Escapade Panel: John: Good Hero, Bad Dad?

[sylvia_bond]

 

Panel: SPN: John: Good Hero, Bad Dad?

 

At Escapade this year, kathyem1 and I ran a fantastic and fun panel called John: Bad Dad. But then we (K'Kathy) changed it a bit to be less provocative, because really, I don't know any fan who thinks that John was totally horrible. So at the end, this was the description about the panel, and points for discussion, in case we ran out of things to say, which, needless to say, didn't happen:

 

***

Panel: SPN: John: Good Hero, Bad Dad?

 

Description: Leave your weapons behind but I think it would be interesting to discuss what kind of father John Winchester actually was. He has so many good qualities and so many bad ones....people get so riled about this subject, it might be nice to hear some debate on it.

 

• Telling Sammy to stay gone when all he wants to do is go to college. Most parents would be proud. 
•  Handing a gun to a nine-year-old. WHAT the fuck was he thinking? Was the hope of giving a gun to a nine-yr-old to protect himself worth the risk?  
• Leaving Sam in the charge of another child, Dean. Again, what was he thinking? As a mom, I hope that kids like that are helped by CPS. (Child Protection Services) 
• Uprooting the boys to chase monsters. No family, no friends, just fellow hunters. I’m sure they moved as often to avoid other well-meaning adults trying to help the boys as they did to chase monsters.
• He offered up his kids on the altar of revenge.  
• John = Bad Dad, start with a list of his dubious choices as a father, taken from the series, make a chart He wasn't all good, but he wasn't all bad, either. What did he do right? Where did he screw up? 

***

 

So then, at the panel we had a two-column list. On the left was anything good we felt John did or was, anything positive. On the right, we had all the bad things he'd done or was. On the left hand side, I drew a smiley face. On the right, I drew a frowny face. After a minute of consideration, I added dark eyebrows and a perpetual five o'clock shadow. To be in keeping with the subject of the panel, namely John Winchester.

 

It was a pretty orderly panel, I felt, considering the volatile nature of the subject matter. To sum it up in brief, we were able to fill up the "bad" column twice as fast and three times as long as the "good" column. Thusly, because I love The Dad, I added stuff like "dark," "tall," and "hairy," at which point a fan shouted out "AND he makes beautiful babies," so I added that because it was true.

 

Our final conclusion, based on this discussion, was that John was a bad dad, because of the fact that he basically sacrificed his children for his revenge, played favorites, and all sorts of neglectful behavior. At the same time, he wasn't a failed parent, because he did raise two kids who grew up to be amazing, brave (and a whole bunch of other good qualities) men. So there's that. My conclusions, as I stated above, are general, because I think this was the consensus of the panel, but by no means is it definitive or absolute. Your mileage on John may vary.

 

Below are the columns, I'll put the bad one first, because that's where we focused, and the good one second.

 

(PS It was also interesting to note that an item in the bad column would show up in the good column for very different reasons, for example, training a child to use a gun at a very young age.)
(PPS Some of the items are reasonable conjecture, others come straight from canon.)\
(PPPS We determined not to go to the lowest common denomenator and blame the WHOLE thing on the YED, even though that’s basically true. Besides, John could have made different decisions than he did, so that’s what we focused on.)
(PPPPS Also, we brought up the idea that in the old days, giving a gun to a ten-year old was not necessarily a bad thing, but a potential means of survival. And while this is true, the general concensus seemed to be that while certain behaviors in wartime are warrented, John usually went to the extreme, and the effects on the boys was negative.) 

