#if dean had a problem with her seemingly having a crush on jesse then i would understand

[the-kneesbees]

how does lorelai not seem to think that there's a problem with her daughter assuming her bf would "yell and scream" because she got in a car accident and fractured her wrist. how do none of these characters see the problems with this.

[profoundnet]

PROFOUND MEMBER POST - NOVEMBER 2018

Header by @pantydean and is available on merch from her redbubble store. You can use all those fancy emojis (and more!) on our Discord Server!

The Masterpost is open for all creations by ProfoundBond members which are posted in entirely during that month.

MEMBER CONTRIBUTIONS FOR NOVEMBER 2018!

Masterpost below the cut.

wargurl83 - @wargurl83​

Fem Cas for Jess

Summary: Art created for Jess/Jscribbles of Fem Cas

SFW

JessJessTheBest - @saywhatjessie​ - JessJessTheBest

Nobody Puts Baby in the Corner 

Summary:  “I’m Baby Del Mar and I think y'all are mighty fine. It’s time for ass-whooping. Who’s next in line?” Baby Del Mar is one of the top faces in the WWE universe. But in real life, Dean Winchester is just a guy who wants to keep his personal and professional lives separate. This turns out to be a problem for several reasons.

Tags: WWE AU, Established Relationship, WWE typical violence, discussion of past injury.

SFW

Accompanying art by @purzelndesbaeumchen 

kradarua - kradarua

The Stars, They Shine

Summary:  Engineer-in-training Dean Winchester just wants to work on cars. Astronomer Castiel Novak spends his time holed up in the school’s observatory looking at the stars and trying to piece together his dissertation. They’ve never had any reason to cross paths. Not until they get roped into participating in the college theatre group, anyway. When Lisa invites Dean to join her at the mass meeting, he can’t say no to a pretty face. But the joke is on Dean when he accidentally lands the male lead and has to come to terms with memorizing lines and trying not to make a fool of himself on stage. Moreover, despite his best attempts to stay interested in Lisa, there’s no denying the strange gravitational pull he feels around Castiel. Castiel is just here to prove to Charlie that he’s capable of doing something besides research; it should be easy, except he finds himself becoming interested in Dean in a way he really did not expect. Dean is trying to navigate being way outside his skill set; Castiel just wants to hold onto his scholarship without pissing off the religious organization that gave it to him. It’s going to be a long semester, especially if Dean keeps forgetting his goddamn lines. The show must go on!

Tags: Alternate Universe - College/University, Theatre, Homophobia, Misappropriated Christianity, Astronomer!Castiel, Accidental Actor!Dean, Gay Panic, Misunderstandings, Mutual Pining, First Kiss, First Time

NSFW

canadduh - @canadduh - canadduh

Uncle Dean: Adventures in Babysitting

Summary:  Dean has always looked after his brother Sammy. So it was really easy to extend that care to his brother's kid. Dean watches his nephew while Sam spends five hours on self-care for the first time since the death of his wife almost six months ago. Dean and Cas talk about the future.

Tags: Implied/Referenced Character Death, Kid!Fic, Uncle Dean Winchester, Uncle Castiel, Dean Winchester is a good Uncle, Fluff, Parent Sam Winchester

SFW

sharkfish - @reallyelegantsharkfish - sharkfish

trustworthy for such work

Summary: Cas hugs his pillow, and he’s mostly asleep when a memory works its way in. His father watching Fox news, a fearmongering piece about ifrits in healthcare. His father’s voice, saying, Blood is how they take your wishes. Cas always assumed that meant through feeding. But —

Tags: Dragon Castiel, djinn dean, Dragons, Djinni & Genies, Alternate Universe - Modern with Magic, Demisexual Castiel (Supernatural), Mutual Pining, Magic, Wishes, References to Addiction, References to Knotting.

NSFW

longing for grapefruit

Summary:  Dean lights up and takes the first hit, but instead of exhaling, he leans over towards Cas. It’s not a proper kiss, breathing in Dean’s air, but it’s intimate, and they take turns sharing hits in between kisses. Cas is flying. Cas can feel everything, Cas is out of his body. “Baby,” Dean says, soft in between them. “Let me make you feel good.”

Tags: Friends to Lovers, Recreational Drug Use, Marijuana, Oral Sex, Mental Health Issues, Hurt/Comfort, Shotgunning, Demisexual Castiel (Supernatural)

NSFW

dancing backwards

Summary:  Cas hears Dean Winchester come into the bathroom, but he’s too busy fiddling with equipment to acknowledge him at first, until Dean says, “So like, is there someone I can sue when I break my ankles?” Cas looks up to see the pair of pale pink stilettos hanging from his fingertips. The only thing he’s wearing is a long, dingy skirt with layers and layers of tulle like a tutu and dark, smudged eyeliner.

