Meta: Sam versus Dean, or, How I Learned to Stop Hating Kripke and Love the Show
This is the meta I have been trying to get out of my brain all season. It started as a comment to this just posted meta, What Sam saw in 4.21 by lemmings_, and developed into the argument I have been trying to clarify in my own mind for quite a while. I feel like I just birthed a whale. A cute, adorable baby whale. I shall pet him and keep him and call him Arthur.
Please read further if you have been wondering what is wrong with all the debates over who is right in what they are doing, Sam, or Dean. If you already know, feel free to skip, or you can read anyway, if you weren't doing anything important just now.
EDIT: warning! spoilers for the finale have been mentioned in the comments, read them at your own risk. The meta itself has no spoilers.
Sam versus Dean, or, How I Learned to Stop Hating Kripke and Love the Show
I've read a number (definitely not all, there are a bunch! ;)) of meta that analyze Sam's visions in 4.21 and this one is as well reasoned as any. Many of the points have validity and bearing, however I'm going to indulge myself in commenting on something other than the point by point.
I don't expect to persuade anyone to shift their own view or stance but this is something that I've been trying to get a handle on and the fact that lemmings_ did put some things down clearly may make it possible to get my own thought out in a more coherent fashion.
Quoted from the essay:
The thing I need to preface my thoughts with is this: I see where both of the boys are coming from. I understand exactly what each is doing wrong and what each is doing right. I know what factors seem to be at play here. I am a Team Winchester girl first and foremost. But if I have to get off the fence and take a side on this one; then it's Dean's side that makes the most logical sense to me, and that my friends, is ALL about the demon blood and little dash of Ruby.
Many of the meta I've read start with something similar. I love both the boys but I understand Dean better, I can see Dean's side better, I agree with Dean more, I just can't agree with what Sam is doing, etc. Also in some cases I love Sam but I'm a DeanGirl, etc.
This is the core of the fundamental split in the fandom, if anything is, beyond gut feelings or preference for the sex appeal of one actor over the other. It can be argued that gut feelings are simply the unarticulated version of the same thing.
Then there usually follows an analysis, with some points in Sam's favor, or sympathetically presented, but the preponderance, as summed at the beginning, falls in the direction of Sam's making the wrong choices because and everything from his character flaws to Ruby's influence and cleverness, and/or Dean is right because/I understand Dean better because and so forth.
These arguments are effective because they all have some amount of substance or basis in the situation.
Here's the problem, and I've been struggling to get this out into the light for a while now.
The problem is, by coming down off the fence, you lose perspective on what is really happening.
This is predicated on my belief that
1. the show itself (Kripke, writers) never do really come down off that fence,
2. however, like the presenter of any suspense or mystery story, they love to surprise the audience, and do everything possible to fake the audience out without actually lying, and it's all the better if the balancing clues are in plain sight, but misdirected away from. In a series, in a season, which is a long story with say 22 chapters, they have a lot of room to shift focus enough to get the audience waffling back and forth.
With Supernatural, there has always been a tendency on the part of the fandom to commit and split along brotherly lines, because this fandom leans towards being as codependent as the family of its main characters. In codependent families, the tendency is for sides to form and family members to take roles that align them with one side or the other, or find their identity in trying to be the mediator.
This season, the split has become full blown, a chasm, egged on and exacerbated by the show runners' need to play to the drama of the boys' story.
By bringing in angels, and Heaven, and invoking God without actually having Him really be a part of things, the gauntlet was thrown down at the beginning of the season that would weight things incredibly with the audience towards seeing the angels side as good, right, righteous.
With Dean having gone to Hell, and the suspended angst from the whole summer being the fans' horror over Dean in Hell and all the hints and outright statements in Season 3 that going to Hell meant Dean was going to become a demon, what was expected would have been to start the season off showing Sam, torn up, and desperately trying to save Dean somehow, impossibly, from Hell. We would have seen his suffering, empathized with it, it would have allied with our own suffering, grief and fear, for Dean.
Since that was the likeliest direction to take, they took a completely different one.
Season 4 opens with BANG! Dean crawling out of his own grave! And shortly thereafter, angels. A scar proving that Dean was literally dragged out of Hell by an angel. Whoo hoo! The day is saved! And there are angels!.
