#samwinchestermeta

[lillysilverus]

I didn’t watch Metamorphosis today on TNT.  But I was thinking about it last night when I knew it was coming on.  It’s such a powerful Sam episode.  He bares his soul to Dean, and although we’ve seen him open up again here and there,  I think it’s the last time he does it quite like that.  I think this is when Sam learned  that Dean was never going to really “know”  him or understand how he felt. That they were always going to be separated by what had been done to him as a child. And he realized that Dean would really rather not know how much pain Sam keeps on the inside.  Jensen is very good at showing Dean’s surprise every time Sam shares a tidbit of it, and at showing his rejection of it as well.  Dean is the one who hates himself, only sees himself as Daddy’s hammer and on and on.  Sam is the confident, superior one. 

Dean has always been a hot mess. He wouldn’t have sold his soul like it was nothing if he wasn’t.  But in this episode, he’s just gotten back from hell and discovered that “Sammy” died the day his soul was dragged to hell. He comes back to a Sam he doesn’t understand, mostly because he never really did.  All he saw was the smart, independent little brother who left him for a better life.  He refused to see the desperate guy who would rather have died than be the last Winchester standing.  The guy who had to live with the fact that his whole family had died because there was something wrong with him.  Dean reacts poorly to finding out just how desperate Sam is, to say the least.  

And something else that occurred to me. Not only is Sam dealing with being the cause of his family’s demise but Dean, whether consciously or unconsciously, has something that he can manipulate Sam with for the rest of his life.  He does it consciously in season 3 of course.  But for the rest of his life, Sam will always be the guy that Dean went to hell for.  To everyone.  Because even though in his heart of hearts, Dean knows he didn’t really do it for Sam,  that is how it’s framed and that is how Sam will see it and it is a hair shirt he can never shed.  And because Sam reacted to the grief and anger of it by throwing his principals out the window and doing something Dean expressly forbid him to do, Dean can justify his own bad reaction.  The words might never be spoken out loud, but it’s there.  Sam betrayed Dean’s sacrifice. Even though technically, Dean made a decision that would make Sam’s life a literal living hell for years to come and was pretty much the beginning of all of the bad things that happened afterward to both of them. Sam was the betrayer, not Dean.  Even jumping into hell for everyone’s sins was not framed as Sam being a hero.  It was framed as what he deserved for not being the guy Dean and the show told us he was supposed to be. And it would be many seasons before anybody said differently. Is it any wonder that Sam holds all of those feelings of inadequacy inside until he’s under so much duress that he loses his grip?  

And like I said, I know that he has moments in later seasons when he might let some of it out, i. e., the trials, but he is never this angry, defiant guy who still thought he had some control of his life again. 

[marys2ndson]

i am going to rip my heart out of my chest, i just read an interview where sufjan talks about his mother’s death and tell me this isn’t sam:

“It's something that was necessary for me to do in the wake of my mother's death - to pursue a sense of peace and serenity in spite of suffering.” 

imagine this motherless child growing up side by side with monster hunts and a depressed alcoholic father and guns everywhere, going to stanford for peace and serenity and safety at last, because “there's so much evil out there in the world dean, I feel like I could drown in it,” but he doesn’t, he perseveres and forgives and tries to make it better. 

“As a kid, of course, I had to construct some kind of narrative. [...] There's such a discrepancy between my time and relationship with her, and my desire to know her and be with her.” 

picture sam, never having known his mother, kneeling in front of her grave, tears in his eyes, saying i love you mom. picture him years later, kissing his fingers then touching her headstone. 

“It was so terrifying to encounter death and have to reconcile that, and express love, for someone so unfamiliar. Her death was so devastating to me because of the vacancy within me.”

look, he should’ve had nothing but bad associations with her. growing up with dean lashing out if he mentioned her, and dad grieving and risking all their lives for her memory, and her death meant that this darling baby boy knew loss earlier than anyone ever should and how does he cope? he loves her. he loves his dead mother. 

[interstellarstorms]

I can’t believe how perfect Sam Winchester is and how terrible people treat him

[sunflowerchester]

I just want to address fandom myself for a second. I’ve seen some wonderful pieces written about Dean and Mary in the AU vs Sam and Dean in Purgatory (shout out @semirahrose) and how fandom has reacted to them, but I need to put in my two cents. Which will honestly just be a large middle finger to the NEVER ENDING hypocrisy fans of Dean will go to to absolve him of any shit he deals while lambasting Sam for taking too deep a breath. 

13.04:

DEAN: Does this mean your plan for bringing Mom back isn’t working? 'Cause I’ll say it again, Mom’s dead, Sam. Lucifer ripped out her freaking heart. Now the sooner you could wrap your head around that, the sooner we can all move on.

8.01

SAM: Nothing says “family” quite like the whole family being dead. DEAN: I wasn’t dead. [He stands up and walks around SAM.] In fact, I was knee-deep in God’s armpit killing monsters, which, I thought, is what we actually do. SAM: Yes, Dean. And far as I knew, what we do is the thing that got every single member of my family killed. I had no one – no one. And for the first time in my life, I was completely alone. And, honestly, I-I didn’t exactly have a roadmap. So, yeah, I-I fixed up the Impala, and I just… drove. DEAN: After you looked for me. [SAM says nothing.] Did you look for me, Sam? [SAM looks away.] 