Tags: Actor Dean Winchester, Photographer Castiel, Dean Winchester in Heels, Fluff and Smut

NSFW

The Answer 

Summary:  “Can I ask if you’ve done this before? BDSM shit.” “Is it that obvious that I haven’t?” “We were all new once,” Dean says, giving him a smile.

Tags: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Sex Shop, BDSM, Gentle Dom Castiel, Sub Dean Winchester, Dom Castiel/Sub Dean Winchester, Paddling, Face-Fucking, soft Recreational Drug Use

NSFW

overdressed and overeducated

Summary: My brother says I’m boring, Castiel wrote. Perhaps you can make me seem a little more exciting.

Tags: Stylist Dean, Cas is sad & bad at clothes, Meet-Cute, Weddings, First Kiss, Pen Pals

SFW

mittensmorgul - @mittensmorgul - MittensWraith

 Lost Time

Summary: Dean figured Cas was only trying to let him down easy. He needed a little bit of time to figure out how to deal with it.

Tags: Fluff and Angst, Dean Winchester Uses Actual Words, Mutual Pining, Post-Canon, Newly Human Castiel, Love Confessions, First Kiss

SFW

ravenscat - @ravenscat-tumbler - ravensCAT

“They Were in the Bag!” (Panties and dildos)

Summary: The Luggage Mixup Au no one asked for. Basically pwp, almost, it was supposed to be and then feelings happened. Gross.

Tags: Top Cas/Bottom Dean, Rimming, Blowjobs, Shower sex, plane sex, Dean in panties, lawyer Cas

NSFW

deliciousirony - @delicious-irony - deliciousirony

Arctic Light

Summary: Art for Northern Sparrow's Under The Midnight Sun

Tags: No Archive Warnings Apply, Dark-Eyed Junco (Original Character), Fanart DCBB, northernsparrow, Birds, Curious Birds, Physiology Of Angels, Angel Wings, landscapes, The Arctic, Deli, SPRW

SFW

dean-bangs-cas-in-the-impala (maknatuna) - @dean-cas-in-the-impala - Dean-Bangs-Cas-In-The-Impala

October in Paris

Summary: No matter where Castiel is he always thinks about Dean. Tags: Fluff, Romance, Friendship, Friendship that is slowly turning into romance.

SFW

EllenOfOz - EllenOfOz

For A Dream’s Sake

Summary: Part of the DCBB 2018. Just four ingredients is all they need to reopen the rift. Archangel grace, the Seal of Solomon, blood of a most holy man, and a fruit from the tree of life. Castiel returns from Syria with the fruit, saying that he killed some djinn and bargained with the rest. But just what bargain did Cas make with the djinni queen? What did he experience at her hands? Heaven's great leader of armies prides himself on his self-control, his steadfast courage under pressure. But when the djinni's dream is everything he's ever hoped for...

Tags: No Archive Warnings, canon level violence, canon verse, Djinn, angst with a happy ending, angel wings, season 13

NSFW

Accompanying art by @usarechan

Bumocusal - Bumocusual

Six Degrees of Levain

Summary: Dean has a dog that won't stop vomiting, a brother with Sasquatch hair that brings all the ladies to the yard, and is developing a particular attachment to the hot guy that jogs by his house.

Tags: Police Officer Dean Winchester, Animal Lover Castiel, Meddling Sam Winchester, Fluff and Smut, Romantic Fluff, Shameless Smut, Vibrators, Anal Fingering, Anal, Kissing, Implied/Referenced Homophobia, Homophobic Language, Rimming, Top Castiel, Bottom Dean Winchester

NSFW

jscribbles - jscribbles

Your Story Isn’t Over Yet

Summary: One morning, Castiel wakes up suddenly very lady-shaped, and Team Free Will discover that a nephilim grows inside him. Sam has no idea how this could have happened considering Cas was supposed to be human, and Dean seems uninterested in finding out how or why their friend is pregnant and female - but he seems goddamn excited. Castiel retreats into himself, seemingly more depressed than usual. Sam is determined to get to the bottom of this mystery, though the others seem reluctant to discover the origin of the nephilim. Could the answer be right under his nose?

