#to all the dean-coded Tumblr users

[scoobydoodean]

you upset the samgirls so bad that I just saw a post about how fandom is not about college essay analysis and that it's okay to have emotionally irrational interpretations of the text (no one ever said otherwise) due to everyone bringing their own history and personal context to watching the show, and like yeah sure that's fine, but why is there a problem when someone challenges those interpretations with facts and logic? why must deangirls allow our fave to be slandered and mischaracterized based on events that never actually occurred?

every single fandom has those people who turn their make blorbo into a wet sopping female coded omega (dean fen included) but it's only samgirls and casgirls that insist those readings are canon and that dean is some mean evil abusive patriarch then proceed to get mad when deangirls argue against that 😭

EDIT for Anon: In the comments, a Tumblr user who believes you may be referring to a post they made makes it clear that they were not talking about me at all. This is also why I typically prefer not to receive mail that starts with "I saw a post about you". I've already said I will not respond to mail containing the usernames of other people whose takes people want me to talk about, but I think from now on I'm just not going to answer mail that starts with, "I saw a post" tbh.

Original response below

I mean I don't know if whatever post you're referring to was prompted by me, Anon, because I only posted a few minutes before I got this. Just one single thing. I've just been making rewatch posts for like three weeks (and enjoying myself a lot while doing so). If whatever post you saw was prompted by me, maybe people who don't like me should stop stalking my blog that ig upsets them so much that they sit around refreshing my tumblr page waiting for me to say anything they can possibly misconstrue to be a vague about them.

I have been enjoying diving deeply into the show lately. The idea that someone out there is mad and thinks I am doing fandom wrong and somehow invalidating their emotions by blogging on my own blog and analyzing the show in the way I prefer instead of the way they prefer is pretty weird. (While at the same time saying I am trying to control how they analyze it, I'm gathering? Not hypocritical at all.)

But yeah god forbid I do the same thing deancrits do all of the time i.e., talk about takes I don't agree with on my blog. That's so mean of me. Bullying behavior really.

#my previous post also is about the manner in which these things are expressed by some. Not a comment on talking about it at all being “bad”. #mail #If samgirls and I are at war then I don't know about it. I simply do not interact with them.

[goncharov-propaganda-factory]

Mishapocalypse: what the-

Hey, former redditors! Welcome to the hellsite, we're all glad that you're here (especially you 196 folk you warm my dead, frozen heart). While on the whole you seem to be adapting AMAZINGLY fast to site culture, if any of you are confused over one of our founding myths this may help.

(or if you're a veteran tumblrina and just want to read an essay that's fine too)

(others key parts of our national identity to learn about if you're curious include Goncharov, I Love You, Color of the Sky, My Three Girlfriends, and many more)

also if you don't want to read my entire fucking essay take this and run

but if you want to know the deal with this man, read on!

Mishorigins

Supernatural is a 2000s-ass TV series that ran on the CW from 2005 to 2020. It's about two brothers, Sam and Dean Winchester, who are "hunters" that protect people from various supernatural entities. The show was originally planned to last five seasons, with an angel character named Castiel (this is important) slated to be revealed as God in the finale. Castiel (nicknamed Cass by the CW and Cas by objectively correct people) was introduced in S4.

left: Castiel, the gay angel of our collective dreams. right: Misha Collins.

The Man Behind the Mish

Misha Collins is a straight man who was forced by a cruel and uncaring god to play a heavily queer coded angel on a TV series intended for any demographic BUT gay teens (which is what it became). His performance as Castiel, and the large queer teen fanbase he drew, were a driving force behind a show would ultimately continue for three times longer its original plan.

I don't have anywhere else to put these facts so they go here

he was an intern in the Clinton administration during the Lewinsky scandal

he knows Tibetan throat singing

he was arrested for climbing onto a bank roof (he was trying to... read a book? 👀👀👀)

he probably made Jensen Ackles (the guy who played Dean less homophobic? Maybe?

he held a scavenger hunt called GISHWHES several times for his charity, Random Acts

cool guy

he later played Harvey Dent on Gotham Knights this very year (2023)

there's icebergs of this shit

he farted on an airplane once

Mishion: Impossible

April 1st, 2013 is a date that will live in mishinfamy. Tumblr a main hub of the SuperWhoLock fandom (a mega-fandom amalgamating Supernatural, Sherlock BBC, and Doctor Who), was the only place the Mishapocalypse could happen.

For boring deets I'll redirect you to the KnowYourMeme page but these images should sum it up.

left: a list of Tumblr users, circa 2013. right: a fine example of Misha culture

There are two takeaways here:

You cannot outrun Misha.

You will become him.

On April 1, 2013, a significant portion of Tumblr changed their avatar to the now-iconic Mishapocalypse photo and their handle to "Misha Collins", followed by similar waves of Mish across other social media sites.

above: the modern Prometheus

This beautiful event was emblematic of pre-Dashcon Tumblr, an era as far away from us now as 1200 AD was from 1208 AD. You'll be pleased to know that the Mishapocalypse returns every April 1st to grace these ancient halls, a small group of pilgrims tracing new paths on the well-worn floor of the Church of Misha.

(this isn't to say the Supernatural fandom is dead, it's just somewhat diminished from it's glory days.

Thanks for reading! Reblog if you liked. I'll leave you with a bunch of Mishimages of my own that I posted for Mishapocalypse 23 (the 10th anniversary). Shameless self-promotion!!!

in clockwise order:

The Mona Misha

Mishius

Misha's extra hour in the ball pit

The Mishian (with Mish Damon)

Future ideas include Salvator Misha. Feel free to ask any questions you have, and I hope you enjoy Tumblr.

Happy Mishing!

ps I have not actually watched supernatural you just learn all of this via osmosis

#196 #mishapocalypse #reddit #reddit refugees #Tumblr #explainer post #r196 #long post

[kcthefirebreathing-bitchqueen]

Mixed Fandom fic rec master list

I have been accumulating this for MONTHS now and just feel it right to share. Pretty much all of this is smut so minors do not interact or I will literally piss my pants

ACOTAR

Rhys x reader by arizona2004

Bat Brothers x Feyre "Steamy Punishment" by ao3 user CeliaMoonbeam

Bat Boys x Feyre "A Solstice to Remember" by ao3 user yafamn92

Cassian x Reader -> Bat Boys x Reader "Why Have One When Theres Three?" by Tumblr user arizona2004

Azriel x gn!Reader by Tumblr user gothicbabydolls

Azriel x Reader "Unholy" by Tumblr user azrielscrown

Azriel x Reader "revenge" by Tumblr user honeybeefae

Cassian x Nesta "Something, Anything" ao3 user thewayshedreamed

Criminal minds

Hotch x reader

Hotch x reader "110 degrees" by Tumblr user sunshinemunchkin

Hotch x stepdaughter!reader "Daddy's Day" by hotchs-bitch

Hotch x Babysitter!reader by ssahotstuff

Forbidden fruit (son’s gf!reader) series by laurensprentiss

Pt. 1 Pt. 2 Pt.3 Pt.4

Spence x reader

dereksgf!reader x Spencer "Bro Code Be Damned (S.R.) by imagining-in-the-margins

Spencer x BAU!Reader "Never Have I Ever" by imagining-in-the-margins

Spencer x Reader "Bound Together" by foxy-eva

Spencer x Reader series "Powerless" by wattled user mjwritesfics

Hotch x reader x Spencer "Three's a Crowd" by radiant-reid

Supernatural

Dean x Reader "Needing & Wanting" by luci-in-trenchcoats

Stranger things

Eddie x reader

Eddie x reader enemies to fuck buddies by munson-trashcan

Pornstar! Ghostface! Eddie x Pornstar! Reader by prettyboyeddiemunson

Eddie x Reader "a burning desire for you" by usedtobecooler

Best friend!Eddie x reader “always have been”

#spencer reid smut #hotch x y/n #eddie munson #dean x you #criminal minds #spencer reid #aaron hotchner #acotar #nessian #feysand #az being hot #azriel x reader smut #pretty much just smut #kcisbeinghornyagain #minors shoo #college

[bisexualbaker]

Dreamwidth Alternatives to Talking in the Tags

(Originally posted on Dreamwidth so I would have less editing to do when cross-posting.)

There's a number of technological and cultural shifts Tumblr users would have to make when switching to Dreamwidth; image hosting (and the lack thereof) is probably the biggest technological switch, but the one I anticipate giving people the most trouble is tagging.

On Tumblr, you can add pretty much whatever you want to the tags, in any order you want; there is no limit to them, and they're essentially used as a secondary comment system.

Not so for Dreamwidth! Dreamwidth has a hard limit on the number of tags any journal or community can register; it's 1,000 for free users, 1,500 for basic paid accounts, and 2,000 for premium paid accounts, and they're basically entirely for organizational purposes. One of the ways that Dreamwidth's code reflects this is that it lists tags alphabetically in posts, not in the order that they were written or added. If you want to include a stream of consciousness in your tags and have them make sense, your best bet is to find a way to make them alphabetical. There's also a hard limit of 40 characters per tag for everyone, regardless of account type (paid or free).

There are other organizational options, Memories chief among them, but it's not really possible to opt out of tags being organizational and switch them to being communication. So what, if anything, can you do instead?

(Here's where the post gets long.)

The first option, and most popular all the way back to Dreamwidth's predecessor, is icons! Free accounts get 15 icon slots for images of up to 100x100 pixels, and up to (IIRC) 60kb in size. Supported file types are .jpg, .png, and .gif—so yes, this means your icons can be animated! If you have the perfect reaction gif to go with a post or comment you want to make, as long as it's the right size, you can include a tiny version of it with your post or comment!

Icons also come with an extra nifty feature: Keywords. While this is, in part, to help you select which icon you want to use from your drop-down menu, the keywords are also visible as alt text, and you can have multiple keyword options for the same icon. So if you want to add a little bit of subtext to what you're saying, you can have some additional interesting content for those who go looking.

For example, you can replicate the very popular Supernatural Current Events meme via icon form: Make a gif where the first part is Castiel confessing his love, and the second part is Dean looking constipated and saying, for example, "Today's top headlines are..." Then for keywords you can use "Supernatural", "Queerbaiting", and "Current Events". You can then choose whichever keywords you want to use for the post or comment that you're making. Just talking about Supernatural stuff? "Supernatural" is a fine keyword. Complaining about media dangling representation in front of fans only to yank it away and go No Homo (etc)? "Queerbaiting" is a fantastic choice. Want to announce some breaking news? "Current Events" is your contender. And all three of those keywords will show the same icon.

Each of these options add a little bit more nuance and subtext to the icon you're using, and, in my opinion, increase the fun factor accordingly.

.

Another fun thing to do is play with titles. While titles can be used straightforwardly, as they are in this post, they can also be used to add a little bit of off-the-wall commentary. Want to include a note that is relevant to the post but doesn't quite fit in the body? Is it something you might put in the tags on Tumblr? Consider putting it in the title!

This works both for posts and for comments. Doubly for comments in fact, aside from contexts where the field is used for organizational purposes, such as fic memes and the like; mostly because the title field is so rarely used otherwise in comments. People do use it on Dreamwidth, and some people do so often, but the majority of Dreamwidth users leave the title field blank most of the time. If you've got something to say that is really more on the margins of the rest of the comment, the subject line is somewhere you can consider putting it.

One final option that I can't say I've seen people using, but is certainly possible: The edit field. When you edit a comment, you can type in the reason you're editing it in a field that shows up at the bottom. Mostly it's reasons like "I forgot to close a tag" or "I thought of something else to add to the comment" or "I found that link I was talking about", but you could use it to add Tumblr-tag-like commentary to your own comments. Caveats that this is only an option for comments (editing posts doesn't have that same field) and that you can't edit a comment that someone has replied to. The latter portion is to try and keep communication honest and clear, though there might also be technological reasons for it.

.

