what beautiful monsters, oh

So chainedtocastiel and I were discussing Jimmy with regards to Destiel and after thinking about it I’ve come to the conclusion that regardless of whether or not Jimmy is still alive, sexual activity does not violate his consent.

There are two possibilities (obviously): Jimmy is still alive, or Jimmy is dead. The latter pauses no moral quandary to think over and yet I’ve seen people raise some … odd objections, so I’ll tackle it first anyhow.

Short response: you cannot violate consent of someone who is dead because they are dead - bit the dust, kicked the bucket, passed their expiration date. Long response: if Jimmy is dead then the body fully belongs to Castiel. Whether or not Jimmy would be squicked at the use of his old body is irrelevant, because it’s his old body. There’s some confusion about whether bodies have minds of their own but I think it’s pretty obvious that was just shitty writing - after the Soulless!Sam arc, which contradicted pretty much everything else on the show including demonstrated angel/vessel dynamics, I gave up trying to work out this universe’s rules about souls and accepted they just bullshitted season 6. The closest you can get to reasonable conjecture is that the only remnants of an old, dead vessel (or a current, but non-present vessel) would be some automatic biological responses (e.g. Jimmy’s love of red meat), and nothing so complex as a thought.

That brings us on to the idea of Jimmy still being alive, to which I put forward my idea of body ownership.

This body ‘belongs’ to Jimmy so long as his mind is located in the body. Jimmy is the soul - the body is just a meatsuit, the soul is the essence. If he were placed in a different body, he would still be Jimmy, in someone else’s [previously] body. Think of the body as the house and Jimmy as the resident - it is his house.

When Jimmy made the deal with Castiel, he forfeited the ownership of his own body, not just in word - Cas gets to control the actions whilst Jimmy watches - but in totality. Jimmy’s body is now Cas’ body because Cas is the soul/mind/essence/thing that inhabits the body. Jimmy gave Cas his house and despite that he may share the premises occasionally, it is still where Cas resides, which makes it Cas’ who may sometimes flatshare with Jimmy. It is literally no longer Jimmy’s body to be violated because as long as he is not a presence there, the body cannot meaningfully be said to belong to him. When he is present, it is both of their body, and a compromise must be made (I trust Cas wouldn’t engage in sex whilst Jimmy was present unless Jimmy agreed).

The argument is not that when Jimmy consented he gave Cas consent all around the board inc. sex - the argument is that when Jimmy consented, and relegated himself to a mind that pops into existence and awareness only at some points, he is no longer capable of owning the body because he is not its (at least primary) inhabitant. It is not that different from him being sent to heaven, since in both cases his soul still exists but is not present in his body. It’s different from demon possession because 1.) demon victims don’t consent, and 2.) demon victims are usually present for their possession.

So tl;dr, bodies are sacks of meat, they belong to whoever inhabits them, Cas is the inhabitant of Jimmy’s old body, therefore it is truly Cas’ body, therefore what happens to it is Cas’ say.

For the record, I think Jimmy’s dead (he was believed brain dead before Cas re-awoke, meaning to me that Jimmy’s as gone as Ruby v.2). You may then ask why I typed this shit - it’s in equal parts because consent is important to address and because I have a physics exam tomorrow that I’d really rather not revise for.

4 months ago with notes (45)