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I don't know if this is an unpopular or rare perspective on Jack, and I'm a huge over-analyzer, but I think that he purposefully makes himself more naive as a way of making himself likeable/less intimidating.

Like at first he's genuinely new to everything and doesn't understand what's going on, but I think he starts "masking" fairly early as he notices people react well to certain things and react poorly to others.

An example that stands out to me is his expression and the way he holds himself.

At the start, he has a "scary" expression reminiscent of the Kubrick stare. His head is tilted down, chin in, and eyes furrowed. It seems to be his default state, as he reverts to it when he's overwhelmed or just focused strongly on something else, like when he uses his powers.

However, at the police station he ends up getting his first positive feedback (lack of fear/nervous response) from his body language

Being down on the ground, he looks up at the officer and ends up with his head tilted up and his eyes unfurrowed. With his mouth full his expression also changes compared to how slack his face was before.

Then when he wakes up in the cell with Sam, he's back to his normal expression and angry about Sam tazing him, and Sam apologizes and explains why.

What's interesting to me is what Jack does next -

He sits crosslegged like he did earlier, despite being on a bench, and apologizes back. Because he just learned from Sam that if you hurt someone and regret it and want them to forgive you, you apologize and explain why it happened.

And he gets into the last pose that worked for him - legs crossed and tilting his head up, because it makes him look less threatening. And it works, it relieves some of Sam's obvious fear.

(part 1)

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.

a lil' sth because I adore Jack ;-; | Sketch/redraw of a screenshot from one of the episodes ~

(trying to explain babyjack in the destiel language so they can understand what I’m saying)

so you see it’s like if dean’s one-off improvised “baby in a trench coat” comment to cas in 6x19 got taken far too literally and everyone decided that either Cas or the show would be better off as an actual baby in a trench coat being babysat by Sam and Dean instead of being a former angel of the lord and later member of team free will. so they completely ignore his actual character and relationship dynamics to keep the baby thing going, make it almost entirely impossible to enjoy or engage with any content about him because it’s all nothing but the same baby-Cas being babysat drivel and there’s no sign of nuanced discussion to be seen.

maybe it gets switched up with Bobby as the babysitting uncle instead of Sam and Dean but that’s as different as it’ll ever get. eventually trench baby Cas gets so over-saturated within the fandom that it becomes regarded and touted as the show’s own gospel truth instead of the silly fandom joke it started as. destiel is of course completely nonexistent, because Cas is a baby and dean is his babysitter-dad and that’s weird, right?

but if you try to say “hey no, that’s actually a grown ass gay man who loves dean romantically and he’s an equal part of the family, this baby stuff was never real and the canon textual evidence actually shows he’s a grown ass gay man who loves dean,” you’ll get thrown in the corner with a shame collar because everyone is still so insistent that their baby-being-babysat dynamic is the real textual deal. mmkay?

Been havin' bad luck all of my days, yes

Born Under A Bad Sign by Albert King + Jack Kline

Honestly, it’s subtle but each time Rufus uses his power there’s an orange tint in the transition but if you look at the sudden cut at the end of e. 4 it’s just black no orange tint.

The editing was telling us that it wasn’t Rufus.

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:

someone help adam, please.

they should’ve had dean realise that there was something wrong with sam when he was soulless by having them come across a clown and sam doesn’t react and dean’s like ???? who are you and what have you done with my brother

THE GOOD PLACE ✘ SUPERNATURAL but it’s just the jason mendoza quotes

⤷ bonus

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