#anyway the other slightly more complex theme in here is that cas looooves that dean is a serial killer <3 | Explore Tumblr posts and blogs

autisticandroids · 2 years ago

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gonna put my director's commentary under a cut because it's crazy long

first of all. i would like to thank @restlesshush for jack stuff, @davidfosterwallaceandgromit for pointing out the concept and coining the phrase "angel conflict resolution skills", @an-android-in-a-tutu, @pregstiel, and @hauntedpearl for being relentless cheerleaders, and @hauntedpearl and @restlesshush also for getting on my ass to add subtitles.

so. this video. lots of things. the first thing i want to say is that this video really... exists in relation to, or in the context of, four other videos.

the first is my pretty little head video. this is actually the most direct link because like... a few weeks after i made that video i decided i just fucking hated it. like i was not satisfied with what i had managed to convey. it was too unfocused, it wasn't doing what i wanted it to. which is a tall order, because what i wanted it to do was... convey my entire cas thesis. also, frankly, i got better video editing software after i made it and am now kind of embarrassed at how out of rhythm it is due to the vicissitudes of my old software.

but anyway, as a result of this dissatisfaction, i actually came up with this (love club) video concept and started outlining it, in september of 2021. if you're counting that's literally more than a year and a half ago. it's been sitting in my brain and my google docs ever since. i essentially invested so much emotional energy in this one video that i was both too intimidated technically to make it and also worried it wouldn't come out right, which is why i didn't make it for a year and a half. but i'm pretty happy with how it came out! part of the problem was that i was simply trying to put too much into one video, which leads me to...

this video to your love is a drug, which is like. a kind of spiritual companion to the love club video. i made it essentially out of plans i had for the love club video that weren't working out? like, it's crucial to show the hypnotically pleasurable nature of cas' experience in order to make a discussion on cas' tendency towards falling into cults and authoritarian and abusive situations work. and while the second verse of the love club video does kind of do that? there's not enough focus on it. so i did a whole separate video on the topic. ideally they should be watched together i think. and i guess i should actually commentate that video a little before going further.

#spn#vid#i may come back and reblog with some meta but for now. director's commentary in the tags#this one is pretty straightforward. it's even MORE straight forward if you've seen my pretty little head amv#since this is basically 'pretty little head amv [cheerful version]'#anyway. this is MOSTLY about cas being in love with dean. but there's some stuff in there about like cas accepting dean as his god#and like why that happened. obviously cas is kind of an unreliable narrator here he's not exactly thinking straight#so there's a lot of stuff here that's about the narrative cas tells himself. which isn't necessarily or even likely to be true#so like for example the reason he accepted dean as his god was bc of like. godstiel trauma basically. and he really hasn't unpacked that#anyway the other slightly more complex theme in here is that cas looooves that dean is a serial killer <3#cas voice you hurt people? you hurt people for me? you hurt other people and then you treat me so tender? [tongue emoji]#of course cas is wrong in assuming that dean is only interested in hurting OTHER people. but cas' secret weapon is of course#that he doesn't care. he'll get off on that too. cas can get off on anything#anyway the last three hours of me editing this were basically just like.#god this show is so ugly *turns saturation sliders all the way up* he's in love bitch let's get you some COLORS#also there's a secret prank hidden in this video which is of course that the song (your love is a drug by puffy) has the same guitar riff#as that one direction song. the famous one. but your love is a drug came first so.#oh and special thanks to pallas leo elisabeth cy and the cas whump chat. all of whom consulted on this video#also did you guys enjoy the sam live slug reaction moment. i enjoyed it.

^those are the original tags. the your love is a drug video is fairly straightforward in that it's mostly, essentially, dean touching cas and cas enjoying it in various ways, or just dean behaving in ways that spin cas' head (mostly either affectionately or violently; sometimes both). but there's a few moments i want to draw attention to.

first of all there's a throughline about cas' season five/six crisis of faith; it goes from on the head of a pin "i still serve god" to his theologically mediated hangover in 99 problems to his self-destructiveness in point of no return. i used to see the world as dark is him calling god a son of a bitch in dark side of the moon intercut with the eventual distant result of that development, the carnage of meet the new boss. now everyday the sunshine's in my heart over honey cas, when cas' response to trauma was to drown himself in false happiness (and this is also the start of his habit of desperately flinging himself into following any order or higher power he can; more on i saw the route of flowers later). you lift me up as dean literally supporting his weight at the end of meet the new boss, standing in as a symbol of how post-godstiel cas eschews agency and allows dean (and others as well, but this video is about his relationship with dean) to make his decisions for him because he no longer trusts himself, or at least, he no longer trusts himself to set wider goals.

