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 argue that for the most part while growing up and afterward for a time as well, those morally questionable choices were mostly made by Dean.
As for Sam, I don't have an issue with him thinking the deal was selfish. From Sam's perspective, it would have been - just as Dean thought with John. However, if John had lived for a while, I'm pretty sure Dean would have managed to express some form of appreciative comment or gesture towards his father before he died and Sam, to my knowledge, did not do so. And that IS something I've some trouble with; Dean went to Hell for 40 years to save Sam's life - some measure of response aside from "that was stupid and selfish" would have done him well.
See, this is what baffles me... I just don't get how you can think it's unfair of Sam to be unhappy with Dean for the choice he made, let alone that he owes Dean thanks for it. It was selfish from Sam's perspective because it was selfish, period: Dean sold his soul to bring Sam back because he didn't want to live without Sam. He did it despite knowing how miserable his father's choice had made him, despite knowing that Sam would hate what he had done and that Sam wouldn't want to live without him any more than he wanted to live without Sam. Then he told Sam not to do the same thing to save him, even though he was leaving Sam in an even worse position than he himself would have been in; not only was Dean dead, but he was in hell, and he was in hell because of Sam.
Sam was every bit as selfish when the positions were reversed a year later; the only reason he didn't sell his soul was that he couldn't find a buyer despite trying desperately to do so, despite knowing that Dean would rather be in hell than be alive without him. But that doesn't negate the selfishness of what Dean did or the fact that he did it knowing that doing it would make Sam miserable, and the idea that Sam was wrong to be unhappy about that, to not actively thank Dean for leaving him in a situation Dean would rather face hell than live through himself, just makes no sense to me. It's perfectly understandable why Dean chose to sell his soul, just as it's perfectly understandable why Sam tried to do the same thing, but they were both fundamentally selfish, not selfless, acts, and expecting Sam to be grateful seems as bizarre to me as expecting Dean to be grateful if Sam had managed to reverse their positions.
I know I'm in the minority here, but honestly, I feel that sacrificing yourself to save someone else's life is pretty much the most selfless thing someone can do. I think it was selfless of John. I think it was selfless of Dean. I think it was selfless of Sam.
In Dean and John's cases in particular, they didn't want their recipients to know and that, to me, removes ALL implications of selfishness from it. Sam was never supposed to have figured it out. John didn't breathe a word of it to Dean. Sam wouldn't have been made miserable by Dean's sacrifice because he wasn't supposed to be aware that a sacrifice had been made.
As for telling Sam that he couldn't save Dean during S3, what else was he supposed to say? If Dean tried to break the deal, Sam would have died. Of course Dean wasn't going to risk that. That wouldn't have stopped Sam from trying to break the deal on his own though. Sam was the wildcard; his whole speech about "You can't be saved if you don't want to be saved" was bull because the whole point was that Dean couldn't try to save himself. He had to walk around for an entire year, knowing that he was going to die, knowing he was going to Hell. To me, that's the epitome of selfless because at any point during that process, he could have given up and chosen his own life over his brother's. He did not.
Sam wouldn't want to live without him any more than he wanted to live without Sam
See, I disagree here. Dean very much did NOT know that. Dean never considered himself as important to his brother or his father as he considered them to him. That was the whole focus of the YED's mockery in DT - "They don't need you. Not like you need them." Dean believed that. Listen to his soliloquy in AHBL2 - he considers his entire life a waste because he didn't get there in time to save Sam's life. He had one job and he blew it.
Sam has never been so wrapped up in Dean. Sam was able to leave, repeatedly. Dean didn't get to the point of attempting to leave Sam until after he'd been reforged in Hell and even then he couldn't swing it. Dean figured that Sam would be able to recover and live out his life and, based on what he saw in 4x01, Sam succeeded at just that. Sam might not have returned to college, but he could still hunt and he wasn't so depressed that he couldn't sex up Ruby. Dean thought that Sam would be able to recover, and Sam proved him right.
