GO S1 : Anthony "Act Of Service" Crowley
GO S2 : Aziraphale "Physical Touch" Fell
(Really Crowley was practically Aziraphale's fidget toy in this season. That angel is HANDSY)
Anonymous asked:
What would happen if Dream abandons his post, like Destruction did?
I know it's not in his character, but hypothetically, what do you think the consequences would be to the world?
interesting question!
i mean, to get the obvious out of the way, the first thing the universe would do would be appoint a new dream of the endless, the reason there hasn't been another destruction is bc he's been keeping his sigil on his person, refusing to abdicate fully, because he doesn't want anyone else to have to get dragged into this
but since you said like destruction did, assuming this was also the case for dream, let's start with this conversation
(and the line here that does always stick out to me is "things still change", because it really does boil down the endless to their most fundamental property - they are all vehicles of change. because life needs change and change needs life, that is the thesis at the core of sandman, that flows through almost every character in different ways, and if you have seven beings that represent the fundamental aspects of life, that means the things they have power over are the things that change people)
(i also still haven't gotten over the time when delirium asks what the word is for the thing that lets you know time is happening and dream just says "change", but now we're getting off topic)
essentially what destruction's saying here is that destruction will happen with or without him, but instead of being in the hands of one of the endless (a being with their own rules and restrictions, their own place in the cogs of the universe), it's in the hands of humanity (or mortals in general, in the comic world where alien species are a common thing)
fate is a really complicated subject in sandman, with both destiny and the fates as separate agents, and within that both can be surprised and influenced by the right person, but all the endless have some kind of connection to time through their father, and if there is a grand plan that's supposed to be fulfilled via the endless' aspects, they would be the ones to push those pieces into place. whether they're aware of it or not, there is some kind of order to how they care for their aspects, they have an instinct for the way things 'should be' (see: literally any prediction any of them have ever made based on their aspect)
and that would be what destruction is deliberately ignoring here, and instead letting every piece fall into place how it will, through the chaos of mortals making their own decisions
and that's a decision that's backed up by the story! because the other thing that sandman does like to push is that ultimately fate is nothing in the face of mortals. the endless exist because of living beings, not the other way around, as dream says to desire. and we see with lyta in kindly ones, she pushed the fates into acting against dream. they didn't go after dream because of the blood debt, the blood debt was the loophole that let them interfere, because lyta was going after dream, and she invoked their power to help her
why should the endless remain caretakers, asks destruction, if it only hurts them, and ultimately they're only needed to complete some arbitrary plan?
(dream who views everything as a story, which must by definition have an author and an ending, fundamentally does not understand this)
so if we extrapolate from there, if dream were to abdicate, there would still be a dreaming, but dreams wouldn't be crafted to serve the stories of the dreamers, people would learn nothing from their dreams, it would be chaos subject to the mind of the individual dreamer. some people still may have helpful dreams, but some people would be hurt by them, and there would be no predicting what would happen. you'd also lose a lot of the knowledge that dream keeps in the library, and there'd be no telling what would happen to all the creatures he's brought into the dreaming to be immortal
(as far as "but we saw the dreaming without dream for a hundred years" goes, i don't think that's a perfect example, because the dreaming is an extension of dream, you can't rip a being in two and expect both halves to just get on with their independent lives. they were hurting being apart, but they were still the channel through which mortals dream, which meant everyone's dreams got thrown into pain and chaos. whereas the dreaming that would be formed through mortals alone would, for better or worse, have nothing to do with the endless)
but there is another clue that throws a spanner in this whole thing so far - death. because destruction isn't the only time one of the endless have abandoned their duties. there's a really short death side comic called a winter's tale, most of which got turned into everything death says to dream in episode six, but there's one page that didn't make it into the tv show
death stopped taking souls. death did not move on without her. mortals were not able to kill each other. and if nothing dies, nothing changes, and the world is thrown into a very different chaos than if death just happened randomly.
i don't have a concrete answer for what this means in regards to all of the above? but here's some possibilities
1) everything i said about destruction holds true for all endless, but this wasn't death leaving her post, this was death deliberately rebelling against the system. she was still pushing pieces into place, but where they shouldn't be, actively holding people back from dying
2) everything i said holds true for all endless but death. because death is different to the others, she's death. the endless cannot experience their own aspect. the ritual that surrounds the lives of the endless don't apply to her, it's specifically stated in regards to the funeral shrouds that there's only six. she must be there for the ending of all things, including her siblings, she has no way out, so she can't just abdicate her post like the others could, even if she wanted to
3) it works differently for all of them. this is the one i personally think is least likely? but since i don't actually know for sure, i think we can consider it might work for dream like it does for death, rather than for destruction (the elder three do have more fundamental abilities, after all). in which case, dream doing what destruction did would have disastrous consequences. it would start with dreams you have while asleep, mortals would only be subject to already created dreams, which may also fade over time into nothingness. but the dreaming isn't the only thing dream has dominion over. stories, creativity, connection, hope, faith, these are all things that fall under his purview. if you could tear those away from humanity, what you'd have left wouldn't be humanity
MAJOR SPOILERS FOR SANDMAN
I think your post is very interesting and insightful, and has sent me into a tailspin.
