An hour-long special released a few days after the first season of The Sandman (2022) finished up. Adapting half of the comic’s third volume, Dream Country, it has two parts; one animated, another live-action, but both with different stories to tell.
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The episode as a whole
- Anthology: Unlike earlier examples in the series, this episode doesn’t even try to hide that this episode is two Single Issue-Stories put together.
- Defiant Captive: The Prophet and Calliope both disagree with their "owners" that they have any right to violate them the way they do.
- Extra-Long Episode: The episode runs slightly over an hour, instead of the usual 45-ish minutes. In effect, it's a regular episode ("Calliope"), with a short animated story ("A Dream of a Thousand Cats") included as a bonus.
- Humans Are Not the Dominant Species: Both stories are about the subject of humans dominating another species that they may have no business dominating: cats and gods.
A Dream of A Thousand Cats
"Justice is a delusion. Wisdom has no place here either. But revelation... that is the province of Dream, if your heart is strong and you are not afraid."
— The Skull Bird
In a special Animated Episode, we follow a kitten journeying to pay audience to a Siamese cat's sermon about the feline's true place in the world, and the odyssey this cat took when she fell asleep and had a peculiar dream one night...
"A Dream of A Thousand Cats" contains examples of:
- Adaptational Dye-Job:
- In the comic, The Kitten was a white cat (probably a Turkish Angora). Here, she's a tabby.
- All the humans in the Prophet's vision of the old times have dark hair, including the Golden-Haired Man (though he's still listed as such in the credits, presumably because that's the name used in the script).
- Ambiguous Situation: Its unclear if the story Dream tells the Prophet is actually true, or just a comforting lie meant to help her process the death of her children and give her the strength to continue living. Given the nature of how the Prophet seeks to change the world, it's possible that the story isn't true yet.
- Animated Episode: This episode is animated as it follows a cat's journey in her dream.
- Appeal to Inherent Nature: The reason the Shorthair believes the Prophet's world will never come; it's simply not in cats' nature to do as they are told.
- Appearance Is in the Eye of the Beholder: As has been seen before, the Endless appear in different forms depending on who is looking at them. In this episode, Morpheus appears to a dreaming cat as a large feline.
- Art Shift: "A Dream of a Thousand Cats" is animated, in a style that very much resembles the original comic.
- Badass Boast: The Prophet, when the guardians of Dream's castle (here a cave) try to stop her.I've come too far to be turned away! I will state my business to the one I came to see, and only to him. I am a cat. I keep my own counsel.
- Blue-and-Orange Morality: While saddened by the cold-hearted murder of her kittens, Prophet doesn't so much take issue with the fact that at least one of her humans is evil, as with the fact that humans in fact have the power to murder kittens by virtue of being the dominant species. She seeks not to punish them, but to make it so cats are the dominant species.
- Beware the Nice Ones: The Kitten's owners coo over how cute their Kitten is when it's dreaming, not knowing it's dreaming of hunting and eating humans.
- Cassandra Truth: Lampshaded when The Shorthair points out that despite The Prophet's conviction, getting a thousand cats to do anything at the same time, much less have the same dream, would be all but impossible because of their nature.
- Cats Are Mean: In the supposed old world where cats were the dominant species, humans were their servants and would often be hunted by their masters.
- Clap Your Hands If You Believe: What The Prophet is requesting of her audiences - if enough cats dream at the same time then they shall be able to create a world where they are no longer subordinate to humans and can be free from the cruelty and abuse.
- Continuity Nod: The breakfast cereal the humans are eating in the final scene has the brand "Kincaid's", presumably a product of the Kincaid Sugar company that Unity's family made their money from.
- Cosmic Retcon: This is what happened to the world ruled by cats: the humans' dreams didn't just change things so that humans now held power over cats. It changed things so that humans had always held power over cats.
- Creator Cameo: Neil Gaiman voices the Skull Bird that greets The Prophet when she enters the Dreaming. Doubles over to Remake Cameo since he uses the exact same vaguely more airy voice he uses when playing The Narrator in the Audible Sandman (and also when narrating his audio books) than he uses in interviews and presumably real life.
