#spn 7x21

[strawlessandbraless]

I remember watching Supernatural for the first time and feeling bad for sexualizing Castiel because he’s an angel and also my best friend

And then all at once I understood why Dean Winchester is the way he is. And it made the line ‘the very touch of you corrupts’ hit so hard. Just look at how both Dean and Cas react here…

If they had only loved themselves as much as they loved eachother

[bloodydeanwinchester]

DESTIEL IN EVERY EPISODE → 7x21 reading is fundamental

lines that almost certainly set destiel's relationship back years because dean took it as confirmation of what he's suspected all along...that he's like poison to castiel

[drulalovescas]

CASTIEL CARED .... AND IT BROKE HIM APART

[sirlancenotalot]

happy 16th to my favourite episode ever made on any show and to my favourite character EVER, happy lazarus rising day 😇🐿️🫎

[spnstillstudies]

427/327 (KO-FI♡)

S7E21, “Reading Is Fundamental”

[captainchilly]

"What are you two jackasses doing with the word of God?" ↳ 7.21 - READING IS FUNDAMENTAL

[garashir]

2x21 All Hell Breaks Loose (Part 1) // 7x21 Reading Is Fundamental // 15x18 Despair

[shirtlesssammy]

Dean and Cas every day not often enough -- 37/?

Supernatural 7x21//Reading is Fundamental

[postmodernmulticoloredcloak]

Most insane underrated line in Supernatural is "the angels, they don't care. I think maybe they just don't have the equipment to care. Seems like when they try, it just breaks them apart". We are in season 7 episode 21!! Cas and Dean haven't repaired their relationship yet!! Dean is fresh from Cas' betrayal and loss, he has barely started processing the entire thing - and this line has everything, there's the acknowlegment that whatever bad Cas did was from a place of caring, of trying, there's the dose of guilt because Dean blames himself for breaking Cas, there's the other side of the blame coin because as far as Dean is concerned "breaking" Cas is an improvement from the default angel uncaring condition, but is it, isn't it, is it, isn't it? Is giving an uncaring creature the equipment to care an improvement or a downgrade? Is the pain worth it? Is turning Pinocchio into a real boy a gift or a punishment? The very touch of your corrupts. You turned him into the same rotten, twisted thing as you are. Humanity is a virtue. Humanity is a curse. The humanity in you is a value. The humanity in you is a perversion. You are hell incarnate, turning an innocent thing into a monster. But is the monster a monster when the monstrosity you gave him was the ability to care? Where's the line between defilement and mercy? Who traces the line? Depravity and goodness are sides of the same coin called humanity and you're so full of humanity it's bursting at your seams. You're a plague inflicting the ones around you with your sickness but the sickness is being a person. You installed the personhood software into the robot and it's not perfect anymore. Is it broken? Or is it really perfect now? Who decides that? Do you get to decide? Is the one you affected able to decide?

*grabs Ben Edlund by the shoulders and shakes him, all while screeching*

[mira-mercury]

His eyes are so telling (and they’re gorgeous)

[bookish-bees]

their soft smiles 🥺

like father, like son

[shallowseeker]

theres a cut line from the drafts of ouroboros where jack says "i'm a winchester, i'm the chicken And the snake" and i think about that line a lot.

he gave up something he loved (his soul) to destroy something he hated (michael) and he was too "greedy" (in a sense, he missed his old power a lot and had he not healed cas he mightve had a sliver of his soul left) and it killed him (his soul). i understand why that line was cut (redundancy was probably a factor) but i wish it had been kept. hes the chicken and the snake......

Yes, I do love this line. It's the duality of it all. And I think it's also the horror of the cosmic hierarchy. To the livestock, we are their Leviathan. But the Leviathan treating us as livestock in season 7 is a campy horror show!

I don't think Jack is uniquely dual-natured (because I think everyone in the entire show is), but Jack's symbolic nature is pretty heavy-handed in its symbolism!

Here again we have the word "nothing," that is so often applied to Jack. He is the chicken sacrificing his soul and becoming the snake (angel).

//

The grace twists like a snake, as Jack becomes an ouroboros after sacrificing his soul, the snake consuming the snake.

I love this moment because Jack is specifically saving Rowena, the same woman his father murdered:

////

I think this has some interesting things in common with Cas's consumption of Theo, way back in season 9. It certainly characterizes Cas's panic. Jack is becoming like Cas here, like Cas's family, specifically. Snakes. Beasts. Burning serpents. Barbarians. Creatures of war. (War, where even Lucifer is happiest, needed. Note: Lucifer was attentive to Kevin Tran, the AU refugees, Jack, and Dean during his stent in Apocalypse-verse. He was happy there, too. Lucifer is happiest as the underdog, not God.)