Tags: Temp MCD, mpreg (but not really), Temp Genderbend, Grace Baby, Angst, Grief, Implications of losing a child, Blood, Vomit

NSFW

supernatural9917

Cogitationes Publicae 

Summary: While organising a store room in the bunker, Dean accidentally breaks a potion bottle, and the contents leave him with no internal monologue. What secrets will be revealed when all his thoughts are laid bare? Written for the Destiel Smut Bingo. Square fill: Consequence of a truth serum/spell Tags: Destiel Smut Bingo 2018, Truth Serum, Dean has no inner monologue, Cas approves of this, Consequence of a truth serum/spell

NSFW

Hot for Teacher

Summary: Castiel Novak is a young new math teacher at Lawrence High, and Dean Winchester is a popular senior in his class. Dean has a bit of a crush, and Castiel can't help but notice Dean's charms. Written for the Destiel Smut Bingo. Square fill: hot for teacher

Tags: Destiel Smut Bingo 2018, hot for teacher, Teacher Castiel, Student Dean Winchester, Dean Winchester Has a Crush on Castiel, Castiel isn't oblivious to Dean's charms (No underage or relationship while Dean is a student)

NSFW

MalMuses - @malmuses - MalMuses

Wendig-Oh-No!

Summary: Of all the things that Castiel, former Angel of the Lord, expected to become as a human, being clumsy was never one of them. When Sam catches the flu, Dean is forced to team up with Cas on a Wendigo hunt in snowy northern Minnesota. It goes terribly. Or does it? SPN Reverse Bang fic, with art by @harplesscastiel.

Tags: Fluff, Miscommunication, Bedsharing, Camping, Human Castiel, Clumsy Castiel, Angst with a Happy Ending, Sharing Body Heat, Hurt/Comfort, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Wendigo, Hunter Castiel

SFW

Personal Space

Summary: Dean is an astronaut, and he definitely chose the career so that he could help move humanity forward, not just because he didn't want to sit in an office, thank-you-very-much. Becoming the first human to set foot on Mars was never part of his five-year plan, but he loved his job and couldn't say no when the opportunity arose. He had spent plenty of time thinking about what he was risking never seeing again if something went wrong; his brother, brother-in-law, and the adorable kid they were adopting, not to mention his friends, his car, and pie. What he hadn't considered was what, or who, he might find when he actually got there. SPN Reverse Bang fic with art by @thefriendlypigeon Tags: Mars Exploration AU, Astronaut Dean, Alien Castiel, Established Gabriel/Sam Winchester, Way more feelings than you would expect, Fluff, Angst with a Happy Ending, Slow Burn, Castiel Has Tentacles, Consentacles, Not as crazy as it sounds, Kid Jack Kline, So many references but actually not crack, Sam is a Good Brother, Jack is adorable, More Wholesome Than It Sounds, Tentacles, Tentacle Sex, Love Can Cross the Cosmos NSFW

The Doppelganger Effect

Summary: Dean had been having a pretty great week, all in all. There had been that case up in Dodge City where he’d worn a cowboy hat, he had made homemade burgers for dinner, and best of all? Cas was back from the Empty. Alive, unharmed, and in the bunker. Things were back to normal. Then they showed up to ruin things—Dean and Cas, Version 2.0. They're not just different, they're happy. Not to mention very... coupley. Thrown from their own world with magic unheard of since Purgatory, the doppelgangers need Team Free Will’s help—or is it Dean and Cas that need theirs? Suddenly, Dean is stuck in a minivan with two angels that hate each other, a (pretty awesome) copy of himself, and his gassy little brother. Through magic mirrors, ill-advised pacts with Eldritch gods and rather too many gas-station tacos, Dean and his angel face down the past, and decide on their future. A 2018 DCBB fic with art by EL.

Tags: Case Fic, Possession, Eldritch Gods, Car Accidents, Canon-Typical Violence, Eye Trauma, Tentacle Monsters, Horror, Canon Flashbacks, Dean Winchester is Bad at Feelings, Drinking, Pining, Slow Burn, Witches, Original Character Death(s), Mutual Masturbation, Gore, Angst with a Happy Ending, Sam Ships It, Casturbation

NSFW

exceptcas - @exceptcas​ - exceptcas

No Call

Summary:  While celebrating Sam's bachelor party in Vegas, Dean runs into Cas. --- This is based off of the song "Closer" by Halsey.

