Supernatural Quarantine Blog

this isn't a particularly deep observation but one of my favorite things to witness in the john episodes at the end of season one is how much dean shrinks around his dad. around sam, dean is confident and sure of himself and always speaks in definitives and just has this air of bigness and ultimate authority. but then john shows up, god of their world, and suddenly dean's entire demeanor changes. he morphs back into an insecure little boy, he talks more softly and everything he says sounds like a question, like he’s afraid to say the wrong thing or assert his opinion. it's just so interesting, the emotional stuntedness of someone who was always treated like a kid but simultaneously had responsibilities thrust on him that were completely inappropriate for his age. he had to present as more confident than he was around sam to protect him, but he also had to present as more confident than he was around john to prove that he was trustworthy and capable of taking care of sam when john wasn't around. and john appeared to trust dean, every time he left dean alone in a motel with a kid to take care of, but that confidence was shattered every time dean screwed up (a la 1x18). so how do you reconcile that? am i a kid or am i an adult? am i trustworthy or am i not? then it's put into such stark relief when you see john reunited with sam and dean. fear and deference battling with confidence and self-assuredness (though the confidence is still largely faked). even when he does speak up for himself or for sam it's...timid. and the picture is so clear, now you have adults being treated like kids ("i'm not crazy about this new tone of yours") after years of kids being treated like adults. dean's role as sam's protector and caretaker versus his role as the obedient son, and he's still trapped in the middle.

saw somebody get flayed alive on tiktok for making an edit of dean winchester to labour by paris paloma but tbh it was kind of a genius edit bc it made me think about how some of dean's misogyny stems from the fact that at a very young age john forced him to take on the role in the family that mary had. just the whole juxtaposition of be a man, but also raise your brother cook the food be my emotional support etc. the emotional incest of it all

like i understand the knee jerk reaction to insist that labour is for women only because it's about victims of misogyny losing their autonomy to men but dean is also unironically a victim of misogyny by virtue of john using him as mary's substitute within the family dynamic as a caretaker. and we can kind of see this in season 12 where sam and dean are hurt and upset that mary doesn't want to be their perfect mother. dean even justifies this by talking about how he had to take her place, seemingly unaware of the fact that neither of them should have to be relegated to that role. john had two sons but he needed a wife and a guard dog and in his mind there was an easy solution to that