#dutch is a whole fucking can of worm by himself as well where people tend to either excuse him of everything or make him completely evil

[lea-khena]

Kinda tired of seeing the fandom forget that john after saving jack from kidnapping starts really caring for abigail and jack. No, its not ooc to imagine john in rdr2 taking care of jack, mostly after the kidnapping. And lets not forget epilogue and rdr1 John is a whole different man who will kill for his family so much he loves them. And even before, during his semi deadbeat dad era, he is actually more than just that. John is a very nuanced character, so is every character in rdr2. Look at Jack constantly running after his dad, asking constantly for his attention, copying him a lot, down to the finger guns, the hand on the hip and the sassy attitude. He keeps running after John when there are literally ten other available "uncles" at camps to interact with, including Arthur who was being ten times more of a dad to Jack than John. If John was being completely dismissive of Jack, Jack wouldn't run after him. He wouldn't try to play with John if since birth John never played with him. He keeps trying because it happened before, sometimes, John says yes, even though most of the time he says no. This means that, sometimes, John did take him in his arms and gave Jack just enough love for Jack to want his attention.

Am i trying to excuse his shitty behavior? No, not at all. What I'm saying is characters, humans, have nuance, depth, they're not all black or all white. Obviously this sort of behavior from John, of being semi there for Jack and randomly and rarely giving him attention, created a ton of insecurities and attachment issues with Jack, which is something he will sadly carry on in the first game and even into adulthood. And that's without even talking about the damage he did to Abigail. But John isn't all evil, even in his semi deadbeat era, there were some moments of light. There are reasons for characters to behave a certain way, sometimes understanding a character is understanding these reasons without trying to immediately categorise them into evil or good boxes. Situations are often way more complex than we think. And i wish people would remember that humans are never all white or all black.