Taking Kink Meme fills too seriously...

[rirren]

This fic is killing me. I was just meant to be writing it for the kink and now my brain has got all caught up with worrying about whether Gadreel (the villain of the fic) is in character. And then I went and did the worst possible thing for this situation: I went and read a bunch of meta about Gadreel on tumblr and ended up sympathising with him

Comments

[balder12]

I've done some thinking about Gadreel for fic recently too, and he's a challenging character to wrap your head around. I don't think he's a "villain" in the sense of being malicious or wanting to cause harm for harm's sake, but I don't think he's just a poor little angel either. He's a gifted actor--he plays the roles of both Dean and Sam well enough to fool the other brother--which implies a certain level of cunning, and he makes the choice to murder both Kevin and his own best friend, even though it seems clear he knows in his heart that it's wrong. You can make the case that he does it "for the greater good" of restoring the angels to Heaven, but he also expressly does it because he wants the angels to see him as a "hero," which implies a certain dangerous vanity

[rirren]

Gadreel is a complex character, he doesn't fit neatly into the role of villain or woobie. I really like that about him. I loved his backstory and I think he genuinely wanted to heal Sam at the beginning but now he's murdering innocent people to redeem himself. Actually, his backstory kinda reminded me of Sam's, where they both made mistakes and were then unfairly castigated for those mistakes and made into scapegoats. Except Gadreel seems to resent others for this and Sam seems to blame himself entirely.
And yeah, I agree with what you say about 'the greater good'. I think Gadreel sees it that way, but really his motives are more selfish and about restoring his own reputation.
I really hope he doesn't get killed off too soon, he's too interesting.

And thank you for your insightful comments! I have some more ideas about how to write Gadreel's character in this fic now :)

[safiyabat]

Disclaimer: I Do Not Like The Creepy Angel

[rirren]

I really quite like Gadreel. I think maybe a big part is how Jared did such a great job playing him. I really enjoy 3D bad guys and thinking about how or if different villains could be redeemed. Even with Ghoul!Adam I sometimes wonder if he was faking all those brotherly moments with Sam and think wistfully of a redemption arc for him/it (pretty silly idea but would make a cool fanfic, I think--Sam, big brother to a ghoul lol

[safiyabat]

So there are the two possibilities that you mentioned - either that there were so few humans when he was imprisoned that he didn't understand how vessels worked - or that he was so screwed up that he didn't care. Of the two my money is on the second, because he showed concern for Abner's vessel and knew enough about humans to simulate Dean and Sam to each other.

But there's a third possibility too - in Gadreel's eyes Sam is too tainted, too much of an abomination, for his feelings on the matter to actually count. His blood, after all, is not entirely human.

[rirren]

The thing is, I would like it to be number 1. Because Gadreel must have missed out on pretty much the entirety of human history--all he's known is the couple of humans innocently frolicing about the Garden of Eden before landing back on Earth. But then Gadreel seemed to have asked proper consent from his first vessel (when that vessel said 'yes' just before he was repossessed