Tags: Implied/Referenced Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, Past Relationship(s), Bachelor Parties

SFW

Hitori-Alouette - @hitori-alouette

Can’t do it alone

Summary: Art created for the DEANCAS CREATIONS CHALLENGE

Tags: #deancascc #destiel  #deancasedit

SFW

[shortskirtsandsarcasm]

Gilmore Girls: Rory is Giving Us All a Bad Name

My childhood TV consumption came entirely from the channel TV Land, which almost exclusively broadcast reruns of American sitcoms from the 1950s-70s (think I Love Lucy, I Dream of Jeannie, Leave it to Beaver, The Andy Griffith Show, Three’s Company, and Happy Days), so Gilmore Girls was not on my radar; in fact, I was barely aware of it. I am sure that if I made any effort to watch it in real-time, my mother would have told me to “turn off that trash,” as she had when I wanted to watch anything on the Disney Channel or Downton Abbey. GG has been revisited in the past years as more people have become aware of all of its problems, and as the Year in the Life reboot has come out recently. Even though many of the re-visitations of GG have been to criticize it, it’s clear that this was an important and beloved show that people see as a seminal aspect of their childhood and adolescence. Reading around GG made me feel like I’d missed a defining experience, so I decided to watch all seven seasons and the reboot, even though I knew that I would hate it. And I really did. I started watching season 1 on Thanksgiving in 2016 and I finally finished the original series and the reboot not long ago, in June 2020. I had to take breaks from Rory and all her bullshit.

Superficially, I share so much with Rory: I am an only child; I love to read; I take books with me everywhere; and I have brown “straight, shiny Harvard hair,” as Carol from season 3, episode 3, “Application Anxiety,” describes it. Adults told me I was “mature” and “precocious” and would “go on to do great things,” without much more evidence than that I was a smart kid. I would like to think that I did not become an insufferable young adult as Rory did, but I write judgmental nonsense on the internet, so maybe I did.

I remember my mom making me read the article “The ‘Trophy Kids’ Go To Work” when I was in junior high that clearly framed millennials wanting financial security and job stability as a bad thing and invoked a moral panic about participation certificates and teachers not using red pens anymore. I thought the article was unfair to young people trying to find financial stability directly after the 2008 financial crisis then and I still do, but Rory is giving us all a bad name. She acts entitled to absolutely everything: Ivy League education, high-profile jobs, men, etc. She assumes that going to private school and getting good grades will be all that is required of her to get into Harvard, and she has no backup plan if Harvard rejects her. She just assumes Harvard can’t reject her. The only reason she even applies to Yale is to make her Yale alumni grandparents happy. But first, she has a meltdown because her grandfather was kind enough to organize an interview at Yale for her. The bastard.

As she enters her final semester of university, she seemingly only applies for three jobs. The one she really wants is a six-week New York Times unpaid internship that is in incredibly high demand. Again, Rory just assumes she will get the internship because she’s special and turns down a real job with a salary in Providence. After she finds she has been rejected by the NYT, she calls back about the Providence job, only to find the position has gone to someone else. She does not learn from this and continues to feel entitled to jobs just because in the revival. Rory has a few job possibilities in the revival, but one by one they fall apart, so she decides to go in for an interview with the website SandeeSays for a job she considers beneath her (but why? Because it’s online?). She is absolutely unprepared for an actual interview because she assumes Sandee will automatically hire her. When Sandee is disappointed that she is unprepared and does not hire her, Rory yells and insults her and her publication.

Whenever her narrow trajectory directly to success is challenged, she goes into a complete meltdown. When Paris says she has been doing community service since fourth grade to look good on college applications, Rory has a meltdown. When Mitchum Huntzberger, who everyone agrees is a giant asshole, tells her she’ll never become a real journalist, Rory has a meltdown. When she doesn’t get the job with SandeeSays because she is unprepared and unprofessional, Rory has a meltdown. When she finds out Logan slept with other women while they were separated but not broken up, Rory has a meltdown. I’m not defending Logan here — it was definitely a shady thing to do — but Rory is upset about her access to Logan being infringed upon and her solution is to bang Jess, to whom she is also entitled.

If you date Rory Gilmore, you belong to her forever.

It’s easy to see how Rory became so entitled in the first place. Stars Hollow is a quaint but bustling town, home to what might be described as a “colorful cast of characters,” who literally all dote on Rory and constantly tell her she is special. Stars Hollow is also home to its very own high school, but clearly none of them are special. Rory’s entire community bolsters this idea in her that she’s struggled against some sort of monumental obstacles, which is just not true. Lorelai is the only one in this family who has achieved anything through hard work alone, and that is because she absconded from the family home as a teenager with a baby Rory.

