because i've gone on at length about how shitty and abusive both my dude's dads were and instead i would like to tl;dr about their individual relationship w being dads themselves

Jack

i find him extremely interesting because for a long time he'd convinced himself he couldn't have kids, because he was convinced he had a fatal condition genetically passed down from fathers to sons - which he later learns is incorrect, and so suddenly it's less that he biologically cannot have a kid and instead becomes whether or not he should

and like

several times throughout the books, he has hallucinations or elaborate dreams in which he has a son, or a set of two kids

like it's a repeated and recurring theme, this idea of himself as a father

but he has such a frought relationship with his own biological father, and he spent many years in and out of the foster system with abusive foster parents, that i think his logical surface-level thoughts are he should not have kids because he would not know how to be a dad, he would be a terrible dad, he never learned a good example of parenting

but i think there's this deeper subconscious desire to have kids, to have the family he never got to experience himself, and this very fierce very dedicated 'i will never be like my father / i will treat children the way they DESERVE and love them the way they DESERVE and a kid will never ever hurt as much as i did'

and in abraxas, he'd JUST started getting to a place with Sabine where he could maybe admit that he might want something like that, if he could guarantee a stable life for them. it just started to be a real future possibility, and now with Sabine gone that's off the table, but i think

somewhere deep in there, the desire still exists, he just doesn't think he'll ever get to have it, and that is very sad 2 me

he's just starting to get to be what i consider the right age for it too

it's very soft and bittersweet

Dean

has had a few shots at fatherhood

i think he really hoped Ben was his son for a long time, biologically, but the fact that he wasn't did not hold Dean back from going full-force into dadhood with everything he had in him

and he had to face the reality that as much as he might want it, his existence around that kid put him in danger. that it didn't matter how much he wanted to raise Ben as his son, every moment he spent in Ben's life meant things that wanted to murder him were just around the corner, and it killed him to let that go, but it was the right decision

the real-dad thing to do, choosing ben's safety over his own selfish desire to be present in ben's life

and of course we know he had to be a mother, a father, and a brother to Sam, so in a lot of ways being dad-mode is like baked into his processing automatically

his first immediate instinct is usually dad mode. it crops up later with Claire, it crops up with Krissy, and honestly I think those two were slightly more realistic choices than Ben because they're already hunter kids, they're already in the life, and trying to raise Ben as normal-never-touch-a-gun was exactly the opposite of cohesive with his own life

but raising hunter kids who learn to kill and defend themselves and survive just makes more sense for his long-term presence in their life. but like. he's of an age now where having his own kids is completely off the table

and boy... boy did he drop the ball with Jack. he was really set up for failure with that kid from the start, and then repeatedly over and over again any time they made any progress toward a father-son relationship it was yanked away from him by some shit like... jack fully killing dean's mom

but what I wanted for him as an ending in the show, and what I kinda wanna do with him in Abraxas, is let him pull a Bobby

let him be a dad to some kids that are his by choice, some hunter kids who are already in the life so his presence is a help instead of something that actively shortens their lifespan

some fierce family-isn't-blood choose ur own kids choose ur own parents type shit is exactly on brand for him and for the show's message

I love him being the bobby SO MUCH em

grips ur shoulder

it just makes sense 2 me

dean has such dad energy

he does i love him so much

he's like 50% dad energy 50% depression

put those things together and u get dean winchester

Aww I love the idea of being Better Dads for both of them and it not necessarily having shit to do with biological family. Dean as Bobby figure is A++ and honestly I can see an older Jack growing into that but for, yknow, weird-magnet neurodivergents

(He kind of IS the Dad Friend a little bit anyway, it’s just that he notices all the death and has....a lot of shit going on, and doesn’t count all the times he keeps his friends safe)

he really is kind of the dad friend a little

disarmingly: look man. listen

nothing has ever made more rp sense to me than dean winchester adopting steve harrington

it did not occur to me until it was happening and then once it did i was like. oh. oh, i see. yes, this is correct.

honestly it was the absolute best rp choice we could have ever made

that shit just fit

IT WAS ALSO SO NATURAL AND JUST

u were like "hey wanna do 1 single cameo in a thread" and

like

hold my beer

here's a grenade launcher time to bond about trauma and ptsd

geralt had no idea what he was unlocking bringing them together

bless him he sure didn't

and like

i try to be a little picky in rp about who dean actually adopts bc i've had a lot of teen characters over the years try and slam their way in there and it doesn't always work

sometimes the chemistry isn't right or the characters don't mesh, like he's not the type to force himself onto antagonistic teens who are likely to be little dickheads to him, he's not gonna strongarm his way into dad'ing those types, he doesn't have that high of an opinion of himself

so the fact that it fell in so naturally with steve is just

i love it

and i don't know clarisse very well apart from fandom osmosis and what i've seen in passing, but i feel like the potential is there with her too WE'LL SEE but i'm optimistic

he works very well with characters who like. had real shitty or absent fathers, because he has this constant 'i'm going to do better than john winchester did' mentality

he had to be the anti-john in a lot of ways in order to raise Sam, who was constantly bucking everything about their father's attitude and parenting methods

i've always believed that dean takes more after mary (altho... like. early seasons mary. we don't talk about her character assassination after they brought her back to life.)

Dean as Mary and Sam as John is something i firmly stand by and i feel like the series always loses itself when it mixes this up

i fully completely agree with u

when they remember that below surface level dean is actually the gentle one... that's when shit is Right

That end of the universe AU with the little kid named Sam he and Blake adopted will forever be one of my faves for its heartbreaking and sheer goodness. Dadness for days.

god that au... it was so soft and good

i mean if it helps, in the AU steve and clarisse were also. besties.

so there’s that added connection

THAT DOES HELP and I remember someone mentioning that which has added to my optimism

If there's already a cohesiveness between those two it's a good sign

she’s his government assigned lesbian so

Lmfaooo

He must always have 1

What about Conner?

listen

conner would be SUCH a good fucking dad, actually

he would be the most patient most involved father of all time, full-on

he'd read all the baby books and he'd obsess over it and he'd try SO HARD and he'd be at all the soccer games wearing the team jersey and yelling at the ref from the stands and if anything so much as threatened his kid he would burn their entire life 2 the grOUND

he would also be TERRIFIED that he was doing it wrong, every single major life event or crisis he'd be scared shitless that he was fucking it up like his own dad

the hardest part would honestly be just accepting that he deserves to be loved and that he deserves a family and that he's allowed to have these things

Aww, yeah