Then Sam is shown, on his feet, and colluding with demon Ruby.
Brilliant fake out. Problem is, it caused a whiplash effect that the fandom, in general, never recovered from.
The show runners spent the rest of the season attempting to get the audience to waffle back and forth. Showing foreboding signs that angels weren't all goodness and light, that there was an agenda, that it might not be a good thing for the boys, for humanity, for Dean, but because the whole dynamic is about getting the audience to waffle, they also showed Sam sneaking around, ooh, what is Sam up to with Ruby? What does this portend?
They laid all the clues that Heaven was fractured, that Heaven wasn't the place we expected it to be, that angels were not what we thought they should be, that Heaven's agenda where the boys, where humanity was concerned, wasn't to save us, and then they used Sam and his shadowy doings with Ruby, to keep our eyes from focusing on all those clues.
It worked too well.
It was complicated even further by having Castiel be a sympathetic character, and they tried to get us to waffle with him too. Instead, they convinced a minority of the fans to hate his presence, and another minority (I hope, on the second thing) that he was dreamy and a better partner for Dean than Sam.
They really tried to get us to waffle with Castiel, and I think the intent was to play Castiel off against Ruby, but they made a huge mistake there. The fandom is predominantly female. While none of this is absolute to every person (I'm talking in grand sweeps here, so if you don't see yourself fitting the sweeps, don't be surprised, okay? Just take in context with what you see around you), in general this fandom tends to see attractive young females as a threat and cute young guys as fantasy material.
They tried, they really tried, to fake us out, to get us to waffle, by having Ruby be sympathetic. She was written differently this season, and played by an actress I'm sure they chose because they hoped she'd have a sympathetic and non-threatening vibe. They failed to understand the fandom's possessiveness and yes, I'm going to go there, bitchiness, and I hope it can be understood that bitchiness just is, and doesn't mean I'm condemning or damning anybody because of it. Remember, girls sometimes wear the label of Bitch proudly when they want to.
So here we are at the end of the season, and most fans are feeling the apparently inescapable pull to come down on one “side” or the other. Either Dean must be right, or Sam is, and Sam can't be!. He's been drinking demon blood! And Ruby is a conniving demon slutwhore bitch!
In the face of all of the left field shots the show has been throwing, like having Castiel free Sam from the panic room, most people are still choosing sides.
I'm not going to rehearse the arguments, and try to show that Sam's right, Dean's stupid to trust the angels.
He doesn't, a fact that I was greatly relieved by. But there are two apparent sides in this war and Dean has signed up for one of them. (And I know, he may have had his fingers crossed, and if so, go Dean! ^_~)
The consensus is that Sam is going to be manipulated by Ruby into being on the other side, in spite of his belief that he is trying to stop the war, that he is, in his mind, on the right side.
I'm not even going to argue the pros and cons of that.
People, I think, have missed a lot of clues, and the clues, rather that the obvious surface, aren't pointing to there being two sides, that of Good and Evil, represented by Heaven and Hell.
The clues point to there being two sides, that being the Winchesters, and everybody else.
Yes, I'm lumping Heaven and Hell together because all indications are, they are colluding! To free Lucifer.
If you look at things in this way, the two sides being the Winchesters, representing humanity, and the Other Side, representing Lucifer, it makes a completely different kind of sense.
Because all the other characters can now be sorted into those two factions.
On the Winchesters' side? Anna, for one. Bobby, Pamela, Chuck (even though Heaven has a leash on him)... in other words, those the boys have helped or who know them best.
Against them: Lilith, demons, definitely some angels, all the forces that want Lucifer to be free. The question is, who is that, exactly?
And the other question is, where do Ruby, and Castiel really fall in that split.
Ruby appears to be with Sam, which would put her against Lucifer rising. But no one in the fandom trusts her, for some good reasons, in spite of this being her entire professed aim since the character was introduced. I'm not going to say what I think, because frankly, I don't know. But she's been on the boards since Season 3 and she has been consistent, even when the actress has changed and the writers shifted the way she presented herself.
