@xpurdyglambertx - hello fellow johndean + destiel shipper!
it took me a bit to pull this together bc trying to be coherent while talking about how every dean ship is about johndean and especially destiel is hard. i'm gonna focus on destiel tho bc otherwise this would just go on forever.
basically, all dean ships are predicated on the existence of johndean and i don't even necessarily mean romantic/sexual johndean, just their relationship dynamic in general and how that created a baseline for how dean interacts with other characters, even those who aren't like john.
dean's abandonment issues are the result of john and he spends much of his childhood with john as this sort of unknowable god-like figure (see chuck's "don't confuse me with your dad" in 11x21 and the various times he's talked about john as a heroic or almost superhuman figure in his childhood). and we see that sort of echo through various relationships, but I think especially destiel bc... well. i guess here's the mish mosh of johndean + destiel parallels rattling in my brain:
both john and cas make unilateral decisions about how to "solve" problems and go off lone-wolfing (john in s1/pre-series, cas in... p much every season)
those unilateral decisions often have to do with dean's safety (in some capacity) and those decisions are made without dean's input and often go counter to dean's wishes / without his knowledge or consent
they are both (frequently) emotionally unavailable to dean
cas is a powerful supernatural being and while john is human, he is still the unknowable god of dean's childhood (again: chuck in 11x21)
unilateral decisions + emotional unavailability + lone wolfing = creating/triggering hella fucking abandonment issues for dean
john dies when dean is still pretty young but has already carved well-worn grooves into his psyche in terms of how he expects to be treated by the ppl who he loves and cares for. however unintentionally, cas and the dynamic he has with dean triggers all of the issues that john heaped on dean and yes, is unaware of that but ohmygod. can we fucking talk about it? how is this something that destiel fandom fucking refuses to engage with? even putting aside johndean as a romantic or sexual relationship, destiel is frequently a mirror of the relationship dynamic that dean and john had.
cas is constantly running off doing what he thinks is best (for dean) and rarely makes himself emotionally available in the same way that dean is emotionally available/vulnerable with cas. (and often it's at dean's prodding e.g. 08x08)
the relationship dynamic that dean has with cas is so similar to the one that dean had with john. we see both dean and sam paralleled with john throughout the show, but if there is any john mirror in all of spn, it's fucking cas.
it just really makes me insane how destiel shippers will mostly refuse to engage with the similarities between john and cas and dean's dynamic with the both of them (even disregarding a romantic/sexual reading of johndean!). i swear it's like folks know if they engage with it and talk about it, then they're going to end up being icky johndean incest shippers and they simply cannot confront that truth about themselves and their ship.
theartofmadeline
ellievsbear
pixelskylines
amandla
areudirty
snowghoul
