I think Sam is doing good, yes, but he's not actually motivated by the good end (which is what I took away from him telling Dean that he needed him). He's hunting, because he's good at it, and it *feels* good for values of feel that maybe right now equal only the physical sensations of adrenaline rush and endorphins, or maybe a kind of cerebral curiosity being satisfied.

It plays really well with Sam paying for a prostitute -- if he knows he can't make an emotional connection right now or anymore, he can still *feel* (physically) good in the sack.

How much were we supposed to take away that the truth didn't remotely make Dean suicidal?

I'm not sure he was quite there yet, but I don't buy that he wouldn't get there. Dean is nothing if not pragmatic, and at that point he still had a case to work, something to focus on, i.e. Sam. If Sam had died or taken off or whatever, the suicidal impulse might have risen its head a little more boldly.

I think, sadly, that Dean is also very well aware of the truth of his life, and a lot of people aren't. So it's not as much of a surprise to him as it would be to some folks that his life is made of a lot of suck.

So it's not as much of a surprise to him as it would be to some folks that his life is made of a lot of suck.

Yeah, he's pretty much written the book on examination of the downside of his life, and he's never actually looking at the good stuff. So what can the truth tell him now and make it worse?

I'm reading people's opinion that Lisa's speech makes Wincest essentially canon. Are these people that can't conceive of a complicated platonic relationship? An unhealthy but non-sexual one? I totally don't get it.

I wonder how much Lisa we'll see from here on in. I don't want her to be killed to free up Dean, but I do think she was highly right (and should have been dealing with this all along), and a reconciliation would make me twitchy.

Well, I think they could stay friends. I mean she doesn't need to hate him or dislike him (once she understands that Dean was under supernatural influence when he hit Ben). But she may need to permanently stop seeing him. Or see him only under controlled conditions, like he uses some of the money from credit card fraud for her to meet him occasionally in a motel. (Unless she is making more than I think she is at her job, then she can pay half.)

If Sam had died or taken off or whatever, the suicidal impulse might have risen its head a little more boldly.

Eh, Dean was messed up but still able to go on despite honestly believing his brother was rotting in the lowest depths of Hell as Lucifer & Michael's chewtoy. I think Veritas would have had to content herself with the do-it-yourself approach to meal preparation in his case.

I think also, with Dean and even Sam, nobody really knows them. They're not stationary enough to develop a broad spectrum of aquaintances and "I know your face if not your name" people who are familiar with them, even in the vaguest of ways. So unless Dean went out of his way to call the other two or five people still alive that he knows, it's only strangers vomiting truth about themselves, and that's only depressing for them. And Bobby's truth-binge was actually fairly innocuous, so maybe the curse gets diluted over the phone?

maybe the curse gets diluted over the phone?

Didn't seem dilute with Lisa.

But where Bobby said "why am I telling you this?", Lisa said "that came out more harshly than I meant," or something to that effect. She didn't tell him a truth she wasn't willing to tell, she just did it a little more bluntly.

Wait, there's going to be a Gabriel big bang? I hope it gets gatecrashed with Wincest and D/C /is petty.

I figure Lisa wouldn't necessarily have said all the stuff about Sam, had she not been enspelled. She might also have tried some sort of compromise.

I feel I should back off wishing stuff on the Gabriel big bang, but FOUR EPISODES. I don't get it, I really don't. People are barely bothering to resurrect him in the fic I'm bumping into these days--he's just there.

I know, I know, fic I don't read is no skin off my nose. But where's the Harvelle big bang?

But where's the Harvelle big bang?

Darn good question. Heck, a BB with stories that primarily focused on SPN secondary characters (e.g. anyone not Sam, Dean, Castiel, or Bobby) would be fascinating.

It would probably go over as well as the proverbial lead balloon, but it could still generate some interesting fic.

(ita, I don't know if you've read it or not, but I did write a BB-length Ellen backstory a while back.) t / self-pimping