Do you think Sam uses emotional blackmail on Dean? A lot of Dean girls believe that and I wanted to know your opinion on this..
I can’t believe this is still a thing. Well, I lied. I can. The narrative focus on Dean’s experiences, perspective, and emotions (necessary in early seasons for the atmosphere the showrunners wanted) mean that accessing Sam’s intentions and experiences sometimes takes some effort. I don’t know what people are using to support their claims, so I can’t actually refute any of them, but I can share my thoughts! I hope that’s all right.
I have addressed this topic before (though my focus was on a particular instance), and it’s here, if me rambling at some length is okay.
Here’s a definition of emotional blackmail:
Emotional blackmail and FOG are terms, popularized by psychotherapist Susan Forward, about controlling people in relationships and the theory that fear, obligation, and guilt (FOG) are the transactional dynamics at play between the controller and the person being controlled.
In short: no. Absolutely not. Having and expressing emotion is not emotional blackmail. Being utterly broken by something and unable to hide that brokenness is not emotional blackmail or manipulation.
Sam sharing his perspective and making requests is not emotional blackmail.
Sam establishing and maintaining healthy boundaries (see: season 9, after Dean and Gadreel facilitated Sam’s possession without his consent) is not emotional blackmail.
Sam, more than many—more than most characters on the show—does his level best to respect the decisions and autonomy of others.
Additionally, I’m interested in term, “Emotional blackmail.” It’s explicitly stated on nearly every website I’m finding that it is often not intentional or even consciously employed manipulation.
Meanwhile…
Sam grew up in an environment of emotional blackmail.
(Under a cut for negativity.)
“You don’t want to hunt? So, what, you want innocent people to die? Or, if my bad paraphrasing is not adequate, here’s an actual quote from the show. Young Sam, on the phone, is responding to rapid-fire comments from his family. “Yeah, so, from what I can tell, it’s something called a Kitsune. Not much. They… look human… till they sprout out claws and stab you behind your ear to get to your brain. I don’t – I don’t know yet. Yes, Dean, I realize killing ‘em’s important. Maybe if Uncle Bobby sent a book in English. I am! No, no, don’t – don’t put him on the phone. Hi, Dad. Yes, sir. I realize people are dying. Yeah, I’m on my way to the library right now.” (7.03)
“If you go out that door, don’t you ever come back.” Sam wanted to go to school. He wanted to get an education. John used his relationship with his son (and his son’s relationships with each other) as leverage to try to extort Sam’s obedience.
“I’m Poison.” Sam approached Dean about Dean’s part in his nonconsensual possession. In response, Dean made it about him and then accused Sam of not loving him/not being willing to save him if the circumstances were reversed.
And those things may not have been intentional. Some may not strictly be emotional blackmail because the people who made the demands weren’t threatening to physically harm others or themselves, but they were leveraging relationships against Sam in order to secure his agreement, forgiveness, or obedience. So… I dunno.
If people are intent on accusing Sam of emotional manipulation/emotional blackmail, (which is apparently a controversial term in some circles, anyway, since it implies intentional cruelty?)…
Perhaps they should take a moment and ask themselves where he might have learned it.
I've had enough with those people accusing Sam having a better childhood and that Dean suffered so much to provide Sam a loved environment. It's not a goddamn competition! And why did they always, always ignore the fact that Sam did LOVE Dean, he's the one who complimented, encouraged Dean! I don't even remember when had Sam guilt tripped Dean into sth while Dean did it all the time. Sorry for getting carried away, I just wanted to ask which tag would you suggest me to search? Thanks!
Me too, Anon! If you want to read a ton of really great analysis on this very topic, check out our Young Sam tag. That one is undoubtedly the most likely to yield results specifically about the concerns you have, but these may also have some relevant analysis: sam and family, sam and abuse, sam and formative experiences.
