#john meta

[theriverbeyond]

how do we know in the books that john is indigenous? can you say more about how his indigeneity is important to his story?

hello! so there is a word of god post on race (doesn't mention John but mentions that Gideon is "mixed Maori"), BUT I frankly don't think word of god statements are worth any weight without actual in-text support (see: the "dumbledore is gay" situation). SO!

Specific evidence that John Gaius is Maori, as revealed in Nona the Ninth:

When he is listing his education, John mentions having gone to Dilworth School (John 20:8). Dilworth is an all boys boarding school in Auckland and accepts students based on financial need instead of academic or sporting achievements. Demographics appear to be about 70% low income Maori boys, indicating that it is highly likely that John is Maori

John reports that P- said he looked like a "Maori-TV pink panther" (John 15:23) when his eyes turned gold. Maori TV is a TV station that is focused primarily on Maori culture & language revitalization, with presumably all or mostly Maori hosts, and tbh I don't see why P- would say this unless John was himself Maori

John uses a te reo Māori phrase ("kia kaha, kia māia") (John 5:20) when he is saying goodbye to the corpses in the cryo lab before the power is shut off. Though it is possible he said this as a non-Maori kiwi, but in combination with the previous two points of evidence I think this all very strongly points to him being Maori

He also renames his daughter Kiriona Gaia, "Kiriona" being just literally the name "Gideon" in te reo Māori

TLT is not a series that hands you anything on a silver platter but to ME this is all pretty solid proof

Why is this relevant to The Locked Tomb?

In Nona the Ninth, we learn that before he completed apotheosis and ate the solar system, John was basically trying to save the earth from capitalism-caused climate change. Climate justice and the rights of indigenous people over their own land are deeply tied together, in the same way that climate catastrophe and capitalism/ imperialism/ colonialism are linked. disclaimer that this is NOT my area of study and others have definitely said it better; this is just the basic gist as I understand it, but on quick search I found some sources here and here if you want to do some reading.

TLT is not a series that hands you anything on a silver platter, but i don't think it is a stretch to see John as an indigenous man trying to save the earth and getting ignored and shut down at every turn by primarily western colonial powers (PanEuro, the USA) who declare him a terrorist and then as a reader thematically connecting that to the experience of indigenous climate activists IRL

there are absolutely TLT meta posts that have discussed this before me; tumblr search is nonfunctional and I have been looking for an hour and a half and cannot find anything specific even though i KNOW i reblogged multiple posts about this in the first few weeks following NTN's release. sad & I am sorry

I think that by the time the books take place, John is 10k years removed from the cultural context he grew up in, with the Nine Houses having become a genocidal colonial power in their own right (with more parallels to be made between John's forever war for the resources of literal life energy and like, oil wars), but I also think that John Gaius is a fictional character who can represent and symbolize multiple different things in service of telling a story. (not to mention the potential thematic parallels being made to how oppressed people sometimes are pressed into replicating the power dynamics of their oppressors and continuing the cycle--now that is a tumblr post i KNOW i read last year and definitely cannot find right now, once again sad & I am sorry)

How Radical Was John Gaius, Really is a forum thread that was locked by the moderators after 234534645674564 pages of heated debate

#john gaius #nona the ninth #the locked tomb #tlt meta #i need to fix my tagging system fr #john meta #tlt thoughts #trb.txt #if anyone wants to add anything or correct anything PLS do so!!! i did my best hope this helps anon. this took me 2 hours

[dotthings]

Some thoughts on John in TW 1.06. I am going to make Star Wars references. It cannot be helped.

Lata and Matt are both John mirrors in this ep, and represent the two paths John could go down.

John is currently getting frequently lost in the violence. Lata already broke clear of her downspiral, and represents hope of how people can escape it (at least at times, although as I said in my post about Lata, I’m a little worried about her, if she picks up a machete and kills monsters).

John, your John is showing again, like, a lot.

