SPN Meta ... Papa!John: The Good Daddy
Fair warning to all who enter: I am almost as incapable of being either short or sweet as I am of taking the majority stance on any subject of debate. Because of this, you should be advised that this sucker is longer than a good chunk of the fanfic out there, so if you’re looking for a fast or easy read, this one ain’t it. If that doesn’t scare you off, I look forward to your thoughts after you’ve had time to read and digest.
This meta was prompted by
astri13, who asked me, "Do you see John`s parenting of Dean, not just in this incident but on the whole, justified? As in for the greater good of the quest?"
My answer is this: I see John`s parenting of Dean, not just in this incident but on the whole, justified in the greater good of both Dean and Sam's ultimate safety. The quest, IMO, is more or less irrelevant to why John had to raise them the way he did.
And here’s why:
Papa!John: The Good Daddy
If there’s a true hot topic in Supernatural fandom other than whether or not Sam and Dean are, should be, or want to be sexing each other to the nines; I think it must be Papa Winchester’s parenting choices. Certainly, I see an enormous amount of discussion on this topic, with a wide range of opinions falling on both sides of the midline. Judging by the debates I’ve witnessed though, an overwhelmingly large chunk of fan opinion seems to fall on the side of "John should be shot for being such a crappy daddy."
Not in a "we don’t love John" kind of way, mind you; but rather more in a "we want to shoot John" kind of way … usually spiced with generous overtones of "and we want to pet poor Dean like a small, wounded animal then have hot sex with him" thrown in for good measure. While I think the latter half of that sentiment is pretty self evident as to where it comes from and why it exists, the first half is a little more troublesome to quantify.
I personally attribute it, at least in part, to the fact that such an overwhelming majority of fandom is female. At the risk of being Captain Obvious or Dr. John Men are from Mars, Women are from Venus Gray (and truly, aren’t they one and the same?), I feel a need to make note that, for the most part, women tend to be the nurturers of the species as compared to the kill-kill-kill of the species (that would be the more traditional role of men), and thus tend to be less tolerant of selfishly fucknuttish parental choices that lead to emotional angst and/or damage to the vulnerable psyches of really hot guys who kick in the Oedipal issues of most healthy women by making them yearn to be both mama and hot mama to the same hot guy.
And by this I mean to say: Dean.
But while this dynamic seems to be in play for many of those who find John an irredeemably screwed up daddy, I think it goes much deeper than that, too. After much contemplation and meta-minding on the subject, I’ve come to the conclusion that the gender influence in finding John a total fuckup as a parent may well have a lot to do with an equally gender-specific tendency of thought when it comes to raising kids: Who comes first?
Not to step on any male toes out there (or any female toes belonging to women who don’t think this applies to them), I think it’s a fairly safe generalization to posit that women, traditionally, are seen as the mommies of the world in large part because the kids always come first. Not that many daddies don’t also put their children first, but they do it in a different way … a male way.
I mention this because I’ve begun to think a gender difference in what constitutes "putting the child first" bears great relevance to some of the intolerance shown John in terms of the choices he makes as a single parent raising two motherless boys. Many who most object to John’s parental choices do so, IMO, because they feel he didn’t put the children first; and this makes him a bad daddy, even if he does obviously love both boys to the moon and back.
With this view, as you might assume, I disagree.
And this is why: John did put his children first. He just did it in a male way.
So let’s explore this gender difference of perceptions a little in a way that may, upon first blush, seem kind off the subject. But it’s not, just stick with me and I’ll get there.
We all know -- even men know this, they just won’t admit it very often - that when a man gets the flu, the entire fucking WORLD must come to a screeching halt (especially the "can you watch the kids" part of the world) until they no longer feel a need to heave their guts out through their nostrils in worshipful praise to the porcelain Goddess. On the other hand, most women can heave their guts out through their nostrils and still render effective child care at the same time (albeit, admittedly, somewhat bitchier effective child care).
So in the instance of a heaving of the guts through nostrils and other facial orifices: Men whine like little girls at the prospect, while women tend to consider it part of the parental gig. Now look at the flip side of the coin.
