#spn 12.19

[scoobydoodean]

SPN 4.23 x SPNWIN 1.12 x SPN 12.19 x SPN 12.19 Production Draft

spn only version

[deancasforcutie]

the tactile way Dean remembers or longs for Cas' touch

[touchstiel]

EVERY TOUCH EVER ☞ 120/?

12.19 The Future

[lower-the-volume]

12.19  The Future

[nancylou444]

I would like to add one small thing in regards to this:

Dean doesn’t have time (or inclination) to sit down and make a mixed tape from scratch at this time in the show, especially when, you know, good luck finding a working tape recorder / cassette player / boom box that still works these days.

Forget about finding a working recorder/player (which I actually have), what about finding BLANK CASSETTE TAPES in 2017. 🤣🤣🤣

Why this Doesn’t Mean Destiel : Part 1 - Mixed Tape

I may make this a series. I may not. But I’m feeling annoyed by a certain side of fandom, so I’m going to take a look at moments (or things) that are claimed to totally make D and C cannon, and discuss why I disagree. If you like the ship, please just save yourself the annoyance and skip on past this post. If you read this anyway or are not a fan, and have anything to add, I welcome your thoughts.

THE TAPE:

First, and I can’t believe I have to say this, a mixed tape is not actually inherently romantic. Friends make mixes for each other all the time, or used to before you could just share playlists or whatever them kids are doing these days. For example, my friends have ripped me CDs because they had better internet, they gave me a mix for my birthday, we went on a road trip and they left me the mix, or just because. I have done many of these things for my friends in return. A missed-tape or CD is simply a way to share songs we like with people we care about, or even an acquaintance. Can it be romantic? Absolutely! Is it inherently so? No.

Why isn’t this particular tape romantic? Check the name: "Dean's Top 13 Zepp Traxx.” This looks, more than anything, like a tape Dean made for himself ("Dean's"). As in, "I really like these particular songs, so I’m going to put them on one tape, so I don’t have to keep changing tapes over on road trips." Also, note the "Zepp Traxx." This looks more to me like something a teenager would write because it looks "cool" than anything else. I mean, a Dean who is pushing 40 might write "Traxx" on a tape — maybe — but it doesn’t seem that likely. So, it’s more than likely this tape was made decades ago, for himself, thus not a romantically intended (or thought out) mixed-tape. There is nothing about the tape itself to indicate it was made for Cass or that it has any special meaning.

DEAN:

Can we be honest here for one minute, people? Can anyone — anyone who has actually watched the whole show rather than cherry picking certain people's scenes — actually picture Dean Winchester, sitting down with an old boom box, lovingly, tenderly loading tapes into one side and recording onto a blank tape in the other side, thinking, "Sigh! These songs are so special to me because they make me think of my crush, Cass!" Or "I’m going to make Cass a tape of the most romantic Zeppelin songs I can to show him I care!"? If you answered "Yes" to that … this is not the blog for you. Also, I doubt that you know who the canon Dean Winchester is, as opposed to the fanon man-shapedr 14-year-old girl version from Tumblr or AO3. Dean doesn’t have time (or inclination) to sit down and make a mixed tape from scratch at this time in the show, especially when, you know, good luck finding a working tape recorder / cassette player / boom box that still works these days. The MOL bunker was frozen in time just a touch before tape cassettes were invented, so I doubt they have one hanging around the place. So, he went and bought something he could make a tape for Cass with? Really? I’m thinking not.

The most likely scenario for Dean giving Castiel a mixed tape? They are in the impala, maybe Sam is there sitting shotgun, maybe he isn’t. Cass starts talking about how he found merit in music Sam liked, or just some random music, and Dean says, "Come on Cass! That music is crap! Here, listen to this. This is the good stuff!" Then he rummages in his box of tapes one-handed, while driving, and tosses one to Cass. "Keep that one. I have a others," Dean adds. Then Cass says, "I’ll treasure it always, Dean!" No I’m kidding. Cass says, "Okay, Dean." He may or may not intend to actually listen to it at some point. After he finds a tape deck, of course.

