#john studies

after they meet ellen and jo in 2.02, sam says

You ever notice Dad had a falling out with just about everybody?

but that's actually not quite true. it's true john had a falling out with ellen, bobby, daniel elkins, and tara* (9.16). but he doesn't seem to have had similar fallings out with and jefferson (mentioned in 1.10), pastor jim, caleb, gordon (2.03, 2.11, 3.07), deacon (2.19), travis (4.04), martin (5.11, 8.09), or fred jones (8.08).

and i think there's actually a lot revealed about his character and the character of his friends based on who he fell out with or not. sure there's some folks we don't have enough information to speculate about (caleb, jefferson, daniel, tara to some extent) but there's a lot to think about given the little information we have about the others.

for starters, we have bobby who clearly pushed back against john not treating dean (and sam) as kids (7.10). we don't know if that was a contributing factor to their falling out but it is the only evidence of tension in their relationship we see. we have ellen, who has strong feelings that her daughter shouldn't be hunting. so we have to conclude that she would at least have had some judgements about how john was raising his kids. even if their ultimate falling out was more to do with bill's death, it's hard to imagine them not being in tension about kids hunting.

and then we have the folks john didn't fall out with. pastor jim, who was at least okay being the back up call for kids left alone for days. there is obviously a high chance that he had his objections to this but that he thought he could at least do some good staying in their lives. but all we can do is speculate.

but there's something distressing about each of the others on the list. gordon seems to have shared a lot of john's black and white thinking about the world. and we have this:

SAM: I - I thought you said he was a good hunter. ELLEN: Yeah, and Hannibal Lecter's a good psychiatrist. Look, he is dangerous to everyone and everything around him. If he's working on a job you boys just let him handle it and you move on.

it's not really clear what she meant but gordon does intentionally endanger sam to try and prove all vampires are evil.

travis, very similarly, thinks of monstrosity as an inherent way of being and not a choice. so much so that he all but forces the situation to play out in the most murderous way possible. martin also seems to share this mindset. and when dean defends benny's character, martin says

MARTIN: Glad your dad wasn't around to hear that. He'd have a mind to take you both out the woodshed and show you what's what. Half inclined to do it myself.

that's a heck of a series of folks who have a really similar mindset about hunting and monsters.

then we have deacon is physically violent to the incarcerated people in his control. and fred jones who

DEAN: Yeah, that guy gave me my first beer. I don't even think I was double digits. SAM: Right, yeah. Me, too.

and, well, that just sucks.

it's just really interesting which hunters john kept around him. both 2.03 and 12.06 make very clear that john was extremely cautious about taking his kids to hunter gatherings of any kind:

GORDON: Word travels fast. You know how hunters talk. DEAN: No, we don't, actually.

SAM: Yeah, no, Jody. We… we know you’ll be fine, but… you know, we never go to hunter gatherings, outside of bars. Dad always said they were trouble, so…

and some of that was about his general paranoia and fears about sam etc. but it also reminds me of what dean says to lee, krissy's dad in 7.11:

DEAN: Don't thank us. Quit. Your daughter's 14 years old. She's already a hunter with a-a kill under her belt. I'm not trying to be a dick, but what do you think that does to her life span? She could still be a regular kid.

john seems to have been, at least to some extent, avoiding exposing himself and his kids to a wider community of hunters some of whom might have said something similar to the above.

oh i don't know how about the woman in white. the vamp nest in 1.20 (in sam's defense that hasn't happened yet). the masked vamps from the 80's....

John did not want Dean to be more masculine. He specifically wanted Dean to parent Sam. Be his caretaker, his cook, his teacher, his brother, his emotional support. AND his protector. Which means he must now shape up and be a good fucking hunter because if he fails, Sam could die!

(Nm that Dean can also die. John simply sidesteps this. I don't think he wants Dean to die. But he wants to sidestep that possibility by saying: if you're a good enough hunter, you shouldn't be fucking dying).