As for Castiel, in the beginning, he was a soldier and a tool of Heaven. They showed him becoming sympathetic to Dean and humans, and then just recently, had him yanked back, and they tried to remind us with Jimmy's story that angels are no more human than demons, and no more caring of human suffering, in general. In 4.21 he is shown doing the one thing that Dean would almost certainly never forgive him for - releasing Sam to go back to Ruby.
I'm on the fence with Castiel, and because we know he's coming back in Season 5, my guess is that he's going to switch sides from Heaven to the Winchesters (remember the two sides here!), but if so, it's definitely going to cost him.
If Ruby is being deceitful, and not really on Sam's side, it will be just like a demon, but it would be more interesting from a story perspective if she ended up true to her professed motivation from her introduction forward.
The fact that the boys are split up now, have been headed that way all season, and it's finally come to pass, is the biggest fake out of them all.
Because they are on the same side, always will be, and they are both hurtling towards the same objective.
If one goes down, and it very well may be Sam, it's not going to be because Sam is wrong, or stupid, or selfish, or whatever else. It's going to be that he goes down, as a soldier does, in the fight for what is right.
Both boys are flawed, yes, yes, we know this. It's what makes them human. It's why we care about them. Both boys are heroic. Both have suffered and sacrificed.
Trying to argue that one is more flawed, or less so, one is more noble, or less so, one has suffered more, the other less by weight or volume, one more right, the other wrong, is missing the true, intrinsic story of Supernatural.
This show is a story about flawed, suffering human beings trying to survive in a world of supernatural forces. They are both our heroes. And whether they stand side by side, or facing off, they will always both be on the same side.
If you come down off the fence, you will miss the big picture. The fence is a better perspective.
This is, ultimately, where I reside. If I have spent most of this season standing on the fence, peering into the shadows, and trying to call out what I've seen (and badly), and if it has made me into a defender of Sam, and sometimes an apologist for Sam, it's mainly because this fandom split and the very nature of the arguments that have been going on all season is, in my eyes, incorrect. It's fine to love Dean the most, it's okay to hate Ruby if you do, it's understandable to feel revulsion at Sam drinking demon blood.
But if any of these things are make or break for you enough to put you on one brother's side against the other, I persist in stating that you are missing the point.
This is why brother versus brother arguments can not be resolved. They are flawed at the core. For every stupid thing one has done, every mistake, every error in judgment every character trait that is self-hating or self-protecting, the other has a balancing match.
If you feel that the preponderance actually swings towards one or the other, consider that it may be your own biases. Your own squicks, or your own personal traits that you either identify with, or dislike and are repelled by.
If you believe that Kripke, or Sera Gamble, or Ben Edlund, or Kim Manners ever really sided or sides with one brother against the other, you are simply wrong.
I realize I won't convince anyone who reads this who had already slid or jumped off the fence that their point of view needs reevaluating, and the truth is, it's each viewer's right to take sides, whatever side they want.
But if you have felt torn by this year, if you have felt wrecked by the fandom split and the arguments, the endless Sam versus Dean debates, some part of you recognizes the truth in what I am saying. So I'll put it out there one more time, to avoid any misunderstanding.
My premise, and my belief, is this:
Supernatural is a story about humanity trying to survive in a world of supernatural forces.
The basic conflict of the show is between humans and the supernatural world, and it is personified in the Winchesters against all comers.
Anyone who sides with the Winchesters is on the side of Good. Anyone, any force, that tries to use them, manipulate them, hurt them, kill them, whatever, is on the other side. Even angels. Even demons. Even humans like Gordon Walker. But to determine what side any one person or creature is on, you have to take each as an individual, and yes, there are shades of gray, about a million of them, but the bottom line will always come down to with the Winchesters, or against them.
Not with one of them against the other.
I think that's it.
Responses welcome, but if you try to argue the merits of one brother over the other, or to point out how Sam is wrong, or Dean is wrong, I'm not going to get into that debate, ever again. They are both wrong at times, in ways and in places, and they are both right in the same measure, and I'm far more interested to hear where one or the other brother is right, and it hasn't been adequately explained or brought into the light.
