thinking more abt 6x01... Dean’s djinn dream. god. because part of it is about Dean’s childhood trauma, of Dean > John (powerless to stop his wife & kid from being hurt), Lisa > Mary (killed on the ceiling on fire), and Ben > Sam (fed demon blood by Azazel). oh fuck, the cycle repeats, generational trauma continues, Dean’s new family is going to face horror & tragedy just like his own did and he can’t do anything to stop it.

there’s that Dean’s having his hallucination dream while he’s trapped on Ben’s bed. so there’s a Dean > Ben connection too. and then there’s... how Azazel is also very vampiric in Dean’s dream, feeding Ben his blood (and in a very creepily suggestive way; he’s really touchy, the whole “drink it, you’ll feel better” line), and how thru the show vampires are often connected to physical/sexual violence, esp w/in the family & including incest, and how only 4 eps later Dean himself is then forcibly turned into a vampire through a metaphorical sexual assault (again by a evil father / mentor figure 🤔) and becomes a monster who almost hurts Lisa and inadvertently hurts Ben.

it’s also his getting vamped that shatters his relationship w/ Lisa and Ben, too. it’s striking to me that Dean admits he & Sam have a weird relationship to Lisa in 6x06, but he can’t talk about being turned into a vampire, he can’t open up about it. I’m not sure Lisa would have (or even should have) taken him back after that, but it’s very different for her to know Dean got forcibly turned into a monster and pushed her son away so he wouldn’t hurt him, versus him showing up like a stalker in the middle of the night, being creepy & invasive, and then shoving Ben. except Dean can’t talk about it, in a way that feels both genuine w/ his characterization and horrible & heartbreaking to watch.

i’ve said this in the tags of the previous spn post i reblogged but i just wanna highlight how the writers kept aborting sam’s storylines before they really got to the part where it became a Storyline. with dean, those things were more noticeable, e.g. demon!dean, bc it’s the A plot. with sam, unless you were really paying attention to every single subplot (as i like to do bc i like seeing things begin and grow into something else, which is probably stupid of me to do so on this specific show but still) you wouldn’t be able to really tell what his story was supposed to be. it’s not about him losing his THEE main character status, but losing his A main character status, bc at some point his story mostly hung on his screen time, rather than anything else.

this is going to be off the top of my head and i’ve only seen the show once, but here are some thoughts on his storylines and what i think killed them. if i don’t remember something, honestly i think it says more about the validity of my argument, because i have a pretty good memory on plot-related things, and if it’s insignificant enough for me to forget... yeah. this is not going to be whether i liked certain storylines, but whether i think they were strong enough to really be called a storyline. also, i’ll be mostly talking abt sam vs dean, as 1) a good portion of cas’s story is an extension of dean’s story and 2) this is just the lens i’m using for this. i’ll try not to blame specific writers/actors for this, just the story as a whole:

seasons 6-7: even though these seasons are considered to be comparably the worst out of them, i think they balanced sam’s story considerably well in regards to his subplots. soulless!sam, working with the campbells, lying to dean, being suspicious of cas, dealing with the fall out of getting his soul back, loss of memories, gaining back his memories, ptsd, lucifer hallucinations... there was a lot going on with sam, and these things did make sense in the cause and effect fashion.

season 8: the whole amelia thing... confused me, but i once read this really good meta that said that amelia never actually existed and it was all a part of his hallucinations which i think i’ve kinda accepted. a good chunk of this season is dealing with kevin, which is technically for both dean and sam, but bc i think in the future kevin was going to be more of a sam’s responsibility i’m going to start counting kevin as sam’s plot. then there’s also mistrusting of benny (same as mistrusting cas in s6? sam mistrusting dean’s significant others? hmm), which is really an extension of dean’s plot, but i’ll take it, as sam made active choices on his part about the whole thing. then as the season comes to an end, besides what’s happening with cas, it really does have a major arc for sam, seemingly capitalizing on the last two seasons, though i wish there was a stronger thread of them throughout the season.

season 9: this was the first season i watched live AND i had not seen the end of s7 and entirety of s8 by that point, so i didn’t know how sam ended up in the hospital, but i was willing to go along with it. the whole gadreel plot was pretty interesting (and i do hate kevin’s death), but i can see how gadreel was more of a dean plot than a sam plot, as sam was largely unaware of what was going on until later. at the same time, i think this made sam dean’s plotline in this cas via gadreel, so you can really go either way with that. by the end of s9, the whole thing is switched, and dean is sam’s plotline bc of the mark of cain. around the end of s9 is when i think is the start of losing sam as a character, because such a large portion of this season was about dean.

