whynot: etc: oh deer (another country)
Las ([personal profile] whynot) wrote2010-02-17 10:02 pm

things Sgrio makes me do

IT'S ALMOST REMIX REDUX TIME, GUYS. SO EXCITED. Click here to vote for this year's qualifying fandoms. Click here or here to get an AO3 invitation because that's where it's going down this year. Reeeeemiiiiix! \o/

This next thing is the fault of [livejournal.com profile] sgrio and her Biblical Studies homework.

Basically it poses the interpretation that angels are not messengers, but messages. Obedience to God is a moot point, because an email or a letter can't be obedient to you. They don't have the faculties to BE obedient, they just ARE. My knee-jerk reaction is of course to ask, "What if Castiel was just a message?" So I wrote


"Castiel did WHAT?" Michael rages. Then he sulks. "He's never been the most legible letter in the mailbag."

"He is but spam," Zachariah agrees.

"Always offering to enlarge my penis," Michael mutters. "I don't even have a penis on this plane!"


and then I wrote this next thing.

I'm not sure what this next thing is. It's Castiel meta, but also maybe sort of a fic, maybe. It is... an experiment? 'Cos someone, SGRIO, was like, "Hey, why don't you fap about religion and language in context of Supernatural?" and I can't say no to that. What is it with you, SPN, making me write 1st person POV, past tense, and now whatever this is idek. I kind of wanted to reference more episodes, but 500 words of this is probably more than enough for now.

So yeah, what if Castiel were words? Spoilers through 4x22, and maybe 5x02. Happy start of Lent, folks. ETA: And now there is a sequel -- unnamed.


untitled
Castiel, Dean, & God


i.

Castiel: just a message. it was God's words that wrote him out, God who punctuated him. Castiel was synecdoche, part of a whole, and he was metonymy, a shadow, but he spirits Dean out of Heaven's green room and becomes caesura, from the Latin caedere meaning 'to cut'.

so what does that mean to be JUST a message, because maybe messages aren't JUST messages, words aren't JUST words, because Castiel is God's words, in spite and because of them. people the world over insist that words can change the world, that stories can foment revolution, and maybe Castiel is beginning to understand why, can see beyond his own pentameter to recognize the irregular cadences of his Father's beloveds.

Dean says, Now shake them around a little.

Shake what?

Songs are what happens when you make words move, says Dean. So move.

far from Heaven, you need new hymns.


ii.

it would change everything, but perhaps it wouldn't be so different. it would become:

this is a story about words, about how they can save you but sometimes they, too, need saving, because if words would walk alongside demons to find you in the fire, you can sit on a park bench on some crisp november morning and listen to a message starting to wear thin. a tidy script, evenly-spaced -- that's what you saw at first -- and when you tried to tear it, it wouldn't tear. when you tried to burn it, it wouldn't burn. that was then, but this is now: you see the creases where the paper had been folded into three parts, reopened to be reread, refolded to be placed back inside the pocket.

do you believe, it asks, that something written is always meant to be read?

but you know that sometimes words are most useful when they are hidden, and you don't know how to explain this to those who need to ask. if words exist without paper and ink, then promises can exist without words, which in the end are only vessels after all.

are you a message or are you its meaning?

and then the familiar sound of rustling parchment and it is gone, leaving you breathless as only a loss of words can.


iii.

if in the beginning was the word and the word was with God, then the word was with you too, and it is with us all still. the word was God, seeping into the world like spilled ink across blank pages so get a load of this divine rorschach, friends: what do you see and what does that tell you about yourself? you are the graffiti smudged by last month's rains; you are initials carved into wet cement; you are a love letter that has been reread a hundred times.

i think every creator must dream that one day their creations will walk off the page and comfort them. God will recognize Castiel by his run-on sentences cut through with ellipses, such unwieldy paragraphs, and when Castiel says, "I have found you," God will bow His head and weep with relief.

[identity profile] twoskeletons.livejournal.com 2010-02-19 10:18 pm (UTC)(link)
:D Thanks so much. Yay, fellow language geek! *high five* Hehe, the first draft of this namedropped Browning, Spencer, and Ginsberg but I dropped it because it was a kinda browbeating. XD

[identity profile] twoskeletons.livejournal.com 2010-02-19 10:19 pm (UTC)(link)
Aww, I enjoy cummings, so that is great praise indeed. Thanks very much!

