i'm good at repairs, and i'm under each snare
So this weekend I started harassing the ol' f-list like, "can I talk your ear off about my deep and abiding love for early-S6-Sam" and got a solid "you're the one with the Jolly Green Jackass fetish, you post about it" (I'm paraphrasing). So here is my scatterbrained flail about why it was so perfect for Sam's arc.
For the purposes of clarity, I'm going to classify Sam's identity with 6x22 in mind, because it pleases me. "Whole-Sam" refers to the "real" Sam, incorporating all the "pieces" Soulless refers to in Sam's vision. That is, Sam the physical entity, the "soulless-Sam" entity which thinks procedurally like the other Sams but lacks a soul, Sam the consciousness which incorporates all the memories he's formed in his life, and whatever the "soul" of Sam is. I'm staying away from "real" Sam because that suggests that Soulless is a "fake" Sam, a replacement or imposter, which is pretty different from my own view that Soulless is a part of Sam. When I just say Sam, I mean the core consciousness which we see in Soulless and whole-Sam.
(Obviously if anyone reading this doesn't love the hell out of all the Sams, including Soulless, this post will just have you WTF-ing. I don't get it, but. SOME PEOPLE JUGGLE GEESE.)
Sam works really hard to understand himself in relation to external expectations and codes of behavior. He may accept them and try to conform, or he may reject them and work to distance himself as far as possible, but he is always highly conscious of them, and there's always that internal struggle of trying to figure out how to integrate his understanding of the outside world with his understanding of himself.
Sam struggled his whole life to think for himself, to define himself outside of his father and Lucifer and everyone that worked so hard to make him a tool. He tried to be his own tool, and look what the fuck happened. Not solely that he wound up doing a Supermax stint in hell, but that the world almost ended. Self/others is zero-sum for him - Sam's reach for a sense of self almost cost everyone else the world; to win back the world, he had to give himself over completely. He's past the point of being able to grapple with that in the way he tried to do throughout S5.
Come S6, Sam has no internal struggle with the hunter code the older Winchesters developed. He acts for all intents and purposes like he trusts family unquestioningly and implicitly. He doesn't bond with anyone outside of the life, even (especially) not the long trail of women behind him. He doesn't fuss around about right and wrong; he doesn't hesitate because of collateral damage. He has a strong survival instinct but isn't afraid to die. As a hunter, he's hell on environmentally-conscious wheels and he has no aspirations to be anything else.
Basically, he's everything Dean always said he wanted from Sammy. "Nature versus nurture" is an oversimplified distillation of the souled/soulless dichotomy, not least because so little of our environment can actually be controlled by conscious choices and explicit verbal communications. Soulless-Sam, without a "nature" (soul) of his own here, is completely reliant on the hunter code nurturing that was consciously, purposefully ground into him from infancy.
I wonder if Dean, in his reactions to RoboSam, ever remembers his own reaction to hell, of wishing he couldn't feel a damn thing. Dean's really good, too good, at holding himself separate from the what-should-be or what-I-want. Sam's less of a dreamer along those lines, but when he does get one of Dean's airy-fairy notions into his head, he balls-out makes it real, come hell or high water. (So to speak.) Not feeling is how you deal with hell? TEN-FOUR. (EDIT because this omission has started to nag me: Soulless claims to remember the Cage. It's not until the wall goes up that he claims it's a blank for him. He knows what's happened to him, he just can't let himself care. It's so real, it breaks my heart.)
So that's enough about what Sam is, without his soul. You know what he's not, objectively? All that bad.
He's ruthless, for sure. But no more so than he's shown the capacity to be anyway. He isn't sadistic, isn't even aggressive. He simply sees the world as a set of mildly entertaining problems to be solved.
Soulless-Sam's interpersonal....skills? tendencies? probably not instincts....are pretty interesting. From the outside, his familial relationships with the Campbells are the most functional he's ever had. I was struck, and not a little relieved, at the way Unforgiven goes out of its way to emphasize Soulless's hem-hem as safe, sane, and consensual. I'm not saying not being a sexual predator makes him some moral all-star? Obviously that is the expectation for a decent human being. But it is at least pertinent to the discussion of what is and isn't bad about him. (I think that's arguably a pretty radical statement? If Soulless Dickbag gets the whole "consent" thing, SO SHOULD EVERYONE.)
There's something off about him from 6x1, and he certainly doesn't react to situations in the way whole-Sam would. But the gratuitous asshole behavior - his expressions of amusement at situations that are awful doesn't really happen until Castiel says he's soulless. He doesn't even seem....cognizant of himself as an asshole before that? Oh, he "wonders" about himself, he knows something's not right with him, but he doesn't take it as a blanket pass to act badly. It's once Castiel says he's soulless and everyone around him kicks up a big stink about how BAD that is that the overt, purposeless nastiness kicks into gear. I can't decide if the soulless diagnosis gave him permission to stop trying to live up to whole-Sam's normal behavior, or if he's simply taking his cues from everyone else about how he's horrible now and adapting to live down to expectations.
