#i haven't called him that very often lately bc it feels like he's so grown up now 😭😭😭😭 he's not that 19yo who won the next gen finals

[sinnettini]

i see, thanks for the answer on my question about jannik and matteo. also i wanted to say i think it's cute when you call jannik "jan" 😊

no problem! i understood the confusion and it's always fun to talk about them <3 and aw thanks! i'm definitely not the only one (random example... a certain matteo does it too...) but it's my favorite nickname for him atm 🥹

[knickynoo]

I'm glad you see how messed up summer of 82 is!! bc when I watched that for the first time I was so icked out like I can't believe that episode was greenlit

Ok. So, I'm glad you sent this because I've been angrily thinking about this episode since I answered that ask the other day and wanted to rant about it, and this gives me the go-ahead. After only ever seeing the episode once during my initial watch-through of the series, I just hate-watched it to refresh my memory of why I dislike it so intensely.

Going to put this under a read more due to the plot dealing with a sensitive subject matter. (Alex--a minor-- is psychologically manipulated and physically taken advantage of by a college senior. FOR LAUGHS.) Just a heads up to others who haven't seen it.

OK. So. Let's lay out the scene of this nightmare of an episode, shall we? Alex is 17--a junior in high school, I believe. He's just got his first job delivering groceries to people around town. One of those people is Stephanie, a college senior, which puts her at like 21/22 years old.

During his grocery drop off, Alex gets to chatting with Stephanie. Turns out she's into economics. Alex LOVES economics. He's very happy to have found someone who shares this interest, seeing as most of his friends and classmates don't really care for the subject.

At discovering how old he is, Stephanie is shocked. Because, as she says, Alex is so mature! He acts and looks so much older than a high school kid! (He does not, by the way. This is season 1. Alex is so baby-faced, he looks like he's 12) But ANYWAY. It is clear that Stephanie is showing interest in him, and it's also clear that Alex is completely unaware of this. To him, he's just found someone nice to talk with for a few minutes. Other than that, he isn't particularly interested and soon says goodbye and heads home.

Stephanie later calls Alex up and invites him to go see an economist give a speech. His mother is understandably concerned at this college senior calling up her son for a date, but Alex puts her mind at ease. There is nothing romantic to it at all. They're just going to see someone speak. Again, Alex literally just sees Stephanie as a nice, older friend. Cut to them getting back to her apartment after the event. Alex just wants to walk her to her door and then go home. He even nervously makes note of it being late (he thinks it's close to midnight--it's actually like 8:30 lol). Stephanie invites him in, and Alex is visibly hesitant. He just stands still in the doorway until she coaxes him in. *red flag alert*

Stephanie offers him wine. (Alex is 17. Legal drinking age in Ohio in '82 was 19) *red flag alert*

They get to talking, and Stephanie again goes on and on about how Alex seems much too mature for only 17, saying, "You seem to have come by so much so early. You must sense that about yourself, don't you?" To which Alex tries to tell her that no, he doesn't think of himself as more mature or worldly than his peers. Stephanie cuts him off with, "Admit it--you're really special." And. I don't think I need to explain why this scene is so awful and uncomfy to watch. Listening to Stephanie try so hard to convince Alex that he's so grown up! So mature and special! 🤢🤢🤢<- hope that comes through on all of your various devices. It's the barf emoji lol. So, yeah. *waving giant red flags around* Alex, run for it, bud.

Let me just be clear that our dear Alex is NOT picking up on any of these signals. Which is very par for the course if you're familiar with Alex and his social difficulties. He's been an outcast, for the most part, among his classmates from the time he started school. He was shunned for being smart and "weird". He legitimately struggles to read social cues and is often oblivious to the intentions/feelings of others (something that's very often played for laughs in the show). So he's just. Hanging out. Talking to this girl who likes economics and keeps telling him how wonderful and smart and special he is.

And Stephanie just keeps layering it on. Telling Alex that she can't even have these types of conversations with COLLEGE GUYS. He's not like the guys her own age. He's intelligent and sensitive. At this point, pretty much all Stephanie has done since meeting Alex is remind him every four seconds that even though he's 17, he's mentally so much older. It's horrible. It's horrriiiibllleee.

Then. AND THEN, she confesses her attraction to Alex and grabs his hand. And Alex is immediately flustered and is sitting there all anxious and breathing all heavily, and the audience is just laughing away. Hahaha, a grown woman is hitting on a high-schooler and he's uncomfortable--isn't that funny??! (It should be noted that Alex tries to bring up sports to divert the conversation and shift the focus. It doesn't work)

She then kisses him, and Alex AGAIN tries to redirect things. She ignores him. At no point does Stephanie pause at the very obvious signs that Alex is stressed and not enjoying her advances. Thus far, he has 1. initially tried to make an excuse to go home, but was persuaded to go into the apartment 2. attempted to tell Stephanie that he is not as mature as she keeps saying he is, but was interrupted 3. tried to put a stop to her holding his hand by changing the conversation topic and 4. tried again to divert her attention after she kissed him.