Those are not masculine traits John is emphasising at all. Even if you claim hunting is masculine (and there's no proof John did), the rest of the parentification Dean faced is also abuse and that's "feminine". So what, he wants both? Except that's not how literally anything works, so please don't let the villains of the show fool you into thinking like this lol. "Hunting is macho" - only ever said by villains. The main characters all welcome more people being aware of how to fight the supernatural threats. Women included. They don't care.

And I really do think John would expect theee exact same things if Dean was a girl. This is genuinely not a gendered activity. This is about his paranoia and refusal to take accountability for himself and his role as a father. John happens to be right about supernatural threats even, but importantly, he doesn't know that. He let his fear, anger, and grief overshadow his actual responsibilities.

If Dean were a girl, it would make him more vulnerable in the eyes of the outside world, maybe. Maybe. But the realities and abilities that go into hunting, caretaking, parentification, etc. all remain the same. John may be more strict in his training of her, if he's sexistly inclined to believe girls aren't as naturally good at hunting. But we know John has met and befriended very skilled female hunters. The gender is not the issue to him. What he expects from a mere child, thing he himself cannot give, those things that emptied Dean out completely - those are the things that make John so abusive.

If we must speak on gender and sexuality and pressures, I'm more inclined to believe that John picks up on the fact that Dean is definitely queer in some way, and he clocks the fact that it makes him more vulnerable. And that's why he's such an ass. He liked Lee, remember. (And I bet he would initially continue to like Gordon even after knowing Dean is hooking up with him lol). He's not an idiot. He's just a deadbeat. He knows Dean is so open with his heart literally all the time, and I bet it scares the shit out of him. He doesn't know how to make Dean more armoured. So he just keeps telling him to be more ruthless, more obedient, and more of a weapon. All the while putting him down verbally. So that he can make Dean the scapegoat AND delegate the duty of protecting Sam to Dean entirely. In his mind, Dean can't afford to be dilly dallying. Esp when anyone could be a demon and whatnot. Focus. Protect Sammy. And I'll go off and find the demon who killed mom.

And he definitely respects Sam as a child and an individual in a way that he doesn't for Dean. Which is not to say he's good to Sam, or that he respects Sam as a whole. Just that his abuse of Sam was entirely different. Sam was sheltered in comparison to Dean (means nothing much lol), and he was also kept out of reach of knowledge. The same things that traumatised John, John did to Sam. He doesn't respect Sam for the act of being rebellious imo. What he respects is the fact that Sam and John can be a lot alike at that point in time. He likes the fact that they both get so fucking angry BUT they'll unite just like that. A few key reassurances, and they're on the same side again. John gets Sam a bit more. He's so mad when Sam leaves for Stanford. In that moment, I don't think he respected it at all. But later, Sam and John can both laugh about it. Sam is not going to hold John to account quite as much.

With Dean, I bet he's suppressing a lot of guilt (and this is part of why he keeps transferring that to Dean). Dean was not kept out of the loop. John can't lie to Dean. He can't pretend their differences have been dealt with. Dean Knows. And knows with too much clarity for his comfort. And Dean will always forgive John, maybe. But he won't agree to a quick revisionism. Not without Knowing. (Like the Sonny lie). So he just keeps deflecting random negative shit to Dean to keep him reeling and then moves on. He can't really stay still with Dean unless it's for his own purposes (ahem John death speech).

but something i'm noticing this time around is how at the beginning of 2.01, i don't actually think john was totally sold on not just letting dean die. very early on in the ep, sam calls him out for his seeming indifference.

JOHN: We'll look for someone. SAM: Yeah. JOHN: But Sam, I don't know if we're gonna find anyone. SAM: Why not? I found that faith healer before. JOHN: All right, that was, that was one in a million. SAM: So what? Do we just sit here with our thumbs up our ass? JOHN: No, I said we'd look. All right? I'll check under every stone.*

*obligatory note that he barely checks under one stone

and sam's right. john seems downright cold and defeatist in this scene. important context is that this is when john's asking sam to get stuff so he can summon azazel - which is when he makes the deal to save dean. but there's nothing to say that was his first plan in summoning him.

