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crack_van2006-12-07 12:07 am
ghost_lingering) wrote in crack_van2006-12-07 12:07 am
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Sandman: An Overview
I have to apologize for getting this overview out so late and starting the reccs so late in the month—December has been very front-loaded for me, so hopefully the rest of the month will go smoother.
The Sandman is a graphic novel (a series of graphic novels?) by Neil Gaiman about Dream—Morpheus—one of the seven siblings known as "the Endless".
The cast of characters in "The Sandman" is, quite literally, a pantheon, so I'm culling it down oh-so-much, to (who I deem) the most important. Feel free to disagree and pipe up with your own favorites if you think I've skipped a 'must mention OMG'.
The Endless: these guys are seven sibblings who have existed since, oh, the beginning of time. They each represent a different aspect of human existence. Each of the Endless has their own realm, and their own sigil.
Dream -- Dream's the main character, so he's kind of an important bit to the story. He's got a whole bunch of names, Morpheus being the most common, and a rather messed up family. (You'll hear more about his siblings later, but, seriously now—his final fatherly act of kindness is killing his son. That's a bit messed up, no?) He looks an awful lot like Neil Gaiman and he wears a lot of black and, let's be honest here, has an emo streak that no MySpace picture will ever beat. This tendency causes him lots of romantic angst and possibly concussions from getting hit with loaves of bread when he's being a moopy drama queen. His realm is known as The Dreaming.
Destiny – Destiny is the oldest of the Endless and kind of quiet and bookish. No, seriously, I'm not joking; he's literally chained to the Book of Destiny, which winds up being a pretty all-knowing and mysterious sort of thing. He's the guy everyone respects, but no one really knows all that well.
Death -- Death is the second oldest, behind Destiny and in front of Morpheus. She's totally hot(t) and throws loaves of bread at her little brother when he's getting all moppy and brooding. She's perky, she's fun, and she has a great respect, it seems, for life—hence the ankh she wears as a symbol around her neck.
Destruction -- Destruction is the brother who's not mentioned for a really really long time in the books, except as 'the guy they don't talk about'. He's the middle child and decides that his realm doesn't really need him, so he goes off to find him—you know, do a bit of painting, talk to his dog. That kind of thing.
Desire – Desire is twins with Despair and is androgynous. S/he has a bit of a rivalry going on with Morpheus—back in the day they were best friends, but then Morpheus had one of his many many bad experiences with love and got pissy at his brother...sister...sibling person.
Despair – Desire's twin sister, Despair is actually in her second incarnation. While we never quite find out what happened to the first Despair, it's revealed that a human took on the aspect when the first one died. Despair often teams up with Desire in Desire's games against Dream. She is very quiet and has a tendency to rip at her flabby skin hard enough to draw blood.
Delirium – Delirium is the youngest of the Endless. Way back in the day, she used to be known as Delight. Now, however, she's got one green and one blue eye and has a tendency to trail fishes in the air after her. She's child-like, but very very much not innocent—hence her shift into delirium.
The non-Endless:
Lyta Hall and Daniel Hall are mother and son. In the second volume, "Doll's House", Lyta and her husband (resurrected from the dead) are taken over by two rogue nightmares from the Dreaming. Morpheus comes along and sends Lyta's husband back to the dead and tells her that someday he will come for her son Daniel, because Daniel was a child of dreams. This makes Lyta go a bit crazy. In her defense, Morpheus sometimes lacks basic social skills.
Rose Walker is the granddaughter of Desire, though she is unaware of it. In "Doll's House" Desire tries to maneuver Morpheus into killing her because she is a 'dream vortex', but, at the last minute, her grandmother (the real dream vortex) takes her place. If Morpheus would have killed her it would have been a big deal, simply because then he would have spilled family blood.
Calliope is one of the nine muses and used to be one of Morpheus' lovers. Together they had a son, Orpheus (yup, the one from the Greek myths) who ends up living for, oh, a seriously long time, as a disembodied head.
