while it is frustrating to hear all the time, when you really think about how spn's narrative is set up... is it really that crazy that the fandom blames sam for so much? the narrative camera is practically glued to dean’s eyes (he's not the sole protag but he is the protag whose pov we usually judge the world through) so when dean gets into all into sam's face and says, "it's gone too far, sam. if i didn't know you, i'd want to hunt you. it's not what you're doing; it's what you are," the show’s music, close-ups, dramatic pauses (++ jensen's skilled acting) frame that as the narrative truth, even when the factual truth contradicts it. we're repeatedly conditioned over hundreds of episodes to treat dean’s moral compass as the correct path this way
where the fandom becomes even more irrational than dean is in the perpetuity of the debt. its a nobrainer that sam saved the world dozens of times over (stopped many seals from breaking, stopped the darkness/amara, helped kill god, threw himself into a pit of eternal torture at the hands of lucifer) and still went on to do much more so like by any logical metric, sam's debt or penance or whatever is paid a thousand times over right?? but no. in the fandom's eyes (and in tbh, in dean's eyez), the slate can never be truly wiped
but why is that?? what's the point of putting all the problems on sam? what's the use of rehashing everything and beating the hell out of the dead horse? it's because the apocalypse became less of an event, and more of an identity. okay this sounds stupid but bear with me: the apocalypse was one of the pinnacles of sam's destiny. he is forever branded as an abomination, the antichrist, more than a monster, a freak, the boy king, lucifer's vessel, the boy with the demon blood. but he never actually TOOK ON these titles, these were all forced onto him by the people who needed him to be what they wanted him to be. but the fandom will never stop blaming him for the apocalypse because it's easier to see it the way dean does than it is to recognize there was so much grooming that went into sam's life, it would have been impossible for sam to be truly autonomous as heaven and hell moved mountains to make sure the apocalypse happened. and the thing dean truly hates most is the feeling of powerlessness
