#every point here about sam and autonomy vs. agency also applies so well too of course

[dyed-red]

years ago now, i wrote a meta titled “dean’s body as a punching bag”. even though it was a somewhat long and comprehensive post, i thought of it as a ‘first draft’ in terms of my attempts to articulate dean’s lack of autonomy. because i knew i wasn’t quite getting it right, but after somewhat more competently having expressed some thoughts about the longstanding motif of sam’s bodily autonomy being violated against his will by external forces, i’d been trying to grapple with the comparable/companion motif for dean being violated with his permission by external forces.

and i’ve just - never seen it so succinctly or aptly expressed as this. autonomy vs. agency.

the motif i’d put my finger on was how dean is repeatedly beaten and assaulted specifically by people that he loves or trusts. sam is ghost-possessed by dr. ellicot? he shoots dean. john is possessed by azazel? slices and assaults dean. sam is possessed by meg? shoots dean. possessed by lucifer? dean’s face is pulp. soulless? dean’s body is vampire chow. heaven has decided to brainwash castiel? time to beat dean bloody. the british men of letters have decided to brainwash mary? time to try and shoot her kids and focus this murder energy on dean.

and the crazy thing to me was always that dean would often (not always!) submit to this in some way, sometimes as part of a more strategic play but sometimes not. sometimes just with a plea for mercy and nothing else. which gave me some brainworms because - what??? it still blows my mind when i think of it as the consistent motif that it is, one which plays out with each and every one of his closest relationships (except maybe bobby? having a hard time coming up with an example in that dynamic but memory is imperfect edit courtesy of Z’s reply: even with bobby, in 5x01 when he’s possessed and dean pleads with him).

and like i said, my thoughts on it were a first pass and poorly articulated, and i at the time hadn’t really thought about how “dean plays bait” is related to it, how he serves up his body as a tool or on a platter in service of the hunt and specifically to help his family, and i hadn’t really extended it to “dean’s body as a weapon” which is another comparable theme.

but Z so neatly synthesizes these ideas here (and elsewhere) into “dean-as-object” because - that’s all of it.

in the narrative, sam is most often presented as an agent who makes his own decisions, even if those decisions themselves are often in response to ways he has been violated or his autonomy has been breached. meanwhile, dean is frequently presented as an object whose decisions and choices are secondary or tertiary compared to what others have decided, including what others have decided for his body. dean will ‘choose’ to place himself up as bait or get on his knees and let someone he cares about break his face apart with their fists, so his autonomy isn’t violated in the same way as sam’s might be, because dean’s allowing it – but that allowing, that “choice” is really the surrender of his agency, something he’s been trained to set aside, in this and in so many other aspects.

which (tangent) is still what throws me about the s10 finale and onward, tbh. because much, although obviously not all, of these motifs of autonomy vs. agency disappear thereafter, or are upended. the s10 finale was apparently meant as a parallel to swan song, however poorly that came across, but it’s there in sam (dean) on his knees being beaten bloody by moc!dean (lucifer!sam) who is ready to launch himself onto a deserted planet (into the pit). the reversal places dean as agent and sam as object and their dynamic throughout the following seasons is altered through the way that the lead up to season 10′s finale developed.

and part of me likes to complain about late seasons writing but another part of me is fascinated by the domestic!bros married dynamic because it integrates the push and pull of what’s come before and requires that both of them are agent and object intermittently. and i think that hardcore sam stans balk at this sometimes because it’s so foreign for them to see sam willing to surrender (even when he does it a mature, healthy, compromise sort of way!) to dean’s will or wants when it comes to shared decisions. but that’s necessary as part of a healthy mutual dynamic, for there to be a give and take that acknowledges what the other wants as part of that give. i don’t really see sam as losing his agency in later seasons but i do see him submitting to dean’s more, and i think it gets mistaken as unhealthy when i see it as somewhat the opposite.

dean needed to be given space to make real decisions that are in the service of his own wants and not in the service of family, especially if they were ever going to learn how to coexist without those types of decisions being suppressed until they build up and explode into stuffing angels into his brother and lying about it. meanwhile sam needed to provide space for those decisions and wants even (and especially) when they contradict his own, for the same damn reason. they both needed to find a more even space in their dynamic if they were ever going to trust each other in the way they eventually really do (trust the other wants to be here as much as he does, trust the other respects and also trusts him too in the same infallible way).

anyway i don’t know that i’ve added anything of value here beyond what was already said but i’ll jump (impulsively, mostly) at any opportunity to reflect on the themes of autonomy (and agency!!) and the shifting dynamics of the bros.

What's your opinion on the fandom rhetoric about how Sam lacks bodily autonomy but Dean has it? I personally think it's weird that it's such a widespread idea when it's just blatantly untrue. A big theme for Dean's character is that his body is seen as a weapon or tool for others to use, so it's strange that people claim that he has full bodily autonomy.