Cain and Abel, Eve, Fiddler's Green, Corinthian, Lucien, and Matthew are all dreams in The Dreaming. Very quickly: Cain and Abel are what you would get if you crossed the Biblical story with the Three Stooges; Eve is, at once, a maiden, a mother, and an old woman; Fiddler's Green is a place that is one of the hearts of the Dreaming (though sometimes he's a rather nice gentlemen who looks a bit like G. K. Chesterton); the Corinthian is a fairly disturbing nightmare with teeth in place of eyes; Lucien is the librarian; and Matthew is a raven—there is always a raven in the Dreaming.
The plot of "The Sandman" is long, complex, and contains many many side plots. I've tried to stick to the 'A' plot, so to speak. I've divided it up by the volumes that have come out, just because it's easier than doing by the individual issues themselves and because I have a feeling this is how most people read the series now anyway.
Preludes and Nocturnes: This volume starts with Morpheus all captured-like by a guy named Roderick Burgess (and then, later, his son, Alexander Burgess). After 72 years he finally escapes, but has to find various items of power that he lost—his bag of sand, a helm, and a ruby—to regain his strength. The collection ends with "The Sound of Her Wings", which is where Death is introduced and where she first throws a loaf of bread at her brother.
The Doll's House: This is the volume where Morpheus begins to re-build his realm, which is in complete disrepair because of his absence. He has to track down several major dreams who have gone and wandered off on their own—the Corinthian and Fiddler's Green, most notably—and also deal with this dream vortex thing that seems to be located in Rose Walker. This is the first volume where Desire is introduced and the first real show of how dangerous the games between the siblings can be.
Dream Country: Dream Country is a bit of a different type of volume. It's comprised of four longer pieces, each it's own independent story (though with definite ties back to the whole series). Of these four stories the two that probably have the greatest impact on the rest of the plot are the first and third—"Calliope" and "A Midsummer Night's Dream".
In the first the muse Calliope is imprisoned by a writer and then released by Morpheus. The second is about the first of two plays that Morpheus commissioned from Shakespeare about dreams. While the Shakespeare side plot is just that, a side plot, it bears mentioning because the second of the two plays, "The Tempest" appears in the final volume of "The Sandman".
Season of Mists: Ok, now we're back to the meaty stuff. In case I haven't emphasized this enough: Morpheus pretty much sucks at relationships. Like, ok, for this story? He goes to Hell to *finally* free a woman (Nada) he condemned to Hell way back in the day for, you know, not having sex with him. Or, rather not 'being his consort'. Yes, Morpheus=kind of a childish bastard sometimes.
Anyway, the story begins with him realizing (*cough*beingtoldbyDeath*cough*) that he was wrong and going to free her. When he gets to Hell, however, he finds Lucifer closing up shop, and Nada nowhere to be found. Lucifer gives him the key to Hell and Morpheus is left trying to figure out who to give it to. In the end he hands it over to two angels and Nada is sent back to Earth, literally born again.
A Game of You : This volume is a rather dramatic shift in some ways. It centers on Barbie, who was a minor character in "Doll's House", and her quest to save a place called the Land, which ends up being a dying part of the Dreaming that she had created as a child. In the end Morpheus comes and has to destroy the Land.
Fables and Reflections: Like "Dream Country" this is another collection of fairly independent stories. The one that really impacts the rest of the series is "Orpheus" which is a retelling of the Greek myth. The story starts with Orpheus' wedding and ends with the Fury's bacchanal that leaves him, literally, a head without a body. This is also important because it's the first time that the last of the siblings, Destruction, is introduced.
Brief Lives: This volume centers on Morpheus and Delirium traveling together to find their brother, Destruction, who abandoned his realm a long time ago and hasn't been seen since. In order to find him Morpheus has to make a deal with his son: Orpheus wants his father to kill him. This sets up Morpheus killing a family member, which is what almost happened in "Doll House" when he was about to kill Rose Walker. Eventually Delirium and Morpheus do find Destruction, though they are unable to convince him to come back. In the end Destruction leaves to see more of the universe and Morpheus leaves to go kill his son.
Don't you wish you were a part of their family?
Worlds' End: The frame for this story is that many people have been directed to an inn called "Worlds' End" because of bad weather. Each person there then tells a story, to the backdrop of a funeral procession outside the inn window, where you see all the Endless in morning.
