#samgirl posting

[ziggykatzfan]

i hope no one's done this before sorry if you did

[mailboxwithaletterinside]

Give me envy, give me malice, give me your attention. Give me envy, give me malice, baby, give me a break!

Time to Dance - Panic! At the Disco // Supernatural, 2005-2020.

[scoobydoodean]

I have 2 spn accounts, a Deancentric blog that ships Destiel and another account that unintentionally follows a lot of Samgirl blogs. So one blog follows majority Deangirl blogs and the other incidentally follows a lot of Samgirl blogs. And here's the major difference I've noticed on the different dashboards.

Deangirl dashboard: Great meta analysis. Beautiful art. Level 1 and 2 headcanons (largely based in canon). Pro-Dean. Stumble across reblogs of Deancrit. Bitter Deangirl blogging. Generally fair portrayal and discussion of the positive and negative traits and actions of Dean, Sam and Cas. Deanhater anons.

Samgirl dashboard: An entirely different pool of beautiful art. Whole lotta woobie!Sam art where Dean is his abuser. Deancrit about Dean being an abuser. Bitter Samgirl blogging about how people will find any excuse to hate Sam. "How can anyone be Samcrit he has done nothing wrong ever." Level 5 headcanons (you literally ignored canon to make that up). More about how Dean is Sam's abuser. So many posts about how awful Samcrit is. "Do Deangirls really think that Dean cries himself to sleep at night thinking that ppl thinks he doesn't know how to read." I have yet to see any actual Samcrit posts (not even links or reblogs from Sam defenders), not even after literally searching the Samcrit tag for it. The Samcrit tag is full of Samgirls crying about Samcrit and no actual Samcrit. "Samgirls are feral, but we need to be bc of the hate ppl throw Sam's way."

I literally have to block so many people on the incidentally Samgirl dashboard bc I'm not on Tumblr to randomly stumble across a post on how Dean is a toxic stalker who abused Sam by changing Amelia's number in his cellphone. Do you have any idea on why Samgirls seem to feel so attacked all the time even though I literally only ever see *them* attacking Dean?

If you dig deep enough into any fandom, you will encounter people who fetishize "helpless victimhood". Some fandoms attract more people with those particular proclivities than others. Supernatural and Sam in particular attracts people who hold those sorts of aesthetic interests because of his relationship toward accountability versus Dean's.

Dean is a character with an overactive sense of responsibility. He blames himself for the Lindbergh baby and unemployment and every child murdered by a shrtiga from 1990 to 2005 because he went to play an arcade game when he was 10. He also blames himself for things like Jessica dying and Sam not being in school. Other characters pile on this blame frequently. John blames Dean for Sam getting hurt (1.18). Ruby tells him (and Sam) that Sam is a weak baby who won't psychologically survive without Dean there to protect him (3.11). Meg alleges that Dean is "dragging Sam everywhere" (1.16). Sam rewrites reality from 1.05 to 1.21 to make Dean responsible for his burning desire for revenge. Cas and Zachariah and Gabriel blame Dean when Sam breaks the last seal because he didn't stop Sam in time. Sam blames Dean for him drinking demon blood first because Dean wasn't there to protect him and then—in a complete 180—because Dean is smothering (4.04, 5.05). Dean generally absorbs blame when it is piled at his feet because he has been blamed for things he couldn't control for most of his life and thus he feels guilty and responsible for things even when him being responsible makes no logical sense. He's never a victim of anything—everything is always on him.

Sam, on the other hand, tends to eventually deflect blame because he can't handle the gnawing bite of it for long. It reminds him too deeply of being left isolated and alone as a child and the feelings of otherness and wrongness he developed through that neglect. When his actions ultimately have consequences he didn't foresee and/or that he finds undesirable, it makes him feel ugly and unaccepted and he can't face it so he eventually finds a way to make what happened someone else's fault—usually Dean's fault. Nothing is ever on him. He's always at least a little bit of a victim and Dean always carries at least partial responsibility for his decisions (1.21, 1.08, 4.04, 5.05, 8.23, 11.01)

In other words, Sam has an under-active sense of responsibility and Dean has an overactive responsibility and that dynamic—driven by their childhood experiences—places them into a vicious cycle of blame being cast onto Dean for Sam's decisions and Dean absorbing it. Dean absorbing it reinforcing the narrative for samgirls with a victimhood fetish that Dean deserves blame and that Sam truly is a helpless baby. They never watch what actually happens on the show to see whether this narrative that Dean is responsible for everything and Sam is a helpless baby lines up with the actual events that occurred onscreen because why would they? That would ruin their enjoyment. Sam isn't interesting to them outside of his capacity to be mourned as some sort of helpless martyr. And yes—they will cry and moan about how horrible and unfair Sam's suffering is, but it isn't because they're having a bad time. They're having a great time. They love thinking about Sam that way. They wouldn't be here blogging about it day in and day out for the last 20 years if they didn't actually want to see exactly what they're seeing.

