VOLUME IV main weekly discussion
Welcome to volume IV: A Season of Mists!
Apologies, I went into a piemaking frenzy late last night for Pi Day, and I forgot to open the thread until I woke up this morning (Alaska time).
Spoiler-free discussion here up to Vol. IV! Take extra care with wikipedia links etc. to warn people if they might read more than they intend to.
Apologies, I went into a piemaking frenzy late last night for Pi Day, and I forgot to open the thread until I woke up this morning (Alaska time).
Spoiler-free discussion here up to Vol. IV! Take extra care with wikipedia links etc. to warn people if they might read more than they intend to.
Comments
I thought the repeated implication that the damned are really damned *by themselves* very interesting.
Having been so recently exposed to the Marvel incarnations of Thor, Loki, etc, it was fascinating but almost confusing to see a completely different take. Made me want to read up on Norse mythology to see which depiction of Thor, in particular, was truer to the original tales, since they're so different.
I loved seeing Dream as a host. And I thought the idea of the servants at the banquet being people pulled through their own dreams into service both clever and disturbing. I would certainly not appreciate being taken from my own dreams and made to wait tables and get Anubis more hearts to eat. It does seem to tie into the repeated themes of free will and destiny we see throughout this volume.
In fact, going back to my earlier observation, it seems as though the only individuals in this volume who are really exercising choice are the damned souls who choose their own damnation. And they're the ones who think they have no choice, while everyone else *thinks* they're making choices but really may not be.
Hmm.
Jill
But now, after our Vol. III discussion, I feel exactly the opposite. Vol. IV felt like a lark compared to III.
I need to go make coffee, but first, a word about Thor. (If only I had a nickel for every time I've said that first thing in the morning.)
I freaking love Thor in this edition. I also love the Marvel Thor of course, though he's never been one of my all-time favorites. So last November I had a chance to stay in Reykjavik for a couple days on my way home from Europe. It was awesome. But possibly my favorite part was learning about how Iceland, because of its remoteness, preserved a lot of the Nordic Sagas that were otherwise wiped out by Christianity. Not just the Icelandic Sagas, the stories from the rest of Scandinavia as well.
I went to a museum all day instead of the hot springs (because I am a nerd) to see an exhibit on the Sagas. Thor and Loki figured much more heavily than I thought -- and it was Gaiman's Thor that I saw up there on the walls, the massive powerful idiot who drinks too much and is easily fooled by the Trickster. He was hilarious and stupid -- yet he still always won in the end. They seemed more like Cain and Abel than like the Thor and Loki I grew up knowing (mostly through Marvel culture around me).
I need to read more of the Sagas, because I don't know nearly enough about that branch of mythology. But seeing the exhibit it Iceland made me really appreciate how the Marvel Thor is really its own creation.
And the idiot lunkhead Thor is hilarious.
I think we also come here to the relationship between the gods and the Endless that some of you were referring to in vol. I -- is there a higher power above all the others? Or do the gods rise and fall as the faith of their believers waxes and wanes over time?
The Name / the Light (seeming to be the Abrahamic God of Christians, Jews, Muslims, Mormons, & more) seems to be the power we're dealing with here, the God over Heaven and Hell. He presided over the Fall. But what's interesting is a lot of the lore about this God that we see in this book comes from extrabiblical sources -- the literal idea of Hell as most of us know it is not even clearly a Biblical idea, it's mostly a cultural one defined in the middle ages and borrowed from earlier traditions, and a lot of the lore Gaiman uses comes from Milton and other Renaissance & pre-Renaissance sources.
That God is also interestingly involved in this discussion of what to do with Hell alongside a number of other gods, all of whom are sort of waning in power. They have had their day or their domain, and who have it no more (or perhaps the reign of Chaos and Order is more permanent, or still to come?).
Morpheus has an interesting relationships to these gods, the past gods, the present demons and Abrahamic God, and the other forces such as Chaos and Order. I'm curious to hear all of your thoughts about this.
