Probably from a parent's perspective, I like John quite a lot. I think he did the best he could under difficult circumstances. He was there in Lawrence in Home, I believe he sent Joshua the information to pass on to Sam about the healer in Faith. I think he felt he was a lightning rod for the YED, and he wanted to stay away from his family to protect them, but I do believe he was keeping tabs on and sending them information to help as well as he could.

I know this is a bone of contention within the fandom not unlike Ray wars, and I don't want to escalate a disagreement here. But I do disagree with an assessment of John, hot or not, as an uncaring parent who sadistically abused his children.

I ache for John, who wanted so much to be the parent he could have, should have been, had things been different. I don't think he ever expected it would take the rest of his life, that the war wouldn't end on his watch.

What was it Dean said in Faith? He'd seen what evil does to good people? I think that applies to John. Mary's death and everything that followed, everything he learned, turned him into someone who couldn't set aside the mission, because if he turned his back or fell asleep for a moment (in his view), he'd lose what little he had left to the evils lurking out there.

John's highly flawed, but I love the character to bits.

a bone of contention within the fandom not unlike Ray wars

What are the Ray wars?

I believe he sent Joshua the information to pass on to Sam about the healer in Faith

I haven't watched Faith recently. Is there anything to support that conclusion? (Seriously, other than wishful thinking to somehow include John in the rescue of Dean?)

I don't want to escalate a disagreement here

I wasn't intending to start any sort of flame war. And it would be foolish to expect everyone to have to same opinion about every issue -- surely (stop calling me Shirley!) we can all be adult enough to have opinions and discuss them without resorting to the name-calling and hairpulling I've seen other places? The ability of everyone to remain mostly civil, and the fairly consistent good spelling have been the things I value most about this board. (Really. There are places out there where people are totally incapable of forming complete sentences and have apparently never learned how to spell or use spell-check.)

What are the Ray wars?

Due South. Two Rays (both with their own appeal), one replacing the other. Wank ensues.

Is there anything to support that conclusion?

We watched it last night, and I don't think there's anything directly shown to connect John to the situation.

I agree that John is very much flawed. He's an interesting mix of Sam and Dean... or, I guess, Sam and Dean are an interesting dichotomy of him? Anyway. Dean picked up his single-minded attitude and a bit of the martyr complex (I mean, John didn't really HAVE to hunt everything in sight trying to get the demon...), and Sam I think picked up the cold calculation (which John has about everything but his boys) and the flaring temper. The man that set out to avenge Mary might have been a soldier, but he became a hunter. (And to be honest, I've read so much fic that I'm having a hard time pulling up an accurate canonic picture of the boys' childhood in my head. Fanon ranges from "single-minded about hunting" to "leaving the boys alone for a few days" to "hiding in the bottom of a bottle" to "abandoning them for weeks.")

Huh. Had more to say than I thought.

I probablyalmost certainly come down on the side of cutting John more than less slack as a parent. I've done that, and I know how scary and hard it can be when the demons are AIDS and lesser STDs, unplanned pregnancies, alcohol and drugs, and any and all subsequent emotional disturbances, not, well, demons. I know what it can do to your head, how it can turn you from a rational person who has a rapport with your child into a screaming, scare-tactic using, militantly grounding over-reacting loser with no perspective at all.

Demons? Actual demons, after my children? I completely understand John's MO. Not that I agree with it, nor that I can't see what it did to his boys. The fact remains that both boys are still alive, still able to function, at least at some point relative to normal. I think John wins.

I didn't mean to suggest anyone here would be less than polite. It's also possible I have some John issues.

Due South. Two Rays (both with their own appeal), one replacing the other. Wank ensues.

Yeah, between S2 and S3, there was a very long break, and when it came back, Ray Vecchio was replaced by this other Ray, who was pretending to be Vecchio, and it was akin to Joel vs Mike.

PS, I have TWO AXES.

Umm.

