#the sandman wip

[ineffably-ryuu]

Finally writing Dreamling and wanna talk about it but I’m only active in Corintheus servers because The Dreamling server is massive and makes my head spin when I try to use it 😭 oh well. Take the summary/intro while I work on the actual fic:

Hob sleeps, and he dreams of his Stranger’s farewell and final gift.

Hob wakes, and there is a bottle of wine on his bedside table and the stench of death in his nose.

Hob sleeps, and he dreams of his Friend’s wake, his own chance to say goodbye.

Hob wakes, and his Friend’s sister meets him, tells him the stories behind one more he has loved and lost.

Hob sleeps, and he dreams of walking side by side with his Friend along endless shores.

Hob wakes, and thinks of how a thousand dreamers once changed the world, and changed his Friend along with it.

Well then. Only 999 more to go, and all the time in the world left.

Or: Death of the Endless tells Hob Gadling of how Dream became known as King of Cats, and how the world once changed. Naturally, Hob Gadling takes it as an instruction manual.

[sleepsonfutons]

Please tell me about Dream of a thousand Hobs ahahaha

Ahaha so that is one I have been trying to get everyone else on board with me about cuz the beauty of this fic is it's supposed to be a massive collab with a bunch of different writers contributing to it! Just one big writing round|round robin|popcorn writing deals with a shared premise and the thought that everyone's writing blind to each other either simultaneously or in sequential order. Then at the end the narrative gets stitched together in an epic/hilarious final result.

The common premise that anyone who participated would share is:

After Dream of the Endless met Hob Gadling for the second time in 1489, he has the stray thought that it would be interesting if there were more of the man to study. He thinks nothing more of it after that and nothing seems to happen. Fast-forward to modern warfare and Hob gets blown up a few times. He survives as always and thinks nothing of it. Fast-forward again to 1989, Hob goes to the White Horse for his meeting with Dream, but when he arrives, the place is packed with (100/1000/1000+??) so many other Hobs. Like a Hydra, it seems Hob now multiplies whenever his body is split or a part of him is severed. (The Hob collective find out about Dream's imprisonment and launch a rescue. Once free, Dream has no idea what to make of the hoard of Hob.) Loosely any level of shenanigans can happen but ultimately Dream has to consult with Death about Hob's peculiar, current state and they conclude that they have to reassimilate Hob somehow. Due to him having lived full lives as a multitude though, he undergoes a transformation when the stacked lives settle back in his bones. No longer is Hob Gadling a human/mortal denied Death's gift. He is now Endless, a multifaceted representation of human Hope.

So the collab aspect would be everybody writing one of the different Hobs and the tie together would be them all reassimilating to become Hope!Hob

[mentallyinvernation]

Dreamling Bingo WIP - Beta/Omega Relationship

The lovely mods at @dreamlingbingo​ have let us submit previews for our squares, so I will be posting as many as I can before the day is up lol

This is from an unnamed omegaverse fae fic - A1: Beta/Omega Relationship

CW: implied later mpeg, ref to canonical child-death, ref to canonical death in childbirth

･ ｡ﾟ☆: *.☽ .* :☆ﾟ. 

“I can grant you riches. Save you from the depths of famish. Restore you to your former glory.” The Fae purrs, curling pale arms around Hob’s shoulders, possessive, nails biting into his skin, toying with the frayed edge of the rags he’s been wearing for months. “But it will come at a price.”

“I don’t…” Hob winces, arms tightening around his middle as he attempts to starve off another sharp pang of hunger. “I’m sorry, but I don’t have anything to give.”

The Fae hums, petal-soft lips brushing over the shell of Hob’s ear. “Oh, you sweet thing, there is always more left to give, and you have Endless.”

Hob grimaces. His life is endless until the day he decides otherwise. He’s not sure how he feels that this creature discovered that with such ease. He can’t find the will to care much right now.

“What service would you ask of me, then?”

“Service?” The fae repeats, their arm slipping off him like liquid silk as they trail around to face him. “Is that what you would offer me? An act?”

