Honestly? My main piece of advice for writing well-rounded characters is to make them a little bit lame. No real living person is 100% cool and suave 100% of the time. Everyone's a little awkward sometimes, or gets too excited about something goofy, or has a silly fear, or laughs about stupid things. Being a bit of a loser is an incurable part of the human condition. Utilize that in your writing.
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sometimes im like "wow holy shit im being really fucking annoying. i should stop talking" and then i pull out my magic 8 ball and it says "youve always been annoying and your friends chose to talk you anyways. youll be fine" and im like wow thanks magic 8 ball. and then the ogre attacks me
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I recently had surgery, and at the time I came home, I had both my cat and one of my grandma's cats staying with me.
- Within hours of surgery, I wake up from a nap to my cat gently sniffing at my incisions with great alarm.
- I was not allowed to shower the first day after surgery, and the cats, seeing that The Large Cat is not observing its cleaning ritual, decided I must be gravely disabled and compensated by licking all the exposed skin on my arms, face, and legs.
- I currently have to sleep with a pillow over my abdomen because my cat insists on climbing on top of me and covering my incisions with her body while I sleep (which is very sweet but not exactly comfortable without the pillow). She also lays across me facing my bedroom door, presumably on guard for attackers who may try to harm me while I'm sleeping and injured.
That's love. šāā¬šā¤ļø
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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 youāre new(ish) to the fandom! š¤
Iām sorry I broke your heartāmuch more heartbreak to come I fear if you havenāt read the comics yet, so Iāll 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. Itās 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 itās far more subtle than in the show). Iāve 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 donāt 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 thatāsympathise off the bat. You will lose an audience pretty quickly if they donāt care about the protagonist and the universe he moves in, and you canāt be as nuanced about it as you can be in a written work. Weāre talking about streaming services thinking about profits here, even if people donāt 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 donāt 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):
āThe Lord of Dreams learns that one must change or die, and makes his decision.ā
And I think some people might have wrongly taken that for an either/or thing. I donāt want to say too much at this point because I donāt know how much you know (if youād like spoilers or already know how it ends, let me know, Iāll 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 isnāt true), he denies he can change. Or at least he thinks he perhaps cannot change enough (itās actually hard to write about this without giving everything away, help! š).
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, itās usually with, well, letās say varying results, and thatās putting it mildly. Personally, Iād say he has problems relating to his feelings, but that doesnāt mean he doesnāt feel. Quite the opposite in my view. He holds the collective unconsciousāall unprocessed feelings and whatever else floats around in that collective mess, and itās 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 doesnāt consume him. But that also means denying himself the feelings that are linked to his own personhood (if you want to call it that). Thereās Dream of the Endless, and then thereās Morpheus. And while theyāre one and the same and inseparable, Morpheus is also the āpoint of viewā. 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 āThe Sound of her Wingsā: 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. Thatās not someone who doesnāt feel.
I donāt know if this answers your questions at allāI was doing the wild āspoiler-freeā dance š¤£ 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 havenāt already. The headers pretty much explain what theyāre 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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Going to need Netflix to add the waiting music somewhere immediately I love the vibe and want it in the background for a drawing session so bad
Waiting for the dead boy detectives premiere to start Iām so excited it looks really good and I really liked the sandman presents story
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