If, and I consider this unlikely because who knows if I'll even get any responses, a debate ensues between commenters, I'll let it go on only so long. So if it happens, play nice. And I say that knowing that I have spent all season jumping into debates with my own knee-jerk reactions and defenses of the brother I consider the least understood this season. But I'm all better now. -_-;;; No, really. <.<;;;
Thanks for your time and patience.
~*~
Please read further if you have been wondering what is wrong with all the debates over who is right in what they are doing, Sam, or Dean. If you already know, feel free to skip, or you can read anyway, if you weren't doing anything important just now.
EDIT: warning! spoilers for the finale have been mentioned in the comments, read them at your own risk. The meta itself has no spoilers.
Sam versus Dean, or, How I Learned to Stop Hating Kripke and Love the Show
I've read a number (definitely not all, there are a bunch! ;)) of meta that analyze Sam's visions in 4.21 and this one is as well reasoned as any. Many of the points have validity and bearing, however I'm going to indulge myself in commenting on something other than the point by point.
I don't expect to persuade anyone to shift their own view or stance but this is something that I've been trying to get a handle on and the fact that lemmings_ did put some things down clearly may make it possible to get my own thought out in a more coherent fashion.
Quoted from the essay:
The thing I need to preface my thoughts with is this: I see where both of the boys are coming from. I understand exactly what each is doing wrong and what each is doing right. I know what factors seem to be at play here. I am a Team Winchester girl first and foremost. But if I have to get off the fence and take a side on this one; then it's Dean's side that makes the most logical sense to me, and that my friends, is ALL about the demon blood and little dash of Ruby.
Many of the meta I've read start with something similar. I love both the boys but I understand Dean better, I can see Dean's side better, I agree with Dean more, I just can't agree with what Sam is doing, etc. Also in some cases I love Sam but I'm a DeanGirl, etc.
This is the core of the fundamental split in the fandom, if anything is, beyond gut feelings or preference for the sex appeal of one actor over the other. It can be argued that gut feelings are simply the unarticulated version of the same thing.
Then there usually follows an analysis, with some points in Sam's favor, or sympathetically presented, but the preponderance, as summed at the beginning, falls in the direction of Sam's making the wrong choices because and everything from his character flaws to Ruby's influence and cleverness, and/or Dean is right because/I understand Dean better because and so forth.
These arguments are effective because they all have some amount of substance or basis in the situation.
Here's the problem, and I've been struggling to get this out into the light for a while now.
The problem is, by coming down off the fence, you lose perspective on what is really happening.
This is predicated on my belief that
1. the show itself (Kripke, writers) never do really come down off that fence,
2. however, like the presenter of any suspense or mystery story, they love to surprise the audience, and do everything possible to fake the audience out without actually lying, and it's all the better if the balancing clues are in plain sight, but misdirected away from. In a series, in a season, which is a long story with say 22 chapters, they have a lot of room to shift focus enough to get the audience waffling back and forth.
With Supernatural, there has always been a tendency on the part of the fandom to commit and split along brotherly lines, because this fandom leans towards being as codependent as the family of its main characters. In codependent families, the tendency is for sides to form and family members to take roles that align them with one side or the other, or find their identity in trying to be the mediator.
This season, the split has become full blown, a chasm, egged on and exacerbated by the show runners' need to play to the drama of the boys' story.
By bringing in angels, and Heaven, and invoking God without actually having Him really be a part of things, the gauntlet was thrown down at the beginning of the season that would weight things incredibly with the audience towards seeing the angels side as good, right, righteous.
With Dean having gone to Hell, and the suspended angst from the whole summer being the fans' horror over Dean in Hell and all the hints and outright statements in Season 3 that going to Hell meant Dean was going to become a demon, what was expected would have been to start the season off showing Sam, torn up, and desperately trying to save Dean somehow, impossibly, from Hell. We would have seen his suffering, empathized with it, it would have allied with our own suffering, grief and fear, for Dean.
Since that was the likeliest direction to take, they took a completely different one.
Season 4 opens with BANG! Dean crawling out of his own grave! And shortly thereafter, angels. A scar proving that Dean was literally dragged out of Hell by an angel. Whoo hoo! The day is saved! And there are angels!.
Then Sam is shown, on his feet, and colluding with demon Ruby.
Brilliant fake out. Problem is, it caused a whiplash effect that the fandom, in general, never recovered from.
