All those hundreds of times he died in Mystery Spot (the whiplash he must have gotten repeatedly pulling a U-y at the pearly gates!)?

But Mystery Spot was before his deal, which I always thought meant he would have gone to hell each time. Or just nowhere, since he wasn't really dead until the Wednesday.

I don't know!

Maybe he was in Gabrielimbo.

Gabrielimbo sounds like a really funky dance. I can see Sam and his bigass limbs flailing now.

When was Dean ever in heaven aside from Dark Side of the Moon?

Ash said they'd both been there before and he'd seen them, so there may have been offscreen deaths.

Oh, I forgot that part. I need to keep notes, I swear.

When Sam's spleen broke down his old blood cells, what happened to the demon blood? Is it spleen resistant? Or would the demon blood cells be broken down like all the others? And if broken down, what happens to any elements particular to its demonic nature? Did Sam end up with a demon spleen? (And would "Demon Spleen" make a good death metal band name?) Would the demonic end up circulating through the lymphatic system, like a really non-Hodgkin's lymphoma?

Could I over-think this any more?

And see, I've always gone the other, simpler way: you feed the baby demon blood, you get demon poop.

Sam seemed to accept that Dean was in hell after the first Wednesday, and Gabriel confirmed it. Even if that was all made a never-happened as far as Dean knew after the second Wednesday, Sam remembered it. So had it happened, and Dean's memory was angel-erased by Gabe--who really hadn't been retconned as an angel at the time? Or was it an hallucination given to Sam as a forewarning? I'm not sure what I think.

I don't see why people think drinking the blood couldn't affect Sam in the long term somehow. Obviously not everything we eat is excreted without regard--some of it will affect our cells forever. And that's before you get to the paranormal. Just think of eating things that are bad for you. Or, you know, radioactive.

Verdict on the Casablanca AU: Rad idea, better than the actual writing. The language gets florid from time to time, especially at the end, but I liked the story and most of the characterisation. The melding of canon and AU was pretty damned interesting.

I was hoping for more . . . tone . . . from the Casablanca AU. Then again, I actually hated Casablanca. But that's more the failing of hearing the hype.

And I felt cheated on the initial deconstruction of the existing friendship between Dean and Victor.

Oh, god, I'm glad it didn't go for Casablanca style. I don't think the author had the chops for that. The attempts at major emotion were the weakest parts of the story.

I liked the actual Dean/Victor friendship, but I do think the reveal was a bit rushed. But I was sold on it. And I liked the Victor voice throughout.

And, call me cheap, but I adored the epilogue.