The Kindly Ones: Oh boy, we're almost done. Basically what happens is this: off-screen Morpheus has killed his son, per his son's request, meaning that the Furies are empowered to destroy him because he has shed the blood of his family. Meanwhile Lyta Hall's son, Daniel, has been captured by Loki, but, because she's got a thing against Morpheus, she blames him. In the end Death asks for Morpheus' hand and disappears—only to be replaced by a new version of Dream—a very changed version of the child Daniel. This new Dream is *not* Morpheus and has white hair, not black. All in all, he's a lot hotter.
The Wake – This volume is, in all senses of the word, a wake—for Morpheus and for the series itself. It shows how Daniel slowly begins to make his way as the new Dream, how various characters viewed the old Dream. It concludes with three stories, the last of which being Shakespeare's second play for Morpheus—"The Tempest".
...there is a fandom? The thing about "The Sandman" is that it's presence in fandom is mostly limited to crossovers—it's super easy to insert Dream in a dream sequence, or Death in a death scene, or have Delirium play with one of the many crazy characters in fandom. In a way that makes Sandman fic easy to find—look in almost any other fandom, anywhere. The downside is that it's not really *Sandman* fic. It's [insert other fandom here] with a pinch of 'The Sandman' for flavor and perspective.
The main Sandman lj community is![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
_sandman, and for fans of Delirium there's ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-community.gif)
deliriumlove. I'd also say to check the yuletide archives—they don't have very much Sandman fic, but what is there is very good.
The Sandman is a graphic novel (a series of graphic novels?) by Neil Gaiman about Dream—Morpheus—one of the seven siblings known as "the Endless".
The cast of characters in "The Sandman" is, quite literally, a pantheon, so I'm culling it down oh-so-much, to (who I deem) the most important. Feel free to disagree and pipe up with your own favorites if you think I've skipped a 'must mention OMG'.
The Endless: these guys are seven sibblings who have existed since, oh, the beginning of time. They each represent a different aspect of human existence. Each of the Endless has their own realm, and their own sigil.
Dream -- Dream's the main character, so he's kind of an important bit to the story. He's got a whole bunch of names, Morpheus being the most common, and a rather messed up family. (You'll hear more about his siblings later, but, seriously now—his final fatherly act of kindness is killing his son. That's a bit messed up, no?) He looks an awful lot like Neil Gaiman and he wears a lot of black and, let's be honest here, has an emo streak that no MySpace picture will ever beat. This tendency causes him lots of romantic angst and possibly concussions from getting hit with loaves of bread when he's being a moopy drama queen. His realm is known as The Dreaming.
Destiny – Destiny is the oldest of the Endless and kind of quiet and bookish. No, seriously, I'm not joking; he's literally chained to the Book of Destiny, which winds up being a pretty all-knowing and mysterious sort of thing. He's the guy everyone respects, but no one really knows all that well.
Death -- Death is the second oldest, behind Destiny and in front of Morpheus. She's totally hot(t) and throws loaves of bread at her little brother when he's getting all moppy and brooding. She's perky, she's fun, and she has a great respect, it seems, for life—hence the ankh she wears as a symbol around her neck.
Destruction -- Destruction is the brother who's not mentioned for a really really long time in the books, except as 'the guy they don't talk about'. He's the middle child and decides that his realm doesn't really need him, so he goes off to find him—you know, do a bit of painting, talk to his dog. That kind of thing.
Desire – Desire is twins with Despair and is androgynous. S/he has a bit of a rivalry going on with Morpheus—back in the day they were best friends, but then Morpheus had one of his many many bad experiences with love and got pissy at his brother...sister...sibling person.
Despair – Desire's twin sister, Despair is actually in her second incarnation. While we never quite find out what happened to the first Despair, it's revealed that a human took on the aspect when the first one died. Despair often teams up with Desire in Desire's games against Dream. She is very quiet and has a tendency to rip at her flabby skin hard enough to draw blood.
Delirium – Delirium is the youngest of the Endless. Way back in the day, she used to be known as Delight. Now, however, she's got one green and one blue eye and has a tendency to trail fishes in the air after her. She's child-like, but very very much not innocent—hence her shift into delirium.
