#thank youuuuu again for the ask! sorry for the absolute essay but i appreciate being able to share my thoughts

[hellhoundlair]

Happy DFF! Would the dynamic between Sam and Dean Jr be similar to the one between John and Dean or is it something entirely different?

hiiii happy friday! thank you for the ask!

this is a really good question. i think they both have the same heart to it (of course with dean conflating dean with mary and sam conflating dean jr with dean) i think they would be set apart slightly because of course the backdrop and circumstances of their relationships are different but at their core they follow the same rhythm. also im going to mostly go into this in a non-sexual abuse way because i want to go into the more broad dynamics these relationships have and that goes so much further than sexual aspects. so im sorry for the lack of dadfucking. instead u get psychoanalysis. fun.

i feel like john and deans relationship has a lot to do with how john parentified dean, relied on him emotionally, relied on him as a hunter, to take care of their his kid, to mediate, to be his right hand man, all that shit. dean filled so many different roles for john and dean did it all because dean was isolated and john was all he knew. i dont think john intended to fuck dean up like that but he sure made all the decisions that lead to the environment that dean grew up in.

things with sam and dean jr are much different. i feel like the two schools of dad sam thought are either sam very consciously telling himself "im not going to be like my father" while making decisions involving his son OR sam unintentionally spiraling into john like behavior. i personally -- despite loving angst and bad endings or whatever -- am a fan of the first one mostly for the sake of mixing up dynamics (but also sam can still slip into classic john treating his son like his dean partner every now and then before realizing to his horror what hes doing. as a treat.)

which would really set sam and deanjrs relationship apart from dean and johns. there is no isolation to the level of sam and deans upbringing, or treating dean jr like an equal when he should be treating him like his 13 year old son. but i do think sam falls into obsession with dean jr.

like dean jr is a normal kid with a normal life but when his friends ask if he can have come over for a sleepover on friday dean jrs like sorry i cant my dad doesnt like me being out of his sight for more than 12 hours at a time otherwise he has a breakdown and also he and i are going on our monthly trips where we drive around aimlessly while he talks about his glory days and about my uncle dean and how perfect and wonderful and great he was and he'll eventually slip into talking to me like im not his son and it's a little weird but i like it because he treats me like an adult and it feels good to have that sort of respect even if its not because he respects me its just because he projects his brother onto me because he physically cannot grieve properly from a loss that big though it does kinda suck because now i feel like i have to live up to the infallible legend of this man ive never met and i feel like i have to do everything right because i dont want to disappoint him but id do anything to make him love me the way he loved his brother.

so sam - even in all his attempts to give his son a normal life - has basically achieved a "normal life" version of john and deans dynamic. i will say i do think sam is a good parent outside of this. like he tries, but its just not going to be possible for him to be normal and just move on after losing dean. its always going to haunt him and his relationships no matter what.

u probably asked this in regards to sexual abuse bc of the tags i left on a post abt that. im fine with talking abt that. i dont usually tend to because i dont want to be indelicate on the topic because. its fucked up! but this is ur warning if ur sensitive to those topics bc im going to touch on it.

again, i think the core of john and deans abuse - as well as sam and dean jrs abuse - is the conflation of their child with their lover. and this can also manifest sexually too. i wouldnt think sam and dean jr would have anything frequent going on. not like johndeans relationship which i tend to imagine as being more similar to them being lovers, almost like fucked up husband and wife type shit where they are lovey dovey behind closed doors and dean embraces being johns wife. i think with sam and dean jr it would be something more. casual? not the right word, but i mean stuff like casual nudity, or physical contact that seems atypical for a father and son that r mostly are explained away by a lack of physical boundaries set between them, until you remember that sams brother lover and how sam gets into these mindsets where he treats dean jr more like a brother than a son and thats what causes alarm bells to go off.

i dont know if dean jr would know that his father was in love with and fucking the brother that dean jr lives in the shadow of. i dont think he'd find out about that until he was older. but i think things would all start to line up and make all too much horrifying sense after he realised it.