It's also worth pointing out that neither Sam nor anyone else makes any mention of his whole demon blood thing. From a crafted-narrative perspective, it makes sense to keep that particular misdirect out of the way, because otherwise it'd be far too easy to equate demon blood with evil and let that be that. But on a strict in-universe level, it's a glaring omission. If he doesn't care one way or the other - if BECAUSE IT'S WRONG is no longer a consideration in the hunting - why in the world wouldn't he want that ability?
There's a possibility that it's simply no longer an option. Souls, as the second half of the season tells us, are raw power, more potent than even the angels' grace. He might just be cut off from that power source. I like this from a worldbuilding perspective because it adds a bit of amoral nuance to the psychicness and the souls. It's the soul-power that let him get so dark and scary; at the same time, it supports my belief that the power itself isn't necessarily all bad, just something with good and bad potential uses, just as with the rest of the power granted by souls.
But then what does that say about Sam, if Azazael didn't just corrupt his body and mind with the demon blood? If it has its claws in his very soul? This ties in with Sam's arc from S2, where before he'd done anything more than have a pissing match with his father and not tell Jess about some random nightmare, he was still convinced that he needed redemption, enough to be vulnerable to the Father Gregory spirit. The strain of being an abomination becomes too much; maybe the only way to be free of that taint is to become nothing at all.
That's not really mutually exclusive with the more character-specific psychological version, that Sam's power trip is a result of fear, and pain, and ambition as an attempt to overcome feelings of inadequacy (I mean, REJECTED FROM HELL when he tried to make that crossroads deal, that's gotta leave a mark). That his whole fall didn't happen in spite of his soul, this thing of unquestioned good and holy significance, but was in large part because of it.
Even laying aside my love of the characterization here, the whole soulless arc is so important to the larger conflict of S6. Sam, in whatever iteration, thinks a lot like another soulless entity - an angel. He's always a believer in some absolute truth outside of himself - normalcy, the greater good, the hunter code, God, whatever. He and Cas have such similar stories in S4 & S6 because they're alike in some crucial ways. Sam going completely amoral - that is, keeping the abstract, absolutist thinking but without any external moral checks - is almost a perfect converse of Castiel's S6 arc of going rogue but keeping the faith.
But it ultimately is a question of characterization - in my opinion, really excellent characterization. Not because I think Soulless sub-Sam is some sort of misunderstood ethical paragon, because I don't, even if I also don't think he's the monster Dean decides he is. It's technically fantastic character work because it tells us what makes Sam tick. Piece by piece.
For the purposes of clarity, I'm going to classify Sam's identity with 6x22 in mind, because it pleases me. "Whole-Sam" refers to the "real" Sam, incorporating all the "pieces" Soulless refers to in Sam's vision. That is, Sam the physical entity, the "soulless-Sam" entity which thinks procedurally like the other Sams but lacks a soul, Sam the consciousness which incorporates all the memories he's formed in his life, and whatever the "soul" of Sam is. I'm staying away from "real" Sam because that suggests that Soulless is a "fake" Sam, a replacement or imposter, which is pretty different from my own view that Soulless is a part of Sam. When I just say Sam, I mean the core consciousness which we see in Soulless and whole-Sam.
(Obviously if anyone reading this doesn't love the hell out of all the Sams, including Soulless, this post will just have you WTF-ing. I don't get it, but. SOME PEOPLE JUGGLE GEESE.)
Sam works really hard to understand himself in relation to external expectations and codes of behavior. He may accept them and try to conform, or he may reject them and work to distance himself as far as possible, but he is always highly conscious of them, and there's always that internal struggle of trying to figure out how to integrate his understanding of the outside world with his understanding of himself.
Sam struggled his whole life to think for himself, to define himself outside of his father and Lucifer and everyone that worked so hard to make him a tool. He tried to be his own tool, and look what the fuck happened. Not solely that he wound up doing a Supermax stint in hell, but that the world almost ended. Self/others is zero-sum for him - Sam's reach for a sense of self almost cost everyone else the world; to win back the world, he had to give himself over completely. He's past the point of being able to grapple with that in the way he tried to do throughout S5.
Come S6, Sam has no internal struggle with the hunter code the older Winchesters developed. He acts for all intents and purposes like he trusts family unquestioningly and implicitly. He doesn't bond with anyone outside of the life, even (especially) not the long trail of women behind him. He doesn't fuss around about right and wrong; he doesn't hesitate because of collateral damage. He has a strong survival instinct but isn't afraid to die. As a hunter, he's hell on environmentally-conscious wheels and he has no aspirations to be anything else.
Basically, he's everything Dean always said he wanted from Sammy. "Nature versus nurture" is an oversimplified distillation of the souled/soulless dichotomy, not least because so little of our environment can actually be controlled by conscious choices and explicit verbal communications. Soulless-Sam, without a "nature" (soul) of his own here, is completely reliant on the hunter code nurturing that was consciously, purposefully ground into him from infancy.