Too many people assume that because Sam’s experience was not equivalent to Dean’s, it was not challenging or damaging. Additionally, too many fans unquestioningly swallow the image of flawless-parent-Dean and take any assertions that Sam had a tough childhood as accusations against Dean, which they most certainly are not. There are also way too many ridiculous headcanons bouncing around in the fandom that a bunch of people accept as canon, like this one which queen-of-carven-stone so effectively refuted.
Dean certainly had many rough and harmful experiences that Sam can’t understand. Sam had many equally harmful experiences that Dean can’t possibly understand, too, and I think too many people forget that.
A short and incomplete highlight reel of Sam’s childhood experiences:
Sam has never known home or a mother’s love. The only life he remembers is the itinerant lifestyle of a hunter.
It’s the only life he’s ever known, and it is also a life he has never really felt a part of. He spent his childhood feeling unworthy and impure. His attempt to leave and seek a place he might belong ended up with his father disowning him.
Dean knew about hunting from a young age, but Sam was lied to for most of his young life and left alone in motel rooms as young as 9 years old and (and quite possibly as young as 5). Sam was dragged all over the U.S., dropped in motel rooms alone, and no one would tell him why they were doing that.
His English teacher when he was fourteen was the first person who asked what Sam wanted out of life rather than assuming that he’d go into the family business.
He had lost his mother and desperately wanted to know about her, but was yelled at when he asked. He didn’t know any/many of the details of her death until he was 22. He never knew Dean carried him out of the fire until then, either. He spent his whole freaking childhood seeking revenge for a loss he was never allowed to be a part of. Is it any wonder he thought to look elsewhere for a place to belong?
So many people in fanon assume that Dean always (or even often) supported Sam when he stood up against John. However… canon has scant evidence of this. In fact, most of the evidence points to Dean taking John’s side.
That’s not unusual at all, of course. Dean seriously shouldn’t have had to bear the burdens placed on him from such a young age, but neither should Sam. Sam’s experiences were no less harmful than Dean’s, and the effects of his unstable childhood have followed him into adulthood and beyond.
I hear some people are accusing Sam and Cas of abusing Dean to get him to do what they wanted, what do you think about that?
My reaction: Utter befuddlement.
(gif credit: sebstans)
I haven’t seen the latest episodes, so I can’t go in and take a critical look at whatever supposedly “abusive” behaviors Sam and Cas are displaying, but I’m gonna guess—as has been the pattern for a long while now—that one or both of them vehemently expressed their disagreement with Dean’s plan, probably more than once. They were probably sad. They might have even *gasp* shown their emotions. (How very dare they) And Sam punched Dean. ** Not something I’m comfortable with, to be honest, but that’s personal and is neither here nor there.
Part of why I love Sam so much is this: as much as he can, to the very limits of his endurance, he tries to trust in people and respect their decisions. He is (despite his lack of faith in himself) slow to wrath—or at least outward expressions of wrath. He is calm, and he is faithful, sometimes even to his own detriment. (Sam has never been able to deal well with losing Dean, though. That’s a long established canon fact.)
But:
Not being able to pretend everything is all right is not abuse. Telling a person (even repeatedly, even convincingly) that you really don’t want them to do something is not abuse. People are allowed to have emotions and reactions that do not mesh with my own. Wanting something or even needing something and showing you need it is not abuse.
Being broken, unstable, or on uncertain footing is not abuse. Needing and seeking support is not abuse. Needing and seeking support even when the person you are seeking support from is, himself, broken and in need of support you are unable to provide is not abuse. It’s tragic, but it’s not, by any stretch of the imagination, abusive.
Hitting a person is not abuse. Here’s where it gets sticky. Hitting a person is violence. It is not a healthy response and should never be encouraged. But abuse, by its very definition, is more than violence. Abuse requires a pattern (whether of violence or of financial, emotional, and/or social control) that is enacted specifically to achieve a desired result: to put the abused person under the abuser’s control.
(Under a cut because this gets long and no one should have to deal with my disconnected rambling unless they wish to. Analysis below of whether Sam [and Cas, to the best of my limited knowledge and ability, since he’s unfortunately not part of my hyperfocus] meet the criteria. tl;dr they don’t)
So. A pattern. And an unequal dynamic.