“Is that what you want?”

“I suppose I could ask you to silence church bells. Swear fealty to the Archfey. Learn the name of a devil. Lay with me.” The fey winks as Hob’s shoulders tense. “But that would be such a waste when I can smell the life on you. All those memories. Would you surrender one of those to me? Your first kiss. First mate. First love,” The fey pauses, tilts their head and smirks some dangerous thing. “A flame that’s yet to burn out, I see. And such an ill-advised candle to worship at that.”

“Fuck off. What use could you possibly have with my memories?”

“That is my business. I owe you no explanation. But where there is love there is also loss. Let’s see here…firstborn fell casualty to a tavern brawl. The second lost in birth along with the mother. Poor Robert Gadlen. All that life and yet here you are drowning in tragedy. I suppose you must be numb to it all by now?”

“Just get on with it and name your price. If it’s a memory you want well - well my answer is no.”

The fey smiles some beautiful, fanged thing. “Not a memory. No, I would claim to something far more precious than that. Your third born. That is my demand.”

And Hob, who has no intention of ever siring children again, snorts. “Deal.”

.

Of course, when Hob gets Dream pregnant three hundred years later, that becomes a bit of a problem. In his defence, he didn’t realise Dream could get pregnant.

[iconsumethesoulsofthedamned]

A dream wip

[karmaisntab]

I MADE HIS HAIR PINK GHHCJINKIHLOJLLNJ

Also yes that is Hob over there. Just Staring. Intensely. Shush

[nynevefromthelake]

new wip🤭

[lacquerheadd]

[five-and-dimes]

Thinking about human Dream as a bartender.

He’s quiet, stoic, which strangely adds character to the dramatics of his flair bartending. Each week he comes up with new cocktails- beautiful, colorful creations, each one unique but always delicious. He barely talks but will listen intently to any and every patron’s stories, soaking them up, the happy or sad or ridiculous drunken ramblings. 

Hob becomes a regular, always sitting right in front of the well so he can have a front row seat to every flipped bottle and color changing spirit. He tells the bartender all his best stories, considering it a victory any time he manages to get even the smallest reaction- a quirked eyebrow or a twitch of the lips. It takes ages for him to even learn Dream’s name (Dream listens, he doesn’t share) but he comes to think of him as a friend, even if he’s still working up the courage to ask if they could see each other when Dream’s not working (he knows better than to ask someone on a date while they’re on the clock, he’s not an animal).

(He doesn’t know it, but Dream has started trying to make drinks specifically for this particular regular, hoping to impress him, to make him smile. And if he indulges in the thought of knowing exactly what Hob’s mouth would taste like. Well. He makes drinks for himself, too.)

And Hob tells Dream all sorts of things about his life, but not everything, which makes it incredibly embarrassing when Johanna follows him to the bar one night and very loudly announces “Why the hell do you come here when you own a damn pub?” 

Dream snaps to stare at him, and none of Hob’s stories have gotten anywhere near a reaction like that, and his eyebrows are practically in his hairline, and Hob’s face is on fire, and he wants to strangle Johanna and then walk directly into the ocean. 

But before he can, Dream smirks, tilting his head toward Johanna but keeping his eyes locked on Hob.

“I’m just that good.”

Hob knows he’s staring, but Dream’s never looked at him like that before and maybe he’s not as crazy as he thought, and Johanna is making fake gagging noises, and then Dream is placing a drink in front of him.

Pulling himself together, Hob smiles and takes a sip, “So what’s this one called?”

Dream doesn’t miss a beat, “It’s called ‘Fuck Me Tonight’.”

Hob chokes on the drink.

