I really honestly believe that there’s not enough appreciation for internal contradiction and conflicting elements both in terms of characterization and relationships.
Like Cas both wants to belong and has the impulse to just go out and do things on his own. He is both proud and ashamed. He is ancient and new. Etc etc.
Dean both feels the need to be the moral authority and is crushed by the burden of it. When he needs the people around him is exactly when he pushes them away. He clings to this rough-and-tumble individualist masculinity, but all he really wants is his family to be together.
And the main thing I've been thinking of is how with Dean and Cas, we always talk about how there’s a fundamental disconnect and miscommunication between them. But I think that sometimes we forget that their relationship is built on their fundamental similarity, on them relating to one another. Like there’s at least a couple of things Misha has said about Cas that I disagree with, but one that i find really interesting is (and I wish I remembered when/where this was) that sometimes Cas feels like Dean is the only one in the world he can relate to.
Like these are contradictory things, but they are all true, and it's important that they’re all true, because contradictory things being true at the same time is was creates tension and creates movement, it's what keeps things dynamic and interesting.
The other day I mentioned a post that had a quadrant chart with a war criminal-angel axis and a virgin-slut axis, and how someone said that Cas was in the middle. But he’s not in the middle, he's at the extremes simultaneously. Like he’s not in some milquetoast little-bit-of-both center. He is all the way at the edges. And you would think it's untenable but that's exactly what makes it interesting.
And I guess that’s also my number one critique on Cas mischaracterizarion. When he's just one thing. When he’s just the poorest little self-doubting wet cat, or just a badass bamf, or just understanding and wise and empathetic, or just alien and clueless. None of those are right. And he’s not in the mushy middle of these things. He's flipping between them, he exists in the overturn, in the revolution.
Castiel is the best, most loyal soldier, and he is the most zealous rebel. He is inhuman and the most human. He is full of self-doubt and he has the courage of his convictions.
This started out as a general post and then became a Castiel post. Because Castiel. But yeah, I don’t think you can fully understand Cas, and therefore understand destiel, unless you embrace internal contradiction.
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