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zeitheist
Supernatural/American Gods crossover. Author says it's NC17, I say R. Gen, but it's got some decidedly unsexy sexytimes. Set sometime before 5x16.
Castiel looks for God, and finds Gods.

OMG. It's like Angels We Have Heard with MOAR PANTHEONS and an extra 30,000 words. Did you know stories about Castiel's God search are my FAVORITE? This is what I wish 'Hammer of the Gods' tried harder to be. I have hearts in my eyes. Raindrops on roses, guys. MOTHERFUCKING WHISKERS ON SOME GODDAMN KITTENS.

...aaaaand somewhere along the way, this rec turned into a teal deer on immigrant identities and narratives.

Fandom projects a lot of narratives on Castiel, and one of the narratives I would love to see projected more is that of Castiel as an immigrant, an exile, expatriate. You probably know of Lola's vid with the Lhasa de Sala song that is about just that. The first lines hit the nail on the head: "i live in this country now / i'm called by this name / i speak this language". Despite the proximity and immediacy implied by the word 'this', it is still Other to the narrator. It is not MY country, it is not MY name.

So we got the two nations in Castiel: Heaven and earth, angels and humans. Sure, angels and humans aren't even the same species, but considering how often we essentialize cultural identity and take a reductionist view of the nation (whether we mean to or not), it is an apt metaphor. All the times I was ever told, "This is not the Indonesian way of doing things", like that means to me what they want it to mean. All the times I was put in the theoretically false but emotionally true position of having to choose between two worlds. Sure, identity is fluid, it can be anything, but it is not created in a vacuum. For those of you who can shrug off one identity for another as easily as changing jackets, you must be one lucky duck (or a cursed one). Also, if it really is that easy, then you're probably wearing the same jacket, just a different color. And that's fine! It really is. Just don't try to tell me that your jacket is a vest.

...ANYWAY. This fic gets into all those heartbreaking dichotomies. The immigrant songs in this fic are the songs of thousands. It's all in the conjunction. Take Gabe for example, as the fic does, and look at the difference in these sentences: 1) I am an angel, AND I am a trickster. 2) I am an angel, BUT I am a trickster. 3) I am an angel, OR I am a trickster. (I don't usually have strong feelings about Gabriel one way or another, but this fic had me going ";___; GAAAAABE <333" like so hard omg.) And what is YOUR conjunction? Each results in (or stems from?) very different worldviews.

One wants to think, "Why should we need these conjunctions at all?" I think this is the crux of what a lot of transcultural kids struggle with: to be defined not as the disparate parts of something else, but as an encompassing whole. It's fucking difficult, transcultural or not. We cling to adjectives and modifiers. The more words that it takes to describe you, the farther away you are from home. Names are unimportant, but they are meaningful. Gabriel is at ease containing multitudes. Castiel is terrified of it. Both experiences are suuuuuuch typical immigrant narratives, I cannot even.

WARNING THE REST OF THIS POST CONTAINS 5x22 SPOILERS are we still warning for that?

WWWWWWWWWWAAAAAAAARRRRRNNNNNIIIIIIINNNNNNNNGGGGGGG

This is part of why I didn't want the reset of Cas becoming an angel and going back to heaven. The story of the immigrant is not one of restoration; it is one of discovery and loss. There are no quick fixes, and you can never go home again, at least not as it appears in your romanticized memories. I want the story of the exile, who sees everything through the filter of absence, but then learns (or doesn't?) to put one foot in front of the other again. You are ever the two-headed Janus, simultaneously looking forward and back. Maybe you will never lose your accent, but you can still sing. Maybe you will forget what 'blue' or 'mouth' is in your old language, but you will remember it suddenly six months later, waiting for the kettle to boil in the middle of the night.

Maybe I speak too soon though. It's always important to go back to where you come from, to reassess. It's just... You don't have to go home to be happy, to be whole. You don't have to be happy or whole all the time. And home, what is home? I just want the recognition that peace and loss are not mutually exclusive things.

[originally posted at http://whynot.dreamwidth.org/24108.html |

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Right, so, I was gonna read this when you rec'd it last night, but then I fell dead asleep like a loser. So now it's on the docket for tonight because <33333333333333 EVERYTHING YOU SAID.

