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awed-frog · 7 years

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Why does it feel like the show is leading to cas' death? The emphasize of Castiel's past crimes he needs redemption for, the "all other angels are making sacrifizes not you", killing Billie with the knowledge may cost him his life, the increase in Cas eps, showing the depth he'd go to for Sam n Dean - all the markers for a standard hero death build. An increase in screen time, a reason to die, the need for a heroes act, the looming warning of Billie's words etc

Hi! Man, that’s one gloomy ask!

So, first of all I have to say this - writing metas is a lot of fun, but you can’t do it right if you’re not keeping a very keen eye on what’s going on IRL. If you want to do a good job, you should know, like, everything - not only the writers’ personalities and what they like about the show and what else they’ve worked for before joining Supernatural, but also what Dabb is up to and what the producers expect and how the ratings are and, obviously, what’s up with the actors - who’s pregnant, who’s sick, who wants to move on to bigger and better things, who’s fighting with his coworkers and so on.

That said - I don’t like knowing about this kind of stuff -

(I’ll like and reblog the occasional interview, but I don’t have time to keep up with what’s going on behind the scenes and I also want to preserve the magic of it all - so, yes, I’m that person - the one who bought the ruby encrusted director’s cut edition of The Lord of the Rings, and then couldn’t bear to watch the making of DVDs, because man, one thing I don’t want to do is to see all those guys trying on ork feet while texting and reading tabloids and munching on Mars bars and ugh.)

- which mean my metas suck. Or, well - they look at canon stuff only, internal coherence, character development - but they will inevitably miss out on Very Important Stuff - stuff you need to know to answer a question like yours.

(If you’re interested in the behind-the-scenes world, I think you need to follow people like @ibelieveinthelittletreetopper and @justanotheridijiton - they are always frighteningly well-informed.)

So, you know - from a real life POV, I think Cas is safe? I remember reading Misha’s role in Supernatural was upgraded in some way, and I think that if he’d expressed a wish to leave even I would have heard about it because tumblr would have collapsed on itself and exploded, so I think we can say with some certainty that no, Cas won’t die.

From a narrative point of view, the problem with Cas is that his arc is a difficult one to solve with some elegance, and so they’re going round and round and that’s why we all have a feeling, every so often, that he’ll die a martyr and we’ll be sad forever and that will be it. And what I mean by that is, from the very beginning, Cas’ arc was about one thing: Heaven or the Winchesters? That’s it. That’s the character, and that’s the character’s conflict, and once you solve that, the story’s supposed to be over. It’s very hard to create a character for a specific reason and give them a specific conflict that’s also very relevant in the story as a whole, and then say, Okay, just kidding - this thing’s over now, let’s move on to something else. Like, really hard. I know we all want Cas living in the Bunker and being a third Winchester brother (or, even better, Dean’s boyfriend) and solving cases with them and just bloody stopping being hurt and lonely all the bloody time (*insert Crowley’s angry voice*), because he’s great and we love him so much, but from a narrative POV it’s hard to give him that and not have him become irrelevant. We already have two flawed protagonists who go on hunts (Sam and Dean), so where are we going to fit a third? This, I think, was one of the reasons why they killed Gabriel and Balthazar - because Crowley had the same narrative role (flamboyant and irresistible sexy villain with the best lines and snark up to there and you can sort of trust him about the Big Issues but boy, will he screw you over the second you turn around!) and he was better at it for a variety of reasons (like, he’s a demon so there’s a nice contrast with both angels and humans, plus he opened up a whole series of Hell-related storylines, plus he was once human, so family-related storylines, plus he’s much less powerful than an angel, or an archangel, so less deus ex machina drama, and so on and so on). It’s also why they’re writing Mary the way she is - I mean, it’s a nice touch and I like her very much and it’s also completely believable that she would be a hunter first and a mom second and whatever, but the thing is, they’ve already got a ‘mom figure’ with Jody, so writing Mary in a different way is interesting and makes the show richer.

Anyway, sorry for all this rambling - I guess what I meant to say is, I don’t think Cas will get better any time soon, but I don’t see him dying, either. At the moment, he’s a time bomb - a plot device waiting to happen. What will he do next to prove his allegeance to the Winchesters? To save Dean? To help his brothers? What crazy, desperate schemes is he mulling over? And how will the Winchesters react to that? And also - will Crowley try to profit off all the mess?

An unhappy Cas - that’s something that creates stories, because this is what gets the world moving: unhappy (or unsatified) people. It doesn’t have to be life-threatening stuff all the time, and I wish Supernatural would scale things down every once in a while, but we do need problems, and an angel going through an identity crisis is a goldmine. And another goldmine? A doomed love story that can never, ever happen, which is why Destiel - the other fundamental part of Cas’ personality - will also be on the back burner, like, forever - because, again, once that’s solved, then what?

(Which is okay, because this angst - that’s not the bad part; the bad part is this ambiguity on whether the thing is there or not.)

So, well - don’t worry about Cas. He’ll keep doing his own thing, and I don’t see him experiencing pure joy any time soon, but he’s not going anywhere. Unless Misha changes his mind, I think Cas will stick with us until the very end - when he’ll either die tragically or get his happy ending with Dean, because this is Supernatural, and there is no middle ground.

#ask #cas #castiel #narrative techniques #spn meta #sort of

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