It’s not just the violence, it’s the tunnel vision, the obsessiveness, the refusal to compromise, the wanting it done his way. You can see glimpses here of the future in how he’ll treat his sons while he escapes into hunting as a way to deal with his grief for Mary. While he will sacrifice everything including his children’s well being for hunting. Was it really about grief for Mary? Or was it the only way John could endure the pain, anger, hurt, that was already inside of him for a long time.

And I think this series has hit a pattern on it. With the signs of how he will break later showing amid John’s better nature, John’s empathy, John’s bravery and kindness, but we know he doesn’t escape the cycle. We can see how he is capable of listening and is reachable though.

This is also the 2nd time an ep ends up with John seeking out Lata, being mindful of Lata, after the hunt’s over. He also this time asks Lata for help. John and Lata's friendship is very very soft. (Again, this makes me fearful for Lata, John's polar opposite mirror).

Who had John Winchester learning how to meditate on their bingo card, not me.

This isn’t an alt John, or a “better” version of John’s history. This is the real story, the truth, and it’s more complicated than we, the audience knew, or Sam and Dean knew growing up. Dean’s unfolding that full history.

Maybe the groundwork on the reasons John doesn’t get entirely lost are being laid out here as much as its mapping his downspiral. Millie and the monster club, all are part of the love and support John gets. He is capable of pulling out of it, or we wouldn’t have 1973 John or 1978 John on the mothership, and we never would have seen at least the glimpses in modern day John his capacity for love.

He would just be wholly lost and all dark, with good still in him somewhere, but John didn't slide down so far he completely lost himself. We’re seeing on The Winchesters John spiraling downward but also growing--and those two things can co-exist. We know there were problems before Mary died, it was never perfect, but it was Mary dying burning on the ceiling makes him snap hard, the progress got lost, and that was the start of a deeper downspiral.

I’ve made the Anakin comparison about John a bunch of times and The Winchesters is a similar portrait of a good human who downspiraled but John isn’t actually an Anakin figure. Older John’s Anakin who went off the rails with grief and revenge but didn't go full Vader. Think of a broken Anakin raising Luke and Leia while on a revenge obsessed path to take out Palpatine. Not choosing the darkside, but letting in a lot of the darkness inside of himself. And the trauma that still might ensue for Luke and Leia being raised like that. While poor Obi-Wan argues with John, for the good of John's kids, and they finally have a big falling out over it. Wow okay thank you for that Star Wars AU prompt, The Winchesters.

John gets possessed by the ghost of Matt the dark John mirror. A hunter who downspiraled almost fully into darkness. His friends were terrified of him and he grew too powerful. Matt is the Anakin figure here. Matt went sith, messing with dark magic, but still had good in him, he responds to Lata's pleas to set John free and to Tracy's tearful regrets.

#The Winchesters #spnwin #spnwin meta #John Winchester #John meta #The Winchesters spoilers

[jensenknowsdeanbetterthanyou]

noticing all these parallels between young John Winchester and Dean is making me reluctantly accept that yes there is some part of John in Dean, especially when immediately reacting to trauma and loss. Dean will always be Mary coded but when i watch young John and Mary in the Winchesters its a bit like watching Dean’s personality split into two, one side represented by John and the other by Mary. Not quite 50/50 more like 30/70. 

we saw similar behaviour in s2 when he spiralled after John’s death, and again a little bit in s7 after Bobby’s death and finally in s13 after Cas died. it was that smaller percentage inside him that the Mark of Cain tapped into in s9 and s10.  

it’s not who Dean is, but it’s still there buried inside him, and those who want to hurt or manipulate Dean use it against him. 

since Dean was only 4 when Mary died, it’s fair to say that Dean inherited all his Mary traits - that he really is his mother’s son - but his John traits? were the majority of them learned? or ironically was it the years of being forced to keep quiet and be the mother to Sam, the good son to John, that caused his feelings to built up until John died. his anger coming out afterwards in outbursts. was that John like anger inherited? or was it the years of abuse and forced silence and obedience? 

either way, Dean fought with that side of himself for years and eventually won, the tragedy of John Winchester is that he lost, and his children paid for it. 

