so how 'bout those SPN ComicCon spoilers?

[pocochina]

SPOILERS, obviously. tbh very little we couldn't have guessed from what we've seen, this is mostly about S8, but for the purists out there, don't click.

Comments

[nekosammy]

I do see echoes of Season 7 here, in that Dean keeps a secret from Sam, killing Amy, and it is all about how much this hurts DEAN and NOT Sam, the actual injured party on all levels. Sam was allowed to be angry with Dean for all of one episode, and that was it. Even Ellen came back from the grave to piss all over Sam's trauma and support poor, fragile Dean, who just HAD to tell Sam why he did it and how bad lying to Sam made him feel (thus, Dean's Lying is used to cover up Dean's Real Crime, killing Amy behind Sam's back). Because of tactics like this, big audience support in fandom almost always lands on Dean's Side, because Sam is barely given one on the show in actual scenes. I think it's highly likely that Dean will get so much positive framing and emo scenes out of all of his dishonesties and manipulations of Sam, that once again, he will not only get away with it, but be rewarded for it as well

[percysowner]

I'm like 90% sure that the story will be how hard it is for Dean to lie to Sam as opposed to how much of a betrayal of Sam it is to be lied to again. I generally liked season two, except for the intense focus on how hard it was for Dean to be told he had to kill Sam as opposed to how Sam felt about finding out his own father put a hit out on him. I mean really? Not one scene of how could Dad hate me so much that he wanted me dead? Then, in The Song Remains the Same, Sam actually makes up with John and tries to make him feel better about the man John is going to turn into. I'm not sure if this is because the Stockholm Syndrome has finally kicked in for good, or if Sam is really THAT forgiving, because if my Dad, who I had a strained relationship with, told someone that I would become so evil that I had to die, I would NEVER get over it or forgive him. It would certainly cement the idea that leaving for college was a good one, because at least Sam wasn't murdered in his sleep by John.

[pocochina]

Yeah, the grossness of S2 (and to a lesser extent S5) is the reason I can't quite bring myself to say the fans are entirely to blame for the willful romanticization of this relationship; they were clearly encouraged.

But from my author-is-dead perspective, I can actually get a lot out of S2 as a very close use of unreliable narrator? Dean is so self-absorbed in his grief, and expending so much psychological effort in his need to preserve his self-image as The Selfless Brother, that he literally never spares a thought (ie there is no scene emphasizing) how Sam, as an individual human being who exists separately from his role as the object (AHEM) of Dean's affections, feels about this huge thing, except once in a while for him to blurt out how he thinks he is bad and will deserve to die, which Dean takes as confirmation that Sam's life or death is All About Dean because clearly Sam is a defective thing that couldn't make this decision for himself. Even the wake-up call of Sam taking off for a few days (in narrative terms, Sam

[percysowner]

I actually don't think John would've killed him, though. To be brutally dispassionate, John had the shot at Sam. He stalked the kid for the years he was figuring out whatever he thought Azazel's plan was, and they were together for a solid couple of days at the end there. He would've done what Dean has done since - more and more stifling and controlling and destabilizing until Sam eventually ended it himself by taking progressively more suicidally insane risks.I actually don't think John would have either, but I think Sam might think he could have. It plays into the whole Dean loves me better than anyone else trope because he got to see Dean struggle, where as John ordered the hit and died. It had to leave Sam wondering

[pocochina]

I actually don't think John would have either, but I think Sam might think he could have. It plays into the whole Dean loves me better than anyone else trope because he got to see Dean struggle, where as John ordered the hit and died.

That is a mind-blowingly good way of putting it.

Season two was about negating Sam's feelings pretty much from the get go. In Everyone Loves a Clown, I think, Sam tells Dean, who is angrily grieving, that Sam isn't doing that well either and basically gets told it's too little too late and we never hear how Sam feels about his father dying again.Well, not just that, but Dean flat-out tells him "YOU fought with him all the time, YOU were not a good enough son, you were insufficiently eager to kiss the dirt beneath his feet and therefore you are less entitled to grief than I am, *I* earned the right to be in charge of how *you* feel about *our* father." Which again, is understandable lashing out on Dean's part, but IMO respecting the character means acknowledging how his mind is manufacturing this

[pocochina]

I think that's probably a statement that will hold as an accurate observation by the end of the season, that Dean violated Sam's trust and Sam let it go way too easily. But I don't necessarily think I'll have a problem with that, because it's an entirely accurate characterization - Dean thinks he has a right to treat Sam like his Cabbage Patch doll, and Sam doesn't know anything else and he's a deeply loving person so he forgives it, and even if he didn't he'd still stay mum to avoid more abuse because Dean has established a pattern where "anything vaguely resembling light accountability" is the same as "cruelly victimizing Dean and 'being a little bitch' (The Mentalist)." By this point I think Sam has a pretty serious cognitive investment in "I SHOULD let things go, I CAN'T say anything," because if all the times he would be within his rights to defend himself were really to sink in, he would be the one really hurting by revisiting a lot of pain and betrayal