Let’s take something more male-oriented than the pig flu like, oh, I don’t know, putting a nail through the palm of your hand while building a tree house. At that prospect, it is women who wail like tail-stomped cats while guys tend to consider it part of the parental gig. In fact, I’ve heard a number of fellas of my intimate acquaint respond to significant bloodshed in pursuit of manly activities by saying "rub a little dirt on it, you’ll be fine." (And yes, that always makes me whine and squeal and lecture in great detail about scientific concepts like germs and blood poisoning and tetanus, for God’s sake … probably because I’m a girl.)
But my point is this: men and women view damage incurred as acceptably debilitating -- or unacceptably so -- when it comes to the commission of parental duties very differently because their gender perceptions of what constitutes debilitating damage is so wildly disparate. And this is where I feel John gets the short shrift in having the damage he incurs as a result of Mary’s supernatural murder judged as unacceptably debilitating to justifiably fuck with his ability to make good parental choices, especially when his parental choices are being inaccurately judged as bad by the application of normal modes of judgement that don’t actually apply to the atypical specifics of his unique situation.
And by this I mean: What might be a screwed up choice for some other daddy isn’t necessarily a screwed up choice for John.
And herein lies the basis for my argument that Papa!John is actually the Good Daddy: Because Papa!John is truly and debilitatingly fucked in ways most women don’t adequately consider when judging the choices he makes in raising Sam and Dean. If the reality of the actual damage inflicted on John by the MODE of Mary’s murder - rather than simply the kind of damage that would have been inflicted had Mary been murdered in a more normal manner - isn’t taken into account, there can be no relevant yardstick of measure by which to judge his parental choices, as all those choices are made under direct duress from the reality of that atypical emotional and psychological damage and the attendant changes that damage wreaks in John’s view of reality and the world around him.
So what in the hell does that mean in real terms, specific to John and his sons? That he can do anything he wants and be excused from culpability because he’s traumatized by the mode of Mary’s murder? Certainly not. For me, the point is less whether or not he can be excused for poor choices than it is whether or not those choices are actually rightly judged as poor (as compared to just the lesser of two evils) in the context of his unique situation.
Here are some of the ways I see it differently than most, and why I think these differences make all the difference in whether or not John is rightfully judged a good daddy or a bad one.
The first and most important dynamic that seldom gets due consideration according to how much weight it carries in why John makes the choices he does is this: Mary isn’t just murdered, Mary is murdered by supernatural means to which John bears intimate witness. The usual yardstick of a man widowed by means of murder isn’t the dynamic in play here. Rather, John is a man widowed by means of a perception-altering event that strips him of far more than simply his wife. It strips him of every reality he knows, as well as every faith in those realities, in the voracity of his own experiences, in the dependability of his own perceptions and in the trustworthiness of his own sensory determinations, not to mention whatever belief in God, Karma or Cosmic Fairplay he might have indulged prior to the appearance of the ceiling demon.
This is, at least in part, why I say way back when that I find the Quest aspect to be more-or-less irrelevant to the choices John makes as a parent, especially early on in the boys’ childhood. I see the Quest as an evolution of John’s damage as much as his parental choices are. Which is to say, the Quest isn’t the reason John makes his choices, but rather, it is simply another tragic but inevitable consequence of the damage inflicted by the mode of Mary’s murder.
If Mary had been murdered by normal means, I would be far more prone to agree that John’s choices are less understandable or forgivable than I believe them to be (although, truthfully, I still allow a lot more latitude in a get-out-of-bad-parent-rap-free way for parents who suffer the collateral damage from this kind of traumatic loss than most people do). If the choices he makes are made in quest of personal vengeance rather than for child protective reasons (as I posit they are), then I, too, can see where they are less defendable in the long run, especially in the context of the emotional damage they inflict on both boys, but most specifically, on Dean.
Harsh as it may sound, I can hop onboard the boat of yes, your wife was murdered, but you have two young sons to raise, so get the fuck over it already and do your daddy job or pursue your vengeance quest on your own, leaving them somewhere safe to be raised in a functional manner by people who aren’t so emotionally scarred they can’t do what needs to be done. And I think this is the stance many fans take: That this is a reasonable expectation for one to have for the father of two young boys, even if his wife has been murdered in a particularly horrific manner.
