#sam meta

These are all things that have been mentioned numerous times before. I'm more summarizing here to put it in one place.

Take their childhood, Sam has a right to mourn the fact that he didn't get a normal childhood. He's allowed to be angry that he didn't get a home, a present father, a stable community, and consistent education. But whenever Sam attempts to express his complicated feelings about his childhood, Dean immediately interprets it as ' oh I was supposed to look out for you. Are you saying I failed? Are you confirming I'm worthless?' which grinds the conversation to a complete halt. Because of Dean's intense self-criticism, Sam can never really be 100% honest with him or ask for support with his own issues, especially regarding their childhood. As anything outside of 100% gratitude just becomes another stick for Dean to beat himself with, and the conversation is immediately derailed.

Not only does Deans self-hatred mean that Sam's expression of his own experiences are pretty consistently shut down. In some ways, I think Dean strips Sam of his autonomy - he's so self-loathing, he sees every decision Sam makes as being about/a reaction to him. A good example of this is Stanford. Rather than understanding Stanford for what it was, an attempt by Sam to carve out a better life from himself and escape hunting. Dean views it as betrayal or abandonment, some re-affirmation of his own belief that he's not worth caring about. Rather than understanding it's a rejection of hunting, he sees it as Sam rejecting him. To Dean, Sam isn't attempting to find a better life, he's punishing the family.

hi, love!!

ooh that's a good question! i LOVE dean as an attack/guard dog. oh it's delicious every time!!

personally, i've always been a bit partial to dean (since i first watched the show in 2012), but i've recently starting watching supernatural with some Normal friends (their first time), and had to join dean as the co-president of the defend sammy club. i'm in the trenches daily. i think i'm a bibro with dean tendencies...unsure...i don't think i can forsake my deangirl roots...

butttt that being said, i'm a huge fan of "dean-as-the-narrative-heart," especially when contrasted with "sam-as-the-narrative-soul."

and dean-as-the-narrative-heart is...kind of a bad thing, sometimes. which i ADORE!!!!

despite the fact and almost because supernatural is sam's story (we start and end with only sam, i could talk about this forever, let's just say i'm right for the sake of argument and move on), the audience is kind of set up to like dean more because--in my opinion--sam is the POV character, and he likes dean more.

the story stops moving when dean is gone. when dean dies (briefly) in s1, we stay with dean. when sam dies in s2, we stay with dean. when dean dies in s3, we stay with dean. when sam dies in s5, we stay with dean. when dean 'dies' in s8, we stay with dean.

the narrative doesn't go forward without dean, because spn is about sam. dean is sam's narrative heart.

dean keeps sam tethered in the physical, while sam keeps dean tethered in the metaphysical.

dean gets sam to not kill YED by appealing to sam's love for his father, and is willing to completely forsake his lifelong mission for sam's safety. he tells sam to make him "stone number one," and keeps him focused on the physical world instead of in sam's head.

and side note, sam loses a lot of physical considerations (like pain, safety, basic living) when dean is gone (e.g., doesn't even wince sewing up a bullet wound in mystery spot, doesn't sleep when dean is a demon (he looks haggard as FUCK, love him for that), and obviously starts chugging blood).

sam is a lot more spiritual than dean, and believes in angels, prays, and stresses about the state of his immortal soul a lot through the series. sam keeps dean tethered to morality & the more-than-physical through constantly tempering dean's violence/beligerence/bellicosity. outside of that, he tries to get dean to be open and emotionally vulnerable with him (e.g., after hell, about cassie, about lisa & ben). and, memorably, tells dean to "start being [his] brother again," which pulls dean back into literal soul-mate position as sam's brother.

when either of them is gone, the balance upends. sam loses his heart (becomes colder, more focused), and dean loses his soul (becomes listless, self-destructive). very fun!

but let's talk just dean for a second:

billie always tries to kill dean by stopping his heart. his first death is a heart attack. dean's greatest strength (AND weakness) is his heart--his love and loyalty to those around him.

he becomes stubborn and mean and violent because of this love--hence why dean as the heart is sometimes bad--but that's kinda the core motivation of all of his actions (e.g., selling his soul, leaving sonny's, defending john), even his bad ones (e.g., telling sam that his treatment at john's hands was his fault, gadreel, etc). even hitting/abusing ben (we can all agree is pretty inexcusable & straight-up awful) is because he wants him to be safe. he loves that kid. but he says that he felt like john, when he was drunk, and paranoid, and yelling at him.

dean is the glue holding his family together in s1. this amazing post by samdeanjohn made me bite straight through a piece of wood, and captures a lot of this.

dean is a lot of secondary characters' favourite between sam & dean in canon. charlie, cas (at first), crowley (kinda?) & bobby both prefer dean to sam. of the top of my dome, a lot of characters like rowena & missouri, as we can agree are pretty damn metaphysical, prefer sam. more on sam later.

and both on a metaphorical and textual level, dean is all about blood.

dean is furious with samuel in 6.10 for not "putting blood first." his relationship with his dad is kind of catastrophic--"he's going to taste the iron in your blood" being one of the most diabolical azazel lines when he's wearing john. (that doesn't support my statement of dean-as-heart, but makes me shiver every time).

when dean goes astray, he always has to be won back through blood. when he went to hell, sam started drinking it, cas spilled it. when he became a demon, he could only be restored through blood. in order to get dean back in "mystery spot," sam has to bleed a human completely dry.