[doitforstamets]

[ineffably-ryuu]

takes the sandmanniversary prompt “soulmates” and crumples it up, tears it apart, and puts it back together with duct tape and glitter glue with my gremlin aroace hands

y’all will see what I mean in an hour or two

[sleepsonfutons]

Ooh, can you tell me more about A Long and Winding Road and A Need to Dream Again? (Darn I apologize if I got the titles wrong, lost them between the beginning of the sentence and the end 😅)

You got em! and oooh you went for like the opposite ends of my WIPs in terms of age lol

A Long and Winding Road is one of my latest WIPs and is my 🍰moar cake🍰 contribution/take on @arialerendeair's hospital caretaker!Dream x critical condition patient!Hob in @valiantstarlights' secondary gender disease omegaverse world:

post-hour 13 catatonic Hob Gadling in the heavy recovery ward at a hospital for alphas and omegas who have succumbed to HRIHC RHIHC* (Heat or Rut Rut or Heat Induced Hyperthermic Coma) with Dream getting voluntold to help care (providing a comforting presence/talking/reading out loud) for the patients while he navigates his and Calliope's divorce following the loss of their son.

Meanwhile The Need to Dream Again was one of my first WIPs for the Sandman fandom and my first AU WIP lol. It's a Hook au with the Dreaming as Neverland, Peter Pan!Dream, Rufio!Hob, and Tinkerbell!Lucienne. Rufio!Hob has been looking after the lost kids of the Dreaming for so long though that he's reverted to a memory-self whenever he's there and when Pan!Dream returns to the Dreaming after escaping the fishbowl he doesn't remember how to Dream anymore so much like in the movie, Rufio!Hob rejects him and he has to relearn what it is to Dream again.

[hopefulpenance]

After a month apart ✨

From Giving Sanctuary by @avelera

[tamago-aki]

mr sandman ..... bring me a wip (bum bum bum bum) make it the roughest wip that ever wipped (bum bum bum bum)

[yourgaydads]

two kinda old very random doodles i don't plan on finishing:

daniel will tide-pen that shit for him

infrastructure week in the dreaming

[zzoomacroom]

Retired amnesia Dream + coma Hob for WIP ask game please 🥺🥺🥺

Thank you for the ask! @linzod asked about this one too, and I'm super excited about it! I only have it outlined so far, but I'm hoping to write it once I'm done with the mpreg fic.

So Murphy is just some guy, as far as he knows. He's an artist, and he's kind of a shut-in with no friends and no life to speak of. He starts having really vivid dreams that, unbeknownst to him, are showing him memories of his past life. He also keeps having these recurring dreams where he meets with this guy named Hob who seems really familiar and keeps telling Murphy that he's real, he's been looking for him, he's trapped in the Dreaming and he needs Murphy to find him in the waking world. Murphy doesn't believe any of it, thinks his unconscious mind made the whole thing up, and he's like, "great, I'm so lonely that my sleeping mind made me an imaginary friend." But then he keeps finding clues suggesting that Hob is telling the truth. He goes to the White Horse and, even though it's abandoned and boarded up, he recognizes it from his dreams. He also maybe finds mentions of Hob in historical texts, the drawing of them from the 1789 meeting, etc. So now he understands that it's all true, and he has to find Hob and hopefully regain his memories in the process.

Now I'm going to put what's happening from Hob's perspective under the cut, because it's a plot twist that would be revealed later in the story.

So how did they end up in this situation? Well, after the Wake, Hob became more unhinged than ever and couldn't accept that Dream was dead. So he planned to do a whole "Dream of a Thousand Cats" style thing and have a thousand people dream that Morpheus is alive again. But in order to organize and orchestrate this whole plan, Hob puts himself into a magically induced coma so he can stay in the Dreaming and make sure the plan works. But once it does, he finds himself stuck there. The mysterious and sketchy person he hired to put him into this coma has disappeared, and now he's trapped with no way to wake up. Morpheus keeps finding him when he dreams, so Hob is overjoyed about that but heartbroken that Morpheus doesn't remember him and doesn't believe any of his dreams are real. Eventually, Morpheus finds Hob in the waking world, wakes him up, gets his memories back, and they live happily ever after.

