It’s wild because The Narrative was constantly all “Sam is demon-coded and Dean is Angel-coded also Dean is usually right”. Meanwhile Sam is mostly normal like 90% of the time and in the background Dean is stabbing the shit out of passerby like some kind of DnD-style murderhobo. Like, I’m supposed to believe SAM is the one constantly tempted by evil in this family? Because I sure as fuck don’t.
Fjdkrtkot anon I am HOWLING right now because YEAH THAT'S KINDA IT ISN'T IT omfg
The narrative, especially from s4, centred on Sam having 'demon blood' and being judged by the Angels as that, somehow, being The Worst Thing Ever when it wasn't even something Sam CONSENTED TO IN THE FIRST PLACE and he only 'embraced' the changes forced upon him in order to get Dean back (or just get revenge because, honestly, Sam is 10000% incapable of giving a fuck about his own life when Dean died for him and is reckless af) because Sam's whole life has been defined by him being Dean's 'little brother' and Sam is Lost™ without Dean in the world.
And then we get Dean being the 'righteous man' narrative which... If Dean is a righteous man then the moment he broke in Hell he stopped being that and instead chose to be unrighteous (which is somehow completely ignored and glossed over and yeah but he's got an Angel who favours him which means Dean is obviously the Good Brother right???? W R O N G) so, by the same metric that Sam is measured by, Dean is just as 'evil' as his little brother.
Except, of course, we THEN get the whole 'vessels' concept shoved in and for that, then Sam and Dean MUST conform to the Angels they are the vessels for.
Dean must be righteous, good, the perfect son who honours his father and is Noble.
Sam must be capricious, stubborn, disrespectful of his father, the imperfect son, the challenger, the one who will lie and manipulate and arrogantly self-assured and Wrong.
Which then makes the Free Will narrative so much fucking worse imho because Sam... Sam Sam Sam...
Sam does what he's told, follows the Plan set out by his 'father' (because Sam and Lucifer have so many parallels and struggling to submit to the commands of a father they don't understand is literally central to them both) and then wrestles control enough to RUIN EVERYTHING because Sam loves his brother, just like Lucifer loves his own siblings, but where Lucifer will still kill his own, Sam REFUSES TO.
Sam accepts the plan, finally obeys his father, but he again shows that any obedience he performs, any acceptance of his 'place' as according to others means FUCK ALL when situated against the life of Dean.
Sam loves his brother above all else, including himself, and that makes him better than any Angel, any Demon, any being because Sam has no qualms about destroying himself for his big brother.
The narrative gives us these two brothers who grew up together, raising each other, protecting one another, and trying to love and support each other in an imperfect, harsh world where their father was more absent than present. It gave us this and then presented us with a narrative foil in the form of the entire apocalypse and the Angels and God and it showed us that Sam and Dean are exactly what we should strive to be.
It throws at us the question: what matters to you more: adhering to the Will of God or loving that which is your life?
Sam and Dean are each others world. They are life to each other. One cannot exist without the other. And the show, the narrative, gives us this amazing gift of showing us that loving those who love us matters most and then it fuckin tramples on it.
Dean faces several moral quandries throughout the show, quandries that Sam faced in different ways and different scenarios, and it does Dean such a disservice because it constantly throws Dean back to the metaphorical Square One.
Dean, as the elder brother, is presented as being dutiful, as the obedient one who listens to their father and does what John expected of them. Dean is the one that, eventually, John expected to take Sam out if John wasn't there to (and isn't that fucked up, to expect a son to kill his brother and to always be both his protector and potential killer, what a way to fuck up a kid) and that sort of... expectation, that exceptionally painful obligation and duty is a horrible, cruel thing to levy upon an elder brother that loves his younger brother.
The narrative gives us that and it makes us look at it and at what John expected and it, rightly, makes us as uncomfortable as it did Dean. Then it throws some characters, like fuckin Gordon, to try and... soothe it? The whole "if our sibling becomes a monster, we have no choice, it's the merciful thing to do" when, ya know, it isn't really because, as the show then points out later: FREE WILL.
