steviecass:

I’m thinking a lot about John Winchester and the boys, and what it means to “raise someone right”.

We all know that John was not a good father. The boys know it too, because they’ve told themselves, they’re telling Cas, and they certainly still feel the pressure he put on them. We know that John was probably physically abusive, based on the subtext on the show; we know he left them alone, he had an alcoholism problem, he asked too much of them in ages where they couldn’t possibly manage it and blamed them for it, deprived them of their childhood, put them in constant danger around monsters and weapons, they didn’t have enough to eat, he taught them to steal and lie and never settle on a healthy lifestyle, never told them a good word (proven over and over), and disowned Sam for daring to do something HE wanted. Among other things.

Now, I’m taking a break to mention my grandmother. My grandma is a very bad person to her core. She is racist, homophobic, and judgemental of everyone that doesn’t hold up to her standards. She’s also a devoted Christian, and she keeps on saying she is going to hell because she judges people when she shouldn’t. The thing is, she’s not saying it as a consequence of her actions; she’s saying it because she wants to say whatever she wants about other people without them being able to tell her anything; she can call people slurs and when they complain she’ll be like, “yeah, I know I’m going to Hell”, so they can’t tell her anything more.

And I come back to John Winchester. He knew he was a shitty father. He knew his sons didn’t see him as a father but as an ultimate force of strict righteousness, which isn’t what a father should be. And knowing that, he refused to make up for it, and instead owned up to it unapologetically. Like my grandma, he decided to say, “you’re not supposed to like me, I’m supposed to raise you right.” Because obviously his way is right, and the children that are suffering in his hands must be wrong for not liking him, and he’s not going to change his ways even though they’re obviously not working. And by that he’s causing his sons even more guilt, by making them unable to even complain about their abuse and neglect. Because if John knew, what kind of person would blame him even more?

But John didn’t own up to guilt; he only said he was doing a bad job so that the guilt would be his sons’ job and not his own.

Jimmy Novak, in his single forty minutes of screentime, cared for his daughter enough to come back to her after disappearing on her, because he knew she needed him. He sacrificed not his life, but his lifetime so that she wouldn’t have to.

Castiel, not even being a father himself, realised the need of a girl for her father. He realised how shitty he had been towards her (even though it wasn’t his fault that he wasn’t programmed for emotion back then), he knew a part of her still saw him as her dad, and he tried to give her back the best he could manage. He stood by her and tried to earn her trust not with threats but with care, even if awkward and maybe a little misplaced. He didn’t give her a gun and told her to deal with it, he stopped her from using it because she is still young and doesn’t need to go down that road. And he’s not even an actual father. He just has the right instinct for it.

John is still a shitty father, and the fact that he hasn’t allowed Dean and Sam to even blame him for it makes him even shittier. “Raising someone right” doesn’t mean making them to blindly follow your rules without letting them a shred of free will. You show them the way, and you leave them the choice of wanting to follow it or not, because you don’t own your kids, and they have the right to judge you for your mistakes and choose their own path. Saving them from situations they wouldn’t have been in if you had been better at your job doesn’t equal good parenting. Good parentling would have been not letting your child get roofied and your other child go hungry and then blaming them for not acting right.

TL;DR: If John Winchester had done a good job as a parent, it wouldn’t have taken them ten years to start talking about him again.

Rest in pieces, you fucker.

  1. superduckbatrebel said: ‘Raised them’
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