i am supremely attracted to both death and morpheus but for wildly different reasons
i’m attracted to death because not only is she one of the most beautiful creatures i’ve ever laid eyes on, she has the most incredible way of interacting with and treating everyone around her. she sees humans and rather than feeling they are beneath her (we quite well are, she is an endless and the personification of death after all), she treasures them and feels that it is her duty to do so. death truly believes that every human being is worthy of a smile and a friendly face no matter who they were or what they had gone through. she loves humans and all the often crazy yet beautiful things they do. she watches humans in fascination and i love her so much for it.
and then there’s dream. he’s undeniably beautiful and his voice makes me sleepy. also he’s real pathetic and sad looking. and also a petty bitch. i love him.
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the sandman fandom has a racism problem
hi! i’d like to say before you read this post: this is not meant to attack anyone in particular! this is just discussing a particular trend in this fandom that is very upsetting to me as a person of color. also, please read the disclaimers! thank you to my friends who looked over and critiqued this when it was a draft and thank you for reading <3
DISCLAIMERS:
I do not hate Hob Gadling. This post is not meant to hate on people who like Hob Gadling, or people who ship Dreamling. I genuinely do not care if you ship Dreamling. I am trying to critique a harmful fandom trend and the misogyny and racism of that trend. Again: this is not about shipping. This is not character hate.
THESIS
My problem here is not that people like Hob Gadling. It’s that people choose to focus on Hob over characters of color, like Lucienne, Rose, Jed, and Unity. All of these characters have more screen time, development, and focus than Hob. This shows a harmful trend in fandom, where characters of color are stereotyped, tokenized, and ignored in favor of white characters. This is racist and alienating to fans of color.
WHAT AM I TALKING ABOUT?
There are 2769 fics tagged as “The Sandman (TV 2022)”, and 1956 tagged as “The Sandman (Comics)” on Ao3 at the time of writing (10/18/22). Of those posts, 1175 are tagged as “Dream of the Endless/Hob Gadling”, which is 42% of the tag for the show. (There were only 11 fics that were tagged with the comics and not the show, so i did not calculate the percentage for them.) Hob himself is tagged in 1393 fics, 50% of the total tag. Out of the show’s total runtime of 8 hours, Hob Gadling appears for around thirty minutes.
Lucienne is tagged in around 680 fics, which is 24% of the total tag. She is present from the first episode of the show, and is an important part of both arcs, being Dream’s right hand and the librarian of the Dreaming.
Death is tagged in 635 fics, 22% of the total tag. She has the same amount of screentime and focus that Hob has, and additionally was an extremely popular character in the comics- as can be evidenced by the fact that she makes up 36% of the comics tag, more than Hob and second only to Dream. She and Lucienne are the closest people to Dream in the show.
Rose is tagged in 44 total fics, 5% of the total tag. She’s the main character of the second arc, and appears in half of the episodes of the show. It’s her (as well as Jed and Unity, who have similarly low tags), that drives the entirety of the second arc, and she’s also related to Dream.
Each one of the characters listed has more screen time and development and are arguably more important to the plot than Hob. Each one has significantly less focus in fanworks than Hob. Each one is Black.
Despite Death, Lucienne, and Rose all having more story presence, screentime, and development than Hob, Hob is still the focus of the fandom. When fandom ignores characters of color and queer characters to focus on a cishet white man who is far less important than them, there is only so much good faith that can be given before it starts being racist, misogynistic, and homophobic. Every character of color in this story is given a complex story, motivation, and development, more than they would get in many other popular shows- and this fandom ignores them in favor of a white man who appears for thirty minutes.
What content is made of characters of color is also tokenizing and stereotypical. Jokes reducing Lucienne to a “mom friend” (see: the black best friend stereotype, and the mammy stereotype) and Death to a matchmaker for Dreamling gets grating. Death has her own complex arc and only mentions Hob once. Lucienne, while a kind and loving character, is not a mom friend- she cares about Dream as her friend, but she is not motherly to him. (It should also be noted that this is also a product of misogynoir- the intersection of anti-blackness and misogyny that Black women face. However, I do not want to speak on this, as I am a non-Black POC. Please listen to Black women on this.)
This is extremely alienating to fans of color. I know that I, because of this trend, barely want to interact with the Sandman fandom at all. It is tiring to go into the main or character tags only to see that the people who look like me are continually ignored and pushed aside for white characters, white creators, white fans.
Please note: I am not saying that people who make fanworks about Hob Gadling or Dreamling are racist. I know that there are fans of color who like the ship. I am not trying to hate on Dreamling or Hob Gadling. What I am asking white fans specifically to do is to examine their own biases. Why do you focus on Hob and Dreamling over other characters and ships? Why is your urge to call Lucienne a mom friend when she’s not motherly at all? Why do you ignore Rose? Why do you make jokes about Death being there to matchmake Dream and Hob, when she has her own arc that has nothing to do with him?
WHY DON’T YOU JUST MAKE YOUR OWN CONTENT?
Because people don’t reblog or interact with fan content about POC. The most popular Dreamling fic has 8462 kudos- in comparison to the most popular Morphienne fic, which has 329. The most popular Gault/Lucienne fic, which has 53. It’s been said many times already that when people stop interacting with fanworks, creators stop making them, and this goes double for POC. Racist- even unintentionally racist- behavior like this is what alienates and drives creators of color out of fandom.
CONCLUSION
What I want people to do is, as I said earlier, is to examine their own biases, and to start interacting with works about characters of color more. Consider why you choose to focus on white characters instead of characters of color. Please listen to and interact with fans of color more, especially Black women.
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