DreamâVince Locke
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Thanks for organising and to everyone else who took part!
A Big Thank You For Death Appreciation Week
This is slightly overdue but I just wanted to say to everyone who participated thank you so much for Death Appreciation Week! All your fanworks have been wonderful to see and it's been a joy on my dash this past week in the run up to the release of Dead Boy Detectives.
Wasn't she fabulous in it? Even if it was only a short cameo it was so so lovely to see Death again and it just makes me more excited for more Sandman!
For anyone who wants to see the fanworks from the week, please check out the #Death Appreciation Week tag
For all your excellent contributions to the appreciation week, thank you so much! :)
@dragonnan, @milfzatannaz, @tryan-a-bex, @seiya-starsniper, @writing-for-life, @marlowe-zara , @bobbole , @mjdrawsalot , @nanonews , @goblininawig , @alteon77 , @iconsumethesoulsofthedamned , @tickldpnk8 , @nualaofthefaerie , @lucienne-my-beloved , @kittynannygaming ,
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DeliriumâDavid Mack
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MorpheusâDean Kotz
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I could write a professionally informed essay about it, but Iâll spare you. Just so much:
It works because people only centre themselves and their own feelings, and they seek people with the same feelings to feel validated (not a problem per se), which creates an echo chamber of a lot of people who canât sit with the discomfort of engaging with opinions and outlooks contrary to their own (definitely a problem).
As a card carrying member of two âlabelsâ that Tumblr apparently luuuuuurves, at least on paper, I can just honestly say: No, I donât feel part of that performative side of it thatâs riddled with blindspots at all, and yes, itâs also sexist and ableist even if people pretend itâs not, but that just as an aside. But again:
To see all of this, one would need to stop caring only about oneâs own feelings and come out of the echo chamber, and thatâs apparently hard. And I can understand why that is, and that there are reasons that got us to this stage that have historical, political and societal underpinnings, but as the old saying goes:
You canât do anything about your feelings. However, what you do with them, you can control. But that requires wanting to engage with the work that comes with it. And that willingness is apparently at an all time low, bar online slacktivismâŠ
I haven't watched Dead boy detectives yet, but I loathe teenagers shows (not because I'm ancient from Tumblr's perspective, ahem, I loathed them when I was a teenager because even then I was definitely NOT the target audience), so I don't hold much hopes for it.
And I'll tell you what: I've just read that I HAD TO love it because if I didn't, I was a killjoy, an horrible person with no taste and who didn't like fun.
Good job people, thanks to comments like this I already hate it. No one tells me what I must like.
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I have started watching it and donât like it either (weâre the obvious minority, or simply not prone to social contagion đ€Ł). Itâs very teen/YA for me (which is fine, itâs just not for me, and it never was, even when I was teen/YA, so itâs nothing to do with age. We can shake hands). I donât like the cinematography, Iâm not super keen on the acting and a lot of it just feels forced to me (both humour and whatâs supposed to be âdeepâ). But thatâs just my opinion, and Iâm not begrudging anyone else their enjoyment.
But takes like the one you mentioned are exactly what puts me off fandom sometimes. Like it, go bonkers over it, all good. We can block tags for a reason (you canât even imagine how quickly I filtered that tag because the lens that now even gets projected onto a totally different show is honestly not for me).
But please stop telling other people what to like, or that theyâre killjoys or that thereâs something wrong with them just because they donât share your interests or opinions or donât agree with your hot takes. Itâs so ironic to me that weâre constantly told to âlive and let liveâ, but that the sentiment immediately goes out the window if an opinion doesnât align with the prevailing one. Just say you want your opinion confirmed and have no desire to engage with anything else, that would at least be honest.
No one needs to validate someone elseâs feelings around the topic; not doing so doesnât make us anything. It just makes us people with their own opinions, which, newsflash, are as valid as yours. And if you canât sit with that, itâs not really on us to help you with your emotion processing by staying quiet or confirming your needs.