Related tags of note:

#sams motivations

#taurus sam in the flesh

#In which Sam is not a helpless little waif with his hands cast over his eyes being carried along by the tides of the immutable sea

#sam the hunter

#sams follower/leader false dichotomy

#parentification

[kellyscabin]

castiel chewing the fuck outta some gum…..

[sammygender]

wrt prev post and sam’s original ‘fed demon blood by azazel as a baby’ arc like. actually that was the most insane thing to see depicted on my television especially when it seemed like no one else i knew or followed was talking about it. it felt so explicit and yet it was sooo deep in metaphor. she walked in on us. sammy, you’re my favourite. god it must be terrible to know something happened but that you’ll never be able to remember it or tell anyone about it. never be able to rip it out or scrub it clean. so azazel could get into my nursery and- bleed in my mouth? because i wasn’t clean. these trials - they’re purifying me. anyway. augh

[twochildreninamoteldemo]

[blacknidstang]

Regarding 4x21 and Sam detox my brain oscillating violently between "locking Sam in panic room to detox was so incredibly cruel and inhuman and horrible and traumatic and its awful that writers never even acknowledged how it must've fucked Sam up afterwards, physically and mentally and thinking about it rips my heart apart and makes me wanna fight every one, writers and characters alike" and

"it was still in character with Bobby and Dean to do that. that doesn't mean they are heartless but that in the context of their characters, their hunter style life and having accepted the default state if everything being harsh and violent, it makes sense- proven by how even after Sam knocked Bobby unconscious and punched Dean bloody, Bobby was like "Dean can you stop being a wuss and just call your brother and apologize?" Because thats how they roll. complaining about inhuman situation is for pussies. I'm not here to say what they did was right or wrong but that in these men's world, so many of these definitions are different and we cannot expect them to behave according to our standards in 2024" and

"Sam's life snd death is in Dean's hands. Not only a responsibility John bestowed upon him but also because Sam is extension of Dean's soul himself. Dean gets to decide when sam dies and when he lives and how he dies. Because Sam belongs only to him, not Ruby and Lucifer, nor angels and their prophecies. If Sam dies it'll be Dean's decision, and if Sam lives, then it will be on Dean's words. Bobby was also torn about what Sam was going through while detoxing but Bobby was also ready to suggest putting Sam's power to use. Dean would rather see Sam die than let him get used as a weapon and I don't know how to explain just how obsessive and possesive and beautiful this is and how i am losing my sanity"

And "sam whump sam whump bark bark sam torture hallucination yum yum sam hallucinating dean being cruel to him is delicious and sexy and catering to me very personally"

[lilacpaperbird]

I'm so used to the bubble of sam-loving content I have here that I forget that meeting another spn fan irl as a samgirl usually ends up feeling like this

[samnterrupted]

sam in sin city cause let's be real? he's cute in every episode

[sam-winchesters-gay-lover]

spn fans out here treating (character) coded (character) girl like astrology and honestly i’m so here for it

[incesthemes]

ok tumblr deleted most of my tag essay on this post, so i've recreated and expanded upon it in its own post.

so the op of the post made a great point which really touched on why i've been feeling that i had a fundamentally different takeaway of season 9 compared to the rest of the fandom. i have a lot to say in response to this, not in argument but in support and synthesis of it.

i'll start with dean at the beginning of season 9: he has a great struggle in 901 regarding gadreel possessing sam, more so than any other struggle he's faced when saving sam's life, which points to me as him being aware of and conflicted about sam's history of possession. he understands this is crossing a line because it's similar to lucifer and meg, and so accepting gadreel's deal is violating sam to a length dean hasn't gone to before. dean by and large is the one who has this particular ethical problem (shown throughout the first half of season 9), not sam. hell, dean is the one who leaves sam once gadreel's out, without even waiting for input because his self-loathing is that strong.

