#then they do with John raising them

[quietwingsinthesky]

Extremely cursed au idea: John dies when Sam & Dean are still kids, and Azazel just happened to be checking in on them around this time and well. I guess now he’s got to raise them.

[angelsdean]

BABYBOY :( also the implication of "i have the days with sammy while dean is learning..." like, so dean has the nights? is what you're saying. baby second grader dean (age 7) has the nights with sammy while john goes out and hunts. john's gotta stay home with sam because his babysitter's off at school. dean refuses to leave for school until john swears he'll take good care of sammy. he's telling their father this, as if it's dean's job to make sure sam is taken care of in his absence. he is 7.

then this passage a year later:

eight years old and "willing to die" to keep sam safe because he's had it "drilled into [him] that sammy is his responsibility." as john literally says, he's eight years old. EIGHT!

[incorrect-hs-quotes]

DAVE: just found out pickles are cucumbers i cant fucking breathe

JOHN: this is how i felt when i figured out raisins.

DAVE: ...............what about raisins

[theoakleafpancake]

After the celebration had finally ended, Halt decided he’d had enough of formalities and appearances. A grand homecoming to Araluen was not what he’d wanted. Now that he had Will back, all that was left to do was to return to the little cabin in Redmont and sleep for a week straight. If it weren’t for the assembly the King called for, he’d be able to do just that.

Someone knocked on the door. He gave a final tug on the straps of his pack before heading over, heaving in a silent sigh. But when the door swung open, he was met with an unexpected face.

Well, not entirely unexpected. It was bound to happen sooner or later. He’d rather it would have been later, but alas, Fate seemed to be enjoying her time with him.

“Crowley.” He stepped aside, allowing the Ranger Commandant in the room. “I thought you’d have left by now.”

“Really?” The sandy-haired man turned to look at him. “Eleven months, and that’s the first thing you have to say.”

“Eleven and one week,” he said quietly. “And I seem to recall giving you a full report earlier. So no, that is not the first thing I have said to you.”

Crowley ran a hand through his hair. “And one week.” A breathy chuckled escaped the other man. “Do you think I haven’t been counting each day?”

He raised an eyebrow. “A Ranger Commandant has more important things to do than wait for the prodigal son to return.”

“I’m sorry.” The older Ranger reached a hand towards his arm and then faltered, those light eyes desperately seeking his. “If I could go back in time, I would change everything. I would have broken you out of prison. I would have covered it all up. No one would have ever known.”

“Having everyone know was a part of the plan.”

“But why, Halt?” His voice broke. “Why would you put us through that?”

Halt raised his eyes to the ceiling. After all this time, his friend still had the nerve to ask the same question. “I don’t give you as much credit as I should. You’re not stupid, Crowley. You know the answer.”

It was the boy. Will. He would have burned the world for his apprentice if necessity demanded it of him. He had given up his life for some cheeky, over-talkative child that had somehow become an integral part of his life. Losing Will had been like losing an arm. He could have said all this and more, but he wasn’t sure if the other Ranger would ever truly understand.

“Crowley.” He laid a land on his friend’s shoulder. “You have your loyalties and I have mine. Surely you didn’t think I’d change over the years?”

“No. I never would have expected that.” The older Ranger turned away. “You always were a stubborn one.”

“And I don’t intend on changing that. I became a Ranger to help you. Not to pledge my full allegiance to a King.”

“That’s exactly what being a Ranger is.” The silver Oakleaf felt heavy around his neck. Halt knew what the Oakleaf meant. Running away from Clonmel, he was given a second chance, and that chance had been Araluen and its Rangers. He liked Duncan a great deal more than he cared to admit—certainly the Araluan was a far better King than either him or Ferris. But against all odds, that’s just what Duncan was.

A King.

“I just wanted to make sure you were okay,” Crowley said quietly. “But it seems to me you’re doing fine in that sense.”

Halt let go of the man’s shoulder. “You thought too highly of me. That’s your mistake.”

“I think just enough of you.” The redhead sighed. “My only mistake was turning you away. I’m sorry, Halt.”

He met his friend’s eyes, and saw the pain inside them, pain he was responsible for. “I am, too.”

