#always hated the ~you are valid!~ stuff because it was very shallow and didn't do anything beyond providing momentary comfort

[pentacentric]

I am so so not gonna rb that john post bc of how it frames John caring so much about Sam & not Dean & such shallow take on John overall in general but i wanted to tell you how immaculate and on points your tags were.

I don't know why it's a war (i know why & you can see which side of fandom is shaping it as if John was attending to Sam 24/7 taking him on freaking themeparks every weekend) it's frustrating & upsetting. Let's not forget that in his last living moments John he was telling Dean he gotta kill Sam. Like this guy would've killed Sam unlike Dean. But hey, Sam had such loving tender father figure who cherished him. Anyway sorry for the ramble. I rarely see someone actually acknowledging that there's NOT supposed to be a competition but minimizing Sam's abuse and suffering is very common here bc they gotta remove Sam from the story in one way or another. I even consider myself a big john lover just bc how flawed but layered and damaged he was but he wasnt a good father for Sam either. He did NOTHING for Sam. Hell it was even Dean who carried Sam out of the fire. It was Dean saving and cherishing Sam, not John. I mean, I don't think there's an argument that he loved them both but that doesn't change how be treated them BOTH

Thank you❤️ 100% in agreement with you. This fandom can be a little exhausting at times as we all know and I generally try to stay out of that kind of discourse, but sometimes stuff like it slips in my feed and I just get so frustrated and I can't help myself. It's always nice to know there's other people that understand that the whole battle thing is just pointless.

And trauma fighting aside, even, it's such a bad take on its own. Like, not only are you completely erasing Sam's whole story and character (which is pretty much a capital crime, really), you are actually doing such a disservice to Dean! It removes so much complexity and nuance from his character, and only adds to the whole boring Dean woobification syndrome where he's the only one that suffered and is alone in the world and no one understands him (except, maybe hmmm I wonder…). Like Dean didn't have Sam suffering right there by his side. Like it wasn't the two of them against the world (which John was a central pillar of). Like all of that isn't such an integral part of why they are so intrinsically intertwined, which is what makes Dean Dean and Sam Sam and drives the whole damn show! You can't say you love Dean and try to remove his actual bond with Sam or reduce it to some kind of fanonized parentified-child/golden-child guilt trap. Because that's not it at all. And if they think that, they don't know Dean it all.

And I agree with you about John. I don't hate him (and JDM made me love him, even, with the way he portrayed him), but I can also be hard on him sometimes because he does have a lot of faults and he is abusive and it's very recognizable. But it's in a very realistic way where he isn't truly a bad person. That's part of his complexity as a character and why he's interesting. Like, someone can be loving and intend to do well and have a lot of great attributes, and also a total fucking mess and abusive and a kind of shitty parent at the same time. John may have tried, but he did utterly fail them in as many ways as he overall kept them safe and cared for them. It's fascinating because in those situations children tend to be pulled between loving that parent and wanting their approval and affectio , and also being resentful and hurt and angry, and both sets of feelings are totally valid. I think the show captures that really well with the way the boys react and develop as characters themselves. Villainizing John is as reductive as erasing Sam's canon history.