#transnaturalweek

disclaimer #1: a lot of these are purely for headcanon purposes only and even if sam was canonically lgbt, I don't think he'd be the best rep all of time for it versus other canon queer characters. my goal was to help non-sam blogs understand where the interpretations come from in the first place and how it's not too dissimilar to the way Destiel fans re-interpret the show's homophobic writing

disclaimer #2: a lot of destiel shippers got into supernatural for destiel. that’s not and shouldn’t be controversial? joining spn tumblr doesn’t come with a welcome pamphlet and it’s a show with 300+ episodes. people shouldn’t be expected to have analyzed every aspect of it and know every behind-the-scenes fact. people are STILL discovering new details even in 2021. this is not a “why isn’t anyone talking about this??” post (I hate those posts) but hopefully a "queer sam for newbies.”

the facts

writer and s6-s7 showrunner sera gamble supported a MLM reading of sam as early as s2, revealed in the commentary for the episode “bloodlust”. in the episode, sam has a flirtatious exchange with the bartender eli (coincidentally played by ty olsson, later known for playing benny.) however it’s implied that gamble was shut down as robert singer referred to her queer sam headcanons as nothing more than “sick twisted fantasies." 2006 was a weird time y'all.

while this is the only known and confirmed instance of fully intentional queer subtext (similar to dean’s moment with aaron in S8) there have been a few other questionable exchanges with sam and men on cases, i.e. patrick the gambler witch from 5x07 or paul the bartender from 5x17 (both featured in this great gifset). notably, both of those instances happen in episodes written by gamble.

(sidenote: there’s theories that the main character on sera gamble’s The Magicians is VERY similar to sam and this was sorta her way of having a queer sam-esque character. it is a good show, just know it does NOT end happy for the character in question. the character of quentin doesn’t use any specific labels but is in relationships with men and women in the show all while being a floppy-haired, bookish but powerful nerd just like sam!)

while sam has interacted with both male and female crossroads demons, he has ONLY summoned male ones on his own (check my own breakdown of the history of crossroads demon gender on the show)

sam refers to past/potential love interests with gender neutral pronouns (examples). his actor has also done this in the past when referring to sam's relationships.

he understands terms used in the gay community, i.e. fifth base

some of the fun evidence we use for trans!dean (i.e. the photo ID that says “F” for birth sex) has also happened to sam!

his reaction to seeing a shirtless man in bed

brady is referred to as sam’s demon lover and crowley implies that the two have "history.” I’d compare the popularity of sambrady in the sam fandom to deanlee in the destiel fandom; it’s generally headcanoned that there was indeed a complicated, college relationship there that becomes even more complicated when a demon possesses him. it wouldn’t be the only past love interest of sam’s to be possessed by a demon either.

the 👀

when dean makes jokes like “could you be anymore gay?” sam actually looks pensive like “huh? COULD I be?” this is very much how I would respond to this kind of joke if my roommates made it and we are LITERALLY all queer

he owned a purple dog shirt...is that straight behavior to you.

he’s a canonical theater kid who took an art history course (for “picking up girls” which sounds a lot like an excuse he’d give to not reveal he did it for gay reasons) AND was attached to his high school English teacher, like pick a struggle

he had an imaginary friend as a kid (sully my beloved) with some light queercoding of his own i.e. rainbow suspenders. sully encouraged him to love himself and to not listen to/be like his family

dean has literally microaggressed sam 10x more than sam has microaggressed dean. I would literally go sleep with a guy just to spite him after the 60th comment.

in general, sam’s story is just...queercoded af. “son is treated as wrong and a freak by his father until he leave home at the age of eighteen?” that’s queer baby!! and I get it, I too moved to college in a state I knew my family would never visit as soon as I could!! alexa play The Village by Wrabel.

and lastly but most important (and I say this as a bi!dean truther because helloooo look at my blog)...at no point has sam ever said he is straight. dean has said they are (“we don’t swing that way” in response to victor henrickson) but sam never said anything regarding his sexuality.

are you into the idea of queer sam but don’t know where to start? here are some of my favorite arguments for the different readings along with some personal interpretations and headcanons!

why I think bi/pan/queer/labelless sam is sexy:

saileen, samruby and samjess all feel like bi4bi couples let’s be real here

demon lover brady could’ve actually been his demon lover! the trauma of your college boyfriend / probably first gay experience being a monster used against you??? lifelong disorders! And as mentioned, it also wouldn’t be the first time a demon possessed a former sam love interest.

sam’s not hung-up on any of the things dean is hung-up on. labels or orientations, he’s always been open to all of it. just like how sam can listen to a celine dion album or drink “vegetable water” without thinking twice about it. to me, it’s all about how sam has always been comfortable with his sexuality and it not being a big deal for him, and dean just...hasn’t lol.