Except. Except the growth that Dean gets to experience in the narrative is shoved backwards again and again. He gets to take steps forward, to being able to exist outside the confines of what John raised him to be (a soldier, John raised a soldier, not a son, a general like Michael, a brother who he expected to be able to kill his sibling like Cain) but that growth is set in a juxtaposition with the Angels and apocalypse storyline that tries to shove Sam and Dean into the narrow constraints that the Angels have for the vessels of the two major players in Gods 'plan'.
Dean gets thrown back over and over to the starting point, to season 1 Dean who still does what dad taught 'em, thinks like dad conditioned 'em, and re-enacts how dad raised' em, because the Dean back then at least had some illusion of agency. He thought he had some control, some free will that wasn't curtailed by other, more powerful things.
The Dean of season 1 had faith in his dad and love for his brother.
Season 1 Dean was comfortable hunting monsters and ganking them because back then, it really was that simple. Monster hunts humans? Bad. Something isn't human? Monster. Simple.
As easy as basic addition.
Except it's not that simple anymore. Not after season 4. Not when Angels — the supposed good guys, the pinnacle of morality and righteousness and goodness — are shown to be flawed, damaged, even evil. Dean doesn't have an unbroken faith in his father — burned into him by the One Time he didn't listen and Sammy nearly died and sorry dad, I'll do better next time, I'll listen, I'm sorry, Sammy I'm so sorry! — and everything is messy and complicated and getting more and more complicated the longer it goes on.
So Dean falls back to a time when it wasn't complicated. When things could be and were simply black-and-white to him.
Hunting monsters. Protecting people. The family business.
And because of this, the show and the narrative make Sam and Dean look... So, so different.
Season 6 Sam, the soulless Sam, is the one that (ironically) was most like Dean and it's horrifying. It's monstrous. Because that Sam didn't care about morality, didn't care about nuance, didn't care for shades of grey. That Sam is exactly the Sam that John Winchester feared (and likely secretly wished for at times because Sam's compassion made it harder for John, and eventually Dean, to possibly 'put him down' if needed).
We get to see Dean who tries to go back to the past, to when things seemed so much simpler to him, with a Sam that emulates the things Dean wishes for and we are shown — and so is Dean — that it's not that easy. That to go back to the beginning mentality is, in itself, the most monstrous thing of all.
And then- then we get Sam with a soul back. We get Dean losing Cas who he came to care for, love, trust, have faith in because Cas is there for Dean in ways Sam can't be. And the trade off is... Messy. It's unfair. And for Dean it's harder still.
He gets his brother back and loses Cas. It's an unfair trade off and it's out of Dean's control.
So, he doubles down on trying to find control again. He does what he knows best and the softness in him, the vulnerability that only Sam — and later Cas, in his own way — was able to draw out gets locked up in a cage more secure than the one in hell. Dean makes himself colder and harsher and lets pain and trauma and grief cloak him just like their father.
Eventually, he literally gets demonified which is a hysterical bit of role-reversal for the brothers (and I'd have loved to see Sam get angelified as an extra bit of 'fuck you' because it'd have been even more poetic imho) and we see how much closer to a demon Dean has always been.
Because... Sam. Sam will do horrible things for those he loves and he'll own the consequences. He'll destroy himself for those he loves and for Dean most of all. Sam will do monstrous things and will become a monster because of his great capacity to love. It, in an ironic way, is closer to the way Angels love than anything else we see in the show because Sam extends compassion, kindness, and forgiveness to everyone (even when he doesn't personally want to). He gives so many chances to people. Heck, he even gave Lilth a choice, a chance, and although she didn't take it, he still offered it.
