The Sandman

I know that. I'm talking about the joke, not the actual reason why she received the vision.

Edited by Wyldchyld on Aug 28th 2022 at 7:55:24 AM

I would like to note that after watching the Calliope episode, I was suddenly able to write more of a fic I had a block on for months now. Thank you freed Calliope.

It's Kassandra from AC: Assassins Creed too.

I like how they went with a very Hellenistic looking woman versus the blonde 80s looking girl in the comic.

I've been seeing the scene where Jed confronts Rose and Morpheus getting shared on Twitter a lot recently, and I have to agree with the general consensus that Tom does a great job of portraying Morpheus being genuinely but subtly amused at the silliness of the situation.

Edited by Willbyr on Sep 1st 2022 at 11:50:36 AM

Tom does a really great job of pulling the humor of Morpheus out in a way the comics can't. Being able to tell when he's being sarcastic or snarky really makes the character fuller.

It's only a look but there's actually a great bit of subtle humor when Calliope said "The old you would have left me rot."

Its a look that says, "Why is it everyone keeps saying I was such an enormous asshole?"

For all that there's (fairly understandable) criticism that Morpheus as a character is a bit stoic and bland compared to... Pretty much everyone else... Sturridge does make him considerably more human (and humane) and likeable than the blank slate cipher of the comics at the same relative point in time.

It is fairly subtle which given Morpheus is a cosmic being makes sense but hes much more fun than the comics Morpheus who was do remote it was hard to care at all.

Finally watched all of it.

Overall, very strong show and a great adaptation. Corinthian and Fiddler's Green were truly fantastic casting, with Corinthian confidently putting the entire show in his backpocket and walking off to the tune of The Big Bad Wolf (probably my favorite original song intervention in this season).

Stray observations:

• First half is stronger than the second, which is amusing in that The Doll's House is a much stronger arc than Preludes and Nocturnes, but I think the show did more to enhance the qualities of the latter than the former. Dee in particular got rehauled to something much more interesting while the latter ended up sidelining some of my favorite characters.
• Fiddler's Green and Lyta Hall ended up choking one another out for screentime a tad, I felt (which is a shame as Fiddler's Green is one of my favorite characters). The changes to the latter's story generally making her much more sane and balanced than her comic self (who was clearly a woman in a downward spiral of sanity from the word go) are going to make future developments a lot trickier and might remove a lot of the teeth from her future arc.
• The CGI can be very hit or miss, although it's usually "hit".
• Lucifer's great.
• The Oldest Game ends up a little funny here as in the source material the point is explicitly made that one loses the game when they hesitate to come up with a immediate response, but this version adds a lot of dramatic pauses from both parties (on account of them physically reacting to the scenarios proposed). Great adaptation though.
• About the Endless: Despair looks pretty terrible and they should consider rehauling her visual to her more grotesque comic self. Desire is a casting on pair with Corinthian and Fiddler's Green so far, just lacking in equivalent screentime. Death's pretty good, although I did find myself missing the striking "pale goth girl" visual. Dream's solid but at the same pace I also missed his starry eyes.
• Rose Walker's pretty good.

Will be looking forward to season 2 and meeting Delirium and Destiny.

According to spoilertv, Sandman is getting a second season.

How reliable is that site?

I'm afraid I don't know. I only got linked to it via an article on gizmodo.

I've been re-watching the series, and found myself pondering a bit over a scene in Episode 6. It's something I did spot the first time round, but wasn't sure how to interpret. In fact, this scene is one of the big reasons why I decided to re-watch the series.

When Death takes the baby, Dream is clearly far more disturbed by that moment than the other deaths. It stood out the first time as a good example of how good Tom Sturridge is at subtle emoting. I wasn't sure if that was just supposed to be because they wanted to handle the death of a baby differently, or whether it was supposed to be something more personal, tied in with Dream himself. I don't know the comics, so all the characters and plots are new for me. After the Calliope episode (which is where I learned about Orpheus for the first time), I came to the conclusion that the scene is supposed to be a bit of both. Something of the same happened in the scene where Hob tells him about the deaths of Eleanor and Robyn as well — he reacts more to that than anything else (other than Hob stating that he still thinks he has so much to live for).

