I have won epic battles and I have reaped vast rewards. And none of it has meant as much to me as the relationships that I’ve formed on Earth. (For @castieled)

And all I really know is, whatever this is, it doesn’t get easier.

Stophurtingcas2k15 → Week five: Favorite Anything about Cast | His smile

season ten’s episodes

Hannah Appreciation Post - S10 E01-03

Oh, and there’s leftover three-bean surprise in the fridge, if you’re hungry.

It sounded familiar. It sounded like Heaven. It’s so strange down here. I followed the tone, and found so many of my bother and sisters had as well. It felt safe here.

hannah smiling

Some stars for Hannah~~~

Cas' body language in "Reichenbach"

What’s going on in Cas’ head in this moment?

I don’t think it has anything to do with romance, at least not on his part.

What it looks like to me is that he’s stopping her, catching her hand before she can touch him.

It’s the way he takes hold of her hand, fast and with what looks like a strong grip.  It doesn’t look like a gentle gesture, as you’d expect it would be if he were intending for it to be a tender moment.  Neither does the expression on his face indicate tenderness.  He looks a little pained, still, and he doesn’t look her in the eye when he thanks her.

Perhaps that wouldn’t be anything to say it wasn’t supposed to be a tender moment, but compare that to any time he’s saying something similar to Dean and it stands out as different, because Cas very rarely says anything important or heart-felt to Dean without looking into his eyes.  Usually for about half a beat too long.

In both these instances, Cas says, “Thank you,” but they’re negative images of each other—with Dean, he’s looking into his eyes, speaks, glances away, and then looks back up to meet Dean’s eyes again.  With Hannah, the only time he looks into her eyes is that brief glance after he speaks, and then he looks away again.

But that’s not the only thing that pings me as Stop.  It’s the way Cas pushes her hand away from him just before he speaks.

It’s really subtle, and very hard to catch in the gif because it’s so fast, but something about the way his hand moved made me pause when I first saw it, and when I went back and watched the scene again paying particular attention to his hand, I saw this:

The camera is panning up, but you can see that it’s only moving upward if you compare the position of that squiggly thing in the left side of the background in the three photos.  If you look at the point of the trenchcoat collar, you see that Misha is moving away from her.  So either he was pushing her hand away or he was holding her hand still and moving away from her himself, neither of which indicate tenderness or romance.

It seems very clear that Hannah is developing feelings for Cas, but nothing I’ve seen this season is telling me he reciprocates or sees her as anything but a sister, a friend, and a “good soldier.”

So what can you do, you impotent sap?

Someone give me a GIFset of this juxtaposed with Metatron’s excruciatingly similar weaponized innuendo aimed at Hannah in 10x02 so I can point out just how gross the heterosexist reading of this moment is.

Because it is. Meg’s weaponizing sexuality. Just like nearly every villain in the series does, as far as I can remember.

And Castiel turns her weapon back on her, the only one he has, after he tries to kill her and realizes, panting from the effort, that he can’t. (Probably partially because, as Raphael does Crowley in 6x22, Lucifer is protecting her.)

He lures her into thinking he’s going to kiss her and she’s so hungry to get her dirty demon hands on a self-righteous dick of an angel (cos at that point, he’s nothing to her, except a nuisance, and assaulting people to get her kicks is her M.O.) that it distracts her, as he wanted, and he throws her down on the fire, like Hannah smashes Metatron into the bars (though the methods to lure their enemies closer are different, as Metatron is jailed while Hannah is free and Castiel is jailed by the ring of fire).

But somehow this moment is sexualized and that one isn’t. Hmm. I wonder why.

(Jk. I know why. It starts with s and ends with m. People remember the closeness without remembering that’s because Castiel is holding her arms down because she is a threat. People remember an ~almost-kiss without remembering that’s because he can’t kill her, because she is a threat. People remember her sexualized taunts [not unusual for her at all--he’s not special] as actual advances instead of as a demonstration of her power and evil as a threat. Metatron’s sexual comments are treated as just grabs for power, as just taunts, indicative of how awful and threatening he is, because he is not a woman.)

9x06 // 10x02