So, does the mixed tape mean nothing? No, it’s still a nice gesture to give something you made to someone you care about. Do I think Dean put a lot of soecific thought into it, just for Cass? No. I think it’s actually similar to Sam letting Cass hang out in his room (presumable on his bed) watching Netflix on his TV, doing something nice for a friend and sharing media.

CASTIEL:

Even if Dean had sat sobbing over his mix for hours while he painstakingly crafted it just for Cass, it still wouldn’t equal Destiel. Why? Because Cass clearly didn’t appreciate it since he simply used it as an excuse to enter Dean's room and steal from him. Even if it was intended as an act of love, it was used as a tool for deception and betrayal. Thus, this does not support Destiel, rather it makes a case against it from Cass' POV.

THE WRITER INTENTIONS

Obviously, I can’t speak to these personally, but my thoughts on their possible thought process behind the mixed tape. First, they needed Cass to return something to Dean so he can get into his room, and it has to be something that was given as a nice gesture to heighten the betrayal. A tape makes sense because it’s not something so huge that it would be automatically given a ton of significance, but it also isn’t totally insignificant either. Second, Dean has a lot of tapes and he loves music, it’s very possible for him to give one to Cass off screen without the audience getting sidetracked and wondering why (how is he going to play it BTW? Go sit alone in one of the cars he’s stolen?). Third, do I think the writers were also throwing destiellers a bone? Probably, but throwing fans a bone does not equal queerbaiting because nothing else in Dean and Cass' relationship points to romance (and Dean is not into guys or Supernatural Beings). Throwing fans a small bone also doesn’t meant it’s leading to a romantic endgame. They do it with Wincest all the time, after all.

Overall, to me the purpose of the mixtape was to show Cass throwing something Dean gave him back in his face, so he could go behind his back for supernatural purposes. Again. If someone wants to read the tape as a romantic gift from Dean (it isn’t), that actually only makes what Cass uses it for worse. Thus, the tape does not support Dean and Cass romance.

And because I have to, this is a mixed tape (CD) with clear intent.

[spnbeit-midrash]

maybe everything there is to say about the mixtape has been said but its so, so crazy that they just dropped that on us with ZERO preamble, there is no scene, no mention, of Dean giving the mixtape in the first place cause obviously that scene would be too [GUNSHOTS] but by showing the mixtape there retroactively MUST have been a scene of Dean giving Cas a mixtape!

WHICH COULD MEAN NOTHING

[sweetm0uringlamb]

S12E19??? HOLY FUCK?? I HAVE SO MANY FEELINGS. AKDJKSKSJSKSKKSKD

[scoobydoodean]

would love to hear more about the “chuck was the one who brainwashed cas and kelly actually” theory, thank you :)

Okay so I'm going to sound like I'm not addressing your question at all at first but just bear with me.

One of the primary reasons that the baby brainwashing incident fascinates me is that Cas's actions are a betrayal of his and Dean's bond on a foundational level. I'm not talking about The Colt or the mixtape (though they're related).

Dean and Cas's relationship as handler and charge was shed and a real, genuine bond bloomed in 4.22, after this exchange:

DEAN Destiny? Don't give me that "holy" crap. Destiny, God's plan... It's all a bunch of lies, you poor, stupid son of a bitch! It's just a way for your bosses to keep me and keep you in line! You know what's real? People, families -- that's real. And you're gonna watch them all burn? CASTIEL What is so worth saving? I see nothing but pain here. I see inside you. I see your guilt, your anger, confusion. In paradise, all is forgiven. You'll be at peace. Even with Sam. DEAN You can take your peace... and shove it up your lily-white ass. 'Cause I'll take the pain and the guilt. I'll even take Sam as is. It's a lot better than being some Stepford bitch in paradise. 

These are the words that convince Cas to rebel. These are the words that dissolve Cas's doubts in doubt, and convince him to follow his convictions instead of act on blind faith. Shortly after this conversation, Cas flies Dean to Chuck, who tells them what they're up to isn't supposed to happen. This becomes a theme of Dean and Cas's relationship.

Together, Dean and Cas do things that aren't supposed to happen—that aren't part of God's plan. They do something Chuck explicitly says isn't supposed to happen in 4.18. They do something that Chuck explicitly says isn't supposed to happen in 4.22. They do something that Chuck explicitly says isn't supposed to happen in 5.22.