- Creepy Crows: The Skull Bird is a crow except that its entire head, upper neck and parts of its rib-cage are devoid of flesh, leaving only exposed bone. It offers The Prophet directions to the King of Cats (aka Dream) but warns about the lethal dangers that bar her path.
- Death of a Child: Or children in this case - The Prophet was spurred into turning against humans after her previous owner found out that she had given birth to a litter. Disappointed to find she had birthed half-breed kittens and finding no use for them, he tied the kittens in a bag and drowned them. This was what caused The Prophet to realize humans were the superior species, not cats.
- Determinator: The Prophet will continue to preach her message to every cat until the day she dies, as long as any are willing to listen to her message. During her dream quest, too, she continued on her path despite temptation to turn aside and even when she no longer remembered why the quest was so important.
- Drowning Unwanted Pets: After the Prophet had moggie kittens with a stray cat, her owner, furious that he couldn't sell them for much, drowned them.
- Earth Is Young: According to the Prophet's vision, the world as we know it was created quite recently by the dreaming of the humans in the previous world; it's clearly shown coming into existence as the modern world, with cities and automobiles. It's billions of years old, but it's only been billions of years old for a few decades at most.
- Elephant Graveyard: The Prophet awakens in the Dreaming at the crest of a hill surrounded by the skulls of numerous animals and humans.
- Environmental Symbolism: Prophet holds the meeting in a human graveyard.
- Formula-Breaking Episode: For starters, this episode is animated instead of in live-action. And instead of any human protagonists, this story is told from a cat’s perspective.
- Gallows Humor: One of the memories Dream shows The Prophet is of a cat tossing a human into the air and catching it repeatedly, before killing it to end the game. At the end of the episode, the movements The Kitten is making mirror this exactly.
- Grey-and-Gray Morality: The Prophet is correct that cats are often mistreated by humans, but in the cat world it's not as if they were any kinder to humans. Further complicating this is that the humans in the kitten's household, contrasting the Prophet's former owners that only cared about her for her purebreed status, seem affectionate and caring towards her.
- Heartbroken Badass: The Prophet lost her mixed-breed kittens because of a callous owner, then embarked on a quest through The Dreaming which took so long (subjectively) she lost and then regained her sense of self. After learning the truth of how things used to be and waking, she leaves her home and travels the world to tell other cats about it, trying to get them to change things back.
- Hope Spot: One for the cats, one for the humans:
- After the end of The Prophet's speech, the other cats begin to drift away. The Kitten steels herself, then approaches The Prophet and declares that she believes the story.
- When taking the Kitten home, the Shorthair reflects that cats are far too contrarian to ever do what they're told, even if it means paradise for them (the other cats reacting with indifference to the Prophet's words support this).
- Hulk Speak: Played with; the cats refer to doors and windows as "wall openings" and "clear openings".
- Humans Are Bastards: The Prophet has this opinion, understandable, since her owners only cared about her purebred status and killed her kittens. Then again, in the world where cats ruled, they weren't any better, maybe even worse, since the Kitten's owners seem to be genuinely loving, whereas we only see cats use humans as toys and prey.
- Kick the Dog: The Prophet's male owner drowned her kittens because they were half-breeds with a random stray cat, as opposed to dropping them off at a shelter, which is what makes her want to restore a world where cats are on top.
- Mega Neko: According to the Prophet's vision, there was once a primordial time long ago where cats were much larger than humans, towering over them and treating the tinier people as playthings and prey. The cats in the episode are depicted as equivalent to the size of elephants compared to humans.
- Panthera Awesome: Dream appears to The Prophet as a gigantic, black feline similar to a panther or jaguar but with glowing yellow eyes.
- Parental Abandonment: Implied with Prophet, who says she can't remember her mother, and vows to do better with her own kittens. That said, as she is a purebreed cat, it's likely she was taken from her mother as a kitten to be sold.
- Reality Warper: According to both the Golden-Haired Man in the old world and The Prophet, as few as a thousand individuals dreaming the same dream would be enough to literally change the way the world always was.