The final option is post-specific (can't be done with comments) and are what Dreamwidth refers to as "Currents": Your Current Mood, Music, and Location.

Mood has a drop-down list of pre-selected mood options, some of which make more sense than others (how is "recumbent" a mood?). If you pick one of those moods, you may also get an associated image from one of Dreamwidth's provided/server supported Mood Themes; these are small and simple, and can be animated, but frequently aren't. You can check the available ones out here. If you have a paid account, you can also upload a custom mood theme, which you can make yourself or may be able to find made by someone else. Making them can take a while, but it can also be very rewarding to find or create just the right image for every mood in the menu.

That's not all, though! An important thing about Mood is that you can also input a custom mood. Not to be confused with a custom mood theme, a custom mood is an area where you can ignore the pre-selected drop-down menu of moods and fill in your own, such as "over the moon", "sick of this shit", or "what the actual fuck". (Like Tumblr tags, moods are typically not capitalized.) Just using the Custom Mood field will not give you an extra image to use for your mood, but it can be combined with the Mood drop-down menu to display alternate text for the selected mood. For example, you can select "ecstatic" as your mood and input "over the moon" as your custom mood text, and the "ecstatic" image will show up with fresh text.

The Custom Mood field only allows up to 30 characters, but there's still a lot of potential for fun combinations.

The second "Currents" field is Music, but honestly it can just be whatever you're listening to. Your teeth grinding as the government makes yet another ill-informed decision? Your cat purring and taking away your worries? Your heartbeat going a mile a minute in the middle of a horror movie? The rain outside? You can even go abstract and claim to hear the sound of silence, and not in a Simon and Garfunkel way. Or the whooshing of a point as it sails past the heads of people who willfully misunderstand.

You don't even have to limit yourself to sounds, real or imaginary, you can just put text; same way with Mood and Location (next). Whatever you put in that field will be listed as Music in your post, but that doesn't mean it is.

The Music field has room for 74 characters.

Last is the Location field. There's some pretty important stuff to know about this one, so I'll just copy-paste from Dreamwidth's FAQ about Currents:

The location text area is linked to Google Maps. Whatever you fill in here will appear as a link to a map of that location when viewed on the entry. The field does not auto-detect your location: you must make a deliberate choice to type it in. If you add a ZIP code or street address the map link may pinpoint your location to others, so think carefully about your privacy and comfort level before specifying a physical location. You can also choose a non-specific location such as a city or country, or a descriptive phrase like "at home" or "in the library".

So yes, you can put your literal GPS location in the Location section! I don't personally recommend it for safety reasons, but it's an option.

You can also lie about your location and input the coordinates for anywhere in the world. You can go fantastical and claim to be in Narnia or in a galaxy far, far away, or you can say that you're surfing the waves of your own imagination. You can say that you're lost in grief or drowning in cookies. Or you can just continue whatever train of thought you were going with from Mood and Music. Just know that it can and will attempt to connect with an actual real-world location if you input one.

As with the other two fields in "Currents", it's up to you what you put there, but the Location field allows you a whole 80 characters to do is.

Also, despite the order they're listed in the post window, they show up in the order of Mood, Location, Music in your actual post, so keep that in mind as well!

So there you have it. Dreamwidth may not have "talking in the tags" the way Tumblr does, but it does have some other forms of communication that you can still have fun with.

(Side note: You might also be able to do fun stuff similar to the "Currents" options with the Age Restriction section, but I haven't tried that one, and honestly it might be heavily dependent on the registered age of who's viewing it. If you're making a fun joke that you don't want people to miss out on, maybe stick to the other options.)

#let me tell you about #dreamwidth #let me tell you about dreamwidth #dreamwidth help #dreamwidth 101 #how to dreamwidth #dreamwidth culture #long post #tumblr alternatives

[twohundredeightyone]

A Twitter User Watches Supernatural

Okay, some background first…

I am a Twitter user, a former Twitter user. And have decided in order to fit in here I need to get into the mindset of a Tumblr user. Now I figure the best way to do this is to watch hit CW show Supernatural, and post about it here. I’ll be giving my recap and review as an Ex-Twitter user and hopefully by the end I will understand what Tumblr is all about. My partner is an avid Tumblr user and Supernatural fan, so they will be fielding any questions I have along my pilgrimage. So here we go…

Season 1, Episode 1: Pilot

Recap

Okay so the show starts with baby Sam and baby Dean, living the American Dream with their parents. Their mom (who’s name I have forgotten) is awoken in the middle of the night by Sam’s crying, a theme I have to imagine is persistent throughout the show. She sees a man at Sam’s crib who she thinks is Daddy Winchester. I have been told it was not Castiel and Castiel doesn’t show up until much later. She eventually realizes this guy wasn’t the dad and she gets got.

We get a nice little time jump and get to see Sam Winchester (played by Jared Padlock, and who is not to be confused with his character in Gilmore Girls, who is named Dean) is living the life. Dean breaks into his house, makes it known he loves Smurfs, and invites Sam on a cross country road trip to find their missing Dad. We cut to the thing that Papa Winchester was chasing and *gasp* it’s a lady. A lady that kills people! Sam and Dean impersonate some Federal Agents which is probably half a dozen different crimes; it was at this point I realized this show was incredibly queer-coded and that Castiel was probably introduced to make a dynamic less like Game of Thrones-like. The Winchester Brothers eventually find out that there was a lady that jumped off a bridge near where all these disappearances are happening and it turns out the ladies children drown in the tub. Dean’s many crimes finally catch up to him and he is arrested but Sam, The Lamer of the Winchester Brothers, is able to go make an old man cry over the death of his wife and children. Dean is able to escape prison and multiple felony charges with his quick wit and charm. The brothers meet up on the bridge where they see the ghost of the dead lady. It seduces Sam, for whatever reason… Dean was right there. Dean tries to shoot this ghost multiple different times, and eventually Sam forces the mom to go back to her home, where her ghost children take her to super mega hell I guess. Sam goes home only for the same thing that happened to his mom to happen to his girlfriend! I can hear Sigmund Freud writing about that one. Thankfully Dean is able to save the day with his charm and smirk and he then convinces Sam to hunt some more bad guys with him.

Review

This was a pretty good first episode, aside from the whole thing being filmed like the trailer for a 2005 horror movie. I’m definitely Team Dean, Sam is like that guy you invite to a party and then he sits in a corner and broods until you ask him what’s wrong and then he tries to read you his poetry. Their dad seems fine, I hope he’s not abusive or something.

#supernatural #spn #superwholock #twitter #supernatural dean

[rihon-scribe-some-writer-guy]

The Hustle of Swagbucks

There’s an article going around in regards to how individuals can earn money on the side for relatively easy work. One of the side hustle that it mentions is Swagbucks. Swagbucks is a site that acts as a survey platform for entities who want to reach a large demographic. The way that I imagine how the business of Swagbucks works is that the site charges the surveyor a fee to either set a subscription to post surveys or a fee for each survey posted. Using those profits, they then entice users to answer the survey with the promise of Swagbucks- a point system used for either a deposit of money into a PayPal account or digital gift card codes.

While I’m well off with my finances, I’m legitimately bored out of my mind most days at my super slow job. This insatiable boredom has led me to seek out outlets that I otherwise wouldn’t have pursued. And so, I joined Tumblr. And also Swagbucks.

Let me get straight to the point: I can’t recommend Swagbucks as a good side hustle in pure honesty. The main reason is that I feel that the site doesn’t reward survey takers well for the time that they spend answering multiple surveys.

Testimonial: Before arriving into my office on Monday morning, I set up a Swagbucks account. In the registration process I ended up receiving 300 Swagbucks just for setting up the account. After getting to the office, I come to find out that that Monday was going to be a slow day: Grading was completed, all students who were graduating no longer needed consulting, the only things that were needed from me was to give a report on university awareness event, meet with a no show, and conduct a review with the Dean who wants to give me a promotion. That 8-hour work shift was less than two hours of me doing simple work and more than six hours of answering surveys on Swagbucks. Throughout that first day I accumulated just shy of 1000 more Swagbucks, leaving me with a total of 1250 Swagbucks.

Gosh Golly, Professor Scribe! That’s so many Swagbucks!

Calm down there, Beaver McCleaver. The thing with Swagbucks is that they are worth pennies. I’m not being facetious. Redeeming 1250 Swagbucks mean that I would have to settle for $12.50 or less. With eight hours put into taking monotonous surveys, I’m earning about 1.55/hour.

Swagbucks’ set up feel rather disingenuous. At an initial glance at the menu of surveys, it seems like there’s ways to maximize your profit with the side gig. I saw a survey that would award 250sb on completion and the time reported to complete was at 9 minutes. No joke: I chose to take that survey, spend a minute answering questions only to be sent back to the Home Screen with a message box saying, “Oh, that survey wasn’t for you. Here’s a Swagbuck for your time.” Therefore, a potential 27 cents per minute dropped down to a penny for a minute. This leads to users devoting extreme amounts of time and effort to meet that reported “earn $140 dollars simply for taking surveys”. It could be possible, but I’m not willing to spend full time hours to earn pennies.

Swagbucks doesn’t earn my recommendation for a side hustle. Even if you’re beyond bored, I feel that your time would be better spent on other endeavors.

#side hustle #recommendation denied #bored #Swagbucks more like bad bucks

[corancoranthemagicalman]

If you’re Dean-coded and you used to sympathize with John Winchester as a broken man missing his wife and trying his best even if he didn’t always do great and you were an apologist for him until you grew up to realize his suffering was no excuse for what neglect and abuse his sons received in their childhood but you hadn’t realized it because John Winchester was Dean’s hero and he was your hero and you didn’t realize how strongly you and Dean had become one until you finally grew up and out from under John Winchester’s shadow and you know it clap your hands.

#John winchester #whoops there it is #love his character hate the man lmao #he's not quite Umbitch from HP to me but yanno I get it #dean winchester #to all the dean-coded Tumblr users #spn #supernatural #sam Winchester #the Winchester family #supernatural spoilers #John winchester's journal #Jensen Ackles acting choices did this to me #cqueue #everything is in my queue anymore I just don't always tag it

[steveyockey]

Non spn anon: thank you for answering my confusing question, sorry it was confusing 😅 I must say I’m so intrigued by all the Dean gender discussion posts I’ve seen so when I learned there was a satin underwear moment I was like ?!?!?!!!!! On SPN of all shows? Just so much to unpack here. Anyway thank you again 🙏🏻

okay like I know you didn’t actually ask a question but this ask has been driving me crazy because “on SPN of all shows” non spn anon you wouldn’t know this because you, of course, do not watch spn, but this sort of slippage occurs all the time with dean! as was written in the gospel of dean by tumblr user marcusantonius, the slippage occurs so many fucking times (he likes to wear nightgowns! he knows purgatory is name of a gay club in miami! he’s made everyone he lives with watch lost boys over thirty times! he recites rent lyrics! soft spot for dirty dancing [“swayze always gets a pass”]! loves doctor sexy aka the in universe equivalent of greys! weird kinky sex references about zorro masks and whips!) and with such an earnestness that it actually actively reconstitutes dean against the superordinate classification of Absolute Heterosexual Male the narrative leans on as his assumed identity! 

the thing about a lot of meta on gay/bi readings of dean is that. well. da miller has a piece called “anal rope” where he uses this understanding of coding as a difference between connotation and denotation, basically things that have the potential for a certain reading vs the literal text,

 “connotation... excites the desire for proof, a desire that, so long as it develops within the connotative register, tends to draft every signifier into what nonetheless remains a hopeless task — hence the desire assumes another, complementary form in the dream (impossible to realize, but impossible not to entertain) that connotation would quit its dusky existence for fluorescent literality, would become denotation.”

it’s the same problem sedgwick refers to as “We Know What That Means” in epistemology of the closet, 

