#I just don't think the wonky naming really indicates anything

[erzherzog-von-edelstein]

Hey being a Jewish person in the fandom, just wanted to say that I strongly agree on your Austria hc; it just makes more sense to me he'd be catholic and while it's not everyone I see a lot of gentiles using the head canon to get around confronting Austria's history with antisemitism (the last thing this fandom needs is more ww2 fics, but it's when they decide to focus on it anyways and just use the Jewish headcanon to woobify that it bothers me). I do miss having Jewish characters, though, especially given there's so much interesting Jewish history to work with, including in Austria. I did wonder how if you had thoughts about how to represent that history? I take the approach of OCs for non-state actors, like personifying the Pale of Settlement or Galitzianers, but I have no idea how most people go about it. No pressure to answer this ask, it's a niche thing and not really what you asked for questions about but wanted to send the first bit regardless. Tschüss!

Thanks for the ask. I appreciate it.

The shortest version of my view on the matter is that I'm absolutely neutral on him being Jewish in AUs. I don't really write AUs outside of events (and not even really then). But from a historical perspective, Austria was Catholic and the empire was the predominant Catholic empire for a long time. I have a book I can recommend if anyone wants to read about how deeply Catholicism was entwined with the raison d'etre of the state itself.

Maybe it's because this fandom only thinks about the 20th century a lot of the time, but I find it interesting that people forget that the Austrian and Spanish Habsburgs spearheaded the Counter-Reformation.

But I also do understand wanting to explore Jewish history. The Habsburg empire had a lot of important and interesting Jewish history. A lot of the intellectuals we think of from the empire were Jewish (Freud, Mahler, Kafka, Roth, etc.) And there is the fact that, even with as Catholic as the Habsburg empire was, Central Europe became a much more dangerous place to be Jewish without it. You can also, however, turn it around to point at how antisemitic populism got one of its first significant footholds in Vienna. This empire contains multitudes.

But by the same token, you could argue that quite a few states in Central Europe had large Jewish populations. The Yiddish literary movement, for example, happened in the Russian partition of Poland too. The Pale of Settlement was a Russian legal construction in what is now Poland and Lithuania. So why don't we have these ongoing arguments about Feliks? (I know actually, but hopefully you see my point here.)

I think there is plenty of rationale for personifying non-state actors, because if you really think about it, there are plenty of those in canon who will become states later (like Slovakia). To kind of over-simplify it, beyond the established kingdoms like Hungary or Croatia, the personifications are sort of ethnic groups within the Habsburg empire. So, if you want to take that route, you could.

I admittedly haven't tangled with how to portray it, but I am intrigued by your idea and will definitely contemplate it more.

Danke, for the chance to ramble about this a bit.

[ghostflowerhotpotch]

To be honest I am fine with him being bad at the theory because is really bullshit.

Hi, Spanish is my first language and I learned back home, being in a school back home until I move when I was an older teen.

But here is a funny story, when I moved to Canada I only did the last two years of high school, and in my last year I didn't have enough credits in almost all of the classes for my grade, so my own ESL teacher suggested me getting Spanish because that was a class I would be able to attend regardless of credits. I ended up doing it because of a lack of options.

I didn't get a 100%, or even that close, why? The theory part continued tripping me over. Ask me the difference between pretérito perfecto and pretérito imperfecto with a gun pointing at my head and I will be dead.

Want to know the difference? Is basically verbs in the present tense and past tense, and I never remembered because rather than just saying that, they put names that weren't indicative of what they do (At least not for anyone speaking colloquially at this time, maybe this made sense a few centuries ago.) You technically can just ask someone to do X verb in present/future/past, but there are formal names that we were taught both in Spanish classes here in Canada and the ones we had back home.

And no one ever remembers.

No seriously, once my family started making fun of me for not having a 100% at the end, I ask them how many of them remembered these details, like participios (aka the -ing at the end of a verb, because spanish works differently we have more than that,) and other stuff, and then everyone shut up. My own mother, who was a teacher for over 30 years; told me she also couldn't recall most of these details, and she taught classes from kindergarten to high school.

Again, I am only one latine person, and we have a big community, but if I am honest I think if I ask at random about any of these details to any of my friends who speak Spanish as a first language, they wouldn't remember.

The point with all of this is that you can functionally speak Spanish perfectly, even having good grammatical skills, use of the language, and so forth, and still be tripped by the theory because of technicalities.

So it would make perfect sense for Miles to go to a test, have the test ask to separate the participios regulares e irregulares, and have him flunking the test because the question was using such obtuse terminology his mom may not even know what the question is about, and I say this because neither of my parents could answer this question without some explaining and juggling their memory.

If I am honest, the difference in how they teach Spanish in English-speaking countries vs the Spanish I learned back home wasn't really that different? Yeah, there was some different way to conjugate things and some words, but no teacher in their right mind would disqualify Miles' way of speaking Spanish unless they were asking for VERY specific things.

You can even have him trip for things that actually defy the grammar because those words are exceptions and the only way to know is remembering them.

For example, in Spanish rather than having "The" we have "El" and "La", these are normally assigned by what the word ends up in.