Dean, in contrast, is more selective and selfish in how he loves and who. He hoards his loved ones close, but he also can be so so cruel and toxic to them because he wants to keep them close and control everything so nothing can harm them. He is exacting and dictatorial in a variety of ways because Dean's love is just as bountiful as Sam's but it makes him selfish. Dean will condemn the world to avoid hurting Sam. He won't say yes no matter what because he will not be the one who kills Sam (not like that, not that way).
Dean and Sam both show how powerful love is and how, in different ways, it is also destructive.
Dean always falls back on what he knows works, time-tested, familiar patterns of behaviour and emotional expression, drilled into him by John. John who was damaged and broken by grief and rage and loss and the thirst for vengeance, revenge, and the need to understand. John who, whilst loving both his sons, resented the youngest because his wife died because of him. Logically John may have known it wasn't ever Sam's fault (and in fact, we later learn it was Mary and John's fault really, the deal that led to everything), but logic is not emotion. And that emotion absolutely affected the dynamics of their family.
Dean was Sam's pseudo-parent because John couldn't be Sam's dad the same way he was Dean's because emotionally, John couldn't move past the loss Sam's existence led to (Mary). It affected all of them and it's why, in a way, the behaviour we see from Dean post s4 is so... painful.
Because Dean starts to emulate their dad and the way John behaved and it is disgustingly obvious how toxic that behaviour was when the one doing it is Dean. And, because the show is a fuckin mess, the behaviour never really stops. Dean is so damaged, so traumatised by everything he's gone through, that he falls back on the behaviour that he grew up with and that behaviour held Sam at a distance.
It's why Sam seems so well-adjusted compared to Dean — which, tbf, Sam got to socialise with 'normal' people for a while at Stanford and Dean also raised Sam to have as many 'normal' interactions and opportunities as possible so yeah, Sam is more well-adjusted compared to Dean but it's a kinda low bar tbqh — and is partly what makes Dean reverting back to the black-and-white 'gank all monsters' mentality of John Winchester and s1 Dean so... tragic.
The show tried to portray Sam and Dean as two sides of the same coin — Sam as the rebellious, tainted younger brother: Dean as the dutiful, righteous elder brother — but the narrative itself kind of wrecked that dynamic and instead gives us two very, very damaged young men who are never given the chance to breathe, to think, to try and really heal from any of the seemingly endless amount of emotional, psychological, and spiritual wounds they gain over the duration of the sow.
The narrative, if anything, shows us that Dean was always the one most at risk of becoming a 'monster' because Dean carried upon his shoulders so much expectation, duty, and obligation, so much responsibility, that the moment he stumbled it crushed him.
Sam, in comparison, is shown to be the one who carries his own weights and shame, the guilt and the knowledge that he is the 'perfect' vessel for the devil, and who keeps shouldering more and more like Atlas because Sam... Sam is stronger than Dean. Sam is stronger because Dean put his faith in their father and had it shaken to the core of him, where Sam put his faith in Dean's love for Sam which, even at the worst points in their lives, is something Sam has always had to bolster himself with.
It's also why Dean is the only one who can (and has) hurt Sam so deeply as to leave him feeling broken. Because Sam is a little brother and all Sam ever really wanted was his big brother's approval and love — which, ironically, is what makes Sam and Lucifer perfect mirrors of each other, because Lucifer wanted the same and didn't want to be be made to love anything else more than his family, and Sam cannot love anything more than he loves Dean and doesn't pretend to, but where Sam can still love others to an endless degree, Lucifer's ability to love is a finite thing and it's why Sam, in the end, could wrestle control from a frickin archangel and throw himself into the cage because Sam loves his brother most of all.
The narrative tried so hard to make us see Sam as the dangerous one, the monster-in-waiting and Dean as the one who would do as duty demands but it failed so hard because it, as you say, made Dean seem the most unhinged of the two of them.
Ironically, if it intended to that, it did it brilliantly, but I doubt the writers were thinking that far ahead (unfortunately).