“to have succeeded... in cracking the centuries-old code by which the-articulated-denial-of-articulability always had the possibility of meaning two things, of meaning either (heterosexual) ‘nothing’ or ‘homosexual meaning,’ would also always have been to assume one's place in a discourse in which there was a homosexual meaning, in which all homosexual meaning meant a single thing.”

and I have to say anon that back in fandom circa 2014 the panties thing drove me CRAZY because I felt like it was everywhere all the time in every post about bi dean or gay dean or queerbait or queercoding or endverse spiral but NO ONE would ever explain it! “We KNOW What That Means”!! it filtered out into every single fucking fic where dean discovers his sexuality, I swear to god I read so many stories where he had this big sexual identity crisis during which part of the realization would be the panties, just the panties, the fact that he liked them an illumination in and of itself. exactly as you articulated it, a “satin underwear moment.” most interestingly (to me, at least), the idea of the panties makes an appearance in twist and shout but in REVERSE with cas being the one wearing the panties (almost as though through some sort of metacognition the writers understood they were making a work so profoundly out of step with the actual characters the meaning of the panties no longer aligned with the dean they had written - but what about the panties had aligned with dean in the first place!?). 

what DO the panties mean! they could mean a lot of things! sexual domination symbolic castration transgenderism kink fantasy shakespearean crossdressing something something gender roles battering rams to masculinity redefinitions of masculinity transgression of masculinity permeability of the borders of masculinity — nothing about the panties is inherently anything, it’s just about what you as the reader understand their meaning to be, the connotation YOU confer onto the text on the basis that rhonda hurley made dean try on her panties and he “kind of liked it,” and, somehow, and perhaps this is the key, this knowledge is what will convince a future self of dean winchester that his present self is the same self. and of course on the one hand it’s obvious that the assumed private nature of this knowledge, that dean would not have told this story to anyone else and thus only dean and rhonda can confirm its veracity, is the motivator for dean’s admission, but where’s the fun in that! and besides, that does nothing to explain how it come so easily, and so comfortably, which is how a lot of dean’s sexuality is supposed to come to him and part of the project he is cultivating as the Absolute Heterosexual Male! he’s a womanizer he’s a ladies man, again, to quote the gospel, “lovable fucker, always fuckable,” and something about the panties does fit into that, into what has been denoted about dean and sex and how he desires, but! it’s been denoted so thoroughly to collapse the image onto itself, so insistently proffered over and over again that it begs a question of itself and of the very comfortability that dean purports to have in his sexuality and the manner in which he wants you to think he wants the girl in the zorro mask to slap him. so the panties, which could be a reassurance of this comfort in this firm Heterosexual-Though-Non-Normative-Sexually Identity, instead become an object that connotes, along with every other little tic, every slippage, every glance, a hidden truth, a discomfort, a necessity to insist that there is not a secret buried beneath the open-bookedness of his sex life. it isn’t even actually about the connotation striving to become denotation, but rather that the denotation itself lacks stability and so connotation becomes identity as the performance of this heterosexual self tips into parody. masculinity. what a beast.

#spn #ziz watches spn #the way I keep writing paragraphs about the cw tv show supernatural is inherently embarrassing #but the way I continue to very earnestly do it? camp #if you make it to the end of this post good for you I probably would scroll past it myself but #non spn anon

[autisticandroids]

4, 7, 13 (unpopular opinion on dean if you can!) - casnation

did 7 here

4. Do you have a NoTP in your fandom? Are they a popular OTP?

i mean, besides the obvious, not really? i'm a consummate multishipper. i'm interested in almost anything if you pitch it to me. i guess one thing is i find drowley really depressing and kind of hate to engage with it because crowley deserves better. but i wouldn't really call it a notp, morelike... i don't usually want to see it or think about it, and it depresses me when people joke about it. but like in the right mood a spot of drowley can hit so right for me. and also occasionally i wake up in a cold sweat thinking about a) the line where crowley implies that he knows exactly what can fit up dean's asshole and b) the line where crowley "mommy issues" supernatural calls dean "very maternal." those moments are precious to me.

13. Unpopular opinion about XXX character?

"i think today is a good day to restart gay dean fiasco. i think you should do it right now." - tumblr user @casnation

anyway. i'm generally pretty loud about my unpopular dean opinions, which is why i'm always getting cancelled about my unpopular dean opinions on this fucking website. anyway let me give you the rundown of unpopular dean opinions:

gay dean truther; also an ace dean truther on about every third wednesday

occasional unrequited deancas truther; frequent "dean is in love with cas because dean is gay and no other man who dean might have hit it off better with ever stuck around long enough for dean to get over himself, so cas basically won a war of attrition for dean's affections by being particularly willing to tolerate dean's bullshit" truther

i believe that dean is abusive to his family members

i really fundamentally think that for at least the first half of the show dean is basically obsessed with sam to the point where it pretty much hamstrings his capacity to care about anyone else, basically at all. i also don't think this is reciprocal. i also think he stops liking sam and enjoying his company before he stops being obsessed with him. like i think even when the brothers seem to really like each other and want to be together, that's not what binds them; they are bound together by dean's twisted sense of responsibility, the fact that sam is a pillar of dean's identity, and the fact that "family sticks together" is a value that dean holds above all feeling, rationality, or other morality, at least when it comes to blood family. the affection they hold for each other is a palliative, not a motivation, and as that goes away, their relationship doesn't wane, it just becomes crushingly joyless and awful. it does eventually wane but not for years after the joylessness sets in

but let me see if i can do something a little more unusual. ok. i think that describing dean as a copy of mary or as a copy of john are both weird ways to look at the text. i think describing dean as a copy of john is a cipher for "dean is an irredeemable abuser who should die," and describing dean as a copy of mary is a cipher for "dean is woman coded and also did nothing wrong." none of these statements are right, and also the equivalencies aren't equivalent. if dean was a copy of mary it wouldn't necessarily mean he did nothing wrong, nor would it necessarily impact the way i saw his gender. if dean was a copy of john, it wouldn't necessarily mean he was an irredeemable abuser who should die. but he isn't any of those things. he has some stuff in common with both john and mary, and these can be interesting sites of analysis, but let's not get carried away here.

#spn #asks #anonymous

[googledocsdyke]

for communitynatural: i think it's interesting that while abed & cas are paralleled, as well as dean & troy, abed and dean speak in near constant references because that's how they relate to the world, while cas and troy just. say things. because they aren't scared of being emotional

ALRIGHT unfortunately this is gonna be long. i wanna deconstruct the cas/troy thing but i’m gonna put a pin in that for now because you’re right! but you’re also wrong! both abed and dean constantly mediate the world through pop culture, in a way that initially makes them seem really similar, but actually when you look at the respective ways their References and Homages work, it actually highlights how different their characters are, and how well they work as foils (different, complementary) rather than mirrors (similar, paralleled)

i think the key difference is that abed uses pop culture to make sense of the world, while dean uses it to make sense of himself. like abed has a very clear & coherent internal sense of who he is, and he's comfortable with it. he knows that who he is isn't someone the world always perceives as "acceptable" or "normal", so sometimes he uses pop culture to translate that person into something or someone “acceptable” readable by the world. but it never actually modifies his internal sense of who he is! key moment: in early season 1, where the study group is intent on making him over so that a girl will like him, and "teaching" him to be "normal". he goes along with it, and when the plan fails, they all express regret that they somehow damaged his self-esteem by forcing him to think that he needed to change for other people. and you know what he says?

"when you really know who you are and what you like about yourself, changing for other people isn't such a big deal." like this is a line that is SO key to understanding abed's character, and makes him like truly one of the best characters on television (it would've been so easy for his internal conflict to come from him hating himself for being autistic(-coded), and they DON'T do that, and it's GREAT) 

and like. can you IMAGINE dean winchester saying that. like can you imagine him saying that even as a joke. for all his efforts to present himself as a Coherent Swaggering Hero, he has DEEP internal turmoil over who he really is, and all the points at which this heroic masculinity fails. half the time, he is gripped by self-hatred. and when he "changes himself for other people" it's not something he casually flips on and off. it's at the very core of his identity. it's something he cannot remove from himself. he knows full well that "your taste in music? dad's. your jacket? dad's. do you even have an original thought?" he then proceeds to listen to the same music and emulate john winchester in essentially the same ways for the next decade and a half.  dean winchester only IS dean winchester because of the external influences that force him to change. and part of this comes from his own compulsion to be written as/write himself as Hot Action Hero at all costs. like literally at the cost of his own life. it's a game that he can't stop playing. when he gets hit by a CAR he wants to know "did it look cool, like in the movies?" abed would never ask that. abed would just know it looks cool. dean has this pathological need to see it reaffirmed by an Audience, a Ceaseless Beholding Gaze that compels him to perform action hero masculinity at all costs

there are two key points of comparison that really cement this for me:

when abed says "i got self-esteem falling out of my butt," it's like an incredibly sincere line. he genuinely is comfortable with himself and has a high opinion of himself. sure, sometimes he gets distressed that the world doesn't see him the way he sees himself, but he knows who he is and doesn't attempt to repress it or lie to himself about it

when dean says "i think i'm adorable" or "there are no men like me" or like any of the "i am dean winchester and i'm amazing and i love myself" swagger lines, it's a PERFORMANCE of self esteem masking, like, a deep core of self-hatred. his entire personhood is built on him lying to himself — (dean to himself in 5x04 voice: i know that lying face i've seen him in the mirror). he can't truly have self-esteem or self-stability because he doesn't truly have a sense of what his Self even is

the han solo thing. in the season 2 finale during the paintball war, abed very consciously takes on a han solo persona because the setting demands it ("it appears we've exited the western and are headed for more of a star wars theme"). he dressed up as han, drops an iconic line or two, and has a Hero's Makeout with annie (who’s “playing” leia) in-character. but as SOON as they're both soaked in paint (and thus their characters are Dead within the game) he snaps out of it with no problem whatsoever. annie calls him "han" afterwards and he literally says he only did it “because the context demanded it.” abed knows exactly when he’s playing a role and when he isn’t, and very consciously turns it on and off.

but dean. OH DEAN WINCHESTER. he is playing the pop culture han solo hero role at all times and will never admit to himself that he is performing. it soaks into like the very core of his being. to quote tumblr user minor-mendings, “dean is trying to be the movie cowboy, the outlaw, the han solo type, with no realisation that that person doesn’t really exist.” i go over this in more detail with my han solo + dean meta - in so many ways he is So Thoroughly Not the pop cultural role that he insists on playing with complete sincerity, and that the writers insist on writing him into with complete sincerity. abed always knows when he is Playing and Referencing and Homaging and Alluding. dean NEVER knows when he is Playing and Referencing and Homaging and Alluding because his whole life is play, an elaborate repetition of stylised acts

so you're right, i think dean and abed are really interesting characters to read alongside each other in that they both 1) sincerely love pop culture in its own right in very fun and neurodivergent ways and 2) use their pop culture knowledge in their own self-fashioning and the way they translate themselves to the world and 3) engage with the world through Homage and Play and enjoy playing Roles. HOWEVER. the way they respectively use pop culture is so deeply different and indicative of fundamentally different processes of self-fashioning and self-perception, that i can't read abed as a dean-figure or dean as an abed-figure. they're complete inverses of each other! dean is a troy mirror/troy-figure and an abed foil

#answered #dean studies #communitynatural #spn #community #wrote this while in line for a covid test wkdffdjfks sasha behind the scenes #anyways communitynatural hive eat this one up #caniwritemywayout

[destieldailynews]

Meet the Staff!

Here at the DDN we have a lovely crew of hard working hellers devoted to getting you the facts when you need them. We’ve each written bios introducing ourselves which are located beneath the cut. If you’re interested in joining the team, here is a post about what we need.

A note: if you didn’t get a response to your application it is possible there was a typo in your blog url that kept us from reaching out. if you applied and would like to know the status of your application, go ahead and send a DM to @lateral-org.