Thing is, Sam would prefer to be alive than be dead, at least if Dean is also alive to be with him. The only way that was possible was through Dean's deal. Dean sacrificed himself for his brother and he suffered an untoward amount as a result. So yes, I do think that Sam should be grateful, now that it's all worked out at least, even if he hated the act and would have gladly switched places with his brother.
Now, the thing is that while I believe that Dean (and John and Sam) was selfless with his deal, the other factor that I believe is that it's freaking unhealthy. It's NOT a good thing to think so little of yourself. It's why until S4, I think Sam had the far more stable and healthier mindset. Unfortunately, in S4, Sam started to go off the rails and Dean, well. Dean sort of melted down a bit. However, I think Dean's made more progress in coming to a healthier mindset over the course of S4 and thus far into S5. Sam spiraled out of control, especially towards the end of S4, (for which I don't blame him! he had a lot going on!) but has made remarkable strides in these past two episodes to finding his center as well.
I feel that sacrificing yourself to save someone else's life is pretty much the most selfless thing someone can do.
To be selfless, you can't be doing something for yourself. It's arguable that John's deal was selfless; while the man didn't seem to value his own life particularly highly, he did value his quest, to the point that he often seemed to put it ahead of his own sons, and he gave that up for Dean, not out of an unwillingness to live without Dean. But Dean's deal, and Sam's attempted deal, were all about themselves; neither one of them wanted to live without the other, and they were both willing to sacrifice the other, to condemn the other to a hell on earth they'd rather go to the actual hell then face.
That Dean didn't want Sam to know to know what he'd done doesn't make it any less selfish; it only shows that he knew damn well that Sam wouldn't have wanted him to do it, that Sam would have far rather remained dead than be in the position Dean put him in. He did it anyway, because he couldn't face living without Sam.
As for telling Sam that he couldn't save Dean during S3, what else was he supposed to say?
I'm not talking about Sam working to save Dean during S3; I'm talking about Dean telling Sam not to make a deal to switch places with him. At least before he'd been to hell, he thought hell was preferable to living without Sam, and while I suppose it's arguable that he didn't know that Sam felt the same way when he made his deal (though I think he'd have had to be pretty deep in denial to not know after the events of S2), he absolutely knew it by the end of S3; he knew the first thing Sam was going to do if he went to hell was try to take his place. Being in hell was preferable to living without Sam, and he didn't want Sam taking the same "out" because it would put Dean right back where he started.
It's why until S4, I think Sam had the far more stable and healthier mindset.
I've always found this argument endlessly frustrating, in part because it attributes motives universally considering noble and heroic to Dean while attributing motives universally considered terrible to Sam while claiming it's saying the opposite, but more because I think it's fanon that has been so widely accepted as canon that it's only ever mentioned as fact instead of as a subjective, Dean-centric way of looking at the events of the early seasons (I wouldn't even count S3, in that Dean thoroughly disengaged from Sam and focused heavily on himself from almost the moment he made his deal, to the point that Sam had to beg him just to talk to him--perfectly understandable on Dean's part, but not for Sam's benefit by any stretch of the imagination).
I think reports of Dean's selflessness have been greatly exaggerated, and I think, particularly regarding the events of the first few seasons, this fandom has an unfortunate tendency to equate things he wanted for himself--for Sam to give up the life he wanted and live the life Dean wanted instead, for instance, despite having every reason to believe Sam would be far safer living a life far removed from hunting--with selflessness simply because they were motivated by his intense love for his family. Love can be selfish just like anything else, and wanting to keep someone with you because you love them, whether they want that for themselves or not, is far from a selfless emotion.