Bad

 

• Was absent.
• Did not provide basic care and supervision, which is not an issue for teenagers so much, but it is when you leave children under 10 alone in a motel room, and especially that you leave a 10 year old in charge of a six year old, like, all the time. Which we were sure happened, because Dean is tired of hearing The Dad's instructions, because he's heard it a million times.
• Gave guns at 9 years old/sawed off shotguns for a 10-year-old.
• Never let Dean be a kid.
• Was psychologically screwed up/bent on revenge.
• Was broken
• Created lack of self-worth in Dean. (Helped create.)
• Made a choice not to dig into the trenches until boys were old enough, instead went right to "war," regardless of the effect on his kids. (Not that he didn't care, but he made this choice, which many felt was detrimental to the boys and not the only choice he could have made.Additional comments include the idea that The Dad chose to hunt rather than buckle down and stick it out - evidence of other hunters with a stationary home base were mentioned, ie Bobby, Caleb, Pastor Jim, Elkins, the guy Evil!Sam killed.)
• Made many choices not to inform even when the boys were older.
• Had an explosive temper. (Many mentions of friendships that ended in gunfire might indicate a lack of stability of emotion or temperament. While no one suggested that he abused the boys, there seemed to be enough there about the drinking to indicate that it could have or did get out of hand. One from the Pilot about Sam's easy reference to the fact that The Dad had gone off with "Jim, Jack, and Jose," which I thought, originally, were people, but are actually, the first name basis names of three hard liquors. The second comes from Nightmare, where Sam says, "Well, a little more taquila and a little less hunting and our lives would have been like Max's." Dean says nothing to this. Max, by the way, was beaten for YEARS by his Dad and his uncle. So it seems that to Sam, the leap for John to have been very abusive was not a big one.)
• Kicked his son out when the son won a full ride scholarship to Stanford. Most parents would have been proud. Of course we know WHY John was upset, and naturally so, seeing as how he considered Sam in danger, but to disconnect from his son like that felt extreme to many. It seemed to point out that it was John's way or the highway, which is not very balanced.
• Constantly slammed Dean. (The off-hand comment in Dead Man's Blood about Dean not taking care of the Impala.)
• Had control issues.
• Was a survivalist. (Which doesn’t mean that all survivalists are bad parents, but they have a choice how to raise their kids, and we felt that it was a negative one.)
• Placed too much of a burden on Dean, Dean had to raise Sam.
• Raised Dean as a weapon.
• Never returned phone calls.
• Provided twisted love.
• He isolated his boys from the world, kept them in dangerous situations, and basically created a situation where his boys experienced the Stockholm Syndrome.
• Forced his quest on his children.
• Requested that Dean commit fratricide.
• Was a very bad communicator. 
• Had problem with long term relationships, therefore could not teach his boys how to have good ones.
• Had tunnel vision about his demon hunt.
• Played favorites. (Which is funny because we all felt he favored Sam over Dean, yet Sam is the one who is so angry with him.

 

Good

• 
  He was an idealist.
• Taught his children how to protect themselves.
• He cared for and doted on his boys.
• He protected his boys to the best of his ability.
• Had a policy of “leave no man behind.”
• He produced two amazing men.
• He did not intend to mess up Dean.
• He prepared for war because that’s what he saw, his intentions were good.
• He loved Mary.
• He was an excellent hunter.
• He had the following fabbo qualities: Dark, tall, beautiful, great teeth, sexy voice, sexy stubble, and, he made beautiful babies.

Personally, I feel bad for John. He was between a rock and a hard place, and being a former Marine might have dictated to him the choices he needed to make, regardless of whether they were civilized. I think the worst thing he did was to raise his boys in the isolation that he did. I mean, they didn’t know about other hunters until halfway through season one, yet John knew about them for years. There’s nothing worse than feeling all alone in the world. Even if your world is hard, if you have someone to be there for and who will be there for you, that makes it easier. The boys only had The Dad and each other, which explains Dean’s desperate need to get either or both of them back.

 

Comments

[pwt-fan.livejournal.com]

I understand and agree that John could've made different choices but feel that with the circumstances as they were he had very limited scope for a better course of action*, although emotionally he could've provided more stability; physically on the other hand, short of leaving the boys in somebody else's care - who's? the state's? - the situation was unavoidable, assuming that YED was still looking for (and a real threat to) them all.