I wonder if Dean, in his reactions to RoboSam, ever remembers his own reaction to hell, of wishing he couldn't feel a damn thing. Dean's really good, too good, at holding himself separate from the what-should-be or what-I-want. Sam's less of a dreamer along those lines, but when he does get one of Dean's airy-fairy notions into his head, he balls-out makes it real, come hell or high water. (So to speak.) Not feeling is how you deal with hell? TEN-FOUR. (EDIT because this omission has started to nag me: Soulless claims to remember the Cage. It's not until the wall goes up that he claims it's a blank for him. He knows what's happened to him, he just can't let himself care. It's so real, it breaks my heart.)
So that's enough about what Sam is, without his soul. You know what he's not, objectively? All that bad.
He's ruthless, for sure. But no more so than he's shown the capacity to be anyway. He isn't sadistic, isn't even aggressive. He simply sees the world as a set of mildly entertaining problems to be solved.
Soulless-Sam's interpersonal....skills? tendencies? probably not instincts....are pretty interesting. From the outside, his familial relationships with the Campbells are the most functional he's ever had. I was struck, and not a little relieved, at the way Unforgiven goes out of its way to emphasize Soulless's hem-hem as safe, sane, and consensual. I'm not saying not being a sexual predator makes him some moral all-star? Obviously that is the expectation for a decent human being. But it is at least pertinent to the discussion of what is and isn't bad about him. (I think that's arguably a pretty radical statement? If Soulless Dickbag gets the whole "consent" thing, SO SHOULD EVERYONE.)
There's something off about him from 6x1, and he certainly doesn't react to situations in the way whole-Sam would. But the gratuitous asshole behavior - his expressions of amusement at situations that are awful doesn't really happen until Castiel says he's soulless. He doesn't even seem....cognizant of himself as an asshole before that? Oh, he "wonders" about himself, he knows something's not right with him, but he doesn't take it as a blanket pass to act badly. It's once Castiel says he's soulless and everyone around him kicks up a big stink about how BAD that is that the overt, purposeless nastiness kicks into gear. I can't decide if the soulless diagnosis gave him permission to stop trying to live up to whole-Sam's normal behavior, or if he's simply taking his cues from everyone else about how he's horrible now and adapting to live down to expectations.
It's also worth pointing out that neither Sam nor anyone else makes any mention of his whole demon blood thing. From a crafted-narrative perspective, it makes sense to keep that particular misdirect out of the way, because otherwise it'd be far too easy to equate demon blood with evil and let that be that. But on a strict in-universe level, it's a glaring omission. If he doesn't care one way or the other - if BECAUSE IT'S WRONG is no longer a consideration in the hunting - why in the world wouldn't he want that ability?
There's a possibility that it's simply no longer an option. Souls, as the second half of the season tells us, are raw power, more potent than even the angels' grace. He might just be cut off from that power source. I like this from a worldbuilding perspective because it adds a bit of amoral nuance to the psychicness and the souls. It's the soul-power that let him get so dark and scary; at the same time, it supports my belief that the power itself isn't necessarily all bad, just something with good and bad potential uses, just as with the rest of the power granted by souls.
But then what does that say about Sam, if Azazael didn't just corrupt his body and mind with the demon blood? If it has its claws in his very soul? This ties in with Sam's arc from S2, where before he'd done anything more than have a pissing match with his father and not tell Jess about some random nightmare, he was still convinced that he needed redemption, enough to be vulnerable to the Father Gregory spirit. The strain of being an abomination becomes too much; maybe the only way to be free of that taint is to become nothing at all.
That's not really mutually exclusive with the more character-specific psychological version, that Sam's power trip is a result of fear, and pain, and ambition as an attempt to overcome feelings of inadequacy (I mean, REJECTED FROM HELL when he tried to make that crossroads deal, that's gotta leave a mark). That his whole fall didn't happen in spite of his soul, this thing of unquestioned good and holy significance, but was in large part because of it.
Even laying aside my love of the characterization here, the whole soulless arc is so important to the larger conflict of S6. Sam, in whatever iteration, thinks a lot like another soulless entity - an angel. He's always a believer in some absolute truth outside of himself - normalcy, the greater good, the hunter code, God, whatever. He and Cas have such similar stories in S4 & S6 because they're alike in some crucial ways. Sam going completely amoral - that is, keeping the abstract, absolutist thinking but without any external moral checks - is almost a perfect converse of Castiel's S6 arc of going rogue but keeping the faith.
But it ultimately is a question of characterization - in my opinion, really excellent characterization. Not because I think Soulless sub-Sam is some sort of misunderstood ethical paragon, because I don't, even if I also don't think he's the monster Dean decides he is. It's technically fantastic character work because it tells us what makes Sam tick. Piece by piece.