What this stance doesn’t accommodate, however, is the enormous difference wrought by the MODE of Mary’s horrific murder. Because her mode of murder (demonically supernatural) effectively invalidates everything John knows (or has ever known) about reality; and because it globally re-defines his every experience and perception as to what is really happening in the world as compared to what he has always taken to be happening; and because it re-casts his every new knowledge of perceived reality to something that exists in direct (and mortal) opposition to what the overwhelming majority of the rest of the world (including both the governmental and law enforcement structures) takes as a known given; and because it creates in him an enormous deficit of knowledge and understanding and viable research resources about the way the world really works and what is required to not only survive this new world, but also protect his sons in it; and because it seems so specifically and singularly and murderously focused on his family in general, and one of his sons in specific; Mary’s mode of murder requires a comprehensive re-structure of every knowing John has ever known.
It isn’t simply a case of recovering from the loss of a woman loved, it is a whole new world in which John and his sons are the mice, and all the cats are invisible, unknown, and hungry as hell for the taste of Winchester blood.
In my view, THIS is the dynamic in which John Winchester makes his parental choices. And in this dynamic, his every choice - especially early on - must logically be driven by an overwhelmingly paranoid fear for the safety of all he has left in the world: his sons. And by the equally paralyzing knowledge that he is utterly unqualified and ill-equipped to protect them from an evil he must feel is specifically aimed at taking them out … Sam in specific, but equally Dean merely by virtue of sibling proximity. And lastly by the inescapable reality that both boys are so young and vulnerable as to be utterly and completely dependent on him for survival. On his skills, on his knowledge and on his dedication to them and their continued safety … only the last of which he would rightfully feel he actually possesses in any way that is relevant to the new world defined by the demonically supernatural mode of Mary's murder.
And all this happens overnight.
Which is where I come to the Good Daddy part of my meta. Because when faced with this kind of incredible pressure, directly on the heals of the traumatic loss of his wife and in conjunction with the stripping of every belief - both scientific and spiritual - that he’s ever held, it is one hell of a man who doesn’t turn and walk away or just lay down and die. Or worse than either, close his eyes and pretend it never happened.
This is one of the major points in John’s favor as Daddy of the Millennium: In the context of what has happened and the effect it must have on his every perception of reality, John lacks the capacity to ignore what happened, forget what happened, delude himself about what happened, fail to pursue answers about what happened, or be stupid or selfish about what happened. He indulges none of these answers - all much easier to palate than the catastrophic re-structure of his sense of reality - even though the temptation would have to be to take whatever option is offered that allows for the rejection of a comprehensive re-structure of perception rather than accept what such a re-structure requires you to accept: That everything you’ve ever known is wrong.
This is a fundamental precept of Human nature: We believe what we can believe as far as we can believe it, then we justify the rest away. If something happens to us that falls outside our capacity to believe it can actually happen, Humans are incredibly likely to reject any and all facts - up to and including scientific data, experiential data and seemingly indisputable sensory data - that conflicts with what they already accept as reality, especially if it conflicts with one of the foundations upon which they build their perception of reality.
It’s a textbook "Who you gonna believe? Reality or your lying fucking eyes?" dynamic; and it is a rare individual indeed who will choose their lying fucking eyes over everything they have ever believed. Especially if what their lying fucking eyes is telling them is as horrific as what John’s eyes tell him in witnessing the mode of Mary’s murder.
John is one of those rare individuals. Rather than take the road well traveled, he takes the hard one that dives straight down into hell, and he does it simply because he is not a guy who can delude himself into believing what he knows to have happened didn’t happen. Of all the other options available to him, he takes none.
Not the close your eyes and sing very loud option. Or pray and it won’t have happened. Or pray and it will unhappen. Or just pray and hope it doesn’t happen again. Or just get up and go to work and it will have never happened. Or will unhappen. Or won’t happen again.
Not the drink yourself into oblivion to forget it option. Or just forget it because you refuse to remember it. Or forget it because then you aren’t crazy, or won’t be viewed as crazy, or won’t have to pretend it isn’t making you crazy.
Not the what I saw is not what I saw option. Or maybe it was a dream. Or I must have been on crack (or in a waking dream state). Or maybe I have a brain tumor, and I just imagined the whole thing.