A pattern?
Sam is very, very rarely violent when he is in control of his actions (i.e. not possessed or under the influence of a supernatural substance). The instances where he has initiated physical violence in all 14 seasons can be counted on one hand. It does not create any real sort of pattern.
I could talk for a long time about how Castiel’s occasional violence does not also constitute a pattern of abuse, but though I like him, I haven’t spent as much time poring over his scenes word for word and am not sure how clear it would be, and additionally, it’s a little questionable to expect a being who has been brainwashed and molded for thousands of years to be a perfect soldier to a) understand and b) act in accordance with human relationship dynamics without a lot of trial, error, and patient explanation (which he didn’t get with any consistency from the person whose ideals he clung to when he first appeared [Dean].) I lived abroad in a country whose customs and social expectations were a bit different from my own, and I had the opportunity to do extensive research in advance. I still had pretty intense culture shock and an adjustment period. There were some things I simply couldn’t fully wrap my mind around, and some things I disagreed with. And it was only some thousands of miles of land and ocean that separated us. Arguably, it can’t even be applied to Castiel in those first seasons. Asking him to relearn in days, weeks, or even years things that have been beaten into him over millennia is… ambitious, to say the least, and something that needs to be considered in any nuanced analysis.
Then the show humanized Cas. It made him make some well-intentioned mistakes while trying to seek a leader and do what he believed to be good for his family…the family he has grown up with, again, for millennia. The show took away his powers, his memories, his sanity. But it did not change his role. Castiel’s arcs over the season have specifically emphasized his discomfort and inexperience with being perceived as a leader. When he was unstable after having taken on Sam’s overflowing trauma from his broken hell wall, he was very much not in a position of power, and… if anyone was being abusive, it wasn’t Cas.
But perhaps people are talking about emotional/psychological abuse? Again, both Cas and Sam have expressed desires and tried to explain differing positions from Dean and have been under powerful supernatural influence (the Siren, demon blood, Leviathan, etc), and have made decisions on their own without seeking Dean’s permission—and, oops, that just highlighted our second criterion.
An unequal dynamic (specifically, abuser in a position of power).
Neither Sam nor Castiel is in a position of power over Dean. Only in season 11 did Sam and Dean’s dynamic start to level out a bit. The big struggle in early seasons, the one that literally carried us to the season 5 finale, was that Dean treated Sam as a kid/subordinate, not as an equal, and Sam felt he needed to seek permission to do anything. Actual quote from “Swan Song” (and I admire this development in Dean so much, even if the later seasons dismantled it):
DEAN: The whole “up with Satan” thing. I’m on board. SAM: You’re gonna let me say yes? DEAN: No. That’s the thing. It’s not on me to let you do anything. You’re a grown – well, overgrown – man. If this is what you want, I’ll back your play. SAM: That’s the last thing I thought you’d ever say. DEAN: Might be. I’m not gonna lie to you, though. It goes against every fiber I got. I mean, truth is… You know, watching out for you… it’s kinda been my job, you know? But more than that, it’s… it’s kinda who I am. You’re not a kid anymore, Sam, and I can’t keep treating you like one. Maybe I got to grow up a little, too. I don’t know if we got a snowball’s chance. But… But I do know that if anybody can do it… it’s you.
Some people will try to claim that Sam is in a position of power because he tried to go to college or because he can leave Dean and (somehow??) holds that over Dean’s head repeatedly (??????????), but if someone is in a position where, for even their own education or mental health, they’re not allowed to be apart from someone or even think about seeking something for themselves, that’s not abuse on the part of the person who seeks separation. And when Sam (young, so young), left for college, the only control he had was his own autonomy, his own two feet that brought him out that door. He was disowned for choosing to do what he needed for himself, after growing up in a family he had a hard time feeling a part of. That’s not abuse on Sam’s part. Maybe Dean did need Sam there beside him. But doing something for his own mental health and personal growth is not abuse by any stretch of the imagination. I call that courage.
