#deanwinchesterbaby

[septembersghost]

Idk how to explain this in a way that makes sense but I really find it so sweet how you love and defend Sam even if I’ve turned quite bitter towards his character. It’s comforting.

this is so consoling to me and nice to hear, thank you. 💗 it's important to me if it's a comfort to you, because that's the purpose of why I've been doing it for myself too.

I have...much, much longer thoughts on this (as if this isn't going to turn out long enough), but in the immediate aftermath of the finale, and the wake of the devastating wound of it, I felt nothing but rancor and bitterness bordering on irrational hatred towards Sam. for standing there and doing nothing. for abandoning everyone. for living a life he didn't even want, that didn't even fit him. I just...had this impulse of wanting to scream in his face, to be honest. he felt like a stranger, a robot. it didn't take long, though, for me to re-contextualize that and realize how tragic and appalling the ending was for him too, how horrifically empty and unfair. resentment towards Sam was doing nothing but hurting me even more, and I had to pick my way through the ruins of it, come to understand that it wasn't Sam's fault, it was the writing, pretending as though that was a satisfying answer, as if that was an appropriate conclusion. it wasn't, for either of them, and the full realization of that led me back to the Sam I knew and had been separated from for a while, due to both the damaging writing of the show itself and fandom.

I think it helped that I'd been re-watching the early seasons at the time, I was only in S3 in November, and I love S3, I love S3!Sam (I love Kripke era Sam generally, in all his flaws and flinty anger, all his struggles with his darkness and his destiny. both of the boys are so strikingly HUMAN and realized and felt in that era). and I watched him trying so hard to figure out a way to save his brother, grasping desperately at straws to the point where he was willing to condemn them both to becoming monsters if it meant saving him, and I ached for the failure he got left with. Dean's arc is a meaningless, agonizing tragedy, but Sam's is a hollow, ugly defeat, and neither is fair. as my friend Cassie just said to me as I was writing this, "[Sam's] fate wasn’t any better. The narrative completely steamrolled him too. It wasn’t tragic in the same way Dean’s was but his story ended up in the same useless place." the more I had to sit with that, the worse it gnawed at me, and I realized that I REFUSE to allow their worth to be taken away.

I fell in love with these boys in 2005, and while my heart and soul are all wrapped up in Dean, that simply wouldn't be true without Sam, because of how they shared and shaped that journey as a team, how their bond informed the story, how their contrasts and edges were essential to its foundation. the profound love they share for one another, which is essential. which dabb era honestly didn't understand, and never allowed to flourish or experience catharsis like they should have.

I've talked about this before, but beginning in parts of carver era and then fracturing into dabb's, the writers stripped Sam of his character. they sanded down everything about him, blunted him - his wit and humor, his vivacity, his raw fury, his hubris, his ruthlessness. we get a revival of him in parts of S10 and S11, but after that, he's harder to see. they tried to feign that he's well-adjusted (lol) or somehow triumphed over his accumulated trauma (where?), but we never saw any of this. if anything, we had evidence for the opposite - Sam being so burdened by it that he became more and more mired in a depression that flattened him, something he SAID in S15 itself. he mentioned still grieving for Jess, and the biggest part of that was guilt. they told us he'd never gotten over the losses they'd experienced, and then tried to pretend he wouldn't be permanently destroyed by losing Dean, the one person he truly allowed in and who could fully know him, the person he relied on most and always wanted to save? that it wouldn't be an unrecoverable grief? the sun was blotted out and we're supposed to believe the world kept turning for him.

also the whole thing with blurry wife and replacement goldfish son doesn't work. blurry wife is nothing, it's the most misogynistic thing this show ever did because she has no purpose, no name, no face, except to be a walking womb to perpetuate a lineage that Sam didn't even ever express a desire of wanting to pass on (and, at times, voiced the opposite, and said they were cursed). the kid is an ineffectual replacement for someone whose void can never, ever be filled. (tbh I just don't buy Sam wanting to be a father at all, and if Sam had that child to "honor" Dean, that's a terrible reason to have a child.) Sam is condemned to the same cycle of trauma perpetuated by his upbringing, just without (maybe) the hunting. Sam does what John did in placing a child into the mantle and hole of a lost loved one that can never be met. it's cruel.