A note, though, on You don't have to go home to be happy, to be whole and the rest. I'd venture, I'm hoping, that isn't where Castiel's story is going. That it will not at all be an easy or welcoming or fulfilling homecoming.

And now here is the overshare from this transcultural kid. Briefly: my mother & siblings immigrated to the US as adults, my dad's from an old Mississippi family. So, I was born in the States, and we all started moving around and being expats when I was around age 8. When I was about 17, we came back and I finished high school in the US, went to college (mainly) in the US, still live there now. No part of being in the US is comfortable for me. I'm not quite an immigrant, I suppose I can't be an ex-pat if I'm in my passport-holding country, and yet. It's weird. I'm weird. It feels weird. It's not home.

All of this is to say, no, you can't go home. You change, home changes, you learn how to work with it. That's my hope for Cas, going forward. Finding a way to be okay with being neither here nor there.

...I think I just said I want Cas to be sad. I DO NOT MEAN IT LIKE THAT. I want him to find the power in it, you know? I want him to look both heaven and earth straight in the eyes and not flinch at whatever part of himself he sees reflected.

Edited 2010-06-09 21:47 (UTC)

No I don't expect it will be! I wonder if that's what he's expecting though. Maybe he'd know how to be sheriff/revolutionary in the home he remembers, but now both him AND his home are steeped in anarchy. But maybe it's easier on the heart that both of them have changed, instead of just one of them. Maybe there will be less of a sense that one has been left behind. Either way, I needed guerrilla!Cas vs. dictator!Raphael fic (maybe with eventual dictator!Cas?!) like yesterday.

I want him to look both heaven and earth straight in the eyes and not flinch at whatever part of himself he sees reflected.
THIS. Exactly. The ability to call a spade a spade and stop trying to figure out whether this limbo is a blessing or a curse. I don't know where I would call 'home'. Where my immediately family is? Or what my passport says? Both feel like oversimplification. It's not a specific enough question. Flying back and forth across the Pacific for summers and Christmas, I used to joke that no matter which direction I'm flying, I'm always going home. It wasn't really a joke. The homes thing is kind of like the names thing. Through roundabout circumstances, I have more than my fair share of both, and consequentially am not overly attached to any one above others, except for practical uses like "this name is easiest to pronounce" and "this home would enable free shipping". I hate questions on official forms that are like, "Are you a resident of ___?" Do they mean am I staying here long-term, or where do I pay taxes? Questions like, "What is your mother tongue?" Do they mean what is the first language I ever learned, or what is the language I know best?

It's like, identity is not an end result. You break it for parts and use them as tools.

1) DICTATOR!CAS, PLEASE. ON MY DOORSTEP IN HIS SPECIAL DICTATOR HAT.

2) "this home would enable free shipping" - I have made so many decisions based on this. This, and "I will get less hassle going through immigration using this home's passport."

You sound like you would be a Pico Iyer fan. Is this so?

Huh, the name rang a bell, but wikipedia tells me the only thing I've actually read any of is Imagining Canada. Which, seeing his other titles, is ridiculous. Got a rec for one in particular?

"The Global Soul" is what I read when I want myself explained. My copy of it is underlined to hell and back, and I read him for the kind of catharsis one usually feels when listening to angsty rock bands while wailing "only THEY understand how I feeeeeeel".

"Abandon" and "The Lady and the Monk" on the other hand are fiction. The latter is a deft and nuanced explication of cross-cultural romance. The former is about Castiel:

"All religious verse speaks to us in a language we can understand. To those with the eyes and ears the poems are a kind of holy come-on; to those without, they appear as love songs, emblems of profanity."

"You do not come to the Sufi way through your mind. The mind is a knife, useful only for cutting apart. You do not come to our path through your heart. The heart is a shield, for defending yourself against truth. You come to it through grief. Through the shock that breaks you open. In your tradition, you speak of loving the one who is the source of all your joy. In ours, we speak of loving the one who is the cause of all our sorrow. Our word for this is bala. Bala in our language means 'affliction'. Bala also means 'yes'."

Actually it's just about some sad guy and a sad girl falling in and out of love, but the numerous excerpts from the sad guy's thesis, articles, and academic presentations about Sufism are TO DIE FOR. To diiiiiieeee for, omg.

THAT STORY MY GOD. I think I've read it three or four times since I found it, and just WOW.

