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November 21st
Why are hellers so fucking stupid?
Yeah hellers, tell us again how YOU are the 'real' fans of the show.
Wait what?
Don’t Call Me Shurley (11.20)
Hellers, stop watching the show with the volume muted, then you won't look like morons when you say stupid shit.
this exchange from 11.20 explains every last one of chuck's motivations in s15 (and in the entire series, honestly)
METATRON: You want to sell the best-selling autobiography of all time? You explain to me – Tell me why you abandoned me. Us.
CHUCK: Because you disappointed me. You all disappointed me.
METATRON: (Stands up and looks at CHUCK with wet eyes.) No, look. I know I'm a disappointment, but you're wrong about humanity. They are your greatest creation because they're better than you are.
It rankles, because it's TRUE. Because Chuck might've pushed the Go Button on creation, may have nudged it here and there at his whims, but I'm still not sure he intended to "create" free will. And it's almost like his "punishments" for "disobedience" to his narrative are specifically tailored to try and crush any hope or art or dreams or love out of humanity. Because those are not just things that are "human" things as Hannah once told Cas, but specifically the things that make humanity better than Chuck himself. Because it took *humans* to invent them. Chuck just took them for himself, and never actually understood or *learned* from any of it.
Metatron *did* learn. We all know Cas learned. Later on, Anael will begin to learn. Even Amara dove headfirst into the wonder and experience of creation after forgiving Chuck for locking her away. But Chuck? He never has to face himself that way. He never relents or repents or grows or changes, just finds new and innovative ways to put his characters into situations to punish them for their supposed failure. And then turns it around on them and blames HIS issues on anyone and everyone else, as if that was proof of his thesis.
And he couldn't get his "win" until he could convince his characters to just stop fighting back.
(and 15.19 was proof of concept)
11×20 don't call me Shirley gives me sooo many brain worms
I mean imagine fUCKing imagine you finally see the father who abandoned you, the warm light that shone on you and then left you cold for so many years and you ask him why he left and he won't answer and you ask him why he chose you, why you were so special he singled you out, and he says you were closest to the door and you aks him to take responsibility for the world he created and he says it's not his problem and finally you blow up at him and you call him all those names that have been bubbling just under your skin for all those years he was away and you ask one more time why he left you and he says "you disappointed me"
Whumptober Nº13 - BREATHE IN BREATHE OUT
Team Free Will as Daddies
i just need to say 11.20 hits so much harder now
chuck’s entire story needed to die, but in our universe it actually won.
you know... we are an alternate universe to Supernatural’s, so of course we don’t exist in the universe where Cas was fully able to rebel (he’s just a fictional character in this universe, like in the French Mistake), or the universe where Sam and Dean finally earned free will (they were still at the mercy of an author in this universe, who makes the choices for them).
But *our* universe is no more real than the French Mistake universe to the Sam and Dean and Cas this entire show had been about all those years. And in *their* universe, they’re free of the author now.
and this is why Metatron is my favorite:
METATRON: You want to sell the best-selling autobiography of all time? You explain to me – Tell me why you abandoned me. Us.
CHUCK: Because you disappointed me. You all disappointed me.
METATRON: No, look. I know I'm a disappointment, but you're wrong about humanity. They are your greatest creation because they're better than you are. Yeah, sure, they're weak and they cheat and steal and... destroy and disappoint. But they also give and create and they sing and dance and love. And above all, they never give up! But, you do!
Ultimately Chuck was unable to even begin to understand his greatest creation, because he never wanted to. He couldn’t see his own creation as real and separate from him.
Left with the epilogue of Chuck’s life story, where for the first time (in a Watsonian sense) the story wasn’t being dictated or manipulated for Sam and Dean, Dabb (in the Doylist sense) instead of throwing the doors to the world wide open and rendering anything possible in a life of hope and rest for the characters, he chose to finally give Chuck everything he’d always tried to force on the characters anyway, and isn’t that just... the most reductive and pathetic and honestly Chuck-inspired act of all time? In a laughably bad fashion.
He should’ve listened to Metatron, who actually learned about humanity, learned about storytelling, and about editing, and about continuity errors... and given every character the ending they deserved, not the ending the original creator thought was appropriate.
And lol... watching the cold open of 11.21 where Chuck supposedly frees Kevin’s soul from the veil and sends him to Heaven, but four seasons later we will learn that Chuck actually sent him to Hell for no understandable reason? Yeah, that’s a perfect metaphor for what Dabb chose to do with the entire narrative.
(and Dean’s tearful speech to Chuck about how he did nothing... Dean DESERVED better. SO MUCH better in the final aftermath of freeing creation from the creator who spent decades tormenting him personally.
