semirahrose:

Oh my goodness, yes. That whole speech. You brought up such an interesting topic. (Oops, I meta’ed.)

Some of the stuff on that list was shocking. I mean–it wasn’t shocking, because I’m not surprised that Dean included them. 

But, objectively speaking, they were horrific, and, quite frankly, sickening and unfair, because a lot of the things on that list are things that were done to Sam and not by Sam, or things that Sam simply was not responsible for. 

Asking Sam to confess for being soulless is like asking him to confess for being born. He had no say in it. He was locked in a cage. A powerful angel somehow managed to get in, grab ‘Sam,’ and get out. Except he didn’t grab Sam. He tore Sam’s body away from his soul, and Sam didn’t even know what was wrong with him until the moment Cas and Dean did. 

So when Dean yells at Sam for ‘losing his soul,’ that was just… in what reality could Dean imagine that Sam had any culpability in that? His soul, the thing that made Sam himself, was literally in another dimension being tortured for centuries. That’s not all, though.

Here’s the thing about that speech… Dean wanted Sam to apologize for things Dean felt had hurt or betrayed him in some way. While I absolutely understand that Dean felt hurt, those things were not the topic for a confession, and the fact that Dean thinks they are is a little frightening to me. 

It makes sense that the first things that would come to Dean’s mind would be things that really affected him, but they weren’t on Sam. And I think the writers of the episode knew that. The dialogue in the scene makes it pretty clear.

DEAN: All right. Well, I’m just spit-balling here, but if I were you, uh… Ruby, killing Lilith, letting Lucifer out, losing your soul, not looking for me when I went to Purgatory, for starters. Or, hey, h-how about what you did to, uh, Penny Markle in the sixth grade? Why don’t you lead with that?

He mentions six things here, and they’re really interesting, when you take a look at them.

• Ruby – This is where it all starts. But Dean really isn’t clear about what he blames Sam for. Meeting Ruby? Trusting her? Clinging to her when Dean died instead of killing himself? Drinking her blood? Being lied to and expertly manipulated by her? There are a number of things he could blame her for, but I’ll bet next to anything that he blames Sam for what the fandom blames Sam for: “Trusting a demon over his brother.” We’re not going to talk about when Dean, seasons later, did the very same thing, because it’s not relevant here, but I register my complaint on that. Let’s talk about how Ruby, who, as she herself said, was really freaking good at her job, was mostly just helpful to the Winchesters and did almost nothing to earn their distrust. The angels told Dean that she was awful and Sam was being evil, but a lot of people forget that the angels also wanted Lucifer to be released. Their goal was to separate Sam and Dean, and they succeeded. Ruby gave the Winchesters weapons and information. She stayed behind to fight for them. She risked her life. Dean’s beef with her was that he believed that she took Sam away from him and was leading Sam astray. But what about demon blood? Other than being addictive and a supernatural substance (not all of which are bad), Dean really didn’t have a real basis for calling demon blood evil. It, like any weapon, was a tool… a tool that Ruby happened to use in a bid to manipulate Sam.. What Dean was really angry about was the separation, and… let’s be real, almost all of the things on his list in 8.23 are connected, because that separation culminated in…
• Sam killing Lilith

  – *clears throat* Here, I’ll turn the floor over to Dean Winchester, who says it better than I ever could: 

  DEAN: […] neither of us saw [the apocalypse] coming. I mean, who’d have thought killing Lilith would’ve been a bad thing?  Point is, I was so worried about watching your every move that I didn’t see what it was actually doing to you. So, for that I’m sorry. (5.05; Fallen Idols)

  I’ll repeat: they both–Sam and Dean both planned on killing Lilith. As recently as the episode right before the finale, (and actually the finale itself) Dean expressed the desire to kill Lilith… he just didn’t want to do it Sam’s way because he thought that was Wrong and Evil

  ™. The fact that Dean blames Sam for doing something that even Dean thought was the correct thing to do until bare minutes before Sam actually did the deed is not only unfair, but ridiculous. This is all connected with Ruby. In Dean’s mind, Sam ‘left’ Dean to be with Ruby, even though Sam asked Dean to work with him and Ruby multiple times. Dean felt betrayed, and his feelings are valid, but the facts are that theirs was a mutual separation, and, furthermore, it was actually initiated by Dean.

• letting Lucifer out – I’m putting this under a bullet point, because there’s no other way to do it. Killing Lilith was literally the final seal, which led to Lucifer’s release, and that’s the largest part of why it’s on Sam. If killing Lilith had ended the Apocalypse, it might not be on this list, though I imagine Dean would still be angry about Ruby.
• But let’s talk about letting Lucifer out. There were 66 seals. Most of them were broken by the demons. Dean knocked over the first domino without knowing. Sam, equally clueless, knocked over the last. The other 64 seals are not on them. Blaming Sam for letting Lucifer out is, again, grossly unfair and narrow-minded. Dean himself acknowledged that in 5.05 (quoted above). The fact that he took those words back in 8.23 doesn’t make them any less true.

• losing your soul

  – I’ll say it again. The fact that Sam’s body was ripped from the Cage and his soul left behind to be tormented should not even be on this list. The empathy, guilt, emotion–the things that made Sam Winchester a (more or less) healthy, functioning human–were absent during that time. Sam, who was at the time locked in the Cage, can’t be held responsible for any of that, and I don’t get why anyone would think he could. (Except Sam himself. It surprises me not one whit that Sam would blame himself for all of that.)

• not looking when Dean went to Purgatory

  – This is established in 8.01: Sam thought Dean was dead. He had no one, he panicked and ran and believed he was keeping their ‘promise’ not to look for each other. I do not and would not ever fault Dean for his feelings of betrayal. I understand where those came from. But faulting Sam for holding on to a promise they canonically made is unfair. This one is freshest in Dean’s mind, and I can see why he’d want Sam to break the promise anyway. Dean is an actions over words kind of guy, where Sam, generally, values pacts and promises and words a lot more. It’s clear that it’s a no-brainer to Dean that, regardless of what they promised, Sam ‘should’ look for Dean no matter what, but that line of thought is not realistic, not logical, and not fair. Expecting Sam to know to go against a pact they made is contradictory at best.

But the best is yet to come, really:

• what (Sam) did to Penny Markle – And this is where things get really interesting. Sam didn’t do this one. He literally didn’t do this. Dean did whatever-it-was to Penny Markle in the 6th grade, and that’s where (I believe) the narrative lets us know that the writing here is very self-aware. Like many of the things on this list, Sam is not responsible for this one. 

The line about Penny Markle comes across as a humorous line, but I’ll bet it’s a lot more than that. It invites listeners to analyze the other items on this list and see beyond Dean’s unreliable narration. 

Sure, Dean believes these things are sins worthy of confession, but they really aren’t. Sam does confess to clean himself of his (again, misplaced) guilt for all the times he feels like he’s let Dean down, but I do think the writing here is letting us know that Dean’s POV here (and Sam’s guilt-ridden response) are not consistent with the actual facts. 

It doesn’t make Dean’s hurt any less valid. It doesn’t make Sam’s guilt any less real. But it does mean that Dean’s accusations were emotionally-driven and not based in fact.