Dean didn't want to be a hunter till he was 16?

[citrusjava]

Rewatched part of Bloodlust. In it, Dean says he "embraced the life" at 16.

I wonder what Dean was like before the hunt that changed his attitude toward hunting. Did he have doubts but didn't share them? Didn't want to do it but stayed quiet? Did John take him on the hunt that changed his mind because he noticed something?

Perhaps Dean wasn't always the good kid, perhaps he ever said no to John, yelled at him? Perhaps it wasn't just Sammy? Perhaps Sam was too young to be as confrontational and rebellious as later, perhaps he was the good kid for a while.

DEAN
... So. I pick up this crossbow. And I hit that ugly sucker with a silver-tipped arrow right in his heart. Sammy's waiting in the car, and uh, me and my dad take the thing into the woods, burn it to a crisp. I'm sitting there and looking into the fire, and I'm thinking to myself, I'm sixteen years old. Most kids my age are worried about pimples, prom dates. I'm seeing things that they'll never even know. Never even dream of. So right then, I just sort of -

GORDON
Embraced the life?

DEAN
Yeah.

Thanks, Superwiki!

Comments

[nickelmountain.livejournal.com]

I don't see Sam standing up to John as a bad thing at all! And I guess I don't see little-kid Sam being annoying from time to time in fic as a criticism of Sam, either. Little kids are pretty annoying, and little brothers are ESPECIALLY annoying. It's just a fact of life. (I tend to see a lot of kid!Sam's snottiness/fussiness/annoyingness as just classic younger sibling. I personally relate to it a lot. I annoyed the crap out of my older sister when we were kids, and that can't have been much fun for my parents, either. :P) But if that's not something you enjoy reading in fic, I completely get that, too.

When I think of the pre-series fic I love, so much of it is about the tension that had to have existed between the three of them. By all normal measures, Sam was a really good kid. But his goals - doing well in school, not having to stitch up his dad and brother on a regular basis, and creating some space for himself to breathe - put him at odds with John's goals. Automatic conflict. Then you factor in Dean's goals, which I think can be boiled down to wanting to take care of his family. He loved Sam and wanted him to thrive, but he also idolized his father. He saw both sides, and was sort of forced into the role of peacemaker. I think when Sam did give in to John, he did it for Dean, not for John.

The fics I don't care for are the ones that paint John as some horrible monster because of that. John was a super flawed parent, but I imagine him as a man who loved both of his sons very deeply and just didn't really have the best tools to work with as a parent. pdragon76's "The Long Narrow Rope" captures my view of John pretty perfectly. I guess Sam could be seen as a little annoying in that one, too, but I find it an entirely sympathetic sort of annoying. His dad isn't listening to him when he really should be, he and Dean are doing some pretty normal brothers-trapped-in-a-car squabbling, and he gets sick on top of everything. Totally not his fault. Sam irritates John because John doesn't know how to relate to him, and while Dean appears to be irritated by Sam in a couple of places, he also snaps seamlessly into concerned, showing that his irritation is more of a front of big-brotherness than a reflection of genuine feeling. John is also pretty severely irritated by Dean in that fic, too, and I don't think it comes off as a condemnation of Dean, either.

When that tension is presented in fics like The Long Narrow Rope or big_pink's Dazzleland (have you read that, btw? SO GOOD), I tend not to see it as a condemnation of any of them. I see it as tragic. Their family dynamic is a catch-22, and none of them comes out completely clean. And that's okay.

wrt Dean being like John - I think it was probably pretty clear to John that Dean wanted his approval, and I think he approved of Dean falling in line with him in terms of obedience and hunting because he saw it as the best way to keep the family together and safe, but I think he also knew that Dean loving classic rock and muscle cars didn't actually make him a carbon copy of John. Dean was the easier kid for John in a lot of ways, but if he'd actually been more like John in terms of temperament and personality, that wouldn't have been true anymore. So no, I don't think he really wanted Dean to be like him. I think he might have wished Sam was more like Dean, though. Which, yeah, not fair to Sam, either.

I don't think Dean really understood who John was as a person until his mid-to-late 20's, during the run of the show. His hero worship got in the way before that. But I do think he might have seen himself as a bridge between Sam and John. I think this is the calculus he might have done (pardon my made-up notations): [If] Sam loves Dean, [And] John and Dean get along, [And] Dean is like John, [Then] Sam and John should get along.

Oh man, thinking about Winchester family dynamics hurts. It's so hard and so sad. I love it. :P

So, I've talked a lot about my head canon for the Winchesters. What do you think they were like? Accepting that Sam standing up for himself is a good thing, how would you show those conflicts from John and/or Dean's perspective in a way that doesn't feel to you like a criticism or condemnation of Sam?