Hi! I’m Lina, (she/her) and I write the news! I’m actually quite a new addition to the fandom, as I only got properly involved at the beginning of quarantine, but I am already invested enough to be reading a copious amount of fan fiction and writing an essay on the queer representation in the show. My favourite quote has to be “happiness isn’t in the having. It’s in just being. It’s in just saying it,” and that is why I will never get over 15x18.

Hey! I’m T (@lateral-org), my pronouns are she/they and I’m the main editor for DDN. I used to be obsessed with SPN in 2015 but stopped watching regularly around season twelve. 15x18 sucked me back in, and now I’m invested not just in the show, but all of the stuff going on behind the scenes. I joined DDN because keeping up with #destielgate has basically just become a hobby of mine, and I wanted to make the details more accessible to anyone else who was interested. I’m a deangirl through and through, and my favorite quote is “I have no idea, but what I do have is a GED and a give ‘em hell attitude. I’ll figure it out.” 

Howdy! I’m Jas (@you-changedmedean), she/her, and I’m a researcher/editor for DDN, plus doing a bit of blog maintenance. I’ve been casually around the fandom since high school but in 2018 is when I got emotionally involved. I’m currently in college and I began my Tumblr only this year. I’ve already received so much support from everyone in the fandom and it’s been the craziest ride. Even if S/P/N is over, there’s still so much to uncover from the last season. With future conventions on the way as well as actors speaking up more, DDN will be able to provide relevant and accurate information to the fandom in a timely manner. Favorite character is Castiel and if my username (you-changedmedean) can tell you anything, it’s also my favorite quote. 

Hi! I'm Amber, she/her, (@my-people-skillls-are-rusty) and I am a researcher/editor for DDN. I've been in the fandom since around 2015 but got a lot more active in the last couple of years. I don't really know why I joined DDN, I just had a lot of free time and was very invested in the fandom, so might as well have it directed somewhere. My favourite character is either Dean or Castiel, I can't choose between them.  I also don't have a favourite quote as there are so many to choose from, but as its my user name I will go with 'my "people skills" are "rusty"'

Hey! I’m Ally, she/her (@larandomfangirl) and I am a researcher/writer/editor for DDN. I started watching Supernatural back when I was in 8th grade in 2017, and have remained caught up and active in the fandom since then. I joined DDN because 15x18, and everything that has happened since then, made me even more invested in the show and I wanted to help spread factual information about whatever occurs next. My favorite character is either Sam or Cas (I blame being a younger sibling for that), and one of my favorite quotes is “happiness isn’t in the having. It’s in just being. It’s in just saying it.”

Hi! I am Saffa (she/her) (@castiel-holmeshasthephonebox), and I am one of the writers on DDN! I was introduced to Supernatural by tumblr only a year ago, and since then I have been completely hooked. First, I fell in love with Dean and then I fell in love with the creative side of the fandom, all the fics and edits, and I just tumbled deeper down the destiel hell-hole. My favourite quote is "I'm hunted, I rebelled, and I did all of it for you."

Hey! I’m El (they/them)  (@desperately-human) I am one of the writer/editors here at DDN. I only started paying attention to Supernatural this fall (november 5, really) but since then, having every update on #destielgate has been my main hobby. Almost everything I know I have absorbed through memes, liveblogs, and those amvs on youtube. I’ve never actually seen an episode all the way through. That said, upon reflection i believe I am a Cas girl gender neutral term. Cliche but intense, I like “I’m the one who gripped you tight and raised you from perdition.” 

Hello! My name is Liz (@bart-ska-mpson) and I am a researcher/writer. Got into SPN in 2014-ish because of superwholock tumblr peer pressure, and whattaknow, it became my favorite of all of them, mainly because of the sheer power of Destiel! I read meta like the morning newspaper back then. I became frustrated by the end of s10 and by the time Lucifer possessed the president I just could not take it anymore (if only I kept watching til Lily Sunder :’(...). But really I never totally lost faith in canon Destiel and  words cannot describe the feeling I had when I heard through Tumblr that it finally happened. I’ve been so obsessed with trying to figure out what's “really happening” so I figured I might as well help out here. My favorite quote is the whole conversation Dean and Cas have when he finds him in Purgatory. “I prayed to you Cas, every night!” “I know” </33333

Hi! I'm Kat (@team-free-memes), she/her, and I'm a researcher and editor here at the DDN. I was internet-pressured into watching the show after seeing so many posts about it online. I've been in the fandom for over a year. I joined the DDN because I've always been an avid Destiel shipper and season 16 has gripped me tight and raised me from sanity, so I want to help clear things up for other fans lost in the sea of conspiracy theories to ensure that the truth circulates. I can't choose between Cas and Jack for the title of my favorite character, but in any case I am definitely Dean coded. My favorite quote is, "Now I realize that there is no righteous path. It's just people trying to do their best in a world where it's far too easy to do your worst."

Hey! My name is Lana (@curvedsphere), she/they, and I’m a part of the research, editing, and blog teams at DDN. I started watching the show when season 11 was airing, but didn’t get into fandom until early season 13, where I fell hard and fast into this community and have been here ever since! It’s also when I started actively and avidly shipping Destiel (I was just a casual shipper before then). I joined the DDN because I’m so truly invested in season 16 - in finding/figuring out as much of the truth as possible about the finale and the rest of season 15. My favourite character is probably Cas, but I love all of TFW 2.0 and Wayward a lot. I have so many favourite quotes that I love, but not-surprisingly I think I have to go with either “Happiness isn’t in the having, it’s in just being”, or “for love”.

Hi! I’m Steph (@stephlovessubway), she/her and I’m a researcher at DDN. I started watching the show in 2007 (on YouTube no less) and then watching live with season 4 in 2008. I have seen the highs (season 4 and season 5) and the lows (season 7) on Tumblr, and took a break for a few years and started back with season 10. I rewatched all the series in the first UK lockdown and managed to witness the wild end of season 15. I’ve shipped destiel from the beginning, mainly because Cas is my favourite character, and have thoroughly enjoyed season 16 on Tumblr. My favourite quote is Cas’s monologue at the beginning of The Man Who Would Be King.

#destiel daily news #ddn staff appreciation #not news #about ddn #spn fandom

[incarnateirony]

S15 Remaster: Grace, Souls, Conversion; Effects of the Fall; The Journey of Man; Self-Godhood and Free Will.

Alright, so over in another thread (x) @curioussubjects​ evoked an interesting take about the effects of the fall vs grace/souls and the meaning of the two, and I remembered having an old post that was a bit of a mess from early S13 where I applied Qabbalistic concepts to SPN not long before the actual... Qabbalistic and Hermetic elements started manifesting (The Shadow, the Empty/Ain Soph, etc) and before I pretty much started flipping theological shit.

The other thread was already becoming titanic with a hodge podge of other philosophical musings between users (I think @winchestersingerautorepair​ and @thecoffeebrain-blog​ are still pending to add their additions to it once life clears them), so we sort of mutually agreed to save this discourse for another thread while I took some time to remaster and update the old talking points.

It's a fundamental point that is generally vaguely brushed over, or often has modern concepts plugged into it in streamlined media form rather than exploration: What makes a soul, what makes existence, what makes meaning in our lives.

This, in fact, is the fundamental question and exploration *of* the soul, which Dabb's SPN seems to be tackling fairly directly.

So let's explore the differences and transitional conversions of grace and soul as we've witnessed in SPN. I'll be starting with my take, but of course, as all philosophical discussions go, this is best a conversation of shared concepts.

Also uh, this post was kinda on-request but is literally ridonculously long. Fuck Andrew Dabb for being the only person on the face of the goddamn planet that can make me write infinite words about esoteric philosophy about a TV show.

So this conversation gets a bit difficult to even know where to begin. I'm going to notch a few notes for everybody to keep in mind: Season 6: Death can not destroy souls. Souls are the most powerful known force in the universe, and he who has the most Is Become God. Season 13: Only god can create new angels, they are the biological definition of an asexually reproductive species (as opposed to sexual orientation identity) -- they are unable to create among themselves, and must be created by a supreme force in command of the grace that creates them. This will passively brush over the oft-discussed topic of angel sexuality as well, but that is far from the core point. Season 14: God calls souls "complicated" to handwave away making new ones. Season 15: Yet again, Belphegor tried to consume souls to become a great power, reflecting S6/7 Castiel's arc.

Now that I've sort of dropped those as a lead-in of applicable concepts, I'd like to move forward.

Now as per my S13 listing, we've all seen this fandom turn over and try to apply human sexuality and identity labels to angels over and over again and, while I understand that and mean no offense to that in general, I feel like approaching it from that angle of the human perspective and lens makes a great deal of the substantiative qualities of SPN's discussion of the human soul vanish into the aether. How are these things related? Let's talk!

Sex isn’t the only part of this discussion. As they are wavelength lifeforms, rather than biological, they aren’t really dependent on biological functions. Many of their native elements pass to their vessels: They don’t eat, sleep, or have general body functions… normally.

Their senses are all sorts of different, too. They see in the astral, they taste and smell in molecular compounds, and especially early-vessel-claiming, they seem to have next to no actual pain response. It’s like, well, some giant wave form stuffed in a meat sack they use like a marionette more than having genuine attachment to. Early on angels could waltz through gunfire without flinching and take a knife to the chest with a very bland look of, “Really?”

When it comes to discussing angels and grace, I'm going to pull some sections from the linked post at the start of this:

We know the biblical concept that all things are made by grace; we know Chuck controls his fake construct, but not the free will of the human soul. Consider Gabriel’s constructed worlds where he can manipulate the fake people inside it and snap them away in veils of blue, they’re just pieces of a machine. “I’m the cage.” The human body is part of the sandbox, but the soul is something beyond it.

If angels are living aspects of grace, wavelengths of celestial intent for Chuck’s machinations, the programs that keep the matrix in order – and fallen angels are the rogue programs – they’re still relatively connected to being just… an animated, if intelligent rock or any other piece of the universe. To use more Matrix terms: Just more lines of code. But Castiel’s break in that was contact with his profound bond with Dean that left a mark on him, a brand, just like Balthazar’s soul claims. This tie was powerful enough to be stronger than even Amara’s connection to Dean, for example.

The human soul is the essence of the one true good, realistically – The One Thing that exists, truly, by which all other things come, the Prima Materia – “What Jack did wasn’t evil, it was the absence of good.” – this is actually a hermetic concept but that’s a whole other bag of words, that’s how I quoted that line before the episode aired from the title alone but MOVING ON

If we look at Eileen for example, her ghost is still deaf. Her body/cage/vessel in life never introduced her consciousness, her humanity, to the tactile sense of sound as it exists within Chuck’s sandbox, ergo her spirit doesn’t know it. But it is the soul, like the sleeper, seeking the meaning of its existence and where it is home that commands the body, and leaves the body, and ends up in chuck’s other matrixes of control like heaven and hell that keep people distracted, keep humans from returning to the primordial man that rivals or maybe even betters God.

That all said, human Cas for example suddenly had the full awareness of experience, rather than an autonomous sentient part of the universe chained to divine intent, free or not; that freedom and liberty came by way of the human soul. (Per metatron, Season 8 finale, “When you die and your soul comes to heaven,”)  But with his tie to Dean, and humanity, and a soul his hands laid on, the extraction of his grace also left… but what? A soul born of Dean, really.

Whenever his grace came back, that universal power and awareness, he lost those senses, but he didn’t lose many of the attributes that came with. In fact he pined for them.

Also if we go Jungian with the inky man/shadow as the primordial man or spirit of man, Anthropos, while it didn’t reflect Lucifer, Billie, or soulless Jack it reflected Castiel.

I’ve held the theory that Castiel still has a soul like the nucleus of an egg buried beneath a titanic presence of universal power.

