SPN: Sam and choice (cake or death)
That fic commentary meme is going around again -- and given the monstrous sprawl I produce for commentary I'm passing this time -- but reading ignipes' on one of her SPN stories did lead to a small moment of enlightenment.
See, the thing is, I don't think that Sam ever really chooses Dean and hunting. The way things played out, I don't think Sam can meaningfully choose; he was born/fated/whatever to be involved with the demon/supernatural, inescapably. He tried to choose something else and it had spectacularly bad consequences. Saying Sam going back to Dean and hunting was a choice is putting a gun to someone's head and saying they chose to give you their wallet. Sure, throughout the series I see Sam gradually choosing to accept the reality of his situation and maturing as a person because of it -- but that's a totally different kind of choice. Yet so many readings of SPN seem to be built directly on conflating these two choices -- not having Sam himself confuse these things in a 'want what you can have' or 'needing coping mechanisms/the stories we tell ourselves' way, but having the credibility and internal logic of a story rest on this conflation.
Dean's all Sam has left. Sam loves Dean, would die for Dean, etc.
But none of these add up to Sam choosing Dean/hunting. (And some of them contribute to its impossibility.)
I can't even say how much I love that, given who Sam is, what he wants and needs, he lives in a universe which isn't going to give him that choice, which specifically denies him the choice he craves. Sam, choice, self-determination, egoism, fate and free-will is one giant lump of chewy goodness, but which largely dissolves in the face of this cut-the-Gordian-knot fix-it. Same goes for a big, very basic piece of the elephant-in-the-room tension underlying Sam and Dean's relationship.
(Apparently this isn't the kind of angst that's generally appealing, even in angst-as-genre, which yes makes finding it all the sweeter, but I can't understand why it's so comparatively rare -- it's sad and dreadful and quietly, sneakily vicious in the right hands and just... really angsty without being all over-the-top about it.)
But for me smudging these distinctions (Sam choosing to go back to Dean vs. Sam choosing to accept he doesn't have any choice but going back to Dean) in the pursuit of relationship fixing or shippy happiness sells the characters, relationship and universe short. YMMV.
See, the thing is, I don't think that Sam ever really chooses Dean and hunting. The way things played out, I don't think Sam can meaningfully choose; he was born/fated/whatever to be involved with the demon/supernatural, inescapably. He tried to choose something else and it had spectacularly bad consequences. Saying Sam going back to Dean and hunting was a choice is putting a gun to someone's head and saying they chose to give you their wallet. Sure, throughout the series I see Sam gradually choosing to accept the reality of his situation and maturing as a person because of it -- but that's a totally different kind of choice. Yet so many readings of SPN seem to be built directly on conflating these two choices -- not having Sam himself confuse these things in a 'want what you can have' or 'needing coping mechanisms/the stories we tell ourselves' way, but having the credibility and internal logic of a story rest on this conflation.
Dean's all Sam has left. Sam loves Dean, would die for Dean, etc.
But none of these add up to Sam choosing Dean/hunting. (And some of them contribute to its impossibility.)
I can't even say how much I love that, given who Sam is, what he wants and needs, he lives in a universe which isn't going to give him that choice, which specifically denies him the choice he craves. Sam, choice, self-determination, egoism, fate and free-will is one giant lump of chewy goodness, but which largely dissolves in the face of this cut-the-Gordian-knot fix-it. Same goes for a big, very basic piece of the elephant-in-the-room tension underlying Sam and Dean's relationship.
(Apparently this isn't the kind of angst that's generally appealing, even in angst-as-genre, which yes makes finding it all the sweeter, but I can't understand why it's so comparatively rare -- it's sad and dreadful and quietly, sneakily vicious in the right hands and just... really angsty without being all over-the-top about it.)
But for me smudging these distinctions (Sam choosing to go back to Dean vs. Sam choosing to accept he doesn't have any choice but going back to Dean) in the pursuit of relationship fixing or shippy happiness sells the characters, relationship and universe short. YMMV.