The same goes for Castiel, especially considering that, despite his greater physical strength (when he was a fully-powered angel), he still tends mostly to act as if he is a subordinate or inferior, possibly from the millennia during which he was a soldier in a garrison: he was looking for a leader, a superior officer, even when he left. He found Dean.
“But what about when Sam and Cas do things behind Dean’s back??” Some people might ask. Again, I feel like (especially in the case of the Mark, where, due to its powerful influence, Dean was significantly altered and violent/controlling) if characters are so afraid to seek permission/understanding that they fear that they have to do something completely in secret… that just…. that’s not evidence that these people scurrying around in breathless terror are somehow the ones in a position of power?? Quite the opposite, I’d say. I mean, MoC!Dean literally said they weren’t a team; it was a dictatorship.
I’m sorry there are so few examples. Honestly, I could go on for hours and for pages and pages and pages, but I don’t have the time or the brainpower to make that post, so this is what I have. I’m sorry it’s not as complete as it could be or that it doesn’t include examples from s14, since I haven’t seen anything since pretty early in the season.
In short/tl;dr: Sam and Cas neither display a pattern of control nor find themselves consistently in a position of power over Dean. (And I cannot stress enough that Sam trying to seek his own path/seek education/do things for himself does not count as abuse and it disturbs me that people think it does.)
In fact, the opposite is most often the case: Dean is generally in the role of the leader. Recent seasons have begun to change that dynamic a bit, but neither Sam nor Cas have reversed the dynamic.
** Re: Sam punching Dean: I understand the circumstances and his reaction makes sense to me, but I’ll be honest: I’m personally uncomfortable with violence as a problem-solving method. So I don’t like that Sam did it, but I understand that both brothers grew up in an environment where less destructive/self-destructive methods were not consistently modeled for them. I understand that there are situations in which people might feel like words are useless and their only recourse is a physical response. I get pain and tragedy and desperation and terror and loss… but it doesn’t mean I’m any more comfortable with it.
Hey remember when Sam lost the last two members of his family in an explosion of Leviathan goo and he was broken and lost and he ran and he didn’t look for Dean because he thought he was dead when he was in fact in Purgatory? Remember how fandom blasted him for it? Still blasts him for it like it wasn’t an honest mistake but the greatest crime committed against brotherhood? Now Dean does the exact same thing to Mary but fandom is all ~but his feeling~ WHAT ABOUT SAM’S FEELINGS?!? THEN AND NOW?!?
OH MY GOSH.
OH. MY. GOSH.
Anon, you are freaking awesome! Thank you for bringing my attention to these parallels. Because of course you’re absolutely right. The show is making no big deal about Dean not knowing about Mary and assuming she’s dead and thus leaving her there because, well…
Because he’s not responsible for it and has perfectly understandable reasons to think she’s dead. I didn’t even think to connect those two events, because I immediately just thought, yeah, even though he’s wrong, I can see why Dean feels that way. He’s perfectly justified in thinking that. Just like Sam was at the end of s7.
But like you said, Sam has been mercilessly mocked and criticized for “leaving Dean behind,” not only by the fandom but also by the characters in the show.
The way he was treated was bad enough that he ended up literally suicidal, desperate to atone for “letting Dean down” with his own death. And as if that wasn’t bad enough (spoiler: IT WAS BAD ENOUGH), Lucifer then mocked Sam for it SEASONS LATER and used hallucinations to make Sam remember and feel guilty for it anew.
That whole thing culminated in a terribly handled apology in 11.11, where Sam apologized despite having done nothing particularly wrong and accidentally highlighted the horrifying imbalance between the brothers.
Quick summary:
Dean leaves Mary behind because he quite reasonably thinks she’s dead. People understand that Dean is grieving and has no way of knowing she’s alive. She even got sent somewhere with a very dangerous being that has reason to want to kill her if she arrived anywhere safely. Dean, of course, knew that the rift was just that: a portal to another world. So he knew Mary arrived safely, but understood that the world was inhospitable and Lucifer would likely kill her. People did not blame Dean. Sam did not blame Dean. Other characters have not blamed Dean. The fandom has not blamed Dean.
