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things Sgrio makes me do
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This next thing is the fault of![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
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
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.
This next thing is the fault of
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.
PART 2, because I exceeded the character limit!
And God would retort: no. They are acting of their own volition, they hurt, they care, they fuck up, they hate, they love, they live and live. They are raging against the dying of the light, and thus are exactly as they should be, no matter what.
My Castiel is sad. Maybe he will be angry sometime after the fic is over, but for now he is just sad and bewildered and confused. This fic is EXACTLY like realizing your parents are regular people, that is EXACTLY it. Well, except maybe more theological, but HAHA, the show is totally making the theological about family anyway, so it can work. The family that prays together, yanno.
I think the first line of this fic is gonna be, "The amulet starts to burn somewhere over the Sulu Sea." I have this image of Cas just hovering in the air all caught up in the amulet that he doesn't notice the jet plane until it's a little too late. I mean, then Cas zooms off towards Manila of course, but the pilot is all, "...Did I just see what I thought saw?"
OH AND HERE IS ANOTHER SCENE. So, they're in God's rented room at the boarding house (He closed up shop early to talk with Cas, I guess), and now the visit is over and Cas is about to leave. But he hesitates, and he thinks maybe he shouldn't ask this question, but maybe now that he's here he can't help himself, and he is both fearful and hopeful when he asks, falters, asks, "Father... may I see You?"
And God knows that Castiel means see Him in His true form, and then there's a MOMENT, yanno. God's expression softens and Castiel can't tell if it's love or pity or something else, and God asks, "What about your vessel? For him to see me in my true form would damage--" but then Cas gets this panicked anguished expression on his face, and God takes pity on him and sighs, "I'll protect your vessel."
And so there, in this dingy room that smells of old food and anti-mosquito coils, God seeps out of the human form. Likewise, Castiel lets what is angelic of him expand beyond Jimmy Novak's body, expanding in ways and directions humans can't even conceive, but as boggling as the angelic may be to a human, the godly is infinitely moreso to an angel, to everyone, everything. In his true form, Castiel is dwarfed before God and feels the love ripped out of him and is relieved for it, is joyful, is reverent, is home. He loves his Father, has always loved Him, and here He is, here is the consummation of an eternity of the joyful longing we call faith, tucked away in the second-floor room of a modest boarding house with peeling paint and rusted gates.
My son, God says, and His voice is the light in which empires rise and fall.
Castiel falls into his Father's embrace and sobs adonai, adonai, sobs allah akbar. Castiel cries alleluia to the high heavens as his Father holds him close and calls him beloved in a thousand, thousand languages.
(In the room next door, Rdentor Sison feels the ache in his back subside and the methamphetamine sadness in his heart dissipate. Downstairs, Manuel Donato pauses in the middle of sweeping and remembers his wife, so young and beautiful and far away in the south of the country, and he thinks he should call her and remind her that he loves her, that he breathes her with every beat of his heart. Out in the garden, Elena Duterte raises her head and thinks today will be the day she finally stops drinking.
There is an invisible golden light that unfurls from this house, spreading through Manila, flowing through the streets like blood in arteries. It settles somewhere deep and soft inside the city's inhabitants, and chases the darkness away. Manila is a city of 20 million people, 20 million dreams cramped together and each on top of the other, barely scraping by in Tondo, extravagantly content in Fort Bonifacio, cheerfully amoral in Malate, overworked and smiling stiffly in Ortigas. For every dream, there are at least two heartbreaks, but for that day, that one day, in the space it takes for a father to love his son, all is right with the world.)
Re: PART 2, because I exceeded the character limit!
Anyway. I like the idea of multiple parallel pantheons as well; it's something I've been playing with in my latest fic. (A subplot involves Cas searching for God, actually, and hitting up Babylon and Luxor for clues.) More particularly, I like the idea of multiple pantheons treated with respect, not just as places to find new villains. I mean, how cool would it be to have Xué show up and be like, We've got some trouble down south, boys, and I'm not talking about those assholes still poking around after El Dorado. And they could go to Colombia and Dean could freak out about having to take a plane and Sam could speak Spanish (which he totally does in my head), and there would be a cursed emerald or maybe a salt mine involved, and someone would teach Dean how to play tejo, and something Deep would be revealed. It might be a little tricky to film South America in Vancouver, but hey, that's what set designers are for. Ahem.
