Do you think either of them like it? I guess I feel so good about their brotherly bond right now, I want to feel a bit better about their lives. And I'm reading people talk about Dean's hatred of hunting, and it's sadface.

(I'm cheating and rewatching last week, and RUFUS!!! Also, SAM! I'm watching the scene where they find Dean after he shoots Gwen, and Sam has this "Who do I shoot first?" look on his face that's positively adorable and I want to smish him to pieces)

In conclusion: RUFUS!!!!

Oh, I think they're both glad to have each other back in a way they haven't for a long time. As far as we know, neither of them is destined for some great doom at the moment, and neither of them are being manipulated by demons or angels. (Except for Cas, and I'm willing to accept that they're both okay with that, after the fact -- they give Cas a lot of leeway for good reason.)

And I don't think Dean hates hunting at all. I think he gets *weary* of all the evil there is to hunt, and especially of feeling like a pawn, but in the moment? I think he loves the chase and the kill and the satisfaction of doing something few other people can do.

He's a thrill junkie to some extent, so there's always going to be that adrenaline rush for him, I think.

(God, I have such a fierce love for this episode. The door just slammed down between Sam and the rest, and Dean! Sam! Dean! Watch yourself! And now Sam will kill his grandfather because it's the right thing to do and I can't believe they had a hero kill his family not in explicit self defense and I love this show)

I think Dean hates himself and any hate it appears he has for hunting is more his low self esteem issues than actual hate of the trade. I'm sure he doesn't hate what his brother and father did, although he probably hates that he had to do it. I like to think he can at least take pride in a job well done, and lives saved.

It doesn't strike me that they feel solely responsible for dealing with Mother. Like it's not even a thought as to whether it's their business or not. It's habit, it's a lifestyle, they stumbled onto something, and their dealing with it. Maybe there are other hunters out there who are also dealing with it, but that's not their problem. Maybe they're not happy with it, the Big Hunt, the lives they lead, but they lack the capacity to think they could walk away from it. And Dean tried that, and first tried to have both worlds, and then deliberately walked away from it after his big epiphany that YES THIS IS MY FAMILY.

And Sam wants redemption. And Dean won't let him look at what he's actually responsible for. So if there's redemption to be found in righting other wrongs, then Dean's on board with that /spec

But until they come back to Dean's self-evaluation from YCHtT where he considered himself a killer (he's stuffed that shit down, y'see), he's as happy as he's gonna get for now. And Dean being happy having Sam is Dean being happy in the life of a hunter or any kind of life.

Was Dean happy in season 1?

He was a total faker there. More innocent, maybe, but even then I wouldn't call him happy, believing in non-attachments. Even without the trauma of him losing his dad and then Sam and then going to Hell, Dean's season 1 delusion of carefree solitariness would have eventually crashed down on him.

So basically, what you're saying is that we've never seen them happy and we never will.

Okay, no, that's not what you're saying. It's just kinda where I'm going right now. I'm flip-flopping about what I can believe and what I want. I guess I want them hunting forever, a little broken but a little happy. Which probably means more happy than we've ever seen them sustain (I might opine that Sam's happiness in the pilot was based on a WEB OF LIES and therefore doesn't count).

I think I'd have rather Bobby died than Rufus, but I'm not mad at Show. I'm just sad.

I think Dean was relatively happy in S1, with the caveat that a lot of that came from having Sam with him again. I see early Dean, and pre-series Dean, as total denial guy -- he wanted the three of them together, but he's always willing to sacrifice his own happiness for theirs.

Before the revelation about Sam and YED's plan, before John died (and even disappeared, because I think a lot of that year Dean was repressing how betrayed and alone he felt), I think Dean was as happy as he could be. I don't think hunting makes him *happy* now, and I don't think it ever will, but I think he's willing to settle for way less than happiness for himself.

I'm also not sure he hates himself. I think he's just convinced he doesn't matter, which is different to me. Even in The French Mistake, he was willing to stay in the other world because of what it mean for *Sam* more than himself.

I don't think Dean knows how to value himself, even now. And I definitely think he believes he doesn't deserve jackshit. If he did before hell, he doesn't now.

I think Sam was happy for part of the pilot. But yes, basically I really am saying that I don't think we've ever seen them truly happy. By which I mean to say for stretches of time lasting more than a moment.

But, I also don't think that hunters are necessarily happy people by definition.

I think the closest thing they have to happiness is each other alive and healthy and unthreatened. And unthreatened as much as say, a firefighter or soldier or cop is unthreatened. A Dean does take some joy in his job, or at least did, or at least pretended he did. I do believe that the "hunting things, saving people" is highly satisfactory to him, and Sam, that he does get a thrill from it. I think it the beginning that was pure, and then that kinda of changed to angry satisfaction, but with YCHtT, Dean's taken a step outside himself and questioned that enjoyment. And that's the worst fucking thing: to question what you enjoy and what it says about you. Dean sees "killer" now, and not "knight in shining armor", when he sees himself.

BUT. With this last ep, he seems much more self assured and confident. It was a dark ep, and Dean was mostly angry in it, but he was also not waffling or angsting about what he thought about certain subjects. Sure and resigned vs. angsty and desperately sad, I'd say he's happier now than he's been in a while.

I'm also not sure he hates himself. I think he's just convinced he doesn't matter, which is different to me.

I like this distinction, Amy.

I'm just still hung up on his self-loathing in YCHtT, and wondering if it will ever be broached again.

I think at this point Sam and Dean will be less unhappy hunting than doing anything else. I think they would be closest to happy if they kept hunting, but the hunting was lower pressure, with no big bad making the stakes high, and the monsters showing up infrequently that that they could get some recreation and non-hunting travel in between hunts.

I think both find killing evil son-of-a-bitches genuinely satisfying, though all the people they can't save is one thing that keeps them from actually liking hunting.

I think Dean was relatively happy in S1, with the caveat that a lot of that came from having Sam with him again.

But he never had any overlap with having both his father and Sam and not the looming shadow of YED. That's why I don't give him any happy points.

And I do think that the speech he gave Ben had distinct tinges of self-loathing in it. But I guess I don't see how to devalue yourself as much as he does in any context outside of hunting without having hatred there.