When it comes to bullies I've got issues.... I learned the hard way and after years of suffering that you have to fight back no matter what. My parents were into pacifism while I'm growing up, so it took me longer than your average bear to learn about the whole fighting back thing. (My Dad did not actually believe in pacifism, but deferred to my Mom on child raising. Frankly, unless a kid is being raised amid The Gentle People, I don't think kids should be taught non-violence until they are old enough to be in a situation where violence is not routine, and old enough to be skeptical of what they are taught.)

It's kind of a litigious society these days. I'm all for teaching mini!Dean to beat the kid up, personally, but you never know what's going to come of that.

Also? Not Dean's kid. He definitely overstepped, in my opinion. Even if, like I said, I think Ben was better for knowing he could stand up for himself and get results.

Oh and back to Supernatural. That fic linked to upthread was based on some reasoning about the whole issue of Ben and whether he was Dean's mini-me.

The logic was:

If Lisa used a blood test to determine whether the kid and was Dean's or the biker, and Dean did not know about the test, then obviously the biker was tested.

OK the biker was ethical enough to take part in the test, and Ben seemed to genetically inherit the macho asshole hero code of ethics. So you would expect the biker to visit on occasions like Ben's birthday, to send an occasional check. Not to be a real father - not visiting enough, not sending his fair share of expenses, but doing something.

Well he could be a total asshole rather than a hero asshole, but in the SNverse I'm assuming not. So if he is not there - why? Well he could have been hit by a truck, or in jail. but again in the SNverse I'm assuming something more angsty, and involving the forces of darkness. Hence the short-short fic.

Frankly, unless a kid is being raised amid The Gentle People, I don't think kids should be taught non-violence until they are old enough to be in a situation where violence is not routine, and old enough to be skeptical of what they are taught.

I think it's more nuanced than that. Small children need to be told to play nice, share, don't hit/bite/whatever. I suspect it's the ones who aren't taught this who become bullies. When they reach the age that they are encountering bullies then they need to learn to stand up for themselves. They need to learn proper and acceptable behavior first and then add the caveat of what can sometimes be necessary.

The other dad wasn't a biker-- he was a bar back in a biker joint.

Hmm - well if he was bartender in a biker joint, he could have been a biker as well. (Rationalizing for the sake of my fic.)

And I remember she said that "scars and no fixed address" was her type.

Hey, the mother of the evil little girl?

She played the werewolf in that sexy werewolf episode of Dresden Files.

She really resembled Lili Taylor to me.

I have a wee question. Did anyone else notice the Roger Rabbit color palette that seems to surround Sam so far this season? It's eyebleedingly colorful, which is just hilarious, coming from a show whose look has been unremittingly noir and shadowed, after Kripke snerked at a network directive to "make it brighter and more colorful." Dean, so far, seems to have eluded Toonville sets. But I was pleased he seemed a lot less of a caricature of himself this ep.

And as much as I love Bobby Singer and am always glad to see him in an ep, I'm a student at the Minear school of character-killing, and I'd like the spotlight to swing away from Bobby, just a bit. I hope he stays around.

So... did it bother anyone else, the business with Ben's reference to "bitches"? Because I twitched, then I wrote it off as a callback to something earlier in the episode, because I'd missed the first 12 minutes or so.

And then, not so much. I'm mildly skeeved by it. It's one thing to have a joking relationship with your brother in which you call him names, and another entirely to tell an 8-year-old boy that misogynistic language is fine and dandy.

I'm also pretty sure that Lisa wasn't lying: it's too early in the series for them to introduce something as life-changing as a kid for Dean. If he's a hero, he can't just abandon the kid. But the show changes too much if he sticks around, too.

and another entirely to tell an 8-year-old boy that misogynistic language is fine and dandy

I think that was the point and was the least offensive part of the scene for me. I would have been completely outraged if that had been my son and his father popped into town and the first "life lesson" he gave the boy was how to solve your problems by fighting. I'm thinking "bitches" + fighting was a pretty heavy anvil of Dean doesn't know anything about kids.