#is anyone actually going to read four paragraphs of disorganized summary of obvious concepts from the comics

[sandpiperrr]

So the ren faire comic (issue 73 I think) is fun for many reasons but i really like it bc of how i feel like it ties into one of the big ideas in sandman, the idea that dreams can shape reality (which we see a lot, like in dream of a thousand cats, ramadan, that whole thing in overture, etc). Ofc in sandman dreams can be about a billion things, so the idea of dreams as stories flows quite easily into the idea of dreams as history, in a way. That's how I've always understood the stories like Ramadan and dream of a thousand cats - the way dreams function to "rewrite" reality in the comics is sort of a literal representation of how history - or what we believe to be history - comes about from stories, memories, pieces of the past.

(and the comic in a meta sense deals w the idea of history as stories thru issues like the american king and august. stories based off of history, but ultimately, what's more important is the story that can be told rather than historical accuracy)

When everyone who actually lived through a moment in history dies, all we have left are memories, stories. And over time the story changes, but we can't know what it was 'in reality' so we just believe whatever version of the story we're told. And when everyone believes that something happened, it becomes true, in a way. Even if what we all believe doesn't match the reality of what happened in the past - how would we know?

But one of the interesting things about how dreams change reality is that it's paradoxical. Like in dream of a thousand cats, the humans dream changed it so that things were always the way they are. but even if the world was reimagined, that doesn't mean the cat centric universe didn't happen on some level (after all, dream still rememberd it) the change doesn't make the past less true, it still happened, but reality is just...different.

SO to connect that back to the ren faire comic. So this basically reflects the nature of how history and memory works for us, and Hob is like an irl example of this. The comic does this fun things where it contrasts the imagined past (Gwen and everyone else at the fair) with the actual lived past (Hob). (And admittedly I'm sure we're not supposed to believe everyone at the Ren Fair thinks what they're doing is totally historically accurate, theres an aspect thats just fun fantasy roleplaying, etc) Still, I just think its a fun way to sort of implicitly demonstrate that idea of dreams as history and memory in a way thats more grounded in our reality then it is with the cats issue, or ramadan.