Dean and Cas's relationship, at its very core, is built upon the rejection of two things: 1) Destiny and 2) Paradise—and by the end of "The Future", Cas explicitly (in the production draft) embraces destiny and paradise... and that screams Chuck.

This is what Cas says to Kelly right after the devil baby brainwashing at the very end of "The Future". The "Paradise" part doesn't make it to the final cut—just the "future" part... but the Paradise part is implied by the "future" part anyway.

What else happens in "The Future"? Kelly says the line.

It's not supposed to happen this way.

She says the line that Chuck said every time Dean and Cas defied the writing during the first apocalypse by doing something Chuck couldn't or didn't anticipate. Kelly says this after Sam and Dean catch up to Castiel—after Sam and Dean convince Cas to just talk through all of this with them and not jump to the nuclear option of murdering Kelly—to consider an alternative plan where Kelly and Jack's lives are both preserved because Jack is born a regular baby. The moment Cas begins to agree to talk, Kelly says "It's not supposed to happen this way."

Now let's talk about Kelly. Her behavior this entire episode is insane. She begins the episode despairing because giving birth to Jack will kill her. She then tries to kill herself, but Jack won't let her die—and this throws Kelly into a sort of religious fervor—convincing her that Jack is actually good and could revolutionize the world. Her belief in this is so powerful that when Sam and Dean arrive, she immediately rejects the plan they've come up with that will spare her and Jack's lives:

Sam: No, Kelly, if you go with Cass, you die. Your baby dies. Kelly: I go with you, you take away the thing that makes him special.

She sounds nuts. Like. Imagine saying you'd rather you and your baby DIE than have a "normal" baby. Your baby HAS to be a special baby or you'd rather be dead? Uh... ew—and to a point that screams supernatural brainwashing.

Of course—Kelly's actions aren't quite as irrational as they seem because right before Sam and Dean arrived, Kelly was shown something by "Jack". She got Cas to lay his palm on her belly, and "Jack" showed her a vision of the future. After she takes off with Cas in the impala, she says,

When you put your hand on my stomach, I heard him. He spoke to me. He told me that even if it seems scary, if I just went to the gate, if I just followed your plan, that you would make sure he was born.

So even as she's driving herself straight into Cas's plan to kill her and her baby, Kelly believes everything will be fine—because "Jack" showed her the future... and the thing is? She's... not wrong. "Jack" did show her the future. "Jack" showed her a tiny moment that actually does happen at the end of the episode—Cas standing between her and Dagon and saying "You stay away from her".

Why do I keep putting "Jack" in quotes here? Because Jack never displays the ability to see the future after his birth, and yet "Jack" did have this power from the womb... only? Yeah... I'm not so sure. I'm wondering if it was someone else—someone who showed Kelly what they had already written.

I'll also note in 13.01, that Jack doesn't seem to remember... any of this happening—at least not in the same way. In fact, he recalls very little leading up to his birth. The way he describes it, his sole knowledge of the world prior to his birth came from Kelly speaking to him while he was in the womb... but also... not? Because he says he was Kelly?

SAM: How do you speak English? JACK: My mother taught me. SAM: So you talked to her. JACK: I was her. JACK: My mother, she said Castiel, he would keep me safe. She said the world was a dangerous place. That's -- that's why I couldn't be a baby or a child. I... That's why I had to grow up fast. That's why I chose him to be my father. Where is he?

It's all pretty confusing, but something blinks at me here: Jack says Kelly told him Castiel would keep him safe and indicates that he chose Castiel as his father based on Kelly's assessment. However, Kelly told us Jack showed her the future which told her that Castiel would keep Jack safe back in 12.19. These are two contradictory stories. What if a third party sowed both?

Two other little bits:

First:

Kelly: Maybe – maybe everything that I've been through, everything that I still have to go through, is happening for a reason. Maybe it's part of some plan. Castiel: No, it isn't. I used to believe in a plan. I used to believe that I had some mission. But I have been through enough now to know that everyone is just winging it. 

Castiel does a 180 on this by the end of the episode and it screams Chuck Chuck Chuck Chuck.

Second:

If you go to the 12.19 production draft (graciously provided to the fandom through @/spnscripthunt) on page 45, you'll see something that never made it to screen—Cas's vision of paradise.