and then there's a few other moments that i feel like need pointing out. make my worries obsolete over cas' initial rebellion is absolutely about the fact that cas is willingly sacrificing himself there, he's willingly dying (and the fact that the reason he's willing isn't really rational, he was knock[ed] off his feet) which matters because that's also like. a theme in this love club amv.

then of course there's the way in your love is a drug cas recontextualizes cruelty through the pleasure he gains from it. dean is awful to cas in holy terror (and immediately before it), but also dean smiled at him in that bar and that's all that sticks. we've talked to death the shitty nature of dean's apology in the trap, but that's another one in here, all is forgiven in the end because dean hugged him. (there's also all of the violence but that's more complex; while that is cas being harmed and forgiving dean the harm, there is something appealing about the violence as itself) this is also the purpose of i know i'll never shake the stuff over dean showing up in heaven can't wait: this is the point where cas realizes it's just... impossible to hold anything against dean. dean will always come back and sweep him off his feet and put cas back on the whirlygig no matter what. and he really stops trying. in order to maintain his relationship with dean he just starts forgiving him everything. and this is a post season nine development. dean can hurt cas as much as he wants and cas chooses not to hold it against him or really integrate it at all because it would mean losing this his most important relationship. and because he will reap the dubious rewards. and because, well, dean will sweep him off his feet anyway so why try?

anyway. all of that is important because it's all stuff that's theoretically relevant to the love club amv but not the focus of it, which is why these two videos are kind of a pair. like, if you look at my intro to the love club amv it's a list of times dean hurt cas and then a list of times dean touched him; cas also experiences the pleasures of affection in the cult in the second verse and experiences being expected to sacrifice himself in the first chorus and being betrayed in the second. but that's not really what the video is about. while those are inevitable results of invitation into the winchester family cult, the tragedy of the love club video is about other stuff. so the your love is a drug video is kind of a necessary supplement. like, it is necessary to understand that cas' experience here is both ecstatic and hypnotic, you know?

anyway. the third video that this video is deeply interrelated with isn't mine. it's spn angels | runs in the family by snooglyshnork on youtube. obviously. like, this and the pretty little head video and the your love is a drug one are all... in a way they're my attempt to put my own spin on that video, you know? like obviously i'm saying different stuff or there would be no point in not just... rewatching the runs in the family amv. but there is a meaningful sense where all these videos, taken together, really are just my spin on that video more than anything else.

the fourth video is, well. this one. i feel like the connection is obvious. but like one of the most striking things @restlesshush has ever said to me is that that video inserts subtext into that scene that is not present in the original text. in the original scene cas is horrified but there is no implication of his guilt. he asks naomi for an apology for trying to lobotomize him, and like. yeah she shouldn't have done that but it's insane that the first thing cas thinks of is that and not his own complicity in the extinction of his species, you know? like honestly, i'm not inclined to blame cas. most of that was done either not-as-himself really, or in genuine self-defense because the first reaction of angels to any kind of disagreement is murder (because due to living absolutely authoritarian lives and having any experience of making actual choices (i.e. disobedience) wiped from their brains so they can't learn from it, they have no framework for dissent). but like. that's not how cas sees it. he should blame himself. he doesn't really have a solid framework of why things are his fault (...which is one of the reasons for a lot of his problems), he just does stuff and then it goes bad and he blames himself, even though it's frequently a result of factors outside his control. (hell, honestly i think cas would willingly submit to lobotomy, might even be absolutely ecstatic about it, if it wasn't for the fact that naomi made him kill other angels and tried to make him kill dean. like. cas WANTS to have his self and individuality obliterated and his choices taken away. that's his dream. he craves brainwashing. the problem is that he could not get with naomi's goals). and it's dumb and ooc that he didn't do it in funeralia. so this video kind of adds that back in.

anyway, now that that introduction is over with we can finally like... actually talk. about this video i just made.

so i've talked to death the subject of cas and angels and cults. and so have other people. but i wanna talk about specifics.

first i kinda wanna talk about naomi? or, you know. gush. gush about naomi. because i'm obsessed with her. because the thing about naomi is she is, to me, very genuinely tragic.

