gah thinking abt John and Mary today, branching off from this post, and my tags on there, about John being Mary's suburban dream, a ken doll, a djinn dream illusion. He's like Carmen. He's like Lisa. He's this suburban Ideal for Mary. Thinking about how young Mary says he's everything a hunter ISN'T. How Samuel says Mary "wanted a normal life, too." and John WAS her normal. She shielded him from the truth about her life and the supernatural. She continued hunting, even after getting her "out" because she couldn't really stop, because she knew she didn't really "fit" in that suburban dream. But she kept John out of it, because he wasn't made for it. Because he was her tether to "normal."
And I'm thinking about the cupids and Heaven and the matchmaking. About how they didn't get along at first but then heaven made it so. And while yes it is undoubtedly horrific, I also think it's not so much that Mary was forced to be with a man she ordinarily would despise, I think it's moreso that John was polished up to be the Ideal Man she dreamed of in her fantasies of "getting out" of the life.
In SPNWIN we see John is much more troubled, dealing with ptsd, and abandonment issues from his childhood. Up until the point where post-canon Dean intervenes, we're to believe this is pretty similar how OG John and Mary's lives were like too. However, the way OG young John is presented? He's squeaky clean. He's un-troubled. Zero baggage despite having the same backstory as SPNWIN John. It's unrealistic. To me it reeks of angel interference. And it's why I kind of interpret OG John to be kind of an illusion. Or maybe not illusion in a literal sense, but he's definitely been altered by the angels. Like, it's not that he wasn't actually kinder / gentler / happier back then, but moreso that I think certain qualities were amplified while others were diminished. The stuff that made him butt-heads with Mary? Erased. The goody-two shoes boy next door qualities? Amplified to the max. So that suddenly Mary was seeing him less as that-thorn-in-her-side-winchester and more as her Idealized Fantasy Man. Those parts of him that she loved were always there, but they weren't all that he was. Instead of "forced together by invisible hands" I tend to see it more as "got a permanent pair of rose-tinted glasses" where they only see the good qualities of each other.
And with John being from Michael's line and essentially Heaven's vessel, it makes sense to me that Heaven would alter John's personality to fit with Mary rather than the other way around (though John definitely gets his version of "rose tinted glasses" too). Heaven sees both of them as pawns and objects for their greater mission, but John especially would feel like "theirs" to really mold as they please.