#dean winchester #dean and john #dean and mary #the winchesters #dean meta #john meta #the winchester family #generational trauma

[lovesigilss]

idk if anyone else agrees but i definitely think john likes to be needed, especially by his romantic partner and i definitely think he gets that in zee ❤️

#john constantine #zatanna zatara #johnzee #magicblazer #johnzee meta #john meta #my johnzee meta #my john meta #the witch speaks

[katakaluptastrophy]

The thing about having read our way through two previous books full of necromancers and weird eldritch shenanigans is that the absolute horror of what happens to John as a person doesn't quite register.

John's own glib, matter of fact narration tells the story as an apotheosis. He was doing great. He'd have fixed everything if only people had listened.

But reading between the lines in the John chapters, you glimpse something rather different.

John basically spends the first half of the Jod chapters sitting in the dark with his creepy yellow eyes, not eating or sleeping, literally stroking his favourite corpses and coming out with chill and fun statements about how he can feel their skin when he's away from them and he's 'waking up'. Cool, cool.

Passing swiftly over the cow dome, Presidential Puppet Pals, and the suitcase nuke, day to day life in the cow dome must have been fun... You're all on the Interpol watchlist, the Vatican is asking a lot of questions, the police are outside and John - who hasn't slept in a week and doesn't eat anymore and is probably wearing some kind of weird novelty tshirt - comes wandering past while you're eating breakfast, followed by a dozen silent, dead-eyed corpses like some kind of mother hen. He makes a cow joke, and then zones out because he got distracted by listening to the bacteria in your gut.

And then some guys die accidentally and it turns out he can eat death energy. So now he's got creepy Twilight eyes, an entourage of corpses, a cape, some very dodgy eyeliner, and he's barely breaking a sweat as he instantly kills over 100 people, says it was an accident, and then, dead serious, tells his followers to drag dead UN peacekeepers inside to add to his 'skeleton army'.

By the end, he's not slept or eaten in weeks, is tweaking his own bodily processes on the fly, is puppeting the dead US president and possibly an army of over a hundred corpses, monitoring G- in Melbourne, carrying on at least two conference calls, and helping to build barricades out of chairs.

And I just keep thinking how weird it must have been for his friends. How sometimes he would have seemed like the man they'd known and loved for so long, and sometimes he would seem different. Did they ever find themselves mourning the man he was? Did they ever stand there as he tuned into something they couldn't fathom, staring at them with those yellow eyes, and feel some awful, uncanny valley terror? Did he ever feel like he was losing himself? At what point did the cow jokes stop feeling like oh, classic John and start to be a reminder that his desire for vengeance and the scope of his powers were outstripping his remaining...perspective?...restraint?...humanity?

#the locked tomb #tlt #tlt meta #john gaius #We think about eldritch Alecto lots #but I think John's whole 'I'm just a guy' routine sometimes obscures that in many respespects he's just as unsettling

[diosapate]

mercy killed john cleanly. he did not die in pain, she did not disrespect his body; she killed him quickly and efficiently and that was it. john killed her brutally!! he mutilated her and covered someone else with her gore and only then killed her with a tap to the back of the head. he ripped a dead woman’s cloak from her body and touched her corpse with his bare foot to prove a point!!

all this to say: necromancy is disrespect for the dead under the guise of reverence, and john isn’t even bullshitting respect for the dead anymore in Thee most obvious way. god’s mercy is finite and he has none left; i suspect that his “i’m just a little guy :)” act is at its end and we are about to see more of the man who claims that guys like him don’t make mistakes.