It's an interesting question, the episode with the Djinn provided a glimpse of how things would (maybe) have turned out without Mary's death. The brothers had little, if any, relationship and were - in that respect - unlikely to have bonded to the extent that they have whilst being brought up by John...

There are pros and cons (BTW I like the "Dark, tall...beautiful babies" argument!) to being brought up the way they were but the end result (i.e. the Sam and Dean we know and love and the life-sacrificing sort of love they have for each other) is possibly John's best shot at vindication.

Take care,

pwt_fan x

*(through no fault of John's - or no fault that we are currently aware of...why were ALL of Mary's friends systematically eliminated while John's were left alive? Was it because John's friends were better able to survive? Were they even aware of Demons back then? Even if they were; they were, sadly, when the time came no match for Meg...)

[sylvia-bond.livejournal.com]

These are brilliant points! I love them all and don't really disagree with you. John did a good job, in the end, but he did a bad job of it, if that makes sense.

John had hard choices, he did the best he could, and the boys he produced who we love so well and who have saved so many practically wipe the slate clean. But he wasn't perfect, as you pointed out, he could have done a lot of things better to provide his children something more stable. Certainly they felt loved and protected, but their current emotional states (that always come out jagged and rough when they speak of it) tell me just how hard their childhoods were. (But who among us didn't have a rough childhood?)

The Djinn ep...such an interesting way of looking at Dean's desires - you get what you want in the worst possible way. And funny how Dean's perfect world had no Dad in it? But then, he had no Sam either. So....looks like he had to take the good with the not so fun. Poor guy.

And to be totally flip about your last point, it was all of Mary's friends that were systematically eliminated, because, you see, John had no friends. He alienated ALL of them. Thusly, none of them were at risk. (Maybe he did that on purpose, knowing....) At any rate, I hope we get to find out what it was all about, why Mary's pals all got eliminated. It would shed so much light.

your reply

[pwt-fan.livejournal.com]

What about Bobby, Pastor Jim etc.? I know they were alienated for a while once the boys were grown (something about a shotgun in Bobby's case) but has it been mentioned how long they've known eachother?

I didn't check where you are based but here it's 2.20 a.m. and I HAVE to go to bed *BOO* which is a shame as I'd liked to have carried this on. Perhaps tomorrow?

Take care,

pwt_fan (Karen) x

Re: your reply

[sylvia-bond.livejournal.com]

Please feel free to post when you can and when you want to! I'm always up for talking about John, both the good and the bad.

Let's see. Bobby was alienated from John, although Bobby was still loyal. Maybe he didn't get offed because he was a hunter? And hunter can protect himself? As for Pastor Jim, I'm not satisfied with how much we know about him, but I think he was a hunter too, so the logic applies there as well. I was just enjoying being flip saying that the reason none of John's friends was killed was because he HAD no friends, but that's not strictly true!

Love your spaghettios icon!

Re: your reply

[pwt-fan.livejournal.com]

The spagettios icon is a quote from Plastic!Winchester Theatre (complete with typo) - have you visited spn_plastic? You should; it is FUNNEE (and the depiction of John is hilarious). Let me know if you're up on the plastic!Winchesters - they really are a good distraction from the lack of fresh Supernatural episodes. *shakes fist in general direction of script writers*

I will post soon - I want to take another look at the pilot first (not that I need an excuse to sit staring at the Winchester boys, er...I mean study the plot for points on John...)

Take care :o)

Re: your reply

[sylvia-bond.livejournal.com]

I will look forward to hearing your thoughts! (And any excuse is a good excuse to watch the boys!)

Re: your reply

[pwt-fan.livejournal.com]

The trouble is - I watched it all the way through without taking any more information in other than 'I want to have Jensen Ackles' babies...' lol

It has inspired me to start making a picspam, though, of random pictures of the prettiness; I'll send you a link when I'm done if you like?

