#the sandman: overture

[ennas-aesthetic]

I have prayed for an ending. I did not think that you would be the one to grant it.

(a.k.a Dream trying to be a better father than Time had ever been.)

The Sandman: Overture 4, 2014 // Brief Lives: Part 9, 1993

[thenightling]

I feel thick (headed). I just realized something that I think should have been obvious.

Remember how in Overture Morpheus got captured by Lovecraftian Old Ones? They locked him in his own dungeon so he called out to each sibling for help and one by one they refused (part of why he didn't try to call out for help when captured by Roderick Burgess). Anyway, when he called to Delight she said she couldn't help because she was "changing."

Obviously this is because she was turning into Delirium. But something occurred to me. There was no madness in the universe before Delight became Delirium. What was happening in the universe to invoke the existence of madness?

Well, The Lovecraftian Old Gods came into being.

Is it possible that the Lovecraftian beings merely existing upset the balance of the universe? Morpheus was captured and Delight was transformed into Delirium. Or could they be a side effect OF Delirium's transformation?

It never occurred to me before that there seems to be a connection.

Lovecraftian entities = The creation of the living embodiment of Madndess.

[ghostly-penumbra]

Father and Sons

Ao3 FFN

Summary: Clockwork is Danny's loving, adoptive grandpa. Time is the Endless' neglectful father. They are one and the same.

Chapter One: First Meeting

- - -

Dream of the Endless stepped into his father's realm and found himself alone. Neither Dream of the Cats nor Hope Beautiful Lost Nebula had come with him. This wouldn't affect him, he would carry on.

He walked down the sprawling garden and stumbled then upon a young boy wearing his father's sygil in a purple cloak, not unlike one his father might use when seen by humans.

The boy stopped dead in his tracks when he saw him, the tilted watering can still spilling its content with no end in sight.

"Uh… hello?" He asked tentatively, the can still tipped. "May I help y—?"

"Who are you?" Dream asked bluntly, straightforward, looking at this child whose identity and dreams were blurred to him, being from a different time period than him, and his father's realm not being a Soft Place nor Dream's jurisdiction.

"Oh! That's- I'm… not supposed to just give my name to strangers." He trailed off, and finally straightened the watering can. "I'll… go get my grandpa." He turned and flew away, giving the perplexed Lord Shaper one last look before vanishing from sight.

"Dream." His father's voice had him turn around and there he was, shifting in shape through ages.

A toddler, a child, an old man, a younger man, if time could truly be described as a man, but always, invariably, with a jagged scar going across his eye.

Next to him stood the boy, looking between father and son with green eyes full of human curiosity, but ultimately leaning towards Dream's father with ease.

"What do you want?" His father asked as his beard vanished to give way to a toddler's impassive face. "You only come here if you want something."

"Can't a son see his father with no motive other than to wish him well?" He asked instead of answering.

This was unscripted. As it often did with his father, being in his presence was to step in loops and whorls of someone else's design, leaving Dream wrong-footed, regardless of where he stepped.

But for that same reason a strange child trailing after his father and referring to him as 'his grandpa' would not deter him from what he had come here for.

It did make him wonder, though…

"Of course you can," Father Time was saying, "but you never do. If any of you or your siblings visit is because you need my help."

"Siblings?! How many children do you have?" The boy almost shouted in what he seemed to believe was a whisper.

Dream turned his gaze upon him, the intense cosmos in his eyes having him shrink, abashedly, behind his father's figure once again.

Dream's father closed his eyes for one second – or a dozen. Or a year, or seventy, or a century – and then opened them again and turned his head towards his companion. "Seven." Was all he said.

"Damn!"

And against anything Dream would have thought, his father smiled, small but genuine. Fond.

"As you well know, I am older than dust."

They were making their way through the garden, where some plants grew and flourished or perished or even returned to seeds as Time approached them, and his father picked two apples, one of which he handed to the boy – who was now floating after Father Time –, and the other he offered to Dream.

"I'm not hungry."

"You will be."

Dream disregarded his father's remark and ignored the proffered fruit, even as the boy happily bit into his own.

"I wasn't travelling alone." Dream said. "Why am I the only one here?"

"You were planning on bringing your friends, uninvited, to my domain, son?" His father asked, his youthful face at odds with the rotting fruit in his hands.

"Not friends, no. A cat, who is also me. And a girl."

His father held a hand to his forehead and sighed, before looking back up at Dream whilst he handed the fresh apple to… his grandson.

"What do you want, Dream?"

"Help me, father. Help me."

- - -

[Chapter Two]

[endlessthedestiny]

[crystal-lillies]

Okay I love this Overture development a ton and how it adds to the context of The Sandman story, but having gone blind into the series without any knowledge of the comic at all, I still adore the no-context version of that creativity battle with Dream and Lucifer.

Hope as a concept defeating the darkness and anti-life is a beautiful, positive message of determination. And it cannot be killed (even by the concept of despair) because anything would be a balanced opposite to it, not greater to destroy it.

Hope, the alien girl, the ghost, the memory, defeating the anti-life and the Darkness at the end of everything, helping to create a brand new universe, and Dream evoking that memory of her as the only being who can remember..... also just as powerful and positive of a message, but in a more story-specific kind of way, I feel like.