#just like. the way he treats her body is insane to me. shes a character that already lacks bodily autonomy so this is just so. #cannot fault augustine for trying to slam dunk him into hell thus dooming the universe Again tbh #shoutout to aster for the phrase ‘he blew mercy up in the microwave’ cant stop thinking about it #tlt meta #mercymorn the first #john gaius #harrow the ninth #the locked tomb #aust.txt

[direquail]

I think what bothers me most about how John is talked about in the fandom is the implication that a different (implied: better) person would've done things differently and somehow more right than he did.

When the text goes to lengths to explore how suddenly coming into an incredible amount of power in a fatally constrained situation cannot lead to a good outcome.

If you're putting John in dialogue with the concept of the "magical girl", which Muir has said he is (a little tongue in cheek, but)--these are young, often profoundly unready people, who often get taken advantage of by the people who give them their powers. And like, yes, John is not a teenager, but I think that's part of the point, is that at no point is a person really prepared to become as powerful as he did--even before he merged with Alecto. Even when he was fully in control of his powers, even when they were given with honest intent and trust, even when he used them with the best of intentions and tried to do the right thing, there was no way for him to be prepared, especially given the situation he was in.

And it's funny to talk about how bad John must be in bed, but also, this isn't a scenario where John is some self-deluding Elon Musk-like villain or loser. He is genuinely trying to do the right thing, in terms of rescuing the Earth's population, rescuing the Earth Herself, and doing it ethically (see: M--'s insistence that they perfect the cryo containers until they could transport pregnant women).

I really do think this is something people are blocking out, because it is one of the uncomfortable parts of Muir's message with the series. But ESPECIALLY because the people "critiquing" him as an embodiment of patriarchy and empire are failing to see that part of Muir's critique is of human vulnerability to power: That is, that power corrupts.

And this even has echoes with Gideon & Harrow's story! Harrow begins the series in a deeply unequal dynamic with Gideon! And she does horrible things, not just because she is traumatized, but because she is traumatized and has the power to act her desires out on Gideon. She might have the motive (trauma), but that's not enough without the means (power).

And, yeah, I do have a semi-salty angle on this because people are frequently loath to think critically not just about axes of oppression but individual relationships of power when it applies to them and to people they like. ESPECIALLY when there is a very vocal segment of the fandom that is enthusiastically pro-harassment. It's very convenient to villainize John and actively dis-identify with him, because otherwise, you'd have to face the question of whether you'd do any better in his place. But the thing is, the mission of revenge he embarks on is a lot closer to many peoples' hearts than they'd like to consider.

That's the whole point.

#the locked tomb #john gaius #tlt meta #and let's be real--this is made easier by the fact that john is a man #given who the author is that's a meaningful choice. but it's not an uncomplicated one either

[relaxxattack]

trying to boil them down to their bare essentials for easier writing…. i don’t think i’m doing it right 😭

#homestuck #jane crocker #jade harley #jake english #june egbert #john egbert #hsmeta #op #my meta #<- barely lol

[aheavenofhell]

They mirrored the Job story

I don’t know if this has been said yet, but during the Job episode I was extremely preoccupied with the “sounds lonely” arc, preoccupied with Aziraphale changing, but I noticed something else.

There is something about that scene in the villa, where Aziraphale asks Crowley not to destroy Job’s children. Now, we know Crowley never had any plans to do this, so why would he lie to Aziraphale instead of just admitting it? Does he actually want to seem that demonic to him, does he want him to think he’s evil?

I don’t think so. At least, that isn’t the way I interpreted it.

I think Crowley was testing Aziraphale’s faith in him. He looks him in the eyes, he tells him he’s going to go through with it, and he watches his reaction. Aziraphale is on the verge of tears when he walks away, and when Crowley goes the opposite direction, you can see he looks a little disappointed.

Then Aziraphale finds out he didn’t kill the goats. And like that, his faith in him is restored.

So what does Crowley do? Just like God with Job, he escalates. He raises the stakes.

Next time, it’s the fire. The “are you sure, angel?” gets me every single time. He is looking Aziraphale in the eyes and asking for his faith, and Aziraphale looks back at him and this time, he gives it resolutely, firmly. Quite sure. And after that, Crowley doesn’t test him again.