::coughs::

Which is to say, while Ray K is fabulous and swell, my heart, and therefore the heart of my mental Mountie, belongs to Vecchio.

My mental drawerfic drawer has SO MUCH post CotW Fraser/Vecchio reunion stuff. It's not even funny.

This would be Why I Just Read That Fandom.

And it would be foolish to expect everyone to have to same opinion about every issue -- surely (stop calling me Shirley!) we can all be adult enough to have opinions and discuss them without resorting to the name-calling and hairpulling I've seen other places?

Heck yeah!

Let us discuss! Discussing is FUN!

I mean, John didn't really HAVE to hunt everything in sight trying to get the demon...

John didn't know it was a demon.

My take on John is that he started thinking this would a relatively quick thing--he would find evidence of the supernatural thing, go out and kill it somehow, and return to his life.

Except when he found a supernatural thing, it wasn't what killed Mary. And the next thing wasn't what killed Mary, and the next thing wasn't either.

And he figured out how to kill them (sitting up nights in a motel room, rocking Sam in one arm while trying to read something written in Latin held in the other), and he took care of those people at risk because he's a soldier and a father and nobody else would. And he kept looking, and kept looking.

And every damn day, every day for 22 years, he was terrified that the thing that killed Mary was going to turn and come after his boys. So he kept moving, and taught them everything he could to protect them, and realized he couldn't hold a job and hunt and protect his sons, and well. So he stopped working, and started the credit card scams and identity fraud, and maybe he thought that that would protect them some too.

As Plei said, John was in an impossible situation. He didn't know what it was that killed Mary, and he was terrified it was going to come back for Sam (or both boys). So he kept trying to find it, and kept getting sucked deeper and deeper into this shadow world, where nothing is safe and death itself doesn't stop the killing and the pain. And the only thing he could do, to protect his sons, was to keep them alive.

And he did.

A couple of notes on fanon: we have one instance in canon where John "abandoned" the boys. Dean was 9, Sam 4, and that's the only instance we're sure of. I suspect he did leave them alone occasionally, especially as they got older. But we don't know, for sure.

We also, despite the more-than-occasional instance in fic, don't have any evidence that John was an alcoholic. Sam makes two snotty remarks about "Jack, Jim, and Jose" in season 1, to which Dean never replies. We don't know if it's because Dean knows it's true, or if it's an argument he's tired of, or if Sam's fixated on a couple of instances he saw when he was younger that he turned into a trend, the way kids can. We never see John with a glass in his hand.

I find it really hard to believe that an abusive alcoholic asshole could have raised two men who are both loving (if a little stifled), funny, and altruistic to a fault. By all rights Sam and Dean should have turned out as at best, socially retarded and at worst borderline sociopaths. The fact that they didn't has almost everything to do with John.

So, you know? I kind of love John. Which is not to say that I think he was always kind to the boys, and I do want to slap him in "Home" and "Faith" for not (apparently) doing something. But he's desperate at that point--he knows it's a demon by then, and demons are something they don't really know how to deal with, and he also knows something about the special children, so he knows Sam is at risk. He cannot risk drawing its attention to them.

So that's my take on John. I may be just a little defensive about the man.

Sam makes two snotty remarks about "Jack, Jim, and Jose" in season 1, to which Dean never replies. was an alcoholic

In Nightmares (? the ep with the abused kid and Sabrina the teen age witches aunt), Sam said John wasn't so bad, and then something like " a little more tequila, and we could have ended up like [the abused Special]")

he's a soldier

I think this is key. He was a marine, presumably in Vietnam, and the only other life he knew other than that as an adult ended up burning on the ceiling. That has to color how he reacts to things.

I am SO hearting both 'Suela and Plei right now. Not just because I share their character-love, though I do, but mainly because they say what I feel and make it sound very reasoned and clear.

I also heart dialogue and discussion, and I'm really not averse to differing POVs. It's been a while since we had character discussion. Which is to say, if you got something to say, bring it!

Um, please?