I’d also further endorse this by pointing out while metatron cited Cas having a soul in the S8 finale, when Jack lost his, neither Dean nor Cas thought Cas could empathize as well as Sam could.

In example, Castiel is the only one the Shadow reflected, not Billie, not Soulless Jack, not Lucifer, just Castiel; I’ve even gone so far as to speculate that the smiley attempt at communication was the sort of subconscious borg having the essence of Jack’s soul trying to communicate with his spirit/mind otherwise alert based on consumed grace in the Empty. Speculation, yes, but… potentially loudly resonant.

The journey of man to self-godhood is a complex and tangled affair, traveling through facets of the self represented by a wide array of *ideas* we have begun to face in the show (including color schemes Dabb has actively employed)

If you venture into my shorthand visual post about The Shadow, Anima, Animus, and the Self (x) you'll find how the show has chosen to address this. Similarly, the masculine and feminine paths of universal progenation would be worth a cursory read (x).

Similarly, @winchestersingerautorepair​ recently sent me a chart from a 1973 book titled "The Colors of Love" discussing Hellenistic use of color in association (which, minding alchemy's growth path through time, is hugely relevant). As Maeve said, "John Allen Lee is the mvp by the way. Hes at the crossroads of psychology and LGBT concepts of love and sexuality, and has a fascinating career and life story."

Before I fully locked on to just how loud Dabb was being in his use of alchemy rather than casually tapping on it, you may remember a series of color metas I built specifically on these very colors (and, let's face it, black light doesn't exist, but blue does, and has similar psychological associations). Click this (x) to go to my color metas on tumblr regarding Optimism, which follows this path. Unfortunately my Nihilism one is either untagged or I only posted it on Pillowfort. But you’ll take note I just sort of avoided/dodged/ignored established fanon color meta in favor of other stuff, just a heads up there if you’re expecting me to follow anyone else’s pre-existing fanon -- it ain’t there.

This is all an aside to the actual question of *souls*, but an important framework to how Dabb is choosing to explore the journey of the soul through its many aspects of Being.

To defer back to what I quoted from my other post about Gabriel's universes: What makes humanity different from the moving bodies performing functions of controlled story, rather than guided elements, inside Gabriel's world? If we were to, say, drift into Doctor Sexyverse, or Cop Proceduralverse, nobody seemed to flinch or even be aware of Sam and Dean breaking the script, they continued on their own paths until Sam and Dean "played their parts". But what made Sam and Dean *different* from them?

Explaining freedom to angels is "a bit like teaching poetry to a fish," said Castiel, now bound to humanity since laying his hands on the human soul in hell that, even the S8 DVD commentary mentions, is how he has come to know, love and, as they say, be "enamored with" humanity. We have seen it now-- blank stares of confusion from breaking their course of action, their function. Their predesigned purpose that they were wavelengths of intent for within the machine. They aren't all so different from Gabriel's creations in the end, with Doctor Sexy's Nurses being not too unlike angels to Chuck. They are there for a path and a reason, and should they be somehow interrupted from that function, they seem to lose all purpose.

To convert this to another method of understanding than "matrix code", in case that isn't sinking in with anyone, think of angels as forces of nature. The hurricane means no malice, it simply exists as a function of or even result of universal laws, and often evokes great rebalancing effects that change the course of history for a huge amount of humans and other creatures that it's basically oblivious to. The hurricane does not understand your feelings much less care about them. It is here to do what it does until it is done with what it does. This very concept is why so many ancient gods are primitive archetypes of natural forces.

If we cease trying to box angels into human perceptions for the want to identify with them in such a representation-light landscape, the field opens up to something infinitely more complicated. Such as: what makes Castiel so different? I've already addressed that, of course, in this post, but let's pitch that as a conversational hook again.

"You want to know why we're meant to stay away from those humans? It's not because we're a danger to them. It's because they're a danger to us."

Now BECAUSE sexuality is the angle this fandom has heavily thrown its discussion chips into beyond the other senses, I'm going to move forward into that topical field:

Anna, talking to Dean, lists a long flurry of reasons to become human, among which sex was stapled. In later seasons, Cas comes up with a different list, but it’s more reflective of his emotive view of humanity, and doesn’t include the sex. Either way, it actually leaves interesting take on the human soul’s function (which is also a silent part of something I’ll get to later** ) as per the trinity of mind-soul-body sometimes called “The Threefold Nature of Man” in a lot of classic mysticism. **

So why would Anna include sex in the list if others can enjoy it? There’s various reasons of taking this into consideration, and I consider most headcanon potentials valid since… you know, there’s really no clear statement on this.

- Most angels have a copilot and that’s just creepy AF - It could be subliminal commentary of wanting to enjoy a native drive for it rather than a learned one, since affections and emotions are also canonically attached to the human condition (as well as the 3fold Nature discussed later). - It could have to do with gradual humanization effects (will discuss shortly) - Misc other.

Barring our specific presumption of why this hangs in the air, the detail is that it simply *does*. Perhaps the truth is between all of these, with each angel unto their own.

Anna lurked, invisibly, on earth observing men as long as she knew. Now, gradual humanization effects is a complete headcanon proposal associated around  all elements to be covered in this discussion. That is to say, most angels that have exhibited sexual behavior and enjoyment of various goods have either been fallen or in their vessels for a LONG TIME, perhaps gradually removing the disassociation from the body and gaining familiarity with its functions.

Yes, we can evoke Balthazar’s sexual activity, but we must also evoke his appreciation for wine and food and music and all of the other things that we have canonically, even mechanically witnessed in Castiel (inability to appreciate food or drink, in example, as an angel.) So WHAT makes Balthazar different that he CAN experience all of these things (beyond the potential of Plothole AF)? There is literally something he has that other angels don’t. The second Cas clicks back to angel, he can’t appreciate food anymore and beer does nothing for him, but Balthazar can enjoy alcohol? There is LITERALLY a difference of template of EVERYTHING going on here, not just sexuality. We can postulate it all we want, but the only one that immediately comes to mind is “gradual humanization”, as we haven’t the FOGGIEST idea how long he has had his vessel. Unless we assume various appreciations of his are Just An Act, but then why not assume it’s performance behavior on the sexuality too? Pick one or the other, don’t run the line on both. (Also if you want to be under the assumption that despite terminal soul dealing it was his first vessel run, I’m going to leave this as a note, and a REMINDER of his meddling in attachment to, handling, trade and use of human souls for his own means, and tuck this aside until we GET to the meaning of human souls.)

The VERY SAME can be said of Gabriel. And Gabriel we KNOW has been on earth as Gabe for a VERY. LONG. TIME. His sweet tooth is what got him busted. Again, it’s not just about his sexuality, it’s his entire composition is somehow DIFFERENT from otherwise canonical function of angels.

Again I point out there’s also a big ??????? on Naomi because again… 400 year old Crowley in Mesopotamia. We have no educated way to even ADDRESS that one because… is it a time warp? WTH??? Even Mark called this a plothole. Literally we have to headcanon how they were even there together before we headcanon what was even going on in a big old pillar of ridiculous headcanon, so I’m going to float that off in a box labeled with a question mark and admit, it’s just random AF. The “fling” is also implied and unclear. So I mean- we’ll just… note that and keep moving on why it’s never impacted my perception of this much.

How long fallen was Lucifer?

Hannah brings an obvious question to mind in challenge to all of my surrounding premises, but this is literally where “choice of experimentation within a vessel” comes into play, as with all of them. I’m human now, this seems like a fun thing to humans, let me try the thing; that’s all I’ve ever read that as. You may have your read of it otherwise, but angels try a lot of things. And I’ll bring this up during canon talk.

The concept of humanization-with-time does have some further established presence of S13. When Lucifer is still an angel but largely drained of his grace, he too begins feeling compulsions of hunger, cold, and basic human instinct he was previously immune to. Diminished power, and the closer one comes to being of Soul Rather than Grace, the more they seem to resonate. Anna carved out her grace to fully enjoy humanity and was born into it, experiencing its gifts of awareness. Cas can no longer fully enjoy humanity as an angel. We don’t know what Balthazar’s status is. And so on. But it appears that by VARIOUS METHODS, such as the depletion of grace or just being a long-assed time to attach to a specific vessel, they do end up ATTAINING various behaviors.

Preparing to speak on Humanized Angels.

What really triggered this premise to me was the recurring humanization of Castiel. And again, this goes far beyond just sexuality preferences. I’m going to do a brief break to get to that ** I marked above about the threefold nature of man before expanding.

** Mind-Soul-Body trinity:

Angels have the mind/spirit (grace) and body, but lack a soul; grace is closer to their natural body’s composition than molecular and transmits a wavelength thought into whatever sack they’re using to operate. But there’s a disconnect here in classic mind-soul-body structure (which is sometimes alternately listed as Body-Spirit-Soul, with Soul as the mind instead, and Spirit in place of the alternate listing of Soul? People swap these terms interchangeably but you’ll find a common pull). There’s multiple takes on this. For example, we’ll go with the standard accepted biblical take as a first ideation of it, considering the various judeochristian influences of SPN.

Please NOTE I’m going to list several variations of this, and have no hard cast “this is the exact model” they’re using, as much as “this is a recurring theme in religion and philosophy”, which, while SPN is rarely 100% accurate to any one specific model, they often call on.

The EXACT itterations of this vary, and there’s no real saying which exact respective “silent ven diagram” they’re using, but as if a triple circle overlapped with Mind, Body, Spirit with the balance we as humans know at the core. Removing a rung of this strips out major overlap of function.

The inner spirit, insight, will and memory reaching from spirit/mind to body by WAY of the soul, for the spirit to engage the human senses within the constructed universe

CASTIEL

Well, perhaps I’ve been down here with them for too long. There’s seemingly nothing but chaos. But not all bad comes from it. Art. Hope. Love. Dreams.

HANNAH

But t-those are human things.

CASTIEL

Yes.

To fully understand this chart, I again point to (as earlier in this post) this previous post about primordials, explaining the chain (x), Anima Animus and the Shadow (x) and also its association with the paths on way to enlightenment at the source of creation which is explored, for a particular path, right here (x)

Just another way to stack out this chart, including the adventure of Anima and Animus, as well as the id/ego/superego I’ll discuss soon; However, you can see the literal concept is the same. There’s an inner mind, a central essence of the inner court that reflects close to the aspects of Humanity Cas told Hannah, and then the “living room” of the body, and the senses. Same deal. Again, "I'm the cage."

You see a running theme here?

The Soul is essentially commonly received as a vehicle between the higher mind and the body (as well as possessing aspects of our emotion, and sense of self, such as how Sam lost parts of himself without his soul) That, without which, we are lacking various critical anchors of the human experience that we often see lacking in angels.

This therein raises the challenge, “But Soulless Sam was ALL ABOUT the sex.”

That’s where species difference comes in.

We’ll talk psychology a bit, wherein we have the psychological variances of id, ego and superego rather than just body-soul-mind/spirit. They essentially perform the same functions (base instinct drive, early personality function, learned and refined function with choices etc, to boil it down to super-simplistics).

“According to this Freudian model of the psyche, the id is the set of uncoordinated instinctual trends; the super-ego plays the critical and moralizing role; and the ego is the organized, realistic part that mediates between the desires of the id and the super-ego.” – Freud, Sigmund. The Standard Edition of the Complete Psychological Works of Sigmund Freud. Vol. XIX. Translated from the German under the General Editorship of James Strachey. In collaboration with Anna Freud. Assisted by Alix Strachey and Alan Tyson, Vintage, 1999. [Reprint.] ISBN 0-09-929622-5

A Sam with no soul has his base species survival instinct but his acting mind. A Cas with no soul has HIS base species survival instinct (in lack of sexual reproduction as much as potential learned appreciation under the above spoken methods) for an id, if any, and a curiously arranged body until other elements come into play. The ego and superego, such as the application of a soul, leaves room for the gradual inclusion of preferences to anything within this model, such as angels developing their own ORIENTATION once having a vehicle by which to come through.

