ratherastory | *sadface*

The shred of hope I have now is that things have gotten bad so early in the season that I feel like things have to start improving on the Sam and Dean front. Dean's going to find out what's wrong with Sam and he will realize that having your soul removed is a horrific thing, and that though he has every right to be angry he also needs to be compassionate and a crusading soul-recoverer.

I'd rather have the hard-to-watch beatdown in 6.6, however painful, than work slowly towards it till 6.21.

But Sam has done so much, I want him to be allowed to be trustworthy and trusted and I want him to not just have people who love him, because he's always had that, but have people who LIKE him. He's so isolated it's heartbreaking. And sometimes I can't tell if he's manipulating Dean or if it's a shadow of real feeling creeping through, and sometimes I feel like manipulating Dean IS a shadow of real feeling showing through, because he needs to be able to communicate with Dean and he knows that but without the center of himself communication comes out as manipulation.

NOW I AM ALL DEPRESSED AND IT'S YOUR FAULT. Let's talk about how awesome Cas is.

CAS IS AWESOME! \o/

Sam really is isolated. No one seems to like him. Dean loves him because, well. Bobby is... conflicted at best, and just now admitted Dean was always his favourite (which, frankly, we knew).

The only person who ever truly cared about Sam just for himself has been dead for five years.

Sam is totally manipulating Dean, which, to be fair, has always been his main way of communicating with his brother. They're so dysfunctional it breaks my heart, but I honestly don't think Sam knows how to connect with his brother in a healthy way. Certainly not now.

The whole no-soul bit has to be a hell of a whammy, too. It's like he remembers how he's supposed to feel and is trying to act accordingly, and he just... can't.

On that note:

CAAAAAAAAAAAS!

I think it's more complicated than always manipulative Sam. Dean, when he loves people, projects incredibly strongly onto them and doesn't always see them very clearly; look at his switch from hero-worshipping John to seeing deadbeat Dads everywhere, or look at the way he interpreted all of Sam's heaven memories as reflections of his place in Sam's life and indeed his image of Sam. In that respect Sam, for all that he can get hung up on rage and revenge and obsession and blind himself completely to others, can also at times be clearer-headed than Dean. He thought through his issues with John, and even to some extent with Dean himself, in a way that Dean never has with either John or Sam.

Sam has always responded to Dean's projective tendencies with a mix of playing the roles Dean casts him in (geeky college boy, rebel who always leaves, little brother who needs to be protected and saved, potential monster) and rebelling against them. When Sam desperately wants to reach Dean, like in Fresh Blood or Point of No Return, he speaks in little brother mode not, or not only, because it's his way of getting Dean to do what he wants but because Dean can see him and hear him in those defined roles, and not necessarily if he steps outside them. Now ALL of Sam is a role that he's trying to play, and the core of himself that made the communication real is missing, and he's playing the role in service of his hunting agenda, but I think he might also be drawn to Dean in the hopes that Dean will project a Sam at him that will make him more cohesive, remind him of the missing core. But Dean has a hard time seeing something like "this is a shell of my brother" or "these are the shattered fragments of my brother;" he's looking for "this is my brother" or "this is not my brother." I'll be really, really interested in how their interactions will play out with both of them knowing the truth that Sam is soulless, whatever Spn decides that means.

/rambling essay thing

Oh, of course it's more complicated than what I said, but there's a reason I don't write meta: my days of elaborating complicated theses about character motivation. ;)

I am, as always, awed by your ability to put my emotional flailing into words. :D

: )

I may be a crazy optimist, but I have hopes for Sam and Dean's relationship. For all it ended in disaster, I think the year with Lisa gave Dean some healing and perspective. And part of the reason I am so relieved that they are giving a supernatural explanation for Sam (apart from the fact that if he were just this way as character development it would be impossible to sympathize with him), is that for all Dean has maybe erred at times, like parts of s2, in thinking of Sam as needing saving rather than able to save himself, it might actually do Dean a world of good to be in a situation where something was wrong with Sam that Dean COULD fix and COULD save him from. Sam saved himself in s5 and it wasn't always perfectly depicted but he was awesome, and I have enormous respect for his s5 development, but Dean was so deep in his own depression that he was a bit marginal to Sam's journey. So now if Dean saves Sam I won't feel like Sam has been cheated out of saving himself, and I will feel that Dean is maybe getting something he needs. They could go on from there to work at a better, adult relationship, after a lot of hugging and crying.

I really hope you're right, but I'd like, at the end, for Dean to come out of it thinking of Sam as, y'know, more than a burden that needs carrying, or someone who needs constant saving/protecting. It's that weird and slightly unhealthy relationship that's gotten them into trouble over and over again.

Yes, I agree, but I think part of the reason they are caught in the cycle (and Sam needing to save Dean is part of it too, in s3 and in a twisted way in s4 and even in s5) is that it never works, it never completes. And Sam came closer to getting to save Dean in 5.18 than Dean to his knowledge has to getting to save Sam, because I'm sure Dean doesn't think that he was what made Sam able to beat Lucifer. Just now I feel like it's something they need to get out of their system before they can move on from it.

I think I want most of all for Dean to like Sam again. At the end of s5 I think he had come to trust him again (and now, dammit, that's totally shattered) and to respect him as a man capable of making his own choices, and he'd always loved him, but I still didn't feel a lot of warm affection, which Sam seemed to be reaching out for, in a very clumsy way, at times like 5.11 and 5.14. I don't think who saves whom would unbalance the relationship if there were more ballast of choosing each other's company and liking each other. But at the moment poor Sam can't enjoy anything, and he's not very likable.

Yes, exactly!

I want Dean to like Sam again, the way he did right up until the end of Season 3. Dean has had so much shit rain down on him that I'm not sure he remembers how to do things like trust people, or like people. Love isn't an issue for Dean: he gives his love out like it's candy. He loves Lisa and Ben and Bobby, and God help him he loves Sam too because he can't not, but love in Dean is a sad, broken thing, like a wounded bird. It's fragile, and it's just something others use to hurt him.

I'd really like to see Dean come to terms with this, and maybe grow out of his conviction that he's basically worthless, or only worth as much as his ability as a hunter lets him be. His words this episode were telling: "I ain't a father, I'm a killer." It's not true, but it's true to him, and that's what breaks my heart and also makes me want to shake him until his teeth rattle in his head and he sees sense.

Bravo! :D That's a very interesting interpretation.

sadface

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