I still don't think that John can be said to be a bad father (overall). There are so many factors/circumstances outside of his control (o.k so the giving a nine year old a gun bit is a tad extreme but we also have to remember that Sammy was NOT LIKE OTHER NINE YEAR OLDS - it says in canon that they were brought up like 'warriors' and also that they received weapons training from an early age)...

What do you think?

:o)

p.s can I add you to my FList?

Re: your reply

[sylvia-bond.livejournal.com]

I would LOVE to see the picspam when it's done and I meant to say yes, add me to your flist, as you have, and I have added you back!
: D

Re guns at a young age...going to stick to my guns here and saying that giving a 45 to a nine year old so they can shoot whatever is under the bed is a little extreme. Raising a boy as a warrior might indicate that Sam is innured to violence, but by his reaction to it (years later when he tells Dean the story), that's not what Sam needed. Dean? Fine, but not Sam. Not by his telling of it, I think.

Re: your reply

[pwt-fan.livejournal.com]

Just noticed I hadn't replied to your point about Sam being brought up as a warrior; the point I was making wasn't that he would have been innured to violence - it was that he would have had weapons training (i.e safety awareness, correct handling etc.)

Sam obviously wasn't impressed by this (his conversation with Dean in the pilot) but as John spent so much time 'out' hunting during the night - short of asking the demons to play nicely, or maybe getting an adult (who was aware of the reality of demons, who cared enough to put themselves in danger, and was available for all night baby sitting duty) to protect the boys, or putting the sole responsibility for Sam's safety onto Dean's (overly burdened) shoulders, what was he to do? He obviously couldn't tell him it was in his imagination like 'normal' parents would have...at least he didn't risk the boys safety by lying/keeping them in the dark (excuse the pun).

What do you think?

K :o)

Re: your reply

[sylvia-bond.livejournal.com]

I think you're asking me whether or not I agree that John's giving Sam a 45 to protect himself at the age of nine was reasonable. Normally, I'd say no, no child should be given a gun like that. But given that this family was in a bad spot, with supernatural things all around that could kill you, he was a Better Dad to give the child something to protect himself, than to lie and pretend that there were no such thing as spooks. At the same time, I'm not sure a 45 was the right answer to that problem.

Surely there were spells, dreamcatchers, tatoos, charms, herbs, and other means by which The Dad could help his boy protect himself. The gun seems such an overwhelming symbol of the lack of perspective that John had on this whole thing. Yes, teach the child the truth, yes, give him something with which to protect himself. But a 45? No.

Re: your reply

[pwt-fan.livejournal.com]

Surely there were spells, dreamcatchers, tatoos, charms, herbs, and other means by which The Dad could help his boy protect himself.

It's so bloody frustrating to have to just go on snippets of information/conversations but I would say that at the time maybe John was almost completely naive/inexperienced - think of Sam in the pilot telling Dean he was a freak for shooting 'Casper' in the face - and Bobby (when confronted by his 'wife' in 'Dream a little dream of me') telling her that he didn't know back then what he knew now i.e. that he could have saved her...The fact is that a gun would have, in actual fact, been almost totally USELESS when dealing with the Supernatural (although spectacularly handy in the 'child-accidentally-shoots-himself' department *L*) - I don't know...OBVIOUSLY John was between a rock and a hard place, I don't know what the hell I'd do in his position. I don't even know that I'd still be ALIVE if I'd been through what he had been through up until then...I just feel uncomfortable condemning him as a father when he was more than willing to spend an eternity in Hell to bring Dean back...definitely a difficult discussion - it's blatantly apparent that you don't go around giving firearms to children...but then again 'normal' children aren't facing what they were, nor would they have been prepared for it either....I could go on and on *in circles*.

I read one of your reviews (and left a comment) at the other site (pink something...) I really enjoyed it.

Take care, Karen :o)

[serena64.livejournal.com]

Hope you don't mind me butting in. Your last point about Mary's friends...Mary recognised the demon didn't she? It hasn't been explained how or why. I thought that the reason her friends were killed was that one of them might know whatever she knew, and presumably that would be something harmful to YED. That was my take on it anyway.