I like them both! Still an excellent story.

[reality-perhaps]

Me, when people want to discuss gender but they haven't unlocked that level of friendship:

[anditendshowyoudexpect]

this hits differently after Overture

[two-hands-toward-the-sun]

j.h. williams iii really said i am going to draw a dream that is so slutty

[ID. dream with his brow furrowed in concern and confusion, saying “where is here?” he wears a black coat with a high flared collar. underneath it is a silky looking black robe with a very deep v-neck, exposing his pale chest. a large ruby pendant hangs around his neck. end ID.]

[raceydays-hopelesshaze]

Dream: I am imprisoned! Countless are suffering and dying!

His family: You’re so annoying. Get laid and maybe you’ll calm down.

[jonsconstantine]

oh im gonna be so normal about this

[lexie-squirrel]

[fuckyou-saidtheraven]

You know, I thought I’d be used to it after six days, but goddamn every time any of the show-only folks posts anything about Morpheus and the concept of hope that isn’t directly related to the Oldest Game, it still hits me like a punch to the gut.

[thenightling]

The plot of Sandman Overture

The Plot of The Sandman: Overture.  What happened to Morpheus between being about to uncreate The Corinthian and the summoning Spell. SPOILERS!  SPOILERS!   SPOILERS! SPOILERS SPOILERS SPOILERS SPOILERS SPOILERS SPOILERS

 SPOILERS

 Far away a flower version of Dream dies in flames.   In 1916 Morpheus confronts The Corinthian with the plan of uncreating him but he gets interrupted.   Morpheus gets summoned to a council meeting of… Dream of The Endless.  All these different aspects (pieces) of himself, different incarnations that all make up the whole, autonomous yet connected.  It turns out a little flower version of himself has died in a far off galaxy.   And no new aspect has come along to replace him.  Glory of the First Circle (an aspect of God / The Presence) tells Morpheus that the universe is dying and it’s Morpheus’s fault.  So Morpheus goes on a quest to stop the end of the universe and what he thinks is a large cat version of himself tags along (actually it's Desire posing as an aspect of Dream but Morpheus won't listen to anyone but himself).   It turns out that long ago Morpheus was supposed to kill a Dream Vortex on a far off world, a young and kind girl and he couldn’t bring himself to do it.  This caused her whole world to die.  And when Death told him to put out her world’s sun he said no, there had been enough death there already.   But the sun (which is sentient and could take humanoid form-  Stars in Neil Gaiman’s writing tend to have human forms-) went mad and started to slowly spread it’s madness through the universe like a cancer among all the stars. So Morpheus goes on a quest to meet with the stars and particularly the first mad one to try to stop the end of the universe.  On the way he finds a group of ravaging space pirates who have disemboweled a blue male alien.  They attempt to mug Morpheus but Morpheus douses them with sleep sand and finds a little girl hidden under a bed.  She’s the child of the disemboweled alien and her name is Hope.Morpheus is reluctant but eventually allows the child to come with them.  The cat carrying Hope on their back.  Morpheus slowly gets attached to Hope, telling the child a bed time story about how he was captured once by some Old Lovecraftian Gods who invaded The Dreaming.  They had locked him in his own dungeon.  In the story Morpheus called on each sibling for help but they would not come and little Delight was turning into Delirium at the time.  Finally Morpheus reluctantly had called on Desire.  Desire gave Morpheus a lover, Alianora.  Alianora rescues Morpheus and fights the invaders.   Morpheus makes his helm and gates out of the bones and horns of the old Gods. He leaves the story there so Hope gets a happy ending instead of the true ending that some time later he became cold to Alianora and she wanted to leave him but didn’t know where she could go, too much time had passed, she couldn’t return to her old life.  So he gave her an Island in The Dreaming and a dream stone to control it. This Island became The Land from A Game of You.  And dreamstone was a rose quartz Barbie would call the Porpentine. Morpheus slowly becomes more and more Paternal with Hope.  He gives her dreams about kindness and holds her hand, he becomes protective.   (Guess which character dies!)   Anyway, Morpheus attempts to contact his father, who is Time incarnate and Time is strange and aloof.   He essentially tells Morpheus he’ll only help him if he gets his saeculum that he gave him back. The saeculum is kind of a magical pocket watch that allows for time travel and casting magick through time.  Daniel goes on a small quest in the present and finds it with Mad Hettie (the immortal). Back in Morpheus’ storyline he finally reaches the city of Stars but the stars have all gone mad.   They murder Hope and before Morpheus can stop them he is dragged off by his father to his realm where his father asks about Night (Morpheus’ mother) and if she misses him, ect.   The two are estranged.  (Get it, Dream was born from Night and Time.) With Hope dead the cat-that-is-totally-not-Desire-in-disguise goes and creates a TARDIS-like sailing ship that looks like a seventeenth century pirate ship that is bigger on the inside and can fly through space and rescues over a thousand people across the universe.  Then Desire …I mean Dream-Cat goes into the afterlife and pluck’s out Hope’s Ghost because they still need her. Desire then parks the Dream-ship in what is essentially Destiny’s front garden.  Perceiving it to be Dream magick and knowing it’s not in his book, Destiny goes into his gallery to ask Morpheus what’s going on. Meanwhile the Stars have tossed Morpheus into a black hole because they know if they kill him a new aspect of Dream will come along and take his place.   In the black hole Morpheus is able to get the attention of his mother and her servant Dusk.  Night is actually quite glad the universe is ending since she is also the void.  She offers Morpheus a small pocket dimension so he wouldn’t even have to know the universe has ended.  And a lover, a relationship, just like he always wanted so he wouldn’t have to be alone and scared anymore.  Morpheus turns her down.  She calls him selfish and dumps him back in the black hole. Destiny is getting pissed about the ship double parked in his garden so he summons Morpheus, who comes tumbling through his gallery portrait insisting he didn’t need rescuing. (He needed rescuing.)  He had also claimed that when Alianora saved him from his own dungeon, that he didn't need rescuing (again, he needed rescuing)… Morpheus recovers himself and goes to check out the dream ship and finds the cat and Hope’s ghost.  Now Morpheus has devised a way to save the universe.  If all thousand souls on the ship dream of the universe as it should be, that he put out the sun of that long lost world after the Vortex erupted, instead of spreading it’s madness like a cancer. But Morpheus can’t tell these people to dream this, not in the waking world.  There are rules.  Hope can. Hope agrees to do this but only if Morpheus promises to remember her, remember her name. Morpheus uses his dream sand and with Daniel’s help in 2016 with the Saeculum they rewrite history with the dreams of those on the ship.  Exhausted, Morpheus has saved the universe and learned the damn cat was Desire all along (Delirium had to break it to him).   Glory of The First Circle (an aspect of God / The Presence) comes to Morpheus and they have a brief meeting where Glory tells Morpheus that he probably won’t remember Hope but he will remember her name when it’s most important.     Morpheus is exhausted and is heading home… when he gets summoned by Roderick Burgess and his occultists. Desire retells what happened to Despair and reveals that it took three tries to get it right and Desire had done it three times with the help of the Saeculum (which Desire had stolen long ago and then left for Daniel to find).  At first Desire tried to do things right but Morpheus wouldn’t listen. The second time Dream was destroyed.  Third time they got it right.   Desire gloats about how one day they will get Morpheus to spill family blood and have the kindly ones destroy him.  And then Desire asks Despair to tell them that they saved the universe, that they were a hero, before the re-writing of history makes them forget.  “Forget what?” “I don’t know.  I guess it wasn’t important.” And there you go.  There’s Overture.  You’re better off actually reading it for yourself, I butchered it and left out important details.