sam, on the other hand, is more textually concerned in his 912/913 arguments with the lack of trust ("i can't trust you, not the way i thought i could") and dean's selfishness ("you did it for you"). this is an ongoing conflict sam has with dean, since the beginning of the show. dean doesn't trust sam to make his own decisions and therefore makes them for him, without sam's consent or knowledge. sam wants to be trusted to stand on his own, and he wants dean to put the same faith in him that he puts in dean. this is the core of sam's needs; the violation of autonomy is just an externalization of these needs and this conflict.

and i don't entirely disagree with the connection between going behind sam's back to keep him alive against his will and a rape narrative. both involve a lack of consent and a violation of agency. however, it really doesn't stop there, and it's a lot more complex than that.

and that's what rubs me wrong about more common interpretations of season 9 that i've seen. because this isn't really what the season is about. this violation on its own isn't the point. or if it is on the surface, it's equally about sam lying to himself about what it's actually about. he's consistently left out of major decisions regarding his own life and then lied to about it "for his own good," and he wants the right to choose his own path.

except, as we learn, that's not true. he lied about it. because the point of the whole season is that sam and dean are the same. they will make the same decisions to save each other over and over again. the point of the whole season is that sam has been lying to himself.

i said this in another post, but i think a big reason sam was able to lie to himself about this fact is because he's had the opportunity to let dean go on several occasions. he's been unable to save dean the way dean has saved sam. he fails where dean succeeds. sam has been forced to endure a grief that dean has never had to experience because dean always brings sam back. and so because sam has endured these experiences maybe he's more comfortable letting dean choose death in the abstract—the hypothetical. but in reality when it comes to that point, sam can't actually follow through, because he's just as dependent on dean being there for him as dean is dependent on sam.

and that's what season 9 is about. sam has been lying to himself about this reality from the start. this is why 1019 parallels 311 regarding how insane sam is about dean. it's reiterating the facts we've known but with a new perspective, now that sam is done deluding himself. he needs to accept that he was lying to himself and to dean, and this is what allows season 9 to close and for season 10 to begin, because season 10 is a response to sam's realization. he chooses dean over everything else in a monumental display of hypocrisy and genuine understanding of himself and who dean is to him.

seasons 8-10 should be taken as a single, cohesive unit, and the show goes to great lengths to enforce this. season 9 mirrors season 8, and season 10 acts as a response to and therefore a continuation of season 9. you can see this in the way charlie's death mirrors kevin's (one brother's lies and deceptions leads to increasing stakes that could have been avoided through honesty and openness, which culminates in the death of their beloved ally, and the deceptive brother blames himself for that death because his own unethical actions led to it), or how both of them undergo a change in their physiology as a result of godlike power entering their bodies which mutilate them from the inside and have fatal consequences (sam with the trials, dean with the mark of cain) which can only reasonably be resolved with their deaths (and they both even enter the final stages of this conflict by going to confession). also the plot structures of seasons 8 and 9 on their own mirror each other very closely.

this is all very important because it outlines the purpose of each of these two seasons. it's about them being fundamentally betrayed by their brother, causing that brother to become desperate and feel rejected and unloved, only for them to get what they need out of each other to reaffirm their love. they have to function as a unit, because otherwise both season's primary conflicts (as in, the conflicts established in the first half of each season) are left unresolved. instead, sam gets what he needs from dean in 823, which means that in return dean gets what he needs from sam in 923, thus closing the circle that was opened in 801.

dean reaffirmed that sam is the most important person in the world to him in sacrifice, that he would choose sam over every single other person on earth—this is what sam needed to hear, because it's the foundation of the conflict in season 8, since sam thinks dean chose benny over him and this sent him spiraling into a suicidal depression and self-loathing. so season 9, consequentially, is about dean getting what he needs from sam: he needs to know that sam will do anything in his power to save dean, which is a conflict that began in season 8 (with sam not searching for dean in purgatory) and is reasserted in 913 when sam tells him that he wouldn't violate his agency if the situations were reversed.

and this is exactly what dean gets in 923, when sam says he lied about all of that. dean gets the affirmation that sam's love for dean goes beyond petty ethics, which translates to "dean is more important to sam than anything else in the world" where the "anything else" includes sam's own moral boundaries. this is important to dean because dean eschews his own moral boundaries for sam's sake and safety over and over again throughout the series, and this is a major source of his own character development (see: 122, 203, 214, 222, et cetera et cetera). sam repeatedly denies that he's the same way, and has proven at least once that he wouldn't do the same, so this is an important affirmation for sam to give and it's why dean had spiraled into a suicidal depression and self-loathing (look, another parallel).