PS. Great discussion topic. Very interesting. I'm afraid I go for the shallow option: JW - awesome dad becuase he produced Sam and Dean!

[sylvia-bond.livejournal.com]

Please jump in any time!

Good point about Mary. She did know the demon, so maybe that was why all her friends were killed. Do we know what happened to her brother (the uncle mentioned in one of the eps)? Also was she the first mother of a special child to be killed? Maybe, though, Mary was killed just to cut off an avenue for Sam to find out how to save his brother.....

Yeah, the shallow option is always a good one. Esp with a man as fantastic, cool, sexy, and DARK as John.

[pwt-fan.livejournal.com]

Maybe, though, Mary was killed just to cut off an avenue for Sam to find out how to save his brother....

Do you really think that is an option? How would YED know that Dean would eventually make the deal? Didn't he say to Dean (when the Devil's gate was opened) that he hadn't forseen Dean bringing Sammy back, but that he was grateful anyway as he wouldn't have been able to himself? Have I missed something? :o)

[sylvia-bond.livejournal.com]

You know, I don't really know. It's such a wide open question, plus Show has a tendency to leave clues and tracks all over the place, some that lead no where. Maybe he just killed Mary to be mean, and that's the only reason. Personally, in the face of no answers, I might be making a lot up! But I'm not alone in that...time will tell, and Kripke, when he's DAMN good and ready. : D

[pwt-fan.livejournal.com]

Butt away, the more the merrier :o)

I know she recognised him and that in itself is proof that there is something significant to come out in future episodes - but it's 5.30 a.m and my brain is mush at the moment, will try to post a better comment tomorrow!

[sylvia-bond.livejournal.com]

Sometimes a mushy brain is the most uninhibited!

[apgeeksout.livejournal.com]

Ooh, this panel sounds like so much fun!

in the old days, giving a gun to a ten-year old was not necessarily a bad thing

Of course, this wasn't "the old days" by most standards. Sam is my age, and my dad (who, not to damn with faint praise, is scads & scads better than John Winchester, even if his babies aren't nearly as pretty) has always kept guns in the house, but I can't even imagine having been allowed to handle one of them at nine, let alone be expected to use it competently in self-defense.

I've actually been thinking about this & I think I've worked out why I'm so conflicted about John: There's a distiction to be made between considering him a bad dad and considering him a bad man. A lot of the items under "Good" are admirable qualities (loving, idealistic, determined, etc), but they don't all go to his parenting skills. For instance, not intending to damage his kids tells us that he had a good heart - isn't "the bad guy" in this situation - but, doesn't change the fact that the way he related to his sons did cause them some harm.

So, I'm thinking John is a good man (& a great character), but simultaneously a terrible father. Does that make sense anywhere outside of my head?

[sylvia-bond.livejournal.com]

In the old days, guns were necessary for survival, so the logic of some people in the panel, totally understandable, was that the same could be applied to the Winchesters. But we were thinking that circumstances might warrant training and familiarity, but hardly, like you pointed out, the expectation that a 10 year old and a six year old would be allowed around a sawed off shot gun with the safety off for DAYS and then, the ten year old is expected to USE said gun on a supernatural creature that he doesn't know anything about, that is, he doesn't know how to kill it, like, while it's feeding. John's expectations were totally off the charts here, and of course Dean failed, and that breaks my heart each and every time.

And I agree with you about your distinction there. I think that's the concensus the panel came up with - he was a bad dad but he didn't fail totally as a parent. I like your distinction even better, because it's more clear about what the conflict is here - can we say he's a good person, while allowing that he was a shitty dad. You don't often meet such complexity in a character that was in less than 15 episodes!

[apgeeksout.livejournal.com]

Ah, I'm tracking the logic now: less the standards of a particular historical era than the extenuating circumstances of a time of war.

John's expectations were totally off the charts here, and of course Dean failed, and that breaks my heart each and every time.