La Casa.

El Coche.

(There is obviously more to this but this is the idea.)

Simple enough, right? What would you use for the word "Dentista"? If you said La, that's wrong! It's actually "EL Dentista."

How do you know that? Well you memorize it, there is literally no other way.

Hope this doesn't come as a rant or anything, I understand that Miles speaking Spanish (which while the pronunciation is accurately a bit wonky, is pretty good btw,) is really important not just for the fans, but to remember that he keeps his roots dear to his heart,

This was really just me wanting to talk about how honestly the language can be pretty dumb anyways and if people whose first language is Spanish are forgetting this crap I don't want to imagine someone who speaks it as a second language and also missed 6 classes.

So believe me, is entirely possible to speak this language perfectly and still do the classes poorly regardless.

I prefer the theory that Miles has a B in Spanish because the Spanish they teach in schools is different than the Spanish he speaks at home more than the theory that he’s just bad at Spanish

Also, I’m getting tired of how people keep portraying Miles as more and more terrible at Spanish, like even if he’s not better at home, a B is still good!!

I know it’s mostly just jokes, but I swear it’s gonna cause a ton of people to just believe that Miles is just horrible at Spanish and refuse to give up that characterization, we’re gonna be watching in real time as a fanon version of a character gets popular and unavoidable

[elizabethrobertajones]

aren't they devaluing team free will tho? jack just come and suddenly it's family and team free will 0.2, now this pushing of gabriel as part of it too, it's just a mock, so now anyone can be tfw even if they didn't anything to earn it, team free will don't exist anymore it's just a joke

I’m sorry this is rubbing you the wrong way. The way I have always seen it is that Dean calls them “Team Free Will” in 5x13 extremely bitterly and miserably. The sense that they aren’t going to win, and they aren’t enough to defeat Michael, at the beginning of his downward spiral where he will be beaten up enough to attempt to say yes to being his vessel. The term then wasn’t used again for 7 years, and even though it got a great fanon following used UNIRONICALLY, and NOT how Dean originally used it, to celebrate the fact that they HAD won and defeated Michael, the symbolism within the show vs the way fanon took it was always a bit wonky.

The actual composition of Team Free Will as a victorious unit can and should stretch to cover Bobby, who was there helping at the true victory at Stull, and Crowley who did his part and was one of their most useful allies in the last few episodes of the season; once he was on their side they ticked off the last few rings very quickly. 

And Gabriel’s speech in 5x19, no matter how he may have been faking it so as not to actually die, but just to shake Lucifer up, was earnestly on the side of the underdog once he FINALLY made his stand, and that stand was in line with the principles of Team Free Will, and he himself over his 2 episodes in season 5 learned to stop just trying to make the script play out - a very similar nihilism about it as Raphael had - and to stand up for humanity. Like it or not, he is one of the only other characters that season to firmly end up on the side of “free will” over picking either Michael or Lucifer. And that was awesome before he came back and I thought he was a brilliant character. 

Being what I consider a mostly to somewhat old school apocalypse era spn fan (that is, I was watching in total isolation from the start so my dates don’t line up to fandom or American viewing until season 7 onwards, but at least I was up to date on the show by season 6 :P) I had a brief moment of bleeh about his return, and then 13x20 and 13x20 won me over, so, fuck it, I’m a current, up to date Gabriel fan now :P We can look back on it that whether he would have been more useful helping them at their side or not, he was still the catalyst for them even having an idea of what they were meant to do, so that Crowley could start helping them, so that Cas, Bobby, Sam and Dean, the core of the real happy positive version of Team Free Will as a family, could defeat Michael and Lucifer. At this point I am firmly in camp “it’s season 13, whatever, they can do what the fuck they want as long as it’s enjoyable and makes some sense” when it comes to Gabriel. 

But, yeah. In season 12 they began foreshadowing the return of Michael to the narrative, and one of those things was having Dean say “Team Free Will” to Cas as the way to express what Cas with all his history as Dean’s friend/brother/husband meant to him and all they’d been through, and the easiest way for Dean to come up with a term that covers the name of his real core family that is the Sam Cas Bobby Dean family. With Bobby dead, it’s just the 3 of them, but that’s still a hugely important distinction to make, that there’s a version of the family where Cas is core, on the same level as Sam is to Dean.

(Which, if you read my watching notes for 13x21, is like how Rowena makes a metacommentary comment about the BM scene Sam, Dean and Cas are having together in the other room while she and Gabriel hook up, because it uses all the terminology we and the show uses to refer to the SalmonDean BM scenes to cover what TFW are doing, which is a wonderful way to indicate that the BM scene is no longer a Sam and Dean exclusive trope, and you KNOW Cas has been joining in on them since ever, but now it’s making it clear that when there’s a TFW BM scene in ANY configuration of Sam and Dean, Dean and Cas, Cas and Sam, that is an official trademarked Supernatural Brotherly Moment Scene, and the ™ doesn’t belong to ONLY Sam and Dean any more.)

