important facts

powerbottomdean:

1. hell was dean’s storyline. and it was complex and ambiguous and important to the plot. it wasn’t gratuitous whumpage for redemption’s sake. dean is the one who had his identity twisted and mangled there. dean is the one who still carries the scars of that. in contrast, sam came out of the cage no longer feeling guilty (his words) because he claimed to have done his time. bad trope and bad cheap imitation of an amazing storyline.
2. we’ve been hearing about how much sam suffered in hell since s6 and around the time the show first started invalidating and minimizing dean’s horrific life-altering experiences there to prop up sam’s. and in addition to that, it didn’t even make sense that sam’s hell included torture. he wasn’t on the rack. he wasn’t being turned into a demon. he wasn’t alone with lucifer like dean was with alastair. hallucifer acted nothing like the character we remembered in s5. and there was basically no mention of adam. all in all, that storyline made little to no sense and was there for cheap drama. and somehow never went away over the following seasons while the effects of dean’s hell experience lived on through subtext and jensen’s acting.
3. sam doesn’t even remember hell. the trauma was magically fixed for him first with the wall (ugh) and then with castiel taking away his memories in 7×17 (double ugh). but for dean it’s still there, forever. he has to live with it. what was done to him, what he did to survive, the parts of himself he lost in the process, the ones he acquired under alastair’s guidance, the ones he held onto against the odds, the ones he reclaimed.

so i have no time for fandom’s insecurities about sam, his importance and how he must have it worse always. one(!) character remembered dean’s been to hell without also mentioning sam’s sequel. you’ll live. it’s how it was always supposed to be anyway.