The non-Endless:
Lyta Hall and Daniel Hall are mother and son. In the second volume, "Doll's House", Lyta and her husband (resurrected from the dead) are taken over by two rogue nightmares from the Dreaming. Morpheus comes along and sends Lyta's husband back to the dead and tells her that someday he will come for her son Daniel, because Daniel was a child of dreams. This makes Lyta go a bit crazy. In her defense, Morpheus sometimes lacks basic social skills.
Rose Walker is the granddaughter of Desire, though she is unaware of it. In "Doll's House" Desire tries to maneuver Morpheus into killing her because she is a 'dream vortex', but, at the last minute, her grandmother (the real dream vortex) takes her place. If Morpheus would have killed her it would have been a big deal, simply because then he would have spilled family blood.
Calliope is one of the nine muses and used to be one of Morpheus' lovers. Together they had a son, Orpheus (yup, the one from the Greek myths) who ends up living for, oh, a seriously long time, as a disembodied head.
Cain and Abel, Eve, Fiddler's Green, Corinthian, Lucien, and Matthew are all dreams in The Dreaming. Very quickly: Cain and Abel are what you would get if you crossed the Biblical story with the Three Stooges; Eve is, at once, a maiden, a mother, and an old woman; Fiddler's Green is a place that is one of the hearts of the Dreaming (though sometimes he's a rather nice gentlemen who looks a bit like G. K. Chesterton); the Corinthian is a fairly disturbing nightmare with teeth in place of eyes; Lucien is the librarian; and Matthew is a raven—there is always a raven in the Dreaming.
The plot of "The Sandman" is long, complex, and contains many many side plots. I've tried to stick to the 'A' plot, so to speak. I've divided it up by the volumes that have come out, just because it's easier than doing by the individual issues themselves and because I have a feeling this is how most people read the series now anyway.
Preludes and Nocturnes: This volume starts with Morpheus all captured-like by a guy named Roderick Burgess (and then, later, his son, Alexander Burgess). After 72 years he finally escapes, but has to find various items of power that he lost—his bag of sand, a helm, and a ruby—to regain his strength. The collection ends with "The Sound of Her Wings", which is where Death is introduced and where she first throws a loaf of bread at her brother.
The Doll's House: This is the volume where Morpheus begins to re-build his realm, which is in complete disrepair because of his absence. He has to track down several major dreams who have gone and wandered off on their own—the Corinthian and Fiddler's Green, most notably—and also deal with this dream vortex thing that seems to be located in Rose Walker. This is the first volume where Desire is introduced and the first real show of how dangerous the games between the siblings can be.
Dream Country: Dream Country is a bit of a different type of volume. It's comprised of four longer pieces, each it's own independent story (though with definite ties back to the whole series). Of these four stories the two that probably have the greatest impact on the rest of the plot are the first and third—"Calliope" and "A Midsummer Night's Dream".
In the first the muse Calliope is imprisoned by a writer and then released by Morpheus. The second is about the first of two plays that Morpheus commissioned from Shakespeare about dreams. While the Shakespeare side plot is just that, a side plot, it bears mentioning because the second of the two plays, "The Tempest" appears in the final volume of "The Sandman".
Season of Mists: Ok, now we're back to the meaty stuff. In case I haven't emphasized this enough: Morpheus pretty much sucks at relationships. Like, ok, for this story? He goes to Hell to *finally* free a woman (Nada) he condemned to Hell way back in the day for, you know, not having sex with him. Or, rather not 'being his consort'. Yes, Morpheus=kind of a childish bastard sometimes.
Anyway, the story begins with him realizing (*cough*beingtoldbyDeath*cough*) that he was wrong and going to free her. When he gets to Hell, however, he finds Lucifer closing up shop, and Nada nowhere to be found. Lucifer gives him the key to Hell and Morpheus is left trying to figure out who to give it to. In the end he hands it over to two angels and Nada is sent back to Earth, literally born again.
A Game of You : This volume is a rather dramatic shift in some ways. It centers on Barbie, who was a minor character in "Doll's House", and her quest to save a place called the Land, which ends up being a dying part of the Dreaming that she had created as a child. In the end Morpheus comes and has to destroy the Land.
Fables and Reflections: Like "Dream Country" this is another collection of fairly independent stories. The one that really impacts the rest of the series is "Orpheus" which is a retelling of the Greek myth. The story starts with Orpheus' wedding and ends with the Fury's bacchanal that leaves him, literally, a head without a body. This is also important because it's the first time that the last of the siblings, Destruction, is introduced.