[keycomicbooks]

THE SANDMAN: OVERTURE #2 (2013) Dave McKean Variant / Neil Gaiman Story / J. H. Williams III Pencils / 1st Appearance Dream's Kryptonian Aspect & Night

#THESANDMAN: OVERTURE #2 (2013) #DaveMcKean Variant / #NeilGaiman Story / #JHWilliamsIII Pencils / 1st Appearance Dream's Kryptonian Aspect & Night "Chapter Two" The Sandman's epic origin story continues in the second issue of the new miniseries by the superstar team of writer Neil Gaiman and artist J.H. Williams III! SAVE ON SHIPPING COST - NOW AVAILABLE FOR LOCAL PICK UP IN DELTONA, FLORIDA https://www.rarecomicbooks.fashionablewebs.com/THE%20SANDMAN%20OVERTURE.html#2b   #KeyComicBooks #DCComics #DCU #DCUniverse #KeyIssue

[onehundredandeleventropicalfish]

so the netflix show has already shown us two of dream's other aspects, kai'ckul and the king of cats, but one of my favourite things about the endless in the comics is that they have a different incarnation for every single species and culture that has ever experienced them, in this case, if your people dream, you have a personalised Dream

and the comics are also part of the dcu, which means there are a LOT of other species out there to dream

many of these screenshots were taken from one issue which involves a meeting in dream's head between all of his different incarnations, some are just from other places in the comic, but my personal favourites include:

l'zoril, dream god of the green martians

to fill out the superheroes requirement, kryptonian dream

fish dream

flower dream, and tree dream

femme dream, with just as much dedication to not wearing a shirt as her masculine counterpart

bird dream, insect dream, and robotic insect dream

two different kinds of cat person

these funky lil guys

whatever is going on here with the tentacle robot, the teen titans looking motherfucker, the dragon, and the guy in the witch hat (all equally dream of the endless)

a literal stone statue that speaks mostly in egyptian hieroglyphs

and then there's this guy

[crystal-lillies]

Oh my GOD

HOPE.

HER!!!!

SHE!!!!!!!!!

IS THAT WHY HOPE BEATS ANTILIFE AND THE DARKNESS AT THE END OF EVERYTHING, BECAUSE SHE DID???

OH MY GOD I LOVE THAT EVEN MORE NOW.

NEIL GAIMAN @neil-gaiman I AM SCREAMING!!!!!! THAT'S SO GOOD!!