#selfish!sam

[in-kyblogs]

Doomed by the narrative - Doomed by her parents

[harbingersecho]

READY AIM FIRE

[witchinatree]

unpopular opinion maybe but sam has been pissing me off lately

i think it started with him laughing in gwen's face about the bonzo thing and (as far as we know) not apologizing???

it's like he only thinks supernatural things can happen to HIM. sam wtf why are you gatekeeping the horrors??

he also only ever listens to celia, alice indulged his magnus thing as long as she could but realized shit was getting dangerous and wanted to protect him

alice is also flawed (jealousy is a bad color on you babe but i forgive you) but like everyone is?? and sam is just dismissing her every word because of it??

he doesn't have to follow her advice but could he at least let her speak??? i hate how dismissive he is, even celia listens to alice more than him

and in episode 24, his "well what can i do about that" mentality was sooooo irritating

he said it twice, when alice said gwen wasn't okay, and when alice said the tape recorder thing was hunting them

1. gwen not being okay could be something you at least pretend to give a shit about, like seriously. everyone tolerates your childhood rejection trauma and you don't bother batting an eye as gwen crumbles? jesus man

and 2. why is it only something 'crazy' when it's not you saying it sam? he expects everyone to believe the evil about the magnus institute (with honestly no evidence? i think we gloss over how little ties the institute actually has rn because we listened to tma) and dismisses alice's concerns that they're all going to die

i don't hate sam by any means (disregard previous discord statements ❤️ i was a lil upset) but he has been seriously upsetting me

also if there's anything i forgot um my bad i'm just oh so sleepy

[cas-poisoning]

There’s currently a poll going around where about 34% of people voted that Dean WOULN’T kill Cas to save Sam’s life (assuming it’s the only way)… I didn’t want to be mean in the notes but y’all voting no are delusional 😭 another 15% of people are voting other and saying stuff like “it depends on the season”

First of all, early seasons Dean would be 100% instantly on board no matter what. And honestly he wouldn’t even be that sad (maybe guilty, but not that sad). I’m talking like season 4, 5, maybe even 6. Late seasons Dean would be incredibly tortured and devastated but ultimately do it because above all else he NEEDS to protect Sam. That’s one of his defining character traits, and has consistently shown he’d do pretty much anything.

“Oh well Dean would only sacrifice himself he wouldn’t sacrifice anyone else” WRONG! Cas has a martyr complex and would love to die for the winchesters (more specifically, he’d love to die for Dean and he’d love to die for anything Dean needs (aka Sam)). “Always ready to bleed for the Winchesters” Cas would honestly kill himself to save Sam before late seasons Dean even gets the chance to feel conflicted about it. But to keep with the poll and making it about Dean’s choice, assuming Cas doesn’t just kill himself, I think late seasons Deans would be pretty easily convinced by Cas being so willing about it.

I just don’t see a single situation where this is ever a no and not an emphatic, yes Dean would kill Cas to save Sam if it was the only way.

[sammygender]

i’ve never been as angry on behalf of a character as i am for sam winchester

[zirconpetals]

Fascinated by this

[flowersintheimpala69]

Love how some dean stans will say “sam was selfish for leaving his family to go to college!” and “john is abusive” in the same breath. Like.

[samdeancrimespree]

so like. i think part of the reason that john stopped bringing sam on hunts was not to protect sam, but to protect himself. john trained them to protect themselves, but also so that he could have hunting partners. and dean is a solid hunting partner. he’s quiet, obedient, calm under pressure. john can trust him to watch his back.

except when sam is there.

they only bring sam on a couple hunts before john starts noticing a pattern. small slip ups that he hasn’t made in years, shots dean would never normally miss that he can’t explain, monsters getting the jump on them when dean was the lookout. at first, john thinks it’s his son’s way of rebelling, trying to prove his argument that sam is too young to hunt.

