#also thinking about how sam is canonically dean’s moral compass begging him not to kill innocent lives

[lambmotifz]

thinking about how dean’s monstrosity is about enjoying violence and torturing people (mostly men) & sam’s monstrosity is about being inherently unclean and his body being used as a tool for use and abuse by others

[ameliacareful]

Goodness

I think about how other people in the SPN universe perceive Sam and Dean.  I’m pretty sure they see them as a unit.  The Winchester brothers.  SamandDeanWinchester.  I wouldn’t be surprised if there are people who envy them their closeness.  Who wouldn’t want someone by their side who would genuinely let the world burn to save you?  Not to mention they are both tall and good looking, sons of one of the best hunters, John Winchester, friend to Bobby Singer.  They have an angel as a friend.  They’re hunter royalty, so to speak.  (Also crazy and, seriously, people who partner with them do not have long lives.)  

 From the outside, for all their bickering, the realities of their relationship with each other is mostly invisible.  Cas is the only one who sees it and he understands some of it, but he’s not human.

 Sam is deeply committed to Dean’s goodness, as is the show.  In 11.23 Alpha and Omega Chuck tells Dean the world will be fine without him because it’s got Dean…and Sam.  But the brothers aren’t nearly so simple as to be described as ‘good.’ Chuck tells Lucifer that the mark didn’t make him hate humanity, “The Mark didn't change you. It just made you more of what you already were.”  (11.22)

 When I thought about 11.02 (Form and Void) where Sam is infected and praying in the hospital chapel, the thing that stood out was Sam’s insistence that Dean deserved better.  Sam was only two, maybe three days away from having knelt in front of Dean so that Dean could murder him.  Even as he was waiting for Dean to cut his head off, Sam was insisting that Dean, the real Dean, was good.  Earlier in that season, when Dean slaughtered a room full of people, Sam was begging him to tell him it was ‘you or them.’ 

 Dean is not ‘good.’  Neither is Sam.  They are vastly complicated morally and I’m not the first note that Supernatural is about two serial killers.  They’ve killed more people and monsters under every range of possible circumstances than any living human being.  Part of what makes them so interesting is the struggle to find a morality in the mess of their lives.  I would say that both are committed to that, each in their own damaged way but that they are not always successful.

 Why is Sam so committed to Dean being a ‘good’ man?  Sam knows what Dean is and what he’s been and done, and he knows enough to remind Dean that they hunt but they also save people when it feels as if Dean has lost his compass in the wake of the MoC.  At some level he has to know that Dean is not a good moral compass for Sam—Sam is willing to stand up to Dean about this even when he won’t about most things in their lives.  Part of it is the show telling us that Dean is a hero, of course.  But it’s canon and the gap between what Dean does and what Dean supposedly is, is not really addressed even by Sam who has been the victim of Dean’s anger so many times.  

 Sam needs Dean to be good.  Perhaps because Sam is so convinced that he himself is not good.  Sam’s grasp on reality and his own sense of self have been stronger in Season 12 than any other season in years—Jarad Padelecki has given us a Sam who feels a little more relaxed than Season 10 and 11—and Jensen Ackles has given us a softer Dean.  Although there hasn’t been much acknowledgment of what has happened to Sam in the opening of the season Dean has listened to Sam and through Sam, to his mother, lashing out less and trusting a little more.  Dean still lashes out, though particularly at Mary but sometimes at Sam.  Dean’s demand that Sam pick a side was an example of Dean at his less than best.

 Sam has a long history of bad things happening when he picks a side.  Even when an outsider might think that Sam is making a reasonable decision, the show will often undermine that.  (Other people have written about the show’s double standard.) Sam no longer trusts his own moral compass and he can’t trust his own intellect.  Does Sam depend on Dean, his stone number one, to be good because it’s that or nothing?  Sam has no friends except Jody and hasn’t made friends in years.  Dean is the point of contact for everyone in their lives, including their mother.  Sam isn’t connecting to Mary the way Dean is.  Cas has a more profound bond with Dean.

 Sam is isolated.  He owns nothing and has learned over the years to own nothing.  Dean got the car and the music; Sam got pulled away from Stanford and other than a box of keepsakes, he’s pretty much stripped himself of much connection to people or things.  He clings to his hair as if it were his identity and in a way it is. It’s his only real self-indulgence. That and Netflix.  

 Sam needs Dean to be ‘good’ because it’s about all he has.