Can I say how well the show has handled Kelly’s story? She was doomed to die from the start because Jack always needed to be born and orphaned of his mother, but she wasn’t simply “fridged” and filed away as the female who produced a child (which was, in fact, how antagonists has referred to her). Instead of not being mentioned anymore like Supernatural tends to do with several of its dead characters (sort of understandably, since there are a lot…), she remained instrumental to Jack’s narrative, and even in death she had agency through her recorded video to Jack, her memory was repeatedly brought up and her importance to Jack emphasized, also through him meeting her parents, and now she has gotten closure and has had her choices (not preventing Jack from being born, choosing Castiel as his guardian) validated.
Jack literally came up to her and was like hey and transformed her back into her continuous conscious self :’)
His life for Jack’s? There is no question; there is no choice to be made. It’s his son. It’s their son.
Castiel watches Jack choke around a mouthful of beer, and he shakes his head fondly. Sam let him have the drink; an indulgence to celebrate the boy’s first return from the dead, like a true Winchester. Dean laughs and thumps Jack’s back while he sputters, green eyes crinkling, and Cas is happy. His favorite people, his family, are alive. His son, his best friend, the love of his life. He waits, eyes closing in anticipation.
Nothing happens. The Shadow, the Empty — it promised it would come when he was at his happiest, and this is the happiest Castiel has been in a long, long time. Yet it doesn’t take him.
He supposes he’s never been happy enough. He wonders if he ever will be, now that his doom hangs permanently over his head. Castiel wonders if that’s such a terrible thing.
///
Weeks pass. Jack is anxious about Castiel’s deal, but he keeps his promise. Sam and Dean don’t know. And if Castiel chooses to stay near them, hunt with them more often — well, they think he’s simply soaking in all the time he can get with Jack after his close call. That wouldn’t be wrong. It’s just not the whole story.
It’s playing with fire to continue to work with them, live with them. Every night spent sitting next to Dean in a shitty motel, every case researched alongside Sam, every story told to Jack is another chance that Cas takes. He feels as though he‘s always inching closer and closer to his happiest moment and thus his inevitable demise. Every time Sam makes him laugh, every time Jack surprises and delights him, every time he even looks at Dean — that’s a time Cas risks it all.
I want to change this deal, he can’t help but think one day as he and Dean are driving together on their way back from grocery shopping. Dean is drumming his fingers on the wheel and singing to one of his tapes. Dean turns to him and mouths lyrics Cas doesn’t really hear, singing to him. Cas smiles, but in the back of his head he thinks, Is this it?
It’s not, but the moment feels degraded anyway.
///
Cas is struggling. It’s difficult to enjoy life when enjoying your life means it will end.
Sam and Dean have noticed, now. They don’t know what’s wrong with him, why he’s so anxious and distracted all the time, but Cas knows they’re worried. He’s heard them whispering about him, noticed Dean is even more attentive than usual. It’s not helping.
”You have to tell them,” Jack says, wringing his hands. He’s too young to carry this secret alone, and Castiel knows it, but he can’t imagine ruining the time he has left with the Winchesters by telling them the truth. “They know something is wrong.”
”They don’t need to know,” Cas says, and he knows it’s a lie.
///
“You’d tell me if something is wrong, right?”
Cas wishes Dean wouldn’t ask him things like that. He wishes he could tell Dean everything. “I made a deal for Jack. If I let myself be happy, the Empty gets me.”
“Yes, Dean,” he says instead, and Dean’s eyes narrow. “I’m just — still adjusting. Losing Jack was…” He can’t even finish the thought.
”Yeah, I know.” Dean sits next to him on the bed, their legs brushing. Dean invites Cas to hang out in his room more and more often these days. Cas takes this as another sign Dean’s worried about him. “It was fucking awful. But he’s back, and you’re back, and we’re all together. Man, I gotta say, these past couple years—” Dean looks down at his hands and takes a steadying breath, considering his next words. “Back when you died, Cas, I lost it.”
Cas closes his eyes. He can’t bear to hear this, can’t bear to witness Dean’s pain when he knows it will soon be repeated.
“I did,” Dean continues, as if it’s something he has to convince Cas of. “I fucking lost it. And I was terrible to the kid, ‘cause I blamed him. And then you came back and Jack became family and losing him, too, just when I realized how much he meant to me… I just can’t take much more of this shit, you know?”
Cas can barely speak. “I know,” he says, and his voice is thick with tears.
