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Name: Castiel
Door: door pass

Canon: Supernatural
Canon Point: Season 11, Post-The Devil in the Details (Episode 10)

Age: Several million to billion years
Appearance: link

History: link
CR AU (Optional): n/a

Personality:
Positive Trait - Compassion: It's no exaggeration to say that everything Castiel does is done with good intentions.

He rebels against Heaven to help Dean save humanity, knowing he'll never be able to return home for his actions. He sacrifices his life, both at the ends of Season 4 and Season 5, in order to help Dean and Sam stand against the Apocalypse. He returns to Heaven in Season 6 with the intent to cure his home of its corruption, and even when he hurts Sam and Dean to do it, it's because he truly believes what he's doing is the only way to get the best possible outcome. He tries to close Heaven's gates in Season 8 in order to make another attempt at helping Heaven reform, and in Season 9, in the aftermath of the Angel Fall, he travels the Earth to gather all the wayward angels and return them to Heaven. He also contacts his vessel's daughter during this time, wanting to help her after the loss of her mother and father. And when he says yes to Lucifer in Season 11, it's because he thinks that Lucifer can help defeat the current existential threat hanging over all their heads.

Castiel's chief desire, once his reform of Heaven fails, is to make penance for the harm he's caused. But the bedrock beneath all this is his need to make the world a better place. For the angels, for his family, for humanity. He loves humankind. He loves the Earth. He loves all God's creatures (even going so far as to profess he prefers insects to angels), and this is why, with Dean's passion to inspire him, he rebels. He loves Dean — For his humanity and his empathy. And this love is what inspires him to continue fighting even after all hope has been lost. It's what pushes him to get up, again and again, even after he's already given up on himself. Castiel can't let go.

To him, this compassion and selflessness is what it means to be an angel, and there's nothing he wants to be more than a good angel.

But you know what they say about good intentions...


Top Negative Trait - Self-Hate: Castiel has lost faith in himself.

Unfortunately for Castiel, most of the self-confidence he once possessed came from his position as a loyal angel of Heaven; his dedication toward God and his cause led him to think very highly of himself. In Season 5, after he rebels and is ousted from Heaven, we see that he struggles with a loss of identity. Once proud, now Castiel falls to binge drinking (an entire liquor store), professing that he has no hope in Dean's plans (before later apologizing when Dean pulls through), belittling himself, even going so far as to call himself a "poor excuse for an angel". Due to his history, he appears to be quite critical of himself. (Castiel's superiors hardly treat him or the other lesser angels like people— rather more like objects.)

This is before he attempts the take control of Heaven.

In Season 6, after his powers are restored by God, Castiel feels he's been chosen to lead Heaven toward reform. His plan is to take over leadership and pass on free will to the rank and file angels. In this, he stands against Raphael, the last remaining archangel, and incites a civil war. Sadly, Raphael is more powerful than Castiel, so Castiel is forced to work with the King of Hell, Crowley, to have any chance of winning. This is a secret he keeps until nearly the end of the season, and the stress of his deception, alongside the pressure of waging a war, causes him to act in increasingly desperate ways. Such as badly hurting Sam to make it more difficult for the three to retaliate against him. His decisions result in a massacre in Heaven, after he absorbs the monstrous Purgatory souls into himself, claims that he is the new God, and decides all those who had stood against him must be punished. After this, he sets his sights on Earth, but when he blacks out (due to the monster souls within him) and slaughters innocents, he realizes he's gone too far and returns to Sam and Dean for help.

Obviously, this is not how he meant for things to go. In fact, this is pretty much the worst way it could have gone. Although he prevented the Apocalypse 2.0, he wasn't able to repair the corruption in Heaven. If anything, he made it worse: Not only did he break the angels' trust, but by killing all the angels that opposed him, who were adherents to order, he assured that the only remaining angels would be those who had their own ideas about how to move forward. And this is what happens. The in-fighting in Heaven doesn't stop until, late in the series, there are almost no angels left, completely obliterating Castiel's dearest wish.

He also dies as a consequence, though he's brought back later by God (Castiel professes here he believes that his resurrections are punishments). He displays great remorse both before and after— Going so far as to say, late in Season 7, that he deserved to die for his actions.

It only gets worse from there.

Of course, Castiel's low self-esteem isn't simply a byproduct of his actions. It's cyclical.