Itâs honestly the fastest way to alienate people to use emotionally loaded language like âkilljoyâ, âhorribleâ or anything along those lines (itâs the attempt to shut down any discussion and control/manipulate the narrative by othering: âWe are the fun ones, you are so dreary.â Or, âWe are so kindâąïž and care so much about XYZ, you disagree with that view, so by extension, that makes you unkind.â Iâm not confident people can see that though because it is always about their feelings that need confirmed and generally tiptoed around, and never about anyone elseâs).
Itâs not new though, so why are we surprised, friendâŠ
I haven't watched Dead boy detectives yet, but I loathe teenagers shows (not because I'm ancient from Tumblr's perspective, ahem, I loathed them when I was a teenager because even then I was definitely NOT the target audience), so I don't hold much hopes for it.
And I'll tell you what: I've just read that I HAD TO love it because if I didn't, I was a killjoy, an horrible person with no taste and who didn't like fun.
Good job people, thanks to comments like this I already hate it. No one tells me what I must like.
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âYou canât get through it till you feel it.â Beautifully said.
Hello,
This is a serious post. It deals with Death and Grief and if youâre not ready to read about Death and Grief, thatâs ok. Feel free to scroll on.
It also contains spoilers for the Sandman Comics The Song of Orpheus and the Brief Lives series and Suzume. If you donât want to see that, itâs ok to move on to some other posts.
It will also be long.
So this is your last chance to scroll on and run.
My friend JP died last week.
Not like, my best friend. We went to college together and we have stayed in touch and her best friend is married to my best friend. Recently, we had become closer. She was helping me look for a house near where she lives and we were making plans. Plans to hang out in the future and she was going to show my family and I the sights and we were going to hang out. We were texted and facetiming regularly, and making plans for so many adventures.
And then she was gone.
It was sudden, and unexpected.
It wasnât a car wreck or anything I could blame or explain or understand.
One minute we were joking about haunted barns and she said her tummy hurt. Then she went to the hospital because her stomach was distended and it really hurt. I donât know all the details. I know they said there might be fluid leaking from her liver, and they gave her lasiks and pain killers. (Iâm sure there was more to it.) Then they sent her home. She didnât respond to texts after that. I texted my other friend, her best friend, and expressed my concerns and he reached out to her mother. We were told she was ok, she just couldnât type on the pain killers.
A couple days later, a family member posted that she was back in the hospital.
Two days after that, her mother posted that while being prepped for a liver transplant she seized and coded, but they got her back.
The next morning, Our friend called to tell me that JP was dying, and on life support. She would probably leave us in a day or so.
I got in the car and drove.
Growing up I was taught to deal with sadness and death with humor. Not intentionally, but at funerals my dad and his brother would poke each other and whisper jokes, and struggle to keep serious faces and not laugh out loud. It made sadness bearable. It was distracting and funny and it was easy.
Grieving is hard. Classically I avoid it. I try to stoicly accept it as it is, and then make a joke.
This time the universe decided I wasnât allowed to.
Neil Gaiman is my favorite author, and I hadnât listened to Sandman Vol. 3 yet. The Sandman Audiobooks are my favorite way to experience the comics, and a distraction for the drive was what I wanted. Itâs a 7.5 hour drive.
But distraction was not in the cards, because the first half of Vol. 3 turned out the be The Song of Orpheus and Brief Lives, and within seconds of the story beginning a character said, âPeople Die. You get over it. Itâs part of Life.â
Orpheusâ entire story is about how he refused to accept his loveâs death, even traveling to the land of the dead to try to get her back, and in doing so ruins his own life, and extends his life into one long hardship. Itâs about how accepting Death IS necessary to live. I choked back sobs and just kept driving.
Halfway through my drive, she left for her final adventure. I like to think that Death took her hand and smiled, and JP said, âwell that sucks,â and then made an inappropriate joke that made Death laugh and then maybe she flirted with Death a little, because thatâs just who she was.
