So it’s an interesting thing for me because what Sam’s doing is such a human thing to do. It’s a response to emotional feedback that no matter how empathic you are or aren’t happens at least in my house all the time.
This is how things usually go for me:
--gets (finally) outwardly upset about something (generally something that can’t be fixed)
--everyone else volunteers to make me a coffee/tries to convince me to chill with the Sims/watch TV
--eventually deals with my shit emotionally and calms down
--goes back to dealing with feelings on the inside like a totally coping repressed empath
With volatile emotions from one person when you’re in a state of focus yourself there’s such a strong impulse to try and gain serenity that you’ll go out of your way to try and fix it. Doesn’t matter if you care about the person’s feelings or not, because the motives from someone who’s doing it selfishly or someone who’s doing it selflessly are the same: please stop being upset right now this is harshing my groove. If it’s for selfish reasons it’s usually because you want to get on with something else and the upset person is causing a roadblock. Selfless reasons imply you want the person to stop hurting because the depth of their upset it in itself agonizing for you.
Speaking in terms of how things go in our house: I generally refuse to accept these platitudes because I can see how false they are, but eventually I’ll suck it in and pretend to be okay for the sake of everyone (usually because emotional feedback from me sets off the other empaths in the house and they get snappish). Anyway, not the point.
Dean told Sam that he was not okay. Their argument was the first sign Sam had (really) that Dean was not okay and that this wasn’t just him being standoffish and brusque for no reason. When Dean then tells Sam that he’s still not okay at the end of 13x04 then we move to this: Sam trying to resolve the status quo by bringing things to Dean that he thinks he likes, and trying to convince Dean to go and do the things he likes.
In my opinion Sam’s motivation could easily be selfishness, compassion or both at once, but he’s basically doing the Sam Winchester equivalent of bringing me a coffee when I’m upset out of - in my opinion - a sense of helplessness that he neither knows what the problem is entirely or (because it’s so vast and nebulous) how to deal with it, not realizing that it’s really just something Dean has to work through on his own.
Anyway that’s just a snapshot of my thoughts based on personal experience, which of course is the window through which we all watch the show differently. But =D That’s what I think’s going on here, surface read style and not meta tear apart the subtext style, because other folks have got that bit handled.