I don't mean to suggest that Dean would have ever forced Sam to stay, and I certainly don't mean to suggest he hasn't done a hell of a lot for his family or that he hasn't made selfless decisions along the way, but I don't think the standard "Dean is essentially selfless/Sam is essentially selfish" claim has ever truly been supported by canon. Through the first two seasons, what Dean wanted most in the world, what he tried to arrange, was what would have made him personally happiest, a return to hunting with his family as a full-time gig, even though (at least in S1) he knew Sam didn't want that, and knew it was lot more likely to get Sam killed young and bloody than if he was a lawyer somewhere. That's motivated self-interest, not selflessness.
Sorry for the delay in getting back to you - it's been an insane couple of days. :)
I'm still not seeing the problem with terming the sacrifice of one's own life and soul to save another to be anything but selfless, I'm sorry. True, neither of them wanted to live by themselves, but that doesn't change it in my mind from being selfless. In any other canon, can you imagine that literally going to Hell for someone else in order to save their life would be considered anything but selfless?
The whole thing with not telling Sam meant that Sam would be able to let him go. If Dean had died naturally, do you think that Sam would have gone so far off the tracks? To my mind, it was that Dean died to save Sam that really set him off, and if that wasn't bad enough, Dean went to Hell for Sam. But if Dean had "mysteriously" died on a hunt after the YED was killed, Sam would have been none the wiser and IMHO he would have been able to get over it. He would have been shocked and devastated, but he would have been able to recover because he wouldn't have failed at saving Dean after a full year of trying, then for months afterward.
it attributes motives universally considering noble and heroic to Dean while attributing motives universally considered terrible to Sam while claiming it's saying the opposite
But that's why I liked it. It really IS a bad thing to be that selfless. I found it a welcome subversion of a trope.
Argh, ran out of room. Have to split the comment in two.
I do think that Dean was selfless though perhaps much of that selflessness was forced on him at a young age. We see that John trained Dean when he was a little kid to put the needs of the family ahead of his own. We see him giving Sam the last bowl of cereal when it's obvious that he wants it and states that he'd already given Sam the rest of the box. We see him going out of his way to provide dinner and Christmas to the best of his ability in AVSC. We know from Skins that he sacrificed his own dreams and desires because it was what his family needed. We learn from John in 2x01 that these sort of things were regularly expected of him and that Dean received very little, if any, gratitude for them. There's all of one moment preseries that Dean is selfish in regards to his family, and that's when he takes a couple of hours off after Sam was already asleep and he'd been watching him for days and we see that he remembers and regrets that lapse for nearly twenty years after the fact. All of that suggests a high degree of selflessness to me.
Of course Dean has his own desires, particularly in regards to keeping Sam and John with him. However, he doesn't ever guilt trip Sam into staying. When asked, sure, he'll admit that he wants Sam to stay but he doesn't press Sam on the issue. When Sam wants to go back in the pilot, despite the fact that John hasn't been found, it's obvious that he's disappointed but he doesn't speak a word against Sam about it. I'm not sure why you say that Dean arranged to have Sam keep hunting; it seems to me that in Providence, at least, he was doing pretty much the opposite and he tried to give Sam an out midway through the second season. While he might have wanted his family with him, he more than once put their desires ahead of his own - even if it meant that they'd leave him.
Sam in turn HAS been selfish, or at least, self-centered. Sam did abandon his family to go to school which in essence meant giving up on finding his mother's killer. Which isn't a bad thing, but he did put his own interests over that of his family. We see moments of self-centeredness from Sam throughout the series; in Something Wicked, Dean tells Sam about a moment in his past that he's still wrecked about. Sam's response at the end of the episode is to talk about how he wishes he could have been kept innocent for longer. Dean's response to Sam's desire? "I wish you could have been, too." Dean doesn't talk about keeping his own innocence. Again, he subsumed his own desire to in honest regret for his brother's.