Not the it’s over so what does it matter option. Whatever it was, I don’t want to know. Whatever it was, I don’t know how to find out. Whatever it was, I don’t want to deal with it, or what it means, or what it requires me to believe.
Not the I’m alive and so are the boys so it must be over option. Whatever it was, it was an aberration, only a one time thing. Whatever it was, we’re safe because we must be safe, right? Whatever it was, I can’t do anything about it anyway so lets just hope for the best.
All of these options are so much easier than the one John chooses: to believe what he saw even if no one else does; to re-structure his understanding of the world based on what he saw; to seek out answers about what he saw; to learn how to defend himself and his sons against a repeat performance of what he saw. And all these aspects of his choice lead to the most important choice John makes, one that defines him The Good Daddy no matter what other choice he may make in the future.
He doesn’t walk away.
It would be so easy to either actually believe, or to pretend to believe, or to convince yourself you should believe that leaving your children behind while you ignore or purse the evil that destroyed their mother is a choice made in their best interests. It would be so easy (and so socially acceptable) to place them somewhere their every child’s world need will be met; where they’ll be loved and fed and clothed and schooled and raised in perfect normalcy while being made to feel safe and protected within the context of the reality that existed for John before Mary’s murder, and that still exists in the perception of most people who aren’t John.
It would be so easy to walk away as if you aren’t the only one in the whole world who has any chance at all of being able to protect them from whatever it is that killed their mother and that seems fixated on, at the very least, Sam, and perhaps both of them.
But this is the Bad Daddy choice. This is the selfish choice. This is the stupid choice. This is the choice that a man less than John might very easily -- and almost excusably - have made, either because he can’t face the making of any other choice or because he truly is short-sighted enough to buy the crap the well-meaning advisors who didn’t watch their wives light up on the ceiling of their son’s nursery are dishing out as the obvious "right thing to do."
So the foundation of every belief I hold when it comes to John’s parental choices is this: Every choice he makes (that doesn’t involve walking away at a later date) after choosing not to walk away from those boys "for their own good" when he must know he is the only person who can hope to protect them from their mother’s fate (or worse) by not only being able and willing to see the Demon coming, but also by being willing and able to learn how to defend against its inevitable eventual coming, is more-or-less irrelevant to any discussion of Good Daddy versus Bad Daddy.
John makes the one choice he HAS to make to protect those boys. After that, he makes every choice he makes in the context of feeling he must either protect them from the lives they have no choice (because of the Demon, not because of John) but to live, or to teach them to protect themselves from the eventuality of having to live that life without him there to protect them.
And that, in my evaluation, is the absolute text book definition of Papa!John: The Good Daddy.
So … that being said, am I trying to pass off the notion that John always makes the right choices when it comes to his boys? Hell, no. I’m a have my cake and eat it, too, kind of gal; mostly because I've never really seen why there can't either be two cakes, or one cake in two places at the same time (quantum physics and all, donchya know).
And by this I mean to say: I absolutely believe that a whole buttload of John’s parental choices are incredibly fucknuttish in their level of general testosteronie irresponsibility and/or in the emotional collateral damage they inflict upon the boys he so loves for no reason other than he can be a real thoughtless fucknut when he doesn’t think not to be.
But I don’t see any of those choices as ones that qualify him to be considered a bad daddy. To the contrary, they just make him human. He’s a parent just like every other parent … sometimes he does the right thing, sometimes he doesn’t. And as it is with all parents, his children are the ones who inevitably suffer for the choices he makes one way that should have been made another.
Hell, I’ll even go so far as to admit that there have been a number of occasions on which I’ve really wanted to smack John upside the head with a cast iron skillet for some of the shitty things he’s said and/or done to Dean. (But again, that doesn’t make him a bad dad. Just a dad.) And even beyond that, I’ll posit that, as the boys grew less vulnerable and John got farther and farther away from the traumatic event that so re-structured his entire perception of reality (and consequently more knowledgeable and skilled at the art of protection by the new world rules), there may well have been a number of opportunities he passed on that would have allowed for a more normal way of life for his sons without requiring any sacrifice of their safety.