The elements and hints they drop into episodes about things we learn later are very nicely done in this show. At least for the most part. The fact that Lyta's baby is clearly important for Dream's storyline was a bit of a sledgehammer (although I don't know why that baby will be important, so don't spoil that for me), but I think the show is fairly good with its set-up and foundations for future plots and characterisations.

Edited by Wyldchyld on Sep 9th 2022 at 10:46:25 AM

Lyta's child being important is .... complicated .... to say the absolute least, but also probably not really going to come up in the second season.

The funny thing is, this Dream being more, human I guess, isn't something that really applies in the comics. It's not to say that he doesn't care, but in the comics he is much much more inscrutable.

The thing that I thought was especially interesting about the baby scene was that in the comic, the baby actually speaks to Death in an adult way and is basically "That's all I get?!" The producers may have thought that trying to translate that into the TV show might've been too jarring for the audience.

Given Orpheus' eventual fate, the choice to have Tom be more emotive in those particular scenes may be a deliberate choice to be a subtle hint of deeply buried guilt on Morpheus' part.

That's putting it mildly. The resolution to his importance doesn't begin until near the end of the comic, although he does get one or two issues devoted to him before then which may get adapted if the show gets enough runtime.

To your second point - Morpheus in the comics is...well, he's a prick. Desire at one point says he's "stuffy, stupid, and thinks he knows everything", and while they're definitely biased, they're not too far off base. He's hidebound to the rules he's set for himself in how to run the Dreaming, and he's prideful to a fault, which means he can't tolerate a slight. If you actually offend him, at best he'll cut you out of his life with no hesitation or remorse, and at worst he'll do something like what he did to Nada.

Edited by Willbyr on Sep 9th 2022 at 3:44:33 AM

It's very telling that when it comes to the series vs. the comics portrayal that the show has arguably humanized him further than the comics ever did, at least for me.

Perhaps the best example of this is when Calliope tells him that his pre-imprisonment self would not have come to save her. In the show you can see he's slightly hurt by the statement, and you as the audience might be inclined to wonder "hunh, was he really like that?". In the comic your reaction to that as a reader is "oh yeah, 100%", and if Dream has any feelings about being told so, he doesn't express them.

Watched the first season last weekend. I loved it.

But I did kinda feel... uncomfortable and uncertain about the Doll's House arc.

Like, we set up that there's a Serial Killer convention. And it's cover is that it's a "Cereal" convention. Which seems... hilarious? And quirky? Like this is clearly intended to be amusing. And then we get the scenes about the individual panels and those are clearly intended to be rather amusing as well; like the women who are talking about being side-lined by the men in their industry... and their industry is obviously, y'know, murder.

But then it plays so much really heavy and horrifyingly straight that it felt really inconsistent? Like I felt so uncomfortable every time the pedophile character was on-screen. Every single time. Nothing is funny about this guy and I feel like the writing is trying to be *a little* funny about him but... nope. nope. nope.

I don't know how I'm supposed to feel here? Is this supposed to be dark comedy? Is it played straight? Which is it?

And then there's the snafu of the Jed? Ok, Jed full on sees Corinthian and the other killers murder someone in the basement. He runs off. He gets grabbed by the pedophile who tries to take him upstairs (nope.nope.nope.) which is also breaking the "shit where you eat" rule, but whatever. Rose runs into Jed and then... pedo creep inexplicably has a flip out and tries to murder them both leading to a chase through the halls (which, idiot but whatever). And then Corinthian murders the pedo in front of them.

Cut back to their hotel room and Jed isn't freaking out that he's seen not one but TWO murders at the hands of the Corinthian? Jed just doesn't care anymore. This isn't a problem? They didn't just watch a man die? It just never gets mentioned again?

Was this some weird adaptation stuff? Did something get removed making it all weird?

Unfortunately, the ending also kinda lost me a bit when it came to the Vortex problem. It's a problem I tend to have with a lot of Neil Gaiman works? He likes his deus ex machinas. We have a big climax going on and, whoop, no we don't. Unity Kincaid walks in and she can just take the vortex power from Rose and die instead. Because yay, disposable self-sacrificial old people?

It just bothers me because I thought the dramatic question we were setting up is if Dream could sacrifice a young girl who doesn't want to die and never wanted to be a vortex and do so for the good of the universe?

But the dramatic question and conflict doesn't get a resolution because Unity walks in. I realize that Rose probably has a role in the rest of the comics/S2 so they obviously couldn't kill her, but then I can't help but feel like Gaiman backed himself into a corner here... And it's not the first time I've felt like that with his writing before either.