And as someone who used to spend a lot of my days studying apologetics and the New Testament in Greek and so on (but no more), the portion where Remiel wrestles with his orders from on high really ties me up inside. It resonates so deeply, it makes my stomach hurt -- that's the essential struggle that Jesus had, that any person of faith has, with obedience and free will. How can any choice be a free one if it is all pre-ordained -- as Remiel says, if he chooses to rebel, where would he go? To the same place he is commanded to go. And yet what a sin to defy even so. It was very moving to me, Remiel's response and Duma's acquiescence but I don't know whether it would move people who didn't have the same background as I do.
So Remiel bumps right up against the essential problem of Free Will in a world that has a God who knows all -- or a Destiny with a book -- or the Hecatae spinning story-threads.
This previses things that happen a little later, but to Morpheus, I think. Is previse a word? It should be. Revise and Devise and Improvise are so very useful.
I'm having a hard time seeing where the story will go from here (and I haven't read volume V ever), so I tried making a list of what we have at the end of this story:
- Hell is now run by two angels, one who is a reforming zealot, and one who doesn't seem to care
- Two dead boys are roaming the earth
- Dream's brother is missing, and seems to be important and mysterious
- The Nada plotline is wrapped up (?)
- Loki is free and technically owes Dream
- Dream has a faerie living in his palace now
- Some deities are probably angry at Dream
- Delirium seems to be interesting and important - her bio is the only one that ends with a question mark
- Hippolyta's son is born and given a name
I don't know what that adds up to. I'm interested in seeing other people's thoughts.
I always have a kneejerk reaction when works of fiction get theology "wrong".
Lucifer claims that we design our own punishments in hell. Remiel believes he inflicts pain for redemption. I'm not sure if Remiel thinks that we demand our punishments or God decrees them. I'm definitely not comfortable with the idea that fate in the afterlife is determined by what we think we deserve - if there is an afterlife, I'd prefer my fate to be outside of my hands. (I'm my own worst critic, after all. Well, in some things)
Still, if I look at it as a metaphor for life instead as a statement on the afterlife, of course our outlook and self-perceptions shape our reality. I strongly disbelieve that it's the only or even the most important factor, but it definitely affects our reactions to events, and can affect people around us as well...
Does everyone get reincarnated, as Nada did at the end? If so, that would explain Death's Better luck next time to Element Girl.
ETA: On the subject of free will - can any of us act differently than dictated by what we are and what choices & influences are around us as we make our decisions? The more I think about it, the less certain I am that we are more than the sum of our genetics, what's happened to us, and what's around us at the present. Which can be discouraging. But I figure no matter what the answer is, whether free will exists or not, all I can do is to try to do the best I can with the resources I have in the time I have available...
ETA2: Why does it make it worse when they are being punished/suffering out of love and for rehabilitation rather than spite and simple malice?
@jonsager, The Loki/Serpent punishment is actually from Norse Mythology. This link has spoilers in section 6 possibly, but the rest of the article is just about Loki as he's presented in the Sagas: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Loki
Part of what changed is hell itself. I wouldn't say Remiel introduced hope exactly - the demons, at least, understood its power back in volume one and Dream is able to walk out of hell by invoking the dreams of heaven as that which gives hell its power. By claiming that the tortures of hell would no longer be punishments but redemption, I think Remiel is forcing the souls to consciously confront the reasons they are in hell. Not due to divine mandate, but to their own actions in life (and beliefs). Punishment can exceed the original crime; redemption can't - by changing the terms, the souls now deserve every moment of their suffering.
jillybob - Right up to seeing Marvel's Thor movie, I usually referred to Thor as the god of frat parties. This version seems to embody that much more closely. Loki's imprisonment is part of Norse myth; Dream helping him remain free (hopefully without kicking off Ragnarok) is another change in how a story 'should' go.
I'm also typing this comment without having read the rest of this thread so far, as I don't want it to affect my immediate impressions. I'll go back and respond to others' thoughts later, but for now, I'm leaving you my unadulterated impressions.
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Lucifer won.
He's the only one who truly came out of this with all his notches in the 'win' column.
He's no longer stuck in Hell. He gets no repercussions (within this book at least) for abandoning his post (I haven't read any of Lucifer, so I don't know if it bites him in the ass in that book). And, most of all, he's succeeded in destroying Morpheus, albeit indirectly.
