Excellent post! And two things in it really stood out to me. One is that it shows how last season was so necessary for Sam. All the lying and defiance and going behind Dean's back is probably partly what made him ready to take responsibility. Last season was the season where he really put himself in control, he thought, and was so ready to take the credit when he saved the day it's hard to not take the credit when he realizes he messed up
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Thanks! I think you're very right - Sam had to try things his way and fail in a spectacular fashion before we were going to see any change from him. After all, before S4, his methods had worked out quite nicely. For Sam, at least - other characters didn't really seem to appreciate it all the time. Why would he change if he'd generally been successful? I think you hit it right on the head when you say that it's easy to take the credit when it's a success and far different to take the blame when you fail
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What Dean hasn't done is recognize the fact that he's only out of Hell because he broke. Sam had given up on saving him. Zachariah wanted the first seal to break and likely was the force who delayed the order to save him until it was too late. The fact that Dean broke in Hell was the only factor that led to his eventual rescue.
Why do you say that? I think Dean came to that realization after 4.16, when the sense of self he had regained after 4.1, when Castiel told him "We Have Work for you to do," was entirely overthrown and turned on its head. And he realized then and there that he was only saved from hell because he broke and opened the first seal - which is why his depression becomes more profound. And why, the only way to rescue him from the implications of all that, is for Zach to magic him into a different persona, where he leaves all that weight behind for a little while.
Dean considered himself unworthy of being saved all the way back from 4x01, and that was before he got his memories of what had happened in Hell back
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And he realized then and there that he was only saved from hell because he broke and opened the first seal - which is why his depression becomes more profound.
I sort of agree with this. I do think that Dean believes that the only reason he was rescued was because the angels have work for him to do, but he had no way of knowing at the time that the angels would wait for him to break before sallying forth to his aid. Even Castiel didn't know, which meant that he unwittingly reinforced the idea that Dean just hadn't held out long enough.
To me, that's the real crux of the issue. Dean knows that he's only important because he broke. However, Castiel said that they set forth "as soon as we discovered Lilith's plans for you", which in turn implies that they set out to save him before he broke. That means that if Dean hadn't broken, the angels would eventually have saved him in order to prevent the first seal from breaking. However, that's not the case - Zachariah wanted him to break, and thus likely prevented any assistance from
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don't think he had his full memories back in 4x01 because of how painfully normal he was. If Dean had really remembered all of Hell, I'm not seeing how porn would have been near the top of his list in terms of prioritization.
I remember reading something last year about how people emerging from extremely high pressure, constant crisis situations like intense ongoing war zones and who have been traumatized are able to hold it together initially, even though with some difficulty, reflecting a sense of normalcy. But as time goes on in their now unpressured state, their personality starts fracturing into pieces.
That made sense to me in terms of Dean's response - though I imagine that everyone going through it has their own unique permutation of it.
Dean hadn't had much luck with opening up to Sam in S4; his two short confessions about Hell had been responded to with Sam's "boo hoo" speech and an immediate slide in how Sam perceived him. Prior to 4x10, Sam seemed to feel Dean capable - after 4x11, he seemed to have no faith in
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I think I've read the meta that you're referring to. Something like Dean would have been acclimated to Hell as his "norm" setting, therefore as terrible as it would have seemed to us, his perspective of a normal situation would have adjusted to it?
I get the point and agree that it's a valid suggestion, but I don't buy it personally. My main reason for declining to believe in it is that Dean got so much worse after Yellow Fever - he went downhill fairly quickly. We've all of one episode where Sam makes a comment about Dean drinking too much, and it comes as no surprise that it's in Wishful Thinking, not long at all after Yellow Fever. What instigated this fall in his ability to cope if not for him regaining his memories?
Mind, TPTB kinda screwed the pooch in terms of Dean's PTSD storyline big time. It's entirely possible that they meant to imply that Dean had remembered all along but didn't say anything, but if that was their intent, they did a pretty piss-poor job of demonstrating it, IMHO.