I always thought that the only way a new endless could get appointed is by the death of the previous one (e.g. Despair, Dream). I even thought it was hilarious when Dream says to destruction ‘you could pass it on’, bc I thought that was basically saying ‘you should KYS, brother’ 😂 (tho knowing their understanding of death as a gift, that seems less aggressive than it sounds).
But now with your post, I went back to BL and there is that one panel where destruction says: ‘I kept my sigil, I didn’t pass it on’, and this gives me pause to observe your theory, that someone else could just get appointed to it.
I always took this ‘I didn’t pass it on’ bit as, ‘I didn’t go to the sunless lands to trigger the birth of my new facet, because I didn’t want anyone else to carry that burden’.
After your post I’m of two minds about it:
a) The ‘I didn’t pass it on’ is a euphemism for ‘I chose not to go to the sunless lands, and have someone else’s inherit my mess (see poor second Despair), and thus the only way an endless can be created is by the death of another.
Or
b) They can actually ‘pass it on’ to others by bestowing their sigil upon to them, as it can be interpreted by the BL panel. But then the question is: Is there precedent for this anywhere in the comics? (This sounds really aggressive I don’t mean it to sound it that way, I’m genuinely curious, and I’m super sleep deprived rn so my post could have probably been better written).
Thank you for the insightful post!
trans people i’m happy you’re alive!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! i’m so glad you’re here!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! keep doing your best!!!!!!!!!!!!!! i love you!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Found a new challenge that could be fun!
Send me some ideas (like pictures, it helps) on what we can put Dream of the Endless in! The Dreaming can use an interesting wardrobe for it's creator, don't you think?
Spam incoming. I’m actually ✨obsessed✨ w finding things for Morpheus wardrobe, so this post really hits a nerve🖤
so i keep referencing the What Broke Delirium essay i plan to write but never actually writing it, so let's dig into that one!
because. sandman does not spoonfeed information. neil gaiman even said this in regards to the tv show, most shows are written these days under the assumption that audiences aren't really paying attention and need things spelled out for them - but sandman is not one of those shows. you gotta notice everything to get the full story
which honestly i love in many ways because it's part of why i'm never gonna run out of sandman essays to write - every time i reread the comics or rewatch the show i catch something new
and this is one of the first hidden bits of info i caught - remember this spread from overture?
it's a fucking gorgeous page and one of my favourite in the entire sandman run, both for the pretty art and the content itself (i love delirium SO much)
but let's just zoom in on the center of those flowers for a sec
because there's tiny tiny text written inside them
(for anyone who can't parse that, the first says "delight was sad", the second says "delight went mad")
now i've mentioned in many of my posts before that the endless all struggle to experience their own aspect, they are that thing, it exists for the most part out of their reach, and that causes problems for all of them
but i usually leave delirium out of these explanations
and that's because, for whatever reason, delirium is the opposite. and delight was too. i don't know what it is that makes her different, but while her older siblings all seem to be barred from their own domain by nature (or have to go to great lengths to experience it), del is too much of it. she's utterly absorbed by it. and while i think she's learned over the centuries how to be a bit more flexible (she understands the coins have two sides thing better than any of them, and can be lucid when she needs to), she didn't start out that way
we don't know what it is exactly that broke her. but we know why.