- Remake Cameo: Some voice actors carry over from the previously released Audible adaptation of The Sandman.
- James McAvoy, who portrayed Dream himself, plays the Golden-Haired Man.
- Michael Sheen and David Tennant had minor roles as Lucifer and Loki respectively, and voice Paul and Don (respectively the Prophet's human owner and the Kitten's) in this episode.
- Neil Gaiman himself, who narrated the text boxes and who described the art, shows up as the Skull Bird.
- Retconjuration: How dream-changing reality works, according to its king. Without really involving time-travel, a thousand or so individuals dreaming the same thing at the same time can change the past so that the dream was always true.
- This Is Reality: When the Kitten eagerly asks The Shorthair if he thinks things will happen as The Prophet said, he points out that it would be impossible to persuade a thousand cats to do anything at the same time, let alone dream.
- What Measure Is a Non-Human?: The Prophet is shocked that her humans would murder her babies, and though the woman expresses some empathy, the man acts callous about it.
Calliope
Calliope: "Writers are liars."
Richard: "Not all of us. Just one book. Please?"
Richard Madoc is an author and professor who has one successful novel under his belt, but has struggled to write anything since. He seeks the advice of fellow writer Erasmus Fry, who while researching a book in Greece came across something that would help him write again. Well, not something, but someone.
"Calliope" contains examples of:
- Adaptational Badass: In the comic book story, Calliope's spirit has been crushed and she's pretty much resigned to her fate, whereas in this version she puts up more of a fight against Fry and Madoc; after the first time Richard violates her, there's a scratch on his cheek showing how she fought back. She also doesn't blame herself for Fry capturing her.
- Adaptational Modesty: In the original comics, Calliope was kept naked and scenes where Madoc violates her for his inspiration are shown on page. Here, we are mercifully spared these; Calliope is dressed in a shift for most of the story, and we only see the wounds Calliope left on Richard after he assaults her.
- Adaptational Personality Change: Richard in the TV version is in a sense 'nicer' than his comic book counterpart, expressing hesitation about enslaving Calliope, making several fumbling attempts to coax her to help him before he becomes desperate enough to resort to force, and afterwards repeatedly trying to persuade her that there are upsides to her situation. In contrast, the comic book version of Richard goes for the forceful option immediately and is brutally, even sometimes cheerfully, straightforward in his interactions with her. This doesn't alter the fact that TV Richard's actions are just as cruel in effect, and arguably in places crueller, since he's not only keeping Calliope captive and exploiting her but also trying to make her complicit in his attempts to reassure himself that he's not really that kind of person (unlike Comic Richard, who's accepted the choices he's made and doesn't care what Calliope thinks of him).
- Amicable Exes: Despite Calliope's insistence that neither she nor Dream can forgive each other for the pain they caused, he doesn't hesitate to assist her once he's able, even noting that his pain has been "nothing compared to yours". When she later floats the idea of getting together to talk, however, he points out their prior relationship was a disaster, and it would probably be best if they gave it a little more time due to their recent traumas. She concedes the point.
- And I Must Scream: Dream punishes Richard for his crimes against Calliope by overwhelming him with inspiration, the ideas for stories coming at him faster than he can get them out, leaving him to write them in paragraphs on the walls in his own blood. After he frees Calliope, the opposite occurs when his head is so empty of ideas, he can't even remember anyone's name.
- Armor-Piercing Response: Calliope initially believes that Dream's anger toward Richard and vow to take vengeance is because Dream himself considers her 'his'. To her surprise, he quickly disabuses her of this notion, even implying that he won't go after Richard without her permission.Dream: I cannot allow him to go free.Calliope: Why? Because I was once yours?Dream: ...Because he hurt you.
- Batman Gambit: It's implied that Calliope intended for Richard to catch her invoking Morpheus, as when he burns the "letter" she wrote with his name on it, a purplish smoke puffs from the chimney.
