jasmineintheforest asked

Hello shal

Question. Why do you think John even hid Adam's existence from Sam and Dean?

(If he had wanted...he could have let them know about each other and connect. Sam and Dean would be fairly young. Or even if they weren't, I just don't believe he was hiding it out of fear of their reactions uk. He could have even asked Kate to babysit or some other nonsense. Ukwim. Esp if she already knows he's a hunter. He did exactly none of this.)

Not to mention, I also wonder what his relationship with Kate was even like.

I simply don't get John enough to come to a specific conclusion uk.

Do u have any thoughts 👀

(no pressure as always ofc <3)

shallowseeker

This is not gonna be very coherent, sorry…

I’ve been thinking about this, but I’m not quite sure! I think you’re right, that is was a lot more about danger and paranoia than anything else.

Kate herself is interesting, too, because she actively hid John from Adam for most of his life. (I know there are family pictures of them, and Kate has a photo of John, so it’s possible they rekindled when Adam was older, but all in all there was a huge chunk of time where they did not see each other, and Kate was NOT interested in calling him.)

I think you’re on to something that she could be a factor somehow. John’s historical response to being lied to and manipulated was to overprepare to the point of insanity and cruelty. And with Kate, he absolutely did NOT do that. It’s so interesting how being a hunter seems to have pushed him closer to Mary’s (and Sam’s) Runaway Mode with respect to civilians!

He became more and more closed off the longer he lived, and the more horrors he saw, huh…

DEAN: Why do you think Dad never told us about this kid, Sam? Huh? Why do you think he ripped out the pages?

SAM: Because—

DEAN: Because he was protecting him! …[a]nd we are gonna respect his wishes.

I mean re: young Sam and Dean’s reactions: I’m sure their reactions were a factor, because he correctly assessed how unfair it is for Adam to be protected, while the soldier-children get put in the line of fire. Younger Sam, for his part, would have been as FURIOUS as Dean was hurt.

With respect to John’s madness, I think he had moments of lucidity throughout his life, so there would be shame, too. Shame he can rationalize, but shame all the same. He ruined Sam and Dean’s lives irrevocably, but they’re slso “lost causes” at a certain point, especially after he starts to unravel the Azazel stuff with Sam. Maybe analogous to how Kevin Tran can’t escape his doom, or how Jack Kline can’t escape his having been hunted from the time he was born.

i.e. His kids are “lost causes,” for now, but not THIS kid.

He probably rationalized that he could introduce them to Adam “later,” when all the danger had passed, and Sam had gone back to school, and Dean had gotten a family/home.

///

Other thoughts:

Aside// I think the wraith might be exaggerating this:

ADAM: —and after I begged her—God, twenty-four-seven—she finally called him. God, when John heard he had a son, he raced to town. I mean, he dropped everything. He drove all night.
[…]
He taught me poker and pool and even bought me my first beer when I was fifteen. And, uh…he showed me how to drive. Dad, he had this beautiful ‘sixty-seven Impala—

I mean, I think the wraith IS telling the truth in terms of the history, but there’s a spin.

I don’t get the sense Adam would have talked about his John with this sort of almost-pride at being so important to John and bragging how John “dropped everything.”

Despite the happy photos, I get the sense that there’s a lot of resentment with respect to John, especially about his mother having to shoulder so much on her own:

Later, Adam is under duress, but this sounds more like him to me. He sounds lonely and desperate, but I feel like there’s resentment bleeding through all his longing. He’s also VERY straightforward and honest, you know? While the wraith reads passive-aggressive.

ADAM: No, John Winchester was some guy who took me to a baseball game once a year. I don’t have a dad. So we may be blood, but we are not family

…

ADAM: Really. You see, it was me and it was my mom. That’s it. She worked the graveyard shift at the hospital. I cooked my own dinners. I put myself to bed. So you can say whatever you want about our dad, but the truth is, I would have taken anything..

So did John drop everything? I mean, maybe. But even if he did, it’s possible he was paranoid at the prospect of Adam being cursed, in danger, or a trap to get at him personally…

Given that John’s paranoia in episode one IS a correctly assessed fear with respect to the meta threat of the story, (“Things are starting to happen. You’re in danger! We’re all in danger”), I wouldn’t put it past John to have a GUT, low-level awareness of Heaven/Michael’s designs on his bloodline… kinda like how Mary had a spooky awareness/sense of “angels” after fighting Anna and Uriel in 1979.

His new, youngest child was in just as much danger from cosmic forces from being in his bloodline as his middle child. He just didn’t overtly know that yet. And if that was at all living in his subconscious, then his gut is right.

As for why he didn’t prepare Adam at all, or use Kate to protect his other kids? I don’t know. I do think it’s very Mary-coded though, and it’s interesting how he continued to sort of “become” the real her in these crucial ways!

///

RE: paranoia & danger

All in all, I think ripping the book pages wasn’t so much about about Sam and Dean’s reactions, but for Adam’s safety.

We don’t know WHEN exactly John burned the pages, but there may have come a time when John got enough Winchester (and Campbell?) danger signals that he started ripping pages, or burning birth records…

…or even falsifying his own blood type to throw off paternity? I’m just saying!

It was super dangerous for John to spend any time with Adam at all, and I think if you asked him about it in season 1, he’d have wished he’d never met up with the kid, for his own good.

4x19, 5x18

shallowseeker

via @angelsdean

Two thoughts that answer the timeline part which i skipped right over at first! Adam born 1990 and Sam born 1983. :) But yeah, when John was meeting Adam, the developmental arcs were also at/near these huuuge junctions for everyone!!!!