but dean wouldn’t go and get injured on purpose to prove a point, especially not in front of sam. dean seems more concerned with sam’s panic than his own wound. sam works well under pressure, stabilizing the injury even through tears. john has to finish the job by himself, knowing sam would never leave dean in that condition, and not wanting to bring even more attention to them by arguing over it.

the hunts are messier with the three of them, and his youngest is much more resistant than dean was, so john only brings sam on hunts when john deems it necessary. everything goes smoother that way, dean back to his cool-headed self.

the last time sam comes on a hunt with them, john almost gets his heart ripped out by the ghost because dean is too busy checking on sam to burn the bones. dean all but carries sam— it’s only a mild concussion, and his ribs aren’t even cracked. dean’s fought on worse injuries— to the car, and refuses to speak to john for two days.

sam is a liability, but not because he’s bad at hunting. his presence destroys any logic in dean’s mind, like he’d rather die than see sam get slightly injured. he’s not that reckless with john.

at least sammy’s good at research.

[lambmotifz]

everyone always talks about how dean can’t say no to sam (which isn’t really true btw! because usually sam has to beg to convince dean to change his mind) but never about the fact that sam always stays with dean despite wanting to get out of hunting and find a safe life

he doesn’t want to go with dean in the pilot but he still goes because dean says he doesn’t want to do it alone. they have a “breakup” in 1.11 scarecrow and once again sam has a chance to get out of the life he never wanted but he chooses to come back to his husband brother. in 1.22 devil’s trap john says “killing this demon comes first – before me, before everything.” and sam tells him “no, sir. not before everything.” while looking at dean. he chooses dean above everything else, including safety and normal life. then their dialogue in 5.18 point of no return: dean’s “you know, if tables were turned…i’d let you rot in here (in the panic room). hell, i have let you rot in here.” and sam just sighs and says he guesses he’s not that smart. the fact that sam still trusted dean even after dean locked him up in the panic room all alone which almost killed sam is probably the most blatant example of sam’s unconditional devotion to his brother

honestly i’ll never understand why the popular take “sam is an ungrateful piece of shit because he always leaves poor dean” exists in the first place because it just blatantly contradicts everything what was shown/said in canon

[jackexmachina]

wow sam really can't win huh

[koschei-the-ginger]

This has been marinating in my brain for a while, but it was honestly so crazy from quantum leap to spoil you the ending by episode TWO (three if you dont count the pilot as a single ep). They establish right at the beginning 2 most important aspects of Sam's personality and that is 1) Sam will ALWAYS go out of his way to help people and 2) He cares about his loved ones so much he will do that without thinking of the CONSEQUENCES. He fucked up his own timeline completely during his 3rd leap by helping his ex fiancée and their whole relationship got erased from existence. We don't know how that could have possibly changed his life had he come back home. Definitely A LOT. But he had to help her. Out of his free will. Just because he could. And just because he loved her so much. That's why later in 5x22, when he gets told he can do whatever he wants he...

[spiderkiss]

Tmagp ep 30 spoilers:

The sheer tragedy of now two people desperately reaching out to Alice for help while she is focused on trying to help the one person who refuses to accept it. Ugh my heart.

[c-kiddo]

just saw someone misread kamen and fionas relationship so bad someone hold me back

[sammygender]

thinking about dean growing up and putting everything before himself. hunting and his brother and his dad and his dad’s revenge quest for their mom. he doesn’t matter. he is entirely irrelevant. thinking about dean internalising this as just what you do, just how people behave and how they should behave. him viewing selfish as the worst thing you can possibly be.

then thinking about sam growing up and fighting. brave enough to challenge their father and rebel against him and voice something different, brave enough to focus on what he wants. dean seeing this and it stings - he could never do that. how is sam acting like that? he can’t believe that’s the right way to behave. so sam must be selfish, just in believing he has any right to his own life.