Not only is this another case of goal-post-shifting from Dean (oh the classics just never get old with this guy), but this is a CLEAR contradiction for how Dean would want this situation to be handled if it were him in Mary’s position. How do we know? Because he LITERALLY says so, he spends an entire season punishing Sam for believing him to be dead, DESPITE the fact Sam watched his brother EXPLODE. 

But my beef with the in-universe stuff is obvious and could have probably gone unstated (especially since I’ve fought the Purgatory battle for years). What I want to break down is the line-by-line fan reaction to each of these situations and how some fans STILL hold onto the very unfair POV that Sam was a bad brother for believing Dean was dead while coddling Dean this season for insisting Mary is dead. (From what I understand of 13.04, Dean’s POV on Mary is resolved by the end of the ep which is great, but that doesn’t address how unfair fandom still is towards Sam even now, 13 seasons in.)

Dean insists Mary is dead and gives legitimate reasons why he’d believe that, her heart was ripped, etc. However, in s8 when Sam explains he, too, thought Dean was dead and had a legitimate reason to believe that (because he saw Dean go up in a Leviathan explosion), Dean fans scoffed as if seeing your brother explode is somehow not a good enough reason to believe and accept he’s dead. Not only that, I’ve seen arguments that state even if Sam thought Dean was dead, he should have done something to ressurect him despite their agreement to never do that again. Meanwhile, this season, we get people of course falling all over themselves to be understanding of Dean’s bullheadedness in insisting Mary is dead and that they should promptly move on from any other possibility. 

It’s just another example of fandom only allowing Dean to be the one to feel his feelings while only allowing Sam to do so when his feelings expressly cater to Dean’s feelings. God forbid Sam have his own. The hypocrisy is still lost on these fans if they can honestly stand by supporting Dean’s position on Mary with understanding while still demonizing Sam’s position in s8 for pretty much believing the exact same thing of Dean as Dean is now believing of Mary. 

So as always, I’m back to sound off and roll my eyes. 

[samwinchestermeta]

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.

[themegalosaurus]

Given the sorts of horrors that the Winchesters encounter on a daily basis, I was a bit surprised that the not-very-gory meat factory in 12x18 was enough to put Sam off his food. But then I remembered this scene from Season 7 - a hallucinatory glimpse at Sam’s time in the Cage - and, yeah. Okay.

[lillysilverus]

So as my mind wandered to Sam Winchester last night while I was trying to sleep, as it tends to do, it occurred to me that Sam has spent practically his whole life without emotional support.  

We know that he grew up feeling different and unclean and his father and brother were not exactly the touchy feely talking types.  I do find it interesting that Dean knew who Sully was which means that Sam told him about his imaginary friend. But Dean’s attitude about it, as we witnessed, probably stopped Sam from ever trying to discuss it after the initial conversation. In fact that may have been when he decided to start keeping his feelings to himself.  

That’s not to say that people didn’t try to be there for him.  I imagine Jessica tried, but Sam was hiding so much from her and he told us early on that he never felt like he really fit in at school.  

And Dean did try too, mostly in the early seasons.  But he was raised by the same father and he works hard to suppress his own inadequate feelings so he really kinda sucks at it.  And basically after season 3, except for a few exceptions, his advice has been to suck it up and keep moving.  Even the “stone number one” speech really had no follow up.  In fact, before that when Sam finally admitted that he was having trouble discerning what was real, Dean’s reaction was to do his patented “I’m acting angry because I’m very scared”shtick. And after Bobby died, forget it.  

We don’t know how Amelia was.  She might have been great, but if we’re going with cannon, all we saw was Sam being a sounding board, looking pensive and sad (and beautiful, bless season 8 hair) and Amelia talking and talking about her stuff. 

Then there was the church scene in “Sacrifice” which I know so many people thought was so wonderfully brotherly. But it was basically Dean saying, “how could you possibly think that I don’t love you just because I’ve been treating you like crap since I got back and can’t let go of anything that hurt me ever, ever, ever, even though I told you I want you to have a normal life in one breath and berate you for finding it in another.”  Dean has too many issues of his own to be emotionally supportive of Sam.  It’s not really a criticism, it’s more of a fact.

And yet somehow, Sam supports everyone around him.  Dean, Castiel, Gabriel, Jack......just to name the most obvious ones. (Don’t get me started on Mary).  I guess it’s why “Just my Imagination” was such a stellar episode and right up there with my all time favorites.  To see someone supporting Sam that way was such a gift.  And unfortunately, a rare one. 

[lillysilverus]

Do you ever watch these later seasons of SPN and suddenly you see or hear a glimpse of young Sam from season 1 or 2 and just get a lump in your throat? 

Most of the time, it's like they're two completely different people because Sam has changed so much in appearance and maturity.  His whole demeanor from confident, defiant boy to the more quiet, compassionate, world weary man he is now is just worlds apart.

But every once in a while, I see that boy in a look or an inflection and it makes me remember how I felt when I first started watching the show and how I fell in love with Sam.