Mine too! Because of course, Dean only registers the failure, not the unmeetable standard... or at least he did for a long time. I think he has gained a little perspective on that score in the time we've known him, in that he's explicitly acknowledged that John put too much on him a couple of times now. Especially in relation to the expectation that if he fails to save Sam, he'll have to put him down.

I'm pretty separating it out that way. It lets me revile the things he does as The Dad, but still genuinely like & sympathize with John, all without any pesky cognitive dissonance.

It feels like a lot more than 15, since, even when John's not actually in the episode, he's still very present in the things they do, informing the way they relate to other people and to each other and the men they've become.

[sylvia-bond.livejournal.com]

Yeah. It's not really fair to compare a 10 year old of today with a ten year old of 1850 or somemthing. Different circumstances.

Poor Dean. He didn't realize, I've come to realize, now that you've pointed it out, that the high expectations his dad had of him were always too high, just too high. At ten you shouldn't be expected to realize this, but it took Dean till he was what 28? That's a long time to feel like a failure in the eyes of the man you admire most.

Agreed on John and The Dad. He was a bad dad, but a good person. And, frankly, sexy as hell.

I have always felt that even when the Dad wasn't there, in an ep, he was. : D

Me, I'm praying for another flashback.

[apgeeksout.livejournal.com]

And, frankly, sexy as hell.

It's a fact. Nobody wears three days of beard quite as well as JDM. And I speak as a fangirl who could lick the beard right off of Jensen Ackles's face given half a chance.

Seriously. It's a thing of beauty. I'm pulling for Sam & Dean to adopt some disguise requiring facial hair... *snerk* Lumberjacks! Then they would be simultaneously scruffy & wrapped in flannel!

[sylvia-bond.livejournal.com]

Oh, lumberjacks! Don't get me started on lumberjacks! I love them scruffy and sweaty and in flannel and STRONG.

You know, those disguises they wear never hide their faces. I wonder why that is. And they never wear hats, except in the bank job ep. Not that I'd want them to hide their faces, eh. But I've seen pictures of the J's and they look EVER so cute with part of their faces in shadow. I'm thinking in particular a picture of Jensen in a knit cap. It's pulled so tightly down he looks about 16.....

[apgeeksout.livejournal.com]

I am way too enamored with this lumberjack image now. I shouldn't be hoping for a hunt for bigfoot or the investigation of a haunted lumbermill... & yet, I am.

Yeah, that's a good point: their disguises never really alter their appearances, which probably should actually be a priority, since they're striking enough to be memorable, especially when they also start asking suspicious questions. Plus, it would be fun for us: beards, hats, hornrimmed glasses, etc.

[sylvia-bond.livejournal.com]

Now they stated quite clearly in Jus In Bello that bigfoot does not exist, nor does santa clause. However, Dean thought vampires didn't exist, and they did, so.....I'd like to get them out in the woods again big time! Camping, which they hate! But there'd be tons of flannel and bug repellent and five o'clock shadows, and those dumb hunter hats....you know the ones with the ear flaps?

[apgeeksout.livejournal.com]

I do know the hats you mean... that scenario would also give them the opportunity to reference Looney Tunes! This must happen!

[catalenamara.livejournal.com]

>>>Sam is my age, and my dad (who, not to damn with faint praise, is scads & scads better than John Winchester, even if his babies aren't nearly as pretty) has always kept guns in the house, but I can't even imagine having been allowed to handle one of them at nine, let alone be expected to use it competently in self-defense.

When I was in 4th grade, as soon as deer season opened, half the class would disappear for a few days. I have to figure a lot of those kids were out there with their dads and their rifles.

[apgeeksout.livejournal.com]

Yeah, probably. I was taking issue mostly with the idea that Sam & Dean had been raised in "the old days", some historical time when every kid likely would have had facility with a gun, which we established was a misreading of Sylvia's argument on my part.

And I would still argue that learning gun safety for the purposes of hunting for sport or for food is a different animal from learning combat skills that you'll be expected to use in your own living room.