blood is dean's downfall, and his "descent" is always marked with blood (e.g., getting bloodthirsty and decaptiating vamps after john's death, torturing alistair in s4, killing hundreds of monsters in purgatory, going on killing sprees with the mark).

hell, even when removing the mark of cain from his arm, the final ingredient is blood. blood from the caster's most beloved person. only through blood can dean be saved.

sam, of course, has a lot to do with blood as well (the demon blood, hello, being "corrupted" in his blood, being the only one to claim the MOL as "(legacy) blood"), but i argue that his main conflict is metaphysical, is his soul.

dean is compared to sam, who always has to be restored through the metaphysical. his soul has to be put back into his body in s6. he beats lucifer with the power of his soul (& love for dean, hello narrative heart!) in the s5 finale. he's saved through the exchange of a soul in s2. even through the trials, it's not his own blood that sam has to spill, but a literal glowing power underneath his skin. he finds peace with (as much as he can) his fear of blood contamination through metaphorical, soul cleanliness. being a good person. the light shining on galahad's face. "burning him clean."

sam's 'failures' are failures of the soul. he has "soul" trauma after the pit, and his moral failings are seen as a sign of his failure instead of his bloodthirsty-ness (lol) or viciousness. his soulmate-heaven with dean is being free from dean (yes, i agree this was probably a heaven manipulation, but sam is narratively framed as being in the wrong for this regardless).

in gadreel's case, dean valued blood over sam's soul. and this breaks them apart for a season.

ANYWAY! this was way more than you wanted. but thank you so much for this ask!! i had so much fun thinking about it, and absolutely devoured some transcripts searching for specific episodes, lmao.

i hope the rest of your day/evening/morning is lovely! <3

nobody really seems to talk about this. the other day, i saw that clip of sam and dean going through the memory of the time sam ran away for the first time in a while, and it made me think. we only see sam with dogs a handful of times in the series, at least owning them, and there’s a reason for that— dogs are a symbol of imperfect happiness for sam winchester.

⚠️there will be MAJOR spoilers in this post⚠️

example 1 - bones

we see bones in the episode when dean and sam are going through some of their best memories. one of sam’s is the time he ran away for two weeks and hid somewhere with a dog he found—bones—and lived off “funions and mr pibb”. people often criticize him for this in favor of dean, because dean tells him that john beat him for losing sam. however, people don’t really seem to mention the backstory for this (probably? not all the details line up, but this is seemingly the first time sam ran away) that we got for this later in the episode with sully.

in the episode, we get flashbacks of one part of sam’s childhood: dean and john were on another hunt and wouldn’t let him come with. he had asked sully, “ever think… about running away?” which sparked a conversation about sam’s future which ended in sam deciding to actually run away and ended with a cut back to present day.

sam had decided to run away because he was tired of feeling unvalued and hated the way he was currently living. he didn’t really hate his family— he was just a kid sick of being alone with no promise of change soon. when he ran away, though, he was still alone. he was just alone without promise of dean and john being home in a few days. he thought it would fix his problems, but it didn’t. he didn’t have the greatest relationship with john, but he did love dean. he didn’t really show it as a kid but dean was the only one who showed him real love, and he needed that. he didn’t have that anymore.

this is the first instance sam is shown owning a dog, and it comes after sam ran away for something he thought would fix his life but ended up not really measuring up in the end. he was ripped back from his little adventure right back into his old life. he couldn’t escape. he was free,

but he didn’t have dean.

example 2 - riot

one of the WORST plot lines on this show. i’ll say that. weird choice for sam. regardless, it stands with the analysis.

we all know how sam hit the dog and went to live with amelia instead of looking for dean. it came from the idea that dean used that one time they had evidently agreed on where if one of them died, the other would live a normal life. personally i don’t think sam would have actually done this at this point in the show, but whatever. dean had lisa and ben, and this was sam’s version. sam’s chance at normalcy. we see bits of his life with amelia develop over multiple episodes, and he was even living with her. amelia made him happy. and they really showed that dog a lot.

the dog lived with them, obviously. the second instance of sam owning a dog. sam was trying to start this new life for himself of being a guy who settles down with someone and lives his life in peace. of course, that didn’t really end up working for him, as he left amelia to go back to hunting.

yet again, we have a dog present during a time sam was trying to escape his problems and start over. sam was starting to get this life for himself that he never really thought he would have, but that he always had as an unattainable dream. he was free,

but he didn’t have dean.

example 3 - miracle

the final instance shown of sam owning a dog. dean had found this one, which, as we’ve seen from the takeaway of the two previous examples, was actually foreshadowing of dean’s death in the final episode.

unfortunately, we all remember how 15x20 starts with sam and dean in a semi-normal life. they’ve beat chuck. they’ve saved the world multiple times, and lost so many people in the process. they finally get some normalcy, while still keeping up the little hunting jobs. and then dean somehow dies on that damn rusty rebar.

immediately proceeding is what i can remember through heavy tears as an extremely sad montage of sam living his life without dean, permanently, with parallels to earlier scenes in the episode. then we get that shot of sam and miracle watching dean’s body burn.

dean had unknowingly found sam a companion before he died. this was what sam had left of his big brother. a dog. he took that dog with him when he left the bunker, and took care of him until the day he died. they had both loved that dog. sam had gotten a taste of a free life— a free life with his brother, unshackled by world-threatening evils. that was then forcibly taken away from him in an instant. he was once again alone. alone with miracle. he was free,