Little things like that come up all the time. It happens in Hunted. It happens in Salvation. It happens in the pilot. It happens in 3x15. It happens repeatedly in S4. The reason that Sam is associated with being self-centered is because he IS self-centered. Or tends to be, anyway. It's not that he's universally thinking of his own needs or that Dean is innocently polishing a halo while debating how he can best sacrifice himself for the good of the world or anything like that, it's just that these are the general trends that the characters have tended to follow.
It's why I'm so interested now that they're switching things up a bit in S5. Sam IS being selfless. Dean IS being selfish. They both have damn good reason to be, to be certain, but it's fascinating to me to see them pushed to the point where they're taking on each other's roles in the mythos.
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 argue that for the most part while growing up and afterward for a time as well, those morally questionable choices were mostly made by Dean.
As for Sam, I don't have an issue with him thinking the deal was selfish. From Sam's perspective, it would have been - just as Dean thought with John. However, if John had lived for a while, I'm pretty sure Dean would have managed to express some form of appreciative comment or gesture towards his father before he died and Sam, to my knowledge, did not do so. And that IS something I've some trouble with; Dean went to Hell for 40 years to save Sam's life - some measure of response aside from "that was stupid and selfish" would have done him well.
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Sam was every bit as selfish when the positions were reversed a year later; the only reason he didn't sell his soul was that he couldn't find a buyer despite trying desperately to do so, despite knowing that Dean would rather be in hell than be alive without him. But that doesn't negate the selfishness of what Dean did or the fact that he did it knowing that doing it would make Sam miserable, and the idea that Sam was wrong to be unhappy about that, to not actively thank Dean for leaving him in a situation Dean would rather face hell than live through himself, just makes no sense to me. It's perfectly understandable why Dean chose to sell his soul, just as it's perfectly understandable why Sam tried to do the same thing, but they were both fundamentally selfish, not selfless, acts, and expecting Sam to be grateful seems as bizarre to me as expecting Dean to be grateful if Sam had managed to reverse their positions.
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In Dean and John's cases in particular, they didn't want their recipients to know and that, to me, removes ALL implications of selfishness from it. Sam was never supposed to have figured it out. John didn't breathe a word of it to Dean. Sam wouldn't have been made miserable by Dean's sacrifice because he wasn't supposed to be aware that a sacrifice had been made.
As for telling Sam that he couldn't save Dean during S3, what else was he supposed to say? If Dean tried to break the deal, Sam would have died. Of course Dean wasn't going to risk that. That wouldn't have stopped Sam from trying to break the deal on his own though. Sam was the wildcard; his whole speech about "You can't be saved if you don't want to be saved" was bull because the whole point was that Dean couldn't try to save himself. He had to walk around for an entire year, knowing that he was going to die, knowing he was going to Hell. To me, that's the epitome of selfless because at any point during that process, he could have given up and chosen his own life over his brother's. He did not.
Sam wouldn't want to live without him any more than he wanted to live without Sam
See, I disagree here. Dean very much did NOT know that. Dean never considered himself as important to his brother or his father as he considered them to him. That was the whole focus of the YED's mockery in DT - "They don't need you. Not like you need them." Dean believed that. Listen to his soliloquy in AHBL2 - he considers his entire life a waste because he didn't get there in time to save Sam's life. He had one job and he blew it.
Sam has never been so wrapped up in Dean. Sam was able to leave, repeatedly. Dean didn't get to the point of attempting to leave Sam until after he'd been reforged in Hell and even then he couldn't swing it. Dean figured that Sam would be able to recover and live out his life and, based on what he saw in 4x01, Sam succeeded at just that. Sam might not have returned to college, but he could still hunt and he wasn't so depressed that he couldn't sex up Ruby. Dean thought that Sam would be able to recover, and Sam proved him right.
Thing is, Sam would prefer to be alive than be dead, at least if Dean is also alive to be with him. The only way that was possible was through Dean's deal. Dean sacrificed himself for his brother and he suffered an untoward amount as a result. So yes, I do think that Sam should be grateful, now that it's all worked out at least, even if he hated the act and would have gladly switched places with his brother.