[identity profile] ratherastory.livejournal.com 2010-02-19 10:28 pm (UTC)(link)
So, umm, I've been poking at your LJ (I think it poked me back once: I was startled and may have squeaked), and between e.e. cummings and you and another friend agreeing that Misha Collins was grown in a vat by fangirls, I am having a VERY hard time finding any good reason to not friend you.

Would you have objections to such?

[identity profile] twoskeletons.livejournal.com 2010-02-19 10:32 pm (UTC)(link)
None! Hello new friend! :D

Goddamn, Misha Collins. Y'know, I saw a tag on someone's journal that said "fuck you misha i used to be normal" and I totally related /o\. I only started watching this show last month and already it is turning my life upside down aaarrrgh.

[identity profile] twoskeletons.livejournal.com 2010-02-19 10:44 pm (UTC)(link)
Thank you! This metaphor has kind of ensnared me now, I wonder what else one can do with it. I did want to reference other episodes, like how words can make you return to terrible things a la 4x16, how words can be revived even if languages are lost, because languages always change anyway. As the world changes, so do the things the world says, which leads to stuff like 5x04 happening.

[identity profile] ratherastory.livejournal.com 2010-02-19 10:44 pm (UTC)(link)
I just started watching in October myself. Yay for being newbies, all bright and shiny and new and untainted by the crazy! Uh, wait, scratch that last part. ;)

That's a tag I could get behind, certainly.

Seriously, this show RUINED MY LIFE. I started in October, but I've already watched the whole thing (like all four and a half seasons) at least four times: the second time because I needed to watch it less fast in order to appreciate it, and the last two times because I was fact-checking for fanfiction.

Hell, this show made me join FANDOM. I have never been in a fandom before. It's exhilarating!

*runs off to friend you*

[identity profile] twoskeletons.livejournal.com 2010-02-19 10:48 pm (UTC)(link)
Thanks! Aww, I'm glad you liked. :)

[identity profile] twoskeletons.livejournal.com 2010-02-19 10:54 pm (UTC)(link)
Haha, totally scratch that last part. Here I was thinking that SPN was just gonna be my casual rebound fandom after the second series of Merlin ended, but it has become something of a whirlwind romance. How would else do I explain, um, these 8000+ words of fic (THUS FAR) that I am trying to finish up? Oh god. From my conversations with various SPN fans, their experiences have been similar. One simply does not simply walk into Mordor Supernatural -- you either flail full-tilt at it frothing at the mouth, or not at all.

Fandom: A WAY OF LIFE \o/

[identity profile] ratherastory.livejournal.com 2010-02-19 10:59 pm (UTC)(link)
OMG frothing at the mouth YES! It's a little embarrassing. I ended up writing a Supernatural fanfic for NaNoWriMo (80K which will never see the light of day because it's just that embarrassing), and another 150K of fic on my LJ, all since November. Before that, it had been about two years since I wrote anything at all. Freaking FLOODGATES, I tell you! I never even wrote fanfic before September (when I wrote an abortive Dresden Files thing, which I won't mention 'cause it's still unfinished).

Supernatural is eating my brain. I don't know what it is about that show, but it makes me want to write-write-write all the freaking time.

I never did get into Merlin. I hear it's good, though. :)

[identity profile] twoskeletons.livejournal.com 2010-02-19 11:09 pm (UTC)(link)
IT'S TOTALLY EMBARRASSING. Give me my brain back, SPN, I need it to do things! But instead here SPN is making us write things we've never tried before, apparently. Like, SPN made me write first-person POV fic for the first time ever. I usually hate first-person POV!

Merlin is the silliest thing to hit my screen, which is why I love it. It's all glitter and crack and (literal) unicorns. I don't know if I would recommend it because it's Good, y'know, but because it and its fandom are mad fun. Merlin is very much like Xena!: anachronistic family-friendly adventure-fantasy starring an ambiguously queer duo.

[identity profile] ratherastory.livejournal.com 2010-02-19 11:16 pm (UTC)(link)
LOL

Unicorns! How can it not be awesome?

I should probably check it out at some point. I'll put it on my Zip list, if it's available.