dean sublimates himself for the family and expects sam to do the fame, and his resentment and jealousy that sam doesn’t turns into anger and making sam out to be the mean one, the one in the wrong. and this never goes away. this is always what dean levels at sam - that he’s selfish, that in wanting to make his own choices he’s rejecting their family, rejecting dean……. awful. toxic. evil evil message to send to sam. entirely in character. dean wants to prioritise sam, would save him over the world. but he doesn’t care what sam wants.

selflessness isn’t always a charming character trait. it’s not the same thing as a generosity of spirit and it’s definitely not the same thing as being caring. sometimes selflessness just means you’re incapable of prioritising your life and incapable of understanding how anyone else could or should prioritise theirs. sometimes it means you still act selfishly, you just convince yourself you were objectively in the right, because doing something actually for yourself is unthinkable. sometimes it means you think the very act of having wants and boundaries is selfish, no matter whether they’re yours or anyone else’s.

anyway… thoughts on dean’s specific brand of awfulness regarding sam. what does it matter to him what sam actually wants? since when did it ever matter in the winchester household what anyone wanted? dean had to deal with things he didn’t want for the mission (for john). sam has to deal with things he doesn’t want for the mission (for dean). augh. the cycles

[nexilu]

I’m tired of Dean fans hating on Sam. Everytime Dean screw up they defend him but when Sam does they insult him. Both of the brothers screwed up and it’s normal, they are humans. They made mistakes thinking they were doing the right things. They blame Sam for leaving Dean behind and going to Stanford (he craved a normal life so much and he worked so hard for it, he couldn’t stand to spend the rest of this life hunting and he didn’t have a real motivation to do it like Dean or John, he didn’t even had any memories of Mary, going to Stanford was the healthiest thing to do even if it hurted the others it was his life and he had the choice to do what he wanted to do) but Dean also hurted Sam, for years, he shamed Sam for wanting to have a normal life instead of hunting (which is also understandable, he maybe didn’t reacted in the best way possible but at the end he just got afraid to lose his little brother and he was trying to keep him close). What i’m trying to say is that in all this ‘quit hunting and going to Stanford’ thing, Sam is not only one to blame, both of the brothers hurted each others. Plus, even when in the early seasons Sam and Dean decided to go separate ways, Sam always ended up going back to Dean. Each time, all Dean had to do was to ask help from Sam and Sam was leaving everything behind to go back with Dean and when he was by his brothers side again there was never any sign of regret, he was always smiling.

Sam is not selfish, he cares deeply about Dean and never hesitated to sacrifice himself to save him, he coldly killed people for him and became suicidal and obsessed after Dean died. After John’s death, he did everything he could to make Dean manage it in a healthy way, he even took a punch from him and when he got the chance to punch him back, he didn’t do it.

Sam is a good little brother.

Sam and Dean come together, they are an inseperable duo but they are not the same person, they are different and it’s perfect because they complete each others. So keep in mind that neither is better than the other.

[revvethasmythh]

An idle thought, really, but I think it's interesting to see fandom latch on the metaphorical interpretation of things like Laudna's relationship with Delilah as a metaphor for addiction or Imogen's psychic powers as a metaphor for either chronic pain or queerness, but there's much less attachment to or discussion of the characters who explicitly, canonically dealt with exactly those things. By which I mean Scanlan's substance abuse, Veth's alcoholism, and even Ashton's chronic pain (which feels like it was discussed much more before it was confirmed canon, and seems to be brought up mostly just as ship fodder these days). I suppose one could argue the devotion to the metaphorical interpretations lies in the fact that it's an interpretation of canon as opposed to being explicitly so, meaning there's more wiggle room to project a personal interpretation onto it. Explicit canon is more concrete, less malleable to the individual viewer. Still, if we're going to talk about addiction now in a metaphorical sense via Laudna, it leads me to wonder if we will see further discussion of the characters who explicitly dealt with addiction (Veth and Scanlan), as opposed to Laudna's purported allegorical version of it