#anti jack kline

[eisforeidolon]

To treat Jack like a helpless woobie take Jack seriously as a character, you have to ~*consider*~ the harm Dean did to him! Dean was forced into looking after Jack in a parental way despite his feelings about it would be a terrible parent, just look at how he treated Jack!

I'm not saying Dean doesn't have issues, because ... oh yeah. However? Come the actual fuck on with this harmless abused baby woobie Jack bullshit.

Starting from the bottom, oh noes, Dean was "a terrible parent" to the creature he thought he was going to have to be the one to kill. Especially because Sam was too caught up in his own issues of desperately needing to believe Jack could be good despite Lucifer (so he could believe he was good despite Azazel), and fixated on an opportunity to use his powers to get Mary back. Neither of which are exactly parent of the year material either, sorry. No shit! It was only as they leaned harder and harder into the absurdly fluffly two men and a nougat baby premise (where they even went so far as to give him magical consumption ffs) that it even makes sense to describe Dean's role towards Jack as "parental", because initially he was watching the dangerous monster Sam brought home in the hopes he'd somehow manage to protect both of them and everyone else from an unpredictable, invulnerable supernatural creature more powerful than Lucifer. Whether or not Dean's approach was a good way to treat a potentially explosive nephilim bomb is a whole other conversation, because asserting Dean would be a terrible parent because of that? Okay, sure, don't ask him to act like a parent to a supernatural threat he has no idea how to neutralize that could easily destroy the universe, that's clearly a bad idea, yes. 🙄

Again, when Jack was introduced, the Winchesters were literally concerned he was an unkillable monster and might destroy the universe - possibly on purpose, possibly on accident. Not just because he was Lucifer's son, not just because he was a nephilim, but because he literally almost did when tricked by fried chicken suit. When I consider Jack as a character and try to take him seriously, that includes remembering he's an unreasonably powerful supernatural creature who has issues controlling both his powers and his emotions, that starts out ignorant as a post and gullible as shit. Frankly, IMO, that doesn't improve much as the show goes on. The narrative itself swung wildly from treating Jack like a literal baby to a quasi-adult person to a cosmically powerful supernatural threat. On the whim of the script-of-the-week with little to no consistency. Then, after literally joking how absurd it would be to make an idiot woobie baby creature that didn't know shit Chuck's replacement, they went ahead and made him the new God because ... Dabbernatural, woo!

So yeah, I guess it's not like I actually can take Dabb's pet teenage stu seriously anyway. Let alone get palpitations over Dean not immediately treating poor wittle Jackie-poo like his child but instead the dangerous supernatural creature he was actually set up as when Sam wanted to adopt him for his own purposes.

[endversewinchester]

how many of the hellers even care about Cas (a fully restored angel by Jack) leaving Dean to die on that rebar? Do we get any accountability on that end, or do we need to pretend it didn't happen, just like we had to pretend Dabb wasn't a clear Dean anti from day one?

[trekkiehood]

[aromanticrowley]

honestly half of my hate for jack probably stems from the bad casting choice of making a thirty year old play him. it’s weird man. i guess you dont want to expose a child to a horror show... but honestly in that case scrap the whole plot. Get rid of it. it was dogshit.

but if you have to keep the child jack plot, maybe get a teen or something. I cant look at jack, played by someone older than me, and see a fucking baby dude. i just cannot.

[laurelwinchester]

My only complaint was that Jack was in it but then he was creepy and an ass and I felt like they finally understood his character

[bibliophileiz]

!

I'm feeling bad about my salty addition yesterday to the post about spn's terrible pregnantKelly/Jack plotline, so let me explain my feelings toward jack as a character with more context and nuance.

first of all i think Alexander Calvert's performance is great. here's a relatively young actor taking a character who as introduced is basically a talking baby in an adult man's body. Many other actors of his age and experience would have taken that in such a cringeworthy direction the character would been dead by the mid-season premiere. Jack as played by Calvert outlasts Castiel.