[alienoresimagines]

We need more Gale and catholic guilt, not in a religious sort of way but the something-is-wrong-with-me kind of way. Not only for the angst and to add on to his already suppressed emotions but also for those kind of thinking and spiraling after a night with John

[unordinaries]

presented without comment

(chapters 280 + 344)

[sammygender]

to me john winchester is like. worst man alive. just wants to do right by his family. cares about his sons more than anything in the world but puts them in life-threatening danger every single day. hubris and arrogance of a god and never believes they will actually die despite the fact that he also has the paranoia and terror and deep intense mistrust of the world of eight year old me. treats both his sons like his soldiers, his eldest son like his surrogate wife/best friend/coparent/counsellor, his youngest son like the troubled-drug-addict-bad-boyfriend problem child miles before he ever actually does anything problematic to john and even then just because he has hobbies and wants to go to college.

wants them to be happy and themselves and have good lives, but thinks he needs them to be mini-him and good at fighting and not much else, and that takes priority. 'wants' all sorts of good things for them but just keeps postponing those good things until he avenges their mother until in a second their childhood's gone by. feels deep immeasurable guilt for everything he's done and knows he's ruined his children's lives. damages them in a hundred different ways, one third that he realises at the time and decides to do anyway, another third that he's unaware of at the time and realises later, and the last third that he'll never realise and never take back.

loves them miles too much and still not enough for it to matter. teaches them both that they're the only things that matter in the world and that they don't matter at all. still fervently believes that everything he did was for the best and was needed and had to be done, and always will.

[weather-cluddy]

So a lot of people have been commenting how the shadows in the 4th anniversary's image looks like prison bars, and that's probably not unintentional but my first thought was actually a kujira-maku, which is a kind of curtain used in funerals.

Coupled with the fact that Japanese media generally shows corpses in their coffins laying atop a bed of flowers, and that white flowers in particular are associated with death and mourning... RIP.

[motelfetish]

all the times john’s left the boys alone. he did it because they needed to learn how to survive without him, how to take care of each other because one day he might leave for a hunt and not come back. he couldn’t let them rely on him too much. when sam was seven or so, dean would’ve been around eleven, john left them at a cabin in montana with a barely stocked kitchen for a week. snow piled up two feet that winter and he wasn’t sure if dean knew well enough how to start a fire. they could’ve died. john knew that. he could’ve come back to two small, lifeless bodies wrapped around each other for heat that wouldn’t stick. but he couldn’t coddle them. they needed to learn to fend for themselves. and sure enough, when he pulled up a week later, smoke was curling up out the chimney and his boys were scared and hungry but warm, rationed three cans of beans and melted snow in front of the fire for water when the pipes froze. 

[shinelikethunder]

when you're trying your best under terrible necessity, but your best kind of sucks

john winchester: sorry kids, but when your entire family may or may not be on a demonic hit list and you've got a revenge quest to get cracking on, the price of survival is constant combat-readiness and being forever alone. everyone sam & dean run into for the next season and a half: holy shit are you johnny winchester's boys? john winchester: it's a lonely life, knowing monsters exist. there's no one i can leave you with. there's no one you can turn to. there ARE no trusted adults within five hundred miles of here. like half a dozen other hunters: it's THE sam and dean! thought i'd never get to meet you two in the flesh, what with your daddy being a bridge-burning asshole who doesn't play nice with others... john winchester: if i'm harsh about expecting my orders to be followed, it's because i'm scared out of my mind for your safety. this isn't the life i wanted for you, but it's necessity: you gotta grow up fast and learn to kill or be killed. a goddamn greek chorus by this point: no offense to your old man but if anyone tried to invite my KID along on the reckless bullshit you boys get into, i'd whoop their ass. dean, a well-adjusted young adult whose daddy raised him right: wow, aren't you worried your teenager is gonna get killed because you chickened out of teaching them normal life skills, like going out and shaking their ass as werewolf bait?

[m1ssunderstanding]

Sorry for the extremely niche post everyone but I just reread this book and I can't help that Dickens wrote very cleverly disguised mclennon fanfiction a century before j/p met it's just the truth.

[myplasticadversary]

Also I was thinking about f/f Paul+Linda again and how Paul would be even more touched by Linda considering her a legitimate co-parent to Heather and not just her "cool aunt", and then when Linda gets sick Paul is especially grateful that the Eastmans accept her and probably feels guilty thinking about all the folks like them who don't have that and goes hard for marriage equality in the 2000s

[stanleyvampire14]

God…

John Emerson is a sopping wet confused cat I swear to god.

I love him

He’d look better if I could draw him in like an actual “cop guy” scene but noooo I no no wanna-

BUT GOD D A M N.

[gatogotica]

the pain and agony i feel thinking about the fact pruitt had to spend sarah’s entire life watching her from afar and never getting to actually be her father. she literally grew up right there on the island in front of him and he just watched…never did a thing about it…oh I’m hurt

[quietwingsinthesky]

I know. I know that Dean killing John was never actually in the cards. But watching s1 with that idea in the back of your head? Completely different experience. The way he insists on diverting from their dad’s trail as it grows colder. The way he bites Sam’s head off whenever Sam insists they need to go after him. Little lines about Dean & John, the life they’ve had alone without Sam there, that are totally innocent but feel so much more ominous with the idea that he killed his dad. Anyway.

[bumblingbabooshka]

Can you imagine if Tuvok got divorced? It’d be so funny, I just know that guy would completely give up on everything. He’d need like, several decades to recover. I think he might go become a Kolinahru for real this time.