And… I don’t know, it depends on where you are about Jack in a meta way, but on a character level way, Jack was hugely meaningful to Cas even before he was born, and once he was born, as ridiculous as you might find the concept of a satan babby plot, on the character level, and on the emotional level, Jack means a LOT to Cas, and the first episode is all about how Jack identifies Cas as his father, rather than Lucifer, and 21 episodes into the season now, it’s clear that Jack has a lot of good in his nougat centre, and his love for TFW is obvious not just for Cas, but that he reacts like that to Sam’s death, and that he has latched onto Mary, too. A blood relative and core of the family, first character to appear on screen in the entire show, now she is back, whatever you feel, again, on any meta level about her return, portrayal, or usage by the writers, she’s of critical emotional importance to Sam and Dean, because she’s MARY, emotional backbone of the show whether you like it or not. And she loves her boys, came to love Cas over season 12, and now she and Jack have bonded to the point of getting Jesus and Mother Mary inverse symbolism to show that she means as much to Jack as Mother Mary as she did to the boys (and the text thank GOD finally called out “Mother Mary” as a concept in 12x12). So if she’s around, she too will be at the core of the family.

Sam’s choice of dinner table family is his brother, his other brother/brother in law, the son he and his brothers have adopted and considers all of them his father, his own mother, and she of course has her own emotional link to Jack that Sam didn’t even know about for sure at that point, but despite being a missing link to him, is one we can fill in, and he could at least have hoped that knowing they were together and fighting together from Charlie’s report, would give him hope (rightly) that this is a true, loving set up his family could have one day. 

Gabriel was NOT at his dinner table, and he blurs a line between “powerful allies” as the recap says, lumped in with Rowena, who fills a spot Crowley ended up having in their list of allies, who is treacherous and you may still want to kill her like, yesterday, but then the next day you might want to fight and die alongside her, and hope she does the same. Gabriel from 5x19 was in that exact same dubious spot. But as Sam points out, he’s uncle to Jack and that’s a blood tie which the show might not value as much as found family, but it sure is a good reason to START to care and form bonds. Technically Jack isn’t “blood” family to Mary, but then if in a normal muggle family, if your son in law adopted a boy you would still consider him fast, good-as-blood family if you LIKED him and were in Mary’s position. Same as Gabriel discovering he’s an uncle. He has the chance to get in on this family in the weird sense that they’ve all bonded so much to the point of close family, that he’s now Dean and Sam’s brother’s brother, uncle to their son, etc etc. He might be more estranged, and in 13x20 they certainly - Dean especially - pushed him hard to explain himself and learn if they cared or not. But Gabriel passed the test and by the time they’re in the AU Dean would at least trust him to fight alongside them and really earn brother in arms at last, wary family member at least by ties, if not by full undying trust.

Like, none of what’s going on there is weird on a character, emotional level in the sense that they’re at least giving Gabriel a chance to come with them. 

I don’t think anyone said “Team Free Will” re: Gabriel so again we’re stretching a fanon term onto him, in the sense that until someone says it for sure, the only new addition to TFW since season 5 is Jack, and that is because Dean’s using TFW as a family term to cover himself, Sam and Cas, and now Jack is TFW by inheritance, as Cas’s son, like, to lack any other surname, this is what you’d put on their driving license if you don’t want to stretch Winchester onto them. I know a lot of fanon since ever has put Gabriel in TFW to balance Sam having an angel in Sabriel dynamics, or just because they like him and he did die for them in 5x19 etc etc as I covered, so if he were alive again people instantly want him to join. I think 13x20 made it clear Dean’s still somewhat holding Gabriel at an arms length before declaring him found family, but he’s at least through several thresholds already, I think TFW is still a closed door to him in terms of how the show has used its language to define him. The closest tie they’ve offered him so far in season 13 is his protestation he helped them in 5x19, and Sam saying they all need Gabriel in 13x18, and reminding him that he’s Jack’s uncle, which is still a large step removed from putting him in the core family unit. 

I think next episode, which is Buckleming, will either wreck this or shake things up or make some more of these connections anvil heavy clear, but at least before they get their grubby mitts on writing at least 11 main named characters all in the same location all at once (I just counted on my fingers, not a randomly chosen number. Ouch.) while trying to deal with the Jack and Lucifer dynamic and everything else they’ve piled up into one spot, this is how I see it all standing, and the dynamics and connections that they’ve built up.

I don’t think it’s a bad thing to have an ensemble cast, and I do think the term TFW has always been more flexible than the original use, in fanon terms, and in terms of if you were ever going to use it positively, it would cover any and all major characters involved in a fight for free will. Which means 10 of those 11 characters may end up in TFW if Buckleming really go wild with it and let like, Lucifer and Ketch and Charlie and AUBobby and so on into it along with Gabriel, Mary and Jack, for the sake of fighting Michael. Which at that point come back to me with the same complaint and I’d probably agree more but specifically about Buckleming being awful :P At the moment I think it’s well-balanced and the characterisation and levels of invested emotion in each dynamic make good sense, and therefore I’m not particularly worried about the emotional integrity of the phrase Team Free Will… At least for 4 more days :D