Rory’s “specialness” is something we are often told but seldom shown. For example, when Rory’s first boyfriend, working-class Dean, comes to dinner at Rory’s affluent grandparents’ house (s2e1), Richard and Emily grill him on why he thinks he’s good enough for their special granddaughter. Richard points out that Rory will be going to an Ivy League university, and that Dean has dimmer prospects, and will, therefore, hold her back. Richard implies that Rory will “go on to do great things,” simply because she is smart and not because she is incredibly privileged. It is obvious that Dean has “dimmer” prospects because he has to work alongside going to high school and has other responsibilities in Stars Hollow which preclude him from spending $$$ on an Ivy education and extensive travel. Rory does stand up for him and point out that being working-class does not make Dean less than, but she hangs on to the idea that she is more than because she is smart and does not acknowledge that her private school tuition, Ivy tuition, and travel is only within her reach because of her family’s money and connections. In her mind, she maintains that she is a lower-middle-class or working-class person who has achieved her “special” status through hard work, but she has never been the one to undertake this hard work. Through the entire rest of the series, she will never come around to seeing this, and interestingly the only time she gets close is when Logan calls her out on her snobbery. Logan, of all people.

This brings me to my hottest hot take on Gilmore Girls: Logan is Rory’s best boyfriend. Both Dean and Jess were possessive and emotionally abusive, so the bar is very low. Rory clearly has terrible taste in men, but of the three dickwads in Rory’s life, he is somehow the best. Logan is not possessive like the other two and seems to be the only man in the entire series that’s not unreasonably jealous. For example, when Rory develops that crush on the TA (even though he’s ugly let’s be real) he recognizes it for the silly passing crush that it is. Dean and Jess would have both lost their minds.

The possessive and jealous descriptors can also be attributed to Lorelai’s boyfriends, specifically Luke. Luke is so sensitive over Lorelai’s friendship with Christopher (pre the whole impulsive decision to get back together and get married in Paris mess), even though Christopher will always be a part of Lorelai’s life because he is Rory’s dad. At this point, Luke has found out about his secret daughter, April, and is fighting so hard to be a permanent part of her life and does not seem to appreciate the parallel. April and Rory are the subjects of Luke’s possessiveness. He feels entitled to be a parent to Rory, even before his relationship with Lorelai, but then refuses to let Lorelai get to know April even though they are engaged and kept her existence a secret for months. Again, he cannot see the double standard there. After they break up and Lorelai gets back with Christopher, Luke then has the audacity to ask Lorelai to write him a character reference so he can win custody of April. Luke also asks for parenting advice from Lorelai on how to deal with both Jess and April, but when he doesn’t like her response, he either says outright or insinuates that Lorelai is not qualified to weigh in, even though Lorelai is a parent Luke clearly loves and admires Rory, the product of her parenting.

On the subject of Lorelai’s parenting, I have some questions. When she ran away from home at seventeen, was she legally emancipated? I don’t think any court would rule in her favor if she had complained that her parents were rich east coast snobs. Richard and Emily are certainly overbearing and snobby, but is that enough reason to literally run away? As a result, Lorelai has become stuck in the mentality of her 17-year-old self and believes people are “against” her personally when they just have different opinions on mundane things. In season seven when her parents want to throw a party celebrating her marriage to Christopher, shoots down literally all of the party planner’s ideas because she feels threatened that her parents want to celebrate her marriage. She’s really out here at thirty-eight being moody and rude to the party planner like she’s a PMS-ing teenager. Richard and Emily did not get to see their only child actually get married — is it so much to ask that Lorelei goes along with their party plan?

This kind of thinking cultivates an “us against the world” feeling between her and Rory which also contributes to Rory’s feelings of entitlement — Rory’s high school valedictorian speech at her graduation was almost entirely about her relationship with her mom. It is absolutely no surprise that Rory has no empathy for anyone else and only thinks of herself and what she wants in the moment. This sometimes even backfires on Lorelai, such as when she graduated from her business degree. Rory chose that exact day to skip school to visit Jess in New York, miss her graduation ceremony, and leave her graduation present on the bus. Lorelai never got her Belinda Carlisle record, and I’m still mad about it.

I have many more thoughts about Gilmore Girls, like how they did Lane so dirty, and how unnecessarily rude Rory was to the Thirty-something Gang, but that would turn into a body of work rivaling my actual PhD thesis I am procrastinating on, so I will stop for now. Now that I can put GG behind me for good, I can finally “go on to do great things,” whatever that means.

[elizabethrobertajones]

Kinda fell off the grid with Crippling Arm Pain for a couple of days and watched Asylum, Scarecrow, Faith, Route 666 and the first half of Nightmare in a haze of "ow ow ow ow" and I don't have a whole lot to say about them and their individual moments that relates to season 12 that we haven't already said when anything relevant happened at the time IN season 12 while it was airing...

