I think the Ziva comparison is a really illustrative one because I would argue that "murder" has a very different definition for those two characters. On a kind of Watsonian level within their respective universes, Ziva is a human being in context of other human beings. But to angels, what differentiates humans from any other species of beast? From their perspective, what makes us any different from wendigos or demons or vampires or whatever? Accepting Ziva and Cas as subjects on their own terms, I'd say Ziva is the character who ought to be held to the higher standard. But then on the Doylist level, where the audience has a stake as "us" which is guided by the narrative, NCIS is set up for us to align ourselves with Ziva as a person with institutional power over those at whom her violence is presumably targeted, while in the SPN-verse the audience gaze is aligned with the humans, and so Cas is The Other with power over "us" - we become the targets so we of course have a higher emotional stake in there being moral sanction for any action he might take toward "us," on top of which, we then find out there's someone above him who can treat him like he can treat us. I don't think it's about the options are either "oh poor Cas" or "the narrative must force him to wear XYZ event on his shoulder," I think it's about Supernatural doing a very cool thing in making us uncomfortable trying to put him into any category. (IT'S NO VAMPIRE DIARIES, but it's still pretty cool.)
I disliked the "brain-wipe" for the same reason I disliked "I made the Grand Canyon." WTF, missy? Yes, the show kicks canon from pillar to post, but jeez, is it THAT hard to remember the Heavenly hierarchy?
Insofar as worldbuilding additions go, I've gotta say I think the brain-wipe is a pretty smooth one, because there's a reason built in that we didn't know about it - there's no way anyone who would come into contact with it would even be able to say anything about it, because they still didn't know anything about it. The only characters powerful enough to be exempt from the chair were the archangels, and Gabriel and Lucifer have been out of the loop for so long that this was most likely a conspiracy of two for all this time, and those two were established as lying liars who lie and clearly didn't spare a moment's thought for the conditions of their ~underlings. IMO it's not that big a jump from "angels casually brain-wipe humans and have no compunctions about torturing each other." They're just even more effective than we realized, because we knew even less than we thought we did, and I am so here for that concept.
I disliked the "brain-wipe" for the same reason I disliked "I made the Grand Canyon." WTF, missy? Yes, the show kicks canon from pillar to post, but jeez, is it THAT hard to remember the Heavenly hierarchy?
Insofar as worldbuilding additions go, I've gotta say I think the brain-wipe is a pretty smooth one, because there's a reason built in that we didn't know about it - there's no way anyone who would come into contact with it would even be able to say anything about it, because they still didn't know anything about it. The only characters powerful enough to be exempt from the chair were the archangels, and Gabriel and Lucifer have been out of the loop for so long that this was most likely a conspiracy of two for all this time, and those two were established as lying liars who lie and clearly didn't spare a moment's thought for the conditions of their ~underlings. IMO it's not that big a jump from "angels casually brain-wipe humans and have no compunctions about torturing each other." They're just even more effective than we realized, because we knew even less than we thought we did, and I am so here for that concept.
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