(...okay, that the gif is by 'unfuckablebogtroll' is somehow very fitting.)

I think my main opinion of the fandom rhetoric is that there are a lot of batshit bitter sam girls who screech that dean is a meanie meanerton who doesn't respect sammy's presh 'tonomy and there are a lot of batshit extreme dean girls who wail about how sam is a meanie meanerton who, idk, waterboards dean in his spare time or whatever they're complaining about this week (I've unfollowed as many as I can of both camps), so for the most part both groups can be completely flushed down into the sewers of 'jesus christ, do you guys ever actually watch the show rather than circlejerk the same four arguments about it? ...no? oh. well, at least you're honest.'

So, with that said.

Yeah, obviously Dean lacks autonomy. But there's a difference between autonomy and agency, and I'm not going to pretend to have a super solid grasp on either (since a lot of philosophical debate [especially by fangirls] makes me want to jump into the aforementioned sewer just not to hear it anymore), but I can at least kind of make a stab, since you asked.

At least in the way I understand it (do you see all the caveats), bodily autonomy is literally getting to decide what happens to your body, including where it goes and who's inside it and what's done with it, and agency is general decision-making of like the brain sort -- what decisions will I make, who will I be, and so on. Both Sam and Dean are assailed on both fronts alllllll the time. Fandom folks tend to exaggerate those assaults on their preferred brother (because, for some reason, egregious victimhood is the only way you get to be a cool character?? what is that about.), but as with a lot of things in CW's Supernatural, the actual facts are a lot more balanced than fandom weirdos will admit.

Sure, Sam's got a bunch of autonomy assaults. Torture, possession, etc. Most of the time, though, I see his agency as pretty intact. He may not necessarily want to do some of the things he does (childhood hunting comes in here), but he chooses to do them. Is he manipulated sometimes? Sure. Lied to? Obv. But there's an essential steel pillar at the center of Sam and whether they're good choices or whether they're bad choices, he is the one who makes them, and he lives with those consequences. This is part of why the s9 thing with Gadreel is troubling: yeah, it's about bodily autonomy on one (more boring) level, but the much bigger problem is that Dean overrode his agency -- part of why I tend to believe that Sam's biggest objection is that Dean lied and then couldn't apologize for it, when Sam's agency is the most precious thing he owns. Now, he's a smart guy, and there are times his agency does take a blow because of some canon circumstance -- he doesn't want to do X but the world will end if Y, so X it is -- but for the most part Sam's solid and he can live with what he has to do. Though he won't pointlessly die of blue balls about it. What a silly stand on agency that would be.

Dean, meanwhile, doesn't actually have his bodily autonomy violated too much. By which I mean: of course, Dean-as-object is one of my favorite tags, of COURSE he's used as a meatsack and a weapon and a fuckdoll and all those lovely things. But he's very rarely literally possessed; he's holding the blade or the gun or what-have-you. That said, his agency is in the fuckin' gutter, haha, and that's more often what I mean by Dean-as-object. From childhood he's fully expecting to be told what to do, to be used as a pawn, to be used in other ways, to take on someone else's responsibility and make it his own and subsume his actual desires and wants for the good of... whoever. Usually John, but not always. This is something Sam doesn't really... do, that often. Sam might hate that he's making a choice but he does seem to understand that he is the one making it, whereas on Dean's part it so often feels like the choice is automatic -- of course he'll do what John says, of course he'll sell his soul, of course he'll... kiss some lady so the Qareen chases him instead. Now, are all those things tied to autonomy, too? Of course. But with Dean I feel like it's a bigger issue that his agency has been taken out at the knees ever since he was ~5 years old -- the autonomy problem is very much secondary.

Agency and autonomy are tied together and assaults on both happen relatively equally to both characters. What matters more is their attitudes about it, and their natures (whether they're essential or if they've been nurtured into acting a particular way). And, of course, there are different times in canon where these tendencies shift or even flip, e.g. in late s8 where Sam's certainty wobbles, or in s10 where Dean's autonomy w/r/t the Mark of Cain is really dicey.

Violated vs violable, victimized vs victim. A ton of it is in the eye of the beholder and OBVIOUSLY fandom will just sail off in its own directions any ol' way, depending on what shipping mood someone is in, how much projection is going on, what the phase of the moon is, etc. But generally speaking I find that Sam has a lot of agency in his life but often his autonomy is imperilled; Dean has a lot of autonomy but his agency is practically nil. At least for a while. What's nice is that Sam does have agency and he uses that agency to choose his own path in life, decide what he wants, and what he wants is -- a life with Dean. Dean maybe never really had a choice in the matter, but so what? He can stay in his bunker, and fight the monsters he needs to fight, and -- lucky for him, there's a strong hand covering his left side. What more could a cat ask for.