I'd vote white-font. That's so that those of us who haven't finished it yet can go back and catch up later.

White font! Discussing Six of One is FUN!

*blush*

Okay!

Whitefont!

I wanna talk about Six of One too. Such a good story!

Okay, white font it is. Let’s begin the discussion on “Six of One!”

First, about the structure -- congratulations on creating such disorientation in Part 1. I had to read through it several times before it started becoming clear to me; for the longest time my brain was stubbornly convinced that this was going to be a body-swapping story, and I kept trying to picture Sam’s consciousness inside Dean’s body, not just inside his jacket and jewelry and haircut. The switches in verb tenses (present tense for Dean, past tense for Sam) throughout the story caused whiplash too, and my brain was revolving trying to get a bead on what was going on. This just added layers of subtlety and uneasiness to the whole proceeding.

Now, questions about the climax:

First, when Sam asked the Sluice Gate (pie! creatures that can be dealt with by giving them pastries!) how to free a soul trapped by a demon, he’s told: "Second answer: mayn't. A deal is not for breaking, not with a demon. They have power and the dead do not. When the demon ends, the deal lives on, until the word of unbinding. Even then, there is no free for the dead. That is reaper-talk, and you ain't reaper, luck-child." My interpretation of that, and from Sam’s reaction, was that Sam would be unable to free John. But when Sam and Dean read the words of unbinding, “Dad looked over his shoulder with an expression of surprise, at a reaper the living could not ever see, and faded into nothingness.” At first it seemed to me as though Dean, rather than Sam, had reaper abilities. (And I was wondering when that had happened?) Now I’m wondering if instead the two of them summoned a reaper?

Second, after Dean was adamant that he would no longer hunt and put Betty’s family at risk, his easy return to the life at the end seemed off to me.

About Sam -- My first inclination was to send a huge Thank You for crafting a Sam who was brave and heroic and every bit as immensely protective of Dean as Dean has always been of him. So often in the fandom I think Sam is treated dismissively, while Dean is held up as the Big Damn Hero. Dean has a huge amount of admirable character traits, but Sam is not just the annoying little brother in the shotgun seat whining for a cheeseburger.

But the more I thought about the conclusion of the story, the more I realized that even though Sam had succeeded in traversing the country for two and a half years, forging a coalition of people with special abilities, rescuing people along the way, and leading them in a fight to defeat the Yellow-Eyed Demon (the goal of the Winchester family for 20 years), and though he had protected Dean (albeit through draconian methods) and released his father from hell, he is still essentially a broken man. "I'm not like you. I can't just handle any situation that comes my way. I'm weak, and you're not.…I know I am. When it all came down, when we gathered to summon him and kill him dead at last, I fell apart. That's why he picked us, I think -- why I was the special one and you weren't. I was vulnerable. But, at the end, when that demon was looking into me and trying to find my weakness, you know what he found instead? He found that part of you I'd borrowed, and the Dean in me pulled me together and I could fight. And because I could do it, all the other specials around me followed my lead and we won. We won, Dean. You and me both."

(continued)

That occurred throughout the entire story. He always attributes any strength or ability within himself to Dean, never to himself. And it hurts. Because I really don’t know where he’s supposed to go from here. He’s achieved everything he set out to do, but it’s as though he has nothing to show for it. He’s hollowed out. As things turned out, Dean more or less got a version of the life Sam had wanted, Sam was living what Dean had wanted, and while I think Dean can be happy living with his little girl, I don’t think Sam can be happy hunting for the rest of his life.

About Jo -- Jo’s not my favorite character on the show. I didn’t mind her throughout the recuperation period, but her constant insistence on hunting made me want to bitch-slap her. Sorry. She used emotional blackmail to keep Dean involved when they were in Florida and he wanted to stop (well, I’m gonna do it and if you want to keep me safe you have to do it too. Here, fuck me and stop arguing.) She kept insisting hunting was some sort of fun family activity, like miniature golf or bowling. And Dean, whether he thought he was Sam or not, apparently was still incapable of verbalizing just how bad an idea that was. Considering that her father had died hunting, and that both his mother and father had died at the hands of demons, her insistence that nothing would ever happen to her was more than a little naïve.

So, hurray for you as a writer, because your characters are living on beyond the end of the story.

One point at a time. In re point 1, you're working much harder than I meant you to do! the Sluice Gate's answer is three pieces of information, but only two of them matter to John's situation. (The fact that Sam is a luck-child is just a detail meant to make him fear that destroying the demon means his own death.) So the two pieces of significant information are (1) deal may not end until the demon is destroyed; and (2) after (1), you still have to do something; it's not automatic that John will be freed.

(1) happens in Chapter 20, Throwdown. The visit to Hell in Ch. 22, where Dean reads off the words from John's journal, is (2), and thus John is freed and he does what any dead soul would normally do: disappear into the hands of the reapers, to a place the living don't ever know.

Onward!

Damn. I yawned myself silly before I could even start Part 4 last night, and I've been run off my feet all day. I just now got online. I'll have to catch up here after I've finished.

In re point 2, Dean has been under a compulsion, basically -- distorted into somebody he's not. Taking that distortion away, he might snap back immediately to who he was before, or he might have to come around to it slowly, or he might never get back at all. I think the best possible outcome is for him to build a new person out of the two people he has been, and re-claiming some of his original personality is a stab in that direction.

It's a fair criticism to disagree with where I put him on the spectrum of those possibilities, but, I wanted to explore the fact that there are possibilities.

And in re your thinking on Sam's transformation -- I put the lines you quote in there knowing they would be ambiguous. Does Sam indeed think himself weak, and externalize his own strength? Does Sam want Dean to have participated in this powerful event in his life, despite that not being true? Is Sam trying to give Dean a reason to forgive him? (It wasn't really that bad; it was necessary; I couldn't have done it without you.) The phrasing also appeals to my sense of Sam as faintly melodramatic, when speaking about himself.

Ultimately, your interpretation of those lines will color how you feel about the whole story: Sam committed a terrible crime against Dean, that might have been necessary. If you can totally and instantly forgive Sam for what he did, then the lines you quote above are unnecessary and even deleterious to your reading enjoyment. If you can't, if you're still angry on Dean's behalf, those lines are there to let Sam express his awareness of, and maybe regret for, his ambiguous position.

And after all, I do think in some wise it's true: Sam is lesser without his brother by his side. That's true of Dean too.