(as a side note to that, I just want to give AlCal a shoutout for his portrayal of Belphagor. I thought the season 15 premiere was especially weak with even Jared, Jensen and Misha seeming to lack their usual energy. Alex was the only one having any fun, and honestly one of the few things i remember liking about season 15.)

I also think Jack as a character had a lot of potential, despite his extremely stupid origins (and they were SO stupid. i mean. the pRESIDENT?) and not all that potential went unfufilled. The best example of this is his dynamic with Sam and their season 13 arc. They start out with Sam being the only one who believes Jack is good despite his powers, despite his inability to control them. He sees some of Kripke-era Sam (also known as the best Sam) in Jack and tries to lead him out of his shell and into confidence with his powers but also confidence in himself, all with a dash of "you're not evil kid, so don't act like it"

Sam's dynamic with lucifer is relevant here as well because it's season 13 that really leans into Sam's trauma around that. So when he runs into the house right after Jack is born and hears the son of lucifer call him "Father" it's pretty spine-chilling. But it comes full circle at the end of the season when, as lucifer attempts to abduct and kill Jack, Sam jumps in the middle of them and defends Jack from his biological-but-not-real father, prompting lucifer to say "Daddy Sammy to the rescue." I hope you're seeing the themes here.

(i know all anyone remembers about that episode is the truly horrendous direction of the michael-lucifer fight scene, and it's so frustrating because the writing and themes are actually really good. robert singer, why must you and eugenie fuck up literally everything?)

Jack's relationship with other characters can be well-written at times too. Some of the writers tried to give him good consistent dynamics with people like Mary and Bobby and tried to write him learning hunting and his powers as a basic coming of age, sometimes heroe's journey story. robert berens, who despite being a little overrated as a writer was def the best of the pre-dabb-era writers in the final seasons, seemed to be the only one writing jack's powers in a consistent and thematically conscious way. (Without going into too many details, if you pay attention to berens' episodes you can see a lot of consistency in how jack's powers and the visions they grant other characters affect those characters' actions. there's a conscious effort to make them relevant to the show's faith and free will themes.)

But overall I find Jack frustrating. Because no matter how hard writers like Steve Yockey and Robert Berens tried to write Jack's character and relationships with other characters like Mary and Sam in a consistent, interesting, and thematically relevant way, at the end of the day, the showrunners seemed most interested in using Jack as Whatever The Plot Needed Him To Be To Make Dean (and sometimes Cas) Make A Sad Face. Even if that means he's out of character, even if it means the logic of an episode makes no sense, even if it means a multi-episode arc has events that don't logically follow one another.

Take for example the end of season 14 when Jack loses his soul. (And in fairness, I'll point out that soulless Sam was written a little inconsistently as well.) The first episode after that when they're trying to figure out how that affects Jack is actually done pretty well (which checks out bc i think it's written by Steve Yockey). Jack figures out he doesn't really have a morality instinct anymore and decides that in order to be Good, he should try to emulate Sam, Dean, and Cas/make people happy. The first sign that this could go horribly wrong is that he assumes his new snake pet is sad because its old owner died so he decides to make it "happy" by reuniting them ... in heaven ... by killing his pet. Leaving out for a second why he thinks that's a thing Sam and Dean would ever do, it at least makes a kind of twisted logic that is pretty in keeping with early seasons jack who was conciously trying to follow very basic rules of right and wrong.

My memory of late season 14/15 is hazy because I hate them so much, but from what I do remember the next big Something's Wrong With Jack plot is in the episode where he's hanging out with the teenagers and he starts using his powers in front of them, making an angel blade twist and spin in midair and accidentally stabbing one of the other kids when she's scared and tries to run away. Also known as The Episode That Made Me Hate Jack.

This episode has soulless Jack being the equivalent of a kid who backs his friends into a corner and points his dad's gun at them, taunting "It's not loaded!" But a bigger problem from a story telling standpoint is it doesn't logically follow the snake thing. Jack killed the snake because he was trying to be morally good without understanding morals. But the conflict in this episode is framed as Jack wanting to fit in with and impress his new friends. One, it has nothing to do with morality. Two, it suggests that despite being soulless Jack stills cares about things.