[sylvia-bond.livejournal.com]

I'm going to agree with apgeeksout that there is a difference between going deer hunting for the weekend with your dad and his pals, and holding the rifle, and *maybe* shooting it once or twice, and then between being expected to watch your baby brother for days on end, and THEN being expected to shoot something that's eating him, and missing and then getting yelled at for it, when you didn't even know what it was or how to kill it.

I think it's reasonable that John taught his boys about weapons. I don't think it's reasonable that he expected a 10 year old to act like a grown man in reaction to a very unusual situation. So, considering the unusual situation, I feel comfortable extrapolating that if this situation happened once, it's happened before, many times. Poor John is caught between a rock and a hard place, and I sympathize, I guess I have a hard time going easy on him when Dean's the one who suffered for it.

[pwt-fan.livejournal.com]

It maybe that I've grown up in a country where guns aren't legal (plus I hate hunting) but I'd be more upset at the thought of a child being allowed to handle a gun for 'sport' than for survival...

[catalenamara.livejournal.com]

I was the person at the panel who mentioned survivalist familes at the panel. I expect there were a whole bunch of bad dads in the town I grew up, because western Arizona was a hotbed of militia activity. Yes, rural Arizona kids were being taught to hunt for sport or food, but I suspect quite a number of these kids were also being taught combat skills by their own "bad dads" in preparation for whenever the dreaded "black helicopters" and other militia "Great Satans" came flying overhead.

Now I thought all of this was bs at the time and obviously still do, but the fact is these people were definitely in their own societies, with their own norms, which were quite at odds with those of the greater community. I can definitely see a parallel between John Winchester's obsessive quest and the paranoid obsessions of the militia types. Both would require of their families familiarity with weaponry and the overwhelming sense that some day their kids might need to use them to defend their lives.

(BTW, I moved away from that town just as soon as I could...!)

[apgeeksout.livejournal.com]

Point taken. And if that were the only questionable choice on John's part that we'd seen or been told about, then you might be able to persuade me that he was a better parent than I tend to give him credit for.

As it is, we should probably agree to disagree on this point. But, hey, we both love Sam & Dean, yeah?

[sylvia-bond.livejournal.com]

I'm in love with John at the moment...one of those questions on the meme (forget which one), asked "John or Sam?" The implication being which one would you go to bed with. And I had to say John, because a) Sam Winchester cries his way through sex, and b) the whole idea of going to bed with John Winchester got into my head and would not go away!!!

I think John was a bad parent, but he wasn't a horrible person, and he didn't totally fail at raising those boys of his. As K'kathy told me, he sacrificed them on the alter of his revenge, and that about sums it up for me.

[blacklid.livejournal.com]

Oh lordie, Sylvie. I can't read all of this. My hackles went up within the first couple lines on that bad list! Absent? Would you prefer he took them along and abandoned them on a road somewhere if something happened to him? What if he had let someone else raise them - given them up to foster? Care and supervision? He created a trustworthy network of helpers in a very short period of time (Jim, Bobby, etc.) and taught Dean to be able to do things for himself and for his brother; how is that bad, given the risks they lived with? John made sure that Dean always had someone he could call if he needed them. That sense of "worthlessness", I mean independence and sacrifice, he wanted to prove himself so young, he wanted to help find the thing that killed his mom, and so did whatever he had to do to prove that to his dad... Sam's "indifference"/lack of memories made Dean even more determined to bridge that gap for John. AAAAAH! *breathes*
I think fanon has become "canon" in so many of these cases - maybe in an effort to plug the holes between our experiences with John first-hand. I was grateful for BD@BR because it made the boys look like they had as many opportunities to be normal as they did to be educated and prepared. Ack... if I start, there will be no stopping me!

[sylvia-bond.livejournal.com]

No worries, my dear, okay? I totally appreciate that you stopped by to check on what I was nattering about. And remember these were notes from a panel discussion, so I tried to grab everything. You'll see some things get duplicated a bit.

