#this is sooo long fjdkkskf i hope it is intelligible

[adamsvanrhijn]

post for thomas/matthew will be here but in the meantime 🫣

fic in question:

i do think i need to disclaim that i have sooooo many parallel tga Possibilities in my brain, as with my da fanfic, nothing is necessarily Definitive for me or aligns with how i Always perceive the characters or even what i think is true most of the time, especially because bizarrely i have been writing tga fic for more than two years and have had evolved thoughts

BUT!

i want 2 put john adams in a jar & this fic is the fanfic representation of this. to be quite honest.

although i will say for this fic universe in particular i don't want to talk tooo much about his relationship with his own sexuality because that is a big chunk of the plot and No Spoilers 🙅🏻 but also only god knows when i will have the courage to update this again fjfjskakdjd so i will try to strike a balance here

so the goal of the whole fic really is to unpack John's choices in 1.08 especially. i think his behavior in the Newport plotline is very revealing of his own like, ability to process emotions and his surroundings for one thing but also his very strong convictions that what he is doing is the best path for him — and that he assumed he and Oscar were on the same page about that.

i have made up a lot about this guy using the Adams family blueprint that could all turn out to be completely wrong if Julian fellowes hates me specifically, but those Basics i have made up allow for a lot of Dot Connecting. example: john is not from and did not grow up in new york. this is my headcanon that so far is universal in my head but it could be completely wrong; its primary Support in canon is his family origins and the irl counterpart. Adams family is a Massachusetts family etc.

but i think that headcanon is Encouraged by like, his presence in new york living his specific lifestyle. is that something he would do and be able to do if he lived in the same place as his family? my guess is no — so that emotional/characterization motivation is informed by my understanding of the history, even though i could be completely off the mark

and the Reason i say all that is because i think that is a big part of my perception of john — i picture him as having intentionally sidestepped his familial obligations, and while he is afforded some allowances here (as oscar points out) by having brothers, that is surely a very significant decision he had to make in his life. and so one of my questions is, when did he make that decision / based on what, and also, did he know oscar before he made it

i think this is a lot of words to restate your question but not actually answer it fjjdjajdjd

anyway in this particular fic the answer to the latter is, he had his mind made up about himself and how he wanted to live his life before Oscar came into the picture. so this is looking at how he got there, & in particular, examining the difference between 1.01 john and 1.08 john and the differences in his behavior with women in given context

in the second chapter of this fic we have a much younger john, 12 years before canon, like 20-21 ish (not always my age headcanon but how it turned out for this one), who is managing the attention of a girl he has known a long time but whose Manner of paying attention to him has changed, with outside expectations of how he will proceed in this relationship with her hanging over his head (while he also has an immediate Out of going to europe in like a week).

& so the first thing i want to draw attention to is this:

With other guests departed she was bolder than she had been but hours prior: though steadfast and spirited in private company, Miss Crowninshield always shied from the center of the room—an admirable quality upon this occasion, but one that did not bode well for a life lived under the scrutiny of the public. Without a doubt she would be happier the wife of a gentleman than a diplomat. No one else but him seemed to understand that.

at this point in his life john isn't secure yet in his sense of self and what he wants — he isn't fully able to name and own his own feelings, which obviously is something he still struggles with well into canon. but while in canon i think john probably can do some emotional recognition internally, even if he clearly struggles to communicate this when it counts, in this fic he isn't quite there yet.

instead he Fully flips what he's feeling — that he is not ready to and/or doesn't want to marry her — onto her: pursuing a relationship with her would be unfair to her, because she isn't cut out for the expectations he believes are placed upon him and his marriage. he's a conscientious person, and perhaps he genuinely believes this is true... but it's not his primary objection nor the main reason for his discomfort with her and her attention. he also hasn't like, validated it with her. he's not considering her actual motivation or intention, only his perception of it, because to go beyond his perception would require him to confront what his actual objection is: that he simply doesn't want to court & marry her.