This whole section of season 1 though, makes a shift in Dean and Sam's dynamic which I think is where they drew most of the angst from for like, the rest of the show, and as usual I'm still obsessed with 12x22 and that very specific message of Sam leading and Dean stepping back and letting him do it. And very specifically where that came from and how as a reversal of season 1 in some ways back to the pilot, Sam gets walked back out of what he gets walked into over these episodes.

Sam perpetually comes back to the sort of "you have to let me grow up" thought like in season 5 & 8 ESPECIALLY off the top of my head before 12, although I think 3 was as well in response to knowing Dean would die, and tbh kicked off the entire arc from 3-5. So yeah, it's been a lot of Sam's lingering feeling about Dean and their dynamic and in 12x22 we see another gesture which I don't think (apart from the endless IMPLICIT trust of just working with Sam every friggin' NORMAL day of the week treating him like an equal when this ISN'T a plot thing) we've had aside from Swan Song, in terms of Big Symbolic Okay You Are An Adult Now Seriously How Are We Still Doing This Plot Oh Right Season 8 Needed Old Angst Warmed Up On All Fronts moments.

(Uh, sorry, I'll pick a fight with Carver about the laziness of season 8 character arcs on my own time because everyone else likes that season and generally it seems the show did well re: audience response to going back to basics and rehashing multiple seemingly resolved character arc things instead of going somewhere new :P Long post 99.9% not about that last thought AT ALL under the cut)

Anyway! In the first part of season 1, Sam is with Dean to find John. And he passes it off as a road trip to anyone who asks, and John is the thing keeping Sam from just meeting up with him and they charge off father & son guns blazing revenge mission - he's disappeared, and then sends them on another hunt when they catch up to where they lost him, also on a hunt he makes them take on his behalf.

For a few episodes Dean can fob Sam off about going to work cases while they look for John but he already kinda knows, then at the end of Phantom Traveller it's confirmed for them that John changed his answer phone to redirect to Dean, and the family business is now his. For Dean that's just like, welp, I'll shoulder THAT burden for my family too, no problem, already got a whole crushing weight there anyway hahaha. 

For Sam that makes it a lot more complicated, that John doesn't WANT to be found and he's now effectively trapped with Dean working the job while trying to convince him John is more important, and Dean is convinced John’s orders are more important.

Bloody Mary doesn't have any real resistance to doing the case, and Sam's preoccupied with visions & Jess's death still, so I think his head is still spinning about what he's actually doing and the case doesn't help settle him AT ALL. In Skin, he's the one who makes them backtrack for a personal thing which turns into a case, and he learns the crappy lesson that he can't have normal friends and essentially sees that Dean feels like a friendless freak even if he pretends this is all cool and part of the job, but rather more focus on Sam as the rebellious child being dragged back into the awful family and his own sense of sacrificing normality for the job & revenge from his perspective (looking ahead to how this bubbles over). Hook Man, he offers token protests to doing the case while we start with him obsessing over finding John, and in Bugs it starts with Sam checking for cases in the newspaper while Dean hustles - we know from Bloody Mary Sam has Dean's money and he really is freeloading as a road trip not just in what he keeps telling everyone, but that Dean is allowing him to stay at a careful remove from feeling like he's actually just doing the job again.

Bugs also has all the good family stuff where we finally have Sam and Dean rehash the trauma of Sam leaving, as of course this is all open wounds to them because Sam left and they don't see each other again until the Pilot, so this is a needed and much-delayed conversation directly addressing for the first time not just on screen but ever, between them about Sam going to college and how HE felt in the family, like the outcast who wanted to be normal, and he gloms onto Matt who is having similar issues with his dad that baffles Dean about why Sam relates to it so much. 

They're still going over early childhood > Sam leaving stuff in their dynamic and Sam really IS the kid brother on a road trip, and he is treated that way by the narrative in a lot of ways like this (also as in Sam sees this as a distraction and John and revenge is the real story/job/mission so hanging with Dean is as useful as road tripping :P I don’t think it’s just a cute excuse he uses over and over), probably up to Home, where it all starts getting more personal and real. 

Sam gets to see Mary with his own eyes for the first time, and they have a bit more of a sense of being in it together and Sam being inducted into the family mythos, revisiting stuff that was very very abstract to him, and for a multitude of intents - writerly from the show and from Chuck and his "narrative symmetry" and the motives from the demons who conspired to kill Jess, that needed to happen to Sam to make it more real to him (in the same way Dean felt all along about Mary dying because that pain didn't go away just because it had been a long time. The point is NOT what Sam says that Dean doesn’t know how it feels - it’s that SAM didn’t but it’s fresh and awful and despite growing up surrounded by grief, fancy learning coping mechanisms from John? Hence, follows in his footsteps, revenge-obsessed).

