theprancingdragon:

safiyabat:

johncroftianlullaby:

safiyabat:

johncroftianlullaby:

samprincesschester:

I won’t let you down.

#[laughs because this is just one of many occasions where dean acknowledges the negative effects of codependency]#[but also acknowledges the alternative would be deadly]#[laughs bc TPTB understand mental health better than the fandom that claims to know best]#[and TPTB aren’t all that great so you know there’s something wrong with you]

Dean talks about them being each other’s weakness all the time, though. What I don’t hear him talk about much at all is what their co-dependency does to their personalities and the scope of their focus and their lives.

Okay, bad guys can use them against each other. Bad guys use civilians against them all the time too, though. It sucks, but it’s kind of to be expected. The real danger for each of them doesn’t get touched on by Dean much at all, even though Sam had tried to hold his own against it early on.

The most dangerous thing about their co-dependency for Dean is that he believes Sam will leave, that he believes he has the right to make certain calls and to be responsible for things Sam doesn’t want Dean being responsible for. He thinks it’s okay to push people into the roles he wants them to fill and to cut away at the things he doesn’t like. Mostly with Sam, but sometimes with others too.

The most dangerous thing about their co-dependency for Sam is he’s losing himself. He’s fighting against the illogical pressure Dean is putting on him. He’s being shrunken down from someone who believed in standing up for himself to someone who barely tries to do so. Someone who doesn’t have interest in interests, who doesn’t believe in a life outside the scope of his brother and his “duty” to the world. He’s becoming someone who experiences layers of guilting insecurities dumped upon him, who experiences layers of abuse, all trying to drown out the fire he still, for some reason that is beyond me, keeps going through the blackness of the night.

In this gifset, Sam had fought against his blood addiction in the previous episode before being met with by Lucifer in a dream. And when he called Dean about it, Dean said they should stay away from each other. Dean didn’t even sound that concerned. And Sam wants back in, but he has to depend on Dean’s forgiveness here. It’s good they make up, but it’s just part of a bigger pattern of Sam having to earn Dean’s forgiveness by jumping through hoops, of Sam never able to quite earn Dean’s trust. Meanwhile, Dean gets to push Sam around relatively unchallenged while the things he does to Sam become less and less understandable.

Achilles heel isn’t an accurate description of the dangers of their codependency, if you ask me. It’s more like they bring out the worst in each other, they wreck each other’s lives because they don’t know how to stop the awful patterns of their relationship. It’s more like being together is a death sentence not from outside influences but from each other. Especially in the case of Sam, who simply shouldn’t believably be able to last much longer. What all does he really have left?

Their co-dependency has brought out the worst in each other, it’s true.  It’s caused Dean to allow his brother - no, not just to allow, but to help coerce and to deceive his brother into the most fundamental violation possible, to the point where now there is very real doubt as to whether or not Sam exists at all.  It’s caused Dean to devolve into a rigid martinet where Sam is concerned for fear that his brother will abandon him, and to risk (and lose) the lives of the people he considers family.  It’s also caused Sam to take some truly terrible steps for Dean’s sake, such as the consumption of demon blood.  (He wound up becoming addicted, but initially he began consuming and resumed consuming to build up power for Dean’s sake, either to avenge him or to spare him from having to hunt Lilith.)  It’s caused Sam to seek to erase himself, either literally or figuratively, simply to earn his brother’s respect and affection again.  

But that same co-dependency that has brought out the worst in them has also brought out the best in them.  That co-dependency forced Dean to resist Michael, even when everything in him wanted to say Yes and just it over with.  Sam went with him and he could not bear to let Sam down.  It let them break through that miserable version of Heaven to find Joshua.  It allowed Sam’s love for Dean to overcome Lucifer’s possession - allowed a mere human, and an insecure and miserable human at that - to overpower an archangel and save the entire world.  It allowed them to come together even after Sam’s perceived abandonment and Dean’s abuse of Sam after Purgatory.  It allowed Dean to break through Sam’s suicidal hallucinations in the wake of Castiel’s act of deliberate violence and it allowed Dean to break through again when Sam stood poised to close the gates of hell forever with his own life as the seal.  

It is not a healthy relationship by any stretch of the imagination, and certainly something needs to change.  I agree that Sam, especially, can’t be expected to hang on much longer.  (This assumes of course that he’s hanging on at all.)  I just don’t think that it’s unalloyedly toxic.  It did, after all, save the world.   

It used to do them so much good. It used to keep them alive, and it even helped Sam so much in season 7. They were working toward each other having a future last season. It allowed Dean not to kill Sam multiple times in season 2. It started the Apocalypse, and it ended it. It’s not a wholly bad connection, but it’s suffering so much right now. This better be the low point. This better fucking be the low point.

