Wait, but it's not surface thoughts he's reading, not like the way fanon has it. He's seeing the sum of a person and their basic fears hopes and life experience and all the shit surrounding that. I'm pretty sure Chastity wasn't thinking about her dad as she was getting to ready to get to work on Cas.

I think that's the big difference for me.

I'm pretty sure Chastity wasn't thinking about her dad as she was getting to ready to get to work on Cas.

Unless she was. I mean, we can't rule it out. I don't think it's unlikely enough.

Is it really a defining characteristic of her? Or did she have a fleeting thought about men and her father? I think textual interpretation can go either way, pretty fairly.

There's also his "You don't think you deserve to be saved" up for consideration.

As noted, I'm not of the camp that likes angel telepathy. I think it makes things too easy, but doesn't explain enough. But if they could read minds and still sucked at what they did the way they did, that's pretty funny. Because Dean straight up lied to Zach.

Maybe a mind is like a book to Cas. He has make the effort to open it up (in a non-physical manner, judging by Chastity's appearance) and read it. Rather than a radio where he hears the thoughts whether he wants to or not.

There's also his "You don't think you deserve to be saved" up for consideration.

That seemed like an effort to understand, to me -- just voicing his thoughts aloud.

But I do assume Cas has some deeper knowledge of Dean anyway. If you put someone back together from scratch, you know his hands were all over Dean's soul, and all that it might contain.

I like that, Calli.

The "don't deserve to be saved" came off, to me, as more of a surprised conclusion to seeing different aspects of Dean, and not a parroting of something Dean was thinking.

I also think the writer's didn't really think this through. As we discussed before, with Zacchariah's dumb-assery with how he handled them and other instances where mind-reading/soul-reading/life-experience-reading would have been really handy and saved them a lot of trouble.

I do assume Cas has some deeper knowledge of Dean anyway

More profound bond?

I see your point of view, and choose devil's advocate. (Huh. Sam. Devil's advocate. Never mind) Castiel did show that he was the only angel able to actually successfully manipulate Dean, so obviously there was something going on there--but doesn't that lend itself to supporting some level of mindreading, even if it happened at the point of reconstruction?

doesn't that lend itself to supporting some level of mindreading, even if it happened at the point of reconstruction?

I would go with he probably could, when he was fully mojoed, and just didn't always bother.

Otherwise I think you might have trouble explaining why he needed the cell phone to track them down after he sigiled them up.

But profound bond, oh yeah. That's there.

From the article:

What is your life motto or may be favorite quote or phrase?

Death to normalcy.

Least surprising answer to a question ever.

Otherwise I think you might have trouble explaining why he needed the cell phone to track them down after he sigiled them up.

I could posit that the sigils protected their minds. I'm good with that construction.

However, why can they now just pray for him, when they had to call him last season? To get Zach, Dean had to go to a proselytiser last year, and to get Balthazar, Sam performed a ritual.

But they can just yell for Cas.

Cute.

Lucifer may have removed those pesky sigils when he took up residence in Sam. Likewise, Castiel for Dean when the former healed the latter at the end of "Swan Song" and it didn't look like hiding out from Heaven would be necessary any longer.

Or the writers may have just forgotten they're supposed to be blinvisible to angels...