The show runners spent the rest of the season attempting to get the audience to waffle back and forth. Showing foreboding signs that angels weren't all goodness and light, that there was an agenda, that it might not be a good thing for the boys, for humanity, for Dean, but because the whole dynamic is about getting the audience to waffle, they also showed Sam sneaking around, ooh, what is Sam up to with Ruby? What does this portend?
They laid all the clues that Heaven was fractured, that Heaven wasn't the place we expected it to be, that angels were not what we thought they should be, that Heaven's agenda where the boys, where humanity was concerned, wasn't to save us, and then they used Sam and his shadowy doings with Ruby, to keep our eyes from focusing on all those clues.
It worked too well.
It was complicated even further by having Castiel be a sympathetic character, and they tried to get us to waffle with him too. Instead, they convinced a minority of the fans to hate his presence, and another minority (I hope, on the second thing) that he was dreamy and a better partner for Dean than Sam.
They really tried to get us to waffle with Castiel, and I think the intent was to play Castiel off against Ruby, but they made a huge mistake there. The fandom is predominantly female. While none of this is absolute to every person (I'm talking in grand sweeps here, so if you don't see yourself fitting the sweeps, don't be surprised, okay? Just take in context with what you see around you), in general this fandom tends to see attractive young females as a threat and cute young guys as fantasy material.
They tried, they really tried, to fake us out, to get us to waffle, by having Ruby be sympathetic. She was written differently this season, and played by an actress I'm sure they chose because they hoped she'd have a sympathetic and non-threatening vibe. They failed to understand the fandom's possessiveness and yes, I'm going to go there, bitchiness, and I hope it can be understood that bitchiness just is, and doesn't mean I'm condemning or damning anybody because of it. Remember, girls sometimes wear the label of Bitch proudly when they want to.
So here we are at the end of the season, and most fans are feeling the apparently inescapable pull to come down on one “side” or the other. Either Dean must be right, or Sam is, and Sam can't be!. He's been drinking demon blood! And Ruby is a conniving demon slutwhore bitch!
In the face of all of the left field shots the show has been throwing, like having Castiel free Sam from the panic room, most people are still choosing sides.
I'm not going to rehearse the arguments, and try to show that Sam's right, Dean's stupid to trust the angels.
He doesn't, a fact that I was greatly relieved by. But there are two apparent sides in this war and Dean has signed up for one of them. (And I know, he may have had his fingers crossed, and if so, go Dean! ^_~)
The consensus is that Sam is going to be manipulated by Ruby into being on the other side, in spite of his belief that he is trying to stop the war, that he is, in his mind, on the right side.
I'm not even going to argue the pros and cons of that.
People, I think, have missed a lot of clues, and the clues, rather that the obvious surface, aren't pointing to there being two sides, that of Good and Evil, represented by Heaven and Hell.
The clues point to there being two sides, that being the Winchesters, and everybody else.
Yes, I'm lumping Heaven and Hell together because all indications are, they are colluding! To free Lucifer.
If you look at things in this way, the two sides being the Winchesters, representing humanity, and the Other Side, representing Lucifer, it makes a completely different kind of sense.
Because all the other characters can now be sorted into those two factions.
On the Winchesters' side? Anna, for one. Bobby, Pamela, Chuck (even though Heaven has a leash on him)... in other words, those the boys have helped or who know them best.
Against them: Lilith, demons, definitely some angels, all the forces that want Lucifer to be free. The question is, who is that, exactly?
And the other question is, where do Ruby, and Castiel really fall in that split.
Ruby appears to be with Sam, which would put her against Lucifer rising. But no one in the fandom trusts her, for some good reasons, in spite of this being her entire professed aim since the character was introduced. I'm not going to say what I think, because frankly, I don't know. But she's been on the boards since Season 3 and she has been consistent, even when the actress has changed and the writers shifted the way she presented herself.
As for Castiel, in the beginning, he was a soldier and a tool of Heaven. They showed him becoming sympathetic to Dean and humans, and then just recently, had him yanked back, and they tried to remind us with Jimmy's story that angels are no more human than demons, and no more caring of human suffering, in general. In 4.21 he is shown doing the one thing that Dean would almost certainly never forgive him for - releasing Sam to go back to Ruby.
