(no subject)

[oselle]

Here's a bizarre story about a mom getting flak for letting her kid ride the subway alone.

I see kids his age on the subway, by themselves and together, all the time. I can't believe anyone's making an issue out of this. I guarantee you, this kid is a hell of a lot safer on the subway than in a lot of other places in this country. When I lived in Maine I used to see kids younger than this waiting for the schoolbus at the end of their isolated driveway and it would scare the shit out of me. It's way easier to pull a kid into a car and drive off than it is to mess with a kid on a subway train or platform that has a few thousand witnesses on it. And for all their "don't get involved" reputation, New Yorkers tend to be acutely aware of what's going on around them. Any kid that's halfway savvy is going to make a stink if anyone tries to mess with him and believe me, people WILL get involved. So there.

I've got a mysterious urge to write a John Winchester fic. Don't know why. I don't think I have a handle on the guy, but that's part of the appeal -- trying to figure him out. I don't think I've read too many stories that are purely about John or written from his perspective. He's a freaking enigma. Seems to me like he violated the one great rule of parenting: protect your children at all costs. But he didn't protect them, he put them in the line of fire. Some argue that he felt he was protecting them by doing that, and maybe he was. Teaching your kids to defend themselves and be ready for anything is part of raising them. But he destroyed any chance for them to have a normal life in the process, didn't he?

John Winchester, it seems, almost belongs to a different generation of father. He's a holdover from some pre-modern era. He doesn't believe in letting his kids have a childhood, he believes in raising them up to face the world they'll have to live in. I've been reading a lot of Cormac McCarthy and he often writes about father-son relationships. I'm reading The Crossing right now, which takes place in Texas in the 1930s and the boys who are the center of the story are very much expected to be men, although they're only in their teens when the story begins. In McCarthy's No Country for Old Men, the narrator says that young people "they seem to have a hard time growin up," and then goes on to tell the stories of his childhood friends, who were all fathers and deputies and preachers by the time they were eighteen. Young people DO have a hard time growing up. An awful lot of them never do. When did that change? With the baby boomers? In the seventies?

I think if you start from that point, you understand more about John Winchester. He didn't want his boys to have a hard time growing up. He knew what was out there, what they'd face, he wanted them to know it too. Nothing was ever going to catch them off guard. I like that idea. That's the John Winchester I want to write about.

Comments

[i-o-r-h-a-e-l.livejournal.com]

*right here waiting*

[oselle.livejournal.com]

I can't seem to write anything when the show's in-season, but there's a long summer hiatus coming up, and heaven knows I have nothing better to do! I really hope this one doesn't fizzle out on me like all the others.

[layne67.livejournal.com]

Knowing the things that he knew, and having seen things that he saw, no one would expect John to be a "normal" father. He could have easily gone the way Max's father did, but he didn't. And all things considered, I don't think he did such a bad job after all.

Have you read vshendria's Helpless? That's all John, right after the fire.

And please, please do write your John fic!!!

[oselle.livejournal.com]

I'd say my problem with John that he didn't take his kids on the road so much to protect them as to pursue nasty things with the kids tagging along. His prime objective was hunting, more than protecting his children. If this were real life, he would have been not only exposing them to physical harm, but denying them the most basic foundations of childhood, like a secure home and an education. You really have to suspend your disbelief to accept that Sam ever had grades/SAT scores high enough to get into Stanford, because very few children with that kind of vagabond lifestyle even graduate from high school. But it makes for a lot of rich subject matter to mine.

[mews1945.livejournal.com]

I'd love to read a fic about John from your perspective.

[oselle.livejournal.com]

I don't see him as the all-out SOB of some stories, but I also don't go with the gruff exterior/heart of gold route. Somewhere in between.