Dean: But it didn't get better.
Chuck: Well, I've been mulling it over. And from where I sit, I think it has.
lol Chuck’s pov has been rendered irrelevant, and we all pretty unanimously agree it only got better when he was no longer able to fuck with the story for his own petty entertainment.)
So, do you think Chuck manipulated reality for Jack to be born because he was bored and wanted to write a new story, and accidentally created something that could kill him? Or was Jack purely a product of free will that Chuck didn't see coming?
Hi there! Sorry for making you wait for an answer, but I was suffering Post Gish Syndrome when you sent this :’D
I have to say I honestly have wondered this myself, and I can defend both sides in this one. And both sides are equally compelling. The show opening up the potential for ALL variables to exist throughout the multiverse, and confirming that Chuck attempted to manipulate every multiverse into following his suggested storyline while also being “surprised” by things along the way because he handed out free will to humans (with the obvious assumption that there are also universes where he just... didn’t hand out free will...), has absolutely made it plausible that just like TFW surprising him by “tearing up the pages” and “making it up as they go,” back in s4 and s5, and really ever since then, Jack could’ve potentially been an unexpected development, too.
His birth did rely on Lucifer choosing to procreate, after all, and that was apparently NOT something Chuck wanted angels to do. Then again, he didn’t make it impossible, so it could also be argued that Chuck was hoping to be surprised like this? Despite not having specifically planned for it. In that case, it’s also possible that he just didn’t know what Jack (or any archangel’s nephilim child) would be capable of power-wise. Chuck does seem to enjoy playing with fire, you know? Like creating the Hammurabi Gun in 14.20, which he said could potentially kill even him, if the shooter was also willing to die in the process. And then Sam did (non-fatally) shoot him with it. Which also seemed to surprise and anger him, you know? I think he really does enjoy the Godly equivalent of that sort of adrenaline rush of danger.
He’s said he’s bored, out of ideas, etc. Hence his lament of writer’s block to Becky in 14.04. He hasn’t just “written” one universe, but potentially infinite universes. He’s retold his favored tale so many times even he’s bored with it. Which is why TFW has interested him so much. They defy his script at every turn and force him to think in new ways. Until they apparently went too far and he knew they wouldn’t willingly just go along with his scripts anymore.
ANYWAY. Yeah, honestly? I like to think it was Chuck’s actions that drove Lucifer to “rebel” in that specific way, but Chuck also seems to enjoy “punishing” those who try to play his own role (Metatron, for example, who also tried to fit himself into Chuck’s role in Chuck’s own story, quite literally). Like Chuck is allowed to tinker with his story, but anyone else who tries will eventually be taken down. Hard.
Because no matter what twists and turns his universes might eventually take, Chuck only really cares that at the end of the story, he’s the “winner.” And that his own story is “justified.” And like Metatron told him (accused him of?) back in 11.20:
METATRON: Then, why the hell are we working on your stupid memoir?!
(CHUCK looks offended and furious as thunder rumbles.)
CHUCK: You think it's stupid?
METATRON: No, I think it's stupid to write a book nobody is gonna be around to read!
CHUCK: You told me to write for an audience of one – Me. And I — think we're finally getting somewhere.
At the end of the day, Chuck really doesn’t care about anything else... And considering how easily he snapped Jack out of existence in 14.20, I don’t think Chuck really thinks of Jack as a threat to him. And honestly Jack might NOT actually be a threat to him, you know? Jack’s just got a similar level of power when it comes to being able to write the story, and the power to make massive edits (Stop lying! and everyone stopped lying!), even if Chuck has the power to undo those edits with a snap. So I honestly don’t know, and it’s a compelling line of thought just to wonder about. :’D
I've watched season 11 again, and I have a question if you're willing to answer. In season 5, Cas was very disappointed about learning God was basically a "dead beat dad," as Dean called it. But when Cas had an opportunity to talk to Chuck, he didn't seem all that interested in talking to him or even asking a question or two. Why do you think they never had Cas interact with Chuck as a son talking to his father when it was such a huge deal for Cas in season 5?
Hi there! I’m happy to talk about this, because honestly I was personally GLAD that Cas treated Chuck the way he did in s11.
(A/N: I was halfway through writing this when my power went out last night, so now that everything is back on I’m gonna see if I remember wtf I was even talking about... if this goes sideways halfway through, blame Potomac Edison)
Cas had already realized long before exactly who and what Chuck was. I mean, not that Chuck was actually God, but that God and “His Plan” was always a load of BS.