- Be Careful What You Wish For: Richard protests that he can't free Calliope because without her, he'll have no ideas. Dream sidesteps this quite adroitly.Dream: She has been held captive for more than sixty years. Demeaned. Abused. Defiled. And you will not set her free because you need ideas? Well, if it's ideas you want, then you shall have them. In abundance.
- Bookends:
- Richard begins the story with no ideas, and by the end of the episode he is once more without them...forever.
- With this story, the season ends as it began, with an anthropomorphic personification imprisoned by mortals.
- Broken Pedestal: Downplayed; Nora, the medical student fan from the first scene, is the one who Richard sends to free Calliope. She's disturbed by his words, but thinks he's perhaps suffering a psychotic episode. Instead of learning the truth, however, when she goes to his house she finds nothing there, since all Richard had needed to do was say that he freed Calliope, which he did as he rambled. Being told to free a captive woman and finding a locked room containing just a book about a captive woman merely results in the understanding he's delusional instead of a captor and rapist.
- Call-Back: Calliope learns that Dream is free thanks to spotting a front page news story about Unity, the last surviving victim of the Sleeping Sickness, finally waking up.
- Couldn't Find a Pen: After Dream's visit, Richard now has too many plots and needs a way to get them out. Cut to Nora and her friend finding Richard muttering to himself on the stairs, his hands lacerated open. One flight above, paragraphs of words are written in dripping blood.
- "Could Have Avoided This!" Plot: Calliope strongly implies that she would be willing to give Richard the inspiration that he's asking for if he were to let her go, but he doesn't take the hint and elects to take her inspiration by force instead.
- Death by Irony: Erasmus Fry collected bezoars which are said to have healing properties and in particular are supposed to help those who have been poisoned. He later killed himself via poisoning (or by trying to prove the efficacy of one of his bezoars).
- Did You Actually Believe...?: Erasmus Fry mocks Calliope as naive when she reminds him that he promised to free her once his career was over.
- Exact Words:
- Asked where he gained his ability to write female characters so well, Richard states that it comes "from the women in [his] life." For obvious reasons, he does not elaborate that this means "from the ancient poetry goddess that I'm keeping locked up in my house."
- When Calliope asks Dream to stop punishing Richard by flooding his mind with ideas, Dream takes her at her word and starts punishing him by instead taking away Richard's ability to even have ideas.
- Fantasy-Forbidding Father: Nora admits that she wanted to be a writer, but her parents insisted she go to medical school so she'd have a lucrative "fall back" career if writing didn't work out for her. Richard says they were right.
- Fingore: When Dream gives Richard more ideas than he can manage to write down on paper, he resorts to cutting his hands and writing on the wall in his own blood.
- Forced Creativity: Morpheus' punishment for Richard is to overwhelm his mind with so many ideas that he's left a wreck, scribbling in blood on the walls in a desperate attempt to write them down.
- Foreshadowing:
- The first sentence spoken in the episode is Richard telling his audience: "You can't force a character to do something just because it's easier for you as a writer." If he had been willing to accept that the same applies to Muses, he could have avoided a lot of trouble.
- The Three-In-One tell Calliope that Dream has also been imprisoned. Two years later, she sees a newspaper article about people suffering from a sleep disorder waking up, and realizes that means Dream has been freed.
- Freeze-Frame Bonus:
- Most of Richard’s autocomplete searches are for porn sites.
- He's also seen browsing through Tinder on his phone while pondering on what to do with Calliope.
- Gender Flip:
- The character who delivers Madoc the bezoar in the beginning of the story, and helps him when he's gone mad towards the end, is a male doctor named Felix in the comic book. Here, it's a female medical student named Nora who does those things.
- The interviewer who makes a connection between Madoc's writing and Fry's, and gives Madoc the news of Fry's death, was male in the comic. Here, it's a different female interviewer.
- Genre-Busting: In-Universe. We never get any specifics on the novel Richard wrote with Calliope's "help", but all we know is that it defies conventional categories and it reads completely different from his first book.
- Hope Spot:
- Richard telling Fry he isn't sure he can go through with enslaving Calliope. This causes her face to subtly flicker with intrigue, clearly wondering if maybe this new captor will be more open to reason then her previous one. The rest of the episode shows that no, he's just as bad and she'll have to contact Dream if she wants to get out.