Then there's Mary. We've got to have a way to make Dean so distraught and put him in such a dark place that he's willing to consider killing jack at the end of the season, so the obvious way to do that is to have Jack kill Mary. (Or Sam or Cas, but as previously stated this show thrives on the tears of angsty white men, so they were always safe.) But again, it doesn't follow logically any of the Bad Things Jack has done since becoming soulless. Far from either a misguided attempt at morality or a teenager being stupid trying to impress his friends, Jack kills Mary accidentally when he loses control of his powers during a little kid meltdown after Mary decides to tell Sam and Dean that Jack's powers are becoming violent and out of control.

When he can't bring Mary back, he goes to Duma for ... bucklemming logic reasons. And she tells him Sam and Dean will be happy if he does Good Things like make new angels for heaven and torture nonbelievers. So that's at least an attempt to go back to the snake logic, but it still doesn't make any sense because in two whole seasons of spending time with them and their loved ones, Jack has never seen Sam, Dean, or Cas do or say anything to suggest that they are ok with 1) more angels and 2) people being killed or tortured for nonbelief in God or the supernatural. (also chilling is the fact that the minister who jack curses with boils or whatever they were actually DOES believe in God and angels, he's just skeptical of jack, making this an ego thing for jack.)

The season finale has Jack doing the most interesting thing he does while soulless which is make it so that no one in the world can lie. I ... feel like this was the kind of thing they should have done more of with Jack.

Anyway, there's a big argument between our three mains over whether to kill Jack, with Dean being on the Kill Jack side and Cas being on the Don't Kill Jack side and Sam being Resolutely Silent on the matter either because he's trying to take his time coming up with a solution because he's learned his lesson from half his people getting killed by Michael earlier this season, or because Dabb forgot he was there, it's honestly a toss up. When Cas catches up with Jack, Jack tells him, "I know you love me, I just don't care." Uh ... if being soulless means Jack doesn't care that Castiel, the person he considers his father and who he instictively awoke in the Empty when he was two weeks old, loves him, then why the fuck would he care what three random ass teenagers thought of him???? Why would he care that Mary was about to tell Sam, Dean and Cas she thought something was wrong with him???

But character consistency and logical plotlines are not the point. The point is to make Jack screw up so many times that it drives Dean to the point of almost killing him, but couching it all under the "excuse" of Jack being soulless so that ultimately, the problem is actually Dean and his Anger Issues.

And this is why I have problems with Jack.

[soullessjack]

your idea of domestic tfw2.0 is a gated community gay couple with an estranged/absent uncle. my idea of domestic tfw2.0 is sam banning violent video games in the bunker because jack keeps trying to do MK fatalities on monsters when they go hunting and dean won’t stop doing the narrator voice to encourage it. We are not the same

[roachingurcoach]

okay I don't really know how to frame this. but like. funniest way to confirm Dean is Ben's dad is

20 year-old Ben takes a genetics test for fun or whatever, and the results he gets back are just batshit insane. it's like. oh hey. my biological father is a known serial killer who's still on the FBI's most wanted list and has been found or thought dead multiple times. and my uncle. and my grandfather. and my grandmother. and my--

[babyboywinchester]

I also find it weird that hellers want to paint the whole Jack story arc as Dean and Cas being gay dads when… Dean wanted absolutely nothing to do with him, was willing to shoot the kid for a bit, and if anything Sam was his mother and father… like the complete erasure of Sam’s parenting just because you want Destiel to be real so bad is so laughably bad and ridiculous I don’t even know how else to describe it besides… dogshit terrible. Please go to the Hallmark channel I think that’s what you guys are looking for.