2.01 is marked by nearly constant butting heads between sam and john. so much so that it prompts dean to move a physical object even though he's a spirit. and i'm wondering if another reason behind john's choice of dean over himself was the simple fact that he has always left and left sam in dean's care because dean is just better at taking care of sam (read parentified).

john clearly doesn't want sam to die. but maybe he realizes, over the course of this episode, that left alone without dean, sam and john will fight and butt heads and that makes it so much more likely that the demons' plans about sam will succeed because it's all about sam tapping into his anger and his frustrated feelings of powerlessness. john decides that if he stays alive while dean dies, that's virtually a death sentence for sam at john's hands.

i'm just pondering all of this. anyway, nothing could convince me that john *only* saves dean out of love. so nothing can convince me that john's speech at the end of the episode is anything but twisted hypocrisy given the context of what he's allegedly apologizing for compared to what he's about to ask.

We know she was still hunting in 1980, when she saves Asa Fox. Dean would've been a year old and the hunt is not local, it's up in Canada. Mary says she's been tracking this werewolf for a long time and that they have history. I do think when she says "a long time" she means years and that she hasn't actively been tracking it but it's been something on the back-burner that she's kept an eye on all these years. But that still means she left for a number of days at the very least, and I wonder what she told John. What excuse did she come up with to justify suddenly taking off when they have a baby at home. And no, I don't think she needed to be there as "the mom" to take care of Dean or that she can't spend time away from the home or that fathers are incapable of taking care of their children or anything like that. But I think John would certainly wonder what's taking her away from them so suddenly. What could possibly be so important. And with a hunt like this, I don't think she could've exactly given him a set time-frame for her return.

Now, imagine that happening multiple times. Imagine that happening again when Sam is just a few months old. She says she has to go visit her uncle who's poorly (father of the Campbell cousins. The uncle that paid for her headstone when she died). And then she's gone for longer than she anticipated. And John is just suspicious. And when she comes back they argue about it. "I know you're lying! Just tell me the truth, Mary! What, are you seeing someone else?" And Mary holding firm to her lies because her family cannot know about the supernatural and hunting. Because she doesn't want her kids growing up like she did. Because John is her suburban fairytale. He can't know. And then John snaps. He's pissed. He thinks she's cheating while he's working to provide for the family AND watching the kids in her absence. So he flings a "Is Sam even mine?" at her in his rage and she slaps him and tells him "Don't you dare" and then John storms out in a huff but then calls later to talk about it more and Mary shuts him down. "No, John. … We’re not having this conversation again... Think about what? … You’ve two boys at home. …"

I can imagine a version of this phone call going something like this:

John calls. Maybe apologizes for what he said, but mostly just wants her to be honest with him.

John: Please, Mary, can we just talk about this.

Mary: No, John.

John: I just want you to tell me the truth! What are you hiding? What's going on that you can't tell me?

Mary: We're not having this conversation again.

John: Oh okay, 'we're not having this conversation again.' Well then can you blame me for where my mind is going? What would you think, huh?

Mary: Think about what?

John: You know how it looks, Mary. And I just, I can't keep doing this--

Mary: You have two boys at home. (and ohh the delicious irony of that in the context of her being the one leaving to continue hunting in secret)

John, probably, since the convo seems to continue: Oh that is rich coming from you right now, Mary.

Anyways, this is only one of many many scenarios I can imagine of their fights. And it's perhaps a little too sympathetic to John, but! I enjoy thinking of John complexly, especially considering how Young John is presented in SPN, and also John in the opening scene of the Pilot seems like the easy-going family man, who definitely had underlying issues prior to Mary's death (thank you SPNWIN for confirming that) but clearly those issues got worse after Mary's death, and for the most part he wasn't yet the guy we see him become after he is transformed by grief and anger. Also s12 Mary's rose-tinted recollections of John being such a good father, which starkly contrast to Dean's later memories of John, I think it's not a huge leap to say John pre-Mary's death was a good father, and I think seeing Mary leave them (likely repeatedly) under secretive circumstances for days at a time would have bothered John back then and been a continuous point of contention in their marriage.