Re: immigrant culture. I can't actually really talk about it, because there's pretty much no definition of immigrant that would include me as an example. I mean, I moved some hundred miles north for college. Woot. But regardless, I LOVE what you said about Gabriel is at ease containing multitudes. Castiel is terrified of it because GAAAABE. CAAAAS. I really really wish that the ending of Hammer of the Gods hadn't been 'you all get pwned by Lucy,' because, well, it just doesn't seem right. One of the things of Weep, Little Lion Man was about how gods do not die while they are still worshiped (to dumb down that whole amazing theme way too much); I was thrown off by the ease with which Lucifer just walked in and bam, gods fall down. It was like the show was saying (God, I hope they weren't ACTUALLY trying to say this. I doubt it. I think they probably just didn't see the scope of what they were implying? I dunno.) that Kali & Co are defunct...almost like Lucifer has more worshipers than the 'old' gods. And that's just weird and unsettling in a few different ways.
So I adore Cas wandering around the world (I've been calling it the pilgrimage fic) seeing the broader scope of things, meeting other powers...gah. I love it. This show!

Cas had better not become Bible-camp angel again. Grrr. Don't just disappear into heaven, Castiel! Spend more time freaking out over humans!

I also like to fanwank that by saying that's not the gods themselves, but their vessels. Gods in vessel form are weaker than in their true form, and that's why Lucifer kicked all their asses. But the real gods are still okay, sitting pretty somewhere and rolling their eyes at THOSE CRAZY ABRAHAMITES.

One of the things of Weep, Little Lion Man was about how gods do not die while they are still worshiped
This is from 'American Gods'. Have you read the book? I highly recommend it.

Oh, I like that theory!

I've not read it yet, because my brother stole it, but I'm stealing it back for the summer! Everyone who's read it gives glowing reports, so I'm really excited.

One of the things of Weep, Little Lion Man was about how gods do not die while they are still worshiped
This is from 'American Gods'. Have you read the book? I highly recommend it.

It's older than that. Probably goes all the way back to the ancient traditions of immortality lasting so long as the name did.

Oh hmm! Well there you go then. :)

I do not read fic but that is such a fucking neat immigrant commentary/discussioningthing I heart it so hard.

I have not even read 80% of this yet but I want to agree that I don't want Cas to be happy - I can't see him realistically being happy returning to heaven. The return home is not the return home - look at the Miamians who go home to visit their family and their family is like "did you bring us stuff cos you're rich now" and the diaspora are like "I'm not rich but okay I brought you stuff, greedy bastards don't even know what it's like to work so hard to make your living," and then going back to cuba isn't like going home at all because home is a moment in time, and Cuba is changing just like everywhere else. And so therefore Cas can't go happy because he can't go home again. He can't go back to being unfallen, he has this free will stuff to lug around. He's got Earth under his skin, in his speech, etc.

more thought out response, less kneejerk blather later <3

" He can't go back to being unfallen, he has this free will stuff to lug around. He's got Earth under his skin, in his speech, etc."
YES. In Blakean terms, it's like the impossibility of regaining perfect innocence - which isn't really something anyone should fight for anyway. Omg I need to sleep AGAIN but, yeah, when he goes home, 'home' itself has changed, and omfg 'he's got Earth under his skin, in his speech', EXAAAACTLY.

So he's got a hybrid identity, and maybe home is also in the places in-between.

I had some thoughts about transnational identity and nationalism and mobility/access - a lot of first gen migrants in various contexts didn't have the option of going back, and their sense of 'home' DID often rest on a sense of the irrecoverable, the lost home they couldn't really ever go back to.

Which brings us to 5.04!Cas, Cas who holds on to the lost home with his too-solid arms, his 'better club'; at his most human he still has this resistive, combative identity, he's not going to be assimilated, it's... THIS was the unhappy version of his story, no?

For Cas, post-5.22, I want to take into account the question of mobility, because access to one's different home-places probably inflects this relationship? As an archangel he has both more mobility and more reason to 'keep returning'... And like people in airports and planes across the world, for Cas 'home' can also encompass events, processes, like the back-and-forth of travel.

access to one's different home-places probably inflects this relationship
Yes! The whole thing where what is forbidden just increases in value and meaning. Forbidding something allows that thing to become abstract, and you can project more easily onto that than on something whose reality you have regular access to. Cas, with his dual citizenship, and one for a country that fortunately doesn't require him to apply for a goddamn visa whenever he needs to go somewhere.