I continued up and saw family and friends and did a little mourning but maybe not the right level of mourning. The memorial hadnât been planned yet, though, and I had to return to work, return to life. I drove home.
This last week I have put on the mask and done my work with a smile and I didnât get time to mourn. The memorial was yesterday, and I was weepy all day, but never in front of anyone. The moment I was alone though, I couldnât control the waterworks. I was able to watch half the memorial on Zoom and it was a good memorial. A room stuffed full of people telling delightful, happy, loving stories about how wonderful and funny she was. It was poignant and lovely. Then I had a client and had to wipe my tears and smile and do my job. I longed for the Victorian era mourning rituals and expectations.
I encountered a song called A TV Show Called Earth by Phillip Labes on the way to get my kids and go home and a catch in my throat appeared and I swallowed it and did slow breathing to calm myself. The line that nearly got me was,
âBe careful picking favorites, cause they all end up as bones.â
I cried when I got home but it was silent flowing tears while I calmly told my daughter why I was so sad.
Despite the weepiness, the sobs continued to refuse to come with someone else around.
Today was better. Less weepy, more normal.
Life goes on.
But then I came home and read more Sandman (physical copy this time), and cried a little. Just a little. Then I made dinner and my partner chose a movie that looked cute for family movie night. It was called Suzume. We didnât know the plot, just that it looked like an homage to Miyazaki. The movie is cute and beautiful and funny but it also came out of nowhere with a left hook about dealing with your grief, and accepting the death of a loved one. A young character full of promise declares that they arenât ready to die, they have so much to do. When he is saved by another characterâs sacrifice, he says,
âWe know life is fleeting, we know we live side by side with death, even then, we wish to live.â
The tears flowed silently again and my kids declared it an amazing movie and went to bed. That was when the dam broke. Waves of sobs washed over me and I couldnât breathe or keep up with the tears and my partner sat with me while I sobbed and sobbed. Despite a shower, my eyes still feel red and raw and puffy. Every time, since I was given the news, that I have thought I could distract myself from the grief or that I had moved away from it, the art I encountered punched me in the gut and shoved a mirror in front of my face and told me to feel my feelings, to grieve. It hurts to grieve. It doesnât feel like relief in the moment. It doesnât feel like youâre letting out the steam, it feels like an explosion. But, you canât get through it till you feel it.
This is why the, âThis is a celebration of life, they wouldnât want you to cry,â funerals donât work.
It just means everyone bottles it up goes home and cries alone.
I still canât stop thinking about the plans that will never come to fruition. Having to find a new realtor is a pain I cannot face right now. Not an inconvenience, but a strange heartbreak that feels like betrayal. I still get her emails, like strange marketing from the afterlife, as if Caldwell-Banker is still requiring her to work from the grave.
We were supposed to go kayaking, and go to drag brunch. We were supposed to go fishing and exploring old haunted houses together, and now we never will. We canât reschedule, itâs just all canceled. No rain-check.
I think if I suppressed all that, and bottled it up, I would never recover. Iâm glad the universe isnât allowing me to bottle it up.
I just wish it didnât hurt so much.
But the pain means I am alive.
This post really just exists so that I can get this all out, more than anything else. I needed a way to scream I AM GRIEVING.
I miss you already JP, more than you know.
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This isnât commonly known but one of the rings of hell is actually being in a fandom wherein the popular bloggers have the worst opinions known to man that everyone else parrots
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Death and DreamâMike Dringenberg
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DestinyâBobby Breed
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Dearest,
I wonder, how much affects Dream the DAY dreaming of humans and whatâs the amount of influence Desire has on it?!
Thank you in advance for answering my question.
J
Hello friend đđ»
Daydreaming is totally under his purview, like everything that is tied to imagination, hopes (!) and wishes.