But OH BOY HOWDY. Sam leaves Dean behind because he quite reasonably thinks he’s dead. People do not understand that Sam was grieving and had no way of knowing Dean was alive. In fact, since the whole spell killed Dick, he had every reason to believe that Dean and Cas also died. He had no reason to think that Dean had been sent to Purgatory, and if he had, then he would have known that Dean (a hunter) got sent to a pit of monsters, many of which they put there. Even if he didn’t die in transit, Sam had every reason to think Dean would be immediately killed. Was the fandom understanding of Sam’s grief? Nope. The fandom blamed Sam. Dean blamed Sam. Characters in the show blamed Sam. The narrative itself condemned Sam, even though he admitted multiple times that he thought Dean was dead. Even though he literally just watched Bobby go mad and demand that the boys let each other go when it was their time. Then Bobby came back in s8 to blame Sam (completely opposite from what he told Sam at the end of s7, mind you). People still blame Sam. The show still blamed Sam in s11.
1)So a Dean-leaning casual fan friend of mine is re-watching the series from the start and she’s somewhere around mid-season 3 when she out of the blue says to me “You know I never really noticed how much Sam as a person has changed over the seasons.” And I’m all like yeah he has and I’m about to delve into all his juicy arcs and plot lines and the lasting changes they’ve had on him when she’s like “That’s not what I mean. I mean with Dean. He used to be so sure-footed in their relationship
2)regardless of anything else that might be going on, in a way I can’t remember seeing him in years. The Sam that would go out and get himself what HE needed, time away, answers, a confrontation, whatever, even when Dean disagreed or opposed him, the Sam that Dean says he had always admired in “Scarecrow” specifically because of that trait. It’s like that Sam just up and disappeared one day when I wasn’t looking and I just never noticed.” Then she goes on to say how that actually made her quite
3)sad because she enjoys their dynamic in those earlier seasons and we talk a bit about Dean too then she adds, and this is the part that really killed me, she says “thing is, I don’t know if the writers did that on purpose as part of his story or if they just stopped writing Sam like that without noticing themselves, but I can say for sure that Dean definitely has not noticed either.” And then she had to mop me off her floor because I’d dissolved into a bitter salty puddle of tears. Hearing
4)these observations from someone free of the intensity of fandom and all our microscopic analysis of the show was both cathartic and somehow so much more painful than hearing it from within the fandom. T_T
Oh my gosh YES. You are absolutely right. It’s really interesting and valuable to hear these things from someone who is not so steeped in the Fandom Conversation™. Hearing stuff like that from a fresh voice really does make it clear that we’re not just tying ourselves up in knots over nothing. There has been a slow but sure destruction of the traits that brought Sam to life in the earlier seasons, and though I think many of them can be traced back to repeated abuses the character endured. (After all, Sam’s ability to stand up for other people and speak his mind for their benefit has not changed. His willingness to do it for himself, though... that has been gone for ages.)
It’s painful, and it’s insightful, and it’s tragic, but it’s also kind of vindicating, if that makes sense? Thank you so much for sharing this, anon!
Hi! I've been getting back in to the supernatural fandom (I've been watching it since 2005) and I stumbled on a Sam hurt/comfort fanfic. It's really well written with lots of hurt Sam and what not but towards the end is started to get a little anti-Sam (it was very minuscule to the point you'd have to squint your eyes and tilt your head) What got to me was that it seemed like the author was blaming Sam for releasing the Darkness. It could have also been read that Sam was blaming himself 1/2
as in he felt that he was responsible even though he wasn't. When I first read it I couldn't help but think Sam went to Dean to die so they wouldn't release the darkness and Dean decided to 'kill' Death and thus released the darkness. My question (and kind of a rant) was why does the fandom (and several fanfiction stories) keep portraying Sam as the 'bad' guy and Dean as a Saint? And blaming Sam for things he never did? It was okay at first but now it's kind of pissing me off.