I mean, there's no doubt in my mind, even without having read the later volume, that his actions started the chain of events that will ultimately lead to Morpheus's death at the end of The Kindly Ones. I don't know the specifics yet, and I'm loathe to spoil them for myself (even though I know the ultimate outcome), but that much seems obvious to me,
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Also, Odin caused Ragnarok for himself. I truly believe that had he left Loki tied to his rock, that, in this version of events at least, Loki would not be free to cause the fall of Asgard.
It's by freeing Loki before he knows what Morpheus's decision is regarding the key to Hell, that has doomed himself. I really don't know why he did that. I cannot see how the All-Father would have that lapse in wisdom to allow Loki the opportunity to imprison Susano-o in his place.
Of course, Loki had to be freed at some point, because Ragnarok must occur, so perhaps it was the pure force of fate that caused it, but as far as conscious decisions, it still boggles my mind.
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Aside from the overarching theme of this volume, that being that Hell is more a product of the mind than a literal place (as first pointed out when Lucifer dismissed Breschau's self-inflicted continued damnation), and the literal occurrence of the dead returning to Earth, I'm not sure why Neil Gaiman chose to make the "intermission chapter" a boarding school story.
I already know that the Dead Boy Detectives (as they later became known) don't recur in The Sandman, unlike Hob Gadling, and their story doesn't directly reflect on anything else in the series, instead only providing an example of the results of what's going on elsewhere, so why that in particular?
Does anyone think the school setting has any significance to the rest of this volume (or the series as a whole), or might it just be a genre that Mr. Gaiman felt like writing, and just used the mid-story opportunity to do so?
I feel like there's something more there, but I haven't figured it out yet (maybe the significance of the school setting will only become clear in retrospect, once I've read later issues?). I don't know.
It just seemed important enough to warrant its own section to this comment.
Another thought. When you are tortured from someone who is evil, you can easily hate him/it. There are no mixed feelings. But when you are tortured "for your own good", when you know you should be grateful for your suffering you can't distance yourself from the pain as easily.
@Ginger: I sympathized with Nada when she said no. After all, she just suffered in hell for 10 000 years because Morpheus condemned her to it (or so she believed). That's not a good foundation for a relationship.
Plus, at first Morpheus does not apologize for having caused her pain but seems to be more concerned about the decorum ( when you have done something wrong you apologize, whether you feel like it or not). I would have hit him, too :-)
I wonder if the choice Nada was given in the end was to be born again as a boy or a girl and she chose being a boy as the easier way?
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I used to love Norse Mythology, and have a volume of it that I've read through several times, and I agree, this representation fits LATE-cycle Thor and Loki's relationship pretty well. There are myths that take place earlier in the cycle that have them be close friends, though.
Of course, Marvel's Thor has a more mature personality than the traditional take, but that's because he was sent to Earth as a mortal by Odin in order to learn humility and empathy (which happened quite a bit differently in the comics than it did in the movie). Prior to that, he was all about boozing, fighting, and f**king.
Also, I found it funny, as in it literally made me chuckle inwardly, how small Mjollnir was in this book.
This first story of the meeting of the Endless seems to be
about choice. It opens with the Fates and Destiny. Desire talks of making
things want things (without their consent), but Desire can only inspire desire
for a thing, never force a choice. Do the Endless have free will? Does anyone?
“I would have made her a goddess.” “Maybe she didn’t want to
be a goddess.” YES. THIS. Dream does not want Nada to be able to choose freely.
More language of choice: Lucifer realizing that his
rebellion was planned for from the beginning, and just a part in God’s plan.
Lucifer: “I have never made any one of them do anything.”
“Perhaps this is the ultimate freedom…the freedom to leave.”
Is it? Is this what Death does: frees people?
Death seems very aware of choices. “What do you WANT to do?”
“It’s your choice.”
Charles Rowland’s story is so strange. I wonder how it plays
to an audience that lives in an older country, where it’s not unusual to have
institutions that have gone on for hundreds of years.