I guess there is a shred of overlap between Desire(s) and Dream(s), but dreaming is the unreal. It can maybe be the seed of desire though: the impulse to wish for and then want something so badly you go after it to make it real. Desire has a much more physical, real component to itâperhaps itâs best called âstrivingâ?
But I guess thatâs why we have Overture, which really goes into that relationship quite deeply. Because only Hope, Dream and Desire together could save the universe. None of them could have done it alone. To me, there was always something in there about Desire taking care of self-preservation (the survival instinct, if you will) and Dream, who usually keeps the boundaries between unreality and reality in check, pulling the ship into reality (making the dream real, if you will, which he usually doesnât because he is unrealityâthatâs why it tires him so and nearly destroys him, thatâs why he is weak enough to be captured). But Desire basically kicked his arse into gear. And actually saved his arse, too, because this is the third attemptâhe didnât make it in the other two (put them in that get-along-shirt is what Iâm saying, and I will not tire of saying it).
But it was Hope who inspired the dreamers. She is the most important puzzle piece (and Dream *knows* it, and so does Desire, and we have many, many panels to support that). And ignored by parts of the fandom to a fault, both as a character and a concept. The girl didnât even have a tag on Ao3 until I created it đ€
I have a whole meta about her (or rather H/hope in the Sandman) in the making. Because sheâs important, she doesnât stop existing after the reset because her spirit prevails, right into Exiles.
I said what I said đ
So to bring this to a conclusion: Those two idiots could actually be a dream team if theyâd get over themselves. They go hand in hand, but theyâre also distinct. And the same could be said for (day)dreams and desires. Theyâre distinct, but they can also bleed into each other.
@klarahimmeltheendless ask answered
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More Sandman S2 Casting News!
And Iâm wondering:
Who are Prime Minister Zewde and Lawrence âLaurieâ Webb? đ€
And Iâll stop wondering straightawayâŠ
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MorpheusâVince Locke
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Dream & MatthewâDavid Hitchcock
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DespairâJonathan Case
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Thereâs something slightly unsettling about your mentioning the words âhelmâ and âfuckingâ in the same sentence, my lord.
You are aware of what they say about Murphy and his Cool Hat on here, right?
my helm isnât a fucking bong mervyn
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Great additions, agreed on all points (and I keep on forgetting to use the bookclub tag, argh!).
I think especially this is important:
âI think because they are comics, folks tend to underestimate the literature side of how they are constructed. I say this not to diminish folks who read them for the surface level story: they work on that level of writing tooâ
The construction of it in literary terms, and also the use of allegory and metaphor. Itâs so rich and incredibly deep, and I guess one reason I write metas is out of the hope that people might get interested to engage with that side of it, too. As you said, nothing wrong with not wanting to do that, but your eyes really open to a whole ânother level of both subtext but also messages that are actually in plain sight if you do.
So as always, thank you for being in that boat (or on that train? Some type of vehicle anyway đ€Ł) with meâŠ
WHAT DO YOU MEAN DREAM'S HAIR USED TO BE WHITE!! oh my god. i just saw your post about killala and i have now perished. thanks for breaking my heart.
but also hi!! i'm relatively new to the fandom and it's a great place to be. i haven't finished reading all the comics yet but i'm curious to know:
what do you think are the main differences between TV!Dream and Comics!Dream? i've heard so many people claiming that he is incapable of changing, for instance, and though the show does convey his overall rigidity pretty well, i'm not getting the vibe that he's immutable.
also!! it's clear that he feels a lot. which is always funny to me when the corinthian is like yo, try this and maybe you'll feel something for a change but like. he does!!! or i get the impression that he does. he probably feels too much if anything?? all of it simmering just beneath the surface, barely contained. how would you personally analyze his relationship with his own emotions?
i hope all of this is coherent enough for you to answer lmao, i saw your post about enjoying being asked sandman questions two seconds after i woke up and barged into your inbox. hope you have a lovely day!
