#Delirium will Hellraiser you because you're in her shadow

[lightdancer1]

And honestly while I'm on it, there's a deeply annoying tendency in fanon to forget two very vital details about Death that should shade everything you see and read about her. One of the lines that really shouldn't age well but gets a pass is 'it always gets me down that they fear me but they enter your realm each night without fear.' Why? Because we have Death's own POV from her own words, and reading that and then looking back at her dialogue shows she's every bit the time bomb Dream is. She's sitting on a depression marked by being stuck doing a job she hates (and Gaiman never really addresses that regardless of intent this is the character he actually wrote) 'because the alternative wasn't very nice.'

She has had all these billions of years to work on this and has it worked? No. This is why I read that issue and the show as her actively trying to communicate to Dream that their duties matter and that family is one of them, that they should connect to others because family is there. Is this entirely valid given what their siblings do with and to each other? No. Is that what she meant, yes. Is that what Dream got from it? Also no.

So when Dream puts her on a pedestal, it is because at some level I think he sees how much his sister is like him and he assumes that the near-worshipful attitude he has for her is that she's solved her problems and A Winter's Tale and all that dialogue very bluntly shows she hasn't. She struggles, she struggles very greatly, and the entire chain of problems she contributes to the family dysfunction stems from that. And as much as she doesn't help Dream she's completely neglectful to Despair. The two are never shown interacting outside of a family gathering. Desire she only speaks to in threats and literally uses as the worst possible comparison to Dream. That indicates they have their own animosities that would be just as relevant as what's there with Dream but the series is from Dream's perspective so it doesn't tend to come up as much.

The second thing is that as heartwarming and kindly as she is, she's still fucking Death, the literal Reaper. If she doesn't like something she ENDS IT. I compare her to Nyarlathotep repeatedly because they have this affable aspect and then at the drop of a hat they become utterly inhuman and can and will casually flex power to end people. Death is a frightening force with a ruthless streak who can disperse the Kindly Ones with a threat and can silence Desire in a way Dream never does. Death at best views the games of Dream, Desire, Despair, and Delirium with condescension and contempt.

It's one thing she shares in common with Destruction.

Death is nice, yes. She's as nice as this setting gets for humans and she's still DEATH and she will still end a bitch if she has to. As Overture shows Dream angsts over a problem, her response is 'just kill it and be done with it.' Death of the Endless has far too much waifu syndrome when the actual character written is nuanced, as toxic as the rest of her kin, and arguably much more interesting than the perfect sibling whose entire life revolves around getting her brother laid with the slave trafficker.

I'm all for people looking at the ways the real character has never been this sweet fluffy adorable cinnamon roll. Delirium isn't either, she straight up Hellraisers a guy because he annoyed her. She gets treated as harmless little sister and she's the most dangerous Endless for a mortal not named Dream or Desire and the one with the biggest sadism streak who may or may not understand what it is she does to the people she affects.

Let the Endless sisters be the dangerous entities they actually are and allow Death to be flawed in the ways she is......because that's the fun part about Sandman. All of the Endless are equally flawed and the setting can work very differently depending on whose POV you do.

It's 2023 and I'm only getting more frustrated with Death of the Endless, who, when her brother did his best to articulate "I am feeling depressed and lonely in the wake of a traumatic experience," responded by throwing bread at his head, calling him stupid, and telling him he shouldn't feel lonely because other people exist, and he shouldn't be sad because she said so.