Why do we hold on to toxic relationships and behaviours that
only destroy us? “It’s part of growing up, I suppose… You always have to leave
something behind you.”
Loki will not share Morpheus’ feast; is even Loki bound by
the rules of hospitality?
Dream throws away the key to Hell for a moment; why can’t he
let it go for real? What would have happened if he had?
What kind of choice does Remiel have? To obey and be consigned
to Hell, never to return to the Silver
City, or to rebel and go...where?
Is it a real choice? Perhaps the choosing is the important thing, not the
result of the choice.
I find it interesting that the meeting at the beginning sort of lays out the arc of the whole book. Destiny calls a meeting, interested parties gather from far corners, they conflict and abrade against one another, and at the end a choice is made to go back to Hell -- but an inevitable choice, because Destiny has already explained what will happen. I think that's true of Morpheus' return to Hell as well as Remiel and Duma's mission there. That echo is elegant, structurally.
The choice matters even though it was predestined/foreknown. I feel this strongly. I'm not positive how -- maybe it only changes the chooser, not the story. (@joi, maybe making the right choice doesn't matter to the Name, because Remiel will go to Hell whether he's a servant going willingly or a rebel. But it changes Remiel himself to go willingly.) So the idea that there's no such thing as free will doesn't bother me so much, because I still feel in my gut that choices change or at least describe the chooser.
I hope someone else can restate that more elegantly than the mess of words I just made.
As for the school session, I loved it -- even though my school experience was very different, it still rang true to my feelings in grade school, sans zombies. All the classic English boarding school characters were there, the weaklings, the bullies, the strict old boys, the matronly yet stiff old women. So different from American public school, but still so familiar, because I think most of us read an awful lot of stories set in that sort of school growing up. Once I stayed in such a school outside of London for two weeks with classmates, and I had trouble sleeping because of the sensation that most of the students who had previously slept in my room were now dead.
@Totz, I have no idea whether there's symbolism in setting it at the school, though I'll pay more attention now to the settings. But I'm noticing that Gaiman is choosing a remarkable diversity in his time frames and settings for the individual stories, spreading them around the globe and making some contained and indoors (Urania), some through the experiences of other creatures (cats), some in the desert and some in the forest, old and young, men and women, each race and tradition and era in turn. So it doesn't surprise me that this is one of the places we visit. I think it's the only time so far we've spent extensively with children.
And the thing I like about observing children is that they have a clarity about their interactions, an honesty, that can be hard to come by in adult characters. Even the violence is more gratuitous, "just for fun." No pretensions.
I didn't know they went on to do something else! The Dead Boy Detectives, you say? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dead_Boy_Detectives Again, more enduring characters that I thought existed only here in Gaiman land!
@scorcha, I'll see your hell yes and high five it.
I was happy to meet Nada in real life, instead of through stories and secondhand accounts, and find she totally kicked ass. Morpheus should be so lucky, but he doesn't deserve her.
Oh, and by the way, I accidentally found this: http://www.robertestutts.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/07/Sandman_photomanip.jpg You're welcome.
And of course, there's Loki and Thor - who in Gaiman's version do seem much more like Cain and Abel figures than at times, the brothers themselves. In this version, Loki is intended to lose, even though his brother is so often drunk and unable to see the first step of a plan, let alone its conclusion. But, this is in keeping with stories in which the hero does not have to be good, so much has he has to be able to best the 'villain,' even while the villain's role informs the audience and the world of important information.
Back to Lucifer and Mazikeen: they leave Hell, and are no longer tied to it in the same way, and their story is continued in Mike Carey's series, which is fantastic on so many levels. Funnily enough, I just wrote a lengthy post on Mazikeen the other day. In that series, free will, and the lengths to which some will go in order to have it, even when destiny may, in fact, be controlling even that desire is played out in fascinating ways.
I do like the idea that this book illustrates the fact that having power does not mean one knows what to do with it, nor will they always revel in it. Lucifer has seen what's happening in the trenches of Hell, and is able to recognize an opportunity to remove himself from what is ultimately a restrictive and stagnant role. It could have been a punishment for Dream, but it becomes more of a cautionary gesture about where one's decisions, or perhaps the lack thereof, can lead you.
