#Long post about romance stuff.

I have lots of meta thoughts and some of them are tangential, roll with me on this.

Okay first this is bullshit. Shockingly, since it's defending the misogyny of Jared Padalecki (and Aisha a bit by extension, considering he called her answer brilliant).

Let me take my response to this on Twitter just to illuminate.

SIDENOTE, aka tangent: this is really fucking relevant to literally everything people have been saying about how it's "ooc" or whatever for Cas to consider Dean killable if he's a monster.

S7 Cas was in a totally different place mentally than Castiel is now.

We were given a lot of insight into Castel's mindset the past two seasons, that he feels violence is not the answer, that he knows his time as Godstiel was the worst thing ever, that Metatron trying to be God is very much a thing Castiel would stop at any cost because angels playing God is villainous, that Crowley will get the fury for being as callous as he is no matter his cause that Meg didn't.

Castiel, at this point, unlike S7 Cas, would kill himself and anybody else to keep the world safe, but really, really doesn't want to, and doesn't think it's justified for any end; would rather save anybody he can and only kill those beyond repair. Castiel would never be or support another Godstiel, would in fact be on the side of Hester killing him, at this point, and Dean is not exempt from that, even if he's like the closest you can get.

If Dean starts to threaten the world and there's no way to save him, Castiel will kill Dean, but it's still a last resort to end all last resorts (whereas for Sam I'm not sure what reading I'm getting yet; will he contrast that by being too trigger-happy? Not super likely. Or instead by being literally unwilling no matter what to kill Dean? More likely.) What this does, however, is reaffirm that Castiel, apart from that time he needed Crowley or the time he needed Meg, both for very life-saving reasons and absolutely not at all for affection reasons...rejects demons. Castiel knows demons are sometimes beyond salvation, and he hates a lot of them, and he knows the danger of empathizing with them instead of keeping killing them as a possibility. Castiel has come out of the mindset he was in in S7 enough to understand that whatever he did, he's no demon, and his choices matter no matter how the universe is set up, ~Sorry or not: "problem with angels" or not.

S7 Cas, by contrast, was trying really hard to find some way to survive his depression and PTSD, the self-loathing it inspired--especially with Sam's Hell "madness", with any coping mechanisms he could, and Meg, I'll bet you literally anything I own, played Sorry with him the same way he did with Dean, and gave him that same kind of speech he gave Dean in 7x21; she took advantage of his incredible capacity for empathy to create the mindset Zerbe talks about in that post to absolve herself in his eyes, false identified with him, and kept it up even through 8x17 (contrary to acting like herself a bit more in front of someone she knows she can't manipulate anymore cos he'll see right the fuck through it, Sam, with "you hit a dog, why" and "puked in my mouth a little" and the undeserved entitlement of "you guys didn't look for me, like, once?").

Paired with the disdain she had for his neuroatypicality, using his trigger word the way she did Sam's in S1 (which btw butterflydm is like the one tidbit you missed in your Hellatus Meta, "freak" "Hellhounds" "Alastair" "useless"), it was a very effective manipulation to get "power where she can get it", but by S8 Castiel was starting to come out of it, which is why his fondness level had toned way down in S8 (while hers has gone up), and he doesn't agree with her about like, anything, at all, except the bare minimum to keep her complacent and pay his debt (he owes her, his words). As Zerbe said, after he came out of it--and even before, tbh, once he had some other way to cope--he would have killed her once she'd flipped on them again. But Cas doesn't kill allies until they become more trouble than they're worth, even if he disagrees with a lot of their shit, and he has a penchant for fondness that defies all logic when it comes to people who've just seemingly helped him.

So naturally, in S7, he wouldn't have as readily killed someone who cared about him/he cared about (no matter how little), when he was in the "Meg and everybody else including me are all products of a shitty system and don't deserve to die for that" mindset she fed him a lot of the time.

And naturally in S9, he would. Partially because, as much as I will literally always maintain that Meg was Evil till the end (especially, as with Spike, in the way she treated her "unicorn"), Dean is going to be worse, Dean is going to be a force to be reckoned with in a way even Meg never was; Dean's going to go all Faith Lehane, "I got a bit...dangerous for a while." enjoying the empty fun of Evil with Crowley (his Mayor? Maybe.), and unlike Meg, he's going to come back, but someone still is going to have to be ready for him to resist that, and if he does, Cas is gonna have to pull a Buffy and go after him, because that's what they do.

"It takes a great deal of bravery to stand up to your enemies, but a great deal more, to stand up to your friends." One of the most Slytherin things Dumbledore ever said about a Gryffindor, and one of Cas's primary leading philosophies right now ("punish him Castiel or we're gone" or whatever Hannah said in 9x22...). It is not more loving to forgive anything a person will do, I agree with Zerbe, and to suggest it is (that whole "when's a monster not a monster" mentality I so loathe as a person who used to believe it and dated "demons") is to feed abuse culture by suggesting someone you love can never be dangerous enough, never be monstrous enough, to fight back against justifiably or leave because they are Not Good no matter how you feel.

What you should be paying attention to instead is that even under Meg's spell (mentally, not literally) in S7, Castiel would not protect her as she wanted (and she ditched him for it) when he was close to death (by Hester), he would not fight, but, as Zerbe pointed out, they're making Dean the one who tests him; Castiel wants his mojo to save Dean, wants to live to help the man he loves, wants to fight for Dean (and Dean's humanity) in every capacity no matter how close to death he is.

End tangent, because the one-sided bullshit of Meg/Cas is over anyway, and was never canon, not at all, because Castiel said no and only ever showed her the barest affection as it was, because as I said, Meg as a person wasn't something Castiel was ever actually about.

Dean/Cas is still on the cards; they're who matter, because Dean is.

But back to Jared:

(P.S. Charlie wasn't a love interest. Charlie had a love interest. Big fucking difference. Also, lol so much lol that you think it's justified that female characters who are not just love interests but ever had any romantic storyline at all are "annoying" to you or Jared or anybody else, or that you think his discomfort at acting with women who're "eye-sexy" or whatever would justify his throwing the possibility of the show being at all female-driven/queer-driven under the fucking bus. Those storylines weren't one-sided, but I don't see Jared talking about how dudes in SPN are involved in romance too.)