#spn 5.14

[virtu4l-di4ry]

cas asks dean what’s his hunger and dean assures him he’s just well fed but he’s just so used to depriving himself of his true hunger he doesnt notice a difference.

[overhighways]

supernatural 5.14 — my bloody valentine

[vaginadentatacas]

Famine made Cas so hungry for raw meat because he's a fa-[GUNSHOT NOISES] who likes it ra- [EVEN MORE GUNSHOT NOISES]

[spngeorg]

Episode 96: 5.14 My Bloody Valentine

Famine. We’re back to the Horsemen, the apocalypse, and learn some deep truths about Team Free Will. I think the most important takeaways from this episode are to remember that it was written and produced to come AFTER the episode that aired as 5.15 (Dead Men Don’t Wear Plaid), and immediately before 5.16 Dark Side of the Moon. It makes so much more sense emotionally and for character continuity that way... thanks 2012 Winter Olympics for screwing it up lol.

The surface level read of Dean and Cas’s revelations in this one obscure a much deeper truth for both of them. Sam... is the most surface-level honest about his hunger. And it’s all agonizing!

Plus we learn some very painful things about John and Mary Winchester, and just how much Heaven meddled in their relationship. Which I find doubly fascinating now that we’re watching The Winchesters. We’ll talk about all of that and more, but there’s also a lot of bonus material for this one, because I’ve talked about all of this before, as well.

LINKS!

The Superwiki page

My tag

A convenient post with lots of links about my understanding of Castiel, the nature of angel grace, and human souls

Edlund’s quote about his intent with Castiel’s hunger

My rewatch notes from April 2017 (honestly i could probably just read out this post and call it a day)

My rewatch notes from June 2019

Filming locations map

Interview with Edlund from buddytv

The CW promo

Extended promo clip #1

Extended promo clip #2

Listen now on AnchorFM, or wherever you enjoy podcasts!

[i-make-fun-of-spn-characters]

Things that really happened in SPN:

A couple cannibalized each other.

[nancylou444]

The only reason Cas had a hunger for burgers in My Bloody Valentine was because it's something Jimmy craved. If Cas craved Dean, it would have been because of Jimmy since Cas isn't human.

Exactly. 

CASTIEL It's my vessel-- Jimmy. His appetite for red meat has been touched by Famine's effect.

Jimmy was a happily married STRAIGHT man, he didn’t ‘crave’ a male lover. 

[mittensmorgul]

I don't mean to 'dog pile' but your recent discussions on s9 has brought up one of my few real peevs on the show. I recognize that the show has declared that without his Grace, Cas is human. I don't like it, but I understand that to be the case. But it doesn't make any sense? In s6 Cas says to Crowley, "I'm an angel you ass, I don't have a soul." And yet without his Grace he apparently has one? I go with it because that's what the show has declared even if i don't think it makes sense. Oh well!

Disclaimer for everyone who is not li-izumi and is reading this feeling sort of vaguely confused… I got this message yesterday, and had a very limited time to reply before having to run out and Adult™, but I sent a bunch of links to past things I’d written, which can all be found in my tags:

https://mittensmorgul.tumblr.com/tagged/angels%20and%20souls/chrono

and

https://mittensmorgul.tumblr.com/tagged/on%20the%20nature%20of%20angel%20grace/chrono

there’s some overlap between those two tags, but almost everything i’ve ever written about the subject is in there… I say “almost” because tumblr refuses to organize tags out beyond, I believe, the 5th tag, so if I rambled in the tags and then stuck the grace tags on at the end, it won’t filter into these searches… sorry… I did, however, put all the contents I had in these tags as of December 2018 into this ao3 post, which might be easier to read through, or might be more difficult to read through, and doesn’t include anything I’ve written after 12/2018…

https://archiveofourown.org/works/17019936

There’s also my tag for “Cas vs Humanity,” where I talk about all of this from another direction:

https://mittensmorgul.tumblr.com/tagged/you%20learned%20it%20from%20the%20goats/chrono

And for further reference, this is regarding the long back and forth I had with zerbe yesterday, here:

https://mittensmorgul.tumblr.com/post/190817337615/i-was-rewatching-s9-and-i-reached-the-ep-where-cas

I was originally gonna reply to this privately, but I think I did a fair job summing up my core thoughts on this in just a few paragraphs, so I’m posting it here as a sort of tl;dr for everything linked above… :’D

OKAY, NOW ON TO THE ACTUAL REPLY!

***

I don’t know if everything from that post back and forth with zerbe answered your question or just gave you more… or if any of those links I through at you in the chatbubbles yesterday helped…

But one more thing, which I’m not sure was included in any of those linked posts or not, but is something I know I’ve talked about in the past, including as recently as 14.19 when Jack was turning humans into angels, is the commonalities between angelic grace and human souls.

My theory since s4, since we first met Anna, has been that there is a core to the being of an angel that encompasses their “personalities,” for lack of a better word, and their thoughts and memories… and that this kernel of being is the “identity” of an angel separate from the “power pack” of the grace that encompasses their “mojo.”

