I agree with a lot of your read: I think both Dean's guilt and his abandonment issues make him read things as personal in ways that they often aren't. And I think sometimes Sam has the opposite problem: he can have a hard time making things personal, seeing them primarily in a relationship perspective rather than in terms of logic or justice or necessity or rebellion. I thought his insistence to Amelia that neither of them was to be pitied was interesting. It reminded me of his "other people have it worse" denial of just how bad things were in s7. And Amelia challenged him on it, insisted on offering compassion. It seems to me that even then and maybe now Sam was/is having a hard time admitting, to himself or others, exactly how hurt he was by losing Dean. It was a problem in the resolution to the Amy business, too, I felt: Sam was pretty clear and angry about what he felt Dean had done wrong, but he never really dealt with the possibility that Dean's lack of trust was hurtful, something to be upset as well as angry about. My headcanon is that Sam developed both anger and rationalization as ways to cope with being hurt in his childhood, and that he's never quite been able to leave them behind, even as he's grappled with his anger issues and developed a great capacity for forgiveness.
I'm also with you on being a little tired of the conflict, and especially I am irritated by the fact that the degree to which Sam and Dean aren't communicating feels a bit artificial to me. Why did Dean give Sam the silent treatment after the island, and not offer an explanation of the reasons he had for believing that Benny wasn't killing? Why has Sam not really communicated to Dean that he thought Dean was dead (as I assume from his words in 8.1 he did) and made the point that bringing each other back has been a terrible idea? It feels like the Winchester uncommunicativeness has become almost arbitrary, to sustain the misunderstanding, rather than feeling as fully rooted in the characters as earlier concealments like Dean hiding John's last words or Sam's s4 lies. Though I really like your point that Sam was evidently secretive about Dean's disappearance during the missing year, that that was part of his reason for cutting contact.
Also, I'm with you on Sam/Amelia being quite intriguing. I haven't loved all the line-by-line writing for it, but I do love just how WARY the relationship is, and how very different from the Jess or Lisa pattern where a woman partly represents an idealized normal.
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I'm also with you on being a little tired of the conflict, and especially I am irritated by the fact that the degree to which Sam and Dean aren't communicating feels a bit artificial to me. Why did Dean give Sam the silent treatment after the island, and not offer an explanation of the reasons he had for believing that Benny wasn't killing? Why has Sam not really communicated to Dean that he thought Dean was dead (as I assume from his words in 8.1 he did) and made the point that bringing each other back has been a terrible idea? It feels like the Winchester uncommunicativeness has become almost arbitrary, to sustain the misunderstanding, rather than feeling as fully rooted in the characters as earlier concealments like Dean hiding John's last words or Sam's s4 lies. Though I really like your point that Sam was evidently secretive about Dean's disappearance during the missing year, that that was part of his reason for cutting contact.
Also, I'm with you on Sam/Amelia being quite intriguing. I haven't loved all the line-by-line writing for it, but I do love just how WARY the relationship is, and how very different from the Jess or Lisa pattern where a woman partly represents an idealized normal.