[passiveagressivepoet]

dean died because john winchester didn’t get him his tetanus shots

[ghostie-sam]

Finished this a bit ago but forgot to post it :b I might add a bee or something to the little spiny bit

Also yes I did carve the back (it was horrible with my carpal tunnel I wanted death)

[endversewinchester]

Because I feel I have not made myself clear even three years in but Dean’s only mistake in supernatural was not finishing jack off when he had the chance 🤷‍♀️

[aromanticrowley]

sucks to look up “anti jack kline” and get a bunch of anti dean content. dean should have punted that “child” harder. fuck jack kline. he murdered mary. little monster. and worse than that, a gary stu.

jack kline wasnt even a child. he sprang fully formed from the womb of the mother (who he killed like a parasite done with its host) like a fucked up athena and got woobified to oblivion. stop woobifying the 30 year old white boy

[humnooshop]

A repeating pattern of Supernatural symbols :)

Tote bag and other products available on my Redbubble

[vaicomcas]

The Frame Job

Another bitter Cas fan moment out of S13x6 Tombstone.

I talked in the other note about how Castiel actually looked sad throughout the episode. He was tentative, unsure what his place was. He felt guilty for not being there for Jack.

Then there was that (rare) scene of Castiel one on one with Jack in the hotel room.

Castiel: Jack, your mother, she believed that you would do amazing things. She said that you would change the world for the better. And now, looking at you, talking to you, I know that she was right, that we were right. Kelly would be so proud of you. (Then Jack was distracted by laptop and rushed to tell Dean about hunting clue)

But this was NOT intended to show them bonding. Just the opposite. It was to set up Jack's devastation later to contrast his deadly accidental killing with the "expectation" that was given to him, such that he became convinced that he was a monster. Before running off, Jack said the line "I can't make the world better" to make sure the connection is made.

It was received as intended. Back in the days when I still read fandom posts, I saw a lot of criticism of Castiel for giving Jack pressure to do good, even from hard-core bitter Castiel fans.

But like, first of all, it was a frame job. There are a lot more normal and logical moments they could have chosen to write for Castiel's first 1:1 time with Jack: to ask Jack about his experience so far or to teach Jack about angel powers (or for Jack to ask questions about Nephilim species or about Castiel himself or ask about his mother- the list goes on). But that was never what the show wanted or allowed for Castiel and Jack.

But let's just ignore writer's intent for the moment. Even if this WAS the first thing Cas said to Jack when given time together, what's so bad about that? He just came back from being dead. All he had to go on was what he and Kelly believed about Jack -- that Jack was a force for good, as opposed to the expectation from most that he would be evil. Castiel's first priority was trying to reinforce that. Perhaps, even without asking, he intuited that the Winchesters would not do such a good job convincing Jack of it.

And, as should go without saying, it was the Winchesters (mostly Dean) who are to blame for Jack's devastation at the end of the episode. Since the beginning of the season, they pounded into Jack the impression that he was already an irredeemable monster at worst (Dean), or was human enough that he could be taught to suppress his evil side at best (Sam).

But of course, after Jack saved their lives a couple times, and they all had therapy, Dean changed his tune slightly and admitted Jack wasn't so bad, so the Winchesters and Jack got to be portrayed as a happy family, only to have Jack run away traumatized as soon as Castiel returned.

Castiel's return was what should have saved Jack from his traumatization. Because unlike the Winchesters, Castiel believed him to be INHERENTLY good.

But no, Castiel just came back from the dead for 15 minutes, had 5 seconds alone with Jack, and could immediately be used as the fall-guy for Jack's loss of self-worth.

[monsterfuckermilligan]

it’s very important to me how my therapist (attachment trauma specialist) who works with a lot of adoptees and ffy is also obsessed with supernatural. and agrees that jack is not adopted, and it’s important to his storyline that he isn’t. it’s so frustrating trying to explain to people that adoption isn’t about ‘what’s in their hearts’ or some other bullshit, because adoption isn’t about love, it’s a legal process that tfw don’t partake in. they never try to to erase his lineage or require it for there to be love. jack keeps his last name! jack has a picture of kelly at his bedside! jack gets the freedom to meet his first family, including lucifer! he gets to make his decisions about that even after he argues with cas about it! he is not adopted y’all just don’t know how else to describe their relationship because of the romanticization of adoption in ‘found family’ media and the fact that most non-adopted people have no idea what adoption actually is.