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one of my favorite Mental Fanfictions is that gwaine figured out merlin had magic after the ‘you’ll need courage, strength and magic’ quest. and he assumed arthur knew.

he convinces himself that arthur and merlin haven’t told gwaine because they don’t trust him enough yet. or that arthur knows but he hasn’t found a way to tell merlin he knows, and meanwhile merlin knows he knows but thinks they just aren’t talking about it.

anyway. years later when arthur Does Not Die in the Finale arthur tells the knights merlin has magic and obviously it was a huge shock to find this out while he was dying but merlin has proven to be a friend and an ally and gwaine are you alright? do you need a moment?

and gwaine is shaking as he grapples with the fact that it was not a fucking bit

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Betrayal&Fidelity in Purgatory

I've never been fully convinced that Dean modified his memories because his grief was just too much to bear and I've always been quite let down by the idea that Cas felt like he had to do penance for his sins. It's all too lukewarm for me so I went looking for other interpretations and oh boy. So, here's what I've come up with.

Cas and Dean are in Purgatory because they killed Dick Roman together and they did so because Dean asked Cas to go with him cursed or not. And Dean asked Cas to because Cas didn't want to. And Cas didn't want to because he regained his memories back, realized what he had done during his Godstiel arc and declared himself unable, cursed and useless. However, thanks to Dean Winchester's great power of persuasion, he was convinced to join the fight against the Leviathans because he detected a note of forgiveness in Dean's voice.

S7 Dean's and Cas' relationship boils down to this: Cas has forgotten everything while Dean can't stop thinking about what happened (the trenchoat moved from car to car is a nice visual symbol for this). When Cas is found out to be alive Dean is very torn between relief and... resentment. He seems to be quite angry at Cas not because of what Cas had done but because Cas had forgotten about it and had later decided he wasn't gonna do anything to fix what he had broken. In other words, Cas was refusing to remember his betrayal, more specifically his betrayal against Dean. And Dean wants him to remember. Cas told him he was going to find a way to redeem himself and then he died. And then he came back. And he didn't remember a thing. And when he did he was in clear denial and was planning on doing absolutely nothing of import to redeem himself besides making sandwiches.

Has Cas really betrayed Dean in s6? Mmmmmh. I'm not so sure. Does Dean feel betrayed by Cas? Absolutely yes. Does Cas feel like he betrayed Dean? Well, at first no but Dean did his best to make him understand that he did and so he did understand it. And so betrayal it was.

Now, in S8 Purgatory and beyond roles get reversed. Cas and Dean take the meaning of Purgatory in a very different way.

Cas does what Dean wanted him to do: he remembers. In fact, he takes remembering to a whole new level and decides to keep carrying his sin by going solo in Purgatatory fighting the monsters he had inside. Literally. Nice symbolism. In other words, he does penance.

And what does Dean do? He forgets. He's so imbued with what he perceives as the "purity" of Purgatory (which is what "purgatory" means so we really can't blame him if he felt that) that he frees himself of whatever happened before he got there. Now he has one goal in mind: find the angel.

Dean eventually alters his own memories to remember it like he wanted to: he didn't leave Cas behind, he didn't fail him. Cas let go. And, in a way, he didn't erase anything because Cas did let go. Just not physically but emotionally and that's what Dean couldn't bear to remember.

Cas was, once again, unfaithful to him. What?! Yes.

See, a paradox of betrayal is... fidelity.

Betrayer and betrayed are in such a profound bond (eheh) that they need to keep the betrayal alive by constantly remembering it. They can't let go and if one of the two parties does they are committing infidelity.

Truth be told, Dean didn't give two shits about Cas doing penance for his sins against heaven and earth: he cared that he did penance for the crimes committed against him.

So Cas letting go meant that he broke their unconscious vow to be faithful to one another.

He broke the connection (with Dean).

A Cas without Dean is a Cas ready to be reaped by Heaven. And so Cas enters a new abusive cycle of remembering and forgetting, remembering and forgetting by Naomi's brain drilling. Until Dean makes him remember (just like Cas made him remember what happened in Purgatory) and Cas broke another connection (with Heaven) but he also realizes that he will never get free of his past if he stays with Dean. He must protect the tablet (himself) from Dean. And so Cas leaves, he lets go of Dean. Again.

Of course this is not the right path because ultimately Cas thinks he can atone for his sins by... dying. He can reach purification in death. Castiel is indeed the Sam Winchester of the angels.

Thing is that Dean is very, very mad at Cas (this is showed twice in S9 too and once in S10) but he wants Cas to stay without acknowledging (with himself first and with Cas second) why he can bear to have around the guy who broke his brother's brain and for whom he spent one year in Purgatory only to be rejected by said guy (spoiler alert: it's because of love. Dean needs to keep the betrayal experience alive otherwise he will have to face the hard truth: he's in love... with an angel).

On the other hand, Cas feels very ambivalent towards Dean and he wants to stay away from him but he won't acknowledge why he needs to do so (spoiler alert: it's also because of love. Cas needs to let the betrayal experience die otherwise he will have to face the hard truth: he hurt the person he loves. Cas' self-harm inflicting tendencies are at their best by the end of s10 when he declares his allegiance and love to Dean in the moment he very well knows he will never get reciprocation: it's his "safest" option).