so season 8-9 are mirrors of each other, and they have to be mirrors of each other in order to work structurally and for any of the conflicts presented to be resolved. season 10 then is a response to this which shows the consequences of those dual resolutions: aka, sam acts just as unethically as dean does in the rest of the show, except this time knowingly and intentionally instead of subconsciously as he has been doing up to now (see: 1001, 1003, 1004, 1018, 1020, et cetera et cetera).

in order for all of this to work, the conflicts in season 8 and season 9 have to be equal. i.e. dean has to violate sam and his ethics as badly as sam violated dean and his ethics. it also has to be suitably Bad because it's revisiting a conflict that's existed in various iterations across the entire show. this is why it's also deeply important that 923 dean's death also parallels 222 sam's death, because it highlights how this conflict has always existed and how sam and dean are similar to each other. they both make the same choices under pressure and go to equally unethical lengths. which is why season 9 couldn't end until crowley told the audience that sam was trying to make a deal with him to bring dean back to life, specifically after dean begged sam to let him die. the point, then, was never about the violation itself: sam disregards dean's right to choose death just as much as dean disregards it. the season is about how sam and dean are at their cores the same, and it's about sam becoming aware of that reality and then actively, consciously choosing it. which is what sam reiterates across season 10, as a response to his choice in 923.

he only realizes that this is a Bad Thing in 1101 (i.e. after the response has run its course) when he says they both have to change. and the "both" is important because they are the same, fundamentally. sam isn't innocent of this violation of agency and obsessive deception of his brother, and he needs to understand that before actionable change can be made, which is what season 10 is all about.

and there's something poignant that can be said about 1023 being titled "brother's keeper," because this episode is about sam playing the role of brother's keeper, only for it to blow up so spectacularly in their faces that it causes the apocalypse 2.0. it forces sam to recognize that his original conclusion (that dean was right, and that he was lying) was not actually the correct and moral way to continue living. the significance of 1101 only reveals itself in the foundation laid by seasons 8-10, because these are the seasons about sam discovering just how down bad he is for his brother and accepting it wholeheartedly. season 11 then seeks to fix what seasons 8-10 broke, which is of course the entire fucking planet.

and this is the problem: the first apocalypse was caused by the absence of love, and the second was caused by too much love. their love is a destructive force that has world-ending consequences. that's the point of these seasons, what it all comes back to. in receiving the exact type and strength of love they needed from each other, they ended the world. and this is the conflict they need to resolve in season 11, or at least try to. because their love for each other can, has, and will destroy the world, over and over and over again. this theme can't exist unless seasons 8 and 9 mirror each other, unless season 9 is about sam's hypocrisy.

without that world-ending love, they couldn't have started the second apocalypse. if sam weren't a liar, he would have respected dean's choices, and he would have let dean die. if sam truly cared about bodily autonomy, dean would have died in 923 when he begged sam to let him. but he doesn't; that's not the point of the narrative. of course the violation of autonomy is important, because it provides the foundation for the conflict. but the violation is itself a metaphor, a triple whammy of symbolism: the possession is a metaphor for violation, and the violation is a metaphor for betrayal (as seen through the lens of deception).

the point of season 9 is not that dean metaphorically raped his helpless little brother; rather it's that the violation of agency goes both ways, and sam is a hypocrite for trying to maintain his autonomy while stripping it from dean. it's a continuation of season 8, which thus compacts his guilt over "abandoning" dean in purgatory and his self-loathing and fears of not being good enough or worthy enough of dean's love, which thus causes him to act recklessly and injuriously toward himself and dean. it's not a positive conclusion by any means; like i said, this is what causes the second apocalypse, and it's only after they've ended the world twice that sam finally sits down and says maybe they were wrong about this whole thing. maybe their love is too destructive.

in 912, sam says: "something's broken here [...] we don't see things the same way anymore."

in 1101, sam says: "this isn't on you. it's on us. we have to change."

sam goes from blaming dean to blaming both of them, because he realizes that they're both equal partners in their toxic, fucked up love. season 8 and season 9 allowed them to become equals by giving each other the affirmations they desperately needed to achieve true enmeshment, and season 10 is the consequence of that unhealthy relationship.

the point was never that dean violated sam. he does that over and over again throughout the series without destroying their relationship. the point is that sam is willing to violate dean all the same, and he had to face that reality head-on and accept it to resolve the conflict between them and give dean the affirmation he needed, just like dean gave sam the affirmation he needed in 823. the violation was simply a vehicle through which the conflict could come to a head, and the most provocative symbol this show could possibly use was the metaphor of sexual assault and rape, given sam's history with it via meg and especially via lucifer.