Now, the thing is that while I believe that Dean (and John and Sam) was selfless with his deal, the other factor that I believe is that it's freaking unhealthy. It's NOT a good thing to think so little of yourself. It's why until S4, I think Sam had the far more stable and healthier mindset. Unfortunately, in S4, Sam started to go off the rails and Dean, well. Dean sort of melted down a bit. However, I think Dean's made more progress in coming to a healthier mindset over the course of S4 and thus far into S5. Sam spiraled out of control, especially towards the end of S4, (for which I don't blame him! he had a lot going on!) but has made remarkable strides in these past two episodes to finding his center as well.
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To be selfless, you can't be doing something for yourself. It's arguable that John's deal was selfless; while the man didn't seem to value his own life particularly highly, he did value his quest, to the point that he often seemed to put it ahead of his own sons, and he gave that up for Dean, not out of an unwillingness to live without Dean. But Dean's deal, and Sam's attempted deal, were all about themselves; neither one of them wanted to live without the other, and they were both willing to sacrifice the other, to condemn the other to a hell on earth they'd rather go to the actual hell then face.
That Dean didn't want Sam to know to know what he'd done doesn't make it any less selfish; it only shows that he knew damn well that Sam wouldn't have wanted him to do it, that Sam would have far rather remained dead than be in the position Dean put him in. He did it anyway, because he couldn't face living without Sam.
As for telling Sam that he couldn't save Dean during S3, what else was he supposed to say?
I'm not talking about Sam working to save Dean during S3; I'm talking about Dean telling Sam not to make a deal to switch places with him. At least before he'd been to hell, he thought hell was preferable to living without Sam, and while I suppose it's arguable that he didn't know that Sam felt the same way when he made his deal (though I think he'd have had to be pretty deep in denial to not know after the events of S2), he absolutely knew it by the end of S3; he knew the first thing Sam was going to do if he went to hell was try to take his place. Being in hell was preferable to living without Sam, and he didn't want Sam taking the same "out" because it would put Dean right back where he started.
It's why until S4, I think Sam had the far more stable and healthier mindset.
I've always found this argument endlessly frustrating, in part because it attributes motives universally considering noble and heroic to Dean while attributing motives universally considered terrible to Sam while claiming it's saying the opposite, but more because I think it's fanon that has been so widely accepted as canon that it's only ever mentioned as fact instead of as a subjective, Dean-centric way of looking at the events of the early seasons (I wouldn't even count S3, in that Dean thoroughly disengaged from Sam and focused heavily on himself from almost the moment he made his deal, to the point that Sam had to beg him just to talk to him--perfectly understandable on Dean's part, but not for Sam's benefit by any stretch of the imagination).
I think reports of Dean's selflessness have been greatly exaggerated, and I think, particularly regarding the events of the first few seasons, this fandom has an unfortunate tendency to equate things he wanted for himself--for Sam to give up the life he wanted and live the life Dean wanted instead, for instance, despite having every reason to believe Sam would be far safer living a life far removed from hunting--with selflessness simply because they were motivated by his intense love for his family. Love can be selfish just like anything else, and wanting to keep someone with you because you love them, whether they want that for themselves or not, is far from a selfless emotion.
I don't mean to suggest that Dean would have ever forced Sam to stay, and I certainly don't mean to suggest he hasn't done a hell of a lot for his family or that he hasn't made selfless decisions along the way, but I don't think the standard "Dean is essentially selfless/Sam is essentially selfish" claim has ever truly been supported by canon. Through the first two seasons, what Dean wanted most in the world, what he tried to arrange, was what would have made him personally happiest, a return to hunting with his family as a full-time gig, even though (at least in S1) he knew Sam didn't want that, and knew it was lot more likely to get Sam killed young and bloody than if he was a lawyer somewhere. That's motivated self-interest, not selflessness.