I don't want to give too much away, but I will say that this fic will also feature Death, Delirium, Daniel, Lucienne, Matthew, Johanna Constantine and Mad Hettie.

Hopefully I'll actually be able to get it written before too long 😭

[five-and-dimes]

I have no idea where this came from but I’m never going to turn it into a full fic so I’m releasing it into the void.

Dream is some sort of fae creature whose son died, so he sneaks into a mortal village and kidnaps a young boy around the same age his son was.

(Part of his heart hurts because he never took part in the traditional changeling child/fae kidnapping thing because he couldn’t bear to leave his son with some stranger, he loved him too much, and he knows deep down he shouldn’t do this to someone else but he’s desperate for something, anything, to dull the pain of his loss).

When single dad Hob wakes up and finds his son Robyn missing, he’s fully prepared to go scorched earth to find him. When it becomes clear he’s not in the village, he going charging alone into the woods, too impatient to put a party together to help him. (He’s terrified- he’s heard rumors of fae in these parts, but there was no child left behind. What could have taken his little boy?)

After a few days searching, he hears Robyn’s voice up ahead. He’s got a sword at his side, but for now he draws a bow and arrow, moving forward slowly. Eventually he comes to a clearing, peeking forward and preparing to shoot down whatever took his child. But then. He pauses. 

Robyn is smiling, and laughing, and has an abundance of flowers adorning his hair. He is plucking some berries from a bush and popping them into his mouth under the guidance of the most beautiful creature Hob’s ever seen. As he listens, he realizes that Robyn is talking about him, telling stories of how his papa taught him to identify the things that are safe to eat in the forest, and how tall he feels when he sits on his father’s shoulders, and how his papa has a terrible singing voice but sings the loudest anyway and so Robyn loves it. 

“I think papa will like you lots!” Robyn declares, and the creature smiles sadly.

“I… doubt that… but he sounds lovely.”

Hob is so confused by the whole situation that he doesn’t notice he’s taken a step forward until a branch snaps under his foot. Robyn looks over and immediately bursts into a wide smile, even as the creature lets out a panicked series of chirps and bolts in the other direction.

“Papa!!” 

Robyn throws himself into his father’s arms, and Hob drops his weapons to hold him, beyond relieved to have his son safe in his arms, unharmed. He spends a few minutes just peppering his son’s face with kisses and telling him how worried he was before finally looking at the spot where the creature had disappeared into the woods. Robyn follows his gaze, smiling and tugging on Hob’s hand to guide him into the clearing as he calls out.

“It’s okay, Dream! Papa is super nice to everyone, you don’t have to hide!”

Hob’s sees two bright eyes in the shadows before the creature- Dream- hesitantly steps forward. He looks sad and scared and ashamed and Hob is smitten almost immediately.

Robyn explains that when he woke up he had been scared, but Dream had hugged him (almost as good as his papa’s hugs, he claims) and told him he would keep him safe and take care of him. Then Robyn had been sad because he already missed his dad, and when he told Dream about him he had immediately realized the error of what he had done and resolved to return Robyn. It had taken some time because Robyn had insisted he was too big to be carried (it’s one thing if he was sleeping, but he was a big boy he could walk home just fine, really!) so they had traveled together, Dream never feeding him anything that would bind Robyn to him, instead just pointing out food and water for him to gather himself. 

Dream is still standing a bit aways from them both as Robyn tells the tale, looking at the little boy with aching fondness.

“I’m sorry,” he said softly to Hob, “I just... miss my son so much,” he smiles weakly at Robyn, “I believe you and Orpheus would have been great friends.”

And oh, Hob gets it all of a sudden. He had been fully prepared to do all sorts of questionable things to get his son back, he can’t imagine what he might be compelled to do if he actually lost him. And Dream was bringing him back, so he finds it very easy to forgive him.

He finds it even easier to invite Dream to finish the journey back with them, and then invite him to stay, and then invite him to build a home in the woods together, and share kisses and a bed and a life. 

Robyn is very smug.

He told Dream his dad would like him.