Ooyuhgetitig4 - Kai 👻

Dean Winchester & hug dynamic analysis

I was thinking about how whenever Dean hugs someone he's almost always the one hugging the other and how this links to his psychological trauma of always being the caretaker of people, making himself bigger to protect them.

Because that's how Dean sees himself, as a shield for others, and then I thought about how Cas actually is the shield, and he's HIS SHIELD, specifically, the only one who's really there to protect HIM, which is why it hits so much when we see this:

The way Cas wraps his arms around him, trying to protect him with his whole body--that he'd use as a shield and give up in a second if he could spare him from any pain and save him.

(for context: Dean was about to go use the soul bomb on Amara there, it was a suicide mission)

Bobby is another one that hits, he hugs him as the big hugger because he's his father, he loves him and he's actually here to protect him (and Dean LETS him -barely, but he lets him *and Cas* - in a way that he doesn't let Sam)

I watched a compilation of Sam & Dean hugs to check if i was right about it, but it's almost always Dean the big hugger with Sam, except when he's about to die or Sam sees him alive again after losing him.

Even then, Dean mostly tries to hug Sam as the big hugger anyway, with at least one arm, like a way to comfort him, making him feel protected, like his body language is saying "I'm here, I'm okay, I'm still strong, i can still protect you" (because their real father failed and Dean thinks it's his job).

He rarely lets himself be the little one hugged with Sam, unless he's barely conscious. Which is why it kills me so much more now that in this moment (s14, when Dean was going to lock himself in the Ma'lak box cause he was possessed by Michael) and Sam has a desperate breakdown and punches him (to stop him) he forcefully hugs him as the little hugger, the way Dean always kept him, like a way of saying "I still need you to protect me, please don't do this to yourself".

In the scene below he gives Sam his blessing to do a dangerous (possibly suicidal) mission, and one of his arms is down, but the other one tries to stay up--he's forcing himself to do it and he struggles because he still wants to protect him, but (as the seasons progress) he slowly becomes more prone to let go.

So in this view the hug dynamic becomes an indicator of how Dean sees Sam (and himself) and his protector role, how adult and self sufficient he considers Sam, and how much he lets people around him take care of him, lowering his walls and letting himself be hugged.

This is also why i think hugs from characters like Garth or Charlie are so special, because they're just like us: they see Dean and they just know that he needs to be hugged a lot, and that he's not used to it, so they just go for it-- and it's so normal and kind and spontaneous that Dean's just not used to it-- he doesn't know how to respond (especially with Garth, at the beginning, but as the seasons progress, he learns to, and he even initiates the hug eventually).

I love the hugs where they're 50/50 (one arm up, one arm down both), feels like they're equals, both taking care of each other. I feel like with Sam and Dean, this indicates a healthier dynamic, because Dean lets go a little of the role that was imposed to him and manages to see Sam as the strong individual that he is. But the same applies to 50/50 hugs with other characters, like with Cas, where I feel like it testifies how equals they feel in terms of being fighters, there's a show of respect of each other's strength that transpires by the gesture (which is even more astounding considering that Cas is literally a powerful angel).

And just to end on a destiel note, I'd like to note the possessiveness and protectiveness of Dean (rightfully so) whenever he finds Cas after he thought he had lost him, and how that translates into his body/hug language:

You let your brother call you a whore????

I’ve had very many partners in the past, so we both refer to me as a whore in an endearing way

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.

My dealer: got some straight gas 🍃🔥 this one is called "straight outta derry" 💯 it'll have you zonked out of your fucking gourd

Me: yeah whatever I don't feel shit

Five minutes later: oh my god the fucking clown

My buddy Stephen, pacing (on coke): the turtle can't help us

The last like millisecond of the second gif makes it look like he has smudged eyeliner due to his eyelashes and the shadows 💪

Supernatural S5E01 Sympathy for the Devil

I would use it every single time

i’m not ever going to get over the fact that sam didn’t know dean was the one who carried him out of the fire until he was 22 years old

I started screaming every time he showed up with his damn shoes on that clean bed

Jack + Being Raised in a Barn Bunker

I made another uquiz :))

this is gonna be so long for no reason i know it already but i’m painfully rewatching parts of season 8 and i really just will never be over how people severely underestimate the impact of trauma on sam’s whole arc in season 8, and that’s obviously because the writers were so fucking asleep at the wheel when it came to that, but it’s the only thing that makes everything slot into place in a way that makes sense (to me, at least). 

