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awed-frog · 7 years

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Hi! I'm really interested in seeing Human Cas as the end of his arc, and I've seen that you have one or two opinions really cool about that too so I was wondering if you would elaborate what you think of it?

Hi! Man, that is one complicated question! Thanks for giving me the opportunity to talk about it - this is going to be a bit long and quite possibly overly nerdy, so I apologize in advance.

First of all - as @thejabberwock said last week, the idea that Cas needs to become human in order to complete some kind of character development or be worthy of a human’s love or whatever else is slightly horrifying.

Interestingly, this whole theme - supernatural creatures giving up their identity to find love - is not some old mythology trope, because in Western mythology and folklore, love between a human and a supernatural creature simply doesn’t work, and there’s no way around it. On the one end of the spectrum, you’ve got your god/human relationships, and there what happens is generally a) human spies on god’s true form, dies horribly, b) god tries to do something nice for human, kills him horribly in freak accident, c) god’s friend gets jealous, human dies horribly, d) human gets pregnant, dies horribly, e) human has a lick of sense, turns down god, is raped or turns into a tree, or f) love story is disregarded because the important bit is that a hero is born, and behold. On the other end of the spectrum, you get your selkie/fae storylines, and I keep seeing posts on tumblr like Don’t hide your selkie’s pelt, #trust and #respect, and I’m sure OP means well, but that’s plain bullshit. The whole point of those stories is that you can’t change your fundamental nature, and those creatures may love a human for a time, but ultimately they belong in their own realm and that’s sad and heartbreaking, but also how the world works. So, if a selkie finds her pelt, she will desert her family even if she truly loves her human husband (and often she does: that’s the tragedy); if you sleep with a sidhe, she’ll probably come back as a pregnant doe and deliver a human baby for you and then fuck off, because she can’t help it; and in the rare cases (I know only of one) where a fae is actively trying to deny the call of the wild to be with you, well, you’ll fuck it up, because that’s what humans do (and plese, do ask me about it - that story is too long for this post but is also the best story EVER). So, well - traditionally, this stuff doesn’t work, but I’m not sure it has to do with racism and cautionary tales - after all, there are plenty of stories about men marrying princess ‘from beyond the sea’ and whatever - I think we simply know in our bones that when it comes to the divine, we’re outgunned and we should be very careful - and sticking your dick into something that’s been alive for five centuries is not a good way of being careful.

So, long and winding introduction aside - if a supernatural creature giving up their immortality to be with their human lover is not a mythology trope, where the hell does it come from?

Well - in part, it comes from the other part of our humanity: fairy tales. Now, unlike myths, fairy tales are more about teaching good behaviour than God and the afterlife, and what tends to happen there is that men are pushed to become more of what they are, while women are invited to become less of what they are (just as it happens in real life). In fairy tales, men leave their houses and their countries, pretend to be noblemen, make use of magical objects, lie through their teeth, fight outsized opponents and ultimately end up with a title and a bride. Women, on the other hand, generally keep their eyes down, accept shitty gifts gratefully, clean when they’re told to, and put others first. Giving up a piece of yourself in order to belong - that’s not what gods do; it’s what women do, and this propaganda has been so successful that we all live like that, mostly without even realizing it - we accept that our life is ours (sort of) only until we become mothers or wives; and then we put aside our own ambitions and focus on our husband’s and kids’. In this sense, it is telling that a selkie - a creature of folklore and myth - will go back to the sea and fuck you very much, but the girl who lived in an apple (an old fairy tale from Bologna), like many of her fruity friends, is freed from the enchantment when she’s eighteen - and she promptly marries the prince who’d been obsessing over the mysterious hottie who came out of his fruit bowl every night.

It’s also important to stress, however, that traditional fairy tales are only partly at fault for our selfish asses wanting angels and selkies to drop everything and cook us dinner every night: much of the blame (if not all, let’s be honest) is on Andersen’s The Little Mermaid - where, let’s not forget about it, what the mermaid wants is not only love, but also an immortal soul and access to the Christian Heaven - stuff monsters like her don’t have. And, well - I think in time Andersen’s tales came to be seen as some universal thing, when in reality they were very personal nightmares of Andersen himself - a tortured, unhappy, repressed bisexual man who’d been abused in his childhood and presumably tried to get past his own inability to have a fulfilling emotional and sexual life by writing overly grotesque and decidely anti-women stories.