Anyway! Asylum changes their dynamic now - Sam is beginning to be openly frustrated even before John sends them a case that Dean's dragging him around on the job when they should be getting revenge, and I think he's now still sort of road tripping until the end of the season because of his speech in Shadow about being a person again, and the flip only being demonstrated in 2x02 that he now is the one more dedicated to hunting and doing the job. 

And during Asylum Sam vents to the psychiatrist under the guise of complaining about his road trip, presumably similar stuff but less murdery to what he yells at the end, and there's a whole thing with him being annoyed the kids think Dean is his boss. The fight continues in Scarecrow with Dean standing up for being a good soldier - I mean son - and Sam stomps off to find John. 2 episodes in a row he uses the road tripping excuse to vent about being stuck in close quarters with Dean bossing him around when he meets Meg and vents to her as well, but he has his realisation about family when Dean is in trouble and goes back.

After that he's immediately smacked with Faith, which is the first challenge one of them has of the other dying, and to which Sam has to save Dean at any close. His characterisation in this whole first chunk reminds me of season 10 Sam a great deal as I’ve recently rewatched it too (he has a "where's my brother!?" line in Skin which has like, the exact same delivery as 10x01's opening, among other little things which stood out to me) but this one episode in particular... Because he does save Dean, at a great cost, even having some very ominous-for-season 10 discussion about the evil black magic spell book and the desperation of Sue-Ann to bring Roy back, all of which made me laugh bitterly when I came through here on my post-season 10 rewatch, because it was pretty much word-for-word Sam's season 10 all in one episode, right down to the freakin pothole in Nebraska.

I think it's interesting Sam is the first one to make an ethically dubious/bad choice to save Dean (dubious since he didn't know it was bad, bad because he doubled down on it after - also looks much worse with at least 10 more years of canon rather than in the immediate moment it's just a bit edgy :P) while in season 2 Dean saves Sam selflessly and after a whole season of feeling brought back against the natural order (something I think is only exacerbating how he already felt since Faith and finding out what Sam did for him). 

I think this is a way to tie Sam deeply into the family and make him prove he'd go so far for Dean after all his rebellion and anger at Dean, with Dean represented as the boss and the good son/older brother, that Sam isn't actually going to really stomp off any time soon. He takes several strong lessons in a row about family and reconciliation, starting with the mirror family in Bugs and like, every episode after that except in Asylum because it abuts Scarecrow and is an ongoing emotional arc one starts and the other resolves, again proving to Sam he was wrong and being with Dean and doing the job is more important than revenge. (For now - he still has this choice all season and makes a false analysis for easy conclusion to the story by the writers that Dean's all he has left and he doesn't know where John is, even though they only just talked to John for the first time to get solid proof he's alive, AND Sam thought he knew where he was for the first time as well and only didn't go there because of going back to help Dean).

That all shifts Sam's dynamic from a fairly equal partnership, where Sam was kind of along for the ride, but without being strictly tied into the family business because he was road tripping, he was basically like... a support hunter Dean took with him to not work alone, just, you know, the best hunter Dean knew for the job :P And that changes after the midseason to really make Sam ductaped firmly back into the family business. But once he's there, Dean goes from equal partner to older brother who is ALSO his boss in Sam's eyes (even though Dean's really just desperately following John's orders, and is the one fighting in general for the family business to continue, in an a-political way about Sam's role in it, just that Sam sees him deciding things and feels like it is Dean ordering him around... They have issues about it, basically :P), and once Sam reconciles with THAT he does ethically sketchy stuff to save Dean and doesn't regret it, which is more of a blood pact thing to reaffirm commitment and loyalty.

In Route 666 Dean calls the shots, and Sam plays a trust game with the church thing so they both get in a power play of sorts and Sam teases Dean the entire time about Cassie...