Stephanie ignores his second desperate attempt to talk about sports and asks him if he wants to stay the night. Alex says no, understanding full well what she's hinting at. Stephanie delivers one more emotionally manipulative statement regarding how well Alex did delivering the groceries even though that was his first time doing it, so this other "first time" will probably go well too, and then she kisses him again and the scene fades to black.

Pick back up the next day at the Keaton house. Things, ya know, happened, and now Alex has convinced himself that what he has with Stephanie is true love. He doesn't see how it can be anything BUT love, considering all that happened and how much she showers him with compliments. He's mature and smart and special. Surely, she wouldn't say those things if she didn't mean it. He ends up visiting her apartment all dressed up, intending to take her on a date, but SURPRISE! Stephanie has been seeing another guy (a college guy) and Alex was just a meaningless fling for one night. She took his virginity (despite his very apparent nervousness and multiple attempts to excuse himself/steer the evening in a different direction) and he's left absolutely heartbroken. Stephanie, meanwhile, doesn't get why Alex is so upset. It's not a big deal to her.

Alex feels like he's been used--which he has--and mentions that he feels cheap, and the audience giggles away. JUST A BARREL OF LAUGHS EVERYONE.

Alex goes home and is sad and confused and angry. He dramatically buries his head in his arms at the kitchen table, near tears, and the audience is getting such a kick out of this. It is so funny apparently to watch Alex in anguish after being taken advantage of and promptly tossed aside by someone nearly five years older than him!! HOW WAS THIS EPISODE MADE.

His dad sits down with him, and Alex tells him what happened. And while Steven is a little awkward because he wasn't expecting to be blindsided by having that conversation with his son, he's not really. Like. Concerned? He mostly just tells Alex that sometimes in life we get our feelings hurt when we open ourselves up to people??? But it shouldn't make Alex avoid future relationships? ANd. That's it?? Alex considers the advice and is like, hmm maybe you're right, dad, and then the episode ends?? Meanwhile, if the plot had been the same situation involving Mallory and a college guy, you know Steven would have run over to the apartment and pummeled the guy with his bare hands. But because it's Alex and he's a boy, it's. It's just a funny episode? A learning experience? A "Hey, sometimes these things happen" conversation and then bam, closing credits??

DO YOU SEE. WHY THIS EPISODE WAS INITIALLY A ONE-AND-DONE FOR ME. Why I watched it like 😬and then went "Huh, never want to see that one again." It is a bonkers episode, but not in the good way. And this has all been festering inside of me evidently for two years, but it was never something I wanted to post about unprompted since most of my FT posts are lighthearted and fun! And this episode is messed up. And yeah, it might just be that I'm seeing it through a 2022 lens and not a 1982 lens, but still?? I have to wonder if anyone watching the show during its initial run saw the episode and went, "Hmm...that was not a fun time."

Sorry, I took your ask and ran with it like this. For those of you who have seen me mention once or twice that this is my least fave episode but never elaborate on why: now you know, haha.

[elizabethrobertajones]

I haven't been keeping up with the season, but obvi I've seen gifsets galore & I wanted to know your take on how human Cas is behaving. I know he's had a soul since Metatron (& I assume he didn't lose it just bc he got his grace back), but I feel like since returning from the empty he's been wearing his emotions & thoughts on his face & in his movements more clearly. Do you think this was a conscious choice after facing the empty or a less tangible change that occurred within him as a result?

I think something less tangible that’s been happening for a long time, because back in season 10, even, we were talking about this. And I know in season 9 there was also at least some commentary on the way Cas was operating, when he had some grace again. Though I missed most of those conversations… My first Cas episode with fandom was 9x21 and I remember people talking about him leaning on the desk in his office and how it was a human mannerism. And that was all before we discovered he’d sewn his coat in 9x18 and we only got it in deleted scenes. 10x09 as well, I remember commentary on his mannerisms, as I think there were some especially noteworthy moments where he was behaving much less stiff than usual. 

All of early season 10 for Cas was pointing out how he’d rather be on earth, rather be with the Winchesters, and in general suggesting that he might one day be better suited for a human endgame than even he realises, especially played off against Hannah, who copes so poorly with being on Earth compared to how Cas has grown so comfortable there. 