And the title of the story was [**redacted] (Just in case you wanted to check it out for yourself and decide whether the author was blaming Sam or if the character Sam was blaming Sam. It's a good story except for that little bit of Sam-blame.
** (I removed the author’s name and story name just because I don’t want to accidentally open anyone up to flames, though I don’t expect anyone would do that..)
It’s so awesome that you were in the fandom at the beginning! That takes a dedication that I respect. I hope that your foray back into SPN fandom is rewarding!
Thanks for coming to me with your thoughts. I took a look at the part where the Darkness is mentioned in the story and hope to read it in more detail later (I’m always down for some 11.17 H/C!) I do see what you mean with your concerns... it does seem a bit anti-Sam.
Unfortunately, there’s no way I can guess at the author’s intent. As you said, since it was Sam’s POV in that scene, it’s entirely possible that it could just be Sam blaming himself...
But in the reality of the show, things were a lot more complex than “Sam” in that story makes them out to be, and Dean’s actions in 11.17 and Sam’s choice in 10.23 are not necessarily the parallel the author makes them out to be. However.... again, Sam may very well see them to be parallels, and that would make sense.
But... Sam didn’t release the darkness by any stretch of the imagination. It wasn’t a choice he made to save Dean. In fact, up until the very end (literal moments before it happened, actually), he didn’t know of the consequences at all and was in a situation where he couldn’t have stopped them. As of a few minutes before the finale, he was pretty sure that the “dire consequences” of the spell were just the death of one person, which is horrible and honestly terrifying and tragic, but not the world ending consequences people kept yelling about.
Additionally, he didn’t even know that the spell was being performed, because when he last left them, they were quite a ways from actually getting everything in order.
On top of all that, Sam’s choice to perform the spell had nothing to do with the darkness. The price of the spell was a human life. The Mark itself was a lock, and had Dean not killed Cain, removing it would not have released the Darkness at all. Of course, that doesn’t make it Dean’s fault! Just like Sam, Dean could not have known. I’ve rambled about this in the past, though, so I’ll be quiet now.
A couple of lovely people have written their thoughts on the matter (here’s one piece of analysis and here’s another, but be aware that there is some understandable bitterness there)...
The thing is, the fandom and the show make the release of the Darkness out to be Sam’s fault, but it wasn’t. Not at all. And in 11.01, he seems willing enough to share the burden of responsibility with Dean, even though neither brother is particularly responsible for what happened.
Just want to say THANK YOU to the awesome post of the parallels between Sam/in Purgatory!Dean and Dean/in Portal!Mary! THANK YOU ANON! THANK YOU SEMIRA! And F**K YOU FANDOM! Many thanks, love you both :)
(re: this post)
The lovely and insightful Anon deserves all of the credit for that observation! It’s really hard for me to actually blame the fandom (though aghhhhhhhhhhhhh it’s hard not to be angry), because the way the show handled both situations was so horribly unbalanced; the fandom reacted as the show wanted them to.
Still, though. I’ve had a number of comments on the post using more and more convoluted reasons to continue to blame Sam for s8. And I get that for a lot of people Sam’s failure to look for Dean was worse because they, as viewers, cared for Dean more, but that doesn’t mean that Sam’s grief was any less and it doesn’t mean he didn’t have every reason to think Dean was dead.
In fact, Dean’s death has emotionally crippled Sam in the past and left him suicidal (s4, anyone?). That he even managed to seek out a person, place, and pet to stabilize and anchor him in s8 is something to be respected, in my opinion.
He stood by his promise to Dean and listened to Bobby’s warning and tried to keep going, and then when both came back, they both told him that he shouldn’t have listened and should have just... done the exact opposite.
He is criticized for keeping his promise in s8 and driven to a point where he wanted to die in 8.23, and then, having learned his lesson (no matter what promises he makes, he must struggle to save Dean no matter what!) he does exactly that in season 10 when he desperately seeks a cure for MoC!Dean, but he was mercilessly criticized for that, as well, both in fandom and in the show.
