mallorytoyourmickey:

veneredirimmel:

the problem i see when talking about dean’s parentification and dean being a ‘father to sam’ is one that is fundamental in almost every post i have seen on the subject.

we should not only condemn john for abdicating his role as father and using a (traumatized) child as substitute for the kind of emotional and substantial support he was supposed to give to BOTH his sons, we should also stop right now judging the kind of effectiveness of dean in that role.

to be more specific, dean shouldn’t have been put in the position of being a substitute parent to sam because it was not his role and it hurt him deeply. it doesn’t matter if he did or not a good job because, see above, it simply was not  his job BECAUSE HE WAS A KID.

of course he couldn’t be a good parent given that he was a) a little boy and one who needed special attention after the trauma of losing his mom in such a violent way and b) thrown into a nomadic HIGHLY dangerous and violent life where his dad and he himself  since he was a little kid killed monsters that usually live in stories that scare kids. the fact that john addedd to all of this the huge burden of responsibility of taking care of his four years younger bro (and from john’s own words also taking care of john himself)  completes the picture of how horrible dean’s abuse at the hand of john was.

but arguing if dean did or did not a good job moves the attention from it and opens, in my opinion, the side to inane counter-arguments about how dean made mistakes . today’s example was dean feeding sam junk food, which btw happened when dean was 9, and a teenager dean having a girlfriend he wanted to spend time with and parking sam at some children place. despite a) the absurdity of such examples to judge first a kid (who probbaly in those fans’s eyes should have been born with a course in healthy food and how to prepare it so he could better feed his babybro) and later a teenager (who should not just live every day to take care of sam but also forego any kind of social interaction because he had to take care of his babybro) — and b) the erasal of john’s presence and responsibility in those two instances ie. WHERE WAS JOHN?, of course those were not stellar parenting choices. but the responsibility of them LIES with JOHN not with dean. 

the arguments themselves do not apply to dean because dean WAS NOT AND IS NOT SAM’S PARENT: JOHN WAS.  they only serve to derail the discussion from john’s shitty parenting and his effects on dean and to erase john from the equation where instead john bore and bears the sole responsibility of it.

the truth is – and isn’t sad that it must be repeated so many times? – dean was a kid thrust into a role that wasn’t his but that belonged to his father’s when he was himself a kid in need of attention and care. the abuse is innate in those choices that john made. it bears no importance if dean did or didn’t do a good job with that role. we only know for sure that it hurt him and that the tension toward satisfying john’s impossible expectations is still hurting him in his adult days.

 you cannot expect a kid to do an adult’s job like john required of him when he parentified dean so dean was doomed to fail from the start. he was set to fail not because he wasn’t competent or didn’t try his best or he wasn’t moved by affection for his bro, but simply because he was a kid. and a kid cannot be a good parent AND he cannot be a bad parent. 

I think this hits on the head something I have felt for a long time, and it’s has to do with the Spaghetti Os scene. 

Dean did have to go without for Sam’s benefit, in that moment. Dean was a kid, a kid that gave into a brother that he was tasked into taking care of, giving him the last of the cereal, however he’s still a kid that wanted the cereal, he didn’t want the Spaghetti Os, and he had a moment of being a kid by tossing it out.

In that scene Dean is being a parent, a parent that sacrifices for his kid, however in at the same time Dean is a kid and is frustrated over having to go without to make Sam happy. it’s not him going without food here it’s him going without the cereal. In that moment of frustration, Dean shows that he’s still a kid, a kid that made a bad decision for himself in throwing away the pasta, because a grown up would have eaten the pasta, but Dean’s still a kid and that scene does a great job of showing Dean’s frustration at his life and his frustration at having the role of caretaker for Sam. 

I think a lot about, this scene, when I think of Demon Dean’s words to Sam, while being cured. They were the type of thoughts that you have at 3 in the morning when you are lying awake in the dark, those moments when you give into your misery and really take stock in your life. The most intrusive of intrusive thoughts

That Spaghetti Os scene was most like one in a million moments when Dean had to walk the tightrope of being a good brother, a fairly decent parentally figure, if we are to take John at his word, and also Dean just being a 100% kid. that kindled Dean’s feeling about his life.