I don't buy the addiction thing either; more a spell. But seemingly one he can wrest himself from, for now at least. I'm kind of fascinated by where this is going. And, yes, Sam was nine kinds of awesome in this episode. :)

I read a theory the other day (today?) from Nightsky, who writes something called Threads after each other episode. She's positing that Dean is essentially becoming soulless himself, that the blade is eating away at his humanity, etc.

It seems very "been there, done that" to me, if that's the case.

Unless the blade is Stormbringer.

I don't really see anything to support the soulless theory--he has too many emotions and isn't displaying lack of ethics or a moral compass.

Becoming ruthless (and they still had to have the "Oh, we kill Crowley too" conversation, so he's not KILL ALL THE THINGS) doesn't feel like enough--it's their job to prove he's different from Sam in season 4 + Dean in late season 5, but Sam in season 6 I just don't get.

They've made it difficult by further muddying the waters of what having a soul means, but he's not all id (did I get that right? I usually get that wrong) and is very thoughtful.

I did like a lot, muddy as it was, the difference between Soulless Sam and soulless everyone else (thanks to John and Dean, I suppose).

If I had to pick, he's more like Famine!Dean with one motive. I still don't know if the kill in #Thinman was supposed to be mark-related or getting-business-done-related. Haven't made my mind up on it yet.

As much as some Sam stans complain that everything is through a Dean prism, we're a lot in the dark about his internals right now.

I don't necessarily buy the soulless theory -- in fact, I hope they don't go that way. I don't think giving Dean a rerun of one of Sam's issues is really worthy plot or character development.

Not that I think that they are, but I don't mind them re-using crises if the responses are different. There are only so many crises to go around.

"I have been shaped into an paranormal weapon" is something I'm good with so far. I'll worry about the rest when it happens. It's more interesting in the present and past tense to me.

Excellent fic that addresses S9 and makes me happy: [link]

Roque has a delight in permanently maimed Dean that puts me off her stories.

Is it the sort of story that someone who's enjoying the season would like, she asks theoretically.

I don't know? I've enjoyed a lot of the season, and disliked some particular episodes/plot twists, and I loved it.

I also don't have hangups about Dean maiming, so.

It's not that I have a particular hangup about maiming Dean, it's just that I can tell in her writing it's a kink of hers and it's very oh-no-not-again offputting. Somehow it reads like I've read it before when she writes it.

I started a long resolving-S9-issues fic and abandoned it recently because it felt...didactic. Like it wasn't just a story, but a knuckle rap to the writers. Since her problem was that Dean didn't have his own story, well, pretty much doomed from the git go. I can't remember the last time I read Sam written out of the story so summarily for anything other than porn reasons, and I'm a Dean or Cas oriented reader.

Sometimes stories are just stories, and sometimes they feel like axes being ground.

Can you believe I'm pissed off I didn't put the First in Dean's hand in the picture I just drew? It has over 500 notes, which is well ahead of anything else I've ever drawn, and now I want to fix it.

Ah, well. I will focus on the picture with the duckling or the tiger instead. And work on contentment with the current pic, because that's just a good thing to have.