Brief Lives: This volume centers on Morpheus and Delirium traveling together to find their brother, Destruction, who abandoned his realm a long time ago and hasn't been seen since. In order to find him Morpheus has to make a deal with his son: Orpheus wants his father to kill him. This sets up Morpheus killing a family member, which is what almost happened in "Doll House" when he was about to kill Rose Walker. Eventually Delirium and Morpheus do find Destruction, though they are unable to convince him to come back. In the end Destruction leaves to see more of the universe and Morpheus leaves to go kill his son.
Don't you wish you were a part of their family?
Worlds' End: The frame for this story is that many people have been directed to an inn called "Worlds' End" because of bad weather. Each person there then tells a story, to the backdrop of a funeral procession outside the inn window, where you see all the Endless in morning.
The Kindly Ones: Oh boy, we're almost done. Basically what happens is this: off-screen Morpheus has killed his son, per his son's request, meaning that the Furies are empowered to destroy him because he has shed the blood of his family. Meanwhile Lyta Hall's son, Daniel, has been captured by Loki, but, because she's got a thing against Morpheus, she blames him. In the end Death asks for Morpheus' hand and disappears—only to be replaced by a new version of Dream—a very changed version of the child Daniel. This new Dream is *not* Morpheus and has white hair, not black. All in all, he's a lot hotter.
The Wake – This volume is, in all senses of the word, a wake—for Morpheus and for the series itself. It shows how Daniel slowly begins to make his way as the new Dream, how various characters viewed the old Dream. It concludes with three stories, the last of which being Shakespeare's second play for Morpheus—"The Tempest".
...there is a fandom? The thing about "The Sandman" is that it's presence in fandom is mostly limited to crossovers—it's super easy to insert Dream in a dream sequence, or Death in a death scene, or have Delirium play with one of the many crazy characters in fandom. In a way that makes Sandman fic easy to find—look in almost any other fandom, anywhere. The downside is that it's not really *Sandman* fic. It's [insert other fandom here] with a pinch of 'The Sandman' for flavor and perspective.
The main Sandman lj community is
_sandman, and for fans of Delirium there's deliriumlove. I'd also say to check the yuletide archives—they don't have very much Sandman fic, but what is there is very good.
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And I agree about the crossovers - it is "other fandom" fic, but it's still nice.
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thanks very much!
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Also, Thessaly. She's pretty important even in the A-plot, isn't she?
XWA
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XWA
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*needs a Gaiman-related icon*
As I recall, Morpheus and Nada, who is the queen of a fabulous African civilization, do have sex, and as punishment Nada’s gods (who are down on the mortal/Endless thing) destroy her kingdom. Nada then kills herself, rejects Morpheus’s invitation to dwell in the Dreaming as his consort, and goes to Hell.
Re: *needs a Gaiman-related icon*
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Awesome overview, it makes me want to reread all of them again.
I have looked for fic off and on... I once found a very sweet one about Daniel!Dream meeting a young man.. I forget how. The story was about how the young man gave up his birthday for Dream, who had never had one. I can't even remember if the young man was an OC or a character from something else... but it was a very sweet story. If I ever find it again, I'm keeping it properly.
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Okay, I'm okay, I can wait. ::gnaws fingernails::
(But I'll have other recs to tide me over, which is totally just as good!)
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1 - did you know this overview isn't linked on the sidebar for December? Perhaps you could mention this to a mod.
2 - Are you interested in two pieces of Sandman fic I love (not by me)? Of course you might have already read them both, but on the off chance that you haven't: Beyond Repair (http://myalchod.livejournal.com/108529.html) (a Thessaly fic); Despair (http://spykeraven.gatefiction.com/despair.html), a fic mostly about Desire.
Please continue! I am loving the fiction that you have thus far recced.
&hearts
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Other than that, excellent overview of Sandman, thanks so much for doing this. :D
Quick question though: which chapters did the pictures of Death and Dream come from?
Daniel is totally hotter!
(Anonymous) 2008-07-02 08:42 pm (UTC)(link)--ghost lingering who is at work so doesn't want to sign in