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writing-for-life · 9 hours

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Dream—Vince Locke

#the sandman #sandman #dream of the endless #morpheus #sandman x art #watercolour #pastel #queue crew

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writing-for-life · 9 hours

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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 ,

#death of the endless #death appreciation week #the sandman #sandman

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writing-for-life · 11 hours

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Delirium—David Mack

#the sandman #sandman #delirium of the endless #david mack #sandman art #queue crew

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writing-for-life · 16 hours

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Morpheus—Dean Kotz

#the sandman #sandman #dream of the endless #morpheus #dean kotz #ink wash #muhulhu #murphy and his cool hat #drat! the EndlessHat #queue crew

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writing-for-life · 16 hours

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I could write a professionally informed essay about it, but I’ll 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 can’t sit with the discomfort of engaging with opinions and outlooks contrary to their own (definitely a problem).

As a card carrying member of two “labels” that Tumblr apparently luuuuuurves, at least on paper, I can just honestly say: No, I don’t feel part of that performative side of it that’s riddled with blindspots at all, and yes, it’s also sexist and ableist even if people pretend it’s not, but that just as an aside. But again:

To see all of this, one would need to stop caring only about one’s own feelings and come out of the echo chamber, and that’s 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 can’t 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 slacktivism…

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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writing-for-life · 17 hours

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I have started watching it and don’t like it either (we’re the obvious minority, or simply not prone to social contagion 🤣). It’s very teen/YA for me (which is fine, it’s just not for me, and it never was, even when I was teen/YA, so it’s nothing to do with age. We can shake hands). I don’t like the cinematography, I’m not super keen on the acting and a lot of it just feels forced to me (both humour and what’s supposed to be “deep”). But that’s just my opinion, and I’m 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 can’t 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 they’re killjoys or that there’s something wrong with them just because they don’t share your interests or opinions or don’t agree with your hot takes. It’s so ironic to me that we’re constantly told to “live and let live”, but that the sentiment immediately goes out the window if an opinion doesn’t 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 else’s feelings around the topic; not doing so doesn’t make us anything. It just makes us people with their own opinions, which, newsflash, are as valid as yours. And if you can’t sit with that, it’s not really on us to help you with your emotion processing by staying quiet or confirming your needs.

It’s honestly the fastest way to alienate people to use emotionally loaded language like “killjoy”, “horrible” or anything along those lines (it’s the attempt to shut down any discussion and control/manipulate the narrative by othering: “We are the fun ones, you are so dreary.” Or, “We are so kind™️ and care so much about XYZ, you disagree with that view, so by extension, that makes you unkind.” I’m 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 else’s).

It’s not new though, so why are we surprised, friend…

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.

#capital F fandom has done it again #the quickest way to alienate people is to tell them what they’re supposed to like #or that they are killjoys just because they don’t like what you like #or don’t see things the way you do despite giving quite good reasons for their own take #also prev tags:#don't force your opinions on others you'll do must the opposite of what you want to achieve #friendly advice #don't do this

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writing-for-life · 19 hours

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“You can’t get through it till you feel it.” Beautifully said.

Hello,

This is a serious post. It deals with Death and Grief and if you’re not ready to read about Death and Grief, that’s 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 don’t want to see that, it’s 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 wasn’t 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 don’t know all the details. I know they said there might be fluid leaking from her liver, and they gave her lasiks and pain killers. (I’m sure there was more to it.) Then they sent her home. She didn’t 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 couldn’t 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 wasn’t allowed to.

Neil Gaiman is my favorite author, and I hadn’t 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. It’s 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, “People Die. You get over it. It’s part of Life.”

Orpheus’ entire story is about how he refused to accept his love’s 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. It’s 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, “well that sucks,” and then made an inappropriate joke that made Death laugh and then maybe she flirted with Death a little, because that’s 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 hadn’t 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 didn’t 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 couldn’t 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,

“Be careful picking favorites, cause they all end up as bones.”

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 didn’t 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 aren’t ready to die, they have so much to do. When he is saved by another character’s sacrifice, he says,

“We know life is fleeting, we know we live side by side with death, even then, we wish to live.”

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 couldn’t 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 doesn’t feel like relief in the moment. It doesn’t feel like you’re letting out the steam, it feels like an explosion. But, you can’t get through it till you feel it.

This is why the, “This is a celebration of life, they wouldn’t want you to cry,” funerals don’t work.

It just means everyone bottles it up goes home and cries alone.

I still can’t 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 can’t reschedule, it’s just all canceled. No rain-check.

I think if I suppressed all that, and bottled it up, I would never recover. I’m glad the universe isn’t allowing me to bottle it up.

I just wish it didn’t 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.

