denugis:

ameliacareful:

chiisana-sukima:

hazeldomain:

That last shot though. Wow.

I don’t know if it’s the makeup or the lighting or just Jared’s spectacular acting, but that is the face of a truly otherworldly creature.

That is a very old soul.

And a not entirely benign one.

More, please.

Not to speak for @chiisana-sukima, but to me this relates to the ambiguity of Sam’s – well, forgiveness isn’t the relevant word here, though it certainly comes into play in the same nexus of issues – Sam’s distances from his own reactions. Sam as a person whose experiences have been unimaginably extreme, and who has accustomed himself to deliberately and/or unconsciously compartmentalize and minimize their effect on him in order to keep functioning, is a bit inhuman, because being shaped and affected by experiences is a human thing. 

And that effect isn’t entirely benign, though it’s also not evil. It makes it hard for Sam to hold people accountable for what they do do to him, for one thing. The ability to experience physical and emotional pain is vital to survival, it’s a necessary warning system, and I think it’s also vital in social and relationship spheres, to keep the ethical reactions that shape how we treat each other dynamic. The fact that with Cole, for instance, “this is a person who tortured me” doesn’t seem to be part of their later interactions at all (and that’s an instance chosen almost at random) makes me terrified for Sam, but also a little bit terrified of him. Even when we see Sam very explicitly using his experiences, as in his dealings with Jack and his dealings with Dean on Jack’s behalf, Sam can’t seem to speak comfortably out of a place of experiencer of his own experiences, they’re something he lends to others, a kind of imaginary currency.  Even when Sam does directly acknowledge pain, it often seems displaced somehow, if only temporally: his outburst about his distance from Mary is something that comes after the fact, that maybe could only exist in expressible form for him after the fact.