"Conversations over a Gun Box and a Roadmap"
Rating: PG
Category: Gen
Characters: John, Dean, guest appearance by Sam.
Word Count: 6000
Spoilers: “Dead Man’s Blood”
Summary: “Maybe if John had confronted it right then, things would have gone differently. But he couldn’t ask without tipping his hand.”
Further author’s notes: For the record, I sketched out the plot and some of the dialogue for this ( Read more... )
Category: Gen
Characters: John, Dean, guest appearance by Sam.
Word Count: 6000
Spoilers: “Dead Man’s Blood”
Summary: “Maybe if John had confronted it right then, things would have gone differently. But he couldn’t ask without tipping his hand.”
Further author’s notes: For the record, I sketched out the plot and some of the dialogue for this ( Read more... )
Nice to see Dean make a break, even though I doubt he ever will until, say, Season 6 or so!
Yeah. I can see him making a break earlier, but nothing so dramatic as this. And hey, that’s why we’ve got fic.
I don't hate John, but it's so damn typical of him only to hear half of what Dean says.
Yes, exactly! At least, that’s my take on John, when he’s in full obsess mode.
What I love most about this fic is that it's not just Dean playing John - it's Dean being honest,
Yes, that’s totally what I was shooting for, both with that particular section and him still hoping for John’s approval, even now.
I wonder if John realizes how much he expects from Dean?
That’s a lot of what I was going for. Indicators are that after Mary’s death, when hunting became paramount, basically what John wanted his kids to be was, well, a couple more Johns, only beta males instead of alpha males. So I also wanted to play with how John assumes that Dean will think the same way he does, how Dean could use that to manipulate John, and how limiting John’s assumptions became on both John’s and Dean’s own perception of himself.
On the college line: So lovely.
Thank you! The college line was an in-again, out-again line, because I didn’t want to evoke the parent imagery any more (don’t want a martyr!Dean). It was more Dean recognizing how much John has narrowed his options. Maybe he would have chosen the life anyway, but he was pretty much raised, it would seem, without the expectation that his childhood or adolescence should ever prepare him to do anything else. The not completing high school thing is wholly conjecture on my part. I go back and forth on whether I think it’s likely, but I’ve established it in my mental set of my fic-Dean characteristics, so I’ll be sticking to it with my stories.
On cleaning the gun: I love the way this works to show Dean's disapproval.
Oops! That was meant to be taken at face value: that Dean had been fondling the gun himself, and he would be conscientious about that. But if John had left fingerprints…yeah, that would be symbolic.
General thoughts on whether John would “really” use Sam as bait:
This is a tough question. In “reality,” I’d see him doing not that, but just about anything up to that point, depending on the circumstances. In an earlier draft, I gave John reason to believe that the demon was almost certainly about to come for Sam soon. That made things a question of strategy rather than obsession. Obsession became more interesting to work with, though. I think that John’s plan here would increase the danger to Sam, and I don’t believe John would deliberately do that. But if he hasn’t recognized that the boys have come into their own, he might see this plan as handling things himself, which he does seem inclined to do. To the point of stupidity. I mean, dude. Tell them that they’re hunting vampires before you take off, and tell them how to kill them before you get to their lair.
Thank you, everyone, for commenting,
Reply
Leave a comment