#I’m so sorry for your loss OP #but this is so beautifully written I had to share it #because it also shows the power of catharsis #and why media can help us to process grief if we allow it to #if we engage with the deep feelings and sit with them instead of running away from them #i wish you all the best #coping with grief #grief #the sandman #art and grief

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writing-for-life · 20 hours

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This isn’t 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

#it’s more subtle than that #your own feelings and opinions get framed as unkind just because they don’t validate someone else’s #and no one wants to be ‘mean’ right?#or your own emotional landscape gets framed as in stark contrast to ‘the fandom’ and ‘its needs’#just because you don’t have problems to sit with discomfort and are actually able to process it without making it everyone else’s problem #and everyone else’s problem = let’s turn fanon into canon #and shoehorn interpretations into something that can only be seen through one lens (that lens usually involves a ship ofc)

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writing-for-life · 1 day

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Death and Dream—Mike Dringenberg

#the sandman #sandman #dream of the endless #morpheus #death of the endless #sandman x art #sandman art #mike dringenberg #queue crew

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writing-for-life · 1 day

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Destiny—Bobby Breed

#the sandman #sandman #destiny of the endless #bobby breed #sandman art #queue crew

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writing-for-life · 2 days

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Dearest,

I wonder, how much affects Dream the DAY dreaming of humans and what’s the amount of influence Desire has on it?!

Thank you in advance for answering my question.

J

Hello friend 👋🏻

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 it—perhaps it’s best called “striving”?

But I guess that’s 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 doesn’t because he is unreality—that’s why it tires him so and nearly destroys him, that’s 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 attempt—he didn’t make it in the other two (put them in that get-along-shirt is what I’m 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 didn’t even have a tag on Ao3 until I created it 😤

I have a whole meta about her (or rather H/hope in the Sandman) in the making. Because she’s important, she doesn’t stop existing after the reset because her spirit prevails, right into Exiles.

I said what I said 😉

So to bring this to a conclusion: Those two idiots could actually be a dream team if they’d get over themselves. They go hand in hand, but they’re also distinct. And the same could be said for (day)dreams and desires. They’re distinct, but they can also bleed into each other.

@klarahimmeltheendless ask answered

#the sandman #sandman #dream of the endless #morpheus #desire of the endless #hope beautiful lost nebula #sandman meta #sandman overture #overture sandman #ask answered #send me asks #sandman spoilers #sandman overture spoilers #sandman bookclub

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writing-for-life · 2 days

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More Sandman S2 Casting News!

And I’m wondering:

Who are Prime Minister Zewde and Lawrence ‘Laurie’ Webb? 🤔

And I’ll stop wondering straightaway…

#the sandman #sandman #the sandman netflix #netflix the sandman #sandman netflix #netflix sandman #sandman season 2 #sandman s2

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writing-for-life · 2 days

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Morpheus—Vince Locke

#the sandman #sandman #dream of the endless #morpheus #sandman x art #sandman art #vince locke #queue crew

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writing-for-life · 2 days

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Dream & Matthew—David Hitchcock

#the sandman #dream of the endless #sandman #morpheus #matthew the raven #sandman art #david hitchcock #queue crew

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writing-for-life · 2 days

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Despair—Jonathan Case

#the sandman #sandman #despair of the endless #jonathan case #pen and ink #sandman art #sandman x art #queue crew

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writing-for-life · 3 days

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There’s something slightly unsettling about your mentioning the words “helm” and “fucking” in the same sentence, my lord.

You are aware of what they say about Murphy and his Cool Hat on here, right?

my helm isn’t a fucking bong mervyn

#the sandman #dream of the endless #sandman #morpheus #muhulhu #murphy and his cool hat #queue crew

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writing-for-life · 3 days

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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:

“I 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 too”

The construction of it in literary terms, and also the use of allegory and metaphor. It’s 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 ‘nother 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 🤣) with me…

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 you’re new(ish) to the fandom! 🤗

I’m sorry I broke your heart—much more heartbreak to come I fear if you haven’t read the comics yet, so I’ll 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. It’s 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 it’s far more subtle than in the show). I’ve 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 don’t 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 that—sympathise off the bat. You will lose an audience pretty quickly if they don’t care about the protagonist and the universe he moves in, and you can’t be as nuanced about it as you can be in a written work. We’re talking about streaming services thinking about profits here, even if people don’t 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 don’t 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):

“The Lord of Dreams learns that one must change or die, and makes his decision.”

And I think some people might have wrongly taken that for an either/or thing. I don’t want to say too much at this point because I don’t know how much you know (if you’d like spoilers or already know how it ends, let me know, I’ll 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 isn’t true), he denies he can change. Or at least he thinks he perhaps cannot change enough (it’s actually hard to write about this without giving everything away, help! 🙈).

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, it’s usually with, well, let’s say varying results, and that’s putting it mildly. Personally, I’d say he has problems relating to his feelings, but that doesn’t mean he doesn’t feel. Quite the opposite in my view. He holds the collective unconscious—all unprocessed feelings and whatever else floats around in that collective mess, and it’s 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 doesn’t consume him. But that also means denying himself the feelings that are linked to his own personhood (if you want to call it that). There’s Dream of the Endless, and then there’s Morpheus. And while they’re one and the same and inseparable, Morpheus is also the “point of view”. 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 “The Sound of her Wings”: 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. That’s not someone who doesn’t feel.

I don’t know if this answers your questions at all—I was doing the wild “spoiler-free” dance 🤣 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 haven’t already. The headers pretty much explain what they’re 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

#the sandman #sandman #dream of the endless #morpheus #sandman meta #sandman book club

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