electric-sympathy:

See, the crazy thing about Sam’s character, to me, is the fact that his whole going evil storyline is something I would normally DEVOUR. I’ve been known to guilt-read fics whose authors can barely spell despite my anal-retentiveness just because it has a good character-turns-evil idea. On any other character, something like drinking fucking demon blood to feed something awful inside would be like crack to me… but not when it’s Sam. 

That’s because Sam isn’t “going evil”– He’s just a nasty asshole that doesn’t see much of a difference between good and evil in the first place. Sam taking steps in villainy is barely a blip on the radar. I’m never surprised by the steps he takes because he never really gave me a contrasting foundation. He has been bargaining for the morally gray on his own behalf all along, ever since his reluctance to hunt in the very first episode, and it took so little to turn him on the path of evil that they didn’t even feel it necessary to give it screentime. Sam didn’t capitulate to Ruby because he lost his sense of self with Dean’s death– He just didn’t have his sense of self tied to any morality to begin with. There’s no draw to storylines like this if there’s no tragedy, no tarnishing of bright souls.

But see, when Dean does something evil? When he kills people instead of exorcising them, enjoys purgatory, commits torture (coerced or no he still enjoys it), goes demonic, makes deals with the devil literal and metaphorical, etc., these things are compelling because he KNOWS they’re wrong. They create tension and change within his character. Sam? lol. I’ve never seen a character so stagnant.

This knowledge and lack thereof is also, I think, why Sam never has any gravitas. If it’s not a big deal to him to cross these lines, why would he change his behavior for the evil-er and therefore cooler? Sam doesn’t grow into his evil. He sits there being a shit while pretending he isn’t one. Dean, however, has breaks of character. Dean feels conflict when he does things he’s not proud of. This schism creates and is caused by emotion. Dean ends up doing these things when he is driven to them, and that means the effects of them show. Dean changes his speech, modifies his body language,

bares his teeth…

In certain circles of Christian theology, C.S. Lewis among them, there’s an idea put forward that the greater capacity someone has for good, the greater their capacity for sin. An animal has little capacity for good or evil, but a Saint can poison a city. 

Dean is brilliant, sweeping peaks and valleys of the black/white spectrum, but Sam will never be anything more interesting than dull shades of grey.