He wants to right his wrongs. But with every attempt, his desperation causes him to make more mistakes.

Another example would be his attempt to close Heaven's gates in Season 8, where he let himself be manipulated by an angel (Metatron) selling a quick fix. Unwittingly, he helps to cast all the angels from Heaven by enacting a spell for Metatron without ever looking into what this spell might do. He simply takes Metatron by his word, even going so far as to target and kill an otherwise innocent Nephilim girl as part of the aforementioned spell. (This not only leaves Heaven open to Metatron's influence (he takes command once Heaven has been emptied), it also burns all the angels' wings, crippling them permanently, and kills a great number in the process.)

By Season 11, Castiel's all but given up on himself.

By Season 13, when faced with a sadistic "evil" version of himself from an alternate reality (who, without Sam and Dean's intervention, has become a master interrogator in Michael's anti-human army), he admits he believes they are the same, just before killing him. ("Don’t think that you are better than me. Well, we are the same." "Yes. We are.")

By Season 15, God refers to him as "The Self-Hating Angel of Thursday".

In fact, at the point I've taken him from, he's retreated into his vessel to allow Lucifer to take control, because he believes Lucifer can do more to help defeat The Darkness (the aforementioned existential threat) than he can. But, after being told by both Ambriel (an angel) and the Darkness herself that he's expendable, it's more than likely that Castiel simply decided there was no point in him remaining.


Negative Trait - Emotional Naivety: Despite that Castiel is from a species which prides itself on a lack of emotion, Castiel becomes quite emotional after spending time on Earth, and has a tendency to let his lead him by the nose. He doesn't seem to be particularly aware of this. Because he comes from an emotionally stunted species (in fact, angels are punished by their superiors for showing emotion, and Castiel himself is demoted in Season 4 for getting too close to Dean), he's inexperienced with identifying and understanding his own emotions, which is necessary for coping with them in a productive manner.

He can be quite childish at times. Pouting, eye-rolling, and giving the silent treatment for presumed insults (such as when Dean called him a "baby in a trench coat").

But worse, this leads him to act out in the heat of the moment.

He lashes out and assaults people on multiple occasions, including innocents (he grabs a Gas-n-Sip cashier for not having pie; lifts and chokes a different employee when he doesn't immediately give Castiel the information he wants; assaults a man by headbutting him for potentially being involved in Sam's disappearance, etc.) and those who can't defend themselves (he beats Metatron for his own gratification for several minutes when Metatron is weak and human, simply because he's upset at his situation and Metatron was a part of it; He also punch Metatron in the mouth for insulting Dean).

But it goes deeper than just physical assault. In Season 6 he kills Balthazar for his "betrayal" of helping Sam and Dean (Balthazar saw that Castiel was going too far and wanted him to see reason, because he truly cared for Castiel), and later breaks Sam's mind (which almost kills him) to keep them from being able to oppose him. In Season 8, he refuses to listen to Naomi's warnings about Metatron simply because he's afraid of her (he had a reason to be, since she hurt him badly, but considering his past experiences with other angels, he shouldn't have trusted Metatron, either— except that Metatron was telling him what he wanted to hear). In Season 9, when he's mortal after losing his grace, he kills and steals another angel's grace to regain his powers in the heat of the moment, while escaping from being captured, even though he admits over the phone to Dean later that it makes him an abomination. Later in the series, he breaks an otherwise defenseless man's mind (the prophet Donatello) for trying to hurt Dean, even when Dean disapproves of his methods. Even his choice to let Lucifer take his body is an emotional one. He's hurt by Ambriel and Amara's words, and decides to run away and hide while reasoning that it's for the greater good.

Most of these things he does with good intentions, thinking he's right to do them, just because he feels so strongly they're true. Much like he insists that the Winchesters are too good for this world to die, while killing the reaper they made a deal with to help them escape imprisonment in Season 12 (she had agreed to help Sam and Dean in exchange for being allowed to reap a single Winchester, but rather than play along with their wishes, Castiel took matters into his own hands, and this results in the reaper later becoming a powerful enemy).

He's essentially blind to his own biases due to his inability to recognize the part his emotions play in his decision making process, which can make him quite a dangerous person when he feels strongly about something.

This is also why his self-hatred becomes insurmountable. He just can't understand that how he feels about himself is a reaction to his experiences and not immutable, objective fact.