(Insert desperate laughter here.)  

All things considered, yeah.  Yeah, I can’t think that things could possibly get worse.  Of course I said that before the s9 premiere and look where that got me.  

(goes to find things I shouldn’t be drinking, still laughing desperately)

I think Sam and Dean’s relationship issues in the past few seasons are a result of the writers losing touch with their codependency and how it works. In fact, the relationship they’re writing isn’t even codependent anymore—it’s abusive. John raised them to be completely isolated from everyone else and prevented them from having any meaningful relationships, especially with people their own age. Sam and Dean didn’t have a peer group. They’ve always only had each other. They moved around too much for anything else, and had to tell so many lies and keep so many secrets that they were always going to be strangers to everyone except each other. (And their father, but he’s gone now. So it’s just them.) When they were younger, a “normal” life and years of therapy with someone they could be honest with—who understood the hunting world and wouldn’t just have them locked up for talking about it—might have helped. Now, I doubt that’s even a possibility. Sam and Dean’s connection with each other is what stopped them from becoming sociopaths, at least in the early seasons. Now, the narrative seems to validate everything they do just because they’re the protagonists, especially if it’s ultimately Dean’s decision and Sam’s following his lead. In S1, Dean was upset after he killed a demon with the Colt to save Sam, because he knew there could have been an innocent person in there he killed along with it. Now, they act like vessels don’t exist unless it’s convenient. Gordon was supposedly wrong for seeing the world in black and white back in S2 and S3, but come S7 and it’s fine for Dean to do that, to kill Amy because he feels responsible in part for Castiel’s actions and wants to make up for not killing a supernatural creature when he could. (Also because he thinks he needs to control Sam’s actions for his own good.) This is another way the show has suffered since the end of S5, and I think it in part results from the writers forgetting that, for all the faults of their codependence, they “keep each other human”. We don’t see that anymore.

Their codependent relationship was fucked up and it was unhealthy, but given the way they were raised and the lives they led, it was really the best relationship they were capable of having. It was the only source of joy and comfort in their incredibly shitty lives. It could be destructive, but it was more often the thing that kept them going. Now … it’s only destructive. The writers are only focusing on that aspect because they don’t know how else to cause ~drama and generate interest.

Increasingly, Dean’s become and asshole and Sam’s become a punching bag. Dean’s acting like John—he’s the adult, the one who knows better, and Sam’s the child who needs to toe the line for his own safety. He keeps Sam on a need-to-know basis and acts as if his feelings don’t matter, because he’s just not on the same level as Dean and never can be. Due to John’s conditioning and the way they were raised, Dean sees keeping Sam safe as a source of personal validation. He therefore sees himself as responsible for Sam’s actions, and seems anxious whenever Sam expresses a desire to do things Dean doesn’t agree with, or keep any part of his life separate from Dean. He’s become obsessed with keeping Sam alive and physically safe, while otherwise treating his thoughts and feelings like no more important than those of a child who wants ice cream for dinner or doesn’t want to go to bed on time. This is how John treated Sam and Dean when they were growing up—if they wanted anything he didn’t approve of, he’d manipulate and guilt trip them into falling in line. The sad thing is, Sam was strong enough to leave that abusive situation to go to Stanford, but now, it doesn’t look like he has any strength left, or recognizes what Dean has become.

As I’ve said before (and I’ll probably say again), the high point of their relationship was Point of No Return—when Dean acknowledged Sam was no longer that snot-nosed kid he had to keep on the straight and narrow, but an adult and an equal who should be treated like a partner, not a responsibility. That character development magically disappeared into the ether after S5, and Dean has instead continued to treat Sam like he can’t be trusted to make his own decisions, like he is not an adult who deserves to have thoughts and opinions separate from Dean’s. The way Sam acted in the beginning of S8 was severely OOC going by literally anything that happened earlier in the series, and the only fucking reason for it was so Dean could emotionally abuse Sam to the point where he wanted to commit suicide. (That was also the only point of Benny’s character.) Come S9, Dean assumes he has more claim to Sam’s mind, body, and soul than Sam himself, and hands him over to a supernatural being to keep Sam alive and with him. Dean needs something to fulfill his “Sam” quota so he can feel validated as a person, and rather than supporting Sam as a person and letting him grow, he’s beaten him down, caged him, and contained him in the guise of keeping him safe. This isn’t codependence anymore—it’s abuse. These characters are barely recognizable as the Sam and Dean from earlier seasons.