Thanks so much for the ask, and welcome if youâre new(ish) to the fandom! đ€
Iâm sorry I broke your heartâmuch more heartbreak to come I fear if you havenât read the comics yet, so Iâll try to keep this as spoiler-free as possible.
I am one of those people who believes the differences between comics!Dream and show!Dream are actually not as big as they are made out to be where it matters, and you will definitely find people who disagree. At the end of the day, we all read it through our own lens and will never be fully objective about it.
The main difference I see is that they filed off the rough edges of the comics a bit to make a new audience sympathise more. Itâs very hard to do that with a character who is basically in full arsehole mode for most of the first 40 issues or so, and even then only slowly begins to come out of it (although we can obviously see glimmers of what lies below the surface at the beginning of the comics, too, but itâs far more subtle than in the show). Iâve worked in musical theatre for a over decade of my life and understand a bit about bringing the written word to stage/screen, and some things simply donât translate well from book to stage/screen, and you have to change it. So my personal opinion is we get a more sympathetic Morpheus and certain changes so the audience can do exactly thatâsympathise off the bat. You will lose an audience pretty quickly if they donât care about the protagonist and the universe he moves in, and you canât be as nuanced about it as you can be in a written work. Weâre talking about streaming services thinking about profits here, even if people donât want to hear it.
Also: The more you sympathise with a character, the deeper the emotional investment and the more you feel, even if it hurts.
Having said this, I donât think Morpheus is incapable of change, and I never got where that idea comes from. His biggest flaw is that he believes he cannot change (and even he has moments when he admits he might have). In the introduction to Endless Nights, Neil Gaiman says that he was once asked to describe The Sandman in twenty-five words or less, and famously, it was this (you might have heard it):
âThe Lord of Dreams learns that one must change or die, and makes his decision.â
And I think some people might have wrongly taken that for an either/or thing. I donât want to say too much at this point because I donât know how much you know (if youâd like spoilers or already know how it ends, let me know, Iâll happily expand on it). Only so much:
He is capable of change, also in the comics. Very obviously so. But just like he denies he has his own story (which also isnât true), he denies he can change. Or at least he thinks he perhaps cannot change enough (itâs actually hard to write about this without giving everything away, help! đ).
As for his feelings: He does feel, but again, it is something he pushes down and will deny himself. Until it bursts to the surface and breaks through, and when that happens, itâs usually with, well, letâs say varying results, and thatâs putting it mildly. Personally, Iâd say he has problems relating to his feelings, but that doesnât mean he doesnât feel. Quite the opposite in my view. He holds the collective unconsciousâall unprocessed feelings and whatever else floats around in that collective mess, and itâs exactly what he says to the Corinthian in that famous scene: he needs to keep a lid on it and keep that lid firmly closed so all of it doesnât consume him. But that also means denying himself the feelings that are linked to his own personhood (if you want to call it that). Thereâs Dream of the Endless, and then thereâs Morpheus. And while theyâre one and the same and inseparable, Morpheus is also the âpoint of viewâ. The character, the person, if you will. And deep down, he craves that personhood so badly. Out of all the Endless, he is the only one who basically collects names because they mean having something beyond his function, which is also mirrored in what he tells Death in âThe Sound of her Wingsâ: he wants something more. He is the only one whose realm is populated with sentient beings (yes, I know Despair has rats, but I think you get my drift). He is desperately lonely and struggles with it. He seeks connection yet denies it to himself. Thatâs not someone who doesnât feel.
I donât know if this answers your questions at allâI was doing the wild âspoiler-freeâ dance đ€Ł But please let me know if you want me to go a bit deeper, I love talking about this stuff.
You can also have a look at my metas if you havenât already. The headers pretty much explain what theyâre about and what spoiler-level to expect, but none of them are truly spoiler-free I guess:
Again, thanks so much for encroaching on my inbox, and feel free to follow up if anything was left unanswered.
@dreamaturgy ask answered
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