A big thank you to kirsten_ish for her observation that Lucifer doesn't just walk away but transfers the responsibility for hell to Dream. I knew that aspect of the story was (vaguely) reminding me of something but couldn't put my finger on it. Now I can. The Titan, Atlas' job isn't to support the world on his shoulders. His eternal torment that was assigned to him is to keep the earth and sky separate because they are not being allowed to touch (their punishment) until he can find someone else to take the burden from him. He can't just walk away and, I suspect, neither could Lucifer. Someone had to be the "landlord" or managing agent for hell and until Dream showed up and fell into Lucifer's trap the job was Lucifer's.
How Dream fell for Lucifer's trap is a mystery to me. I would have thought that Dream would be more wary and looking out for the angles when dealing with the Father of Lies (...for he is a liar, and the father of it. John 8:44 KJV), I certainly noted Lucifer's qualified statement that he wouldn't harm Dream while Dream was within his (Lucifer's) territory. OTOH, I have the benefit of reading this exchange and not being a party to it. I don't have to be thinking on my feet as I walk through it.
Building from my window. It's normally dark after 2 A.M/ except for a
ring around the base of the spire. Both last night and tonight (&
perhaps tomorrow?) it's still lit up. From the bottom up the colors are Orange, White and Green. Lots of green. Is this so the reveleers, as a co-worker used to refer to himself and friends, have something on which to orient themselves for their trips home, just like some residents of Boston us the Citgo sign in Kenmore Square as a landmark?
This might not be as unrelated as it seems. The Jewish holiday of Purim
and St. Patrick's Day fall around the same time and both are, perhaps,
an ancient Spring celebration that's been co-opted by the
dominant religious culture, the same as Dream's guest are older gods
who've been co-opted or subsumed by the dominant cultures and now must
jockey for a piece of real estate that someone else is brokering. They
are no longer able to command a territory of their own because they
don't have enough believers but they have too many believers to just
disappear or die, as was said in a previous volume. Lucifer passes his burden to Dream who acts as agent brokering a piece or property that he discovers is only the steward of and not the owner. He can't sell it, he can't even choose what he does with it.
Free will seems to be an illusion. The dead boys can up and leave the place where they were killed, but they are still dead. They can't choose to change facts. They are limited by the physical realities of their existences, as are we all. Dream has no choice but to hand the keys over to Remiel and Duma. What would have happen if he refused?
I come from the Judeo side of the Judeo-Christian heritage so I missed out on the whole "hell as eternal torment" thing in my religious training. I've heard about it & I get it, sort of, but I didn't learn it or incorporate it. My training is that we've always had "free will" but that to do other than what the Creator wants is to court calamity. It seems to me that Dream has the same idea when he gets the "command" and turns the key over to the angels. He could do otherwise but that would be asking for trouble. Where is the free will? Actions have consequences.
I am finally caught up, yay! I'm going to read this thread in a minute, but there's a couple of trivial notes I thought I'd get out the way first:
1. This is, and always has been, my favourite Sandman volume, because it brings together so many different mythologies - reading it feels like Neil is rummaging around in his favourite toy box (also witness American Gods and Marvel 1602, for example).
2. I grew up reading Norse and German sagas, so seeing Odin Allfather show up anywhere always makes me happy. This read-through was extra fun for me, because I've just read The Gospel of Loki, which is a great primer on all things Asgard and Ragnarok, and wherein Thor is described in very similar terms as here (Drink! Girls! HAMMER! Durrrrrr.) Also, I cannot tell you how much I enjoy the fact that Mjollnir is TINY here.
3. I have a similar obsession with hell and devils (we read Goethe's Faust pretty much every year at school and Mephistopheles is my all-time favourite character), so seeing a bit more of Lucifer Morningstar is great - and I love the idea of his just packing it in to go sit in the sun.
4. Destiny's shadow. I shouldn't have read Harlan's introduction, because suddenly that was all I could focus on. Mistake, or intention?
5. And speaking of the art: considering that Morpheus can and does choose how he appears to others, how much do you love that he manifests a three-day shadow whilst contemplating what to do about the key? I love it THIS much.