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I'm still not seeing the problem with terming the sacrifice of one's own life and soul to save another to be anything but selfless, I'm sorry. True, neither of them wanted to live by themselves, but that doesn't change it in my mind from being selfless. In any other canon, can you imagine that literally going to Hell for someone else in order to save their life would be considered anything but selfless?
The whole thing with not telling Sam meant that Sam would be able to let him go. If Dean had died naturally, do you think that Sam would have gone so far off the tracks? To my mind, it was that Dean died to save Sam that really set him off, and if that wasn't bad enough, Dean went to Hell for Sam. But if Dean had "mysteriously" died on a hunt after the YED was killed, Sam would have been none the wiser and IMHO he would have been able to get over it. He would have been shocked and devastated, but he would have been able to recover because he wouldn't have failed at saving Dean after a full year of trying, then for months afterward.
it attributes motives universally considering noble and heroic to Dean while attributing motives universally considered terrible to Sam while claiming it's saying the opposite
But that's why I liked it. It really IS a bad thing to be that selfless. I found it a welcome subversion of a trope.
Argh, ran out of room. Have to split the comment in two.
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I do think that Dean was selfless though perhaps much of that selflessness was forced on him at a young age. We see that John trained Dean when he was a little kid to put the needs of the family ahead of his own. We see him giving Sam the last bowl of cereal when it's obvious that he wants it and states that he'd already given Sam the rest of the box. We see him going out of his way to provide dinner and Christmas to the best of his ability in AVSC. We know from Skins that he sacrificed his own dreams and desires because it was what his family needed. We learn from John in 2x01 that these sort of things were regularly expected of him and that Dean received very little, if any, gratitude for them. There's all of one moment preseries that Dean is selfish in regards to his family, and that's when he takes a couple of hours off after Sam was already asleep and he'd been watching him for days and we see that he remembers and regrets that lapse for nearly twenty years after the fact. All of that suggests a high degree of selflessness to me.
Of course Dean has his own desires, particularly in regards to keeping Sam and John with him. However, he doesn't ever guilt trip Sam into staying. When asked, sure, he'll admit that he wants Sam to stay but he doesn't press Sam on the issue. When Sam wants to go back in the pilot, despite the fact that John hasn't been found, it's obvious that he's disappointed but he doesn't speak a word against Sam about it. I'm not sure why you say that Dean arranged to have Sam keep hunting; it seems to me that in Providence, at least, he was doing pretty much the opposite and he tried to give Sam an out midway through the second season. While he might have wanted his family with him, he more than once put their desires ahead of his own - even if it meant that they'd leave him.
Sam in turn HAS been selfish, or at least, self-centered. Sam did abandon his family to go to school which in essence meant giving up on finding his mother's killer. Which isn't a bad thing, but he did put his own interests over that of his family. We see moments of self-centeredness from Sam throughout the series; in Something Wicked, Dean tells Sam about a moment in his past that he's still wrecked about. Sam's response at the end of the episode is to talk about how he wishes he could have been kept innocent for longer. Dean's response to Sam's desire? "I wish you could have been, too." Dean doesn't talk about keeping his own innocence. Again, he subsumed his own desire to in honest regret for his brother's.
Little things like that come up all the time. It happens in Hunted. It happens in Salvation. It happens in the pilot. It happens in 3x15. It happens repeatedly in S4. The reason that Sam is associated with being self-centered is because he IS self-centered. Or tends to be, anyway. It's not that he's universally thinking of his own needs or that Dean is innocently polishing a halo while debating how he can best sacrifice himself for the good of the world or anything like that, it's just that these are the general trends that the characters have tended to follow.
It's why I'm so interested now that they're switching things up a bit in S5. Sam IS being selfless. Dean IS being selfish. They both have damn good reason to be, to be certain, but it's fascinating to me to see them pushed to the point where they're taking on each other's roles in the mythos.
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