sexualty is a spectrum! sam can still prefer women and in fact has excellent taste in them (have you seen his girlfriends? have you? this may be the samcoding talking...)

while the majority of queer sam fans ship with him with castiel (and who can blame them, it’s CAS) there’s other cute boyfriends out there for him too:

- max banes, the cool and canonically queer witch from s12. in their first scene together, he defends sam from a stranger asking about his trauma! a man that respects sam’s boundaries? sexy af. also witch!sam and max banes?? sexy af. in general there was so much more the show could’ve and should’ve done with the banes twins, and exploring that through sam’s pov would’ve been fascinating because you know he would try to help max & alicia and understand why he did what he did!

- mick davies, aka sam’s “nerd soulmate” as dean refers to him. sam and mick get each other and bond over their love of learning and making the world of hunting a better place! mick even turns against the BMOL to side with them (but unfortunately dies before that can be realized.) oh, society if mick was resurrected instead of ketch and got to be nerdy bfs with sam...

- one episode-icons patrick the witch (what’s it with sam and witches amiright), paul (my personal beloved) and brady the demon and/or human (a given)

- crowley! while its peak popularity was probably pre-samwena and the drowley summer of love, the samcrowley fandom (formerly known as "moosely" now usually referred to as "cram") is STILL alive and kickin’. they even have cram mondays now!

- and can’t forget ol’ gabriel the archangel. sabriel is a classic “opposites attract” pairing that’s existed ever since sam puppy-dog eyed his way out of a timeloop and you know what? for good reason. two words: height differences.

sam being an ally isn’t nearly as fun to me as sam being out for years and just waiting for his idiot brother to catch up so he can get the stick out of his ass so he can then list of a list of microaggressions dean has made over the years. I think he deserves it.

why I think gay sam is sexy

this post is basically the gay sam manifesto so I’m stealing from there but

basically there are multiple instances where a girl comes onto sam and he very harshly rejects them (i.e. the iconic “I’m lactose intolerant”) and I think it’s funny okay. I love you gay sammy.

why I think nonbinary/he & they sam is sexy:

again, the whole “not hung up on labels” thing. sam using gender neutral pronouns for his past relationships means it makes total sense for them to also refer to themselves with gender neutral pronouns.

a lot of sam’s journey on the show is about their body autonomy and lack thereof (and whatever mother mother was singing about in “body” and ajj in “body terror song”) to me, trans/nonbinary sam is just him reclaiming their body and making it their own again. a chance to heal and be confident in their identity and sense of self.

sam/sammy is literally the perfect nonbinary name!! they struck the gender neutral name LOTTERY I’m so goddamn jealous

long hair, don’t care! nonbinary people have the freedom to mix & match whatever gender expressions they want because they owe no one androgyny.  I love the idea that sam’s always been into having more traditionally feminine hair that’s it’s become part of their identity, and one of the most iconic aspects of their character, while dressing and presenting traditionally masculine otherwise.

sam’s actor has vocally supported it he/they sam headcanons! am I a fan of him as a person? not really! does it still matter just as much as jensen saying dean’s side of the confession is open to all interpretation? yes! actors do not make and cannot make anything canon, but being supportive of it IS still nice and encouraging! can you imagine if misha hadn’t been so open to queer readings of cas? can you imagine if his support was taken away from you? it’d suck!

I’m samcoded and also a they/them, so like...they/them solidarity I guess????

why I think trans!masc sam is sexy:

see less love for this but so far every FTM Sam fic I’ve read has made me cry so that’s gotta be something right

speaking of “makes me cry”, THIS TRANS SAM COMIC BY @kimodraw MAKES ME FULL-ON SOB PLEASE READ IT

there’s minor show details that could be used as evidence just like trans!dean headcanons (sam being called “samantha” in mostly derogatory manners being deadnaming, the F on his ID that one time, etc.)

sam going from Baby Boy to Buff AF? that’s just the T!

sam + cahartt hoodie = transmasc swag

the john, sam and dean dynamic is only intensified if he was seen as the precious daughter that must be protected (and not as a living person) and adds even more layers when sam returns to the family as a man

there is also something compelling about sam becoming a man in a family with such a warped view of masculinity & wanting to redefine the definition of a “man” for himself

as far as headcanons, this post has so many beautiful headcanons of sam growing up trans

sam coming to embrace who he is in college, jess being openly supportive of sam as soon as he comes out, jess joining sam on his appointment to get his top surgery, jess proudly loving her boyfriend as the man he’s grown to become...goddamn it I’m crying again...