Chuck left the angels a lot of conflicting information, and not a lot in the Free Will and Critical Thinking arena. I was just thinking about season 6, and this sort of feeds into a lot of the same distinction between Cas and the rest of the angels. My personal line of thinking earlier this evening was this line in 6.20:
CASTIEL I'm doing this for you, Dean. I'm doing this because of you. DEAN Because of me. Yeah. You got to be kidding me. CASTIEL You're the one who taught me that freedom and free will -- DEAN You're a freakin' child, you know that? Just because you can do what you want doesn't mean that you get to do whatever you want!
Major Tangent Warning, because I gotta write out what I was thinking earlier in order to explain why I am So Pleased with Cas and his reaction to Chuck in s11, which I think of as abject disdain. This is key to everything Cas had learned, to all of his growth as a person up to that point.
What Dean tells Cas here is in direct contradiction to what Raphael’s self-stated motive in restarting the apocalypse was. Also from 6.20:
RAPHAEL You rebelled - against God, heaven, and me. Now you will atone. We'll start by freeing Lucifer and Michael from their cage. And then we'll get our show back on the road. CASTIEL Raphael...No. The Apocalypse doesn't have to be fought! RAPHAEL Of course it does. It's God's will. CASTIEL How can you say that?! RAPHAEL Because it's what I want. CASTIEL Well, the other angels won't let you. RAPHAEL Are you sure? You know better than anyone, Castiel. They're soldiers. They weren't built for freedom. They were built to follow.
Raphael is just doing “whatever he wants,” in the way Dean was trying to convince Cas NOT to. Because if Dean learns anything in s6, it is the cosmic cost of his own actions. Think 6.11, and the lessons he learns having to play Death for a day. As much as Dean tries to work around the Bigger Picture of the Universe, he does understand that there is a right and a wrong, and that some things are worth fighting or even dying for, but the cost might sometimes just be too great. And unleashing all the souls in purgatory on the planet seems like just a different sort of apocalyptic level of bad... like putting out a fire with a flamethrower.
Cas had to make a choice here. He’d chosen his path every step of the way, wrestled with each decision he’d had to make over the previous year leading up to that point, but he’d passed the point of no return, and his direct prayer to Chuck went unanswered, and he never got a sign whether he was doing the right thing or not.
I’ve argued in the past that he absolutely DID get a sign, in the form of Dean telling him to stop in 6.20. But Cas dismissed him, out of pride, out of hubris, out of desperation to do the one thing he believed could give him the power to stop Apocalypse 2.0, save Heaven, and also save Dean in the process, since Dean would be back on the radar to be Michael’s vessel if Raphael succeeded in breaking him out of the Cage.
And here’s the really tangenty part of the tangent: it just made me think of all the nitwits who won’t wear a mask in public, or follow social distancing rules because MAH FREEDUMB, you’re impinging on MAH LIBERTY. BUT THE CONSTITUTION!
Because yes, we can do what we want, but we can’t do WHATEVER we want when our actions are harmful to others!
The framers of the Constitution could never have foreseen a pandemic like this. But any SOCIETY where people must coexist needs to put some constraints on liberty, and the framers absolutely DID understand this.
They also couldn’t have foreseen air travel, but we have established rules about this. They couldn’t have foreseen cars and traffic lights and interstate highways, and yet we have rules that govern our behavior there, as well. Air traffic controllers, stop signs, speed limits-- we don’t just have the right to drive 90 mph through a school zone and run through red lights. And yet nobody yells BUT MAH FREEDUMB! when they get a speeding ticket.
Polite society ALSO must include *MY* right not to be killed because someone else decided that traffic laws didn’t apply to them, see?
Basically, wear your mask and shut up about it, whiny pissbabies. This is what is required of you to live in a functioning society. You do NOT have the right to infect others with a potentially deadly illness. Full stop.
But back to Cas and the Leviathan infection he’s about to infest the entire planet with...
Dean was effectively giving him the “wear a mask, nitwit” speech, but on a cosmic level.
And Cas had to live with the consequences of his choice, with the GUILT and DEPRESSION that resulted. And he spent the next few seasons desperately trying to make up for what he’d done, to atone and do whatever he could to redeem himself-- to Dean. He’d tried to redeem himself to Heaven, but the more he eventually began to learn about Humanity, the less affinity he felt for his fellow angels, and for Chuck’s construct of Heaven.
Because back to another previous point, Chuck effectively left the angels two opposing sets of instructions: orders to watch over the earth and act as shepherds to humanity, and orders to bring on the apocalypse at any cost. Can’t do both, truly. Even Naomi will eventually say, right before Metatron stabs her in the head, that she (and the other angels) forgot that their true mission was to protect and defend humanity, and she didn’t know when or why that ever changed.