- Calliope is overjoyed when the Three In One appear before her, thinking she's finally about to be freed — only for her joy to be quickly crushed when they gently but firmly tell her that they can't help her.
- Humans Are the Real Monsters: Calliope and Morpheus are two divine beings that exist to protect and inspire man but find themselves imprisoned and abused by the very people they're intended to help.
- Hypocrite: At the release party for his latest novel, Richard hits on a woman by saying he regards himself as "a feminist writer". When asked for his literary influences, he names all female authors. When casting for a movie, he insists that 50% of the crew be female. This is all while knowing his success is due to imprisoning and raping a goddess. What's more, Richard barely acknowledges Calliope as a person despite claiming to write nuanced female characters; he's shocked when he finds out Calliope was once married and had a son, to which Calliope replies that he knows nothing about her.
- Implied Rape: No one ever says the word, but Fry tells Richard that if wooing Calliope doesn't help, "force" is another option. When Richard's patience runs out, the episode cuts from him knocking at Calliope's door to him feverishly writing with a scratch on his cheek, implying Calliope tried to fight him off and failed. Dream also says that Calliope has been "defiled".
- Jerkass Gods: Zigzagged; when Calliope summons The Three-In-One and begs for their help, they tell her that because she was lawfully bound, they can't interfere. When she protests that there must be someone who can help her, The Crone mentions The Endless, but snarks that they're "having a difficult time of late", referencing both the Prodigal abandoning his responsibilities and Dream's imprisonment. However, they quickly move into straight-up Jerkass territory when The Crone recounts the history of Orpheus, reminding Calliope that her son was murdered. On the other hand, they do drop some hints that later lead her to being able to call Dream for help.
- Karmic Protection: Dream decides a fitting punishment for Calliope's enslavement is to ensure that Richard have ideas "in abundance". This leads to Richard's brain nearly overloading with story concepts that he can't get out fast enough, even trying to write on concrete with bleeding fingertips. Calliope eventually calls it off by saying that he did live up to his promise to free her, even if unwillingly, so Dream lifts his enchantment, putting Richard back where he was at the beginning of the episode.
- Kubrick Stare: During Dream's first conversation with Calliope, he lowers his gaze while asking her to let him help, but when she asks what he plans to do to Richard, he looks up, instantly converting his contrite expression into a menacing Kubrick stare.
- Loophole Abuse:
- The Three-In-One can't free Calliope because she is lawfully bound, but they can give her hints about who is capable of freeing her (Morpheus) and when she'll be able to reach him (when the sleeping sickness ends, which means that he's escaped).
- Similarly, Dream can't simply break the contract binding her, but he can make Richard's life a living hell until he does it himself.
- Magically-Binding Contract: Fry's binding ritual forces Calliope to serve him (and later Richard), though she isn't actually compelled to share her gifts and only does that under duress. Still, it's referred to as a contract and can't be broken, even by Dream. He gets around this by giving Richard no choice but to break it himself, tormenting him with boundless inspiration.
- Might Makes Right: Fry's rationale for forcing Calliope to serve him. He did the research which let him locate and bind her, so rightfully, she and her gifts belong to him.
- The Mirror Shows Your True Self: When Calliope is visited by the Three-In-One, there are several shots where one of the Three is standing in front of, or walking past, the room's mirror, which shows one of her other aspects in the reflection.
- The Muse: In this case, one of the actual Muses from Greek mythology becomes the source of a writer's inspiration. Specifically Calliope, the muse of epic poetry.
- Muse Abuse: A depressingly literal version of this trope, as Erasmus and eventually Richard hurt Calliope in order to write their books. Again it's not directly stated or depicted, but implied that both men sexually assault Calliope to gain inspiration.
- My Skull Runneth Over: To punish Richard for hurting Calliope, Dream curses him to have ideas "in abundance". Sure enough he gets them... way too many for his body and brain to keep up with. He's reduced to desperately scribbling them on the walls, even in his own blood.