And a lot of it is evidentiary - is that the right term - like, I can see the trees bend, so I can assume that a wind is blowing? So we saw the results of John's parenting, and a smattering of acutal interactions, and have to conjecture most. I don't think we're far wrong, but at the same time, we could be seeing canon where there was none. And in the end, we did agree that his boys turned out just fine, if a little messed up on the inside.

I think, yeah, he shouldn't have abadonded them, but maybe left the hunt for the thing that killed mom until later, when the boys were old enough to take the stress of moving pillar to post. That was one thing we felt John could have done differently. To his credit, he is the LAST man who would ever abandon his kids.

What I think the panel's general thought was, for example, in light of the network of friends that John had or his training of his boys, sure all well and good, esp in a time of war, but we felt (and I felt) that he was excessive in his "need to know" mentality, or his unwillingness to realize that his kids were kids, that at that age, putting a 10 year old (and younger, possibly), in charge of Sammy over and over and over, in situations not just for the night or for a few hours but for DAYS, it just seems excessive. That's where his parenting goes awry, the excess and the tunnel vision. The way he seems to feel that the sacrifices are worth it, making that choice for his kids too young to make it for themselves anyway, and too young to realize how whacked it is. He's not a horrible person, but but he's not the best parent. I think.

I love John. He's a good man. He's just not the best dad.

[blacklid.livejournal.com]

I know, I know. It's just that... it is so easy to judge him. It seems like people have a difficult time putting themselves in his shoes.

I'll shut up after this last thing: I'll defend his timing. As much as it sucked out loud for the boys, there was really no way he could have waited. If someone commits a crime, the immediacy with which an investigation is begun has everything to do with its success. I'm sure that his desire to protect them clashed constantly with the knowledge that doing so effectively would burden them in possibly scarring ways. I think he did the best he could and he raised two awesome sons. *stops being overly protective now*

How obvious is it that I adore John? LOL :)

*hugs you*

[sylvia-bond.livejournal.com]

I adore John too, so you're not alone there. And you know, this panel was a bunch of very reasonable fans, who were willing to give him the benefit of the doubt, but the negative issues just kept aclimbing and aclimbing. I was considering all this on my drive home today, that our intent was to examine the issues, and that we did. The conclusions people draw is up to them, and surely there was tons we forgot.

And then there's this...you know, he's hunting that demon for 22 years, the thing that killed Mom, and he's pretty driven. He drags his sons behind him, and guess what? He didn't have to kill every evil thing that crossed his path, but he did. Yeah, he rather sacrificed his sons for his revenge, yet at the same time, he saved a LOT of people a lot of pain. Even if it was only one a year, that's 22 people saved who wouldn't have been, plus exponentially, the number of people also saved because John got rid of the bad thing. No doubt single handedly. He was brave, he was fearless, he was clever, self reliant, he was a whole HOST of good qualities. So I love John too.

It's just that when I see him slamming Dean or putting yet more responsibility on his shoulders, it gets me all riled up. I'll just disagree and say that I think he should have waited. Lord, at least till Sam was ten.

Hugs right back!

[pwt-fan.livejournal.com]

I don't see that he COULD have waited; surely, as far as he was concerned, YED was still after them/they were all in danger. How can you put that on hold to play happy families?

The problem is that I love all three characters (the actors don't hurt my eyes either *L*)

[sylvia-bond.livejournal.com]

To be sure, their handsomeness is made of awesome! There's lots of things John could have done differently or sooner or later. I'll never get tired of discussing it, I think!

[pwt-fan.livejournal.com]

Do you agree, then, that John couldn't 'wait a while' before taking the course of action he did *believing himself and the boys to be in immediate danger*

:o)

[sylvia-bond.livejournal.com]

Well...no. : D
I think he could have made different choices and allowed the children some time to grow up. He admits this in IMTOD that he made Dean grow up too soon. He had his reasons at the time, but....I think I'm just realizing now that any way you slice it, we can justify each decision both good and bad. So I can't close the book on this one, you see?