We do know that Sam appreciates porn - he was watching Casa Erotica but did the quick channel change/remote toss when Dean walked in.

Well, he doesn't appreciate it enough to admit to it, the big wuss.

Sam was also very familiar with Lovecraft's fiction, though that may have been research rather than reading for enjoyment. (I'd imagine Machen and Poe are like going over case files for the Winchesters.)

Hmm, it really makes no sense to me that Sam doesn't read for fun. . . surely he did when he was younger?

I'm not saying he doesn't, but I can see that his life might be so taken up with reading for various sorts of achievement and duty that it's not really an issue. It would be a valid character note for me, and an interesting one, if Dean, the one who relaxes aggressively ends up chowing down on Tolkien and Vonnegut, while Sam is surfing the web for the latest lore from Guatemala. Just In Case, you know.

Yet, in Dean's head, he's the practical one, and Sam's the big old geek, but Dean's the one framing things in even literary references.

I think in Dean's head it's that way because it may have been that way when they were kids.

So you think he wasn't reading Vonnegut or its parallels when they were young? It seems simpler for me to assume Dean's just off about evaluating himself than that he had a marked change of reading habits.

However, Sam didn't know about it, but it does seem (perhaps unfairly to Sam) that there are a lot of things he didn't notice. I was looking at these animated gifs from early eps, and Sam is us--he finds out Dean is afraid of flying when we do, as opposed to it being a clearly established part of his family persona.

Is that because Sam had his head up his ass, or because Dean wasn't into sharing with him? Did John know? And if so, because he'd been able to see it, or because he was a master detective?

Looking at some more of that person's animated gifs, I'm led to wonder--did Misha tilt his head one time and tar Cas with the "owllike" brush, or was it a consistent tic?

I think flying probably wasn't much of an issue growing up, so Sam's surprise about that doesn't really ping me.

I also think the writers favor Dean, at least in terms of writing the fun stuff. Sam was always supposed to be the straight arrow, the one who wanted normal, for one, and Dean has more of a sense of humor and fun (he's the bad boy). I think they riff on Dean's geekiness and extracurricular interests because it's easy to, and it's also a chance to shout out to stuff that Sam wouldn't necessarily like.

I think they riff on Dean's geekiness and extracurricular interests because it's easy to

I think it would be just as easy to make Sam a bona fide bookworm though, enough that it seems a conscious decision not to talk about it at *all*. I know Dean gets more attention, but I feel that us not knowing what music Sam likes, for instance, is deliberate so we can't actually know if we disagree with Dean or not--we either have to take his word for it, or disagree on principle. No evidence. The only bars of his music we heard were Jason Mann, so that barely even counts.

As for the books, it's a simple way to expand our perception of Dean, who could easily be a gun-wielding boozing pussy hound with a heart of gold and less on the details. But when you add it all up, he's a proper mass of contradictions, instead of the most easy version.

I can't quite decide who's our entry point into the story all the time. In some ways it's all about Dean, but in many ways Dean is all about Sam, and Sam is the closest we'll get to our sort of conventional in a Winchester.

So, in summation, dunno.

I can't imagine that John took his boys flying very often, if at all. So I'm more surprised that Dean knew he was afraid of flying. Maybe there was one trip during Sam's Stanford years that Dean got on a plane for a hunt (maybe to get to Sir faster, who was in trouble, and driving the impala just wasn't practical).

I am mean. Those LJ users who spammed me now have their accounts suspended and it fills me with satisfaction.