additionally not a secret, I LOATHE how a significant part of fandom characterizes Sam. the Winchesters are such richly drawn characters and complement and contrast each other intentionally. for some incomprehensible reason, a huge part of fandom infantalizes him, copy/pastes traits over him, victimizes him, and reduces him to this wobbly, helpless softboi babygirl who can't stand up for himself and has no agency (and is afraid of Dean...absurd). I have never once in my life seen that man. I don't know who that man is. spine of steel Sam? relentless, determined Sam? Sam fucking Winchester? Sam is a freak (affectionate). Sam never had to be told that he deserved to voice his opinions or that he deserved to carve out his identity and choose his life, he knew that from before the pilot. Sam who is aggressive and sharply intelligent and nearly compulsive about lore, Sam who asserts himself and his plans, Sam who loves his brother in a huge way, a way that sometimes takes on shades of obsession and jealousy, a way that makes him try to break open the gates of hell, that has him demanding to trade places with him, that makes him let out the Darkness. I'm not saying he's not a victim of trauma and abuse (he is, from John to the Cage, etc), or that he doesn't experience self-loathing/doubt, because he certainly does. it is very, very different from how Dean experiences it. Sam's issues with suicidality in S8 particularly are very, very different from Dean's issues with suicidality through the entire show (and the reasons for their unending recurrence). Sam takes on the Trials in S8 because Dean sees them as a suicide mission, and Sam WANTS TO LIVE, and then as they break him down and convince him he's impure and needs purification and should die for it, Dean pulls him back from the ledge, and for this, Dean is vilified. fandom makes no sense to me. people like to say he had to be free of Dean to live, which is absolutely not true - Dean was always willing to let him leave, or even to leave him (often with accompanying self-blame), he did not keep him hostage or demand Sam be shackled to him. Sam made the choice to stay every time. Sam chose his brother. Sam was willing to die together ("we'll do that together too"), and Sam embraced their life more and more as long as they were together ("I don't want to do it without my brother"). Sam wanted to prove to Dean that it was worth it to survive ("I want to slam hell shut, too, okay? But I want to survive it. I want to live, and so should you. You have friends up here, family. I mean, hell, you even got your own room now. You were right, okay? I see light at the end of this tunnel. And I'm sorry you don't – I am. But it's there. And if you come with me, I can take you to it."), and Sam WANTED DEAN TO LIVE ("Dean deserves better. Dean deserves a life."). down to the wire, near the very end of the story, Sam stood in front of Dean as Dean frayed at every edge, as Dean essentially had a (VERY UNDERSTANDABLE) mental breakdown in front of him, and he said, "My entire life, you've protected me - from Dad, from Lucifer, from everything. I didn't always like it, you know, but it's the one thing in the whole world that I could always count on. It's the only thing I've ever known that was true...we'll figure it out, Dean, we'll find another way, you and me. We always do." Sam's who he is because he had Dean, because Dean's empathy and love shaped him, because Dean's sacrifices and vulnerability allowed him to be selfish (and saying "selfish" isn't an insult, Sam was able to claim desires in many ways, that isn't inherently bad) and proud and to forge his path. one of Sam's BIGGEST THEMES was that he kept faith. and they just. robbed him of everything.

they set up these potentially really great arcs with Sam embracing his legacy as a leader and uniting the hunter life with the Men of Letters history, something which was affirming for him, which WAS a victory over the damage of their childhoods, which was turning hunting into something more, a community, and they dropped it. they set up Sam's closeness to Rowena and her teaching him various spellwork and empowering him, leaving him with her CENTURIES WORTH OF MAGIC AND KNOWLEDGE, something he could have used to finally rescue his brother (something he never once achieved, he never got to save him back), and they dropped it. it's insane, because if you want to tell a story about someone who was unfairly "tainted" with powers he never asked for as an innocent BABY, something that sunk claws into his life and caused him to grapple with his value, to question his goodness and his identity, a way to overcome that would be to grant him powers entirely separate from Azazel, who decimated his family, from the demon blood which hurt him in its dark addiction. it's a show literally called Supernatural and they ended it with NO SUPERNATURAL THEMES LMAO. they set up the idea of them retiring from hunting altogether, thinking about a life apart from that, showed them both wanting it for each other and together, and they dropped it. Dean gets impaled on a random, conveniently placed piece of rebar by a vampire who has no name, no face, not even a voice (the metaphor of that is unbelievably gross in how it ripples to Dean, and it's also...blurry wife and masked vampire #3 are the same black holes of non-character?!), and Sam idly is forced into doing nothing and then stuck in beige suburbia, something he once classified as a kind of nightmare ("I totally lied. That kid's life sucked ass. All that apple-pie, family crap? It's stressful. Trust me – we didn't miss a damn thing"). they forced him to stand silent as Dean died and said his life was worthless and built Sam up, and didn't let Sam correct him or tell him how much he loved him too. I cannot express the RAGE I feel about what this story did to Sam.