Negative Trait - Neediness: Castiel deeply desires to be loved and to give love, which clashes with the asceticism of his belief system. Much of Castiel's character revolves around love, the expression of it (mostly through self-sacrifice), the lack of it, and the hunger for it.

We see this most obviously during his brief stint as God. Because God brought him back to life, he believes he's been chosen by his Father to lead Heaven. His plan is to take over where He left off and be a better leader, a better Father, and in doing so be worthy of His choice and His love, or at least the love of his followers. When he faces Sam and Dean and Bobby in the first episode of Season 7, he demands they bow down and profess their love unto him, threatening them when their attempts are obviously forced. After this, he tours both Heaven and Earth, punishing his detractors and false worshipers and looking to his followers for adoration.

This need is highlighted once again at the climax of Season 12, when the Nephilim Jack touches Castiel's mind and shows Castiel visions of paradise. (In a cut scene, we see that these visions involved Castiel as a powerful savior figure to Sam and Dean.) After this, Castiel becomes completely loyal to Jack, insisting many times that Jack will bring good things to the world, even when all evidence points to the contrary (such as Jack losing his soul and killing Mary Winchester). Castiel can't help but seem to desire paradise, which he once described as a place where "all is forgiven." It's easy to see how this would be a solution to all of his problems. If he's forgiven, he'll finally be able to allow himself the reward of love he's so long been denied.

In his last words to Dean before he sacrifices himself to save his life, he admits that he loves Dean, and tells him the one thing he wants is something he knows he can't have.

In fact, when he made the deal that bargained his life away, it was on the condition that he would be dragged back to the Empty once he finally allowed himself to be happy, which is something he assumes will never happen. The only thing he believes will make him happy is for Dean to love him in return— Something he doesn't think is possible.

But it's not a shock Castiel feels this way. Heaven is devoid of compassion, and Castiel has long been deprived of affection. Anna, Castiel's former commander, who ripped out her grace on purpose to live a human life, likens angels to marble statues, perfect and cold. Castiel himself says that his superiors see emotions as "doorways to doubt" and is punished for becoming close to Dean. Castiel spent his entire long history suppressing any glimmer of feeling while being treated as nothing more than a disposable object by those whom he looked up to, and for all his time there, up until very recent history, he believed this was just and right. (In Season 4 Episode 7, he insists that all of Heaven's orders are just.) But in the past eight years, he's learned that not only has God been long absent from Heaven, but he learns how to feel, and feel he does. (As Anna tells him: It gets worse.)

This lack of emotional fulfillment reinforces his other negative traits, forming the basis of what incites so many bad decisions.


Negative Trait - Avoidance: Castiel has the unfortunate habit of making himself scarce when things get difficult.

That's not to say he doesn't take responsibility for his actions. He always does eventually. But, particularly when it comes to personal relationships, he tends to avoid confrontation if at all possible. This can be seen most often in his relationship with Dean. He cares for Dean deeply. More than anyone. But he rarely goes out of his way to contact Dean unless he's offering help or a tip, both because he feels that he's a burden to other people unless he's actively helping them in some way, and because they're so often in conflict. This repeats in other personal relationships: He avoids contacting his vessel's daughter for years, though she'd been praying to him since the beginning, essentially abandoning her when she lost everything.

And this applies to the big issues as well. When he's brought back to life after Season 6 and fixes Sam's mind, there's a stretch of time where he experiences a mental break In this time, he refuses any sort of confrontation; Disappearing when people fight, fidgeting meekly when he's called out for his cowardice, even allowing himself to be beaten when the angels come calling for blood. Even though the current situation is a result of his actions, he claims that he's now a pacifist, and can't take part in the fight. But the truth is, he's just afraid to get involved, in case he makes things works. Eventually, he does step in and help, but it takes Dean's convincing to get him there.

When Castiel returns from Purgatory in Season 8, he refuses to return to Heaven, because he can't stand to see what he's done to it. Even though he knows that the circumstances of his return were mysterious and need to be investigated. In Season 9, when Metatron strips him of his grace, he remains human for three months while the angels continue to fight, killing both each other and many innocent people who're caught in the crossfire. In Season 11, as mentioned above, he says yes to Lucifer, and gives up control completely.

And what could be more avoidant that refusing to even take responsibility for your own body?



Powers and Abilities: link
Inventory: An angel blade and Jimmy Novak's wallet.

Samples: Communication | Thought