There’s a few other points to notice about the transition. The Mind/Spirit is capable of questions and doubts, or faith. “I’m not a hammer, as you call it; I have questions, I have doubts.” - S4 Castiel.

The mind is capable to think and to reason, but complex emotions are a challenge to it without a soul, which also filters our thoughts and memories from upper mind into the body, wherein we gain connectivity to the physical senses and the realm we experience.

But the universe -- the wavelengths of intent that make it function -- simply can not experience itself, any more than any other code running on your computer can experience itself. It is you, the human, that experiences the results of that code, and views and understands it and reaches out to aspects of life through it. Grace, should all things be made by it and through Chuck, as the thing that creates this code/intent of angels -- it simply is, and runs, and functions.

So BACK TO THE HUMANIZATION OF ANGELS,

Castiel has humanized or near-humanized three times and we're pending on a fourth. Briefly in the hospital, he was braindead (lacking Jimmy’s brain function, but instead having his own mind) while his heart remained pumping, meaning the body/vessel was alive, but the remaining grace WAS in fact functioning in place of a mind.

CASTIEL 5.21 I just woke up here. The doctors were fairly surprised. They thought I was brain-dead. (…) CASTIEL You could say my batteries are – are drained. DEAN What do you mean? You’re out of angel mojo? CASTIEL I’m saying that I am thirsty and my head aches. I have a bug bite that itches no matter how much I scratch it, and I’m saying that I’m just incredibly… DEAN Human. Wow. Sorry.

However, it was depleted, and this is addressed in effect later on by Metatron removing grace. As grace is removed,

METATRON 8.23 And now something wonderful is going to happen, for me and for you. I want you to live this new life to the fullest. Find a wife. Make babies. And when you die and your soul comes to Heaven, find me. Tell me your story.

Now Castiel goes on to return to himself by going all cannibal and whatnot, but that’s its own story. The simple fact of it is, with the mind housed in a vessel, but the grace attached to it depleted, the body seems to generate something like, equivalent to, or equal to a human soul in its function.

Now to reflect back

2014!CASTIEL 5.04 So, in this way. We’re each a fragment of total perception—just, uh, one compartment in that dragonfly eye of group mind. Now, the key to this total, shared perception—it’s, um, it’s surprisingly physical. 2014!CASTIEL spots DEAN. 2014!CASTIEL Oh. Excuse me, ladies. I think I need to confer with our fearless leader for a minute. Why not go get washed up for the orgy? The WOMEN leave. 2014!CASTIEL You’re all so beautiful. 2014!CASTIEL stands and stretches his back, grunting. DEAN What are you, a hippie? 2014!CASTIEL I thought you’d gotten over trying to label me. (…) 2014!CASTIEL I wish I could just, uh, strap on my wings, but I’m sorry, no dice. DEAN What, are you stoned? 2014!CASTIEL Uh, generally, yeah. DEAN What happened to you? 2014!CASTIEL Life. (…) 2014!CASTIEL You want some? DEAN Amphetamines? 2014!CASTIEL It’s the perfect antidote to that absinthe. DEAN Mmm. Don’t get me wrong, Cas. I, uh. I’m happy that the stick is out of your ass, but—what’s going on—w-with the drugs and the orgies and the love-guru crap? 2014!CASTIEL laughs. DEAN What’s so funny? 2014!CASTIEL Dean, I’m not an angel anymore. DEAN What? 2014!CASTIEL Yeah, I went mortal. DEAN What do you mean? How? 2014!CASTIEL I think it had something to do with the other angels leaving. But when they bailed, my mojo just kind of— psshhew!—drained away. And now, you know, I’m practically human. I mean, Dean, I’m all but useless. Last year, broke my foot, laid up for two months. DEAN Wow. 2014!CASTIEL Yeah. DEAN So, you’re human. Well, welcome to the club. 2014!CASTIEL Thanks. Except I used to belong to a much better club. And now I’m powerless. I’m hapless, I’m hopeless. I mean, why the hell not bury myself in women and decadence, right? It’s the end, baby. That’s what decadence is for. Why not bang a few gongs before the lights go out? But then that’s, that’s just how I roll.

Now, we can try to extrapolate that it’s “all the drugs,” but drugs or not, while decadence includes MORAL decline, it also is this:

dec·a·dence ˈdekədəns/Submit noun moral or cultural decline as characterized by excessive indulgence in pleasure or luxury.

And Cas doesn’t get words wrong (unless he’s trying to make an awkward conversation starter with Dean as what’s almost a routine for them, always in idioms and never in definition). In fact, he has a very on-point vocabulary. How often does someone evoke “Insouciant”?

Calling it decadence defines this as a luxury to Castiel. The entire episode is like One Giant Exposition of the differences: being breakable, prone to decadence, bang a few gongs on the way out. Yes, it includes drugs; hell, he’s now subject to being INFLUENCED by drugs, contrary to being able to drink down the entire bar before “starting to feel something” or needing to drink the whole liquor store before the grace stopped implicitly filtering it enough for him to stagger in on Sam. At some point, Castiel decided these were ALL his coping mechanisms, but this is an adaptation of some period of humanization between late 2009 and 2014.

This could be considered a one-off of Zachariah’s manipulation or whatever if we choose to ignore Edlund saying it was a real universe, but then we get the SAME THING hitting us again in season 9, if under a different, immediate scope rather than “end result.”

9.01 CASTIEL looks at his bloody palm. CASTIEL It hurts. (…) MAN How about we get you some water, hmm? CASTIEL I, uh, I don’t drink water. (…) CASTIEL It’s okay. I don’t eat.

and

9.03 CASTIEL (Chewing on the toothpaste) I’ll be moving on tonight after work. It’s time. The MAN nods and hangs up his towel. CASTIEL Can I ask you something? MAN Sure. CASTIEL walks into one of the bathroom stalls. CASTIEL Do you ever tire of urinating? I’ll never get used to it. (…) HOMELESS MAN You’re new at this, aren’t you? CASTIEL Food… sleep, or passing gas, it’s all very strange. And it’s occurred to me that one day I’m gonna die. CASTIEL and the HOMELESS MAN just look at each other curiously. CASTIEL Well… I better try falling asleep. It’s quite a process, isn’t it? (…)

Now, we’re going to take to the raw moment of Castiel and April,

She kisses him gently on the cheek, but stays close and eventually kisses him on the lips. CASTIEL seems surprised at first but then joins in.

Cas is surprised… and then joins in. Castiel did not expect this, but falls into it of his own action. No force was implied, and the moment leading into it was all of a few seconds, rather than any persistence or insistence.

A few more bits,

APRIL So, that was okay? CASTIEL Very much so. Um… what I did, that was, uh… correct? APRIL Very much so. CASTIEL (Smiling) (…) APRIL So what happens next for you? CASTIEL More of this, I hope. They smile and start making out again.

I don’t exactly get the feeling that she’s entirely leading this situation on all by herself, to the dismay of several gatekeeper ship or sexuality stans.

More elements with regards to humanity in this episode,

CASTIEL I am really enjoying this place. Plentiful food. Good water pressure. Things I never even considered before. There really is a lot to being human, isn’t there? DEAN It ain’t all just burritos and strippers, my friend. CASTIEL Yeah. I understand what you’re saying. SAM You do? CASTIEL Yes, there’s more to humanity than survival. You… look for purpose, and you must not be defeated by anger or despair. Or hedonism, for that matter. DEAN Where does hedonism come into it? CASTIEL Well, my time with April was very educational. SAM Yeah. I mean, I would think that getting killed is something. CASTIEL And having sex. DEAN chokes on his burrito for a second. DEAN You had sex with April? SAM Yeah, that would be where the hedonism comes in.

This isn’t just Castiel talking about having sex for the first time. This is Castiel acknowledging the allure of hedonism for the first time (…not minding the timewarp of 5.04, which didn’t happen Because AU.)

And here, also 9.03, before meeting April CASTIEL is once again wandering through the noise and the people. He is trying to take everything in – he glances from a hot dog stand to a woman’s breasts to a supermarket. The whole place is noisy and crowded and confusing. He is overwhelmed.

In 9.03, among this onslaught of Castiel’s change in visual, sound, sensory, and other instinctual acknowledgment of a change in the senses (see back to the 3Fold Nature and the acquisition of a human soul), we also get Castiel rubbernecking at a woman’s chest for the first time, before encountering April; the transcript doesn’t do the moment proper justice with the pure level of focus directors and editors called to it. In fact, we get slow camera pan and a rubberneck that might as well have ended with him walking-flipping into a trashcan blindside.

With all of these stacked connotations aside, I find it difficult to interpret anything but it being installed as a yet-again evocation of a difference in function.

Episodes 1 and 3, the first two episodes Castiel is in during season 9 after losing his grace at the end of season 8, DELUGE us with a current of differences of all of his sensory faculties.

Once his state is “corrected,” (for lack of a better term - Castiel seems to yearn for his humanity back through the show) the show makes a point of showing us a reversal as applicable,

SAM What? What are you talking about? CASTIEL When I was human, you know, I had to eat constantly. It was kind of annoying. SAM Yeah, a lot of human things are pretty annoying. CASTIEL But…I enjoyed the taste of food – particularly peanut butter with grape jelly, not jam. Jam I found unsettling. SAM [sitting on the table next to CASTIEL] So, what? Now you can’t taste PB and J? CASTIEL No, I-I taste every molecule. SAM Not the sum of its parts, huh? CASTIEL It’s overwhelming. It’s disgusting. [looks longingly at the sandwich] I miss you, PB and J.

Once again, paradigm shift. What he once appreciated, amidst the VAST wash of senses they told us about, just seems… null now. Something is missing, and something is different. Again, the universe can no longer experience ITSELF.

Now, I’m going to fall back a bit to cover what would possibly be framed as an argument against all of this, but frankly builds into it,

Back in season 6, Meg was UNABASHEDLY FLIRTING WITH CASTIEL and trying to prompt him to “move some furniture around,” and, in a learned “last night on earth” move, Castiel makes a motion in 6.10

Meg grabs Castiel by the neck and kisses him, at the same time removing his sword. Castiel pushes her up against the wall and returns the kiss with interest. MEG: What was that? CASTIEL: I learned that from the pizza man.

NOTICE. LEARNED THAT.

With FORWARD PROMPTING from Meg, and existing example (porn), Castiel did in fact make a move. That is to say, “learned behaviors” and “personal orientation” beyond “species reproductive instinct”. But as made clear by April, this never led anywhere particular, never completed, and while he expressed wanting repeats with April during being human, this is the only actual example we have of it.

In short: throughout the show, Castiel finds new things and tests new things. These new things become bizarre little childlike obsessions at times even. This one… obviously a little less childlike. (clears throat) But again, this is a process of “learned motion.” (though I’m somewhat disturbed that canonically Emmanuel-Cas sees her face and is absolutely horrified at her appearance, meaning this is also not likely even by nature of physical/spiritual attraction as much as personal, almost a demisexual trait with experimental curiosity which, as an independent idea beyond “holy shit she’s a demon”, is a healthy phase.)

But by way of learned motion/acquired taste and function, we then have the question of “why doesn’t Cas repeat this if he clearly enjoyed season 9?” Well, I can name a few. We can go over the fact that Cas simply doesn’t explore social venues that make it ready. Or we can mention his seeming lack of compulsion for it which ...is a topic of this post. Or we can simply reflect to the *challenges* of hedonism and what it will, in this post, continue to implicitly adventure as the cage and trappings of the human body and experience within what we call “life”, which the human soul extends well beyond.

But it leads us to an interesting series of questions about Castiel and Dean’s seemingly changed interactions in season 12, on a subliminal level.