That book looks fascinating. I'll pick up a copy on my library expedition this afternoon. I'm particularly interested in that characterization of God for a lot of reasons, some shallow (see me play in sandbox), and some more intellectually meaningful: if God created Man in His image--Man is Godlike--then why do we always assume that God is not to some degree man-like? That He can't have needs and desires and dreams? That way of thinking about love is also fascinating: humans love one-to-one (I love my boyfriend/wife/father/sister/cousin and he/she loves me) or in the abstract (I love playing volleyball; I love Steinbeck). But a god or God would have to love in a greater sense, would have to love both concretely and abstractly at once, and would have to love even those who arguably don't deserve it, who don't love Him back. Those He doesn't know, those whose hearts are closed to Him. We can't fathom that kind of love. We're not wired like that.
Out of the quotes you posted, I really latched on to this one: "The meanings never change, only the people who seek for them." With the part that comes before, he links the word "meaning" to the idea of "power," the idea that a society or a deity only has power as long as its meaning can be understood. Once you lose words and songs, rituals and "secret doors," you also forfeit your power. It's a concept I'm not sure I can get behind, though I see where he's coming from. I think I'd rather believe that meaning and power are related but not synonymous. Or that he's using the word "meaning" to describe the narrower concept of "knowledge," which brings up all sorts of issues regarding how people in power manipulate access to knowledge and interpretation of meaning to bolster their positions. I'll probably get the book and then end up writing a whole freaking essay on that paragraph.
Re: PART 2, because I exceeded the character limit!
Oh man, drinking beers with God. That would be amazing. I imagine him as a scotch ale kinda guy.
The Navy is full of Filipinos; I almost imagine it as a culture unto itself, drawing from its components and its innate hierarchical structure to create a unique group of people. I actually hadn't heard of that miniseries before you mentioned it, but HBO and I have a good relationship on account of Deadwood's unparalleled awesomeness, so I'll definitely take a look. As for the food, the stick things are like churros, though I remember them having a different name. Same principle, though. Halo-halo is amazing, mostly because it appeals to the part of me that loves a range of mixed tastes and textures and, of course, my sweet tooth. I've never had puto--I looked it up and they're a sort of steamed rice-flour cake/muffin? Do you have a recipe? (I bake once a week for the crew at the bar, but one of the girls just found out she's allergic to gluten, so I'm trying to find things she can eat.)
I am so in love with your God it hurts, seriously. (He quotes Dylan Thomas!) And He is the consummation of an eternity of the joyful longing we call faith, and that's perfect. Your writing is always so gorgeous and evocative that I have to sit with it for a moment before I even know how to respond. I can't wait to read the whole thing!
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I like the idea of multiple pantheons treated with respect, not just as places to find new villains.
Thiiiiiis so much. If other pantheons make it to SPN, omg, I really really need SPN to NOT FUCK IT UP. I don't ask much from you, SPN! I know what you are. But please, show, please.
why do we always assume that God is not to some degree man-like?
Yes! I think this book helped to solidify a lot of what I'd been thinking about god and loving god, and what that love is like. I was coming out of Narnia fandom at the time, I believe, so god angst was at the forefront of my mind. The idea of loving god the way you would love a human being pushed something into place in my head, I'm not sure what. It's not that it answered questions, but the questions became that much more clearer and brighter. And maybe they are not questions about god after all, but questions about love and devotion.
Sam speaks some Spanish! I think it was in 'Fallen Idols', he had to talk to a housekeeper and was kind of crap at it. I feel like a dork for remembering such trivia. Man.
Have you read American Gods? Haha, sorry with these book recs, but "Once you lose words and songs, rituals and "secret doors," you also forfeit your power" is kind of what it is about.
I imagine him as a scotch ale kinda guy.
Yeah, something strong and simple, for sure, though there is a part of me that wishes he loves colorful fruity drinks and he makes a wibbly face when they forget the paper umbrella.
Wow, Filipino representation in the navy. I wonder how they come to be strongly represented then. That's interesting that you mention the hierarchy, because I find the Filipino social fabric is like this odd mix of Asian filial piety and Spanish machismo. And Catholic... Catholicness. I mean, that's a gross simplification of course. But yeah. Alas I have no recipe for puto :( . I heard good things about Deadwood. Isn't that the one that got weirdly canceled? I sometimes contemplate watching it, but don't want to be heartbroken at how there is no more episodes.
Aww, thanks dude! It really helps to have this back-and-forth here, I totally appreciate it. I look forward to writing it. Though right now I am totally being SIDETRACKED cowriting apocalypse fic with unoshot. It's got zombies! It's got vampires! It's got long walks on the beach. For real! Okay, not really. More like drinking tequila on a beach, which is totally Dean-speak for 'long walks on the beach' anyway! Also we just broke ten thousand words. God, what is SPN fandom doing to me.
no subject
I'm always a little wary of this show's ability to tread carefully in areas that are socially volatile--like, say, killing off every woman/PoC ever--so I'd almost rather have them fight home-grown critters than appropriate religious structures without tact. However, because this show basically owns my soul at the moment, I'm willing to give it the benefit of the doubt and see where it goes.
