#brought me back to the very early episodes where the cyclical nature of the parties frieren travelled w/ was so potent

[muninnhuginn]

Staring at my notes for myself on last frieren ep like that was good but I need to actually use some more words here 🤣

[tonyglowheart]

i recognise this is an unasked-for niche knight's move tangent on meta-commentary tag talk you left on pretty gifset but: spn destiel really being a textbook example of grade a CLAMP-style "there are no such things as coincidences, only naturally foreordained events in which other outcomes are impossible as a result of a single causality, as all other causalities would necessarily create different results" hitsuzen fuckery huh

I think I know what you’re getting at but like, what drives me feral about destiel is that I think they’re very much NOT that. Like, they’re only “fated” or “inevitable” in a sort of philosophical sense of “well what happened must have been fated because that’s how it turned out.” I think CLAMP/Holic’s hitsuzen is a bit more... inevitable in a pre-ordained sense? like the idea is more “it may seem accidental but really it was all sort of a big plan”? Whereas the confluence of metatext and text with destiel is that.. they WEREN’T supposed to happen. Castiel only exists because Dean got sent to hell because of a writer’s strike, and then he was only supposed to stick around for a 4-episode arc, but then I guess whoever decides things (audience? cast? showrunner? writers?) decided they liked him so much they kept him around for longer. And then there were several times where the showrunners/writers wanted to kill him off for good, but then like... fan campaigns, I believe, or other decisions happened and he got brought back. And destiel is the romance that, like, wasn’t supposed to be, like it has a reputation for being a huge queerbait because I don’t think the showrunners or writers ever really intended for it to be romantic, and whether that be writing or acting choices but we actually can look back at it and it does all work as one big romantic arc, and imo a lot of it - especially early stuff - was done without conscious intention.

And then in the text, we have this explicit struggle between fate/destiny/will of God, and free will, and the idea that the apocalypse was written by God and should have happened, but they diverted it and created free will because they’re no longer going by God’s script so to speak, but then a later reveal of actually that was a lie too and God was still pulling the strings all along until they finally defeated him. But before we got that development and reveal, and post diversion of the apocalypse, we repeatedly got other characters - other angels in charge, God even later - who textually said Castiel was the famous spanner in the works who had to repeatedly be brought back in line with the party line (said by this one angel in charge of heaven), and God actually said at some point that “you know what every other version of you did after gripping him tight and raising him from perdition? what they were told. but not you”

Maybe this is “fated” more like that one Black Mirror episode one, where the dating thing worked by running simulators telling them they weren’t fated and seeing what they did and if they defied that to try to be together, but I think the conflict of Destiel comes from the fact that textually, the worlds where Cas didn’t keep doing what he was told ARE the minority, and that also parallels the crazy real-world metatext of, like, looking back it just seems like a series of happy coincidences that led to all of this happening, and honestly, they could have even left the show off without even explicitly acknowledging Cas’ love for Dean either.

idk I mean the philosophical arguments is a bit tricky bc it can get a bit cyclical, but just.. I think the vibe of destiel isn’t so much that they’re fated lovers, but that they are in fact UNFATED lovers who against all odds and like active attempts to prevent even, still ended up coming together, and like if we’re talking about a hypothetical multiverse, they are in fact the minority. And like, “in every universe I will find you” is sexy but “despite everything we are together because we CHOSE to be and the power of our choice literally changed the whole world” is just. A Lot.