#and even in the kinder gentler world of the 'prequel' when he got bored and wanted to leave heaven

[chiisana-sukima]

Between Dean and Sam: who prefers to be liked, and who prefers to be right?

Hi Nonny, thank you so much for the ask!

I think the easy answer is that Dean prefers to be liked and Sam prefers to be right. Dean has more friends, is more malleable, and has a huge, life-destroying fear of aloneness at his core, while Sam is Mr According to the Lore Research Boy who is often distant and intellecualizing, so this is a natural conclusion.

But actually I think that, like many people in high stress occupations, they both vastly prefer to be right and don't actually care that much about whether people like them or not.

In nursing, it's a truism that certain sub-disciplines--ICU, PCU, NICU, OR, ER--are full of "strong personalities"; which is what we call people who are excessively competent, just want to get the job done and get it done right, and don't really give a fuck about much else. Partly this is because people who are at baseline inclined towards a combination of technical competence and adventure tend to go into those difficult and high stress disciplines and partly it's because once you're there the job winnows everything else out of you.

That, to me, is Sam and Dean. They are "strong personalities". It's not that they don't have friends (although it's canon that in the early years part of the job is explicitly stated to be leaving your friends behind and not getting too close); it's that their friends are expendable, they themselves are expendable, everything is expendable except family and the job--and the job involves getting things right or dying.

Look at how they treat their friends. Look at Kevin, Garth, Rowena, Crowley, often Cas, even each other. They are frequently mean, insulting, belittling of others' value, and interacting with their friends like autistic children who bond through parallel play; except the play is "bleed for the Winchesters".

They both of course do have the basic human need to be seen and loved--which each expresses in their own natural way-- but that isn't at all the same as wanting to be "liked", and they both largely confine their need to be loved to a few select people. Everyone else goes in the "to sell for a corn chip if my brother is hungry" resource pile.

This is very much not me insulting them or saying that they're deranged or actually the bad guys or whatever. The way the universe of the show is set up, they are right. Their world is a huge ICU full of dying patients that's also on fire. In some ways the whole show is just a 15 year argument about how to be right when everyone is dying around you. Give up? Throw out your phone? Push it all down until it comes out in violence and alcoholism? "Like" is small and easily sacrificed compared to wading through the big stuff and doing your best.