”Hey, look at me.” Cas looks at Dean because he must, must give this man everything he wants before he goes, and he’s surprised to see there are tears in Dean’s eyes, too. “I know it was a nightmare, but we made it, okay? It’s over, Cas. And I know what it feels like, livin’ while waiting for the other shoe to drop. I don’t want that for you.”
”Dean—” He knows, of course he knows, Jack must have said something—
“You deserve to be happy,” Dean continues, and Cas feels like someone has reached into his chest and pulled out his all-too-human heart. “I want you to be happy, because I love you. I — I have to say it; you need to know. I’m in love with you.”
Castiel doesn’t get the chance to say it back. The Empty keeps its deals.
So there’s these computer programs called artificial neural networks that are good at imitating things. By seeing examples of what humans did, they can learn to translate languages, predict product sales, and even categorize text and images as innocuous or explicit (it has a lot of trouble with this last task, as it turns out).
One neural network I use, called textgenrnn, tries its best to imitate any kind of text you give it. I’ve given them paint colors, bandnames, and even guinea pig names and in each case their results are somewhat… mixed. (Paint colors called Stanky Bean, Stargoon, and Turdly, for example) The problem is that it doesn’t know what any of these words mean – it’s just picking letter combinations that seem likely to it.
This is what happened when I gave it all the cookies from a list of American recipes. This is what human cookies sound like to a neural network.
Now if you’ll excuse me, I’m going to go whip up a batch of Fluffin Coffee Drops.
For more cookies, including the neural net’s strange obsession with “balls,” as well as bonus material every time I post, you can sign up here.
Random thought:
mittensmorgul heck… what if cas is finally given a proper CHOICE about what to do with his grace… and he “pays off” the empty by cutting out his grace to send it to the empty, while remaining human on earth?
elizabethrobertajones HECK HECKCELLENT good lawyering I’m hiring you to represent Castiel as his defence
mittensmorgul the empty can have his angel half
elizabethrobertajones and Cas splits in half much cleaner than Jack
mittensmorgul throwing himself (or even just his grace) at an emergency situation isn’t a proper choice. he needs a choice
elizabethrobertajones We’ve proved that much that Jack went into system shut down without grace and Cas didn’t
Jack’s heaven is being on a road trip/hunt with Sam, Dean, and Cas. He had to go find Kelly’s heaven. His default heaven, best memories, are Sam, Dean, and Cas.
When Gods and Monsters aired, I said wait for it, this is an arc.
“I heard what you were saying, Cas, about me finding out where I came from. I never knew my mother. I thought the next best thing might be for me to meet the only real family that I have left.”
While it’s valid for Jack to want to meet his blood family, from audience pov, we’re seeing things Jack isn’t, we know things Jack hasn’t figured out yet. Family don’t end with blood. What audience realizes and what characters know are not always the same.
And now we’re here, where Jack’s heaven is being on a road trip with Sam, Dean, and Cas. His adoptive fathers. His family. Kelly is no less significant to him, but the mini-arc set up in 14.02 is partly resolved–Jack has found his “real family” and he didn’t realize it before but his heart knows now.
Gods and Monsters is also the ep where Jack says “Then Dean dies” because Michael must be stopped at all costs and that mini-arc had an explanation and partial fulfillment in 14.06, “Optimism”:
Jack: “You don’t understand. I could’ve killed Michael. Here. When I was strong enough. But there was so much going on. And then…everything else happened because I was distracted and stupid. And–” Dean: “Hey. You didn’t do anything wrong.” Jack: “And neither did you. But that doesn’t make it any easier, does it.”
And was satisfyingly put to rest in 14.07 “Unhuman Nature” when Jack tells Dean:
“I guess my point is that… if I don’t make it… the stuff I’d miss… it wouldn’t be things like Tahiti. Or the Taj Mahal. I’d miss more time with you.”
I was dubious about this character in S13 but those specifics have been addressed or resolved or course corrected. Even with my S13 issues aside, I wouldn’t have been seeing him as a soft nougat-boy, the whole point was he was good yet also a dangerous wild card. Wariness was part of the story. But there is an arc at work until we’re here where Jack’s heaven is a road trip with Sam, Dean, and Cas and I really, really did not ask for these feelings. And yet.
Especially in an episode where Anubis explained this exactly, that it’s not God or Death or Heaven or Hell that decides their fate, it’s each person themselves. It’s the choices we make and our feelings about those choices that makes the difference.
Mittens of Sorcery 