- Mythology Gag: Richard's burning a piece of paper with 'Morpheus' written on it summoning Dream is a reference to how Rose Walker summoned Dream in the comic during "A Doll's House": Fiddler's Green had given her a similar paper and told her to read it if she was in danger; when she did, Morpheus heard her and appeared instantly.
- Nice Job Fixing It, Villain: Richard burns the piece of paper Calliope had written 'Morpheus' on. Dream later implies this is what got his attention.
- Oblivious Guilt Slinging: Richard looks bothered after being told that Erasmus committed suicide after being unable to get his favorite book republished. After handing over Calliope, Erasmus had asked Richard to arrange this as a favor should he be successful. It's clear that Richard had forgotten all about it.
- Oh, Crap!: Several.
- Calliope gets this look on her face when The Mother mentions that The Endless are still around, quickly revealed to be because she knows how badly things ended between her and Dream.
- Richard has this reaction when he walks into his house and sees Dream sitting in his chair. He's more annoyed than scared, at first, assuming Dream to be some random intruder, but he quickly changes his tune when Dream starts speaking and everything about him exudes barely-contained rage.
- This is soon followed by Calliope telling him the terrifying person he just met is her ex-husband and the father of her child.
- And then at a book reading, Richard begins reeling off concepts for new books (which, to be fair, sound pretty interesting), only to then see Dream watching from the back of the room. Then it quickly dawns on him that he can't stop.
- Paper Destruction of Anger: When Richard catches Calliope writing what he believes to be a letter to Morpheus, he rips the paper up, throws the pieces in the fire, and declares that she is his and no one, not even the Lord of Dreams, can take her from him.
- Pragmatic Adaptation: In the comic, the progress of Richard's career after he writes his second novel is shown in a montage of many brief scenes, most only a panel or two long. In the TV version, these are condensed into fewer, longer scenes, and several events that were in other locations in the comic, including the book launch and the interview where Madoc learns about Fry's death, take place in Madoc's house to reduce the number of locations required. Madoc is also in the same house all the way through, unlike in the comic where he moves to a larger and more impressive house after his career takes off.
- Protective Charm: Erasmus Fry collects bezoars which are believed to have mystic, protective power. Probably for the best since he has imprisoned and sexually assaulted a goddess for over several decades.
- Race Lift:
- In the comic, Calliope was a blonde Caucasian. Here, she's played by Greek-Canadian actress Melissanthi Mahut.
- The doctor who helps Madoc at the beginning and end, and the interviewer who remembers Fry, are both white men in the comic. The equivalent characters in the episode are both women of colour.
- Rape and Revenge: The story provides a reconstruction of the trope. Calliope has been imprisoned and repeatedly raped by Richard Madoc (and the late Erasmus Fry before him) to exploit her powers of inspiration. When Morpheus comes to her aid, he swears he will make Madoc pay for what he did. Calliope, however, emphasizes that she just wants to be freed, with the focus being more on Morpheus helping rescue Calliope than avenging her; that said, Morpheus' way of doing this does involve psychologically torturing Madoc until he releases her. In the end, Calliope asks Morpheus to let Madoc go so that she can move on and heal. Morpheus isn't completely happy but does as she asks. Both also express a wish to inspire humanity to be better so this doesn't happen again. Madoc does still receive a long-term punishment given he's left with no new ideas at all once Calliope is free, though this is a more a side effect of his own bad decisions (he could've freed Calliope as both she and Morpheus requested but selfishly refused).
- Rape Discretion Shot: The comic famously showed a rather disturbing scene of Richard raping Calliope. Here, he knocks on her door, the scene fades to black, and when we next see him, he's furiously writing...with a scratch on his left cheek from where she fought him.
- Redemption Rejection: Though the situation clearly enrages him, Dream is mindful of Calliope saying she doesn't want Richard hurt, only for him to free her, and is reluctant to punish the man if he'll just do so. It's only when Richard refuses that Dream stops playing nice.