Right, read through all of your comments. Many great ideas here! I'm still fumbling with the concept of free will vs Remiel's and Duma's fate. But free will vs Destiny's book is even harder for me to get my head around. His book says 'This must happen.' So he then makes it happen. Could Destiny, if he so chose, defy the book...or would that change the book? Is this a time travel paradox? I don't know but it makes me a little crazy to think about.
@mariancallI love seeing Dream change aspects as he speaks to all the different delegations! - Yeeees, this! Especially his robe, whenever he talks to Azazel/ other inhabitants of hell. It's beautiful.
For everyone thinking they want to read up on Norse mythology (which I HIGHLY recommend because the pantheon is so very awesome and SO different from the (recent) Marvel re-inventions - which I also love, don't get me wrong), let me point you in the direction of Joanne Harris's Gospel of Loki. (Disclaimers: Ignore the reviews mentioning Tom Hiddleston. This Loki is NOTHING like his Loki. In fact, I found Harris's Loki annoying. That said, repeating I said above, the book is a brilliant primer on all things Asgard and Ragnarok.)
And I will try to answer two of Marian's questions for this volume:
We get our first good glimpse of the whole family together here (most of them, anyway). How irritating would it be exactly to have Destiny as an older sibling and Desire as a younger sibling? Scale of 1-10.
10,000. I don't mind Destiny, as long as he stays in his garden, but I really, really dislike Desire. I have this thing about emotional manipulation (which leads to my foaming at the mouth during most adverts, it's really attractive), so the idea of Desire messing with my head (or anyone's head) makes me angry. I totally agree with Morpheus' anger at the end of the Doll's House. Also, Morpheus can be my older brother any day of the week.
To which delegation of gods do you think you belong?
Norse. I've wanted to live in Asgard since I was 8 years old.
First, if the damned are condemned to Hell as a means of redemption because Remiel thinks that he'll feel better about the torture then, as was said earlier, he's changing Hell into Limbo, where your soul can still be salvaged. That means there's two Limbos, depending on your belief system, which would be one Limbo too many, to paraphrase Lucifer in The Prophecy.
The key there is that it's not really being done for the benefit of the damned souls, it's being by Remiel for Remiel's benefit. The is the fallacy behind every statement of "doing this for your own good." The idea of corrective punishment doesn't really seem to make sense in this case. He just becomes a torturer, or the employer of torturers, with a heart of gold.
Secondly, the person being punished inherently understands this hypocrisy. That's what makes it worse. It's not being done for the his benefit and he knows it. He may change his behavior but it's only to avoid punishment and not because he wants to do "better" or be "a good person." The Act of Contrition says, "..because I fear the loss of heaven and the pains of hell, but most of all because they offend You...." Nothing in there about, "because it will make me a better person in the long run."
Thirdly, as someone else, several elses, noted punishment as a means to redemption does have the potential to instill hope in the person being punished. From 1992 - 1999 I worked with a man who, whenever anyone said s/he "hoped" that something will be, would say "Hope breeds despair." So Desire and Despair may be twins, but Hope seems to be, according to my former co-worker (RIP Beau,) their parent of one stripe or another.
So we've got one Limbo too many, an Angel who needs to have it's conscience assuaged through an act of hypocrisy so it can feel better about itself because it can no longer bask in His glory (wasn't that what happened to Lucifer?) and Despair of the Endless being called upon more often than before.
"'Lasciate ogne speranza, voi ch'intrat" ("Abandon hope all ye who enter here") becomes "Arbeit Macht Frei." Chilling, and a lie, but he's only doing it for the good of the sufferer.
Morpheus goes from being a stand off jerk, to playing the hero and rescuing a mortal.
The only mortal that the story shows who has been in Hell a very long time is Nada. 10,000 years.
The mortal that Lucifer ejects has been there 1100 years.
Does this make Morpheus a bigger jerk than Lucifer? (Possibly)
Lucifer acts fairly honorably. (???) He's even sweet to Mazikeen. He could have taken Nada and held her for Morpheus but this is the leverage Lucifer has to get Morpheus to accept his Key. Big question for the remainder of the series is: does Lucifer do anything more to Morpheus?
