And here I thought I made it all up! Of course there's nothing new under the sun - and no kid should have to go through this particular kind of hell, and I'm sorry your childhood was anything like this!
...canon seems to indicate that these kids did have hard childhoods, and being twisted like that, I wanted to explore it. I got the idea from Bugs, where Dean goes, "It wasn't that bad...." and Sam goes, with his face all twisty and hurty, "You don't remember, do you." Because to Dean's way of thinking, this is the PERFECT summer...no school, nothing to do but play with guns and run through the woods. He's loving it. Sam is not. To Sam it's the summer from hell.
And yeah, John. One reader pointed out to me that what I did was allow readers to see John through Sam's eyes, but to give indications without the Sam filter of what John was really going through. And I was like, I did that? Oh..er, YEAH, and I totally took credit. But I can't really, because it wasn't conscious on my part. Now, of course, I'm hyper aware and it's much harder when you're aware, of writing to the same affect.
But I like what you say about the fact that Sam can't figure out if this particular summer is the way it's supposed to be OR if he's just horribly bad at everything....I hadn't thought about it like that before, but I think you are right. Part of Sam's pain comes from the fact that he doesn't know enough about the world in order to have true perspective on this summer.
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...canon seems to indicate that these kids did have hard childhoods, and being twisted like that, I wanted to explore it. I got the idea from Bugs, where Dean goes, "It wasn't that bad...." and Sam goes, with his face all twisty and hurty, "You don't remember, do you." Because to Dean's way of thinking, this is the PERFECT summer...no school, nothing to do but play with guns and run through the woods. He's loving it. Sam is not. To Sam it's the summer from hell.
And yeah, John. One reader pointed out to me that what I did was allow readers to see John through Sam's eyes, but to give indications without the Sam filter of what John was really going through. And I was like, I did that? Oh..er, YEAH, and I totally took credit. But I can't really, because it wasn't conscious on my part. Now, of course, I'm hyper aware and it's much harder when you're aware, of writing to the same affect.
But I like what you say about the fact that Sam can't figure out if this particular summer is the way it's supposed to be OR if he's just horribly bad at everything....I hadn't thought about it like that before, but I think you are right. Part of Sam's pain comes from the fact that he doesn't know enough about the world in order to have true perspective on this summer.