Headcanon: John remembers a lot of intellectual stuff and things about himself but he doesn't remember anything about ppl close to him (BC of spectre) and he only gets feral around survivors
Otherwise he's mostly chill and will get into small talk with killers
But that's only after he's forced to calm down after killing (via straight jacket)
He's gotta have some level of intelligence if he's a trapper killer after all
He's certain he knows them, he recognizes their faces, their voices, but he can't remember what significance they had to him presaken, what their hobbies are, or even their names, and it's infuriating. On top of this, most of the people he knew presaken are survivors, ones the Specter has a tendency to put into the rounds where he's the killer.
It only makes sense that when the Specter actively tries to make him angry, when the Specter forces him to see the people he's so close to knowing, who's identities are just out of his reach, he goes over a tipping point which leads to him killing them, trying to just get their faces out of his head, to stop being aware of how much he knows but can't remember.
The reason the straight jacket helps him calm down after is that it forces him to stay still for a while, he can't act on that frustration, and it lets him return to his senses.
Despite this, he has been known to spend some time after being in the straight jacket but before he's feeling social again trying to remember the things he can't about them, trying to find fragments of who they are, whether they're from brief moments of clarity during the rounds where he can remember something about them being mentioned, or get some kind of hold on anything about them.
By this point, he's set up something akin to those bulletin boards with red string in an isolated part of the forest. A place the other killers tend not to wander to. After all, it's his burden to carry, his information to figure out, and he'd rather not drag them with him into this rabbit hole he can't find a way out of for the life of him.
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