why trans!femme sam is sexy (bonus points if it’s trans!lesbian sam):

update: I have been leaning away from this and think this post explains it well (thanks queersamofficial for sharing) but would love to hear from trans!femme fans who want to talk about it! in general, this is a very fanon-heavy interpretation (similar to witch!sam) and think it’s important to know that. tho I always support more trans headcanons over cisswaps/genderbends.

since this is the masterpost tho...all you DO need to know is that sam winchester is very popular with the lesbian spn fan community (science cannot explain this) and there are storylines and moments that I think resonate with sapphic fans similar to how dean resonates with trans!masc fans and cas resonates with ace/demi fans. I even made a post about one. would love to hear people talk about it!

anyways, if you are a fan of trans!femme sam...

known lesbian icon velma from scooby-doo having a crush on sam when they first meet? well...

trans!femme AND witch!sam? best combination known to man, the POWER that has, the IMPACT that has---

trans!femme divorcing herself from not only her old self but her family’s obsession with toxic masculinity? *chef’s kiss*

bonus trans!sam: stream thee t4t samruby post

why I think aro!sam is sexy

this post

sam always associated a “good life” with having a girlfriend or wife, but aro!sam comes to realize he doesn’t need that to be happy. his happy ending can look a lot of different ways.

...tho aro saileen and samruby does compel me

I don’t have much to offer in the asexual!sam departments, BUT my inbox is open to anyone passionate about it who want to talk about it (or anyone who has anything to add here!!)

counter arguments I’ve gotten sometimes:

"___ and ___” was clearly just a homophobic/misogynistic/joke, not evidence of anything

I mean I could say the same for 75% of bisexual dean and destiel evidence so. I approach LGBT sam the way trans!dean fans approach that interpretation (which I also love): taking what was nothing more than a shitty joke from cishet men and turning it into something beautiful that you can relate to and see yourself in instead.

"j*red is the straightest/most homophobic man alive I refuse to see any character he plays as queer”

yo I hate that guy and you should too. luckily these characters are fictional and you don’t need to like the actor to enjoy a character. in fact, actors shouldn’t exist at all anymore I think. I like headcanoning his character as queer/trans just to spite him even. while his actor may have kept him from being the queer icon he deserved to be, the writing (and most importantly the writer’s support) was there.

this is just a made-up version of sam that lives in your head :/

well, yeah? while there is canon evidence for some of these especially the bi!sam truthing, sometimes headcanons are just fanon...and that’s okay! the canon version of the show ended with dean a dead “heterosexual” alcoholic and sam married to some random woman we know nothing about it. what’s wrong with imagining a better more satisfying ending and story for these characters? also, if you think the differences between fanon sam and canon sam are bad you should see the differences between fanon dean and canon dean.

final argument: what queer!sam adds to destiel because they can (and should!) coexist!

“but wouldn’t have sam figured out that dean was lgbt if he was also lgbt?” nah. one, there’s a LOT about dean that sam doesn’t know and that’s a major reoccurring theme (especially since dean is a parent figure to him in addition to an older brother). two, even then how do you ever know for sure? my “token straight friend” made jokes for YEARSSSS about her lady crushes and we never took them seriously since she said it was just her being comfortable in her sexuality. guess who came out as bi the past year?

“I’ve been out since Stanford” Sam can judge dean for still being hung up on his outdated ideas of masculinity, sexuality, etc. (which he does anyways! now he just has more reason to!)

the impala is basically now just the “down with cis” car

all of TFW and their friends being LGBT only makes sense because gay people tend to flock to each other like magnets. science cannot explain this!! all but one of my friends I knew in high school / college has since come out as something!! even one we joked was the token straight realized they were bi this year!! another thinks they might be ace! it never stops!!!

the chaos of sam and cas’s friendship is not only explained if they’re both queer but ELEVATED

jack gets THREE gay dads!! the literal dream

at the end of the day, the show never even let dean be openly bisexual so what better form of rebellion is there than headcanoning no spn character as cishet? you can’t give us one good gay movie kiss and now ALL your characters are gay & trans, bob singer <3

when dean does come out, he still has the most supportive brother in his corner ready to help him be more accepting of himself... but also to help educate him on queer issues because let’s be real, dean has some learning (and unlearning) to do. charlie and sam are preparing a powerpoint as we SPEAK.

most importantly: sam, dean, and adam all being lgbt??? john winchester’s worst nightmare baby!

at the end of the day, they are literally all fictional and this is a sandbox in which we can do whatever we want! no one wins by keeping someone from headcanoning a character as any form of LGBTQIA, but we do have fun to gain!

on that note, here's some fun queer sam tumblr posts to start you on your journey: (x) (x)

I also highly recommend the blog queersamofficial (which shares fun posts & ships) and sambrosia’s sam slash anyone series if you want a fun introduction to all the sam ships out there! (includes m/m and f/m)