And no, I’m not implying they’re boning. When Dean is no longer getting strung across a variety of cosmic elements to save him directly from the crosshairs of, or from himself, we’re getting this weird vibe of gruff jealousy, bickering, and infighting. As if Castiel, settling in more among them, is channeling increased humanity. Despite being an angel in some crippled capacity still, personality traits acquired from his human period are still there, leading to believe the soul element never ENTIRELY disappeared, as much as with further ding-dang-donged up grace, we have to wonder - is this almost a sliding scale? Or can both run mutually when one doesn’t overshadow the other? The exact specifics of this mechanic would be unclear.

But all of these complexities is why I find it nearly impossible to, in my head, reduce it to the simple “well some like it and-” because I have always read an intentional base-beat of differentiation between the human and angelic experience including, but not limited to, sex.

There’s a subtle hint of some osmosis of this in what I mentioned above with Hannah. “Perhaps I’ve been with them too long.”

CASTIEL

Well, perhaps I’ve been down here with them for too long. There’s seemingly nothing but chaos. But not all bad comes from it. Art. Hope. Love. Dreams.

HANNAH

But t-those are human things.

CASTIEL

Yes.

And so why I find it impossible to just address “angel sexuality” as its own topic. This may just be my brain at work, but I don’t see all of this effort in dividing their experiences, in a show that addresses theology and concepts like the human soul, to be arbitrary and random and I just see SO much beautiful complexity IN the shift of his sexual behaviors, among other operations. It’s not just about Castiel’s sexuality, it’s about addressing the complex creatures that are humans, and what builds us at a core. Frankly, from that end, it doesn’t matter if Cas is bi, ace, straight or pan – Castiel has been human, and wants to be so again. And it, along with other things littered throughout the show, have given us great insights on the soul, or the lack thereof, and all of these beautiful building blocks.

And so to roll away from approaching sexuality so heavily, and instead ball and bundle that up as part of the human experience within the body, the reflection of the human soul, I hook again: The universe can not experience itself more than Windows OS can experience itself; it requires the essence of man to experience the result of the work of grace and by which it finds many things of itself, even within the trappings of a human life.

The fact that humans are afterwards caged elsewhere is a whole other discussion me and others have been holding in the original linked post, so let's step away from that and instead go back to the concept of, far and away beyond sexuality, what makes a soul, and how is it different from the created universe.

If we were to apply these concepts -- angels, bodies of grace, as parts of the universe and how it functions -- versus the irrevocable free will fundamental to the human soul, dividing bodies from just being roving parts of the construct like Gabriel's realms -- to our dialogue in regards to Castiel as our seeming oddball with a crack in his chassis, "And the universe came to humanity, and laid hands on humanity, and fell in love with humanity to come to know it; it abandoned its own purpose and functions due to this connection to the concept of the human soul, and began to live and dream and love as a man, rebelling against its predesigned function; and one day, the orphic child of both the universe and man looked through the eyes of the universe to first see man, and itself was born from the universe unto man, to live and learn as a man and hold its dominion of both human sovereignty and creator of grace, mastering both realms." in regards to Jack's very creation, and why he is such a huge threat to Chuck's power and control of his realm.  

As a powerful creature of grace, he can take and reroute those elements without issue by authoritative command of the independent liberty of the human soul, free thinking and not just a Doctor Sexy Nurse in motion.

But the question is conversion, which we've seen in both directions, be it Castiel acquiring a human soul or Jack converting humans into angels with his command of both of these dominions. The best I could liken it to is AC/DC energy conversion. It is worth noting, however -- grace can be drained without permission, it is not tied to freedom. Humanity is the body of choice: be that humans choosing to surrender that in the name of glory and power to simply become part of universal functions, which isn't so different from choosing to burn one's own soul away in the name of spells, magic or other power; or the human spirit attached to its cage of a body and life still needing to concede and give permission to be taken BY the forces of the universe, surrendering the potential impact of their own choices within their own moving cage to what the universe would will of it.

Ironically, if you use an AC inverter to power a computer or television, the power supply in the device is converting the 120-volt alternating current into a much lower voltage direct current. The sensitive electronic circuits in these devices need low, regulated voltages to work, so you're actually converting DC to AC so it can be changed back into DC again. You can't use straight direct current without the AC to DC inverter because the device's power supply needs the AC power in order to properly step down and regulate the voltage. That is to say, in conversion parts are lost, but they can still be transmitted; so while Castiel was subject to the human experience, he still struggled with parts like dreaming. It was a young, small spark of a soul, converted from another energy form, and likely with his connection to Dean acting as the inverter.

Demons go to the empty; demons are former human souls that corrupted and lost the light that made them inherently "good." That which defines them. They have collapsed to the pressures of Chuck's universes and let their flame go out. But realistically, that's also antagonized by other human souls in hell trying to escape their own torment.

It has been seen, time and again, that the only thing that can destroy a human soul is... the human soul.

*takes a breath*

And now to explore what @curioussubjects​ has been saying about The Shadow as a recycling Bin of souls, which would predate the universe and even Chuck, I simply repeat this segment, to help master-off this post:

If we take the Shadow as the reflection of the collective soul, which then becomes the substantiative Prima Materia through which all things come (x), including even the potential of Chuck and Amara as manifestations of the primitive concept of masculine and feminine, light and dark as among the first thoughts in the cosmos. But in such by it all things are born, even the universe or the gods, in this proposed theory. It is the primitive self asking (per the far-above chart), first–well, WTF, why am I thinking, but after that – who are they, and then who am I, and then eventually who are you, before the end of the soul’s journey on its path is Who Art Thou, long ventured within the constructed realm to learn what it means that we even exist.

Those first thoughts then create the totemic pillars of creation by which it can explore the very meaning of existence, even if its own thoughts have made cages and trappings for itself in the expansion of infinite time, but those cages are themselves the vehicles of higher learning and experience, and without those cages, the rest is for naught.

This is the nature of the Prima Materia, the One Thing by which all comes which I linked above. If the soul and Prima Materia are synonymous, then while the universe comes by grace, then all things -- even grace -- come by way of the raw template of the collective soul, which then structures all resulting thought and experience through an infinite series of independent human experience that defines who were are, independent to ourselves, beyond the vat of primitive consciousness that binds us.

The question even comes, why not just reset time? But I am good with who I am. I am good with who you are. This isn't just a story. It's our lives. So god or no god, you go to hell.

And so the reincarnate journey of the man, through the many deaths and rebirths of Sam and Dean and lessons gained within the universe, begins to lock on to the meaning of the independent self in what it means in full, beyond the challenges sent by the creator that may very well be a reflection of our own primal thoughts, our doubts, our fears, our internalized challenges not too unlike the Shadow which again I raise, and point back to the above-linked protogenic discussion of the masculine and feminine paths: In this premise, are Chuck and Amara anything less than the Animus and Anima of humanity, should the Shadow be their forefather?

The path of alchemy, before it became pursuit of literal gold, was about self completion and sovereignty. The phases I have listed above, as well as a brief overview of Dabb's use of it, but if anyone wants a visual aide in these, check out these three videos (x) (x) (x) and remember that Chuck desperately wants them to believe that nothing Gold can stay, should it complete this path; because should man become Gold, they also become God, and he has no authority here. Because in the end, if we abandon the cages -- be it human bodies or heaven -- in here, in this headspace that is Chuck's, we're all just projections of the primitive man trying to find our independent meaning in life. So in here, we're all the same. So in here, Chuck's all talk. And Chuck's afraid, and even wounded by elements of his own creation fallen into the free hands of man.

And so to FULLY hook back, the effects of the fall --

To be detached in various tiers from the divine spheres of constructed intent, and surrendered unto man, or touched by man, or tied to man, or even converted unto man simply seems to be removing the lines of code that defines the constructed universe and instead leaves only the experience of soul, be it directly gained or by proxy. And with that comes many things -- be that the oft-discussed sexuality of angels or any of their other senses, but also their ability like Castiel to understand "complex" ideas like independent thought and function that is otherwise like "explaining poetry to fish" to his kin. I remind you of Agent Smith in the Matrix, who was essentially infected with the power of the One that completely started warping the laws of the universe and, eventually, left the universe, to become the body of man outside of the universe.

It is the universe falling into man, as man at some point seems to have fallen into the universe. And their child now waits beyond the universe, holding council with Death and the Inky Man over what to do from here.

The human experience is double-sided. By it we learn, experience, and exist; but as chuck designed the sandbox, so too did he the bodies as cages. So be that "hedonism" or anything else, these are limitations and bindings. It is not the limits themselves, as much as what we learn in facing them, that becomes who we are as people, and what meaning we bring to our own existence. And this, some angels themselves have chosen to convert and surrender themselves to, some more successfully than others, but the ultimate point between all of them is "Free Will", whether they like PBJ, sex, or good water pressure at the same time -- something that only comes from divorcing themselves from the divine spheres, when otherwise they're numb to bullets or a knife through the heart. The universe simply operates. Man experiences. The universe learns more of itself only by way of man, as man learns the universe.

There are those who fall that do not embrace humanity, but instead explore their creation. These are rogue programs, but still limited in their function. Be that angling out a line at a river, or just needling humanity as lesser ants. But these do not come to the same essence of humanity that those who choose to fall into it and truly experience it do. They still lack a great deal of motivation or purpose, as in breaking away from their programming without gaining genuine compulsion to want, to seek, to find, they find fascinations between their own strips of code that immerse themselves in, and sit, and observe, still not too unlike Anna before completely divorcing herself from her grace.

It is humanity, be it indirect or direct, that proxies the ability to experience, desire, and enjoy, and that more than anything is the nature of man and his power. It is the path of the Soul between Gevurah and Hesed; from the divine spheres descending, passive intellect and active intellect from the different pillars, and hidden higher learnings, reach by way of Spirit and Mind towards the individual self, strapped across passive and active emotion to learn the individual self. From the angle of man, in the material world, and the body as a manifestation of it, our ego, identity, and other evolutions of the mind TOWARDS the self of individuality lead from Tiferet, by path of the soul, into those emotions to climb the tree towards the divine self. Hell, I'll repost the chart so you don't have to scroll.

Castiel, the consciousness of the divine, with active spirit and mind, and intellect, descended towards the individual self within the realm of ego and super ego, and learned of them through Dean Winchester, while hedging at the sphere of emotional complexes and the identity of the self by which he chose to fall into the world and humanity, into and below and between the cross paths of the soul, and in those paths attained a soul. Dean Winchester, on the other hand, was lifted to explore the upper spheres in reverse, to understand the divine self gradually, and with time, as we now prepare to face within season 15.

Man is freedom. And some fall into it. But man can conquer the tree of his own ironic fashioning. The only absolute is what thou wills of it.

The rest is commentary.

Let there be gold. But all that is gold does not glimmer.

#supernatural #spn #meta #my meta #mine #pagan life #souls #angels #the fall #tree of life #spirit #mind #body #physical realm #hermeticism #qabbalah

[prodigil]

since ive got quite a few new followers and am heading to another milestone, heres my “opinion list” on things w/in supernatural that some ppl might think is ‘controversial’ (really, common sense, but i know it can be deal breakers for some people lol.) 

extremely anti w*ncest

extremely anti s*mifer 

anti lucifer (i think he’s a good villain but an utterly despicable person) 

heavily dean critical (i tag but cannot fathom there are people who dont think dean exhibits severe abusive behaviors)

heavily j*hn w*nchester critical

heavily pro s*stiel 

pro s*briel but anti fandom s*briel. this is a ship that requires development and i basically will only ship it with tumblr user praeco. 

heavily anti d*stiel. it wont affect me if you slap a basic tag on it but if i see it unfiltered i will go feral 

lucifer raped sam. this is not an opinion, its heavily implied in canon, lucifer uses the word ‘rape’. mark pellegrino has said that lucifer raped sam. jpad plays sam as a survivor.  if you “disagree” i ask that you don’t follow me.

canon bisexual sam. (kinda. jpad said he’d be happy to play sam that way if it came into the show so he’s bi now.) 

trans sam. you’d be surprised how many people dont realize my sam is a transgender man.

soulless sam isn’t “evil”, he’s low empathy, and is strongly autistic coded in that season.

uhh... thats all i can think of right now. just be normal!!! 