Only—these visions don't seem to come to fruition unlike Kelly's vision of Cas protecting her. The bits with Dean and Castiel's wings don't feel like the future anyway—they... just feel like what Cas wants most desperately at that time—to be a protector and provider who can handle everything on his own—who needs a "win". This is another theme of the episode. Cas stole The Colt in a misguided attempt to protect his family from having to be directly involved in the ruthless murder Cas had determined would be necessary. He didn't believe there was any other choice, and he wanted to spare Sam and Dean the pain of being involved in the dirty work.

Sam: Then – Then why didn't you call us? Cas, we could've helped you. Castiel: I know. I wanted to keep you out of this. I-I was trying to keep you safe. Dean: You're not our babysitter, Cas, okay? That is not your job. And when in our whole lives have we ever been safe?

This probably stings for Cas because he knows they aren't, and he wants them to be—he wants his family to be safe... all without having to discard his conscience by killing Kelly. He wants her to be safe too! The stuff he sees gives him what he wants--Sam and Dean and Kelly happy and safe—Dean thanking him—Cas once more a fully powered angel who doesn't need anybody's help.

But all of this stuff he sees? It's a lie. It's a lie because it never happens, but it's also a lie because destiny is always a lie. Paradise is always a lie. God's plan is just a way to keep them all in line... and Cas is trying to secure paradise for someone who said they'd take the pain and the guilt over someone else's vision of their paradise.

[deancasforcutie]

#the amount of things like #not to bring it back to the Dean cave or den or whatever er but Sam #didn’t even know that existed #and yet there were two chairs #it’s canon Dean and Cas also have movie nights #like #same thing with music like it’s canon at one point Dean gave that mixtape to Cas #how often do they just sit around and listen and deans explaining it #like god #and again Cas knew that gun was under deans pillow #sure he could use angle powers as generic as that is #or he’s just been in deans room enough times and was trusted to be in there #to know (via @wigglebox)

Cas knew Dean would keep the colt under his pillow. Sam didn't.

[deancasforcutie]

everyone knows the Pizza Man Montage but we don't talk enough about the Mii channel theme compilation of Concerned Boyfriend Dean in The Future. Berens-Glynn said He Was in Love Here

[touchstiel]

EVERY TOUCH EVER ☞ 122/?

12.19 The Future

[lower-the-volume]

12.19  The Future

[deancasforcutie]

#THAT'S EXACTLY THE POINT YES!!!! #the crowd the worms the clowns go wild!!! #it's about the penny drops #s12 truth #spn creatives dodging censors left and right #masterclass tbh #and i say creatives bc it wasnt just the writers! the reason the strategy works so well is bc there are a lot of contributions #from directors actors set design editors ETC #there was A VISION YA FEEL #and a whole lot of delightful serendipity #makes me crazyyy #i love this show!!!!! (via @curioussubjects)

the craziest thing about the mixtape is it sets up a precedent, we had no idea dean gave it to him because it didn't happen onscreen, we only knew about it because we saw castiel trying to return it.

so how many other gifts may dean have given castiel that he just kept?? whose gifting or returning wasn't crucial to the main plot and so we didn't get to see??

how many destiel scenes happened offscreen during all those years?? another example of this is them watching tombstone. so many little throwaway lines or moments here and there that basically confirm that for as much insane couple behavior we saw onscreen, there was a whole other level of offscreen insanity going on

[spnscripthunt-inactive]

We're doing our last fundraiser for RIP Medical Debt and our goal is to raise $5,000 so we can erase $500,000 in medical debt here in the USA.

Just one $10 raffle entry erases $1,000 in medical debt with no tax burden to the recipient.

