Honestly I think that a lot of the reason why people view dean as abusive towards jack is because they genuinely think of him as a baby/toddler and not someone with the cognitive abilities of an older teenager/young adult who just happens to not really know much about the world. Obviously there's more to it because people ignore that cas wanted to put jack in the cage and sam wanted to use his power, but I stumbled across a post the other day about how they (the writers and the characters) should've given jack a capri-sun instead of a beer because he's a "literal toddler"... which is just completely incorrect and considering he has the body and brain development of someone who's older, there's no reason to not give him a beer. (also is anyone really a dad unless they give their 3 yr old a beer /j)
Context
It's funny because the whole point of the beer scene is to establish that Jack is not a child and that treating him like one would be ridiculous.
[DEAN grabs and opens a bottle of beer. JACK imitates him.]
DEAN
Wait, wait, wait, wait. How old do you think you are?
JACK
3 days, 17 hours, and 42 minutes.
(From 13.02)
When Jack proves that he has such an advanced understanding of communication and time and such an unusual awareness of exactly how much time has passed, Dean immediately realizes that treating him as if he's a baby makes absolutely no sense because he clearly isn't one. Treating him like a child would be infantilizing, and we see Jack rebel against the notion that he's a baby a few times.
There's some push I think to separate Jack's intellectual abilities from his emotional coping abilities, but even these I think are more or less on track with other young adolescents around the age he presents himself to be when controlling for traumatic experiences. Jack's initial emotional regulation abilities don't read like those of a toddler, but of a young adult who's confused and upset and has been through a lot. Without powers in the mix that he doesn't know how to control, his emotional regulation abilities seem fairly standard for boys his age (at least to me). I don't think for example, that the anger he experiences and the reasons he experiences that anger can be equated with toddler-like tantrums, and any other person whose been around a toddler and sees what kind of things make them furious knows what I mean.
Granted, there are things Jack is naive about that are probably connected to him being "born yesterday". We see this early on when Asmodeus tries to manipulate Jack into opening a hell gate. At the same time, this interaction also highlights Jack's innate sense of right and wrong as a counterbalance. I personally find it frustrating when people try to take away Jack's understanding of right and wrong (rooted in his love for others) and cast him as a baby to the extent that he isn't even capable of understanding the golden rule, when Jack shows over and over how seriously he takes the personhood of other people and the weight of their lives. This is what allows him to see through Asmodeus's trickery in a very confusing situation, simply realizing, "you're hurting my friends". Jack using his care for others as a foundation to navigate Asmoedus's trickery also serves as excellent contrast to soulless Jack in 14.19. Soulless Jack was not able to grasp that Dumah was manipulating him because he was missing this crucial piece of himself—his love for other people including strangers. Because he was lacking that part of himself at that time, he was unable to grasp that filling someone's body with worms for not wanting to be turned into an angel is horrible and cruel and couldn't be a good thing. His naivety played a role in what happened, but it was the crucial missing soul that actually allowed this situation to transpire. I think a lot of people just straight up think normal Jack also would have been manipulated into killing people for Dumah in this circumstance and I really just don't think that's true at all.
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ik it’s been forever in internet time but i’m gonna die mad abt the way the live action atla show got a good amount of backlash and criticism from the fanbase meanwhile the pjo show was THAT horrendous and the fanbase treats critics like they’re out to kill their mother. as someone in both fandoms am i crazy bc i keep fucking seeing people say yes 💀 like!! these shows, whose original series were both about a 12 year old boy born with godlike powers going on quests with his friends to save the world, released in the 2000s, and had a shitty movie adaptation, now reboots released within weeks of each other, both committed nearly identical crimes of character assassination, exposition dumping, dumbing down their source material, sanitizing “problematic” elements (that the characters originally had to overcome), and wasting actor potential (also at least live action atla had good action scenes CANNOT say the same for the pjo show)—and i’m seeing like mainstream(ish) social media coverage of new atla show critique by people with millions of followers all across different sites, but nothing even close to that for the pjo show?? if that coverage exists for the pjo show somebody fucken send it to me bc like!! the pjo series is Not an unpopular series, i get it’s a book series and not a tv series so i didn’t expect the popularity to be exactly the same, but Damn! i feel like i need an hours long video essay comparing the two audience reactions to these series’ first season releases bc they were WIDLY different
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some of my 'deepest' (to put it that way) arts in general but mainly lisa i havent had the will to post them here yet, i think there is such a big number of feelings in them that it's hard to allow them to be subjected to likes and reblogs and what people make of them, but i also want people to see whats in my brain enough to make me draw these things, i also want them to be treasured somewhere other than my folder
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