#i love his inability to break the cycle but i don't think some dean girls even like that about him

[sampegger]

certain deangirls just frustrate me so bad. like. the ones who insist with their entire chest that dean loves sam more than sam loves him. even just talking early seasons. to see sam leaving for stanford as a betrayal to dean and proof that he loves him less is so. him leaving for college wasn't about dean. it was about wanting something better for himself than what hunting had to offer. him being able to want something more for himself than what he had with dean and john is not a betrayal. to claim that sams ability to endure misery is directly correlated with how much he loves someone is cruel and a terrible perspective to have on any relationship.

and in season 4, to claim that he chose a demon over his own brother while in the midst of having an active addiction problem, and to take that and make it about his loyalty to DEAN is so. that is so biased and evil. you should not see sams violation of his own autonomy as a betrayal to dean. i know the show likes to think they do in the later seasons but the choices sam makes do not all have to center around dean, and that still doesn't mean he loves him any less! viewing it through that type of lens will certainly make it look like he does, but that is objectively the wrong way to interpret any of sams arcs.

when it comes to season 8 i'll say a lot of the same stuff i said about sam leaving for stanford in the first place. while yes i do think him not looking for dean was slightly out of character, it is still unbelievably cruel to think of sams ability to endure pain and claim it marks the level of which he loves someone. especially when he takes on the trials this season, and the entire narrative thrown on sam is his newfound notion that pain purges sin. to have that level of misery thrown in your face (these trials are purifying me) and still insist that if sam is actively fighting against something that is making him miserable (staying in hunting) it's proof he never loved dean that much anyways is awful!!! and that whole "non-agreement" line in which bobby says that he and dean promising not to look for each other was just something that was said and it should've been obvious he was meant to look for dean. don't even get me started.

season 9 is the last season that i think people use as evidence for this. sams claim that he "wouldn't do the same thing for dean." and really. i guess i don't expect dean letting gadreel possess sam to be seen in any other light at this point. sam said he wouldn't have done the same thing for dean because he literally wouldn't have!!! there is nothing that can properly convey the absolute level of violation that that was, especially when sams entire storyline is about his struggle for autonomy. it was a selfish decision on deans end, as is most of the way that he loves sam. it is just so frustrating to see this arcs that revolve specifically around sam turned into evidence of how much he does or doesn't love dean, because that is literally the opposite of what they're about.

i could move onto later seasons as well and talk about how dean is outwardly abusive in them, but that would just be dean slander and that's not what i'm trying to do. the entire point of this post is that tying all of sams decisions to how much he loves dean is wrong and you fundamentally miss the entire point of sam as a character if you view the story through that lens.

sam's ability to endure misery is not directly correlated with his ability to love.