[identity profile] ratherastory.livejournal.com 2010-02-19 11:16 pm (UTC)(link)
Also, Supernatural makes me unusually capslocky. Usually when I'm trying to comment in a cool and detached fashion about an episode. It always backfires. :P

[identity profile] twoskeletons.livejournal.com 2010-02-19 11:26 pm (UTC)(link)
I have long given up trying to be cool and detached about anything in fandom. I, too, am an advocate OF CAPSLOCK. \o/

Yeah there's only 26 episodes total out for Merlin now, so it's totally easy to catch up, should you want to. Here, let me spam you with GIFs until you cave:

Image

Image

Image

Image

Image

[identity profile] ratherastory.livejournal.com 2010-02-19 11:36 pm (UTC)(link)
Wow. Those are some pretty inspiring gifs!

And CAPSLOCK FTW!
ext_22293: ([ncis] the thing is)

[identity profile] anjali-organna.livejournal.com 2010-02-19 11:50 pm (UTC)(link)
Seriously, like I needed another reason to love your writing more.

I JUST COMMENTED on another thing to you how I could not get in to SPN on fear of brainsplosion! You are bad for my productivity level.

if in the beginning was the word and the word was with God, then the word was with you too, and it is with us all still.

For some reason this whole section reminded me of A River Runs Through It, primarily in how threads of the book end up coming together so beautifully in the very last paragraphs. I can't remember if it was you who talked about this book years ago. If not, you should read it. Maclean's subject matter might be growing up the son of a Scottish Presbyterian minister in Montana, but man, his words say so much more.

[identity profile] cherryscott.livejournal.com 2010-02-20 12:12 am (UTC)(link)
This is amazing. I'm actually speechless. Wow is about all I can say coherently. Especially the last part there. Just...wow.

[identity profile] ibroketuesday.livejournal.com 2010-02-20 01:36 am (UTC)(link)
Oh, this is so gorgeous and beautifully written and unique. And the last third is just amazing. I've never before heard it conceptualized like that! Truly fantastic.

[identity profile] twoskeletons.livejournal.com 2010-02-20 02:42 am (UTC)(link)
SOON YOU WILL FALL AS I HAVE FALLEN. I'm taking as many people down into perdition with me as I can, goddamn.

I have never read 'A River Runs Through It'. Didn't they make a movie out of it? It this reminds you of it, it may very well be up my alley and I might have to check it out! Thanks bb <33

Image

Oh shit, sorry I have no idea how that got there.

[identity profile] twoskeletons.livejournal.com 2010-02-20 03:02 am (UTC)(link)
Thank you so much! The last part is my favorite too. XD

[identity profile] twoskeletons.livejournal.com 2010-02-20 03:03 am (UTC)(link)
Aww gosh, thanks so much! I was kinda nervous about posting this, I'm glad you like it. I'm just such a language dork, I couldn't resist the idea. \o/

[identity profile] mute-mime.livejournal.com 2010-02-20 03:46 am (UTC)(link)
Are you expanding on this? I just feel like there are so many more places and episodes to consider that this piece could expand on. I really enjoyed the last part and the beginning.

I also LOVE that this is short because it keeps my attention the whole way where something longer generally means I'm skimming through paragraphs and focusing on sentences here and there.

[identity profile] twoskeletons.livejournal.com 2010-02-20 04:34 am (UTC)(link)
I'm considering it. I'm especially interested in what Castiel-is-words means for 4x16 and 5x04 (but then again I'm always especially interested in 5x04). Like, as the world changes, so do the things the world says, and what does that mean for Castiel? Also the idea of words/Dean is kind of breaking my brain in a good way, and I just might have to go there.

Haha, I know what you mean about the length. I was considering writing more, but it could have gotten really unwieldy really fast.

Thanks for reading!

[identity profile] marycontraire.livejournal.com 2010-02-20 05:05 am (UTC)(link)
SPEAKING OF CASTIEL. This week, on things I'm pretty sure Lass will like:

 

Just watch/skip till towards the end. The tweezers bit. You will know it when you see it.

[identity profile] marycontraire.livejournal.com 2010-02-20 05:07 am (UTC)(link)
Damn, invalid embed. Here's the link.

[identity profile] twoskeletons.livejournal.com 2010-02-20 05:16 am (UTC)(link)
At first there was cognitive dissonance because I was like WHAT HAPPENED TO HIS VOICE. IS THAT JIMMY.

TWEEZE IT, PADALOLKI. TWEEZE IT FOR CAS.

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