season 10: i swear to gd idk what sam’s plot is in this season besides curing dean in the first few episodes. i just read through the ep summaries on wikipedia and i cannot tell you what he’s doing there really besides research. this season introduces rowena who is going to be a part of sam’s arc in the future seasons, but she’s mostly all about crowley in this season, and honestly? i like that they gave her some time to develop as a character before making her a part of either sam or dean’s story.

season 11: just my imagination was a pretty good episode that gave us a glimpse into sam as a character!! i liked that whole thing!! but immediately after we are getting sam seeing lucifer again. (also ik that jared actually expressed his dislike of having sam work with lucifer due to, well, their history, and i fully agree that it should have been dealt with very differently. but oh well. the only character whose faults they like to ignore more than lucifer’s is john winchester, and ain’t that saying something.) then lucifer becomes more of a castiel issue, which automatically makes it a dean issue. i wish they kept lucifer more of a sam issue and i wanted sam to kill lucifer :) bc he deserved it :)

season 12: here we have a significant sam storyline where he is working with the BMOL, by extension from mary. the significance of it directly corresponds to him having to lie to dean about what is going on, because as soon as dean is involved, it just automatically transfers the plot line to him. the relationship with mary ends up also being more of a dean thing, even though they clearly have very different relationships with their mother. also eileen is killed this season for no reason (aight i said im not gonna blame specific writers but we all know who did that silly number), as if they literally want to kill sam’s plots. edit: forgot about this, but the ep with the culty family who had a psychic daughter??? whom sam tried to save?? and i bet he doesn’t actually know that ketch killed her later??? okay yeah they kind of pulled a good one with that, even if heartbreaking. AND THEN they had sam work for bmol...... okay yeah you see how that was a sabotage of sam’s story.

season 13: i wanna say that jack was definitely a large part of sam’s story this season and i’m glad for it. besides benny and cas, sam was always the one to say that a supernatural creature is not a monster, and i liked that they brought this part of sam toward the light (re: magda in s12.... wait. see: edit in s12). dean’s plot with jack extended to his relationship with cas, and you really don’t have to be a heller to see that. also, this is when we really get into sam/rowena and witch!sam. also, we get some sam/gabriel interaction, as gabriel has always been more of a sam thing than a dean thing, i’ve appreciated it. then the whole lucifer thing... anyways. they should have had sam kill him. honestly? they should have somehow made sam michael’s vessel to really go galaxy brain on that.

season 14: sam being the leader of the new hunter network is a SEXY idea and what should have remained for the rest of the show but fuck if this show hates having nice things. also, i liked both the sam & charlie and sam & cas collabs, bc even tho they were both always more of a dean thing, i enjoy those characters having one-on-one plots with sam as well. also this season continues sam caring for jack with both sergei and lily sunder connections, furthering the witch!sam plot, but still not enough to really put it forward.

season 15: the season starts with sam’s connection to chuck, and i genuinely enjoyed that storyline, and i wish they made the whole thing last for longer, maybe even into the finale. (i think there are so many plots on this show that they like to Have but then Not Do much with them.) then obv they have sam/rowena arc continue, with him making her the queen of hell (pls look at this post i’ve made abt it before bc i think the whole thing is actually Hilarious) and then furthering witch!sam storyline with resurrecting eileen. (in some way samwena and saileen are actually extensions of each other and maybe could have been samwenaleen but yk. a girl could dream. maybe throw gabe into that as well).... after that... there’s nothing really. i mean, sam goes out to meet with the surviving hunters, but it’s just that. and i don’t even count 15x19 and 15x20 really because 19 was more of a joint story with dean and 20 was well. that. i think i would have accepted the ending if they actually built to it.

in the end of the day, i think sam had a few stories that were either aborted by poor writing or by transferring much of the burden to dean. i think having so much lucifer in the middle of it all without Really addressing sam’s feelings about it was probably the biggest clue that the writers didn’t Really care about his story as much. leading the hunters, rowena, eileen, witchcraft, jack (i will argue that jack had a significant relationship with all of his dads) were all good parts of it, but severely underutilized, and it makes me sad. i just edited the s12 part about magda, and i think that part was especially upsetting, as they gave us a glance into sam’s savior nature and then took it out. anyways i hope this made sense, and if anyone wants to add anything in reblogs/tags, feel free, i’ll read everything.