bethoftheendless reblogged
flutiebear:
jkateel:
I actually didn’t think the angel feather thing couldn’t annoy me more—introducing a new concept like that in a one-off line is terrible, terrible writing— but now thinking of it with my bird-expert mind, it really pisses me off.
Feathers basically serve three functions: keeping a bird warm, waterproof and flying. Why does an angel, a wavelength of light, need feathers when they don’t get cold, tired, hungry, wet (they come with an instant clean-clothes function!) or fly.
When SPN has a really good record with using science to explain for how angels work (e.g., angels use radio waves to communicate, they have forms that can’t be perceived by a naked human eye, their powers can be cancelled out by microwaves—which is subjective on my part, but the science fits), why bring in actual feathers? THEY’RE NOT BIRDS.
And you can’t even make the fantasy argument, because they’ve used science before to explain angels!
It’s not even bad story telling now, it’s bad evolution. Augh!
My take on it is that what we call “wings” are something (presumably, some fairly important part of an angel’s being) that doesn’t have a proper physical analog on the material plane. They appear in the form of bird wings basically because they have to look like something. Wings are something that humans find comprehensible and are relatively comfortable with, and make a certain type of sense in that they go along with the whole ‘celestial beings that fly and are above us’ theme.
I figure angels don’t often manifest their wings fully on Earth because, number one, they’re unwieldy and get in the way; number two, they’re rough on the vessel, which isn’t anatomically equipped to handle them; number three, they may be vulnerable to damage; number four, they’re conspicuous as hell; and number five, the angels are well aware that the idea of a human-shaped being with wings is a bit ridiculous, and find it more useful to just flash the shadowy outlines on occasion for effect rather than haul them around and give people amply opportunity to reflect on just how absurd it is.
But when they do have occasion to make their wings physical, for whatever reason (your guess is a good as mine—to keep someone warm? Impress the ladies? Prove beyond doubt that they’re real by allowing someone to touch? Or provide a feather to some worthy mortal who needs it for a spell component?) you get feathers.
