#Destiel shippers are very much the normies of the SPN fandom lol

[dreamytfw]

You wonder why Destiel fics that also have Sam in a relationship don't feature Samwena? It's because it's so much easier to get him out of the way on a hunt with Eileen, or off living a normal life with Jess. Samwena is too much chaos. It's mystery and magic, it's intriguing, it's trouble waiting to happen. And let's face it, it's hot. Too much work when the writer just wants to center Destiel and have Sam there to say "Get a room, you two."

I was talking about fics where Sam's relationship is an entire subplot, not just authors dropping in a token Sam mention.

But if we're going with the token Sam mention, then I don't completely agree with this take. Don't get me wrong, I agree with your 2nd paragraph 100% 😍 But any writer worth their salt would be able to have an intriguing secondary dynamic in the background, not upstaging the main pair. And there are too many well-written Destiel fics out there for this to boil down to a case of bad and/or lazy writing choices.

With the caveat that I'm excluding fics written before Rowena debuted (because iirc the only ships for Sam at that point that didn't involve abuse dynamics were SamJess and I think Sabriel? idk I don't read Sabriel), I think Sam gets paired with Eileen or Jess a lot for the same reason way too many Destiel shippers are so invested in human!Cas end game: the Destiel section of the fandom is full of boring normies lol. SamJess and Saileen are safe and "normal."