FINALLY back to the point! WHEEE!
Basically, Cas has, in the six years between s5 and s11, experienced “god-ness” from every angle, experienced his own guilt over what he now believes were misguided actions, that sometimes Humanity has a better answer, and there are some things that just aren’t worth it in the long run.
Mostly, he’s realized just HOW deadbeat Chuck has always been. And the revelation that Chuck had actually been God all along? Saw their pain and suffering at trying to STOP the apocalypse all those years before? KNEW FULL WELL that Sam, Dean and Cas were doing everything they could to try and save the world from basically the entirety of Heaven and Hell, who were plotting the destruction of humanity and most of creation with it. I mean... Cas spent s5 begging for God’s help, to save the world, to convince Michael and Lucifer that they did not have to destroy humanity, and Chuck... had done LESS than nothing. He’d sat there and ghoulishly watched the entire mess unfold like a bad tv show... oh wait... :’D
By s11, Lucifer had not reached that point that Cas had. Lucifer had many other issues, having been rejected and locked up for most of existence, and even HE had been the one in 5.22 to try and talk Michael out of enacting Chuck’s battle plan. Lucifer never had the experiences Cas did (and despite being given every opportunity to have them over the next few seasons after s11, he continues to reject those experienced at every turn anyway, only serving to highlight the difference between Cas and, honestly, most of the rest of the angels). Lucifer had a personal need for a direct apology from Chuck for everything he’d been put through-- starting with taking on the original Mark and ending with the cage.
Of course Lucifer didn’t get an honest apology, because in the end, it was all just a theoretical production to Chuck. He had never apologized, in any of his universes, to any of the beings he created. And he never would. And on some level, Cas-- via his experiences, what he himself had already come to understand about God and creation-- already understood this about Chuck.
Cas... didn’t care about him anymore. He cared about HUMANITY, about Chuck’s CREATION. The creator might be a worthless jerk, but what came out of his creation is a thing of ultimate beauty. Humanity, love, free will, and the beauty of the universe is what ends up saving the world in 11.23, so I’ve chosen to accept this read of Cas and his relationship and opinions of Chuck. Because it’s perfectly in line with the “moral” of season 11.
Plus it’s just so personally satisfying to me watching each individual character’s reactions to Chuck, and understanding how that aligns with all of their personal arcs.
Dean: brought the “how could your forsake your creation” of a broken-hearted son who has finally seen the truth. something he worked out YEARS ago between himself and his own father, so it didn’t come with that particular personal baggage and didn’t completely break him in the process (as it may have done with Cas had Chuck revealed himself, say, in 7.01...)
Sam: brought his life-long hope that God was real, his faith in God’s inherent “goodness,” did the Chuck Fanboy for a bit before seeing Chuck a lot more clearly. He was able to relinquish his idol worship of Chuck as the Savior of Humanity.
Cas: had brought his experience of Humanity and Godhood, the entire spectrum of Creation that he had experienced for himself and grown through. Cas, for all his mistakes, had never stopped TRYING to do the right thing, never stopped doing everything in his power to save humanity and creation from every cosmic threat, while Chuck himself had only hidden away and watched from the sidelines, when he’d ALWAYS had the power to make everything good and right and allow the Winchesters their peace. Honestly, what BETTER response than to treat Chuck like a bit of gum stuck to his shoe?
Metatron: who had basically spent s9 trying to turn himself into Chuck Lite, literally plagiarizing his Supernatural novels to create his own origin story as the new God, and failed miserably. What other angel could truly confront Chuck, writer to writer, and call him out for His Story? Even fallen as low as he could go, Metatron understood first-hand the responsibility of The Cosmic Author in ways even Cas couldn’t, because narrative symmetry. Metatron was always about the Word, as God’s Scribe. He was a bad copy of the original with the names scratched out. He basically wrote the worst self-insert fanfic of all time. And that gave him the narrative space to confront Chuck about everything that Cas no longer had. Cas had long since rejected that role, sided with Humanity, and smashed Chuck’s Word. The original tablet-breaker.
Crowley: carried on Crowley-ing. Doing the best he could with what he had, and somehow miraculously BS’ing his way through.
Rowena: recognized the Biggest Power in the room and ingratiated herself to it for comfort and protection, and hopefully for a bit of power and security.
Billie: gosh she just stepped in at the 11th hour to annoy Chuck. :’D
But yeah, I’ve always been incredibly pleased that Cas basically ignored Chuck in s11. Good for him.
