2)regardless of anything else that might be going on, in a way I can’t remember seeing him in years. The Sam that would go out and get himself what HE needed, time away, answers, a confrontation, whatever, even when Dean disagreed or opposed him, the Sam that Dean says he had always admired in “Scarecrow” specifically because of that trait. It’s like that Sam just up and disappeared one day when I wasn’t looking and I just never noticed.” Then she goes on to say how that actually made her quite

3)sad because she enjoys their dynamic in those earlier seasons and we talk a bit about Dean too then she adds, and this is the part that really killed me, she says “thing is, I don’t know if the writers did that on purpose as part of his story or if they just stopped writing Sam like that without noticing themselves, but I can say for sure that Dean definitely has not noticed either.” And then she had to mop me off her floor because I’d dissolved into a bitter salty puddle of tears. Hearing

4)these observations from someone free of the intensity of fandom and all our microscopic analysis of the show was both cathartic and somehow so much more painful than hearing it from within the fandom. T_T

Oh my gosh YES. You are absolutely right. It’s really interesting and valuable to hear these things from someone who is not so steeped in the Fandom Conversation™. Hearing stuff like that from a fresh voice really does make it clear that we’re not just tying ourselves up in knots over nothing. There has been a slow but sure destruction of the traits that brought Sam to life in the earlier seasons, and though I think many of them can be traced back to repeated abuses the character endured. (After all, Sam’s ability to stand up for other people and speak his mind for their benefit has not changed. His willingness to do it for himself, though... that has been gone for ages.)