If you want the John Oliver segment to explain how this works:

All the details, including direct donation links to RIP and the link to submit your receipt to enter the raffle:

Raffle closes on November 5, 2023 at 11:59pm (EST)

Update 11/02/2023 @ 6:14 PM (Eastern): "$7,179.50 of $5,000 goal"

We added a separate tier of X-Files scripts and added a question on the Google form so we can pull those entries out for a separate drawing:

2X05 Duane Barry (Blue)

2X25 Anasazi (White-Full)

4X05 The Field Where I Died (White; Blue-Pages only)

4X14 Leonard Betts (Salmon-Pgs; 2nd Blue-Pages only)

5ABX19 Folie a Deux (Blue-Full)

🚨FOUR MORE RAFFLE PRIZES ADDED🚨

Supernatural: the complete blu-ray box set, donated by HanmeiCui (Twitter)

12.19 "The Future" (pink draft) signed by Jensen Ackles, Jared Padalecki, and Misha Collins donated by Kreespa (YouTube)

Curse Box (7.5") made by @thegreencooler

There'll Be Peace When You Are Done essay collection donated by @fangasmspn and signed by J2M, Gil McKinney, and Meg Donnelly.

Necklace made by @thegreencooler "Hey, Lunatic" - Amethyst flakes like a shattered bunker wall with a steel Men of Letters pendant. Adjustable: 17.5 - 22 inches.

[castiellesbian]

Ben Edlund:

2.05 Simon Said

2.12 Nightshifter

2.18 Hollywood Babylon

3.03 Bad Day at Black Rock

3.09 Malleus Maleficarum

3.13 Ghostfacers

4.05 Monster Movie

4.08 Wishful Thinking

4.16 On the Head of a Pin

5.04 The End

5.10 Abandon All Hope…

5.14 My Bloody Valentine

5.20 The Devil You Know

6.03 The Third Man

6.09 Clap Your Hands If You Believe…

6.15 The French Mistake

6.20 The Man Who Would Be King

7.02 Hello, Cruel World

7.09 How to Win Friends and Influence Monsters

7.15 Repo Man

7.21 Reading Is Fundamental

8.05 Blood Brother

8.13 Everybody Hates Hitler

8.21 The Great Escapist

Robert Berens

9.06 Heaven Can't Wait

9.14 Captives

9.19 Alex Annie Alexis Ann

10.07 Girls, Girls, Girls

10.14 The Executioner's Song

10.19 The Werther Project

11.06 Our Little World

11.14 The Vessel

11.17 Red Meat (with Andrew Dabb)

11.22 We Happy Few

12.03 The Foundry

12.07 Rock Never Dies

12.14 The Raid

12.19 The Future (with Meredith Glynn)

12.22 Who We Are

13.03 Patience

13.09 The Bad Place

13.10 Wayward Sisters (with Andrew Dabb)

13.21 Beat the Devil

14.03 The Scar

14.09 The Spear

14.18 Absence

15.03 The Rupture

15.09 The Trap

15.12 Galaxy Brain

15.18 Despair

[soft-pine]

jack

hello. this is in part a reply to "not ghost anon" from a few days ago and in part a reply to someone on twitter and in part just something i have been meaning to say for a long time. but the nuance here matters a lot and i've been wary of attempting something so delicate. but i don't want to make claims that I can't articulate and back up so here we go.

i think the vast majority of issues around jack come from very different fundamental understandings of who and what he is. and i think this issue comes from inconsistent narrative in a way that i really don't usually complain about on spn which contributes to why i'm hesitant to talk about it. because i LIKE canon. i consider very very very little of the show ooc so it bums me out a little not to be able to do a fully consistent reading of jack's characterization. (the other issues with jack's arcs are people not watching the whole show, relying on fanon, and just wanting to villainize dean. but i'm not addressing those here.)

so what do i mean about who and what jack is? well, a lot of people read jack as just a kid in an adult's body - essentially a two/three year old child. and look, if that's your read of him, that's fine. and if that is the case, of course dean was wildly out of line in almost every interaction with him. of course dean's behavior was abusive. if you see jack that way, i'm really not trying to argue with you. and we can happily end all conversations here.

however, if we do keep talking, i would say i don't read him that way because i think there is enough data and messiness in canon to trouble that simple a reading of jack - and the moral implications that go along with it.

to me this boils down to two things to examine the implications of: 1. jack's own actions and, 2. the way all other characters treat him.

jack begins acting before he's born. in 12.19, he stops kelly from killing herself. at the time, cas tells her, "what your child did, that's a testament to his power, but it's not proof of some goodness. he needs you alive." it's never revealed if jack knew what he was doing in that moment or simply had enough power and life instinct to react. but he did act.

