i know spn hates good writing and also sam, but the dumpster fire of s4 really could have been salvaged if they'd just played ruby and castiel straight
ruby should have been one of the good guys (honestly it feels like the writers changed their minds last second regarding her anyway)
castiel should have been the villain (which, let's be clear, he totally was)
the point of this is that it would force dean to confront his own bullshit and maybe figure himself out, which not only would have been good television but would have been satisfying to me, personally
sam's problem is that he wants there to be a good equal to every evil. that he believes goodness exists even where it doesn't, that he always wants to give things a chance, that he always has hope. they sound like good traits, up until they're used against him. they reach the station of angels are bad eventually, but it should have been more immediate and visceral, that there is no greater good here. sam should have had this knocked out of him, which would have shattered him in way, to lose this thing he's depended on his whole life, but it really would have hammered home that it's choices that really do matter, not circumstances
dean's problem is always that he sees monsters as monsters with no grey area, that sam always has to play his moral center the second anything becomes complicated. then he goes to hell, breaks, tortures innocents, and an angel yanks him out and tells him that he's a righteous man
dean desperately desperately wants this to be true
because it's sam who they had to look out for, sam who was destined to go darkside, sam with the demon blood
dean doesn't have that excuse
he's just a human man with a hunger for violence who never learned to curb his appetite. who was instead pushed to gorging himself on it, who is left broken and desperate and angry by what he did to save himself. his whole life, his whole self perception for thirty years, was about protecting innocents. then he betrays that in hell. do you think he kept count? how many innocents he destroyed against how many he saved? the day it equaled out, do you think he wished he could weep?
dean is so unbelievably messed up by hell. not the torture he endured, that's barely a blip, but the torture he inflicted is what haunts him
so he needs for sam to be the bad guy
he's using his powers, he's hanging out with demons, he's drinking demon blood. he's the monster. he's inhuman
(he's using his powers and hanging out with demons and drinking demon blood and still he's doing less harm than dean, still he's trying to save people. dean can't accept this, because he can't be the rotten one. he'll forgive sam anything, but never himself, so it has to be sam. because he can fix sam, he'll always love his brother, so if he's evil there's stil a path forward there. but if it's dean? if he's the one going evil? sam's left him before. why would he stay now? if dean is the one going darkside then he loses everything. himself. his brother. it has to be sam)
dean is projecting all his own shit onto sam because he can't deal with any of it, which is why he treats sam like shit, why he treats him in a way that he's never treated him before. it's how he treats himself. and sam has no idea what to do with this, is left reeling and hurt and broken himself by dean doing this to him. sam never thought dean would leave him to die in the panic room, because dean wouldn't, not the dean he's known his whole life, not the dean that loves him. not alone.
but dean would do that to himself. and since sam is his proxy for himself, it's what he does to sam, but sam doesn't know that so all he feels is the weight of betrayal and grief and rage
isn't it funny, almost? the demons brought sam back just as he was, exactly the same. the angels bring back dean but he's not the same. dean comes back wrong, comes back different. but no one wants to say that. to deal with it
having ruby be evil and castiel venerated justifies all of dean's spiraling, all of his punishment. he was right all along, sam was the problem, don't you see?
ruby stays loyal to sam, a demon who chooses something different, who chooses the boy with the demon blood because there's something compelling about sam winchester, as tempting as the apple before eve, and ruby didn't get where she is by knowing better
(remember when sam pulled all the psychic kids together, acted as leader, and resisted azazel? there is a leader in sam, a compassion in him, that azazel had to cheat in order to beat. and if ruby can show him how to win against demons then-)
castiel let sam out of the panic room. he's following orders, because that's his job, and damn the consequences. this should have been seen as the act of betrayal and evil that it was, castiel proving he was never really on their side at all, never on the side of preventing harm. it also would have made his redemption arc mean something, it would have given castiel a lot more to work with if they'd had to really bring him back over
ruby realizes too late what killing lilith means. tries to stop sam, but now that she's here it's too late, kill or be killed. sam accepts that, is willing to die rather than start the apocalypse. but then dean is there, and he can't watch his brother die again, he just can't. so he kills lilith to save dean, when he would have been willing to die himself
ruby gets them out of there. they discover what castiel did, that he pushed forward the apocalypse rather than prevented it
this breaks dean. he finally snaps, but it's good, because everything he'd used to shore himself up before had been terrible and rotted and corrosive
a righteous man is not a good man. dean is forced to confront everything he's done in hell, and after he'd gotten back, everything he put sam through, how he left him in that panic room and almost killed him, how he's treated him for the past year. how it was a demon who tried to help in the end and an angel that damned them
and how sam saved him anyway, damn the consequences
we should have returned to what the show had been building up to from the beginning - that sam loves his brother enough to do terrible things and dean has no idea how to deal with that
so we've got sam and dean on the run with ruby, castiel's slower and much juicier redemption arc, and dean having to pick up the pieces of himself while sam tries to figure out how he gets them out this mess. and sam's guilt is justified here, his aching sense of responsibility, because this time he kills lilith knowing it'll free lucifer. he makes that choice, for dean. and he's determined to fix it
just. demon blood tainted sam and turncoat ruby trying to save the world. the angels trying to end it. all while dean finally accepts the crushing guilt of what he's done and starts to work through it, starts to work on becoming the brother sam lost, on once more being the steady thing sam can hold onto no matter what it takes, because sam choosing him reminds him of something he'd told himself he forgot
he doesn't want to be a righteous man, a torturer, a demon, a victim, a martyr
he just wants to be sam's brother. the one he looks up to, depends on, loves
he wants what he's always wanted
to feel worthy of his little brother's affection
snowghoul
tangentwithtanner
janainaart
areudirty
romaincrisis
dededos
yousharknotpass