Well, I am speechless; this is the most interesting posting and conversation I have read since the beginning of the season. It reflects exactly my feelings and thoughts about it and I don't have anything intelligent to add except a little something that crept up to me when I was watching "When the Levee Breaks": could there be a little bit of jealousy - in top of the denial - on Sam's part? Could it be that the whole idea that his brother is not only (or according to Sam at that time "had been") the best hunter there was, that he was a man worth saving by angels from the fires of hell( we didn't know everything at that time), that he had a mission appointed by that same God he had been praying for all those years and who had not given him - to his understanding - an answer… was too much for him and his sense of self? I was thinking that most of the time last season when Sam was putting down Dean, that was actually his ultimate goal (albeit unconsciously) and that what he really wanted was to steal the “glory” that would come out of
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I think there was very much an unconscious measure of jealousy on Sam's part in S4, which IMHO comes from a very deepseated insecurity that Sam doesn't measure up. Sam has long since had a habit of putting Dean down whenever Dean's actions become a "threat" to something Sam takes pride in
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What can I say? you got it all right there. I think Sam's sense of self has been fueled by his brother's dedication and admiration. His brother was ready to do anything for him and always let him believe he was the "smarts". I'm not lying when I tell you that first time, with the EMF was a stab for me because a good brother, a loving brother should have praised it -even if he thought it worthless- but he couldn't bring himself up to it. I think Sam resents Dean's personality as much as a child resents his parents' during adolescence. Dean simply cannot do well by Sam. All of the things that endear Dean to us, irritate Sam. But yeah, I see light at the end of this tunnel and it's not hellfire. I think Sam actually turned a point. Matured and decided he has to grow up and has to do it in his own time. For as painful as it is for both of them, Dean, at least recognizes it to be true. This season is going to rock!
I've read meta that theorized that Dean deliberately downplayed his own intelligence and I can see that as being believable, especially since Dean wouldn't have cared about the same things that Sam did in displaying it. Dean would have been impressed by tactical rather than strategic developments - developing the salt shotgun shells, for one, which it's implied that Dean came up with and which he seemed quite pleased about. That's clever and would have had an immediate application within their lives. Stuff like the SATs or finals? Not so much. Getting an A on that Algebra test wouldn't likely have helped him ensure that his father and Sam stayed safe on a werewolf hunt, for instance. So I think it's a matter of Dean's prioritization and about him being sensitive enough to Sam's buttons that he didn't mind letting Sam shine there
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I don't think it's so much a matter of seeking glory, but I do think that Sam was addicted to being The One. Sam might have hated what Azazel did to him, but I have to wonder if it soothed some inner complex of his; I mean, it was a compliment, if one that no one really wants to receive, to be called the Boy King. Sam was used to being the center of attention when it came to the Winchester family drama and I don't think he liked sharing that one whit, though I doubt he ever thought that through. From the moment that Dean came back though, Sam automatically assumed that whatever Dean's "destiny" was, Sam was somehow included in that. It wasn't just that God had work for Dean; by 4x02, Sam was talking about the situation in plurals.Oh yeah. I totally agree with this
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He's unable to think of Dean as the one with the destiny, not him, without trying to appropriate it.
Yup. I almost can't blame him for this either, because to his credit, when hadn't it wound up being All About Sam? Since the pilot episode, it was Sam's struggle and trauma that pushed the storyline along: it was Jess' death that got him back into hunting, it was because of Sam and all the children like him that the YED showed an interest in his family, he later discovered that it was to get to him that the YED had Mary and her family killed. For all that Dean's played a surprisingly large role in the series canon, it's always been about Sam
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You know, there can be more than one destiny. No need for the boys to fight over it.
I can think of one hard decision Sam has made -not shooting YED-possessed John in Devil's Trap. You could see how torn Sam was. Here was a chance to finally get revenge, sleep for a month and go back to Stanford, putting the nightmare being him once and for all. And John was shouting at him to do it too.
All Sam said was that the deal was selfish, not that he didn't appreciate it. And it wasn't like Dean was brimming with gratitude over John's deal either.
Sorry for disagreeing once again. Please don't be offended.
No offense taken whatsoever! Differences of opinion is what keeps things interesting. If we all agreed with each other, then we'd all be parroting off the same trite facts over and over again. *g*
That's exactly it - there is no point in fighting over "destiny", if one can believe in the concept at all. Seems an awful lot of the destinies that have been strewn about are really just manipulations by higher forces - thus why Sam didn't actually become the Boy King and why Dean has outright rejected his own destiny as Michael's vessel.
