#sam studies

My favourite part is where he gifts Dean the liquor bottle.

This is the wincestie side of my brain typing, but I love how similar his actions look like to a vintage man courting his date, and the thing is that Dean is onboard. He wants to get spoiled by his little brother

Tsundere much?

Then they sit down, facing each other, Sam placing the bottle between them, like a date (again, wincest brain)

because sam and dean understand that they can’t have both. it can’t be samanddean, deanandsam, the winchester brothers on the road together, and also that dream of white picket fences. your brother does not live in that house with white painted walls and warm yellow lighting. and for sam, that’s fine. he’s okay with that. he can sacrifice their codependency no matter how much it hurts as long as dean is somewhere alive and himself.

but for whatever reason, the outsider complex haunts him even inside the hunter life. systematically excluded from hunting as a child because of john and dean’s dynamic, he finds himself excluded again and again; even when mary comes back, he sees how she relies on dean and feels that it’s happening again. he never quite feels at home in the bunker. he’s never man enough. never enough of a hunter. and when he’s the best hunter, he’s still a freak, too, because of the demon blood, and therefore excluded by nature from humanity as a whole. his father hated him and his mother liked his brother better. the only person who chose him was the devil. the motif of outsiderhood is underscored over and over but is most clearly scene in the last shot of season five, as sam stands outside in the cold.

sam sees that the mark slowly turned dean into a demon, just like drinking the blood of possessed humans did to him. after sam fully detoxed from 'demon' blood, he changed his own eating habits to prove to himself that he has control of his own urges. it makes sense, then, that sam wants dean to prove that he is in control of the mark by changing his eating and drinking habits in the same way.

initially, dean is the one to try changing his eating and drinking habits. he figures out pretty quickly that he hates it. after that, sam is the one to try to enforce it. in fact, in About A Boy (10x12), the mark quiets down once he drinks again. in that same episode, he refers to himself as a functional alcoholic. he doesn't see his drinking as out of control with or without the mark, but we see sam looking worried in the background of almost every shot where dean consumes any alcohol because sam does see it as out of control.

For example, Sam doesn't like Benny. Actually not a bad idea. But he gets distracted by sheer hatred and unresolved issues and ends up treating Dean so badly that Benny is better by simple comparison.

Sam doesn't like Crowley. On the mark with that one. But he's simply so unable to articulate it in a way Dean can grasp onto. And his unkind responses (even if his anger is very valid in s9 for hiding the possession specifically) push Dean so far away that he ends up in Crowley's claws.

I even think Sam's discomfort with the case in Folsom Prison Blues is kinda justified. Deacon has bad vibes and is clearly taking advantage of Dean's loyalty and self-sacrificing nature. They could genuinely lose their freedom and entire life for this one weak lead. But. Instead he says, meh these are criminals anyway. Don't you think you fit in too much here? I wanna fit in with the FBI agents only. (Sam. You ARE a criminal). So now Dean gently but firmly says no thanks I wanna work the case even if I die in here. And Sam's real and valid worry is just unaddressed or worsened. Lol.

The Sam of 15x19 would never act like the fucked up caricature we got in 15x20. That Sam was a witch, protege of the Queen of Hell who could learn from her and use power without being corrupted. That Sam was in love with Eileen Lahey, a woman who took no shit and knew the truth about his life, a woman who was capable and fiercely independent and would never cater to any of his younger self's egocentrism. That Sam had found his niche within the supernatural world and had learned to balance his pragmatism with thoughtfulness and the weight of responsibility. That Sam was a leader. He had reconciled with the fact that he LIKES his life, that he CAN like his life without losing some battle of independence from his father or brother. He had actually learned real compassion instead of just going through its motions. He could make decisions and stand by them and be trusted. And NONE of that hard-won growth is present in the finale. Finale Sam is simply not the real Sam.