///

CASTIEL: I'll – I'll need a moment to make contact. (THEO waits.) And you have something that I'll need. THEO: Anything. CASTIEL grabs one of the medical implements and slices THEO in the throat, letting his white grace slip out; CASTIEL opens his mouth and swallows it. Mm. (CASTIEL groans; the grace fills him up; his eyes turn blue; THEO stares in dazed recrimination, blood dripping from his neck. CASTIEL looks at him, then puts a hand to his forehead; THEO screams, his angelic white light bursts out of him, and he falls to the ground his eyes burned out. 9x09

CASTIEL: He had me. I, uh, I was tortured. But I got away. DEAN: How? CASTIEL: I... I did what I had to. I became what they've become. A barbarian. ...

CASTIEL: It's better I stay away. They're gonna want me even more now. But I'm gonna be all right. I... I got my Grace back. Well, not mine per se, but it'll do. DEAN: Wait, you're – you're back? You got your mojo? CASTIEL: I'm not sure. But I am an angel. DEAN: And you're okay with that? CASTIEL: If we're going to war, I need to be ready.

You are an angel, once and forever. (Hannah, 10x01)

JACK (to DEAN): I don't think you have a firm grasp on what snakes eat. (14x15)

DEAN: There's no use asking "why me?" 'Cause the angels – they don't care. I think maybe they just don't have the equipment to care. Seems like when they try, it just... breaks them apart. (7x21)

CAS: You understand? I can't. I destroyed...everything, and I will destroy everything again. (7x23)

It's what serpents do. When they enter gardens, all they know how to do is consume and destroy.

[nym-wibbly]

Which one of TFW got the best line in Spn?

Huh. If it has to be one of Team Free Will then you've got me. They all had so many great lines. Crowley, Bobby, and Lucifer all got some stonkers, too.

The line that really seared itself into my brain from all of Supernatural was guest-character Hester's:

It really shook me! I mean, in and of itself it's a great line. But there's so much worldbuilding packed into the combination of the line with Emily Holmes's delivery. This idea that Castiel fetching Dean out of hell was the first domino tipped over, not only in Cas's personal fall ("You have fallen in every way imaginable,") but in the subsequent chaos and destruction in Heaven. And she's not wrong to single that event out as the turning point, but she turns the blame on Dean, who hardly got any choice in the matter:

"Why should we give you anything after everything you have taken from us? The very touch of you corrupts. When Castiel first laid a hand on you in Hell, he was lost! For that you're going to pay." Supernatural 7x21 - Reading is Fundamental

She says these lines to Dean, and it starts as the whole aloof, disdainful shtick we've seen from other angels speaking about and to humanity. But Hester reaches max gross load right there and then, so it finishes raw. She breaks down, shouts, loses all self-restraint and just hurls her grief, rage and pain at Dean. Moves to punish him. When Cas deflects Hester from physically attacking Dean - no small intervention, given his fragile state of mind - she whales on the helpless Cas instead, trying to claw back some control of her life by attacking what she sees as the source of her problems.

Hester's completely adrift in this new world of free will and personal responsibility that Team Free Will have dropped on her, and on all the other, surviving angels who didn't get a starring role in the Apocalypse or the war in Heaven. Hester's fallen too, they all have, and she only knows it when Inias begs her not to kill Castiel. Then she snaps completely, and Meg kills her before she can kill Cas.

That's some corking dialogue right there, and in some ways it's more of a reveal about the state of things in Heaven, post-non-Apocalypse, than all Castiel's season 6/7 power-grab arc with its exposition about what's going on up there. Hester's public breakdown is one of the few hints we ever get of exactly what Cas is so regretful and self-hating about in later seasons. Every time his storyline trips him over another failure or mistake, it adds to this guilt until he ends up just desperate to do something right. So desperate that it blinds him to the nuances of an evolving situation, sometimes.

I don't think Cas understands until almost the very end of the story, after becoming Jack's father and reaching rock-bottom in his relationship with Dean, that the one thing he always thought he got right in the first place - pulling Dean Winchester out of Hell, saving him, taking his side against an absent and uncaring God - was always victory enough.

[drulalovescas]

THE VERY TOUCH OF YOU CORRUPTS WHEN CASTIEL FIRST LAID A HAND ON YOU IN HELL HE WAS LOST!!!!!!!!!!! is an actual line spoken to Dean Winchester about gay angel Castiel in the CW show Supernatural. How insane is that??????

[sirlancenotalot]

honeybee cas edition

[deanhisnippleisout]

i've watched this ep like 10 times and have only just realised he's looking inside the ceramic deer I AM IN LOVE WITH YOU