You're absolutely right that Sam did have a harsh choice to make there and I don't want it to sound like he never had to make tough calls, because he very much did. Sam did so in DT, he did so again in S4 when he decided to follow Ruby's advice and while that might not have been the right choice to make, it was definitely a difficult one and I appreciate that he must have suffered in the making of it. He also made the tough choice to give into Madison's request that he kill her. However, I would
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You raised some excellent points about the boys and their ability to accept responsibility. I was amazingly proud of Sam in 5.02 for just that. Starting in the Pilot when he makes some crack about Dean's use of fake credit cards, we've consistently seen Sam claim the moral high ground without doing any of the moral heavy lifting. In large part I think this is because he was shielded all his life from dealing responsibility or the effects of his actions. He was kept from the hunt far longer than Dean was and during the show it was not until Madison where he was really forced to really step up to and acknowledge the morally complex and emotionally difficult ramifications of hunting. In Something Wicked he complains that he wishes he could have remained innocent longer and the fact that Dean agrees with him is part of the reason Sam never really bothered to take a long, hard look at himself
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Starting in the Pilot when he makes some crack about Dean's use of fake credit cards, we've consistently seen Sam claim the moral high ground without doing any of the moral heavy lifting. Oh, that's perfectly phrased! And really one of the reasons I was turned off of Sam's character at the start - he came across as hypocritical to me. And to be fair, ALL of the characters occasionally are hypocrites, from Dean to Sam to John to Bobby. They ALL have moments when they come off as holier than thou but most of them are called on it and until S4, Sam never was. Even his disastrous S3 plans went by without comment
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Why do you say that? I think Dean came to that realization after 4.16, when the sense of self he had regained after 4.1, when Castiel told him "We Have Work for you to do," was entirely overthrown and turned on its head. And he realized then and there that he was only saved from hell because he broke and opened the first seal - which is why his depression becomes more profound. And why, the only way to rescue him from the implications of all that, is for Zach to magic him into a different persona, where he leaves all that weight behind for a little while.
Dean considered himself unworthy of being saved all the way back from 4x01, and that was before he got his memories of what had happened in Hell back ( ... )
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I sort of agree with this. I do think that Dean believes that the only reason he was rescued was because the angels have work for him to do, but he had no way of knowing at the time that the angels would wait for him to break before sallying forth to his aid. Even Castiel didn't know, which meant that he unwittingly reinforced the idea that Dean just hadn't held out long enough.
To me, that's the real crux of the issue. Dean knows that he's only important because he broke. However, Castiel said that they set forth "as soon as we discovered Lilith's plans for you", which in turn implies that they set out to save him before he broke. That means that if Dean hadn't broken, the angels would eventually have saved him in order to prevent the first seal from breaking. However, that's not the case - Zachariah wanted him to break, and thus likely prevented any assistance from ( ... )
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I remember reading something last year about how people emerging from extremely high pressure, constant crisis situations like intense ongoing war zones and who have been traumatized are able to hold it together initially, even though with some difficulty, reflecting a sense of normalcy. But as time goes on in their now unpressured state, their personality starts fracturing into pieces.
That made sense to me in terms of Dean's response - though I imagine that everyone going through it has their own unique permutation of it.
Dean hadn't had much luck with opening up to Sam in S4; his two short confessions about Hell had been responded to with Sam's "boo hoo" speech and an immediate slide in how Sam perceived him. Prior to 4x10, Sam seemed to feel Dean capable - after 4x11, he seemed to have no faith in ( ... )
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I get the point and agree that it's a valid suggestion, but I don't buy it personally. My main reason for declining to believe in it is that Dean got so much worse after Yellow Fever - he went downhill fairly quickly. We've all of one episode where Sam makes a comment about Dean drinking too much, and it comes as no surprise that it's in Wishful Thinking, not long at all after Yellow Fever. What instigated this fall in his ability to cope if not for him regaining his memories?
Mind, TPTB kinda screwed the pooch in terms of Dean's PTSD storyline big time. It's entirely possible that they meant to imply that Dean had remembered all along but didn't say anything, but if that was their intent, they did a pretty piss-poor job of demonstrating it, IMHO.
It became an opportunity for ( ... )
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Yup. I almost can't blame him for this either, because to his credit, when hadn't it wound up being All About Sam? Since the pilot episode, it was Sam's struggle and trauma that pushed the storyline along: it was Jess' death that got him back into hunting, it was because of Sam and all the children like him that the YED showed an interest in his family, he later discovered that it was to get to him that the YED had Mary and her family killed. For all that Dean's played a surprisingly large role in the series canon, it's always been about Sam ( ... )
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I can think of one hard decision Sam has made -not shooting YED-possessed John in Devil's Trap. You could see how torn Sam was. Here was a chance to finally get revenge, sleep for a month and go back to Stanford, putting the nightmare being him once and for all. And John was shouting at him to do it too.
All Sam said was that the deal was selfish, not that he didn't appreciate it. And it wasn't like Dean was brimming with gratitude over John's deal either.
Sorry for disagreeing once again. Please don't be offended.
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That's exactly it - there is no point in fighting over "destiny", if one can believe in the concept at all. Seems an awful lot of the destinies that have been strewn about are really just manipulations by higher forces - thus why Sam didn't actually become the Boy King and why Dean has outright rejected his own destiny as Michael's vessel.
You're absolutely right that Sam did have a harsh choice to make there and I don't want it to sound like he never had to make tough calls, because he very much did. Sam did so in DT, he did so again in S4 when he decided to follow Ruby's advice and while that might not have been the right choice to make, it was definitely a difficult one and I appreciate that he must have suffered in the making of it. He also made the tough choice to give into Madison's request that he kill her. However, I would ( ... )
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