#cassinidean thinks

[cassinidean]

The Last Summer Crop | Supernatural | G, 1.3K

When they set out, it was summer, but driving back now, it’s starting to feel like fall.

For Suptober Day 01: Maze/Maize

[cassinidean]

brighter than all of the suns in the firmament | Supernatural | G, 4.3K

They pull Cas out of the Empty like a gunshot. Like a harpoon. Like a spider.

He's exhausted.

[cassinidean]

I miss spnwin. :(

[cassinidean]

Accord | Supernatural | G, 200w

The phone line crackles and statics and rustles, and Claire is silent.

[cassinidean]

Yes, you have been given a life in which none of your suffering will ever be meaningful or justified. I am asking you to endure it anyway. (x)

[cassinidean]

I am not a Casgirl so this has been requiring some thought and stuff but I think the thing about Cas. Late-seasons Cas, S12-15, maybe. Besides all the other stuff. Is that Cas is trying really, really hard to love people, both in a specific way and in a more overarching way. And it is really, really, really hard for him.

His models for this are Dean and Sam Winchester, and Dean’s love is both almost entirely action-based and also almost entirely...reflexive? Might be a good way to put it. He’s got contact empathy. If you’re an even vaguely sympathetic figure and you kick around in Dean’s orbit long enough (which in early seasons is like...half an hour), Dean’s going to end up caring, intensely, about what happens to you. It’s part of what makes him a good hunter, but it also burns him out.

Sam doesn’t have that reflexive attachment; he’s both a lot more vocal about his (intended) emotional response as well as more deliberate in the application of his compassion and sympathy. There’s some change pre- and post-cage, but generally Sam is quite intentional about deciding to care about others, and the boundaries for this are usually demarcated by “good” and “good intentions,” which is why in general he has more flexible boundaries when it comes to SPN’s monster problem.

A quick aside: there’s an exception to his here which I’m still trying to puzzle out, but basically, I think once you make Sam’s blacklist, you’re blacklisted for good. And Dean is far, far more likely (especially post-hell, I think) to be willing to compromise a moral or an ideal in order to find a middle-ground solution, and he’s also faster to agree to an alliance with a “bad” person in order to do that. Crowley is the obvious example, but Dean is also usually the first person to pause and hear out the monster of the week, unless they’ve done him a grievous personal harm (by which I mean, hurt his family or else done something to insult him).

These are Cas’ primary models for “love” (aside from Bobby and Jimmy, but, well...another post). And neither of them are quite suited for him. I think the gap between what Cas feels and what Cas thinks and does is quite narrow, but it’s very deep, and bridging that gap is extremely complicated for him. The difference between sensation and emotion is a thin, thin line, and experiences like frustration, anger, grief, distress, loneliness etc. aren’t processed too far away from hunger, thirst, overstimulation, exhaustion, and so on. And Cas is used to blocking all of that out, or feeling them all at once, and he’s had very little practice with regulating them, picking out which sensations he needs to feel and which he needs to ignore. Dean’s method doesn’t work for him, because he doesn’t allow his emotional experience to run straight through to his decision-making to his processing, because there’s simply too much he’s experiencing at any given time for that to work.

But Sam is almost algorithmically careful in his dealings with others (it’s part of what makes him such a good leader) while maintaining a lot of hope and optimism (some insanely hard-fought-for-optimism and I adore him for it) about people in general and the potential of the human experience. Sam believes in these things; he has faith in them. And Cas doesn’t quite want something to believe in, either; he’s been there, done that, decided it wasn’t for him. It’s not that he doesn’t believe in the promise and the good of humanity. It’s that he wants to love as a commitment.

And it doesn’t come easy to him at all. He’s a hypocrite. He’s prone to justifying the means. He alternates between overly cautious and incredibly reckless. He throws himself into things and he’s prone to a kind of reluctant narcissism and he’s really petty. There’s that Misha Collins quote about how Cas doesn’t really have a scale for relative importance that I think is kind of bang-on in certain ways. It’s hard for him to know what’s important and what’s okay to set aside. And he knows all this about himself and tries to account for it, most days.

So he’s done all of this really big stuff for humanity and he ends up here, on the planet, trying to do things in a mundane kind of way, and trying really genuinely to be patient and loving and kind to everyone he meets. And it’s hard. It’s hard because regulating his emotions enough to muster up the patience and the kindness doesn’t feel like love, because love is an emotion, too, right? He gave a lot to be able to feel it, not just believe in it. And it’s hard because love doesn’t drown out all the other sensations slamming into his processing power all the time. He has to be deliberate about it. He has to pick it out. It’s exhausting. He doesn’t know any other way to go about it.

And he still decides every day -- deliberately, intentionally -- to do it anyway, because it’s worth doing. That’s Cas.

[cassinidean]

Alright, so they have a dialogue problem, I think. It cleared up significantly over the first half of the episode, and I understand they’re trying to avoid the “sit on the Impala and talk about feelings” scenes, but it’s getting in the way of the urgency of the plot.

If I were to fiddle with the script, I’d take that early scene with John and Mary in the kid’s room and pare it way back. Something like...

--

The room is bright with the mid-morning sunlight, blankets strewn about on the bed and pictures tacked to the wall. It hits him, then, that there’s a whole child sequestered away by some kind of monster, and it strikes a chill down his spine that he thought he’d left far behind and far away. They’re in Kansas. This place should be safe.

Mary’s pushed on ahead, like she always does, scanning a brief hard eye over the careful crayon drawings and the toys lined up on the shelves. Her flashlight casts everything in harsh yellow light as she pans it over the room.

John swallows. “You knew these kids pretty well, huh?”

“Yes.” Mary’s on her knees, now, curls swept up over her shoulder and hands running over the walls, the little child-sized chair, the floorboards. “Find anything?”

He doesn’t even know what he’s supposed to be looking for. “Not yet.” He goes to the dresser and tugs open a drawer. There’s a whole pile of art supplies inside: markers, glitter pens, coloured paper and pencils. “Been a long time since I’ve been in a kids’ room. Mine was all army men and baseball cards. Wanted to be a catcher for the Kansas City Athletics.”

When he glances up, Mary’s moved on to the bed, tugging reflexively at the loose blankets and folding them military-perfect around the corners. She checks under the pillow.

“Any luck?” John tries.

Of course that’s what gets her to look up, meeting his eyes across the room and shaking her head. “There has to be something here.” She frowns past him, at his lax hand on the dresser. “John, this is an emergency.”

Everything is always an emergency, and it still never feels like enough. “I know, I know.” He digs through the next two drawers and stares at the happy mess of dress-up clothes: nurse, firefighter, unicorn, police. “What did you want to be when you grew up?”

No response, then, just a long silence and then a creaking scrape. By the time John’s jumped over to help, she’s already pushed the bed aside, reaching down and flipping a long strip of rough-woven cloth up into her fingers. “Bingo.”

“What does it mean?”

“I don’t know. We’ll go back and talk to Lata.”

And then she’s pushing past him to the door. “Mary.” He shoves the bed back into place. “Mary.”

Mary stops with her arm outstretched, white-knuckling the doorknob. She doesn’t turn around. “I didn’t,” she says. “Happy?”

John catches the door just before it swings shut.

[cassinidean]

Anything Here | Supernatural (TV 2005) | G, 2K

It's hard to pin a guy down from your sickbed, but Dean's already had too much time to think. He's got his piece, and he's finally got the time, and he's going to say it, come—well, the usual.