A Chasing After Wind

I have thoughts - and feelings, on Spike and Dean Winchester, on the roles they play. I am not the first person to note that there are similarities between Spike's devotion to Buffy (and previously Dru) and Dean's to Sam.

( On love )

I was thinking about Sam's emotional intimacy issues in light of a some of his interactions with demons.

As usual, bear in mind that I haven't seen past S10.

Do you remember the time Sam totally confided in Meg? He doesn’t want to confide, and then she pushes, and she reminds him that she knows his “sad, little thoughts and feelings.” He tells her that’s creepy, but then he starts opening up to her. She pushes, and he ends up telling her all about Amelia. She’s been inside his head. She literally knows everything about him. She was the first, but not the last.

If I was going to name one person besides Dean who Sam confided in the most within the context of an actual relationship, it would be Ruby.

And he never loved her.

I just can’t believe he would have had absolutely no concern and reaction about her death if he had in any way loved her.

She’s like Dean and not like Dean. He sees Dean as speaking through her, and she calls him “my boy”. She plays Dean’s trump card, the reminder of what she has done for him (“I'm a fugitive... For you, Sam. I took all of this risk to get back to you, so, yeah, I deserve a damn ‘thank you.’”) but it doesn’t work as well for her. Sam wonders who asked her to save him (who asked Dean?). She doesn’t express affection for him, and he doesn’t feel affection for her. They’re using each other, that much is upfront.

She expresses empathy about Dean’s death, but not untill after they’ve been working together for a while. Then she convinced him to sleep with h er. The emotional intimacy is there and gone. She puts it out there, but instead of letting him pull away and shut her out, she pushes him into another kind of intimacy, one that is considerably less intimate. A distraction from the emotional intimacy he would have withdrawn from (He fled Bobby, didn’t he? And if Mystery Spot is anything to judge by, he would have fled Bobby no matter how hard Bobby pushed for connection.). In sleeping with her he is accepting his monstrous nature. In sleeping with her he is rejecting and accepting his brother. In sleeping with her, he is giving her attempt to reach out to him an affirmation that he would never have given her under any other circumstances.

I've often thought that what Dean says in Metamorphosis, "If I didn't know you I would want to hunt you", is the worst line that either Sam or Dean have said to each other while not under supernatural influence.

Dean does apologize for it. But look at how, exactly, he apologizes: “Sam, I wanna tell you I'm sorry. I've been kind of hard on you lately.[...]It's just that your, uh, your psychic thing, it scares the crap out of me.”

I think his acknowledgement that he is afraid is true. I think Dean's actions in Metamorphosis are based very much on fear.

But let's look at the rest of the apology. Dean apologizes for having been “hard” on Sam. What are the implications of that?

“Hard” implies overcritical, expecting too much, being too harsh.

I should have softened things for you because I love you.

“Hard” does not imply inaccurate, untrue, or wrong.

“Hard” kind of implies “righteous”, in a way. But going too far.

I was righteous but I should not have treated you that way because I love you. If I didn’t love you, I would want to hunt you.

Dean is not, actually, contradicting his statement that if he didn't know Sam, he would want to hunt him.

In Citizen Fang, when Sam said, “You’re too close to this”, he was not articulating a deeply hidden fear. He was articulating a desperate desire.

Here’s a little interesting moment in the SPN pilot. Do you remember what finally convinces Sam to agree to go with Dean? When Dean says this: “You know, in almost two years I've never bothered you, never asked you for a thing.”

This is particularly interesting because earlier this same scene, Sam told Dean that the reason he has been “stay[ing] gone” is because John kicked him out. But Dean still characterizes Sam as not wanting to be “bothered” by Dean.

Of course, it's interesting that it's only as soon as John is out of the picture that Dean starts pretty forcefully (to the point of breaking and entry) trying to convince Sam to come with him. Not because he needs Sam, but because he wants Sam. Nothing has changed, except that John is not there. Dean doesn't have to choose between Sam and John, because Sam isn't present.

It bothers me, a bit, that Dean's argument is essentially to guilt-trip Sam about a choice that Dean made that I doubt Sam wanted Dean to make.

One argument that irritates me from many fans who believe SPN's Amy Pond should have been killed is how much importance they place on the fact that she killed recently. Specifically, Amy kill recently, Benny killed a long time ago, therefore Benny should be allowed to live with no punishment or restrictions, and Amy should be killed. I have no problem with the recent-ness of a monster's killed being a factor in how they were killed, but the entire judgment? That makes no sense. In the real world, there is no statue of limitations on murder, and there's a reason for that.

( Statue of Limitations )

I have occasionally thought about how both Spike and Ruby use Buffy and Sam’s shame about their sexual relationship against them.

There are strong differences, of course. Spike just wants Buffy to love him. In many ways, he follows her lead, but his lack of soul makes it difficult for him to gauge when he’s abusing her and when he isn’t. He’s an emotional predator, and we see that on the balcony in Dead Things. She’s ashamed of what they do together, so he uses it to isolate her from her friends, to convince her that she is bad and dirty and has no choice but to be with him. He deliberately crushes her happiness and exacerbates her feelings and self-loathing. He’s impulsive about it - only a few episodes later he is touched to see her happy. But that makes what he does no less real.