And it is here that I think The Quest for vengeance comes into play. I tend to believe, based on many of the early things John notes in his journal and on the way he trains Dean to the task of fighting wars against evil even at the tenderest ages of childhood (well before any offensive agenda could logically be considered without unacceptable risk to the child being part of the equation), that John’s original choices are not about any quest for vengeance. Rather, I find his choices to be predominantly (if not all) protective in nature, with the only element of "Let’s Kill Demon" finding play being in a "the best defense is a good offense" strategy that tends to be a bit typical of military-minded and trained men. Or ones who watch too much Monday Night Football.
Because "Let’s Kill Demon" wasn’t originally a game of vengeance, however, doesn’t mean it isn’t now. To the contrary, a quest for vengeance is exactly what evolved from choices originally made for protective reasons. And I consider this John’s greatest failing as a parent, albeit an extraordinarily understandable one for which I have great empathy. Because when his children were strong enough to protect themselves, and when he knew enough about the way this new world works to feel reasonably confident he can protecting them, it is a damn fool’s move to go looking to hunt down a Demon who, from all appearances, isn’t hunting them at this particular time.
Is strike first a reasonable defense against the perceived eventuality of inevitable attack from a enemy of unknown strength? Sure. I can make that argument, and so can John. But hide your ass well and stay hidden, especially when you have children who can otherwise suffer for your aggression, can be a damned effective strategy, too; and I’m not sure John ever really considered that.
And he should have.
But as the lyrically articulate
janissa11 points out, "John is a juggernaut, and he has been careening down the hill for 22 years now. Military background: collateral damages, acceptable losses. Winning is everything."
I find that statement a beautifully articulated and achingly accurate portrayal of what John becomes in later years. And he becomes it, IMO, not only from being a bitter, broken man stripped of the woman he loves, but also from being a Good Daddy who has spent so much time in mortal fear for his sons’s lives that his need to strike back at the source of that fear eventually becomes an obsession to which he is vulnerable, and to which he tragically capitulates.
By the time we join Sam and Dean at Stanford, it isn’t about protecting his boys any longer, it’s about getting his vengeance on the Demon who murdered his wife and destroyed his family and his life. And while it is certainly understandable that John might feel this way, it is also one fucked up way of being, and one that holds the fatal potential to destroy everything he’s spent all these years trying so hard to protect: His sons.
That being said, however, I feel a need to point out that the choices John makes now aren’t choices made for children who have no option but to follow blindly and trust. When that was John’s role in Sam and Dean’s lives, he made the right choices for them. But now, when his sons are adults who are not only capable of defending themselves, but also capable of choosing not to follow him in his obsessive quest for vengeance (as Sam has so aptly proven), John has begun making choices for himself.
The choices he could have made 22 years ago are the ones he is making now. Are they the right choices? Who knows. Depends on your perspective, I suppose. But the one thing I do know - at least as much as I know anything - is that these choices aren’t ones that make John a bad dad. Rather, they are ones that make him a Good Dad when his sons so desperately needed him to be a Good Dad; but just John the Broken-Hearted Man now, when he can afford to be such, even if that indulgence does hold the potential to court a doom for his entire family that he spent the last 22 years of his life doing everything he could to avoid.
So there you have it: Why I feel Papa!John deserves The Good Daddy of the Millennium Award rather than the ire of fans who (arguably rightfully) lay the blame for most of Dean’s damage right at his father’s feet. Because John is often a fucknut to Dean, and often that fucknuttery is utterly undeserved.
But the fact still remains that John’s love for, and devotion to, both of his sons has always been so unbreakably strong that he makes the hardest choice any man can ever make in choosing to NOT walk away from them "for their own good" two decades ago, when the obvious choice by all accountings other than the measure of a Good Daddy’s heart said those kids were well shed of him. And when he could not possibly have been under more justifiably debilitating extenuating circumstances himself to shirk the responsibilities of child care, in that every reality he has ever known has been stripped away at the same time as he suffers perhaps the most grievous loss any soul can suffer: the heinous murder of the one he loves.
But even in the most raw grip of this horrific loss and terrible vulnerability in a new and terrifying world where he is all that stands between his family and demonic annihilation, Papa!John remains ever The Good Daddy. And the only reason he does is because John Winchester, the man, is not capable of being anything less.
-finis-
Okay, I'm going to go just sit in a chair and stare at Jensen for an hour now. Cause, like, my brain hurt, dude.