I'm on the fence with Castiel, and because we know he's coming back in Season 5, my guess is that he's going to switch sides from Heaven to the Winchesters (remember the two sides here!), but if so, it's definitely going to cost him.
If Ruby is being deceitful, and not really on Sam's side, it will be just like a demon, but it would be more interesting from a story perspective if she ended up true to her professed motivation from her introduction forward.
The fact that the boys are split up now, have been headed that way all season, and it's finally come to pass, is the biggest fake out of them all.
Because they are on the same side, always will be, and they are both hurtling towards the same objective.
If one goes down, and it very well may be Sam, it's not going to be because Sam is wrong, or stupid, or selfish, or whatever else. It's going to be that he goes down, as a soldier does, in the fight for what is right.
Both boys are flawed, yes, yes, we know this. It's what makes them human. It's why we care about them. Both boys are heroic. Both have suffered and sacrificed.
Trying to argue that one is more flawed, or less so, one is more noble, or less so, one has suffered more, the other less by weight or volume, one more right, the other wrong, is missing the true, intrinsic story of Supernatural.
This show is a story about flawed, suffering human beings trying to survive in a world of supernatural forces. They are both our heroes. And whether they stand side by side, or facing off, they will always both be on the same side.
If you come down off the fence, you will miss the big picture. The fence is a better perspective.
This is, ultimately, where I reside. If I have spent most of this season standing on the fence, peering into the shadows, and trying to call out what I've seen (and badly), and if it has made me into a defender of Sam, and sometimes an apologist for Sam, it's mainly because this fandom split and the very nature of the arguments that have been going on all season is, in my eyes, incorrect. It's fine to love Dean the most, it's okay to hate Ruby if you do, it's understandable to feel revulsion at Sam drinking demon blood.
But if any of these things are make or break for you enough to put you on one brother's side against the other, I persist in stating that you are missing the point.
This is why brother versus brother arguments can not be resolved. They are flawed at the core. For every stupid thing one has done, every mistake, every error in judgment every character trait that is self-hating or self-protecting, the other has a balancing match.
If you feel that the preponderance actually swings towards one or the other, consider that it may be your own biases. Your own squicks, or your own personal traits that you either identify with, or dislike and are repelled by.
If you believe that Kripke, or Sera Gamble, or Ben Edlund, or Kim Manners ever really sided or sides with one brother against the other, you are simply wrong.
I realize I won't convince anyone who reads this who had already slid or jumped off the fence that their point of view needs reevaluating, and the truth is, it's each viewer's right to take sides, whatever side they want.
But if you have felt torn by this year, if you have felt wrecked by the fandom split and the arguments, the endless Sam versus Dean debates, some part of you recognizes the truth in what I am saying. So I'll put it out there one more time, to avoid any misunderstanding.
My premise, and my belief, is this:
Supernatural is a story about humanity trying to survive in a world of supernatural forces.
The basic conflict of the show is between humans and the supernatural world, and it is personified in the Winchesters against all comers.
Anyone who sides with the Winchesters is on the side of Good. Anyone, any force, that tries to use them, manipulate them, hurt them, kill them, whatever, is on the other side. Even angels. Even demons. Even humans like Gordon Walker. But to determine what side any one person or creature is on, you have to take each as an individual, and yes, there are shades of gray, about a million of them, but the bottom line will always come down to with the Winchesters, or against them.
Not with one of them against the other.
I think that's it.
Responses welcome, but if you try to argue the merits of one brother over the other, or to point out how Sam is wrong, or Dean is wrong, I'm not going to get into that debate, ever again. They are both wrong at times, in ways and in places, and they are both right in the same measure, and I'm far more interested to hear where one or the other brother is right, and it hasn't been adequately explained or brought into the light.
If, and I consider this unlikely because who knows if I'll even get any responses, a debate ensues between commenters, I'll let it go on only so long. So if it happens, play nice. And I say that knowing that I have spent all season jumping into debates with my own knee-jerk reactions and defenses of the brother I consider the least understood this season. But I'm all better now. -_-;;; No, really. <.<;;;
Thanks for your time and patience.
~*~