His encouragement alley beating is real, too. Buffy’s a big girl and Spike doesn’t force her to do anything, but he encourages her. He lets her. He wants her to beat him, because the more horrible she is, the more ashamed she feels, and the more (from his perspective at the time) she is under his power.

Ruby comes at it more deliberately. She doesn't want love. She wants control over Sam in order to achieve her goals. While she may have enjoyed having sex with Sam, I think she initiates sex in order to have power. Dean’s “banging monsters” comment in Sex and Violence underlines Sam’s very real and very legit reasons for being ashamed of having sex with Ruby, for not wanting Dean - or Bobby, for that matter - to know.

While Spike wants Buffy’s friends to know the truth, Ruby initiates the lie to Dean, in such a way that continuing the lie is the path of least resistance to Sam. Later, she encourages Sam to tell Dean the truth, but she’s already set it up. They’re co-conspirators. Telling Dean the truth would be admitting that minutes after Dean walked into the door from Hell Sam lied to his face about something pretty significant. In that moment, when Ruby wondered if Dean was Sam’s lover, Sam chose Ruby. “He’s my brother,” he said, and in some ways, he really did choose a demon over his own brother.

There’s that moment in Citizen Fang when Dean references Benny’s granddaughter. He’s explaining why Benny wouldn’t kill, giving several reasons, none of which involve Benny have any moral, ethical, or empathy-related reason not to kill human beings. Dean tells Sam and Martin that vampires kill on the outskirts of towns, “Not in the cafés that they work in with their great-grandkids.”

(The "Vampires pick people off from the outskirts of town" argument is questionable, as even if Dean is right, they are still discussing vamp kills.)

And he looks at Sam when he says this.

Now, watching this the first time through, I was too busy being pissed-off on Sam’s behalf to think about what was going on in Dean’s head. But what was going on in Dean’s head? He seems like he’s trying to appeal to Sam. You know, you care about monsters and their families and their monster lives. Care about this one?

But he must have known. Monsters with progeny they love and Sam connecting with them is not something that’s happened that often. Maybe not ever.

Except that once.

What was Dean thinking in invoking the ghost of Amy Pond? He knew, from Southern Comfort, that this was still an open wound for Sam. It’s like, “Hey, remember that time your friend killed to save her son and I went behind your back and killed her? Well, my friend loves his great-granddaughter just like yours loved her son!” Even worse if Sam knows that Jacob was present when Dean killed Amy, and that it’s a fact that Benny has killed in the past.

Remember, when Sam brought up Amy in Southern Comfort, Dean did not try to claim that Benny was different. And in this scene, he seems to be trying to communicate to Sam that Benny is like Amy. What was he aiming for there?

I wonder if Dean is deliberately trying to rile Sam while appearing to be perfectly reasonable.

Something of a continuation of this

I remember, when I first watched On the Head of a Pin, when Alastair described Dean as a righteous man and Castiel confirmed it, I disagreed. I did not think Dean was righteous. I don't remember quite why I thought that - perhaps I was influenced by reading other fan's journals, people who were so upset by Dean's increased use of misogynist slurs that same of them said that didn't feel sorry for him going to hell because of it. Which, okay. I am no fan of misogynist slurs and completely down with being upset by them. And at the end of the day, people feel what they feel. But let's put that in the context of being tortured in hell until you become a demon

Nonetheless, I did not think Dean was a righteous man. And I still don't. I'm not sure that's a title anyone deserve.

( Righteousness )

I think the reason Sam gives into Dean in the Mentalists is not that he's ashamed of his mental illness, per se. It's what Dean says: "And I woulda told you, eventually, once I knew that this whole "waving a gun at Satan" thing was a one-time show. I think it's reasonable to want to know that you're off the friggin' high dive, Sam. You almost got us both killed, so you can be pissed all you want, but quit being a bitch."

Ever since getting his wall broken, Sam’s #1 goal has been being there for Dean (“You know me. You know why. I’m not leaving my brother out there alone.”). He was desperate that his problems to not make things worse for Dean (“You got a lot of pretty severe crap swinging your way lately, and -- and I thought --what? I thought why burst the one good bubble you had left? It's under control.”), to the point of making a very unwise decision and hiding his problems from Dean and Bobby.

Even in the witch episode, Sam tells Dean, “You can unload. That's kind of what I'm here for.” The very point of Sam’s existence, at this particular period in his life, is to be there for Dean.

And Dean throws in his face that he failed. That his mental issues fucked things over for Dean.

On Dean's end, I think the feelings are real. . Of course it’s not fair to blame your brother for falling apart when he was hallucinating the devil who tortured and raped him for a length of time too ridiculous to mention here. And of course if your brother points a loaded gun at you because of mental issues that he previously deliberately hid from you, it's going to hurt, anyway.

But Dean in The Mentalists is not just expressing his feelings. He took those very real feelings and stored them up. And then, when Sam was not falling in line the way he wanted Sam to, he used those feelings in a very subtle victim-blamey way to coerce Sam into falling in line.

And it works. And it works again, in PPMM, when a mere reference to Sam’s mental illness is enough to get Sam to shut up about something Dean doesn’t want to hear about.

At some point, I figure out why Buffy Summers projecting her guilt onto others in unforgiving ways makes me sympathize with her, but when Dean Winchester does it, it just makes me think he's a hypocritical asshole. I think Buffy is ultimately more forgiving to others and harsher on herself, which helps.