In Blakean terms?? Can we talk about Cas in Blakean terms more often? eeeee okay now I want a gid_hanasheh poem printed a la Blake.

As an archangel he has both more mobility and more reason to 'keep returning'... And like people in airports and planes across the world, for Cas 'home' can also encompass events, processes, like the back-and-forth of travel.
I REALLY LIKE THIS.

UH HUH YES TO ALL THIS. How the other angels can tell he's different just from the way he holds himself XDDD. He's picked up an accent XDDDD. lololol They keep explaining to him angel customs like he's a baby but he's not a baby or dumb okay, he's just balikbayan LOLOL DDDD:

IF HE IS NOT CASTROIEL, YOU KNOW HE'S JUST CHICAGOBOY!CAS COMING BACK TO FUCK UP HEAVEN WITH HIS NEOLIBBURUL LEARNINGS.

OMFG I ALWAYS WAKE UP IN THE MORNING TO FIND ALL THESE CONVERSATIONS THAT HAVE HAPPENED AND JUST

RIGHT NOW, MY PLACEHOLDER IS A GIANT YESSSSSSSSSS.

I will not read that story until I have finished this paper. I will not read that story until I Have finished this paper. I will not...(This is kind of like how I say I don't do Wincest).

I am too busy for everything right now so DOTPOINT THOUGHT
-Basically I love everything that has been written here, post + comments
-One of the problems I have with a lot of depictions of Castiel is the tenancy to recast him as refugee instead of immigrant.
-Migrant identity explored through the way their adopted culture depicts the place and people they were born to...what does Castiel think about religion and statues of weeping angels? Is it like going to an 'authentic' Chinese restaurant with 'dim sims' on the menu and absolutely everything drenched in soy sauce?

I reckon refugee is another class of immigrant. How are you differentiating between the two?

Is it like going to an 'authentic' Chinese restaurant with 'dim sims' on the menu and absolutely everything drenched in soy sauce?
LOL OMG. Yes, yes it is. And it's not that he likes churches, but they're the next best thing. He scoffs at it even as he's shoveling the whole thing in his mouth. Cas probably checks out mosques and synagogues too sometimes, because they use the same ingredients even if the recipe isn't the same, and it kind of tastes similar. omg Cas doing the salah fjsklfjfjlsd

ow are you differentiating between the two?

Oh, that maaaay be my own bias from cultural perspective/experiences showing. In Australia we have a reasonably high rate of recent migrants from places like Lebanon returning to their native countries, whereas the Sudanese refugees I've worked with don't seem to have that same kind of nostalgic longing for what they grew up with.

alskdj you have no idea how excited I am for this show! SO EXCITED.

I cannot wait to hear your thoughts on this highly ridiculous show. :D

hi, I found you through

gabby_silang and am only commenting now, but this post is brilliant and moving. I'd seen that Lhasa vid and love it but never quite connected the immigration-dots as explicitly as you have here. I'm not in any way an immigrant but have been really interested in identity struggles, and am kind of obsessed with people's ideas of home and roots, so very much of this has pinged for me. (also I read Jhumpa Lahiri's entire written works last year and her themes of immigration and family continue to marinate for me.)

Now that you've stated it this way, I also want season 6 to be as you imagine it to be, to have fallout and to have Castiel in a different place now, his world and identity grown. Thanks for the rec (which ate my night) and thanks for sharing these thoughts.

:DDD Hi! I apologize very much for my late reply, I have a terrible habit of letting unreplied comments just stack up in my inbox. The song didn't ping me immediately so strongly as an immigrant song, but the more I read about Lhasa and her life, the more that I put the song in that context. These questions of identity and affiliation are even more volatile now I feel in context of the J2 BB racefail. What are we all the time, and what are we sometimes, and what does that mean?

I have been meaning to read The Namesake for a while now. Which of Lahiri's books would you recommend for a newbie?

I really loved The Namesake. Her other books are short story collections and her themes are so consistent that the collections start to feel a little samey after a while, even though the stories are individually always fully transporting.

All her writing is quiet and domestic and sort of upper class, but rooted in these internally-epic identity struggles. She's got a really nice writing style where even though no particular words ever leapt out as "poetic", the narrative itself led so gently and inexorably forwards that I found myself really affected.