in s1 we see this with oscar and gladys — jf calls out that john sees that what oscar wants with gladys is unfair to her. he doesn't think she deserves that, and while i think that's genuine — jf obviously says it is — it's not his underlying fundamental problem with what Oscar is doing. his main problem with what oscar is doing is that he loves oscar and wants Oscar to stay with him! he sees oscar's pursuit of Gladys as a rejection (of both john himself and the lifestyle john has chosen, i suspect).

which is why he is then immediately able to put his concerns for fairness for Gladys to the side when he sees an avenue to make a point to Oscar. (i still don't know what exactly the point he is trying to make Is but i do think he thinks he's making one!)

and that's like. the whole point of this chapter. john immediately does it again — it wasn't fair to his sister that he went to this girl's ball abroad and she didn't; it's inappropriate to keep talking to this girl when a servant is cold because the door is open. he can't give her a proper goodbye because he can't take her hand because she's wearing winter clothes now etc.

in this part of the chapter, he can successfully hide his actual feelings from himself with that veil of concern for other people — he's a Good Person for being concerned, so he doesn't have to confront the emotions he has about it, because he knows he has a satisfactory reason other than his emotions, which are unrefined and unjustifiable and scary. not meeting the expectations set of him and following the path he is supposed to is Scary, so he needs good wholesome selfless reasons not to do it !

and then the back half of the chapter is his sister using that same method of emotional processing and seeking sympathy with him:

"Principally," she continued, a little louder, as though the problem were that he couldn't hear her and not that he disagreed. "It isn't fair to Louisa—she ought to have had a better showing." Parrying. John took a deep breath. "She had a fine showing," he said, "she was delighted." "It will be spoiled for her when people talk about the attendance." "They'll say what a pity Miss Louisa Adams had the misfortune to come out in the midst of a snow squall." "She looked forward to dancing with him." "It's no fault of mine if Mother didn't see fit to tell her that Mr. Saltonstall declined the invitation—I thought we were talking about Miss Palfrey?"

it's the opposite situation, except his sister is struggling a little more in this situation to find a viable reason she can own other than her own feelings — it's not fair to her friend who asked about this man, it's not fair to her sister who should have had a chance to dance with this man. but the emotional stakes are too high for her to successfully & convincingly make it about fairness and sympathy for another person, just as we see with john in the union with oscar 1.08.

john sees what she's doing and tries to acknowledge it:

She was twisting her gloves in her hands, a defiant lift in her chin even as her lower lip trembled. At the sight of it John felt compelled to placate her; he tried, "perhaps you'll see him another time." To her credit, Abby did not protest that John had made the discussion about her. "It doesn't seem to me as if there will be another time."

but bringing it to her ultimately brings it back to him, which is upsetting, because he absolutely does not want to talk about his ex bestie with benefits who just dumped him with his sister who has a crush on said ex bestie. and scene!!! hope this helps x

no but for real i think it's a fascinating thing people do and jf represents it really well in tga with multiple characters — bertha plays cards like this a few times i think —so i wanted to play with it

john's sister, having grown up alongside him but as a woman so with a very different upbringing and personal relationship with/conception of her future despite otherwise similar circumstances, is almost but not quite a foil here: her narrative purpose is to highlight that john's way of emotional processing isn't unique to him, as well as that he has agency in leveraging it more than the women around him do — (especially at his age in this fic) he can afford to beat around the bush as it were, but his sister abby has, it seems to her, more at stake than he does. in her mind john would do better to leave girls alone unless he's serious, and he also should be more thoughtful of her in his own personal life — in her (emotional) view he's messing up her prospects by ending his friendship with this man she genuinely likes and is interested in, and which she thought was reciprocated

what she doesn't know of course is that the man she likes and is interested in is the same guy her brother is/was deeply in love with!

i Love the brother and sister like the same person trope which long term readers might have noticed.

and then the broader point of All of that is that john's choices aren't happening in a vacuum and that he is subject to, impacted by, and likely to impact others with what he is doing. & in future chapters we get to see him navigate that a bit more and try to figure out what is the best version of him to put out there and whether or not / how he can pick and choose what to be