(Side note: I have a vague memory of a story told by Cain & Abel & Eve of Lucifer before The Fall. One of Lucifer's assignments was being the duty of Angel of Death. For a while he does it. Then he gets sick of it and quits. But I cannot remember if this was from a comic book or some other weird book I read and just have it all confused in my head.)
Destiny's portrait of Delirium shows her all sweet. But she appears and speaks as a hallucinating drug addict. Delirium is called "Delight" by Desire... and Desire appears to be raking her over the coals by doing so. What happened? We do not get clues on what happened here until later in the series. And some things are never explained. And who is the missing sibling? (We get that later too.)
2 Angels effectively get assigned to Hell. Looks like a punishment.
In the Lucifer series, this is shown to be more complicated.
The dead walk the earth for a bit. Oops.
The phrases that Death tosses to her brother to hurry up and make up his about what to do with the key... because yeah, she has her hands full. (There is not much added for the story line but for the dark humor, there is a manga style comic of what some of this time is like for Death.
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1563899388
For 1 cent and cost of shipping, it might be worth the smile or 2 but only if you are a die hard Sandman fan.)
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One of the classic ways the gods (or genies) destroy a mortal is to grant their wishes before they are stable enough to handle 'em. Morpheus does a bit of this to Richard Madoc by giving him more stories than he can cope with. And I read it as Morpheus understands that this is what Lucifer has done to him with giving him his Key... but Morpheus is honor bound to rescue Nada. So he gets dragged into Myth politics. And because Morpheus stays polite, keeps his balance, and has some incredible dumb luck, he manages to survive the experience.
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I have thought long and hard about the mystery of Omniscient/Predestination & Man having Free Will.
The best I can do to wrap my head around it is that the Universe is God's video game. (It's sort of a next step after "God the Clock Maker".) And just for fun, He plays it an infinite number of times and is looking to see what stays the same and what changes. So He knows all the outcomes (because He has been running it forever) but as in any particular run, we get plenty of free choices to see what we do with it this time around.
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Destiny as an older brother, not very irritating. A 2 or 3.
Desire as a younger sister, a 7 or 8.
If I did not have Death as an older sister who was looking out for me (and occasionally telling Desire to stop talking if she ever wants to speak again), then Desire would rate a 10.
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I'm not assigned to a god delegation.
I'd like to be working in The Dreaming as one of Mervyn Pumpkinhead's assistants (who once in a while gets to sit in and play rhythm guitar with the house band at that super cool new nightclub out in LA called "Lux").
[...] those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end for they do so with the approval of their own conscience.
Ohhh, nice one, Joi.
And as we all know...change can be more of a torment than simple suffering through the status quo.
As it turns out, I was able to find it digitally, and I've just started it. I'll post my thoughts about it in this thread when I have some.
When Morpheus asks for Death's advice, she pops out saying, "Hiya, big brother." but on the next page (and in the balcony scene), she calls him, "little brother."
I doubt this inconsistency in terms was a writing mistake, so what do you all think that means when it comes to the Endless' respective ages?
First noteworthy thing: Season of Mists was published between 1990 and 1991, and collected in 1992. Death: At Death's Door was published in 2003. Kurt Cobain committed suicide in 1994, yet he's at a party for the dead that Delirium throws at Death's place in order to keep the wandering souls happy and all in one place while Death's dealing with the new deaths. Anachronism.
Oh, and not noteworthy, but it's amusing to me: Thor's hammer is even more absurdly small in this interpretation. Its head doesn't even make it past the edges of his fist.
I also thought it was adorable that Morpheus "dressed up" to call Death.
I removed some meanderings I posted about Azazel. I was thinking of a different cosmology, namely the one from the TV show "Hex."
Neither the little cat nor Morpheus is willing to share their thoughts with someone not needing to know. Cats are inscrutable. Their thoughts are very much their own. Dreams are highly individual. There may be a "collective unconscious" as Jung claimed (I don't disagree) but how it expresses itself is unique to each of us. "I am myself..." indeed.