#this is also about Sam Winchester's childhood and how I go absolutely feral thinking about his earlier arcs

[corancoranthemagicalman]

Okay so I thought of this all in the shower so it's a wee bit messy but like TL;DR do you think Dean was paralleled to John in his Widower Arc and if so, what does that say about how John treated Sam vs how Dean treated Jack?:

Canonically, Sam Winchester was most like John in the earlier seasons. More distinctly, Dean was not like John despite trying to be. Yeah, Dean drove Baby and he wore the jacket, but those are all the marks of someone trying to fit into a shadow and not being their own man. When Sam walked away from Stanford, he was his own man. And in his grief for Jessica, we see how he paralleled John with his hunt for revenge.

Interestingly, Dean raised Sammy in opposition to how John raised them. While I'm not here to enter the great John Winchester debate, I am here to say that according to John's canonical journal, Sam's first word was Dean and that means something. [At least, I'm pretty sure I read that in his journal. I don't even remember anymore. These are thoughts and nothing more.]

[Also, that being said, while I’m not here to debate John Winchester’s parernting, if you think there were no issues with how he raised his boys then this post is not for you. My John Winchester feelings are for another post, though because they are hella complicated.]

But anyways, obviously Dean made sure Sam had holidays and birthdays and dinners when John wasn't there. And we hardly get any flashback of John that wasn't centered around a hunt. So, textually Dean was Sam’s parent. His big brother who raised him is much more accurate, but this is important in reaffirming that Dean Winchester is fairly Mary-coded.

Dean's growth from defending his father against Sam to calling his dad out to his own inner demon was a big ol' chef's kiss. He literally calls how he sees his father's personality - "an obsessed bastard." [Can you tell I obsess over that line? It’s so good.]

Still despite this, despite the meta-narrative contrasting how Dean [Mary-coded] influenced Sam, when All Along The Watchtower happened, when Castiel was pierced by Lucifer's blade, some part of Dean went out the window.

He had parts of his father's personality. He can get obsessive. He does drink. Etc, etc, etc.... but here we see him reach his father's level of obsessive and drinking. This is Dean's Widower Arc.

Surprisingly, despite Dean being Mary-coded and early season Castiel being John-coded (I'm just saying.... perfect solider. All he knows. Obsessive to the point of Bad Decisions Baby~. They're not exactly alike by any means, but there was some similarities. But this might have been sharing similarities with Dean and these similarities within Dean were parts of his father that he was projecting onto himself. I digress---)

Despite all of that, in the Widower Arc, Castiel has become the girl on the ceiling. He is Mary-coded/Jess-coded. It's just instead of burning in fire on a ceiling his grace burned out from his body on a muddy floor. Which there's probably some symbolism there but so not the point of this post and I don’t know if I can mentally handle disecting that. Dean Winchester becomes his father.

I feel like they narratively did not draw enough attention to this. [Which ain’t that the same old song and dance? How much sustenance did this show have that they just... never used?] On one hand, Dean is truly excellent with kids. Truly. There's a lot of canon evidence proving this fact. And again, he literally raised Sam. However, whether due to his grief or Jack being Grown-Shaped or both, he never treats Jack like a child. Which is a direct parallel to how John treated his boys as soldiers. Except in this case, Dean doesn't see Jack as a soldier. He sees him as a weapon.

Do you see where I'm going with this.

Yellow Eyes/Lucifer kills Mary/Castiel because they want The Boy With The Demon Blood who shall be a weapon in the Apocalypse.

[Also, side step, if Lucifer is Yellow Eyes-coded for this story arc, then Mary taking him back into the Other World is THAT much more meaningful because she's taking down the demon who fridged her but anyways that's another digression---]

Obviously, it was Lucifer who killed Castiel and not Jack, but Dean blames Jack for Castiel's death. His mere existence made these things come after him, and Castiel defending his son is what got him killed.

Mary Winchester was killed because she tried to stop Yellow Eyes from getting what she promised him. She was killed defending her son.

We know John treated the boys differently. I know it was probably because Sam was a baby and Dean had a full four years on being dad's little soldier first, but---

And giving thought to the fact that Sam's Blood Addiction arc was working with the fact that he was monster coded---

Do you think, in John's grief, he blamed Sam for Mary's death and do you think this - whether intentionally or not - this was what Dean’s attitude toward Jack was paralleling?

Because that is canonical of Dean, internalizing grief into anger I mean. He feels such intense sorrow, but sorrow doesn't get work done. Anger does. So he gets angry and he stays angry and if he's angry at Jack, at least he's functioning.

I personally think it was A Choice™️ that John Winchester was not included in a lot of the arcs that Sam was going through that addressed him as The Boy With The Demon Blood. He was only really centered in arcs where Yellow Eyes was the forefront of his attention. And I also think it was A Choice™️ that John Winchester made a deal for Dean’s life. 

ACTUALLY I JUST LOOKED THAT UP TO MAKE SURE I WAS REMEMBERING THAT DEAL RIGHT AND--- AND JOHN LITERALLY TELLS DEAN TO KILL SAM IF HE TURNS EVIL. OH MY GOD. OH MY GOD JACK KLINE IS SO SAM-CODED. I CANNOT----

Also, also --- what the fuck. According to the wiki it was established that John went to Hell for over a century and didn’t take up the offer to slice and dice for his moment off of the rack, but Dean Winchester did, and what does that mean in how Dean was raised even if he’s trying to be like his dad, and----

[That is SO another post.]

I don't know where I was going with this, honestly. I think I was just trying to give voice to numerous parallels they unintentionally established but never followed through with. My point was definitely to drive home that Jack Kline is Sam Winchester in Dean’s John-coded Arc.

And Dean's Widower Arc is just so meta-textual to me. Castiel subtextually dies in childbirth and Dean is left raising his kid with his brother and that's just SO MUCH to unpack that we apparently did not have time for and it drives me WILD.

Dean's Widower Arc is where I started my glass diet tbh.