At the beginning of Death Takes a Holiday, I remember being ruefully surprised that the person who was knifed at the beginning of the episode was not the black man. You know things have gotten to a bad point in a show when I see two characters--one of whom is black--and wonder how the show is going to screw it up this time.

Aside from here, I mostly drift along the edges of online SPN fandom. Has there ever been any talk about having people write in en masse between now and the time they start working on next season to say how and why the treatment of race and gender has been bothersome? Not as a protest, but more along the lines of an intervention?

On a totally different note, who else besides Dean referred to Castiel as "Cas?" I think I recall Anna doing so, but did Uriel? Sam?

Sam called him "Cas" in Heaven and Hell, and has since then as well.

I did not intent to rhyme.

Many thanks!

CW interview with Misha Collins - mostly unspoilery but it does talk very briefly about something that they will be going into in a future (un-named) episode.

Or Anna - I think Anna would have been a GREAT call, all pissed off with the forces of Heaven and taking revenge on them for not letting her reascend, or whatever.

Yes, this. The show is so busy being all "it's better to be human than an angel" and portraying Anna as the one special snowflake that sees the blind loyalty of Heaven as a worse alternative than free will/rebellion that they've overlooked she decided she knew better than God and fell to follow the beat of her own drummer. I believe there's another figure who started out that way whose story just might be familiar to viewers.

She wouldn't even have to be all mwah-ha-ha evil, merely convinced that the angels were too willing to sacrifice innocent people in the name of winning the war, and willing to put a stop to that.

grabs devils advocate hat again.

So having a woman (who Dean had sex with) turn evil/traitor and then die would be "better" than having a black angel do so?

eta: I'm really not trying to say that the show doesn't need to work on race or gender issues. I guess it's more that it's painted itself into a corner because of the patterns, and because of that I'm not sure there's a way they could have played this that wouldn't have been problematic. Unless Castiel was the traitor, and as Fay said, that's just no.

It would involve better established motivation on her part than Uriel's speciesm, since she's already effectively regarded as a traitor by Heaven to the point of putting a kill order out for her. And I said nothing about her dying, my impression is she'd win a fight against Castiel just like she did against Uriel.

It would involve better established motivation on her part than Uriel's speciesm, since she's already effectively regarded as a traitor by Heaven to the point of putting a kill order out for her.

Fair point,

And I said nothing about her dying, my impression is she'd win a fight against Castiel just like she did against Uriel.

But if the traitor didn't die, that a) would probably end up with Castiel being dead, and b) definitely change the story arc.

b) might not be a bad thing in the end, but I still want to see where the show is going with the storyline they've created, not the one(s) I might have wanted them to create.

Has there ever been any talk about having people write in en masse between now and the time they start working on next season to say how and why the treatment of race and gender has been bothersome? Not as a protest, but more along the lines of an intervention?

There was a flurry of activity like that near the end of season 3, when the mysogyny in particular was just too over the top. A bunch of people wrote letters to the production company. It might even have made a difference: there's been a significant drop in the use of gendered slurs on the show. Of course, they still blinded and then killed Pam, the only actual human woman we've seen more than once since Bela died.

Have we seen any recurring human male characters except for Bobby?