she had spent all of her life as the personification of happiness and joy, and someone who embodied those emotions. she appeared most as a little kid as delight, because kids definitely find it a lot easier to stay in that perpetually excited, happy mindset
but nothing stays that way forever. and this is where she is like her siblings, and why she's so familiar with the coin metaphor - when you're missing a fundamental piece of being human (either by being barred from your aspect or by being absorbed by it), that's not sustainable. it will tear you apart. dream refuses to accept that this is the case, and that breaks him. desire is equally stubborn about it, and they've outright admitted (in narration) that they're hanging on by a fucking thread
but death figured it out, when she realised she couldn't fulfill her function properly without learning what it was like to live. destruction figured it out when he ran away to go create. and delirium figured it out the hard way, because as soon as the world got a little too big for her singular aspect to make sense, it shattered
and it shattered slowly
there may have been some form of inciting incident, but she didn't become delirium overnight. i think a lot about her describing it as "growing up, or at least growing older", because that's both a very mature way to look at it and also an extremely tragic way to look at it, the idea that she knows too much, is never going to see the world the same way again, and that means delight is never coming back
(and that realisation is when she stopped presenting as a child and started presenting as a teenager)
and i think for a while, early days of being delirium, not delight, she didn't know what to do with that. delight broke into scattered pieces and the more fell away the harder it became to connect them
but she's also the only one of her siblings who's picked herself up from that. and it's why she's the wisest of them. because from there she learned
okay, so her innocence is gone. so delight isn't coming back. but there's still parts of her around, if delirium ever needs them. and the more she observes about the world, the more she experiences, the more different pieces she gets to add to the puzzle. they don't fit together, but that's del's real strength - they're not supposed to. she could have tried to reassemble herself piece by piece, like gluing together a broken statue, but why would she do that? then she'd be exactly as breakable as before, if not more so
instead she's more of a floating amalgamation of pieces, or rather, she's the ties between them. and because there's no set puzzle, she can put those pieces together in any order. she's no longer susceptible to the same problems as her siblings, because she's not missing anything anymore. she didn't lose parts of herself when becoming delirium, she gained some
and yes, no one is entirely without flaw - her downside is she's still susceptible to strong emotion, and when that overwhelms her mind she stops being any kind of person, we just see that floating amalgamation, until she can calm down. but that's the worst of it. her siblings may see her as broken, but she's more whole than she ever was as delight. and she's never going to break again
Dreamling for Ukraine
Creator- @notallsandmen (Notallmaenads on ao3)
Hello Dreamers, I'm participating in the fandom charity drive @dreamlingforukraine !
That means I'II be creating fanworks in exchange for donations for one of these charities which are providing relief for the victims of the war in Ukraine and the destruction of Kakhovka Dam.
What I offer: Fic in any guise, preferably very smutty and/or fluffy.
Accepting prompts: YES. I am open to most prompts, particularly your weirdest smut prompts, goofiest joke prompts, or heart-achingly fluffy. My speciality falls under Victorian/Edwardian smut, but any historical fic prompt is also very welcome. Will make sfw, nsfw, pwp, kinks (particularly BDSM-adjacent), dub-con
Won't make: MCD, Daniel-Dream, unrequited love, love triangles, infidelity etc. I can share my more detailed squicks in DMs, and we can brainstorm a compromise if need be.
Suggested Donation Amount: 1€/$/£ or the equivalent in other currency per ~100 words. This means you can donate 10€/$/£ for 1,000 words or 20€/$/£ for 2,000 words and so on.
I accept offers for a minimum of 100 words and a maximum of 5000 words.
Slots: 2
Expected turnaround time: between a week and a month, depending on the requested word count
How to commission me:
* I will be accepting donations until further notice
* Send a message here on Tumblr, telling me what you'd like me to make for you.
* Wait until I reply. Do not donate until I confirm your commission! All money donated to charity is non-refundable.
* Once I confirm your commission, go ahead and donate. PLEASE remember to screencap your receipt and black out your personal details. You need to send me this to prove you've donated.
* Once l've seen your receipt, I'II start working on your project.
* I reserve the right to refuse commissions if l'm not comfortable with them or feel like l'm unable to accept them for lack of time, skill or any other reason.
UPDATE: I will keep commissions for @dreamlingforukraine open until further notice, with intent to keep it up until the war is over. Slava Ukraini 🇺🇦
Ian Stone, Doubting Thomas, oil on linen, 12x16 in, 2023
"If you know the painting by Caravaggio, Doubting Thomas, it was my direct inspiration for this piece.
A doubting Thomas is a skeptic who refuses to believe without direct personal experience. 50-60 years ago, it was not uncommon for people to think or believe that being gay was a phase or a mental illness or deviance in some shape or form. It's embarrassing that the same things are being said about trans people today."