i've probably written enough now. the tl;dr is that season 9 invokes what can be interpreted as a rape metaphor not to vilify dean or even really to continue sam's ongoing rape narrative (though the violation that occurs in season 9 uses this as a foundation for the conflict and that's important to understanding the gravity of the situation), but rather to give appropriate stakes to mirror the primary conflict of season 8 and provide grounds for dean to get resolution for the conflict that began in 801 and continued through 923. god i hope this makes sense because now i've written this essay twice and i'm so miserable because of it.

my apologies if any of this is repetitive or meandering or lacking in any way; i tried really really hard to recreate my original essay and also provide more evidence and groundwork for my argument but obviously i'm sure i've missed some details and overlooked structure in many places. if you read this far, i love you and please talk to me about seasons 8-10. i'm losing my mind

[mailboxwithaletterinside]

Ethel Cain, "Sun Bleached Flies" // Supernatural, 2005-2020.

[scoobydoodean]

you upset the samgirls so bad that I just saw a post about how fandom is not about college essay analysis and that it's okay to have emotionally irrational interpretations of the text (no one ever said otherwise) due to everyone bringing their own history and personal context to watching the show, and like yeah sure that's fine, but why is there a problem when someone challenges those interpretations with facts and logic? why must deangirls allow our fave to be slandered and mischaracterized based on events that never actually occurred?

every single fandom has those people who turn their make blorbo into a wet sopping female coded omega (dean fen included) but it's only samgirls and casgirls that insist those readings are canon and that dean is some mean evil abusive patriarch then proceed to get mad when deangirls argue against that 😭

EDIT for Anon: In the comments, a Tumblr user who believes you may be referring to a post they made makes it clear that they were not talking about me at all. This is also why I typically prefer not to receive mail that starts with "I saw a post about you". I've already said I will not respond to mail containing the usernames of other people whose takes people want me to talk about, but I think from now on I'm just not going to answer mail that starts with, "I saw a post" tbh.

Original response below

I mean I don't know if whatever post you're referring to was prompted by me, Anon, because I only posted a few minutes before I got this. Just one single thing. I've just been making rewatch posts for like three weeks (and enjoying myself a lot while doing so). If whatever post you saw was prompted by me, maybe people who don't like me should stop stalking my blog that ig upsets them so much that they sit around refreshing my tumblr page waiting for me to say anything they can possibly misconstrue to be a vague about them.

I have been enjoying diving deeply into the show lately. The idea that someone out there is mad and thinks I am doing fandom wrong and somehow invalidating their emotions by blogging on my own blog and analyzing the show in the way I prefer instead of the way they prefer is pretty weird. (While at the same time saying I am trying to control how they analyze it, I'm gathering? Not hypocritical at all.)

But yeah god forbid I do the same thing deancrits do all of the time i.e., talk about takes I don't agree with on my blog. That's so mean of me. Bullying behavior really.

[sammygender]

that post about dean having to convince sam he can read…. sigh…… wasnt going to say anything on the post itself because people have the right to their own (wrong) takes <3 also it’s silly and i don’t even really disagree i’m just petty and it would be funny if i made it. but. coming from someone who calls out samgirls… rubs me SO the wrong way. not like dean doesn’t constantly mock sam for everything under the sun either….. sam does not actually think deans dumb this is just a long running thing between them dean calls sam a nerd constantly… college boy?? hello….

[twochildreninamoteldemo]

okay im gonna be bitchy why do some deangirls act like they're oppressed when dean is the most beloved character of the entire show, the one most recognizable in pop culture, the one everyone takes the side of, the one in both main ships...like deangirls are the majority but somehow it's always still positioning samgirlism as this dominating force (on the fucked up family/wincest side of the fandom at least). just strange, i don't get it. i think samgirls have a right to be annoying about dean after over a decade of sam getting fucked over by the show and consistently shunted if not outrightly hated by hellers

[red-hood-vigilante]

if you stopped watching spn or continued watching just to finish the series (but did so with disdain or with little to no attachment to what was going on) - what was the moment/storyline/character/something that made you start losing the plot? for me the first moment of disconnect was in 6.06 when sam says 'you're right there's something wrong with me, i need help' to dean who proceeds to beat him unconscious and it's not until the next episode they find out sam's soul is gone and dean does not make amends in any way for beating sam unconscious without grounds