It’s just so interesting to think about the state of their relationship at this point—the fact that Crowley is, relative to the rest of their existence, newly fallen. They’re treading this new ground, and Crowley doesn’t know where he stands in Aziraphale’s eyes. So in his own weird, definitely-not-trauma-fueled way, he decided to find out.

#good omens #ineffable husbands #crowley #aziraphale #aziracrow #good omens season 2 #go2 spoilers #analysis #good omens 2 #john finnemore #neil gaiman #good omens meta #s2 e2

[ilovejohnwinchester]

Thinking about early days on the road before John started leaving Sam with Dean and was still going around and talking to hunters trying to learn everything he could. Imagine you’re some hunter and you get a call that the new guy in town wants to meet at the roadhouse and talk demons or werewolves or witches or whatever, then he shows up with a 4-year-old and a baby. He’s real serious and writes down everything you say in his journal but he also has to get up halfway through to sing and bounce a cranky baby to sleep on his shoulder while the kid stares at you with a mouth full of French fries. No wonder every hunter in John’s generation seems to remember Dean and Sam whether Dean and Sam know them or not.

#also my headcanon as to how John and Bobby met #john #dean winchester #sam winchester #spn meta #supernatural #spn he #spn headcanon

[kuzuyamii]

any play, performance, or game is a cage because it's played by the rules written by someone else or whatever black sails is about.

#black sails #bs #edit #mine #meta #tv show #show #book #treasure island #james flint #john silver #long john silver #miranda barlow #max bs #character

[theriverbeyond]

"i have crossed the face of the universe; i poison it to match my grief" is one of the rawest lines in Nona the Ninth. there's like a whole thesis in here but Varun just says it so plainly, and it's so human. because that's what Cytherea did! that's what John is doing! that's what Kiriona, in all her rage and grief and loss of everything she ever had, has fallen down the path of. that's Alecto, the fury of unceasing anger. that's the cycle of abuse!!!

#question for AtN: WHO is going to break free? #nona the ninth #tlt meta #varun the eater #john gaius #kiriona gaia #rotating this. wish i was more articulate but hey it's like 1230am

[dotthings]

So John gets the reckoning with his father moment, he gets to confront Henry, but John's all "we don't have time for my issues right now we need information about the monster killing box" and so while Henry and John have at least a moment of being face to face fondly, it's not even the slightest use as helping John get closure, although it might be giving him a little comfort.

But the wound's not healed. John doesn't get to express his hurt, or hear Henry say why he left.

#John Winchester #Henry Winchester #The Winchesters #spnwin #john meta #The Winchesters spoilers #spnwin meta #maybe they are saving it for later if they bring back Henry's ghost again #but long term doesn't it make a whole lot of sense if that wound never gets healed and addressed

[ranna-alga]

"Do the Evolution" - Pearl Jam

#ranna word dumping #this specific lyric of the song reminded me soooo much of dutch/john and hosea/arthur #obviously john is very different from dutch but i think there is a reason why he was considered to be dutch's favourite son #john seems closer to dutch in a similar way arthur is with hosea but in a different manner i think. there is obviously a tension present #dutch is observant but only when he wants to be (otherwise i think he would have kicked micah out of the gang a long time ago) #john is just observant. he saw first-hand what happened in blackwater and is sus of dutch throughout the rest of the game #he isnt as dumb or slow as he calls himself #i read a meta about it and it explains it 1000x better than i can #as for hosea/arthur the parallels are already obvious enough #also i am quite a fan of pearl jam so teehee i had to make the selfish parallel #might make more like this idk #rdr #rdr2 #red dead redemption #red dead redemption 2 #arthur morgan #rdr2 arthur morgan #dutch van der linde #rdr2 dutch van der linde #john marston #rdr2 john marston #hosea matthews #rdr2 hosea matthews #outlaws for life #pearl jam

[arithmonym]

re-reading the locked tomb, and i'm thinking about how harrow identifies alecto as a "girl" rather than a "woman."

obviously, john had other sources of inspiration... but did you know that the original barbie doll was only supposed to be nineteen years old?

