#as every subsequent action warps to fit what your main interpretation is

[elizabethrobertajones]

Ha! Sorry , yeah I forgot to put in Cas's name (and it's coming from a LOT of Cas fans in a "I get why they're happier to see their mum- just as someone without blood relations it makes me super sad to see people act this way about bio parents- same reason I can't watch Once Upon a Time which is super gross about that)

Aah, I get you >.> Yeah, I understand now. But I haven’t been on my dash at all so I have no idea what people are saying about this or how they have been interpreting it. I’m so far behind despite it being like 2 days since the episode I’m still in the fresh eyes episode reaction phase >.> I’d like to know what people are saying before, like, the next episode, but I suppose I can offer my perspective without any idea what everyone else is saying about this :P 

To my eyes I didn’t think they were “happier” to see their Mom - they called Cas and Mary came too and they didn’t have an expectation she’d be there. Using Sam as a control group because Dean is definitely acting weirder in that scene, Sam just sort of stumbles on both of their other immediate family in the wood and glomps onto both of them. 

I have read a fair amount of meta now suggesting Dean’s weirdness about Mary being there was because he hadn’t expected her and the whole deal thing - which we don’t know the terms of yet when they see her for the first time - being a real problem. Now I rewatch it Dean definitely seems much shiftier about it all so I read HIS reaction to seeing Mary as not letting go of Cas and rushing off to her because he cares more to see her, but he is distracted by her presence because he hadn’t counted on it.

(It all relies on Cas and Mary bonding while Sam n Dean are locked up - I don’t think they knew really that Cas and Mary had been as close as they were even before they both split off on their own things, because they talked alone at night. Mary IS Cas’s emergency contact and that should be fairly obvious but Dean made a point of calling Cas and only Cas over and over when they got out so his behaviour excludes Mary and remembering 12x06 I think he would have feared exactly what nearly happened, involving her in the deal even if he couldn’t have been sure the terms covered her, Winchesters tend to sacrifice for each other and the last time they saw her her vulnerability there was emphasised.)

Buuut the camera from Cas’s perspective tells us he’s THINKING Sam and Dean are prioritising Mary, so that’s a valid thing to discuss, but I do think Cas’s self esteem was literally the subplot of the episode for him, so his judgement on these matters is impaired - 12x03 with the conversation about belonging is so important and he thinks Mary belongs (and she assumes he does), but when Cas sees something like Sam and Dean rushing to hug Mary, despite how we see how happy they are to see him, he can’t process it properly; we’re getting Cas’s perspective but it’s only a perspective. So I think Cas is actually feeling what you are about the sad and isolating feeling of blood family winning over found family (as he expressed in 12x03 about Mary belonging just because she was their mom) and he feels like he’s seeing it in action there.

But the show has ALWAYS stressed these messages about what blood is and how that includes people who aren’t literally blood at all (and in Cas’s case are angel grace instead of blood :P)… Crowley’s one thing in the episode was to remind us how he cares (even though he says he doesn’t) and Dean gave him the family don’t end in blood (or begin there) speech about HIS newly discovered Mom back in 10x17, which is now pretty eerie. It looks like we’re coming up to conflict about Mary in 12x12, and her choices, and while I think there’s a very very low chance the Winchesters disown her, I do think the actual bonds of closeness between them all need to be really forged in fire through all the stupid decision making Winchesters do :P I just watched the end of season 6 yesterday, and Cas making all his stupid decisions, and Dean saying he considered Cas family to try and talk him out of it… The knock on effect of that long down the line when Dean and Cas reconcile, is a bond that’s far stronger than it was before, because it’s come through all that pain into forgiveness. 

And not to say Mary isn’t important to them because although she hasn’t been in their lives, the comparison to Rowena is obviously nothing like how Mary was to her sons when she was alive and they were small… The tragedy aspect of her dying changes the way in which she wasn’t there for them and how they relate to that… It’s an emotional stake they have in each other that people literally can’t have in real life so the melodrama attached is very heightened and weird… Anyway, the way Mary has been written in the past, to go right back to episodes like Home, shows a huge sacrifice and love for her sons, so though she hasn’t had many chances in the narrative, their one encounter with the “real” her in the whole story before season 12, she did one of the big Winchester sacrifice plays out of love for them, so though she doesn’t remember it, in a way I would suppose to them it seems like she has been tested and her true self demonstrated to them in a way that would make them very happy to accept Mary as-is, as both blood and someone who would earn their total respect and trust, even taking the tragedy and subsequent canonisation of Mary aspect out of it.

Buuut yeah while Mary has been this constant presence in the show, Cas HAS physically shown up for them more… I don’t wanna get into points scoring or saying who is more deserving because they both have very different relationships to the brothers, and they have been put in the narrative in a neat sort of parallel to each other walking a similar path but with their own baggage, and the direct parallel in 12x03 of how they felt about belonging started this off. The narrative is therefore treating them as equals both needing to come to the same place and feel the same way in SOME ways, about belonging and finding a family (and they’re doing it with each other as well as bonding with Sam and Dean which is great because the family dynamic will work best with all 4 of them sharing love in all directions)… But it all needs to be tailored to the ways they’re approaching it. To take that 10x17 speech again, Cas is “family don’t end in blood” and Mary is “but it doesn’t start there either” and they’re working through those two extreme opposite ends of the mantra side by side, so in moments like this, it’s demonstrating where we’re at with this. (Mary seems to find some belonging but now is desperate to protect her family even more; Cas’s actions not just here but in the speech after killing Billie, clearly paint him as an outsider looking in, and admiring “the Winchesters” while not feeling like a part of the family unit - the three standing together and him addressing them)… This is not the end of this arc by a long shot, so while Sam and Dean are relatively stable and when it comes to THEIR relationship absolutely a fluid duo who move and think together (have they EVER been this good?) Cas and Mary have been thrust to extreme ends of their approach to belonging right now… 

So I think to compare them by how much history they have with the Winchesters is a bit one-sided whichever character you are favouring, because these stories are parallel lines on the same emotional quest, and you need to consider both to understand the other. I don’t think it’s really a competition for family? Cas’s found family side is equally a valid part as Mary’s blood relationship but to reconcile both to the core family unit has to deal with the issues of both, which from Cas’s perspective is Mary having less history but easier acceptance into the family and from Mary’s perspective is reconciling being in this family by blood with properly feeling herself as part of the family unit with the same bonds that the forged in fire found family relationships have - in 12x03 her problem is she’s feeling like an outsider because “her” family is babies and married to John, not two gruff hunters and their angel. She HAS the blood connection and it seems to give her an “in” but she’s struggling so much with what is “more” than that. 

… I hope this rambling makes any sense and maybe makes you feel better about whatever’s going on here. I definitely don’t think the show is betraying its age old mottos about family that I assume would make it so appealing when you have a lot of found family.