You are ever the two-headed Janus, simultaneously looking forward and back. Maybe you will never lose your accent, but you can still sing. Maybe you will forget what 'blue' or 'mouth' is in your old language, but you will remember it suddenly six months later, waiting for the kettle to boil in the middle of the night.

THIS.

OMG, THIS POST. HOW DID I MISS THIS POST?

I want to say something intelligent, but really I think I'll just reread this post over and over again and have my mind blown a few more times. Thank you.

Hey, came to this post, somehow, can't remember how but sooo glad i did! Just so much to think about and process. With it all coming from a point of view I don't have, and loving to read about in this post and all the comments.

First I'll do a small courtesy of answering your question of which conjunction we'd take for Gabriel. Personally I see him as "I am an angel, AND I am a trickster." This is because he is an angel, he may have chosen to leave Heaven and all that may or may not entail for him but it is still a fact that he is an angel. Along with that it will forever set a foundation for how he does, thinks etc everything, no matter where he chooses to go from that foundation so even with that life set behind him by his choices it still has a current role for him. Now to justify why that goes with 'and' being the Trickster. Since whenever he decided to take on that title, his identity both the one shown outside and the one inside that helps you define who you are has been incorporating this. Thus he is both as they play an active part in his identity. That was way longer than I thought it would be, ah well nevermind. :D

I have to say I somewhat disagree about not wanting Cas to get a reset to being a 'proper angel' (I say it like that cause he's always been an angel, just diminished and more human), because even with a restoration of power and all the rest of it, it can never be a reset. He's changed forever for his experiences and the same would be said for Heaven changed due to a lack of Michael amongst other things. With regards to the idea of forever looking forward and back, I can't say I come to the idea understanding from an immigrant PoV (please teach? :) ), but to me it seems Castiel more looks forward and handles the idea that home is not a memory but what you make it. While Gabriel only looks back, forsaking the idea of having Heaven as a home because it isn't what it was once. Think I should point out now that's all my opinion from canon not from the rec'd fic (which I will read at some point, but had to comment first). Also I completely agree with your last paragraph and peace and loss really aren't exclusive, what a person sees as home can change and can lose elements from it as can you, yet it can still offer that same peace or comfort it always has.

From the comments, with the talk about how Lucifer just wiped the floor with the gods from Hammer of the Gods. As far as my interpretation of canon goes, I always took it that they weren't necessarily the actual Gods but instead rather powerful creatures that had taken on the identity of Gods possibly so long ago that they no longer see the distinction between the two while the fact remains they aren't who they say they are. I don't know how others like that idea but however I try to look at the problem it does leave a slight bitter tang in my mouth with it basically boiling down to a judeo-christian superiority thing.

To end my overlong comment, I loved reading your thoughts on this subject! And in my eyes you win uber points for mentioning Janus :DD

Hello! Sorry for my tardiness, summer has gotten quite away from me. Glad you're enjoying the discussions here though. It's a subject close to my heart.

I agree with the AND conjunction being what Gabriel chooses for himself, too. Anna might agree with this too. His siblings might see things differently, maybe using BUT, or even going so far as to say "you are an angel, thus you are not a trickster".

I don't think Cas is the same Cas of 4x01 either. I see why the narrative and character arc has to have him going back to heaven, but I wish it were handled better. I mean, he became mortal just two episodes ago! I thought they were going to do something with that! Why make him go through this tectonic shift of becoming mortal only to deus ex machina it all better two episodes later?! What is the viewer satisfaction in that? Again, I reiterate that it makes sense for his story to become one of homecoming here, but it also would've made sense if his story were also to further elaborate on his exile. Like I thought they were building up to.

My handwave for the gods thing is that those were gods in their vessels, not the real gods. ;)

Thanks for commenting! Again, I apologize for the lateness of my reply.

Don't worry about it :D
I see what you mean about it not being a proper story arc for him returning to Heaven, but I suppose you might call it bad timing with his return to Heaven being so very close to the end of the season. We can always hope that there's a storyline about it next season. :)
Until we get more storyline I'm going along with this here (http://nimloth87.deviantart.com/art/God-is-totally-a-Cas-boy-164106361) (while not great in story, it tries to make up for it with funny ^^ )

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