STOP SCROLLING!!! THIS IS NOT A PHOTO IT'S OIL ON LINEN!!!!!!!!!
on a serious note regarding the wga strike and (as of 1:50 AM PST 7/13) upcoming sag-aftra strike, dsa-la has a fundraiser called The Snacklist which provides snacks and water on the picket lines here in LA. right now the funds they have will not last through the end of the summer, especially given the current and upcoming heatwaves necessitating more supplies. if you have a couple of dollars to spare it's a great way to directly support the writers (and potentially the actors) during this difficult time!
happy first sag-aftra strike in 60 years to all who celebrate.
if you are an enjoyer of media (which i will guess based on your presence on tumblr that you are) please consider donating to the snacklist (linked above) or to any of the following mutual aid funds that directly support striking actors/writers, IATSE and teamster union members who are also out of work and by and large refusing to cross the picket lines, and nonunion PAs and assistants (like yours truly) who are directly impacted by the work stoppage. everyone in this industry works unbelievably hard to bring you the shows, movies, webseries, and variety programs that you enjoy and every worker deserves a fair contract. any support you can give is extremely meaningful.
The Entertainment Community Fund provides emergency financial assistance to anyone in the entertainment industry who is unable to pay their immediate basic living expenses such as housing, food, bills, and healthcare.
The Union Solidarity Coalition has been formed by members of the wga, sag, and the dga to help cover the cost of healthcare for IATSE and teamsters who will not get enough work hours to qualify for their coverage this year due to their refusal to cross a picket line.
The Hollywood Support Staff Relief Fund (also run by the Entertainment Community Fund but separate from the above link which supports all film and tv workers) offers assistance to tv and film support staff and assistants who are not protected by a union and have been displaced from low or entry level positions.
Drive 4 Solidarity is an IATSE organized event in August raising funds for all union and guild members. Tickets are available for those in socal but donations are being taken as well.
Humanitas Groceries for Writers fund provides WGA members with grocery gift cards.
Green Envelope Grocery is a grocery fund for all workers in the entertainment industry regardless of union status.
Small note: this is NOT the first SAG-AFTRA strike in 60 years. It has been 60 years (63 actually) since the WGA and SAG were on strike at the same time. SAG and AFTRA went on another major strike together in 1980. This was before the two unions merged in 2012. Please support the striking workers via the links above!
This is Doris Pollas, the cofounder of the organisation now known as lgbt+ Denmark which by being founded in 1948 is one of the oldest if not the oldest queer organisation in the world.
Doris lived in a farm in Jutland as a child. She was always butch and figured out she was a lesbian in her teens. When she heard about a club in copenhagen where boys kissed boys and girls kissed girls she went just some months after and it was through that club she started a paper connecting queer people all up to seventies and co founded lgbt+ Denmark.
She is now 97 year and wishes for every queer person to have an as loving and accepting family as she did.
I don’t see a lot of older gays from my country, so learning about Doris, a masc lesbian, was really nice.
Hello! I hope you’re well!
If you’re in the mood for some rando inspo, I just saw this pic of young Neil Gaiman and thought there’s a lot of 80s Dream energy there 😂
Anyway your account is amazing, and it brings me all the joys!
PS: Your Jessamy character design is so beautiful. It’s definitely how I picture the character whenever she’s human in fics 🖤
Have a great day!
Thank you for the suggestion! I hope you’re well and enjoy! 💛
🪽Flutter 🪽
hc: Dream has wings but he rarely allows anyone to see them because this part of him feels too vulnerable and fragile and hard to control so it is easier to pretend that he doesn’t have it even to himself most of the time
you like gay shit? you like libraries? you wanna stick it to the fascist assholes trying to ban books across America? Boy have I got the thing for you:
The Queer Liberation Library (QLL) - a digital library by and for queer folks accessible to anyone across the entire US
*stefon voice* QLL has everything, an endorsement from Wonder Woman, 501(c)3 status, a quick exit bar on their website, and an absolutely delightful comments section on their fundraiser.
Fundraising now through July 7th, 2023 for an Oct 2023 launch! We just hit 50% of our goal, and with your help we can go all the way!! Find us @QueerLibLib on most social media.
Tell your friends! Tell your fandom! Tell your rich gay uncle if you’ve got one! If you don’t have money and don’t know anyone with money just give us a follow and we’ll be providing *you* with free queer ebooks and audiobooks before the end of the year!
HAPPY PRIDE & SOLIDARITY FOREVER
Practical tip for those dealing with wildfire smoke now: you can make a very effective air filter for a reasonable amount of money using a box fan & one of those filters meant for your furnace.
Also, I've managed to pick up 2 of the box fans for very cheap/free from yard sales. Make sure you get a filter rated for wildfire smoke, I think this one cost about $20.
These make a huge difference in the indoor air quality.
Posting again because of the fire situation up in Canada and resulting smoke. If you're dealing with wildfire smoke, these are surprisingly effective and relatively cheap.
Just tape the filter to the fan, making sure the air can't sneak around the edges. I used painter's tape, but I'm sure duct tape or similar would work just as well.
