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.

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

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.

I was remembering Dean's expression in Croatoan when he told Sam he was tired. And that was before the weight of the world came crashing down on top of him, pretty much literally. Sam's death, Hell, the angel's expectations, Sam's addiction, the demonic forces chasing them, learning about their half-brother, knowing that as fast as he ran to catch up it was almost certainly a contest where either the world would lose or he'd lose his brother. No wonder he's exhausted. I hope for his sake the year with Lisa helped him recuperate a bit, but the half year or so with RoboSam would have worn him down yet again.

I think he gains satisfaction in putting down evil things and in helping people. I don't see any of the glimpses of joy we used to get at the beginning. Either it's all been beaten out of him, or he has undergone an attitude shift towards hunting.

edit -- sorry - just realized I didn't reference the quotes at the top. They're there because I agree with the sentiments and see Dean as an amalgam of them.

I don't see any of the glimpses of joy we used to get at the beginning

I'm still clinging to the stupid goofy smiles we got when Sam got his soul back. It wasn't an overarching happy, but good god, it was nice to see some unadulterated joy that wasn't just "boobies!"

I think to hate himself he needs to want to be something better or different. And with Ben, in that speech, maybe it was true -- he hated that he couldn't be (or didn't believe he could be) what Ben needed. And possibly Lisa, too.

But on the whole I think he just doesn't care enough. In my head, he's come to accept that he is who he is, and it's not much. In other words, DEEEEEEEAN.

Sam, on the other hand, I think was probably pretty happy at Stanford. But I think Sam is and always has been better at compartmentalization, and understanding who he is. As far back as After School Special you see it -- when the teacher asks him what he wants to do, and he realizes no one has ever asked him that before. I think no one ever took the time to ask that of Dean, but I'm not sure he would have been able to answer with anything other than what his dad wanted for him.

So Sam, I'm sure, had some unhappiness and regret about losing John and Dean while he was there, but he was also mature enough to embrace the life he was building and find happiness in it. I don't ever worry about Sam's happiness the way I do about Dean's, because I think he's always been drawn as a less damaged person, for all he was the target of a demon plot.

HOW CAN YOU NOT WORRY ABOUT SAM???

Okay, you said the way you worry about Dean. Sorry...I just...it was blinding for a second.

I think the difference is that Sam has been trying to be happy. Had been trying to be happy. Now he's just trying to make up for what he caused (not all his fault!) when he was trying to do things for himself. So he has that beating up of himself to do.

Dean never got as far as trying to do anything for himself, because I don't see him as visualising himself outside of a fucking, eating, saving, and brothering machine. He just needed his pieces in place, and then he could go forward and do his job.