along those lines, one thing that always frustrates me is that kelly and cas' visions are never circled back to. what did they see in 12.19 that made them both so adamant that jack be born with his powers and who is responsible? the indication we get from the script is that the visions were specific (at least to cas) in a way that implies telepathic access to and an advanced understanding of who he is, who he cares about, and what he wants. dean describes seeing cas effected by the vision as cas being "sock-puppeted" and that it made it so dean "did not recognize the guy staring back at [him]" (12.20). (while i personally theorize that chuck is responsible for those), the show never gives us much more than the concerning implication that it's jack.

in 13.01, jack says, "my mother, she said castiel, he would keep me safe. she said the world was a dangerous place. that's - that's why i couldn't be a baby or a child. i… that's why i had to grow up fast. that's why i chose him to be my father." now there's a lot to unpack from this. off the top, we learn that pre-birth, jack was able to understand and act out things based on what his mother believed and/or communicated to him. he understood enough of her thoughts and feelings, for example, to choose cas as his father. he also understood enough of her concerns about the world, to chose to be born as the young adult he appears as. it's clear from kelly and cas' preparations for him in 12.23, that she was expecting a baby but jack choses to be born more grown up.

we have two other examples in supernatural of beings that grew up exceptionally fast: emma and amara. emma was born and grew up into a teenager in the span of a few days but when she encounters sam & dean, she has the maturity (for lack of a better word) of the age person she appears to be. she speaks and thinks and acts like a teenager, not a newborn baby. amara, on the other hand, took longer to grow up in the body she chose but though she was a being who existed before time, she took on the characteristics of the ages she appeared to be up to and including when she became a full adult. the common thread here though is despite the speed at which they aged, they both did fully grow up in that time.

that doesn't mean that is necessarily what happened to jack. but it does seem for the most part to be how the show, and all the people around him, and he himself acts.

whatever criticisms you might have about dean not treating jack like a kid, it's always been a bit of an annoyance of mine when other people's actions are ignored or minimized. for example, sam, mary, cas, and au bobby all encourage jack to go on hunts and to train (both with his powers and without them after lucifer takes his grace). sam is consistently more supportive of jack hunting than dean is. (not to harp on my notes document but the "Parenting Jack" and "Others Hunting" tabs both have relevant numbers about where pressure and approval is coming from in terms of Jack hunting and Dean, out of all Jack's dad's, does the least. I'm totally open to things I've missed so do let me know but...). mary and au bobby go farther than that and in fact let jack guide many of their missions and troop movements in apocalypse world (13.20). (personally that always sticks out to me as one of the most concerning issues because even if jack fully is the maturity of the age he appears, he should not be put in that position at all.) in 13.23, it's sam that prays to jack to come save them from apocalypse world michael. and it's cas who instructs jack to keep his deal with the empty secret from sam and dean (14.09).

jack himself doesn't act like a toddler and specifically rejects being babied. in 13.02, he picks up a beer and drinks it confidently. in 14.06 he asks for advice on having sex. he consistently wants to hunt and in apocalypse world, fight.

now i'm not saying you have to accept all of the above as okay. it's pretty common for kids to want to do things they aren't ready for. but everyone in his life - from cas to sam to mary to dean to au bobby treated jack as though he's a young adult, old enough to hunt and make his own choices. i am wary of people who pick and choose who to blame in that regard.

next i want to dig into something even more unfortunately controversial perhaps. jack is powerful and that power is dangerous. his birth killed kelly (it's unclear how much control he did or didn't have over that but his actions resulted in her dying not when she chose to kill them both but only after he was born with all his powers). he opened a rift to another dimension before he was born. in 13.01 and 02 he involuntarily throws many people across rooms.

he didn't mean to hurt any of them, of course, but his attitude about these events troubles me. in 13.04 he says to mia, "it’s just, i… i’ve hurt people. i didn’t mean to. it was an accident. and i know i should feel bad, and i say i feel bad, but most of the time, i mostly… i don’t feel anything."