To sum it up, the phantom of betrayal must always hang around between Dean and Cas so that the other side of it can be concealed: love. However, by virtue of betrayal's paradox, their insistence on refusing to address this ghost shows how faithful and unfaithful they are to one another, howcommitted they are, how they are almost... married.

More on Cas as the betrayer: the betrayer keeps his fidelity by admitting he has betrayed, by refusing to forget it. They have to do so otherwise the wider context of love is missed. If the betrayer fails to do so they keep wronging the other person and they keep cutting themselves off from self-forgiveness. And so Cas, by refusing to acknowledge his betrayal specifically towards Dean, keeps hurting him and keeps himself in a vicious cycle of self-harm.

This is why "The Trap" feels like it missed something to me: we the audience actually know why and how Dean operates, we know he has forgiven Cas inexplicably (to Dean) since s6. Dean telling Cas in Purgatory that he forgave him was something that... we had already seen.

I would have found it more interesting if Cas told Dean something there and no, it didn't have to be his happiest moment ever, it would have possibly been his worst (and it could have been a good thing: sometimes bad moments are actually good moments): he could have admitted to his infidelity in their perverted version of marriage where the Scariest Thing (betrayal) actually constituted the foundations of their binding contract. It could have been a stepping stone towards "Despair".

There is much more to say because I have only touched upon the "love side" of the betrayal/fidelity dynamics. The other is power and it's possibly an even more interesting angle.

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MERLIN REWATCH ✦ 1.07 The Gates of Avalon

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they dropped "the very touch of you corrupts" in 2011. that was pre gangnam style. before gay marriage was legalized. the year super bass was released.

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my favourite post canon merlin/leon dynamic is friend-of-a-friend -> best friends

you know when you have a close friend and that close friend has another close friend but you and them aren’t close at all? you like each other well enough but you never hang out without the mutual friend. that’s. leon and merlin to me.

don’t get me wrong i think they respected and cared for each other but they were not close-close. which is why the immortal!leon headcanons are hysterical to me. leon and merlin in the year of our lord 2025 being like oh my god actually he kind of gets me. they were never able to bond over swords and battle in their time, but now they have reality tv, taxes and a third, terrible roomate. they haver never been more understood by someone and they have never been more isolated

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viktor arcane has to be one of the characters ever.

he's gay. he's terminally ill. he's suicidal. he's from league of legends. he's in a toxic relationship with an orb. he also might be the orb(???). he bullshitted his way into the academy by pretending he went there. he rizzed up a guy so he wouldn't kill himself. he then tried to impress said guy by breaking into his boss's lab. then when he got caught he tried to play it off by saying he thought this big intimidating door was his bedroom door and he was just trying to sneak a guy in there. he nearly died because hetero sex was happening like a mile away. kinda. he took illegal drugs. he's also the apprentice of the guy who's making the illegal drugs and never mentions it. he's inspired off of the tale of frankenstein's monster. he got shot by a missle and fucking died. when he came back to life he immediately broke up his messy gay situationship and became jesus fucking christ.

truly one of the characters of all time

EDIT cause i made this pre-act 2:

he started a cult. his ex came back from purgatory and shot him straight through the fucking chest. he got revived by his illegal drug making mentor using mutant furry blood. he turned everyone into fucked up magic robots. he got neutered by magic orb. he fought with his ex and choked him freaky style. a time travelling guy threw an orb at him and then he found out he and his ex were inextricably bound in every universe and timeline. then they went to super heaven.

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Casgirls

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Little vignettes of TrueForm Cas putzing around the Bunker, which follow this post.

(Please don't repost, but reblogs are awesome!)

_________________

My Patreon | My Kofi

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cas catching bobby up on tfw’s post s7 bullshit before dean shows up in heaven

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And now, I'm walking together with Sakura. As if we're trying to regain the eleven years we lost. I walk together with Sakura in the time that has started moving.

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season nine is really good bc dean and cas and crowley spend the whole time not knowing that the reason they all feel weird around each other is because they’re in a love triangle

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Captive, Shackled and Bound

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I wish there was more supernatural. Dean had more to not tell me

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They really gave us everything though: old gay dads, cool straight couple, badass lesbians, gay (temporary) rivals

+

bonus: jayvik together for eternity

I would be beaming from ear to ear if I wasn't so depressed about arcane being over for good

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"Yo! Shinji has something for you!"

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6!cas like ‘you do not understand what it means, 16!dean, to know that we move past… my current activities (working with crowley). these are the most unfortunate circumstances our friendship has gone through and i am beyond grateful to know-‘

16!dean: (white noise, flashing back to leviatans, naomi, the MOC, casifer) god i was so dramatic about this

S16 Dean realizing how much worse things get from here will never not be funny to me

cause could you imagine how jarring it would be for S16 Dean, who has survived multiple world-ending events, has died multiple times, has crossed various plains of existence, and has lost every person he's ever loved, suddenly being told

"I'm glad we moved past this terrible period of betrayal and continue to be friends."

and thinking

"holy shit, I should savor your innocense for the shit storm about to come"