(But this is all Buckleming characterisation, which I tend to find completely backwards, and thanks to watching with my mum, I went from 1x13 to 10x03, and remembered I still want to write a tooth-grinding post about their characterisation because something about it really sets my teeth on edge specifically about Sam and it just occurred to me watching 10x03 that that was how they wrote him in 1x13 and it was vaguely justified there because specific scenario but like... is that just their impression of who Sam is? Anyway in 10x03 there's lines he could have said seriously or whatever but there's like, a Buckleming Face Sam has/Jared uses and it makes me massively intrigued to know wtf tone suggestions they put in their scripts because almost without fail Sam only acts like this in their episodes and the grimace Jared uses delivering their Sam dialogue, even relatively inoffensive lines, is like at least a full 30% of why their episodes make my teeth grind because wtf he never does it in any other episodes with any other writers, it's like he has a separate personality to play Buckleming!Sam?? This is all massively beside the point except to say on realising that I decided that I just cba to analyse that one for personal arc stuff :P)

And in Nightmare, Sam's back to a sort of subordinate role in the power dynamic because he has to prove to Dean his visions are real (I think Dean totally believes him he just really really badly doesn't WANT them to be real but it means Sam spends the first 10 minutes needlessly arguing his case wanting to be believed) and then at the end Dean coddles him with a protective you've got me you'll be fine speech, which again puts himself in the role of protector to Sam.

I feel like from here on out their dynamic is hashed out a bit more firmly with all these specific things having happened in relation to all the main arcs - Sam's powers, the family business, John, Sam n Dean, saving each other from death, the whole lot, which as I said up the top, OBVIOUSLY day-to-day they still act very equally and usually, unless plot reasons, have 100% equal trust on cases and work side by side very well. But long-term, I can see a LOT of character stuff settling on Sam that becomes his pattern of thinking (e.g. the stuff in Asylum & Scarecrow especially betraying how he feels as the younger brother being bossed around) that in the first handful of episodes at least up to Home wasn't an issue or a part of their dynamic and they were going for a brothers on a roadtrip vibe without a lot of these Dire Obligations or Life And Death Pacts and so on.

I think Sam hasn't really been able to get out of this because season 5 was supposed to resolve it, but season 6 and 7 have something constantly wrong with him until Cas fixes him for good, so Dean spends a great deal of Gamble era having to deal with each new thing that happens to Sam, frequently acting with power of attorney to fix him and get his soul back etc for his own good. Sam has a blissful free space in his life from 7x17-7x23 and got to work equally and fairly and without any massive interpersonal drama or whatever with Dean (though for most of season 7 after they reconcile say from 7x09 onwards they have one of their best dynamics with the least interpersonal drama once they let go the Amy fight), and then Carver takes over and gives Sam 1 more year or so of recovery off-screen only to smash it all up with a sledgehammer and regress him all the way back to how bad he was in 8x23... Which we’ve been recovering from for all the characters ever since.

Anywho I said I wasn't going to get all obsessed about that, but the point is that watching season 1 and knowing where Sam is going to be coming from in season 12 about his own personal growth and how HE views it, I can see some interesting stuff because a lot of season 1 is Sam VOICING how he feels about their dynamic, job and lives, because it's the exposition season to get us involved in their lives and there's a lot of telling and explaining hot they feel about this that and the other. Knowing how Sam says he didn't want to lead and so on, his original issues with leadership was that he felt he had a mind of his own and Dean didn't and he didn't WANT to be bossed around by Dean, and to do his own thing. And season 1 subsumes him into the family business, and it leaves me thinking about the ever-relevant 10x05, and how the line about John in "The Road So Far" was that he took away their free will.

I sort of feel like watching season 1, you can see Sam giving ground over and over again in these fights. I know there's more to come, but the important flip next is in 1x16 where it stops being Sam swinging against Dean's position in the family, and goes back to Sam vs John, where it stays for the rest of the season and of course ending in 2x01 with John leaving them on a fight and 2x02 Sam having given himself over to the job and not really getting a break from then on to even dream of something normal until he hit a dog... 

So that's all totally different territory in season 1 because there wasn’t much/any Sam vs John stuff in season 12 that I can think of (idk if sharp-eyed Sam fans caught a narrative about it I didn’t see making its way onto my dash), so I think I've watched the parts now which exposition most clearly how Sam ends up essentially following Dean into the family business and in the main arc stuff seeing himself as still being the kid brother being bossed around and made to do it somewhat against his will to have a normal life even if as I say, in general unless this point is being made, Dean rarely if ever acts like this towards Sam and Sam seems to have all the freedom he likes to call the shots in their dynamic because Dean will totally trust him with all the normal parts of their job without being precious about taking his lil brother into fights...

Obviously there’s a hell of a lot more intervening trauma and I think Carver era does a LOT to Sam to beat him down from a relatively balanced, happy-with-himself-and-the-universe place so to actually trace WHY Sam felt like he did in 12x22 you’d start at 8x01 and begin counting THERE, but looking at season 12 through a season 1 lens is really interesting to me.