The fact that Anna still could hear angel radio and was eventually able to access her memories of having been an angel even though she’d cut out her grace and literally been born as a human, with a human soul, was all the proof I personally needed that despite everything else they are, angels do have a nascent or primordial seed of a human soul within themselves that they can literally choose to nurture or not. And Cas, by his choices, has been nurturing that part of himself since s4.

And when Cas had the “power pack” portion of his grace cut out by Metatron, he wasn’t left “soulless,” in comparison to every other example we have of a soulless person on the entire run of the series. He was perhaps even MORE overwhelmed by his own human feelings than at any other time in his history on the show. His personality, memories, his preferences and emotional engagement with life, and the essential core of his identity wasn’t extracted when his grace was. So what was left? The show seems to be actively begging us to consider this, especially when Metatron stated directly that he believed he’d left Cas with the equivalent of a human soul in 8.23.

Cas had no wings, no “mojo,” but he had his entire personality, all his memories, everything that comprised his fundamental identity… but no grace.

The show has contrasted this by demonstrating the other way an angel can inhabit and then leave a human vessel– as that glowing cloud of grace– that incorporates all these “personality traits” and memories, etc. into the grace cloud. So clearly, that portion of an angel’s grace is somehow not the same thing as the “mojo” portion.

That leaves us to question what exactly Cas was at that point, and because of all of his other actions and choices during that time, the only reasonable conclusion I could personally arrive at was that yes, that was the equivalent of a human soul.

I mentioned Jack converting human souls into angels in 14.19, because before when I’d mentioned my theory of grace as stated above, folks countered or dismissed my theory because it apparently didn’t work in the other direction, of the potential for a human soul to have this “mojo power pack” grafted on to it, to make a human into an angel. But this is exactly what Jack did, so I feel even more content with my personal theory about what angel grace actually is, and how it functions, and how at the very center of every angel is this kernel of potential to nurture their very own human soul.

OH! And after going back and writing the long intro into this post and considering how the heck to actually tag this thing, I feel it’s important to also mention that 6.20, where Cas delivered that “I don’t have a soul” line, was written by Ben Edlund, who also wrote 5.14, wherein under the influence of Famine, Cas developed a craving for burgers that, in episode, he deflected HARD and blamed his sudden craving for red meat on Jimmy, on his vessel… but I always ALWAYS have read the fact he turned away, broke eye contact with Dean when he made that statement, as a direct deflection, as him deliberately handwaving the fact that Cas himself was “becoming more and more human” during s5, culminating with the near-complete loss of his powers by the time he wakes up in the hospital in 5.21 and could no longer deny the fact that he’d lost his angelic powers.

And for those who require Authorial Intent as proof of things like this, that’s essentially what Edlund said he was attempting to prove with that line.

https://mittensmorgul.tumblr.com/post/159579521875/i-always-reserve-in-castiels-overall-makeup-the

“I always reserve in Castiel’s overall makeup the fact that there is an aspect of him that is purely flesh and purely human, which can function as it did in an episode before as a real Achilles’ heel, when he started to eat meat, because he just loved red meat. He couldn’t stop himself.”— Ben Edlund (May 6, 2011) in Supernatural’s “Cliffhanger Is Deeply Involved With Castiel’s Fate” (via justanotheridijiton)

I wrote in far more detail on that episode, and what it implied about Cas himself, right here:

https://mittensmorgul.tumblr.com/post/159772440305/514-same-cas-same-lizbob-was-laughing-at-me

I hope that covers it, but if not, please feel free to poke at it some more :’D

[mittensmorgul]

5.14, My Bloody Valentine

When the cold open has two people literally devouring each other... D:

ALICE Ugh! I've been so alone. So empty... RUSSEL I know. Me too. ALICE I want you, Russel---All of you... inside me...

and just... in the context of Lucifer and Michael wanting to literally get all up inside Sam and Dean... >.>

I think there's already been plenty written on the various hungers TFW experience under Famine's twisted influence (bearing in mind I think what Dean actually craved most was SATIATION, and that's why he wasn't interested in food or sex or anything else in this episode, because he finally felt SATED):

https://mittensmorgul.tumblr.com/post/167126681825/emptiness-and-lies

https://mittensmorgul.tumblr.com/post/163806291830/12-so-ive-seen-people-suggest-that-that-the

And possibly most of all:

https://mittensmorgul.tumblr.com/post/159772440305/514-same-cas-same-lizbob-was-laughing-at-me

and plenty about the context for learning about the long con Heaven's been running on the Winchester family for at least four decades (and probably a HECK of a lot longer, since Michael's informed them their bloodline goes back to Cain and Abel...):

https://mittensmorgul.tumblr.com/post/180089000785/hi-i-am-really-curious-in-cupids-magic-in

And in the end, this was all a grand manipulation that leaves Sam AGAIN detoxing from demon blood in the panic room, while Cas tries to reassure Dean. But ironically without Famine's influence sating him, Dean suddenly feels even more empty and hopeless than before. And he actually goes outside, looks up at the heavens, and prays for help... and ouch... knowing this is exactly the tipping point they'd been setting Dean up for, so the angels would be ready to sneak up behind him and shove him over the edge...