postmodernmulticoloredcloak:

woahthisguy:

postmodernmulticoloredcloak:

frozen-delight:

squirrelsan:

Yes. It was even noted by Jensen as well, because it’s SOO obvious. Sam only bonds with people if he can project (he feels they’re in the same situation he’s in), or if there’s sexual interest/attraction. Even when he’s supposed to be empathizing with other people, the writers just have to have him say something about how “this is just like me!” or about how he’s invested because he really needs to believe his own redemption/ salvation is possible. They do with Matt, Jack, the family in Salvation, Max, Ava, Andy, and even Madison.

And what makes it worse is the counterpoint. They have Sam care when the person’s situation is nearly identical to his own, but the same investment is starkly absent in other situations. How he has no problems advocating for leaving victims to their fate if it furthers his own goals (Wendigo, Scarecrow, Kevin, ect), the lack of remorse in Faith, his suggestion they just count John good as dead and abandon him to his captors in DT, his lack of empathy for the prisoners OR the guards in FPB, his disgust and dismissal of Ron in Nightshifter, his lack of concern at the prospect of knifing Lilith’s child host in NRFTW, his suggestion they preform human sacrifice in JIB, the admission that the real reason he’s into saving people is because he thinks it’ll change his destiny in Playthings, the list goes on. And that’s not even including times he’s failed to show any kind of empathetic concern for Dean in moments where he really, REALLY should have.

By having Sam only really shown to empathize when he is bemoaning his own feelings/situation, by having him show too little concern or simply fail to act as an honestly empathetic person should act otherwise, by having him often give voice to his own emotional investment during times he IS supposed be being empathetic…well, it makes it seem like Sam is only truly concerned about his own feelings and emotional needs.

I know the writer’s didn’t intend it to be that way. I really think Sam’s just suffering from Chosen One syndrome in a bad way. But if you consider his behavior just as it appears onscreen, Sam reads very much like a covert narcissist.

If you ask me, this ties in with Sam’s lack of self-awareness. On the one hand Sam assumes that everyone and everything relates to him somehow, but on the other he’s completely blind to the most obvious parallels between himself and other people. For instance, in There’s No Place Like Home he’s shocked at the notes Charlie’s therapist made about her after she lost her parents and Dean has to point out to him, “Dude. If a shrink interviewed us at that age, you think the report would be all kittens and rainbows?” Or in Repo Man, he has an incredibly hard time accepting that Jeremy the psychopath was just acting and pretending to be normal, oblivious to the fact this is what he and Dean do pretty much all the time.

I don’t think it’s accidental from the writers’ part, it’s too consistent and survives several rounds of change in the writers’ room. I think it all stems from the basic system of characterization for the two brothers – they decided that for a show with two leads the only way for the show to work was to make them fundamentally different in their personalities, their approach to others, their morality, and the masks they use to conceal their deeper selves. So they built Dean as the seemingly insensitive, rough around the edges, devil-may-care guy who has actually a huge emotional intelligence and cares too much. And they built Sam as the seemingly friendly, caring California-educated golden boy who is actually fairly bad at empathy and whose journey on the show is basically his struggle with what means to be a good person.

I’m screaming ya’ll. If I ever get my shit together, I’ve got a meta brewing called “Why Jarpad’s hair makes it hard see when Sam is being a ~fuckboi.” It will be more empathetic than its title (and Sam). However, I’ll briefly add to @postmodernmulticoloredcloak’s assessment. Dean was raised to be toxic masculinity incarnate…but also to be Sam’s caretaker. Sam saw this. He heard how John treated him. How he was put on a pedestal. Its only logical that Sam would have a hard time seeing past himself when he’s been raised to believe he is literally the most important person.

Yes of course, Sam was basically the “only child” of the weird family made of John the Father and Dean the Mother. I wanted to write a post some time ago about Sam’s perception of John and Dean but with my graduation and everything I forgot :p I’ll make a note. Oh I just saw that I had already made a note lol. Anyway. (NB I’m not saying that only children are inherently narcissistic or selfish or anything, of course, but lbr we all know at least one person who is an only child and it shows…)

So Sam is the child to the odd couple of parents John and Dean (a few scenes in the show suggest that he thought of Dad-and-Dean as a unit similar to how we often think of our parents as a unit). But – I am aware that this could sound controversial but please keep in mind that I am not judging or downplaying disabled people’s needs – Sam has also been raised as the Disabled Younger Sibling to Dean’s Abled Older Sibling. If I remember correctly the show’s canon doesn’t specify when and how exactly John started suspecting that there was Something™ about Sam that tied to the supernatural/monster that killed Mary, but it’s implied that John kind of always suspected that what happened over Sam’s bed happened over Sam’s bed for some kind of reason, and he tried to keep Sam shielded from the supernatural and to other hunters for that reason. Sam got a “special treatment” over Dean, whom John saw as just a normal kid – Sam got to live a fairly messed up childhood, yes, but messed up in “normal” ways – dad moving around the country, poverty, neglect, but he still experienced that as a child, with a caretaker that was Dean. Dean didn’t get a caretaker, he became his sibling’s caretaker – it’s a dynamic that can happen in families where there’s a kid with special needs, the older sibling(s) assume a more of less subtle caretaking role towards their sibling who (rightfully) needs extra care. Of course I am not saying disabled people are inherently selfish or narcissistic, faaaar from it, but there is some kind of self-centeredness that comes from receiving extra attention and care than others (esp peers like siblings). NB that I am not saying this as moral judgement or criticism. In Dean and Sam’s case, Sam wasn’t actually disabled (although his demon blood situation is coded as a disability), but he was a tiny child so he obviously had the needs of a tiny child, and there was something about him that made John wary about exposing him to the supernatural and the hunting world too soon. So Sam got extra protection and Dean didn’t get any protection – as John didn’t deem he needed it – and even got burdened with being Sam’s parent since John didn’t provide that. 

Slightly digressing but since I’m on it – this is what I mean when I say that Dean represents the queer side of the ‘freak’ coin and Sam represents the disabled side of the ‘freak’ coin. There is something about his body that is seen as something wrong and shameful etc etc – that’s why I think that the ideal endgame for Sam is to embrace supernatural powers, as a companion to Dean’s endgame to embrace his attraction to men.