certain people like to say he "broke the codependency," and then got his "happy ending/reward" in heaven, please miss me with how fucking insulting that is. death breaks nothing, it is an absence that solidifies that forever. furthermore, Sam had absolutely no idea that heaven would even be there, that he would even see Dean again, and there are multiple canonical reasons to assume he thought he wouldn't. it's awful. Sam and Dean always, always knew that heaven wasn't the point. heaven was established as a vaguely threatening place, memorex but nothing real, because the purpose of the story was fighting and helping people and holding on with both hands to LIVE. five minutes and throwaway lines about heaven being "fixed" (with it feeling eerily desolate and melancholy) does nothing for me. them reuniting after DECADES APART does nothing for me. heaven was never the point. and maybe some of this is my nature in not finding a concept of the afterlife particularly inspiring, but they were supposed to have freedom, they were supposed to live and thrive as a part of their world, after all they endured and suffered, to be able to overcome and find their places and shine like we knew they could.

there's also the story where they COULD have had the "tragic" ending, the blaze of glory where they fearlessly saved the world and died together, and that still could have had meaning. I've discussed this endlessly with friends and have probably posted about it before, but there's a version of that which works poignantly, where they leave the strength of their legacies behind, make the world they inhabited a better place, are remembered, celebrated, become enfolded into the lore. the Winchester gospels redefined and passed on. they didn't get that either, though. they got...more of the same and then this odd pointlessness sold as, idk, "bittersweet." I just. ugh. reject it.

so, unending grief and agony for Dean was joined with this sense of burning fury and injustice over Sam. over the boy with the demon blood who felt kinship for monsters because he was afraid he was one of them, who could express kindness honestly but also utilize it as a tool, who was fierce and arrogant and fought back. they forced Sam to fail. they forced him to lose everything, everyone. Sam's this fascinatingly insular person, who guards himself and keeps on restraints, which makes the moments of him being unrestrained that much more feral and affecting. Sam deserved to succeed in the life he'd run from, because he understood his place and found belonging there after all. Sam deserved to have his brother, whole and beloved and finding his way, because Sam would have been so proud to watch Dean as he recovered and grabbed hold of his agency. Dean deserved to persevere, whole and cherished.

what it led me to was...defense and reclamation. I can't stand what the show did to him, to them. I can't abide the way fandom makes him a delicate lamb instead of the strong, passionate, determined man he was. I can't handle the people who hate Dean with such vitriol that they classify him as an abuser when he gave everything he ever had to others, especially to his brother, and then died putting himself down in his last breaths. Dean who fought for the whole world for love, and Sam who saw that at every step.

I fell in love with a story about two beautiful, glimmering lost boys moving through their world of shadows and sharp fangs and gothic horrors, blazing on its margins, claiming open roads and fighting for the innocent, and for one another. a story that had love so firmly, loudly beating at its heart that we got all these beautiful instances of its resonance, its danger and its transcendence. that told us nothing ever really ends, and that free will is paramount, and that we make our decisions and are brave in defiance. that love is a radical, holy act, bigger than manipulations of any heaven, any hell. Sam and Dean represented every facet of that, dark and light, knife's edge and hearth of home. that's what this story was, and it MATTERED. I can't and won't let it be taken away, or reduced to some flimsy facsimile of itself. I won't let THEM be crushed and whittled away into unremarkable paper cutouts of themselves. they meant too much to me for so long, and gave so much to my life, and I'm grateful for that. they've always been my boys. they always will be.

Sam and I argue and we lost our way for a little while because I very admittedly love his brother overpoweringly, but loving his brother is actually PART of loving him. Dean loves Sam so much, I don't feel like I'm honoring him in not remembering that I do too. (I love everybody because I love you.) Dean was proud of Sam, and I don't want to throw those achievements away or disregard that they were important. Sam forces me to ask more questions and investigate things more deeply, and I appreciate that. I talk about Dean all the time, but Sam really did give and teach me things too, he did provide lessons on resistance and hope. "it doesn't matter what you are, it only matters what you do." "hope is kind of the whole point." that's who he was, and who he is, and I'll hold onto it as defiantly as he lived too. that's why I defend him and that really is why I love him. if it can help you even in the smallest way, I'm so glad, because I know that's exactly what the Winchesters would want.