the culmination of his early struggles with his powers is accidentally killing someone in 13.06. rather than staying in the care and comfort offered by cas, dean, and sam, he intentionally throws them down while he flies away where he promptly pressures both derek and kaia into dreamwalking for him in a way that is painful and risky to them both. both of these actions strike me as a concerning shift into understanding how to use his powers and then choosing to exert that power over other people. his intentions may be good in that he wants to try to save mary but the way he goes about it doesn't sit right with me. (i also feel the need to point out the person who has been consistently urging (and on at least one occasion pressuring (13.03) jack to learn to use his powers to open the rift is sam.)

additionally concerning to me is the way jack attacks and nearly kills nate, the clerk, in 13.23 when he believes nate killed maggie. (some people may also criticize dean for shooting jack here. and if they do, i hope they can understand 1. it didn't hurt jack, only stopped him from killing nate and 2. sam tases jack in 13.01)

this brings us back to dean's much-critiqued comment in 13.02.: "if i’m right… and it comes to killing you… i'll be the one to do it." do i think that's a shitty thing to say, yes. do i think jack found it upsetting and scary, yes. do i think there was a much better way to articulate deans concerns, yes. do i wish that dean had been kinder to jack in those early days in general, yes.

but dean just is right that jack is powerful and that it has always been dean's job to try to hold powerful beings to account for their actions.

not to get too in the weeds into dean's perspective here but i want to remind people that dean's very recent previous experience with a being similar to jack was amara who did control dean in ways reminiscent of how jack seemed to control cas and kelly (which resulted in both their deaths). to act like dean shouldn't have taken the circumstances around jack's birth and the things jack had already done and shown himself capable of doing into account strikes me as unfair and unrealistic.

i understand what i'm saying is kind of a process critique but it matters. it matters because people claim that dean threatens jack that he'll kill him multiple times in those early days and that just isn't true. it matters because there is a difference in saying you will kill someone out of anger or revenge and telling someone with power that if they start harming people with it, you will be the one to stop them. it matters because dean literally cannot kill jack. he had no way to do so as it's clearly demonstrated in 13.01 that angel blades don't work. i'm not saying it's an empty threat or wouldn't be scary and affecting to hear or that dean didn't say to sam that he wanted to find a way to be able to kill jack. but when they have this conversation, jack is more materially powerful than dean.

i really understand why people are upset with what dean said but if we're gonna talk about it, i want to talk about what actually happened.

(i bring up anger or revenge because of 14.20 which i'm not gonna go deep into because it has been litigated to death. but just a brief reminder that jack was a) soulless, b) changing the fabric of the world, and c) indiscriminately killing people at the angel's command. and dean chose to try to kill him not out of vengeance but because god told him jack would literally destroy the world. (and killing jack will kill dean too which i feel like we dont talk about a lot))

the moral implications of jack being soulless is another whole can of worms (and i'll do another post on it if needs must) but it is at least clear from both sam and dean's past actions that stopping someone who has lost their soul and sense of morality from harming people is sometimes worth risking their life for (specifically i'm thinking of 6.11 and 10.03).

in conclusion, i think jack is a young person. he is a new creature with his own set of rules and ways of being in the complex supernatural universe. and i think he deserves to be treated with care, safety, respect, and accountability - as do we all!! but treating him as though he really is just a human toddler in a human adult's body flattens too much of the narrative for me to accept that reading.

i hope this has made some sense and registers as fair. i don't bring up the above examples of other people's behavior to bash them but to show that if the standard we're holding dean to is not treating jack like a toddler, then everyone else, including cas, falls deeply short as well. and i'm sick of having conversations with people who demand i take dean's actions deeply seriously and no one else's.

i must admit that looking at all the information about who and what jack is makes me a little dizzy and of course i wish it were simpler. i wish he got to be just a little kid and could be treated as just a little kid. but i can't assent to claims that penalize dean for not existing in a reality which simply doesn't exist.

ultimately my issues with jack's mistreatment are focused on chuck and the narrative at large. i think it's tragic in a show which has already established that hunters don't get to be kids and that sam & dean were both forced to grow up too quickly, that jack experiences that so acutely. and it's tragic that the show concludes with him taking on all the burdens of godhood. i feel like that reaffirms something hopeless and dark about the universe.

if you've stuck around this long, thanks for reading! i really am open to feedback and critique but i really don't want to be yelled at as though i'm being glib when i find all of this deeply agonizing.