zatnikatel:

dirtyovercoats:

well yeah of course, i mean they both piss me off a lot of the time. they’re kind of equal opportunity assholes like that. I think it’s important to remember though, both with Dean’s treatment of Castiel and with Castiel’s treatment of Dean, there’s no simple dimension to their attitudes and approaches to their relationship. It’s not enough to say “Dean’s an asshole for being angry with Cas when Cas was only trying to help him,” or “Cas is an asshole for lying to Dean in season 6” and be done with it, because that neglects the emotional complexities behind those impulses and also isolates you in one character’s point of view.

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Yes. Yesssssss. 

THEY BOTH FUCKED IT UP. BOTH OF THEM.

Re: “Both of them” — hmmm, I think yes, and but I also think kind of no. I’ve been thinking a lot about this recently. See, I use to put that same mantra out there — “both of them fucked up” — when I saw Casfandom blaming only Dean for everything that happened with D/C and piling all their issues with canon onto Dean and Dean alone, and acting like Cas was an innocent victim/woobie in all that went down. But when it really comes down to it, all of S6 was framed by Castiel’s actions, right? So my question really becomes: how did Dean fuck it up, really? What was he supposed to do? I’m honestly curious, ngl. He was the one who was ready to forgive/work together IIRC — “Cas, we can fix this!” despite finding out about Castiel’s manipulations. What I hear fen blaming Dean for is not trusting Cas (which I don’t get at all — why in the world would Dean be okay with Cas swallowing all the souls and destroying the world??). Or the popular refrain that Dean was ~mean~ to Cas (if this is Dean’s greatest wrong I’m just confused — Dean was no “meaner” than Cas has ever been to him, so I’m confused by this), abusive to Cas (I call bullshit — please look up what is actual abuse, fandom), and not appreciating Cas enough (which I guess is basically not giving him enough hugs or something, IDEK). But none of those things fed directly into what played out from what I see of events that led Cas to make the decisions he made. Which is why I’ve never bought into the whole “it’s all Dean’s fault” mantra fandom was yelling post-S6 because the things they were blaming him for were not things he should have been blamed for. BUT, I’m not saying that Dean couldn’t have done anything different in the lead up to the events — yes, he’s emotionally messed-up and it impacts his relationships. For instance, it would have been great if he and Cas were able to talk to each other during the missing year and during S6, if one or the other had been able to reach out — “I was here, where were you?” That would have been amazing to see, and I would understand more of the “it’s Dean’s fault too” argument if fen framed the breakup in terms of both of them not reaching out from the outset. It’s in this sense I agree, both had a role to play in the maintenance of their friendship because both chose not to reach out to each other. But all the other stuff that people put on Dean? I don’t see the how or why of it as it relates to the arc of S6. I guess that goes back to the original question that had to do with how Dean “treats Castiel after all Castiel has done for him”. I find the framing of their relationship in this way really really problematic when fandom isolates it down to just this, ngl. Yes, Cas has done a lot for Dean, but Dean (and Sam) have done a lot for Cas. And Cas has done a lot of bad to Dean (and Sam) as well — S4 and S6’s manipulations are clear wrongs. So the idea that Dean is just as much at fault because Cas has done so much for him and Dean hasn’t done enough to pay him back — I think is a really harsh way of approaching this very, very complex relationship. 

Sorry, that probably didn’t make sense! Dirtyovercoats, thank you for the thoughtful meta. And Zatnikatel, your point is something I get — it’s just that after doing a rewatch of S6 recently, I can’t say I really understand how such a large portion of the blame was ever put on Dean in the way that parts of fandom have been doing it for the past two years. I remember watching til the end and thinking: so what did fandom want Dean to do? Let Cas destroy the world? *scratches head*