i'm sorry i don't like "dean as a replacement for mary" deanjohn. it just...doesn't hit right for me. i feel like the happy, normal world john had with mary is so far away from him that he could never recreate it, even as a delusion or some kind of one-sided noncon roleplay. i think the death of mary broke and changed him so fundamentally. i think a relationship with his son is...more complicated than that. i think it exists on the other side of the chasm between who john was and who john is, almost as a manifestation of the ugliness of what he's become. it's him not being able to treat his kids like kids dialed to eleven. it's him trying to fill the gaping hole in his soul with the only thing he has left, the only family he has left, and destroying it in the process. anyway