like, i used her in this video as a synecdoche for heaven's control. which is, you know, it's an obvious choice. but i do think it fits, and most crucially i think naomi and her relationship to heaven is a really solid parallel for dean and his relationship to the winchester family. which is relevant given that dean is the emblem for the winchester family cult i'm using.

like, supernatural is in many ways a show about headless bodies. and i think heaven and the angels are maybe the best example of this. because like... the thing is, they're just doing what they think god would want them to do. but he is gone. like, the archangels' relationship to god is to either do what they think he would want (michael; raphael, but there's another layer with him which is that he is also doing what michael would want/would do in michael's absence; lucifer is just doing the opposite of what god would want), or flop around like headless chickens (what lucifer does post-s11 without god's disapproval to guide him; gabriel's total disengagement and hedonistic passivity). and the power structure of heaven basically all just exists to facilitate that. like, all the other angels exist to follow michael and raphael's orders. but then of course in season eight there are no archangels left and heaven is tearing itself apart. and it was always going to, because of the kind of absolute authoritarianism that naomi helps prop up. and naomi's goal is really just... to hold things together. to keep things normal. she, too, is not really working towards her own goals and interests. she isn't the queen, she's the high priestess, just like michael and raphael. she isn't working towards her own goals, she's working towards the goals of a mysterious leader who isn't even present. like, she may be one of the highest authorities left in heaven post-s7, but that's not how she wants it. she doesn't want power, she wants the machine to keep running the way it's supposed to. she's a technician. and she's trying to keep angel society as it was functioning. in many ways, she is right! theoretically if naomi could keep things running indefinitely, she could save a lot of angel lives, and keep them happy and well-adjusted, too, if your definition of happy and well-adjusted includes having no doubts or individuality and being well-lobotomized. but the thing is, she can't keep things running indefinitely because that kind of absolute authoritarianism is inherently unstable. the level of control and violence it requires is not indefinitely maintainable. it's bound to collapse sooner or later, and then in the aftermath the angels will have none of those wonderful useful skills like conflict resolution or making choices that you get from being allowed a certain amount of conditional training-wheels freedom before just being released onto the world free to do what you will. and it will be a blood bath.

and i think that's a solid parallel to dean. because in many ways, dean is a headless body. he doesn't maintain authoritarian control of his family because he wants something from it, he does it because that's how things are supposed to be. he's not trying to get anything out of it except maintaining a kind of stability and order in which he is as much a subject as everyone else. he is not the king, he's the high priest of the cult of john winchester. just because john is dead and gone doesn't mean that dean can stop maintaining it. like naomi, he maintains the cult for its own sake. the purpose of the cult is self-reproduction, nothing else. dean has no goals except maintenance of the status quo. he too is a technician.

which is why i used naomi as the face of the angel cult in this video, and why i placed her dialogue against dean's dialogue/dialogue about dean ("i fixed you" vs. "you used to be human" and "i'll find some way to redeem myself to you"). because they serve similar roles.

this is also, by the by, why i had naomi mouth the word "love" in my mother's love is choking me (while in the show she's saying "hold still"). because she does love them. the angels. in her way.

next point. "i saw the route of flowers. it's all right there, the whole plan, there's nothing to add." honey cas is like. that whole situation is one of the reasons cas is so very vulnerable to being in a cult. he rejects agency, because as an agent he has ruined everything. he lives under the weight of absolute, crushing guilt. and so being nothing more than a cog in a machine is soothing to him. at his lowest, at the end of season seven and the beginning of season eleven, cas leans towards absolute passivity. when he collapses, this is how he falls: into total nonfunction. making choices becomes an impossible horror, both because it's just not something he's used to, and because he can never trust himself to make correct ones (because his choices always just seem to turn out poorly). so in season seven, he removes his ability to choose to dole out violence entirely, and in season eleven, he simply fully collapses in on himself and stops being able to do anything. and this leads to him desperately seeking out an authority figure, any authority figure, to make his choices for him. which is one of the reasons he's in cults. and of course, the cults are part of the reason why he doesn't trust himself in the first place; cas, i know you try to be a good guy, okay, i do, you try says dean. after everything you did, to us, to heaven. i fixed you, castiel. i fixed you! says naomi. but this is a vulnerability that exists in cas outside of intentional attempts to play on it. and it is in the end a result of his experiences as part of the heaven cult - the reason he relates to choice in this way is partly a result of the unspeakable guilt of godstiel arc, but that in itself is kind of the result of the inevitable collapse of heaven, which is a result of heaven's authoritarian nature. and the way cas processes it happens because he has spent his life as a drone without choice up until he had a glut of it. like he doesn't really have the skill at making choices and regulating his emotions that would allow him to look at the situation rationally, because he just doesn't have the experience. he has, functionally, four or five years of existing as an individual under his belt at that point (because any other experience has been lobotomized out of him). it's not much to go on.