#given that tamsyn says she writes books for angry girls and her seventeen-year-old self: it feels VERY thematically relevant #i’m kicking myself a little for not picking up on it earlier!!! #also: contextualizes john and alecto’s relationship Differently to say the least. sidenote: everyone should read the magician’s apprentice #(the 2013 short story by tamsyn muir) #the locked tomb #tlt #tlt meta #alecto tlt #john gaius

[katakaluptastrophy]

Continuing to think about the horror of what happens to John, and the horrors of love...

When Alecto has first been created, she says to him "I picked you to change, and this is how you repay me?" and "What have you done to me?"

They're heartbreaking questions she has every right to ask, but there's something awful and ironic about them too. Because John also might have asked "what have you done to me?"

It's easy to get distracted by the cartoonish awfulness of John's own narration: "talk about police abuse", "come on, love. Guys as careful as me don't have accidents," "love a working tram system." But all of these comments come after moments where John has unwittingly come into proximity with violent death, an experience he repeatedly likens to having drugs forcibly injected into him; an omniscient, dream-like, out of body experience that seems to propel him forward through his basest impulses. The first time this happens, he's brought back from "the verge of something insane" by being shaken violently by P-. Lines like these aren't revealing John's diabolical plotting. They're a man who would rather own atrocities as premeditated than admit that he was losing his grip.

The second is when he encounters the soul of the earth. His human mind makes contact with the incoherent, furious soul of a planet. In any other context, this would be straightforwardly Lovecraftian. And everything he describes after that is full of elipses, jumbled, and detached. His friends are shot by gun-toting cultists and he says it was like a dream.

Hearing the earth screaming, feeling his friends' deaths under his skin like a drug, he might well have asked "what have you done to me?"

Alecto said to him, "I picked you to change, and this is how you repay me?" But as everything collapses, John says:

"I thought you were going to take me, somehow. Purge me. Use me as an instrument. But you didn't say anything...I was babbling, Show me. Come on. I'm ready. You kept screaming and screaming..."

John has spent months becoming something terrifying, an entity with yellow eyes and uncanny powers. He's discovered that death has an overwhelming impact on him that he cannot fully control. Everyone was relying on him to do something. And he did so many things: well-meaning things and stupid things and things that were lashing out in rage and frustration. Hundreds of people have died because of him. His friends have died because of him. Surely, surely there was a point to this. Surely there was meaning. Surely whatever did this to him, made him into this, had a greater plan.

But there is no plan. There is no great revelation. He tries to hurt the earth, to provoke some kind of answer, but the screaming continues. And when P dies, the person who snapped him out of it the last time, John lets go and the whole world dies.

John is kneeling on the grass vomiting up dirt and tearing out his own ribs, saying "there was still too much of me that was just a human being...", trying to swallow the soul of the earth. And by the end, the one shred he has to hold onto is a memory of playing with a doll as a child. That, and his anger...

The earth tried to reach out in the only way it could, amidst its incoherent suffering. And John tried to use the abilities it gave him, but he was only human. Fallible and proud and angry.

She said, "I still love you." And the horror; the horror of love, the horror of this story, is that to begin with they did this to each other.

To be clear: I don't mean to diminish the awfulness or the very specific forms that John's violence against Alecto takes, and continues to take across the story. I don't mean to excuse his own self-mythologisation. I certainly don't think he's blameless for the decisions he made and the agenda he pursued. But if there's one thing that happens over and over again in TLT, it's that the horror of love is not a one-way street.

And I wonder, in light of what we now know about the permeability of the soul, quite where John ends and Alecto begins. And when that blurring began...

#the locked tomb #tlt meta #john gaius #alecto the first #Can't wait to see what the Eldritch Alpha Couple get up to in ATN