You’re kind of missing the point of Rose and her role as the Vortex. There is no suspense in whether or not Morpheus was willing to kill Rose, because it’s mentioned earlier that Morpheus had already failed at some point in the past and let a Vortex fully manifest, which resulted in the destruction of an entire universe. The question, and the central conflict, was never if Morpheus had it in him to kill a young woman if it meant protecting reality itself. As shown in the scene itself, he very much was ready to kill her, even though it’s clear he didn’t relish in having to do so, and was already about to deal the killing blow when he was interrupted by Lucienne and Unity.

Then... I guess what was the point? Unity coming in and explaining that she can inexplicably take the Vortex power felt like a Makes It Easy moment.

Edited by InkDagger on Sep 9th 2022 at 10:33:27 AM

The entire thing is explained, both by Unity and Dream almost immediately after. Unity was originally supposed to be the Vortex, but due to the sleepy sickness after Morpheus got imprisoned, the role instead got passed on after she was impregnated in her sleep by her “golden-eyed” lover; the shape of the “heart” that Rose yanks out of her to pass back to Unity is another massive hint as to who this lover was. Hint: their name begins with a D.

As powerful as the Endless are, they are bound by rules. Rules that, if broken, lead to disastrous consequences. Dream, for example, cannot take a mortal’s life, but for one exception: killing the Vortex to keep the universe alive. There is also another rule that Dream hints at with Desire when he goes to their realm at the end. The entire Vortex thing was just Desire’s machinations to try and to get Dream to spill family blood by killing Rose, “with all that entails,” per Dream.

In the topic of Jed, I thought his relatively blasé reaction to the whole thing is on account that he's already a deeply traumatized child from a nightmarishly abusive home. His reaction to horror is very much stunted by this point.

Ok, I got the explanation they give. It still just comes completely out of nowhere. I buy Unity having supposed to originally have been the Vortex. Sure, that's totally reasonable. And I got the whole Desire thing. I was actually watching the show here...

"Hey, you can just give this world ending power to me and then Dream can kill me instead" is the part that comes out of nowhere. That's the part that suddenly makes it easy and ruined the stakes for me. That's what I found to be an Ass Pull.

I don't buy Jed being just unphased by the murders. After all, he sees the Corinthian murdering in the first place and that *does* phase him into running. Followed by Corinthian murdering again in front of them and they do clearly react to that. And then they're just back in the room acting like they didn't just watch a guy die. And if Jed has that excuse, Rose doesn't.

It just kinda felt like a... "We can't deal with these consequences" kinda moment which is why I wondered if the original plotting did things differently?

Kinda an odd one... of all things, I find it strange that the pedo apparently got off the easiest of all of them. He just gets stabbed in the back. Dream mindfucks everyone else into confessing and then offing themselves. Which just feels bizarre saying it outloud.

In the comic, they all just get their dreams crushed, with their further fates being completely unconfirmed. Fun land (the pedo) survives, and actually has a fairly tragic moment that gets chopped off in the adaptation where we see that he dreams about his victims being happy and forgiving him while he tells them he's sorry, giving him more of a "this man is genuinely mentally disturbed and needed help long ago" character beat.

Personally the Cereal Convention (with its mix of pitch-black dark comedy and genuine horror) is one of my favorite bits of the comic and show, so I don't share your criticisms there. Rose does react remarkably well to the horror, but that's who she is.

Speaking as someone who doesn't know the comics and only has the show to go on, I think the show has done a decent enough job of establishing over the 10 episodes that Dream's post-captive behaviour is different enough to be jarring to those who knew him prior to that, but still in a process of development so that people who meet him for the first time think he has some jerkass and Lack of Empathy issues that need improving.

As a result, by the time we get to Calliope and the Fates discussing the fact that Dream wouldn't help her even if he wasn't trapped, and her later saying that his old self would have let her rot, is not only unsurprising, but it fits in with what the rest of the show has depicted.