(i also quite enjoyed the double meaning of the line. get out your maps and papers find out your hiding places again. the route of flowers and all it stands for: the will of god, external deterministic control, non-agency, all of those are a kind of map. but they are also, for honey cas, primarily a hiding place. he hides in them from his guilt and anguish.)

i also want to talk about cas and the hive. obviously i always want to talk about cas and the hive it's my favorite topic. but it really is relevant. a crucial element of cas' vulnerability to being in a cult is his desire to be reabsorbed into the hive. like, this is why i included the dragonfly eye of group mind line from 5x04. endverse cas is in many ways replacing the communion of heaven. he wants an absolute communion, no self, no boundaries, he will eat the whole world to make it a part of him. and that's what he gets out of being involved in the kinds of intense relation that dean gives him: absolute communion. of course, it's also sexual; part of my argument in this video in fact is that the appeal of the winchester family cult over the heaven cult is that it's got individual, hedonistic, embodied pleasures. people are nice to him, they're affectionate with him, they touch him. at the same time there is also explicitly sexual pleasures: he kisses meg, has homoerotic experiences with dean, watches crowley seal a deal with a kiss. (this is why take the pill, make it too real is over cas' grace vampirism and also him examining his body in meet the new boss and lazarus rising: these are the horrors and consequences of embodiment, wrapped up with the horrors and consequences of guilt). but yeah. like, when endverse cas is talking about the dragonfly eye of group mind, he has lost the communion of heaven. he is also about to have an orgy. they are intertwined. they are the same.

i also want to talk about my specific choice to use anna and uriel a lot in the first verse. with anna, that's partly because she was kind of... the first authority figure cas tries to get to be his leader. there's a reason i used the scene where cas says "i don't know what to do. please tell me what to do." and anna says "like the old days? no, i'm sorry. it's time to think for yourself" over what about the kid? / it's time the kid got free. and of course there's the dean/anna kiss and its relation to cas' sexual awakening. but anna and uriel both also serve a different role, which is that they're examples of other rebellious angels. like, the most interesting thing about the angel stuff in season four is that we see three rank and file angels. and all three of them turn against heaven in different ways. it's like rebellion is inevitable. every angel is a potential cas. in fact, cas is the least rebellious of the three! season four is about cas teetering on the edge of disobedience, while anna and uriel have both already toppled over. and uriel is actually also a great example to put cas against because cas is more similar to uriel than anna. anna falls for her own freedom; cas changes his allegience like uriel. this is one of the reasons why i included uriel's our father! in the dialogue mashup. like, i just want to put some dialogue from on the head of a pin in here:

CASTIEL: The murders. Maybe they aren't demonic. Sam Winchester said the demons had nothing to do with it.

URIEL: If not the demons, what could it be?

CASTIEL: The will of heaven. We are failing, Uriel. We are losing the war. Perhaps the garrison is being punished.

URIEL: You think our father would—

CASTIEL: I think maybe our father isn't giving the orders anymore. Maybe there is something wrong.

and then later:

URIEL: Not murders, Castiel. No. My work is conversion. How long have we waited here? How long have we played this game by rules that make no sense?

CASTIEL: It is our father's world, Uriel.

URIEL: Our father? He stopped being that, if he ever was, the moment he created them. Humanity, his favorites. This whining, puking larva.

CASTIEL: Are you trying to convert me?

URIEL: I wanted you to join me. And I still do.

like this goes crazy right? in terms of themes? you agree. like, uriel asks cas to join him, in the same way cas asks anna to guide him. they're much more similar than they are different.

so i've just learned that tumblr has link limits. click here to read the rest.

SAM: Well, you know, sometimes families do better after a little time apart. DEAN: Yeah, who? The Mansons?

[youtube with subtitles] [youtube without subtitles]

a meditation on cas and cults. the starting point and the ending point. angels and winchesters. love and affection and family and the twisting of it. the invitation to destroy yourself, and the appeal of being absolutely subsumed.

(x)

#spn #vid #abuse cw

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