#ask to tag #OUT. #PSA. #rape tw #rape

[destielfreshhits]

Destiel Fresh Hits - Monthly Writing Challenge

Play April round here

What is this?

An open monthly writing challenge for any fics featuring or mentioning the destiel pairing (Castiel/Dean Winchester). No sign up required. Open for posting every month.

How to join?

Write any fic and post it to AO3. Long as it has destiel tagged as a pairing it is eligible to be in the Destiel Fresh Hits collection. There is a prompt codeword every month. Posting is open ALL MONTH (e.g. 1 April -30 April). On the last day of each month, all fics posted during that round will be tallied. The fic with most kudos wins. Winner gets to pick next month’s prompt codeword.

Rules

Hard and fast rules:

1. Enter one fic per writer per month

2. Must add fic to AO3 collection ‘Destiel Fresh Hits’

3. Fic must have destiel pairing, though it can be a side pairing and can be briefly mentioned

4. Use the prompt code word for the month (feature it in your fic or just token mention)

5. No underage fics of any kind, writers must be over 18

Fast and loose rules:

1. In author’s notes provide link to our tumblr to help promote this game

2. In author’s notes state your estimated ‘user subscriber’ score handicap figure

3. If you have tumblr, reblog our prompt codeword post

How winners are picked:

1. On the last day of the month there will be a kudos count. Each kudos = 1 point.

2. To make it a level playing field, experienced writers with high user subscriber counts will estimate their own ‘handicap score’. That’s just your AO3 user subscriber number on your stats page. If your user subscribers are all for some other fandom you can nominate a lower figure. Whatever you think is fair and puts you on an even footing with less experienced writers. You’re doing that as a courtesy, you don’t gotta.

3. Bonus points: the winner of the last month’s challenge (and the mods) may throw in some bonus points rules to make the competition more fun. That will be announced in each month’s prompt codeword post. There will also be some crack awards given out at a monthly ‘awards ceremony’ on a tumblr post. This is just to bring your fic to the attention of more readers and is just meant to be for fun. The final winner will be announced in that post. We’ll then contact the winner to request their choice of prompt codeword for the next month.

Why?

We want to encourage writers to keep writing destiel years into the future. We want new destiel writers to feel welcomed and that their fics are being noticed. We also want emerging and established writers passionate about this pairing to have a chance to interact and inspire each other.

We’re affiliated with the Destiel Fanfic Season 16 Project. Some of us are trying to write an expanded season 16 collab. For more info on that check out @destielfanficseason16 @destielwritersroom or ask @violetlyvanilla for our discord link! We discuss our season 16 fic ideas, update on destiel writing challenges around the fandom and cheer on each other’s writing efforts.

#destiel #destiel fanfic #destiel fanfic season 16 #rules

[imagitory]

Readers of Harry Potter and the Lack of Lamb Sauce,

I come to you needing some assistance.

Recently I stumbled upon a post here on Tumblr stating that the user had found one of my chapters, as well as the comments underneath, to be full of “vicious, intense, casual racism.” I am not above constructive criticism (I actually appreciate it), and I was deeply troubled by the thought that I’d hurt somebody with anything I had written. Considering it was a blog post and not a review, I sent the user a message via Tumblr chat. I figured talking the matter over personally and privately would allow me to take in the person’s point of view, hopefully reassure them of my intent, and try to mend what had been hurt. The next day I received a link to the user’s new blog outside of Tumblr with a public response to my private message. Although I was a bit disheartened that we could not have a private discussion rather than a debate, I still tried to address the concerns. You can read the entire exchange if you wish here.

I do not write this blog post, my readers, to ask you to defend my honor, or even to take my side. What I aim for is understanding, for if I’ve truly written something offensive, I need to understand the issue at hand. I’m well aware that I have my own biases – as everyone does – but I have tried very hard to be sensitive about cultures that are not mine, and in this situation I feel like there’s a piece missing from my understanding.

The user, zenolalia / @fangasmagorical, in part, said this:

While I do think that it’s a bit less-than-ideal to present a child trying to act within the dietary restrictions of her heavily, heavily maligned religious and racial minority as “cheating,” my issue was very much not with the fact that the characters within the story (such as Dumbledore) treated her as cheating. In fact, I think that’s a very realistic thing for them to do. Rather, that at that point in the story there was not indication in the narrative itself that this treatment was unfair. There was a strong implication that her disqualification was legitimate and deserved. The excuse given is that she should have simply asked for an exception to be made. But, that’s a completely unrealistic expectation to present on a child of color who has, especially in the UK in the 90s, definitely been subjected to extensive racism surrounding her religion. Indeed, canonical to the books, the exclusive celebration of Christian holidays in a school that pre-dates the wide spread adoption of Christianity in the isles is, itself, strong evidence that she would have experienced a lot of this racism. So, of course, her not asking for an exception is totally within reason and a strong character choice. Just like having the judges treat her as a cheat is also a strong and reasonable character choice.

(…)

The thing that burns me the most is, it would be a very, very easy fix to make. A single line tucked somewhere in the narration that indicates that although the judgement is reasonable (in that there are reasons for it), it is not necessarily just, would be enough. Anything that indicates that the racism of the scene is known.

From what I understand, they wish that I had (to borrow a phrase) called a spade a spade and used narrative description to confirm that Arjuna was the victim of racism. The concern I have is this – as I said in my comments, I deliberately wanted to write a world where people of color are not treated like maligned minorities, and the rules of prejudice are different among witches and wizards than they are among us. Rather than racism, the main source of prejudice – like in the books – is blood purity. There are also touches of prejudice against different species like house elves and LGBT+ prejudice because their life style wouldn’t jive with the Death Eaters’ image of a Pureblood family with seven kids, but there’s practically no racism among witches and wizards. Even in J.K.’s flawed portrayal, we don’t get much evidence of racism – Lee Jordan, Dean Thomas, Cho Chang, and the Patils aren’t treated differently than their classmates for their race…Blaise Zabini is even one of those promoting prejudice against Muggle-borns. Perhaps someone like Bridget (or even Hermione, if you like headcanoning her as black like I do), who grew up among Muggles, would know the prejudices of our world as we do, but Arjuna was raised in an entirely magical household, in a world where the President of the MACUSA in the 30′s and the British Minister of Magic in the 80′s were both black women. And considering I purposefully wanted to write a world without institutional racism (at least in regards to race: I have referred to such a prejudice against Muggle-borns), I’m afraid I don’t see what would be gained from saying that the judges – when they disqualified Arjuna for cheating – were targeting her for her religion. At one point the idea that Arjuna wouldn’t have felt comfortable enough to come forward came up, but I don’t know of anything I’ve written that would’ve signaled that. She had been the best of the chefs and just about everyone had considered her more than capable of winning the competition – her decision process came down more to her pride making it hard for her to ask for help. I can’t help but think of media like Avatar: The Last Airbender and the new Star Wars films, where there are characters of color but there are different rules about how those cultures interact with each other. Finn is a black Stormtrooper, but the only prejudice he experiences in his universe is for being a Stormtrooper, not for his race. Katara, Sokka, and the Southern Water Tribe are treated badly by the Fire Nation, but it’s not because of their race – it’s because they’re a territory the imperialistic Fire Nation is exerting control over. Even when there are parallels to the real world, those fictional worlds still have their own rules.

Now of course, some real world parallels are relevant enough that they could still be offensive even if the rules are different from our world. J.K. got a lot of blow-back for saying every witch and wizard, including Native Americans, would attend Ilvermorny, which is a bit insensitive when Native Americans have a history of being forced to attend American schools far from home. Gay characters are so often martyred without proper development or as soon as they find romantic happiness that people understandably get upset when one is written that way. Jewish and gay coding on villains is still something people talk about. If this is an issue of that – as in many Hindu people or even Indian people experience discrimination specifically for what they eat – then I want to learn more about it and address that. My best experience with something like this are Jewish people eating things that are kosher or, in a looser example, Morman Elders, when they’re on missions, being unable to be inside a home without another male being present – because not everyone that follows a religion will necessarily follow every code to the letter and not everyone will be thoroughly enlightened about every religion’s code, sometimes one must bridge the gap. (Particularly when in this situation, the judges would’ve had no reason to know about Arjuna’s dietary restrictions – the only one who’d known her for any length of time was Dumbledore, and I can’t see him memorizing every student’s eating patterns when the Hogwarts house elves are responsible for every meal.) And as much as some cultures may feel pressured not to speak up on certain things, it doesn’t make cheating the right or moral choice, and in this situation that wasn’t even an issue at play.

I wrote this to explain my position so that hopefully I can get the feedback needed to approach this issue. If any of you were likewise troubled by what I wrote or have any other insight, please reply or whatever to this post, if you’d like. And if anything I’ve written has upset you, then you can always message me here on Tumblr, start up a Tumblr chat, or even just leave a review on my story. I will always read what you’ve said and I will not get angry. Even when I end up disagreeing, I always try to take in every bit of feedback I receive and try to use it to become a better writer, and I‘ve been so grateful for the constructive criticism I have received over the last year amongst the praise. At one point early on, I cited Ayer’s Rock as the site of the Australian Ministry of Magic in a montage scene talking about world travel. Not long later I received a review from an Australian fan explaining to me the history of Uhuru and why my artistic choice, made in the heat of the moment while I was writing three chapters in a week, was insensitive and gave me a suggestion on a location I could use instead, the Nullarbor Plain. I immediately changed it, not only because I realized how much I should have taken my time and done my homework, but because her idea ended up being so much better than my original concept. I later applied the lesson I’d learned when I had to do research for a character with autism, and I took almost an entire month researching American and Native American history before writing about the MACUSA and introducing a new character who was a half-Native American wizard. I’m not above improvement or reproach, and everything I learn I try to integrate into who I am. But I cannot learn if I don’t understand.

This is undoubtedly an emotionally charged issue and I truly don’t want to create controversy or hurt anyone. If this were a story set in our Muggle world, I would do everything I possibly could to address the racism, sexism, and homophobia that infects our world, and even in this fictional universe I try to slip in plenty of commentary wherever I can. I know we’ll all have our own opinions on the matter, but if any of you have been kind enough to read all of this and have anything to add, I would appreciate it. I only aim for improvement, both for myself and for my writing, and I hope that even if I have disappointed any of you with my sentiment, you at least feel my sincerity in that.

Thank you.

#harry potter and the lack of lamb sauce #race relations #prejudice #racism #oh boy here i go #hinduism #religion #arjuna belaji

[corancoranthemagicalman]

Actually, finding out that John Winchester took Adam Milligan to a baseball game for his 17th birthday, and Dean Winchester’s 17th birthday was his first hunt solo is An Emotion™️. But finding out that the same year Sam left for Stanford was around the same year that John found out about Adam and then proceeded to split his time between Dean, hunting, and Adam can be something so personal.

#the wiki actually explicitly words it as 'John reaching out to Adam to fill the void left behind by sam's departure' #ah yes I too love being told I'm not enough #C is a Dean-Coded Tumblr User #so this hurts like a son of a bitch #and it definitely has nothing to do with my own emotional baggage I'm working through and homework I'm procrastinating because of it hahaha #John Winchester #Dean Winchester #Sam Winchester #Adam Milligan #also lowkey forgot that like Adam was all 'we're not family >:(((' #found out sam and dean were still treating him like family #said yes to Michael anyways #and then had a wee bit of resentment that they left him in the pit #like ??? honey #but also the growth of Adam being like 'it is what it is' and MICHAEL being the protective boyfriend like 'you left him >:((((' is FUNNY #cannot believe they didn't lean more into baby Adam Milligan having an archangel wrapped around his finger