- Remake Cameo: Like the previous story, this episode features an actor who previously played a role in the Audible adaptation of the comic. Richard is played by Arthur Darvill who played William Shakespeare.
- Screw the Rules, I Have Money!: Averted. Richard tries to invoke his fame and fortune to convince Morpheus to back off, but the Lord of Dreams is deeply unimpressed.
- Shout-Out: Madoc's first novel, which he's seen signing near the beginning, is titled The Cabaret of Dr. Caligari.
- Significant Wardrobe Shift: Calliope spends most of the episode in a grey silk slip, with her hair hanging freely. After she's freed, she's wearing a peplos (an ancient greek gown) and her hair is braided.
- Take That!: The character of Richard Madoc is a scathing rebuke against media figures who publicly champion feminism while simultaneously shamelessly exploiting women in their personal and professional circles.
- Tempting Fate: Richard finds Calliope trying to summon Dream and stops her, then declares that "The God of Dreams can't save you". It doesn't take long until he finds out how wrong he is.
- That Man Is Dead: Calliope notes that previously, Dream most likely would have ignored her plea. Dream, who just spent the first season getting humbled by coming to terms with his previous actions and attitude, reassures her that he no longer hates her or blames her for what happened to their son.
- Time Skip: The episode starts in August 2018, then moves forward to August 2020, then to August 2022, when Dream is freed and the series proper begins.
- Tranquil Fury: This episode shows, more than any of the rest of the season, why it is not a good idea to go after someone Dream cares about; he's clearly enraged by what's happened to Calliope, and devises a particularly nasty punishment for Richard because of it. Even though he doesn't know who this man is, Richard is immediately cowed by Dream's demeanor.
- Trespassing to Talk: Richard is startled to arrive home and find Morpheus sitting at Richard's writing desk. Richard initially threatens to call the police, then fears Morpheus will call the police, and then becomes frightened and desperate when he realizes that Morpheus is likely not human.
- Unwitting Instigator of Doom: Madoc's agent Larry calls him to tell him about how the publishers are getting impatient with his lack of progress. This causes the previously indecisive and reluctant Madoc to finally take Calliope's inspiration, which devolves into him eagerly embracing the gains of exploiting her.
- Villain Protagonist: Richard Madoc. While initially reluctant to take Calliope from Erasmus and use her to write his next book, he becomes desperate enough to forcefully steal inspiration from her (which, while not stated, means he sexually assaults Calliope to do so). Richard drops his promise to eventually release Calliope altogether and continues to repeatedly abuse her, judging by the subsequent books he releases.
- Violently Protective Girlfriend: Gender-Inverted (and they're separated, if still quite loving) but Dream teaches Richard the hard way what he does to people who mess with Calliope.
- What Measure Is a Non-Human?: Both Eramus Fry and Richard Madoc try to use this as a justification for their horrific treatment of Calliope. It just makes them even more loathsome and unsympathetic, that they don't even recognize Calliope as a person. Highlighted when Richard insists that Calliope was "made" to inspire humanity, completely ignoring her objection that she and her sisters were born like any other being, and the fact that forcefully stealing the inspiration from her renders calling it a "gift" moot. When Richard confronts Calliope after being threatened by Dream, he's floored when she tells him that Dream is her former husband and the father of her son, pathetically saying that he didn't know she had children.
- "What Now?" Ending: Dream asks Calliope this after she's freed, and she says she'll work to ensure slavery is no longer tolerated by inspiring people to want better than that.
- Writer's Block: Richard Madoc has written a book that was well received but is struggling with his sophomore effort. He's particularly stressed because he has already accepted and spent the book advance money, obligating him to provide a book or be sued by his publishers.
- You Have GOT to Be Kidding Me!: Calliope's face is just screaming this when Richard says that perhaps "they" will decide to move to L.A. together, and she doesn't hesitate to remind him that she's his prisoner, not his creative partner.
- You Have No Idea Who You're Dealing With: Richard says "Do you have any idea who I am?" when he finds Morpheus waiting in his house. Morpheus responds that he knows exactly who and what Richard Madoc is and exactly how to deal with him, which puts Richard in his place.
