Imaginary storytelling, Supernatural edition: Places to come from, places to go.

[hannahrorlove]

This is for neotoma and tiny_antares. And everyone who likes fictional anthropology.

I had a moment of great jubilation when I got to the fourth season of Supernatural - not just because the plot was kicking into high gear, not just because of Misha Collins, not just because the effects budget had been increased to about $72 per episode up from $65. A lot of it was

Comments

[neotoma]

I'm really tempted to do something similar for the gabriel-bigbang -- something in the 'angels are physical beings' line, I mean. Of course, I also want to do a sedoretu marriage fic as well, so who know what I'll do. Maybe combine the two?

[hannahrorlove]

Is that the one where they lay eggs in giant nests, megapode and crocodillian-style?

If you want help working on the anthropological details, I'd be happy to pitch in.

[neotoma]

haha! the angel-=megapode fic is going up Wednesday (if I can get it finished -- you wouldn't want to do a last minute beta, would you?)

This one is more of the idea that maybe angels are an endangered species, they're not breeding well because it's hard for a sedoretu to get set up with such a small and widely scattered population, and Gabriel is a captive-reared angel that Jess and Sam are trying to set up with a female from the opposite moiety, except that they're also have to stand in as surrogates for the other heterosexual pair in the sedoretu, because they're just aren't enough angels left for Gabriel and Kali to find two other angels of the appropriate genders and moieties to marry... or something like that.

[hannahrorlove]

I want to, but I don't know how helpful I'd be, or if I had the time. How long is it, and what would you need me to do?

So there's what, barely a three-digit population? Was it hunting that drove the population down, habitat encroachment, disease? How intelligent are they?

This also makes me think of this one turkey vulture at the raptor rehabilitation center I worked at, actually - he was hand-raised by people and imprinted on them, and couldn't live in the wild. Is Gabriel in a similar position? I ask because otherwise I don't think he'd acknowledge Jess and Sam as proper sedoretu participants.

And please tell me Dean is working with Cas somewhere.

[neotoma]

Oh, it's 21K (and I'm still typing, because apparently I work best under pressure :headdesk:), and basically I need spelling/grammar/tense check, and to make sure that I haven't got scenes out of order

[hannahrorlove]

One detail I forgot to put into that wall of notes was that the feathers over the wound where Dean shot down Cas all grow back black, and stick out from pattern on the rest of his feathers. I wonder if something like that happened to Gabriel, assuming he's got wings: injured at an early enough age and far enough distance from other angels humans had to take him in so he wouldn't die. If he ran away, then it'd be easy enough to argue whoever found him contacted the local wildlife services to come help.

Where are the populations found?

If Cas is Gabriel's younger brother, that brings me to thinking about someone finding a cache of unguarded eggs, or that Cas was just unhatched and nearby when they found Gabriel to bring him in. If that's the case, Dean could make a lot of canon-paralleling comments about how Cas is wonderful and kind and careful, but doesn't know how to be an angel.

[neotoma]

I figure that angels live in mountain areas, so Gabriel is probably from the Appalachias somewhere (given that he code-switches in canon, this makes sense). Possibly he was injured or the only member of his family that survived some virulent disease

[hannahrorlove]

Bird flu can and does jump the species barrier. And social siblings instead of genetically related ones - I like that. Cas makes for a very good case study for Sam the researcher, specifically demonstrating how instinct can only go so far.

Dean works as the engineer, and every so often helps out with the caring and feeding of the young ones under Jess' supervision. (Why not make them all friends? They could've been friends, we just never learned!)

That last scenario is fairly plausible, given the set-up you have going.

[neotoma]

Bird flu might do it -- especially since birds and mammals can react differently to the same strain. And yes, social siblings, and possibly different moiety-sibs,if a nest is all the young from two females of different moieties together

[hannahrorlove]

The angels I have in the original post live much less than humans - Cas is 12 or 14 when he's shot down, and can't conceive of living more than 50-some-odd years, and then only if he's incredibly lucky. The reason there aren't stories of old angels is partly because they don't live as long as people, and partly because they age like reptiles, where once they hit adulthood that's it for the changes. That said, I do like the idea of angels living longer in yours, especially since it means Gabriel and Cas being handed down through the ages, as it were. Angel heirlooms.

What does Cas know of moieties? I imagine Gabriel's information is incomplete, at best, and humans wouldn't necessarily be the best ones to learn from.

[neotoma]

I was thinking if angels aged like birds, Gabriel might be twice as old as he looks, so he'd have been born around 1930 or so... orphaned around 20ish, so had to put up with 1950s child-rearing and just the beginnings of child psychology and animal behavior (and he would have been studied by both kinds of researchers).

Castiel probably doesn't know much about moieties, but if the moieties have some sort of phenotype that is passed matrilineally -- I was thinking of speculum feathers -- he'd know who was and wasn't in his moiety.

[hannahrorlove]

Ah, the fifties - I imagine he'd have been tested on wire mothers, and fought to not speak English if he could help it.

A lot of the images I'm thinking of for what you're describing come from my time at the raptor center, of which a good number of the runs and enclosures had only one solid wall, with the rest of it being chain-link fence or whatever. Only a few of the birds were housed together, mostly mated pairs, and the rest kept alone or with others of the species. What's the set-up like for Gabriel and Cas? Are there other angels there?

[neotoma]

Not wire mothers, I'd hope. I was thinking more along the lines of raising chimps in human homes and trying to teach them speech

[hannahrorlove]

Ahhh. I see the fine distinction. I also wonder if humans can speak Enochian without the help of a vocal synthesizer or computer.

Gabriel and Castiel are inevitably the weird ones. And what are the protocols on captive-born angels getting released into the wild?

[neotoma]

Depends. If angels have a syrinx instead of a larynx, they might be able to make two sounds at once, would definitely make Enochian impossible for humans to speech without assistance (or two humans speaking together to make each part of the phonemes, which might be some Sam and Jess learned how to do in college

[hannahrorlove]

Two humans speaking together would sound strange, but passable and reasonably understandable. It'd be a good way to get the two of them together, co-translators.

And that would be when the center realizes what it needs to do next time, to make sure this doesn't happen again. That would be one thing the center does offer no place in the wild can, anymore: that closeness of so many angels together. Humans are more intensely social than angels, and it's something that's rubbed off on Cas, who looks contact and community the way humans do, not the way other angels do. Gabriel understands, and often indulges him.