I also don't have any trouble with him coming to Calliope's rescue while still leaving Nada in Hell. The show hasn't given us Nada's story yet, so I can't judge it, but the Nada scenes occurred very soon after his escape from captivity where he was still hell-bent (excuse the pun) on getting back his tools and therefore hadn't really processed what had happened to him. The way the show has set it up, it's only after he's regained them that he's forced to begin looking at what's happened to him and find a way to deal his new 'reality'. The Sound of Her Wings therefore becomes the pivotal episode (in the show) where that process of readjustment and reassessment begins for him, starting with him finding Hob and accepting that they are indeed friends. Nada comes before that trigger point and Calliope afterwards, with Calliope's situation being more immediately relatable for him, because it was done to her according to existing laws, which was his situation, too, and wasn't something done to him, which seems to be the problem with Nada. Nada therefore sounds like something he should eventually re-evaluate, but probably hasn't grown enough yet to handle it (he may have grown enough to rescue Calliope, but he hasn't yet grown enough to admit her to his realm or discuss their son, so whatever happened with Nada is likely too high up that "personal hurt" scale for him to be ready to reassess it).

I think it's actually both. Not quite at the same time, however.

I think what they were going for was to set us up with black comedy, and then hit us with the horror story, using that prior comedy to create an extra punch. For example, the paedophile is treated with black comedy initially through his behaviours and mannerisms, but when he notices Jed everything changes. All that behaviour that was treated comically previously now becomes subversive as it's used to showcase how his "disarming" and "harmless" persona becomes the tool he uses to snare his victims.

So, I think they're trying to give us a flip: "You know that behaviour or mannerism that portrayed them comically? Flip. Now realise it's the tool that makes them so horrifically successful at what they do."

Whether they pull it off is YMMV, but that's my interpretation of what they were trying to do.

I think the point of the storyline wasn't Dream, it was Desire. I didn't think there was any suspense over whether Dream would kill Rose. I think it was very clear that, unless someone could find an alternative solution, either Dream or Rose would kill the other. It was set up to be quite clear that Dream would prevail and Rose would be dead.

What was introduced with Unity was the fact that she had a baby while unconscious with a dream lover who had golden eyes. We've already been introduced to Desire, so the golden eyes immediately tells us that Desire forced an unconscious woman to have a child. The question is why. Even when we learn that Desire knows Rose is a vortex and wants Rose to kill Dream, the question is still why. (And how does Desire know Rose is a vortex, of course.)

So, it is set up for Unity to be that third option, that intervention that means Dream doesn't have to kill Rose, the only real question is how and why. As soon as we learn that unwritten histories exist for characters who have had something significant spin them off their original path (such as Dream's imprisonment trapping people in a sleepy sickness), that's basically the point.

And the point is the revelation that Desire found out that Unity was meant to be the Vortex, so ensured that vortex would come to pass by forcing a child on her. This is about what Desire is willing to do to mortals to attack Dream through them. It's the storyline that makes Dream realise that Desire is after him and establishes for the audience the lengths Desire is willing to go to in order to attack Dream (for what reason has yet to be explained). It also establishes that mortals can be part-Endless, since Rose is technically Desire's great-grandchild.

It also raises an unspoken question in my mind. Unity's unwritten history is to be a vortex, which is essentially a hijacked destiny that she takes back to save Rose. How would Desire know that Unity was meant to be the Vortex, and which one of her descendants became the Vortex in her place, given that Destiny is a different Endless? Did Destiny provide that information? If so, how? Willingly? Unwillingly? Unwittingly? Unknowingly? Was it stolen? If it wasn't Destiny, then how did Desire find out?

Therefore, for me, the storyline is about Desire (and, to a lesser extent, Despair and Destiny). Throw in Rose being part-Endless, and the point of the storyline is that the Endless have a dysfunctional family relationship, and there's clearly something going on in the family that Dream (and therefore the audience) doesn't know about. Does it connect to the missing Endless? I haven't read the comics, so I don't know and have to ask that question, too.

Edited by Wyldchyld on Sep 10th 2022 at 12:33:06 PM

It's also important to remember that each storyline is part of a bigger narrative. Without going into spoilers, in this case it was established that Desire was trying to set Dream up to die (either killed by Rose or in punishment for killing Rose).

This time it didn't work but the antagonism and rivalry between the Endless will be important later. It's not "everything is suddenly okay now" it's "Morpheus got away with it for now."

Yeah, Desire made it clear they've been antagonistic towards Dream on the quiet for a long time, since they cited Nada in the list of plans they've attempted.

I don't want to be spoiled on what Desire is ultimately up to, but anything that keeps them on screen will work for me. They definitely chose the right actor for the role.