Very Brief Guide To [tumblr], For Reddit Refugees

jack

I made a uquiz :>

it’s so easy to read gadreel’s behavior in early season 9 as inherently suspicious or nefarious especially when watching for the first time especially ESPECIALLY when it turns out he was lying about his identity but it really does make me go off the wall insane that gadreel escaped from heaven’s torture prison where they’d kept him since the GARDEN and his first action on earth is to go find the winchesters and seek sanctuary with them. i know he’s not, like, selflessly attempting to save sam out of the kindness of his heart, but he is trying to ingratiate himself with the only two humans he knows who might be willing to take in an angel with a bad reputation who wants to find redemption on account of, you know, that’s exactly what they did to castiel. i don’t think he showed up to that hospital with the intent to trick or deceive. dean prayed and said somebody come help my brother and gadreel really truly tried. and when it does come time to offer to trick sam, gadreel fully defers to dean’s judgement. gadreel says god may never forgive me but if dean winchester likes me then maybe that can be good enough

listen i get your frustration about how people treat jack, i hate when people reducd him down to just a destiel baby too. but as an autistic person myself, i really disagree with you calling people that like baby jack ableist. he's canonically 4 years old and had to have his childhood basically stripped away from him due to how dangerous it was. i don't think people enjoying the thought of him getting to have that chance at a happy childhood is as cruel and evil as you seem to think.

it’s actually a little more complicated than i sometimes make it out to be, but let me square some misconceptions away first before I get to that.

1) Jack’s childhood was never stolen or stripped from him; he specifically chose to be a teenager/young adult because of Kelly’s warnings, and he is narratively treated like one from there on out.

2) there’s never been any canon instance of him wishing he was a child or had a normal childhood—in fact, whenever people do regard or treat him as one, it’s only ever been shown to upset him. there’s also the fact that Jack literally says out loud that he isn’t a child, so unfortunately “giving Jack a chance at something he never wanted” isn’t a good enough justification for me.

The things he has expressed, however, are—

wanting to be a “normal” human teenager and experience human teenager things, like falling in love and getting a parking ticket (also read: not wanting to be a messiah figure that’s always being chased and manipulated)

wanting to be strong and capable enough to protect his loved ones, hating when he isn’t strong or capable enough, and hating when others perceive him as weak, defenseless and less capable (also read: he hates being infantilized)

frustration that his limited experience and naïveté give him less self control over his powers, making him more dangerous and more vulnerable for manipulation

wanting autonomy over himself; his identity, his chosen family, his decisions, his powers, etc. pretty much goes hand in hand with wanting to be more capable. Jack’s character is literally built around him struggling to have autonomy, and as cold as it sounds, children just don’t have that. so, to actively and repeatedly take away something he’s had to fight for just sits so wrongly with me.

3) While his canon chronological age is two, Jack is also canonically developed to being either 18 or in his early twenties (ie the “I’m 22” line). He’s also still treated like a young adult and continuously placed in adult situations: being tortured, dying, expressing both romantic and sexual interest in Harper (and her reciprocating), being called hot by the girl in Gimme Shelter. In various scripts he’s referred to as a teenager, a young man, an adolescent, etc. “Kid” is a very broad term for anyone that’s younger, also, so please don’t try to act like that means he’s a real baby.

It’s basically the same situation as other born-adult characters like Vision or Superboy; Vision is three years old and already a husband/father with Wanda. Superboy is only sixteen weeks old throughout the first season of Young Justice and has a girlfriend, Megan.

4) This is the complicated part of it. It might shock you to learn, but I’m actually fully aware that nobody who likes baby!jack is a raging ableist with malicious intent towards autistic people. Because Jack wasn’t intentionally written to be autistic, and only coded via the traits and mannerisms given to him (topped with AlCal’s own portrayal + eventual confirmation of the headcanon), the idea of making a chronological two year old adult an actual two year old was fairly harmless, and like you said, done with the intent to give him a chance at a happy childhood.

However, since he was confirmed as autistic, there have been plenty of other blogs pointing out that turning him into a child or continuously insisting that he canonically is—especially since he’s intended to be an adult—is basically teetering on the edge of accidental ableism. I don’t know about you, but insisting that a grown adult with autistic traits is “mentally a toddler” is extremely gross, and I don’t want to be in even the slightest vicinity of anyone who believes it. The other problem I have with it is that all of these blogs were basically ignored. I’ve been ignored. I’ve gotten more engagement on my 1000th day destiel shitpost than most of my posts about Jack’s infantilization, and that speaks very loud to me about how much the fandom really cares.

There’s also the fact that baby!jack is basically the only content ever made around him, and even in adult jack content, all of his personality and growth is still basically so watered down and infantilized and far removed from actual canon that it should be considered an OC at this point. it’s an extremely frustrating experience for people who are actually interested in his character, bc we basically have nothing to engage with in the fandom now—which has also been pointed out out time and time again, only to be ignored time and time again, because again, the fandom doesn’t care, especially since it’s such easy canon fodder for hashtag domestic destiel.

I don’t think baby!jack fans are cruel or evil for enjoying it, but I do think it’s worth calling out that they repeatedly ignore any criticisms of it, whether that’s the underlying ableism, the general frustration with his character treatment, or the fact that the content they engage in actively takes away some pretty meaningful representation from autistic people. Honestly, the worst of it is when they literally accuse people in the fandom of pedophilia (I am unfortunately not joking about this) for finding a grown man attractive, because they’re so attached to the notion that he’s actually a baby and, yet again, actively ignore anything that says otherwise.

DEAN SHAKING A DEAD SAM LIKE A KID TRYING TO WAKE UP HIS PARENTS AND SAYING SAMMY SO SOFTLY AND LIKE HE CAN’T BELIEVE HE DIED AND OWOWOWOWOWOWOW THAT HURTS

Thinking about Gadreel getting enough strength to use Sam's body bc he's like, one of the most powerful vessels, he's the perfect Lucifer's vessel

I’d say this quiz is pretty accurate

which version of castiel are you? it's all very scientific and exact according to me (a castiel expert)

Son and angelic sperm donor bonding time

Fan art I drew of Ghostface dying in a glue trap

claire and jack are total opposites of each other. claire tries to play broody tough girl and acts mean as a defense for how genuinely sensitive and damaged she is, because she thinks that makes her weak and she actively doesn’t want to be weak or be seen as weak because she doesn’t want to get hurt again.

jack has their own broody mean streak, but is so outwardly saccharine and polite and overly forgiving it’s like they practice it in the mirror with an etiquette 101 book. he can be quick to anger like claire, but he’s way quicker to calm himself down. claire doesn’t understand why an all-powerful demigod would choose to be weak, to just not use their power and retaliate against people that treat them shittily. she wishes she could be as strong and invulnerable as he is, and she thinks he’s wasting it on nothing.

jack, on the other hand, is a little jealous of claire’s boisterousness. he wishes he could be more openly angry and defiant the way she is, without it automatically being taken as a sign of Lucifer’s genetic influence or imbuing him with nuclear charged teenage hormones that turn him into an active threat. jack doesn’t understand why Claire can’t just relax; take advantage of the fact that her emotional state isn’t cosmically charged and she can freely let go of herself. he longs for the passivity of being a gentle human, and he doesn’t get at all why claire wouldn’t want to be gentle every moment of her life while she’s able to.

claire thinks his strength is an advantage, and doesn’t understand why he doesn’t want it or doesn’t use it. Jack knows it’s a burden and doesn’t understand why claire would ever want it.