the thing with sam in season 7 is that it wasn’t his post-hell arc the way season 4 contained dean’s post-hell arc: sam is still functionally in hell in season 7 in at least some way shape or form - in other words, up until the last 5 episodes of the season, sam is experiencing some form of hell-related trauma, not the after-effects, but the actual thing. it may have been psychosis, but as we saw, it was real to him and frequently debilitating. so that makes season 8 sam’s real post-hell arc, compounded with the sudden and confounding loss of dean (his “stone number one”) at the end of season 7, again, barely 5 episodes after sam’s 17-episode long psychotic break ended. 

sam canonically (per jared, not the writers, of course) has PTSD from his experience in lucifer’s cage and we see that manifest in more understandable ways in later season when he’s faced with lucifer again, but it has to exist before then even if left unacknowledged by the narrative. but the season 7 hallucifer arc is in itself traumatic and not just a response to the older trauma from the cage because his mind is at all times trying to convince himself he’s still in the cage. that barely ends before he loses his brother again. so that’s a double dose of trauma and sam has to deal with both at the same time. that’s what gets us to a sam that is so unable to function in his life alone that he runs away from every responsibility and settles down into a pretense of normalcy with amelia. it’s not just grief or losing dean but effectively the first time his mind is not actively dealing with the trauma of the cage and instead now in post-trauma mode.

PTSD manifests itself differently in different people but it certainly can cause a debilitating fear of change, as after experiencing trauma people seek a sense of security and stability, so losing the “rock” that he had throughout his traumatic experience in season 7 (dean) so soon after he finally “escaped” hell would obviously send him into that kind of spiral, where he can only stabilize once he’s found some solid ground to re-orient himself and someone to effectively replace dean with. the need to feel safe, to feel secure, stable, in control, are all very real post-traumatic things.  and then dean coming back is a similarly disorienting experience for similar reasons, resulting in him wanting things to be the way that he got used to while dean was gone. 

moving on to benny, the thing that bothered sam about benny is, as astutely pointed out by jared and never really acknowledged by the writers, the hypocrisy of dean being able to have this monster friend and expect him to be trusted automatically when he was deeply mistrusted for his relationship with ruby and then berated to hell and back (LITERALLY) for having been stupid enough to trust her. now having difficulty trusting others is also very much a symptom of PTSD in people who were victimized by others which is something that just generally applies here in my view.

but for sam specifically, this is the origin point of his trauma - he went to hell because this, trusting ruby, ended the world and made him feel guilty enough to think that was his sole fault. this is compounded by the fact that for sam, prior to the in-between year between 7 and 8, the events of season five are basically the last time his mind and memory were functioning in a linear and normal way. for half of season 6 his soul is in hell and for the remaining half he has no memories of either thing except brief flashbacks and then suddenly he has all the memories again, centuries of memories, but then trauma is destroying his psyche and messing with his sense of reality etc. and season five is when he was being raked through the coals for this very thing, which led him in an incredibly, fully direct way (“i let him out, i gotta put him back in”) to the source of the horrifying trauma that his mind is forced to process. now PTSD obviously causes memory issues in and of itself so adding that to the absolute mess that sam’s mind/memory is because of the above, it’s hard to say objectively what’s “fresh” in sam’s mind vs. what isn’t, but the causal link between “trust monster” and “almost unsurvivable trauma” is definitely present. 

that obviously adds another dimension to sam wanted to be “pure” and rid himself of the thing inside him (demon blood) that, to him, was the root cause of all of this - if you didn’t have the evil blood, they wouldn’t have been able to get to you, you wouldn’t have deserved to go to hell - but also would apply to wanting to scrub himself of everything done to him and his traumas and become clean again, whole again, instead of the mangled mess he sees himself to be after hell. and it of courses adds another dimension to my beloved sacrifice church scene because this entire time sam would have been coping and struggling with unimaginable trauma compounded by the loss of dean in the only way he can, trying his best not to hurt someone again the way he did the last time he lost dean, and he’s being berated and blamed again somehow for doing it the exact opposite way this time as last time - having lost not only the security he built with amelia but not being able to find any solid ground the whole season with dean either, who was capricious at best with his brotherly affection due to his own issues post-purgatory and his woundedness and blame towards sam for not looking for him - and then the rules of who to trust and not trust are flipped on him but just before the church scene dean again brings up trusting ruby like it was a cardinal sin but only when sam does it - resulting in a desperate breakdown at the end of the season where he doesn’t think that anything he does can ever be the right choice because he’s done diametrically opposite things in the same situations and been berated both ways, but now i’m getting off topic. anyway season 8 sam didn’t do anything wrong in his life ever 

every time you say jack has the mental age of a baby or a toddler an autistic person spawns in your house to kill you. it’s me. I’m in here and I have something sharp.