rusty_halo

I can understand the within-textual rational of the argument for why Dean classified the relationship as brotherly but I kinda utterly disagree with it. When you have that kind of strong, close relationship with a sibling nothing measures up. There's nothing else that will ever compare and that would go for Dean times a million. He just wouldn't feel this way and he wouldn't articulate it this way. I would have been okay with him saying Castiel is like family (not really, but, heh, whatever, *handwave*), because that frame of reference fits with the way Dean conceptualizes the relationships he has with people who are close to him and he cares about - it's that extra "like a *brother*" that feels completely unnatural, and extra-textually it comes across as a total failure of characterization, lazy writing (and, quite honestly, Edlund fanboying Castiel) and the show in general being unwilling or unable to delve into and deepen the relationship.

I agree i_speak_tongue has an interesting point about the show presenting Dean as a father/mentor figure but this is also problematic to me because, though it is an interesting angle, it fails to take into account all that Castiel is. Castiel might be new and like a child at free-will, but this is an old, old being we're talking about here, one that has knowledge and power beyond what we can imagine. The show seems to have forgotten that. This is not a relationship between equals or 'people' in equal footing - this is a relationship between beings that aren't even the same race. This, however, seems to bear no weight in their differing moral approaches. Instead it's all about Castiel being morally underdeveloped (when it could be something akin to Illyria's story, if we imagine Illyria's possible progression in the hands of someone other than Joss).

Yes, it is about the ends vs. the means. But it doesn't bring anything new to the table. Instead it feels like a step-back. I don't really care about the story of the angels fight to become 'real boys' to begin with and the way this new iteration fails to encompass personal sacrifice makes me care even less.

More than pacing, I blame the writers having run out of ideas and not knowing what the fuck they're doing. I'm not surprised but I'm still quite a bit :/ about it.

(Thank you for the recs though - I do not read SPN meta other than what comes across the f-list so I had not read the first one.)