And I don’t think Cas has ever really got more stiff and formal after any of this, just that the writing moved away from directly challenging Cas about who and what he was for a while and started asking him different questions and framing him in other lights. He picks up a lot of trauma towards the end of season 10, once he gets his own grace back, and he’s out of the zone where he would die without it and therefore challenged in the story to think about this himself. The writers don’t really wanna spend all their time telling the same thing over and over and if it’s a few season renewals before this can be relevant again, all I know is that Cas never answered the major questions he was posed, and this was never satisfactory resolved in any way when it comes to the themes of that time, just that we moved onto his depression arc. 

But I think in that time we saw a lot of stuff where Cas supposedly, at least with his original grace and often times without any magic effects on him, was still in a really terrible place, being depressed and traumatised, saying yes to Lucifer, and all the punishment season 12 put him through, including some very emotional moments like in 12x09 where he kills Billie on their behalf. 

This season his return from the Empty has made him seem more confident in some ways, but at the same time he’s still lost about his purpose, still struggling with being sure he’s completely accepted by Dean and dealing with low key self worth issues which of course affect him, because he can’t come out squeaky clean. But he had at least to fight off some of the worst things he believed about himself in order to defeat the Empty and on the other side of that he’s been standing taller and more confidently, which is great. But I think his mannerisms have been slowly creeping in and evolving for a long time, especially since being human, and while playing Cas since then always as a lower powered version of Cas, I think the change has been a long, slow process, but at this point we’re getting to where it’s extremely obvious how he’s so different from how he used to be.

My favourite example this season is in 13x19 where he’s bored waiting in Heaven, and he isn’t waiting like Cas would do in the old days, where if he was impatient he’d still stand still and radiate annoyance, or maybe pace back and forth if he was REALLY agitated. But we get a whole montage where he flops all over the furniture, pokes and prods things, and moves around the room bored and curious and very very much in a human way where it’s not even being disrespectful or whatever, it’s that he genuinely is bored and is distracting himself from a long wait in a really human way. I don’t think it’s really surprising with where is NOW or particularly weird for him. It’s not a red flag that anything is short term weird with him. Based on how the last like 4 years at least have gone for him, it’s not super strange for him to be behaving like this in season 13. But if he was doing it 5 or 6 years ago and longer it would have been much stranger, maybe even a red flag that something was wrong with him, and would have had way more purpose than just being to make us laugh at how bored Cas is, but to make some really profound point about him which would be new and revealing instead of expected and just a way of reminding us how different Cas is these days. I don’t think it’s revealing now in the sort of way of saying “wow! how human Cas is!” except maybe for people who REALLY weren’t paying attention, compared to if stiff and proper Cas had been revealed to act like this away from the Winchesters’ eyes in like… season 4 :P 

But, yeah, idk, Cas goes through so much and he’s been gradually changing for a long time, and in season 9 and 10 especially there was so much focus on who and what Cas was, and things like Claire calling out how much he changed and stuff, that it was a time of a lot of growth and shaping of Cas while season 8 had very deliberately been a sort of soft reset where it turned out Naomi was responsible, but it’s a last hurrah for Cas being remotely like he was in his most angelly times. They really rebuilt who and what Cas was in that time and since then we’ve been exploring deeper the new version of Cas.

I suppose no one really reads my episode notes but if you see me joking about party!Cas a lot, it’s because of this from 13x19: 

elizabethrobertajonesListen, at some point Cas transitioned from the stoic Cas we once all knew to a new and better Caswe’ve been talking about this a long timesince season 10 at leastbut I think finally I can say for certainthe season 10 - present Cas is…party!Cas

mittensmorgulPARTY CAS

elizabethrobertajonesand will refer to him as such meaning this period of his life indefinitely until it changes again :Pwe can keep it to season 13 if that makes more senselike his newfound purpose since the Emptybut I was harping on Riverboat Gambling!Cas earlierso I think this is actually something that’s been going on a whileand Party!Cas is just a more dominant trait this season than ever beforebut the arc to  becoming party!Cas has long been in motion

mittensmorgulthat reminds me of some of the early s12 meta talking about ‘growing up’ and how the characters were getting to experience adolescence for the first time… and Cas is kinda going through growing pains too. guess this is late adolescence for him now :P

elizabethrobertajonesawwwwwteenage party CasI love himso much

(I ended up typing this all to Mittens while first watching Cas messing around in 13x19 in the heaven waiting room. Though at the start of that episode, Rowena complains they don’t go to enough parties, and when she hangs up on them, Cas is like, “she’s right, you never go to parties.” I figure he’s waiting for someone to throw him a birthday party while Sam and Dean are too awkward to ask when it is after all this time.) 

But yeah, the traits I identify with party!Cas are all the ones where he seems less angelly and more human, more a truer version of himself and especially when it’s because he’s confident and owning being more than anything he ever thought he was “only”.