Gabriel/Sam Winchester

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Pairing
Pairing: Sam Winchester/Gabriel
Alternative name(s): Sabriel, Gabriel/Sam, Sambriel (Mostly due to Tracked tag confusion on Tumblr)
Gender category: M/M, Slash
Fandom: Supernatural
Canonical?: No
Prevalence: Medium
Archives:
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Sam/Gabriel or Sabriel is the slash pairing of Sam Winchester and the archangel Gabriel in the Supernatural fandom. Sam/Gabriel is the second most common slash pairing involving Sam Winchester.

Sabriel has become one of the most common ships (slash or not) involving Sam in the whole fandom. In 2015, it was the 21st most common pairing on Ao3[1] and the third most common ship in the Supernatural fandom.

Fandom

Development of the Ship

Gabriel first appeared in the second season as Trickster posing as a Janitor, he was hunted by Sam, Dean, and Bobby.[2] Most shippers site the semi-flirtatious behavior between Sam and the Janitor as the beginning of the ship.

Gabriel appears in several Supernatural episodes, but it's Gabriel's third appearance (Changing Channels[3]), where Gabriel is revealed as an archangel, that caused the Sam/Gabriel pairing to really take off and gain a lot of fans. After Gabriel's speech in Changing Channels fans started to point out the similarieties between Sam and Gabriel and how they both tried to escape their somewhat troublesome families but got dragged back in anyway.

It's in Hammer of the Gods[4] in season five, where Gabriel sacrificed himself to let the boys escape and was decidedly declared to be a good guy after all, that really gained him a lot of fans and shippers.

The pairing attracted many slash writers interested in the canon who were uncomfortable writing Sam into the juggernaut pairing in the fandom, the incestuous Wincest pairing. With Castiel's addition to the cast in season five, and his subsequent paring with Dean, writers started pairing Sam with other characters and Sabriel really took off.

Fanfic Tropes

Common tropes explored in fanfic include wingfic, Height difference, and food kink. Alternate universe fics are also very popular in the Sam/Gabriel fandom.

There are some common themes in fic that are specific to this particular pairing:

  • Gabriel falling for Sam during the apocalypse and deciding to help Team Free Will end it a different way.
  • Sam and Gabriel acting as matchmakers for Dean and Castiel and falling for each other in the process.

Challenges

Fanworks Examples

Fanfiction

Canon Universe Fanfic

Alternate Universe Fanfic

  • Eat Me 'Verse by LadyDrace
    • A verse where Gabriel is the most super sweet Dom in the world and Sam is significantly more of a sub than he ever imagined. In which there are sexual epiphanies by the buckets, slow burn of growing affection and lingering darkness of past mistakes.
  • Borrowed Heaven by Miya_Morana
    • Summary: In a world where angels are running the show, the Winchester brothers investigate paranormal cases for the Hunters Department. But Dean is ill and Sam has to take a job at Club Rouge as a "host" to pay the new bills. He certainly wasn't expecting to catch the eye of an archangel. As he and Gabriel get closer, Sam also takes on a case that will prove far more complicated than anything he would have imagined.

Podfic

Art

Vids

Ship Manifestos

Example Art Gallery

  • Art by iamkathastrophe created for the fic Ramblin' Man, as part of the 2018 Sabriel Big Bang

  • Art by teenytinytony for the fic Night Weaver, created for the 2016 Sabriel Big Bang

  • Art by nintendostrickster for the fic Into the Light: The Leader, for the 2016 Sabriel Big Bang

  • Art by buttsp8jr for the fic The Roles We Play, created for the 2014 Sabriel Big Bang

  • Sabriel by L-a-m-o-N (2014)

Archives and Communities

Tumblr

Livejournal

Resources

References

  1. ^ 2015 Ao3 Ship Stats by centrumlumina
  2. ^ Super-Wiki's Gabriel's page has many more details.
  3. ^ Super-Wiki's Changing Channel's page has more details.
  4. ^ Super-Wiki's Hammer of the Gods page has more details.
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