(We all know about The Little Mermaid, but another highlight would be Red Shoes, in which a selfish girl who has the nerve to go to Mass wearing red shoes finds they are enchanted and can’t stop dancing until her feet are chopped off with an axe; charmingly, the heroine is named after Andersen’s half-sister.)

If we consider this precedent, I think what @thejabberwock said is spot-on: for Cas, becoming human includes some element of self-mutilation: just like the little mermaid had to give up her voice and her family, Cas would lose something irreplaceable by choosing to leave Heaven behind. And also - narratively, that choice would frame him as ‘the woman in the relationship’ once and for all, because male heroes just don’t do this stuff; and that, in my opinion, would be a huge loss. What I find so fascinating about Dean and Cas slowly falling for each other is the careful balance of traditional gender roles and how neither character is boxed in; how Dean, our muscle car and hard rock hero, is often pushed into what would be the woman’s role - only he’s not pushed at all, but walks there willingy, and that’s plain spectacular.

That said, the SPN universe chose to frame the opposition between humans and non humans has been framed in a slightly different way from traditional storytelling - even if the narrative isn’t always coherent.

So, if we’re talking specifically about angels, the original idea is that angels 1) don’t have free will and 2) can’t have feelings like a human does - a point that is clearly implied in the first one, because true free will and the ability of make your own choices are the fundamental prerequisites for forming your own opinions - and feelings. Now, in theory, it makes sense that angels wouldn’t have either; despite the daydreams of some truly adorable fanart (Gabriel holding baby Cas, for instance), angels aren’t born; they’re created in order to serve God, and that’s their only mission. Heaven started to unravel only because God left, and this is where we see the SPN narrative starting to fray - because their angels generally have both free will and feelings. From Zachariah’s refusal to serve humans to Uriel betraying his brothers to Gabriel’s anger and Balthazar’s insouciance, there’s not a robotic servant of God in sight, and I know it’s objectively difficult to write feeling-less character who are also engaging, but I always found that all those angels wishing things for themselves sort of cheapened Cas’ own journey towards humanity. Because, well, Cas becoming human only makes sense, in my opinion (and this is how the story’s being framed), in an I want to make my own choices and experience love kind of way, but in this case - from what we’ve seen, both with other angels and with Cas himself, it’s perfectly possible for angels to behave and feel like humans do, so why would Cas need to give up his Grace?

Another point is that Cas’ already given up his ‘angelhood’ in every way that matters. He’s rebelled against Heaven, he’s refused orders, he’s been tortured and silenced and imprisoned, and he’s chosen humanity (Dean) over and over and over again. Hell - as far we know, Cas isn’t even interested in God any longer, and surely heeding God’s will is, like, item one in the job description?

(By the way - Cas’ reaction to God’s coming back - that was important, show. What the hell were you thinking about? How is it possible that the subject was never discussed again? Uuuuugh.)

Furthermore, Cas hates being human. He’s tried it before, and we know he didn’t like it - at all. The storm of emotions, the need to look after your body, eating and drinking, the acute knowledge of not being powerful enough to defend yourself and your loved ones against dangers you know are there - Cas does not long to become human; what he wants is to belong, and what he needs, narratively, is the possibility to make a choice that’s not either/or - to be with the Winchesters not because Heaven hates him and not because he’s got no other friends, but because he feels loved and welcomed and wants to live with them 24/7 (feels he’s worthy of their love) - so, if anything, that’s where his character arc should be going.

As a last point - something that will never happen but would be absolutely hilarious is the David Eddings solution: in his novels, an immortal sorceress chose to renounce her powers and her eternal life to be with the (fully human) man she loved, only to find out her soul couldn’t be ripped apart like that and instead, the gods had chosen to grant her beloved immortality and powers of his own. I always found that a very sweet twist and a good compromise on the whole mortal partner + immortal partner = heartbreak thing, and man, it’d be so much fun to see Dean turn into an angel out of the blue and zapping himself all over the place by mistake as he learns to fly (and later using that ability to freak out Sam and check on Claire and have dinner with Jody). A girl can dream, right?

(All that said, I understand why so many writers, myself included, keep making Cas human in one way or another: for some it’s a question of fluff and hurt/comfort, and for others a chance to explore this tragedy, this impossible, unconceivable thing: an angel choosing to Fall for a human being - an angel choosing to love, fully and unreservedly, the mess and chaos and guilt and bad dreams that we all carry deep in our hearts. Just - wow.)

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