And maybe they are not questions about god after all, but questions about love and devotion.
It's interesting you say that, because honestly, those are synonymous for me. My parents--I'm still unsure whether this was intentional--brought us up as agnostics, believing in the abstract idea of God as a force or a system rather than a being. In a lot of ways, the idea of "God" for me has always been "love" and "right" and "good intention." (Not always "truth," though, since we were taught also to measure the value of truth against the value of kindness and act accordingly.) And there are so many degrees of love! I love my best friend, my cat, my siblings, and my cast-iron skillet, even if sometimes I'd really like to smack the first three with the last. I love running (a physiological response), and reading (a psychological response), and the way the earth rumbles under your feet when you stand on an active volcano (a response motivated by something so huge and terrifying that it's humbling.) They're good questions to ask, I think, and I'm always glad when smart people ask them. Because then I get to read about it! I am not selfish at all.
Oh, American Gods was great. If you haven't, you should read Good Omens as well. It has an angel and a demon in it! And thought it is unrelated, if you haven't yet read it I think you would enjoy Norman Maclean: A River Runs Through It and/or Young Men and Fire. Both of them are just stunning, but the first is religion and philosophy and what it is to be human all tied up together in a great story. There's this one part where the narrator's brother says, "All there is to thinking is seeing something noticeable which makes you see something you weren't noticing which makes you see something that isn't even visible." It reminds me of some of the topics we've been dancing around here: how to talk about things that aren't physically there, but nevertheless have a very real effect on people's perceptions and actions.
though there is a part of me that wishes he loves colorful fruity drinks and he makes a wibbly face when they forget the paper umbrella.
I love that! God: I will have a blueberry pomegranate margarita please.
Cas: *frowns*
God: What?
Cas: ...Dean Winchester informs me that margaritas are for. Well. Please excuse the crudeness and understand I'm only quoting, but he claims they're for "pansy-ass tools who couldn't get laid at a whorehouse." Or women. Though in retrospect, the only time I had occasion to test this assertion, there was beer involved--not that, you know, I mean, I was there simply at Dean's request; I had planned to spend the evening in quiet prayer--
God: All is forgiven. As long as they don't forget the umbrella.
Deadwood is great. It was weirdly cancelled, so the last episode is sort of "huh" and unsatisfying, but honestly that's no reason to avoid it. It's one of those incredible shows where every single character is compelling and well-written, and everything that happens feels realistic and logical.
lol, I am hardcore looking forward to your post-apocalyptic collaboration as well, since you guys are both great to read and, y'know, it's post-apocalyptic. SPN fandom will suck you into a whirling vortex of awesome. Just so you know. You may abandon all ambitions of carrying on a real life. :)
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This is how I feel. Innocent until proven guilty! I mean, I already let it get away with a bunch of other things, like yeah, the weird women/race issues. Sometimes I feel I watch SPN to shop for tropes to write about in fic. It's a weird way to engage with media.
Ya dude, SPOILERS. The Norse and Hindu pantheons are gonna come into play. Baldur, Kali, and Ganesh have been cast. I am both superexcited and wary. I would be thrilled if all the pantheons band together to defeat Lucifer or whatever. It's like that scene from Prince Caspian, y'know. "Hinduism pledges its troops! Zoroastrianism pledges its troops! Shintoism pledges its troops!" Though if it comes to that, I guess it's the Winchesters gonna be heading that army, and We The Fandom might bust a nut quibbling over white man's burden and HAHAHA look at me anticipating wank. Let's not do that yet, self.
I was definitely raised to think of God as, like, a human with superpowers basically. Very anthropomorphized. I was wary of discussing religion with my parents, so I had to come across the conception of God as a 'how' rather than a 'what' on my own, helped along by certain books and movies, haha. I think what I'm learning is that how I think about god is largely related to how I engage with love and freedom, standards of which change as one grows up of course. So yeah, I started to think of god as this impartial force, as a description of how the world works, but now I'm coming around to anthropomorphizing him again.
I read Good Omens and absolutely love it. You are the second person to recommend "A River Runs Through It" to me! I guess I'll have to check that out.
All is forgiven. As long as they don't forget the umbrella.
HAHA OH GOD. What a goober. <3
We're in the home-stretch! We just hashed out how we're gonna approach the ending scenes, and now it's just getting to the doing of it. High five!