I really agree with your "wank"(I read it as a thoughtful opinion!) and am really disappointed about the lack of reaction shots/screentime they are giving to Cas/Misha this season (and season 9 even). For a bunch of writers who claim to "zomg we love Cas!" they sure don't treat his character with a lot of respect. He is no longer an integral part of the show, and doesn't for the most part have his own journey. I want textual confirmation that his role in the winchesters lives is appreciated.
(cont) This storyline with Claire honestly seems as if they are writing him off the show. It is so entirely separate from Sam and Dean, and they seem to really care so little about Cas (even thought I’m sure you can find recent examples but it’s honestly reaching). I am not seeing what everyone else is seeing in all this separateness. It’s a complete 180 from what I understood in season 8.
Hey shoulderpadutopia! Thank you for writing this out—it made me feel marginally better about the terrible acts of wankery I keep helplessly committing every Thursday and then inflicting on y’all (though I still don’t feel any better about what I perceive as the series’s chain-yanking). In addition to the Winchesters’ biweekly flareup of Casnesia (talk to your doctor about Herpexia!), I’m also a critic of the show’s Sam erasure, weird as that may seem from someone who doesn’t passionately ship Wincest (I ship it in a kind of desultory s1-3 way) and who is ongoingly cranky about Cas’s glaring absences. But Sam also doesn’t seem to have his own journey anymore, which confuses hell out of me given how popular Padalecki is with his fans.Anyway, so obviously I agree with you—I’m not sure what positive shippers see in s10 either, other than their own beautiful glorious spirits of hope shining through. Which I think is gorgeous, and I will reblog them until I’m 100. I’m not a hater, really! I hate the haters! And I love the lovers! I’m just, you know, one cynical lady academic who lives in a 400sf casa with her elderly cat, and who spent 3 years off and on writing movie reviews, which made me even more nitpicky than to be honest I already was by nature.
I do keep circling around this idea, though: that the more they keep Dean and Cas apart, it actually has the opposite affect from the intended one, for at least two reasons. First, keeping them apart so obviously sort of implies there’s a reason to keep them apart—for example, for them never to look at each other (which doesn’t happen with, let’s say, Dean and…Garth) (I just picked him at random, mostly because he’s still alive); plus, it adds an additional charge to the few in-person interactions they do have. Basically I agree with someone I reblogged last week, who said bluntly: Your no-homo’s broken, CW, so if that’s really what you want, y’all just gonna have to get yourselves a new damn show.