kill Cas just to get his way (or at least OK with the possibility).

However, and not because that would be OOC of him, I don't believe that Dean really thought Castiel was dead. It was a convenient lie the three humans told each other to justify not giving a damn about Castiel's life.

Then, when Castiel turned up alive, there was not a hint of relief, just hostility. "We all thought you were Dead. Where the hell are you, man?"

Wouldn't the normal (decent) reaction be, "We all thought you were Dead. Glad you are not, man."

No. Dean was angry that Castiel had the audacity to be alive yet not at his beck and call.

Then Castiel explained that he was basically "brain dead" since Van Nuys. Dean did not even say one word to acknowledge what Cas went through. Cas woke up "just in time" to be ordered around by Dean.

Castiel was gravely injured, comatose, powerless, stranded (from helping his friends); the sailors were upset, the doctors were surprised, but these "friends" had zero reaction to any of it.

They had less than zero reaction to it. They demanded that he immediately get out of his hospital bed and help them half way across the country. Once he did that, and saved their lives and their cause yet again, Bobby berated him for being sad over losing his powers. "Are you really going to bitch, to me? Quit pining for varsity years, load the damn truck".

We sometimes say the Winchesters used Castiel as a tool. But people show more concern and care even for their tools. Castiel didn't need to wait till season 11 for Ambriel to declare him as "expendable", or till season 15 for Belphegor to point out the same; if this scene isn't proof of that I don't know what is.

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Bonus 100% unnecessary footnote: How long was Castiel comatose for (from end of 5x18 to here, beginning of 5x21)?

I estimated 1-3 weeks. Castiel had been unconscious for 1-3 weeks.

I mapped the locations of each episode between Van Nuys and this moment: southern CA; Munice Indiana; western Nevada; sioux falls Indiana. If they drove without stopping it would take 80 hours. Considering they would need to stop even assuming they took turns driving, and also had to do a lot of things in the plot like staying a night in a hotel with all the gods of other religions and killing some of them, I very conservatively doubled the time to 160 hours, about 1 week.

If we go with episode airing dates then it's been about 3 weeks.

#castiel #Dean winchester being an asshole #dean critical #bobby critical #anti winchesters #bitter cas girl #spn 5x21 #justice for castiel